After weeks of umming and erring, I finally bought the Nobilis and Chuubo Bundle on Bundle of Holding, featuring the games Nobilis and Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine by Jenna Katerin Moran.
It’s not that I wasn’t sure of the games’ worth. On the contrary, it’s because I well understand the quality and beauty and ingenuity of these games that I considered buying the bundle, despite already owning both of the games. Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, the one that I’ve played before, is unlike any other roleplaying game I’ve ever tried, and the scope of the ideas it can add to a game designer’s toolbox is immense.
I bought the bundle because I hope the Chuubo supplements will help me sort through a few issues that are holding me back from running another Chuubo’s campaign. I really want to, but some relatively minor things are in the way, like the need to provide and use large amounts of stationery props (the Quest and Issue cards). I got some advice on this on Google+, so I might have eventually got round to doing it again regardless, but this Bundle is a prompt to dive back into this (occasionally mindblowing) game and see if I can sort through it.
Even without playing, there are so many great game mechanics in these games that can be lifted out and used in other places. That’s what I did recently with the emoting rules in my blog post on Revealed Emotionality in roleplaying games, but there is so much more gold to mine in these pages.
To make a long story short, there are only two days left on the Bundle of Holding. If you don’t have these games already, this is an excellent opportunity to get them at a bargain price. If you own them, maybe it’s time to give them another look. I’m planning to do just that.
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I *almost* wound up running Glass-Maker’s Dragon via video chat, and had basically engineered a giant Google sheet for tracking everyone’s character, including tracking issues and tallying XP on quests. It doesn’t have quite the tactile feel of marking off boxes on a graphical card, but it’s probably significantly easier to manage at the higher scale.
Sadly, I suspect the audience for the game isn’t at the point where it’s likely to include at least one programmer with good graphical and web expertise that can’t help but knock out a free solution. My recent experience *is* that most of my players at the table bring tablets or laptops, so would find a digital solution equivalent to cards.
Are Acrobat’s ad hoc form filling tools good enough yet to mark up the cards if distributed in PDF?
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You wouldn’t mind sharing that spreadsheet, would you? I’m used to managing my campaigns on spreadsheet, although admittedly never on one that I shared with the players in real time.
No idea about Acrobat’s form-filling tools, sadly. Might be something to explore for someone who has that software and some experience using it, though…
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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XeZl2702OrM4-6W9ITVBdZZ5rcw7k9ryV9G4iQq6J3A
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Thanks!
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