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Mike Selinker's page
Former Titanic Games Lead Designer. 236 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists.
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Last year I launched "NaNoWriMi," or National Novel Writing Minute, and lots of folks here participated. The challenge was to write as much of a novel as possible in one minute. Now it's back, over on the Wired Magazine site. Feel free to jump in there, or here, or wherever you like. Here's the post on Wired.com:
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NaNoWriMi: A Wired Challenge to Write a Novel in One Minute
By Mike Selinker November 2, 2010 | 6:37 pm
Here is a writing challenge for all readers of Wired.com with a little time on their hands. Make that “very little.”
With a tip of our cap to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the Decode blog wants to see which of our readers can write the best start to a novel — in only 60 seconds. You can flex your creative muscles in NaNoWriMi: National Novel Writing Minute just by posting a comment to this entry. The rules are these:
1) You can’t start with any ideas in your head. Open a comment, hit a timer, and then write a title, a byline, and as much text as you can.
2) When the timer ends, you can finish your thought, but for Pete’s sake, be quick about it.
3) You’re not trying to write a complete novel. You’re just trying to see how far you can get in 60 seconds. So you don’t need a middle or an ending. We’re not looking for length either.
4) Submissions must be in by 11:59 pm Pacific on November 30. (Okay, you can have another minute.) You can submit any number of novels, as long as none of them takes you longer than a minute to write.
5) This is totally on the honor system. Sure, you could dust off that story you wrote in Freshman English, copy and paste in the first few sentences, and impress us with your creativity. But we’re sure you’re not like that. Besides, it’ll probably take you longer to find it than it will to write a new one.
Here’s how this came about. Last year, with no likelihood of having time in November to write a NaNoWriMo novel, I figured I at least had the time to start one. With a timer next to my desk, I wrote as much of a novel as I could in one minute. This was “Novel Zero”:
Last Moon at Aggathor
by Mike Selinker
Today I am a man, thought Redclaw. I can give up enough of myself to make the change, day or night. The greater acommplishemnt is retaining enough of myself to change back.
Yes, that’s terrible, and yes, that’s exactly how I typed the word “accomplishment.” You think I’m going to waste precious seconds performing a spellcheck? I published the result on my Facebook page, and then hundreds of 60-second novels sprung from my creative friends’ fingers. People talked about how it was good practice for larger writing tasks, and how it was better than coffee for waking them up in the morning. You can see some of the results on the forum for the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game.
We’re sure you can do just as well as those authors. So, got a minute to spare? Open a comment, start your time and start writing. We’ll post comments on our favorite ones later in the month.
The good folks at DriveThruRPG are organizing a Gamers Help Haiti drive, where you can join your fellow gamers in contributing $5 to the relief efforts. Follow the link if you want to donate.
Mike
We at The Loonbucket Brigade didn't really cotton to the whole "Pray for Obama—Psalm 103:8" flap, so we made our own gamer-themed version. Let me (ducking) know what you think.
Mike
Yes, you read that correctly. I wanted to do something to show solidarity with my NaNoWriMo friends, so I invented “NaNoWriMi.” You see how much of a novel you can write in a minute (hence the “Mi”), and then you abandon it forever. 1, 2, 3, go…
My "Novel Zero" was this:
Last Moon at Aggathor
by Mike Selinker
Today I am a man, thought Redclaw. I can give up enough of myself to make the change, day or night. The greater acommplishemnt is retaining enough of myself to change back.
Yes, that's how I spelled "accomplishment." You think I'm wasting precious seconds on spellchecking? I've concluded that the rule "You can finish your last sentence, but for God's sakes, be quick about it" may need to exist, but most people seem to get somewhere with 60 seconds from conception to (a sort of) conclusion.
Anyway, it's kinda taken off on my Facebook page ("novels" by Jason Bulmahn, Owen Stephens, Miranda Horner, and more), so I figured folks here might like in. I'll probably collect them somewhere afterward. Anybody want to climb on board the NaNoWriMi Express?
Mike
Today's Most Beautiful Thing is about TSR's classic typo "dawizard." If you went to the ENnies at Gen Con, you heard me talk about it there. Enjoy, and post comments here or on the journal itself (you don't need an LJ account).
Mike
This is my favorite game of the year so far. It's just about the quickest game I've ever seen, from the moment you open the box to the moment you start playing. Two players get cards with people on them, like Gandhi and Frank Sinatra. Then you flip an action card such as snowboarding or basket weaving, and the players make arguments for who would win. It is as fun as fun gets. We played a ten-person game at the National Puzzlers' League convention, and people wouldn't leave until we'd finished the entire box. Give it a try.
Mike
One of the things that's made me happy as a board game designer has been Board Game Geek, the ultimate encyclopedic compendium of tens of thousands of board and card game. It's the site if you want to know anything about board games. Hardly a day goes by where I'm not looking something up on it.
So the roleplaying game designer in me is particularly happy about this: the upcoming debut of RPG Geek, which is just like Board Game Geek for RPGs. There are 3200 entries for 1000 systems currently being slated for construction.
There's an open beta starting very soon, and a call for entry development will likely go out shortly thereafter. So if you ever wanted to help transfer all that Pathfinder or D&D or any other RPG content into a massive database, this is your chance.
You can sign up for the open beta here and read about the project here and here.
This is a very big project, but I think it will be very, very cool.
Mike
Unprompted plug here, just cuz I love this thing: Run, don't walk, to click this Paizo store link and order Stan!'s amazingly cool Cthulhu bedtime-story "The Littlest Shoggoth," which can be previewed on the Story Time with Stan! site. You may not know yet that you need this little book, but you do. Hurry--Stan will only sell as many as people actually buy!
Mike
As some folks here know, I write an occasional series of columns called "The Most Beautiful Things". Somehow, in a year of writing this, I never wrote anything about fiction. So today I just posted about the most beautiful fantasy novel series, which I think is Jack Vance's Dying Earth series. Feel free to post your agreement or disagreement there if you like.
Mike
Check out the ad site for the new Risk:
It asks ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH?
And then says, “Grab your shoes and pull up your panties. Your manliness is about to be tested.”
And there’s the words MAN UP! on the screen.
And a MANLY METER. (Subtle.)
And a STUD CHALLENGE, where you pick up women in a bar using pickup lines (I scored two women at once, but left a $20 bill for the other one as “seed”—apparently I need pickup lines to hire prostitutes).
And a WIFE BUTTON, which leads to a Tiffany’s parody page.
And a remote control which plays a movie of hot women dancing.
And a finger you can pull for the obvious effect.
And the ability to turn your truck’s trailer hitch into a sack of two soccer balls. (Way subtle.)
And a big pile of poo on the intro page, which leads to a game where you increase your manliness by flinging poo.
And of course, no ability to pick a female avatar. But you can pick your mustache, so that's something.
I erected my MANLY METER up to 2849 manly points (I have chest hair!) before I got bored. Took about eight minutes.
I’m sure proud to say I designed a Risk game now.
Mike
I've just been invited to join a Facebook group called "Pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons Crowd," in the wake of Michael Goldfarb's bafflingly polarizing comments on behalf of the McCain camp. What I like is there's a few people who I believe would call themselves Republicans on there, but they don't like broad-brush strokes about their lifestyle. A large number of people involved the creation of the last two editions of D&D are among the "PODD People."
Anyway, I don't know if everybody can see the group, but I seem to have a link that allows me to invite members. So if anyone can't join and needs an invite, leave a note to that effect here and I'll do so in a couple of days.
And yes, Barack Obama's 4E stats are on there.
Mike
This week's entry on my journal The Most Beautiful Things is on the Most Beautiful Roleplaying Game, for which I selected White Wolf's Mind's Eye Theatre. And yes, I did seriously consider D&D.
I'm sure not everyone here agrees with that choice, so please go over there and register your opinions if you feel inclined. (Especially if you want to give Jason's ego a boost.)
Mike
I just posted this on The Most Beautiful Things but I figured you guys would like it too.
Evon's cracking 65 as we head home to Seattle from our 13th-anniversary day in Bellingham, when I see a bag fly off the back of a boat being hauled by a pickup. We speed up and flag down the driver to make him pull over. We tell him that a quarter mile back his bag flew off his boat. He thanks us, and we head on our merry way.
Minutes later, I notice that a cargo van hauling a flatbed has a purple and blue bag caught on its back axle. We flag down this driver, and he pulls over. We quickly retrieve the bag from the back axle.
Now we have a dilemma. We have the bag. There's no way the owners are going to find it on the roadway. They could even get killed looking for it. We have to go back and find them. So we pull off at the next exit, with Evon watching the highway.
Sure enough, at that moment the boat whips by on the highway. But we're on the exit ramp. So we reenter the highway, and Evon tops 85 as we catch up to the boat. We flag the driver down for a second time, and hand him his bag. He is flabbergasted.
That all takes place in about fifteen minutes and ten miles of road. Now that's how to celebrate an anniversary.
As some readers here know, I write a blog called The Most Beautiful Things, in which I name the things that I think are better than all other things of their type. Today's entry is on the Most Beautiful Card Game, and I picked Bohnanza, the German card game about bean farming. Feel free to head over there if you'd like to see, and you're welcome to agree or disagree on the page.
Mike
For reasons unknown to me, I've decided to start a non-gaming blog called "The Most Beautiful Things," in which I pick the single best example of something amazing and fawn all over it. First up is the bass line from the Temptations' "Ball Of Confusion." I might next write about salads. Actually, I have no idea what I'll write about. But come on along if you like, and feel free to suggest ideas for things to write about.
It's at The Most Beautiful Things.
Mike
..we've decided to drop some of them from a great height:
Falling: The Goblin Edition.
Falling is one of my partner James Ernest's all-time best games. It's a real-time game in which you are all falling, and the object is to hit the ground last. (It's all you could think of on the way down.)
For the Goblin Edition, I wrote a little goblin song:
Goblins falling from the sky
Can you teach us how to--THUMP!
Enjoy falling to your death.
Mike
Total diversion here, if you'll indulge me:
One of the great aspects of my life is that I get to design games with my friends. I've brought in major designers like James Ernest, Teeuwynn Woodruff, Bruno Faidutti, Richard Garfield, Richard Borg, Andy Looney, Klaus-Jurgen Wrede, and Jason Bulmahn to create games with me like Harrow, Stonehenge, and Key Largo. I've known most of those guys for years, so my days are usually pretty awesome.
But I've been feeling really jazzed about three of my newest co-designers, whose talents I didn't know so well before now. In the last week, I've designed game material with:
- Josh Frost, who's done brilliant work with me on the not-so-Civil War game Yetisburg,
- Greg Vaughan, who's been a peach to work with on the Gold Goblin Gaming Hall for Pathfinder 13, and
- Dungeon Grrrl, who on the same project has unwittingly let me draft her into the ranks of full-fledged game designers.
Plus, I've gotten to marvel at the fine cartooning of Drew Pocza on a very funny Pathfinder-inspired game we're working on.
I hadn't co-designed a major game product with any of those folks before recently, and boy, I'm really enjoying doing so. When you see the results, I hope you'll enjoy it too. Anyway, just felt like sharing.
Mike
P.S. In Greg's case, I think we should all go here to this website to become "Greg's Angels."
Paizo just announced the soon-to-be-existence of Yetisburg: Titanic Battles in World History, Vol. 1, an American Civil War game... but with yetis. And mastodons. Mastodons that explode. Head over to the Yetisburg page for more details.
Mike
This may not be for everyone on the Titanic forum, but I wanted to suggest people look at Paizo's new card game Harrow, which is at:
http://paizo.com/pathfinder/pathfinderChronicles/v5748btpy80sv&source=s earch
There's a cool divination component, but the more interesting thing for board/card game fans would be the gambling game that's included with this gorgeous deck. Take a look if you like.
Mike
I had a really good week last week, as two games that I've been working on for a while came out. Both involve good friends of mine, so I figured I'd take a moment to tell you about them. If you feel like indulging me, read on.
The first, as you may know, is from Paizo's Titanic Games imprint, called Stonehenge: An Anthology Board Game. It's a project I worked on with Richard Garfield, Bruno Faidutti, Richard Borg, and James Ernest (and later Paul Peterson, Bruno Cathala and Serge Laget, Andy Looney, Klaus-Jurgen Wrede, and Paizo's own Jason Bulmahn, among more to come). It's an anthology board game, which means a bunch of game designers take the same pieces and write different games for them. It's open source, meaning that if you're a game designer or want to be one, you can write for it too. I hope you will.
Another game I'm excited about is Unspeakable Words, from Playroom Entertainment. It's a Call of Cthulhu word game, where the words you form can cost you sanity. It's just about the only word game where exercising your big vocabulary can lose you the game. This game has the distinction of being the only one I ever wrote entirely in my sleep. I was at a convention at my friend Monte Cook's house, and had the opportunity to play Arkham Horror and Scrabble on the same day. I went to sleep, and woke up with that game fully formed in my head. I made it to a pen and paper, and two hours later, I was playing it with Sue Cook, Monte's wife. It was the encouragement from Sue and Cindi Rice (both former TSR editors, by the way) that got me to work toward getting it published, and a few years later, Playroom has put it out. So if it sounds like fun to you, I hope you'll check it out.
Anyway, a good week. Thanks for listening.
Mike
First fan-submitted Stonehenge game! Rich Hutnik is my new favorite person on the whole planet. Yay, Rich Hutnik!
Mike
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