My good friends back In Las Cruces, NM, have started a blog of their quest to eat every burrito on the menu at Santa Fe Grill. It’s entirely awesome.

I make a cameo in a couple of episodes somewhere around July, so you’ve got that to look forward to when the blog gets that far.

That science game thing I talked about yesterday? I ended up calling it Erudite, and it’s available now.

It’s a plugin for any system. Two pages of rules, plus a tracking sheet and two sample tracking sheets (one for 4E, one for a specific 4E character).

The question is, what does this have to do with science? It’s ostensibly a plugin that makes magic a little more interesting, maybe a little more like magic in fiction. However, it’s all about hidden, unchanging rules, which the players have an interest in figuring out. These little rules make magic a bit more or less powerful in certain situations, or make cool effects happen.

The players want to figure out these rules, so they take actions they think might trigger a rule, and observe the results. Based on what happens they get a better knowledge of what the rules are, or what they aren’t.

Basically, it’s a set of rules encourages science.

Science! I think I have a game design about science. Not science fiction (see Free Market for that), but the practice of the scientific method.

It’s a game about science, not of science (like carry is a game about war).

And it might actually be a 4E supplement, for now.

I’ve been talking about ’sandbox’ games a lot recently (electronic and pen-and-paper), and it’s made me realize something: sandbox narrative games don’t really work that well.

Let’s face it: sandboxes are boring. Sandboxes don’t really do much, they have some potential for creation, but nothing to encourage it. A sandbox is, at best, an empty canvas.

A good narrative game is more like quicksand: it demands reaction, creativity, and emotion.

That doesn’t mean there can’t be good sandboxy games. Something like Sim City thrives on being a sandbox, and it works wonderfully. But even there you sit down with a purpose, you don’t just look at the screen and consider if you’d rather build a city or a forest.

Anyway, from now on when I pitch a game, it’s always going to include something to provide some initial conflict. Telling the other players that it’s a big open world where anything can happen usually means nothing does happen. Quicksand, not sandboxes.

I was originally going to write a post about a nice, Dogs-ish dice mechanic that I was thinking of using for Revolucion. Then I realized that it just wasn’t the right game for the mechanic, I think Rev should keep to single, quick rolls. Oh well, now I have to figure out what game it does belong in.

I finally set up a page just for my new game, Revolucion. The current version (at this point the GenCon draft) will always be at that URL.

It’s a game about how you rise to the top, who you bring with you and who your throw under the bus. The current version’s got all the rules, plus three sample settings. Have at it.

My friend John Harper recently posted a two page RPG called Ghost/Echo that got some creative wheels turning for a lot of people. The format got me thinking, so I put together my own little ‘oracle game:’ Codename Eliezer.

Over at Play This Thing, just in time for the presidential election, my review of a game that promotes a level of discourse on par with the presidential debates: Og.

Since the price of cricket bats ruled out my Shaun of the Dead costume, but I still needed something zombie themed, I’ll be spending tomorrow as something not quite dead, but definitely not alive either: the dreaded zombie process.

I will feast on the memory of the living!

Edit: Got featued on Boing Boing Gadgets! If you’re here from Boing Boing, take a look around, there’s more here then awesome t-shirts.

Another review of mine up on Play This Thing, this time it’s a writeup on vs. Outlaws. I’m also now listed in the site’s staff section, so you can keep up with my posts there.