Happy Bishop Games is a small company and we get really excited when someone mentions us. That’s why I’m happy to promote Episode 44 of the Nearly Enough Dice podcast!

The podcast covers lots of roleplaying and movie stuff, and it’s very well done, so it’s worth a listen just for that. But around 25 minutes into it, the two hosts talk about the Outlive Outdead kickstarter campaign. Liz and Mike (the two hosts) more or less reviewed the Kickstarter campaign and loved it. Liz even says she’ll pledge! Hooray! (Maybe you should pledge too!)

Thanks to the fine folk at Nearly Enough Dice for including our project in their news. Cheers!

Our Kickstarter campaign for Outlive Outdead is halfway over, and we’re very happy with how things have gone so far.

Our goal is $2,000 USD and we’re are currently (as of 05/16/12) at $1,582 USD. That’s 79% of our goal with 2 and a half weeks left! Not too shabby!

We have 46 backers from all over, including the USA, UK, Canada, Norway, and Australia. 41% of our funds come from people who found our game on Kickstarter’s pages, while the other 59% came from other sites such as RPG.net, ENWorld, UKRoleplayers, and Facebook.

Still, we need to hit our goal in 17 days or this will all be for nothing. That’s why I ask, beg, and implore you to tell others about this Kickstarter. Send out emails! Tell your friends and family to back this great game. Post on Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+, and the rest! Even people who might only have a passing knowledge of you should be made aware of this campaign. For Pete’s sake, there’s some dumb email chains floating around the internet–let’s start something that has some actual merit!

To all of you who spread the word, thank you!

To all of you who have backed the project, thank you! You rock!

To all of you who haven’t backed the project yet, what can we do to get that pledge? Send us an email (wjmacguffin at gmail dot com) and talk to us. We’re quite nice most days!

Paul Baldowski, one of the designers of Outlive Outdead, posted a great actual play report yesterday. (Or maybe the day before that. I’ve lost track of days.) He ran the introductory adventure that comes with the book, and I found it fascinating for three reasons:

1. When I wrote the adventure, I set it in the Chicago suburbs. Paul lives south of Manchester and translated every locale to the UK. It’s cool to see how another GM took the mission and translated it into his hometown while keeping the adventure intact. This is exactly what we will do if you pledge $15 or more. You give us your place names and we’ll edit those into the adventure. Here is a list of all the customization options. Of course, if you pledge $45 or more, we’ll even zombify a pic of yours and put it into your copy.
2. The players are really liking how characters go temporarily insane. We call this a break and it happens when you roll too high on an attribute check. It’s still a success, it’s just that you snap from the stress. I love how players are getting into this feature. I think it works better than the Chaosium SAN check rule because it happens more often but with less significant (i.e., less deadly) results.
3. Reading the actual play report feels more like reading a story–exactly what I designed to emerge from the gameplay. Although some of this feeling is due to Paul’s excellent writing, I can tell the characters were the central part of the game, turning what could be yet another zombie game into a unique, story-driven experience.

See, that’s why I created Outlive Outdead. No offense to other rpgs featuring zombies, but they left me feeling cold. They focused too much on simulating how a zombie apocalypse would really be like and ignored the story. I wanted Outlive Outdead to play like a great zombie move (original Dawn of the Dead) or TV show (The Walking Dead), and from both personal experiences and reading other GM’s reports, it does exactly that.

Our Kickstarter campaign for Outlive Outdead is steadily growing and now stands at 57% of our goal. Keep those pledges coming!

We’ve just released an update explaining all of the customization options for the introductory adventure. For those who aren’t aware, Outlive Outdead includes an episode (our game’s name for an adventure) specifically designed to help teach the rules. If you pledge $15 or more, we will customize the episode with place names and people that you give us. That means the pregenerated human characters can be you and your friends. Also, the episode can be set in your home, with local stores and cities replacing the ones we wrote.

It’s a small change but one that we’re really excited about. It’s kind of neat to see your home town and friends in a PDF or printed game, don’t you think? And this is for $15, which is a reasonable price for a roleplaying game PDF. The customization options continue at all higher reward levels too, meaning your softcover or even hardcover game  can include your hometown too!

Please, if you can, tell everyone you know about our Kickstarter campaign so we can get Outlive Outdead published. Thanks!

When I wrote for PARANOIA, I enjoyed noticing little bits of reality mirroring the darkly humorous world of Alpha Complex. Found one the other day, and although my days writing for Mongoose Publishing are long gone, I’d thought I would share it regardless. It’s CPU at it’s … well, not best, certainly not worst, but somewhere in between.

I have a temporary job scoring standardized tests for a large US corporation. The following is a real conversation I heard during training, simplified but otherwise left intact.

• SUPERVISOR: If your pace is too slow, you’ll be penalized. Also, if your pace is too fast, you’ll be penalized.

• NEW HIRE: What if I’m going too fast but my work is accurate?

• SUPERVISOR: If you go too fast, you’ll be penalized.

• NEW HIRE: But wouldn’t the company like me working fast and accurate? Doing more work in the same amount of time saves money, doesn’t it?

• SUPERVISOR: Do not go too fast.

• NEW HIRE: The company is less concerned with accuracy as it is with speed?

• SUPERVISOR: Of course we’re concerned about accuracy! That’s why we don’t want you going too fast!

• NEW HIRE: Then why not penalize us when we make mistakes instead of when we go too fast?

• SUPERVISOR: Going too fast is a mistake. That’s why we penalize you for it.

• NEW HIRE: Let’s say I go the right speed and I make a mistake. Am I penalized?

• SUPERVISOR: Not until you drop below 60% accuracy.

• NEW HIRE: …. Really? I can screw up 40% of the time and be fine, but if I work too fast, I’m in trouble even if I’m 100% accurate?

• SUPERVISOR: Just don’t go too fast, okay?

• NEW HIRE: Fine, whatever. By the way, what is the proper pace we need to keep?

• SUPERVISOR: We’ll let you know if you go too fast.

• NEW HIRE: You can’t tell us?

• SUPERVISOR: We’ll tell you when you go too fast.

• NEW HIRE: Can you give us a ballpark figure? By the hour, or even the shift?

• SUPERVISOR: All I can say is we will tell you when you’re going too fast.

• NEW HIRE: And by tell, you also mean penalize?

• SUPERVISOR: Well, yes. You went too fast.

• NEW HIRE: How can you penalize me for something I don’t know? Don’t you have to tell us what the acceptable work pace is so we can be successful?

• SUPERVISOR: Just don’t go too fast.

For the record, thank God this job is temporary.