Site Updates and Generators!

 Greetings!

Creativity is Fluid
I realize that my path to making stuff whether it be games, art, writing, etc. is really dependent on my mood and what is influencing me at the time. This is really a driving force in my creative life and something that guides the direction I move. Mere Anarchy was really a side project to help me cleanse my palette from working on Far Away Land for so long. I just needed a creative outlet and that outlet became Mere Anarchy. And now that I am deeply invested in Mere Anarchy, I feel the creative pull in various directions as you will see below. This is just how I work and while this piece of process has its strengths, keeping things fresh, allowing me to learn new things, etc., it also has a downside in that I get sidetracked by things that inspire me and I want to pursue in the exact moment. For example, I will read a game or watch a video of a video game or see a post on Facebook and that single nugget may become a gravity well of inspiration for the day, week, or even longer. I'm a kite. So, if it feels like I am often all over the place in what I release or the direction I am taking things, that is pretty much the case - just blowing about on a sea of ideas and letting those ideas come to tangibility as I see fit. The nice thing about Mere Anarchy has been the release of finished content in stages. This has allowed me to feel the completion of a project and then the excitement and newness of a new project that I can begin work on. This has also offset the daily toil of creating a project in private over several months or even years. The community around Mere Anarchy has helped greatly with that.

Okay, a couple quick announcements...

Mere Anarchy in Italian
Mere Anarchy in Italiano has been updated with some small changes (thanks to Francesco Catenacci for all of his hard work and expeditious awesomeness in the translation of Mere Anarchy). I have always said that Mere Anarchy is an evolving work and subject to change. There won't be a Mere Anarchy 2nd edition or whatever but changes may take place in the existing rules over time. 

Mere Anarchy Generators
So, I am putting together a series of generators for Mere Anarchy. The NPC Generator is already up and the PC generator is on the way! A monster generator will follow shortly. Also in the works will be a world event generator and possibly an extensive history generator. It might be nice to have an output option and a print option as well? I'm in a learning phase here and starting from the bottom as far as coding knowledge. Fun to learn new things though.

Upcoming Releases
I am hoping to release the Mere Anarchy Kingdom rules here shortly. Playtesting was put on the backburner due to other stuff going on (I get sidetracked with things like the generators etc.). 

Dungeon Design Contest
The Dungeon Design Contest wraps up at the end of February. Submissions will be judged and the winner gets a sweet little miniature that I sculpted. The finished version is below!

Dirk

A Quick Look at Mere Anarchy Kingdoms

So, the Mere Anarchy Kingdoms rules are undergoing some extensive testing as everything gets finalized and balanced. I have included a playthrough of the Beginning Era of a kingdom below but first I want to sort of explain what the rules do and how they work.

Essentially, MA Kingdoms is a group narrative building game where players take turns creating and narrating events in a kingdom. The end goal is to create a history of a kingdom from start to finish (or even to simply establish a bit of backstory and history for a kingdom). 

A kingdom is divided into three eras: beginning, middle, and decline. In each era players take turns determining the year, the event, the scale of the event, and persons and things involved in the event. These event attributes are then used as keywords to create a narrative for the kingdom. After each event is created and narrated, the Era Die Pool is rolled to determine if the kingdom has graduated to the next era in its lifetime. Once a kingdom exists the Era of Decline, it collapses. This event is narrated as well.

Play can consist of players all narrating events in the same kingdom or each player narrating events in their own kingdoms. The book contains...

• Overview of MA Kingdoms and how to play
• Event generator
• Event scale
• Historical Figure generator
• Historical Thing generator
• Kingdom Name generator
• Kingdom Attributes (for details on things like population, attitudes, etc.)
• Kingdom Collapse rules

Here is a sample test where I ran through events in the beginning era of the kingdom called Dragonkeep (yeah, that's actually the name that I generated). Don't pay attention to spelling/grammar as these were rough notes.

Just some quick notes: all names were randomly generated. The keywords generated as event attributes were used as the basis to build a story that made sense.

The Kingdom of Dragonkeep

Symbol: A green dragon above a keep.

Beginning Era 

Year 30. Event: Collapse, Figure: Charlatan, Thing: Failed Idea, Scale: Major

The Charlatan known as Gresikmere pretended to be an engineer from a far off kingdom. Gresikmere proposed the creation of a dam to provide a natural reservoir for the kingdom. In the year 27 of the kingdom dam construction began. Three years later and halfway through construction, the dam collapsed and led to the deaths of 50 people. 

Year 90. Event: Ancient Evil, Figure: Trader, Thing: Guild, Scale: Minor

A Trader named Davis Hollowshadow from the Guild of the Swapping Hand, delved into the ruins upon which Dragonkeep had been built and discovered a tomb under Castle Dragonkeep. Hastily the tomb was opened and the demon Glassopheles was released. Upon being released Glassopheles murdered Davis Hollowshadow and made its way to the surface where it fed on several infants and young maidens before escaping Dragonkeep and heading into the wilderness. The people of the kingdom, although disturbed, thought little about this event and blamed greed. The ruins under the castle were sealed off without further investigation.

Year 110: Event: Explosion, Figure: Villain, Thing: Technology, Scale: Major

The Villain known as Flint Distantwind constructed a massive bomb using blackpowder and the dried entrails of fire breathing dragons. The bomb components were placed inside a carriage. Flint detonated the bomb (along with himself) at the gate of Castle Dragonkeep. The explosion was massive and caused great damage to the castle walls. Some 60 people were killed in the blast and a great crater was left that in the subsequent year was converted into a moat around the castle.

Year 140: Event: Trade Route Shifts, Figure: Prisoner, Thing: Structure, Scale: Minor

An escaped Prisoner known only as The Wolf gathered a group of marauders and footpads and took up residence in an old tower outside the kingdom. For the next two years The Wolf and his men robbed and murdered a great many people on the north road that led into Dragonkeep. As news of this grew merchants from neighboring kingdoms stopped sending shipments via the North Road. Eventually the exploits of The Wolf reached the ears of Dragonkeep’s King and soldiers were sent to dispatch the ne'er do wells. The Wolf and his men were quickly defeated but it was years before trade on the North Road from Dragonkeep resumed.

It was at this point the Beginning Era came to an end and the Middle Era began...

Slacking on the Blog But Lots of Work

Past Work and Translations
So, while I haven't posted in a couple of weeks although I have been working diligently on Mere Anarchy. Since the last post we have released Mere Anarchy Dungeons, Battle of the Colossi, and Mere Anarchy Oracles. On top of all of that, all of the books that have already been released have been translated into Italian thanks to Francesco Catenacci! Really amazing work Francesco. Thank you so much for taking the time to do that. Everything can of course be downloaded from here for free 

I know that the Mere Anarchy Core Rules are also being translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Hungarian. I love that so many people have taken an interest in this little game from all over the world. I really appreciate the effort and work people have put in in these translations. Thank you.

Currently
Right now we are running a Dungeon Design Contest over on our Facebook group. The idea is to use the Dungeon Builder to help create a dungeon for Mere Anarchy. The contest post is pinned in the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/500517761169092 

Upcoming
Projects currently in the works include Mere Anarchy Kingdom Builder, Mere Anarchy Overworlds, Mere Anarchy Book of Violence, and some map books. After these are completed I will probably begin putting boxed sets together. Still some work to be done on this but it is all coming together and the box sets should be really cool. The plan is to hand make all of the booklets and do all of the printing and design and everything in house. As much as possible. I want Mere Anarchy to have a certain feel to it, like something small and niche and evolving. 

Dirk