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Our Miserable Future Revisited

Published on December 10, 2012 by in Uncategorized, website information

With ten games online and the year coming to a close, I thought now would be a good time for a quick update about the future of Misery Tourism Games.

First, the big news:

Print Collection. Kickstarter. Soon.

Rudy and I are planning a kickstarter to (hopefully) fund a print collection of the games that we’ve released so far. The plan is for the collection to include expanded, polished versions of each of our games, plus artwork, and perhaps some scenarios, new content, and a hack or two (stretch goals permitting).

We still have some research to do. We need to get a few quotes for printing, art, and layout together so that we know what our goals should be. We should have more information for you soon.

Unfortunately, this will mean an investment of time that might otherwise go into game design, so we are suspending our monthly new game releases for the foreseeable future. I hope to have some new material for you this month, and you will likely see the alpha draft of a new game pop up from time to time as we’re inspired, but we won’t be continuing with the same rigid monthly schedule.

If you’re interested in the kickstarter, and would like to help out, you might consider:

  • playing one of our games and telling us what you think. The more feedback we get, the better prepared we’ll be.
  • sending us any stray useful information you might have, particularly printer recommendations and other practical tidbits.
  • reaching out to us yourself, if you do layout, or know someone who does, or if you enjoy (or appreciate) our games and want to talk about contributing a stretch goal.

Any and all of the above can be sent to whduryea[at]miserytourism.com.

That’s pretty much all I have to offer right now. Expect another miserable update soon. (And, no, I am never going to get tired of lazily adding “miserable” to every post I make. Sorry.)

 
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THE OLDEST, CRUELEST SWORD

Published on November 11, 2012 by in Games

 

I went there to steal the Sword.  It was supposed to be a quick, in-and-out type of thing.  I didn’t mean for things to turn out the way they did.  Not that I’m making excuses, I’m just saying.  I don’t know how I even got the balls to do what I did; I’m a burglar, not a… Well, I dunno.  I guess I saw the opportunity and seized it.

In The Oldest, Cruelest Sword, you have a opportunistic Thief, an reclusive Sorceress, and a very opinionated magic Sword.  Is this a recipe for adventure, or sexual assault (or maybe both)?  As you play, you’ll find out.

  • Explore (and play around with) the minds of the victim and the perpetrator of a violent rape
  • Play a hide-and-seek board game with your friends

DOWNLOAD The Oldest, Cruelest Sword

This is an Alpha Draft: The Oldest, Cruelest Sword

DOWNLOAD THE ROOMS LIST

Room List

DOWNLOAD THE ROOM FEATURES LIST

Room Features List

DOWNLOAD THE MAPS

Large Map

Small Map

Thanks for reading!

 
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Want to Talk About It?

Published on October 20, 2012 by in Uncategorized

Have you played one (or more) of our games? If you have, we’d like to hear about your experiences.

To use the jargon of our (non)profession, we’re looking for actual play reports.

But we’re not looking for transcripts of play or attempts to objectively describe how the mechanics functioned in your group.

No, we’re looking for expressionistic actual play reports. We want to know how it felt to play the game. We want to know what you were imagining as you played, how you saw the reality that you created through play. We want to know if you were offended, or amused, or bored. And we don’t care whether you loved the game, or hated it.

And we want to share your experiences on our site.

So record a video, or an audio clip. Or write something, quickly, on whatever you have at hand. Write it on a receipt from the liquor store, or your welfare check, or a handkerchief stained with tuberculous blood. Write it narrative style, or stream of consciousness, or as an angry vulgarity filled rant.

And then send it to us. Send it to us, and we will post it, regardless of whether it reflects positively or negatively on us. Also, we’ll put a link to your blog or gaming site or whatever else you’d like in the post. (But, please, play the game first. We are looking for responses to actual play, not reviews of the text.)

Oh, and since I know we have a (small) international audience: feel free to use your native language. If Rudy and I can’t read Italian or Polish or Lojban, that’s our problem, not yours.

You can send any and all AP reports to whduryea at miserytourism.com.

 
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SHADE

Published on October 10, 2012 by in Games

 

When I was a kid, I was infatuated with ghost stories. I read everything and anything I could find about ghosts. I didn’t discriminate between fiction and dubious nonfiction and folklore. I don’t remember all, or even most, of the stories now. Mostly I’ve retained fragments without context. I remember a Victorian child who fell down a flight of stairs, leaving a blood stain at the bottom that would return, undeterred after every cleaning day. I remember the witch’s jawbone, and how her spirit would leave fruit and toys for poor sick Mrs. Bell, even while it consumed her husband’s life. I remember the hitchhiker’s abandoned jacket, and her tombstone.

I only remember those fragments now, because I grew old enough to stop thinking about ghost stories and to start thinking about work and codependent relationship and role-playing games about post-Reconstruction racism. I also grew old enough to realize I had lost something, or many things.

Shade is a ghost story game. It’s also a game about how life diminishes us, and how death (or our ideas about it) empowers us. It’s a simple narrative role-playing game that can be played in a single sitting.

Shade uses a custom deck of personality cards to guide each character’s journey through life, and their transformation after death.

Download Shade

Alpha Draft – Feedback Appreciated

Download Shade Cards

Shade Cards Template Draft

 
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Game Delayed (But Have Some Stories)

Published on October 1, 2012 by in Uncategorized

October’s game won’t be up today, but it is coming. I want to pretend that the game is late because my life is busy or because I am a meticulous Carmack-esque perfectionist who will not release a game that is less than complete. But, honestly, I just blew it  off and saw The Wallflowers in concert instead. Maybe there was some writer’s block involved, and perhaps I was still trying to iron out some of the mechanics mentally before I committed to a finished draft, but mostly it was The Wallflowers.

That said, there will be a game, and you will have it soon. It will even be seasonally appropriate. Expect ghosts and shit. Oh, and some misery, I guess.

Since I do honestly feel bad about blowing you guys off to hear an extended version of  “6th Avenue Heartache” that included an accordion solo (!), I am giving you three short stories I found on my hard drive as an apology gift. (Are apology gifts a thing that exists?)

Enjoy?

“Paper Nest”

Download “Paper Nest”

“The Fertilizer Man”

Download “The Fertilizer Man”

“The Deserter”

Download “The Deserter”

 
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THE DUNGEON

Published on September 1, 2012 by in Games

You are a special education teacher at a school for warlocks, witches, and the occasional centaur. You hate your job.

The district doesn’t give you nearly enough money to run your classroom, and things are slowly slipping into dysfunction. Your peers, the professors who get the pleasure of teaching young magical prodigies, have little respect for you or what you do. To them, you’re basically just a glorified babysitter. Nowadays, you’re starting to think that they’re right.

The minotaur kid with emotional-behavioral problems is one violent sumbitch. The mentally disabled kid wants to fly with the Broom Squad; she spends most of her time flailing around in midair making noises that you reason are cries of happiness. The juvenile fire elemental just sits there, staring (why is he in here anyway?).

Every day is a struggle when you’re teaching the magically-sensitive kids that nobody else wants to deal with. Are you brave enough to enter the Dungeon?

  • Be a Teacher and try to bring order to chaos any way you can
  • Be a Client, and give your friends hell
  • Modify your Client’s behaviors through accomplishing objectives from their Individualized Educational Plans
  • An auction mechanic that can let the Teachers reap great rewards, or lead to grand amounts of educational dysfunction

DOWNLOAD The Dungeon

This is an Alpha Draft: The Dungeon

DOWNLOAD THE CLIENT CHARACTER SHEET

Client Information Form

DOWNLOAD THE TEACHER CHARACTER SHEET

Teacher Information Form

DOWNLOAD THE TEACHER EVALUATION FORM

Teacher Evaluation Form

Thanks for reading!

 
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Our Miserable Logo

Published on August 24, 2012 by in website information

Entirely the work of Amelia Cottle.

Opinions?

 
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6 PAGE MANUAL

Published on August 1, 2012 by in Games

 

Six Page Manual is game of serious, thematic role-playing. It is about things thought about in dark room, at night waking, alone, but now experienced as party game with good friends. It is about genocide, hunger, child negligence, and European Union Declaration 168B controversy. It is not for play while drunk with other boys in basement, rolling fifteen side die.

In Six Page Manual you will put yourself in shoe leather of suffering persons throughout world, face their difficulty, and overcome—or fail!

But is not game of task resolution and dragon murder, so do not get wrong idea.

Available in English for the first time, 6 Page Manual is a competitive social game like no other. Part improv, part jeep; give your friends increasingly ludicrous punishments for their role-playing transgressions. With one million possible character combinations and three hundred different punishments, it is almost infinitely replayable.

Why are you reading this hype? You could be reading the game. It’s only six pages long. (Except for the other nineteen pages.)

Download 6 Page Manual:

Rough Translation – Feedback Appreciated

 
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THE NEEDS OF THE FEW

Published on July 1, 2012 by in Games

You were barely a teenager when they blasted you off into space. The Institution said it was for your enrichment. But now the Captain’s dead, and the only things he’s left you with are nightmares, a dwindling supply of dehydrated food, and them- your fellow crew. There are times when the ghost of the past just won’t leave you be, but it’s mostly the daylight phantoms of the present that get on your nerves.

The engineer has been hoarding food in between shifts pretending to fix the engine (you’re sure he’s sabotaging it). The biologist keeps herself locked in her room most of the day doing fuck knows what (she’s got to be poisoning the food). The computer-savvy tech keeps the viewscreens lit with porn while he’s running diagnostics on the failing mainframe (can he even get it up?). You’re the doctor. Which one do you euthanize first?

The Needs of the Few is a four-player roleplaying game about people on the brink who have to deal with their haunting pasts and, worst of all, each other.

  • Take on one of four roles–The Captain, The Professional, The Victim, and The Positive One–each with their own baggage to deal with (or not deal with) in play
  • Parlor game-like mechanics challenge players to guess each others Secrets, while preserving their own
  • Space maaaaaadnesssss

This is an Alpha Draft: The Needs of the Few

DOWNLOAD THE CHARACTER SHEET

The Needs of the Few Character Sheet Draft

Thanks for reading!

 
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WELFARE QUEENS

Published on June 1, 2012 by in Games

It’s 2084, and wealth has finished trickling down. One hundred years of supply side economics has eradicated poverty and want throughout the United States. The American Dream isn’t just a possibility for everyone; it’s a reality. Every man and woman goes to work wearing a white collar and comes home to a spacious penthouse. They only go hungry when they’re counting calories, and the only oppression they know is a tight deadline.

But still, some are dissatisfied. For them, the paperwork is too demanding, or life in a cubicle is too boring. They need to find an outlet for their stress, or a safe, discrete thrill. They need to get away from themselves, and get off.

They find what they’re looking for in black market virtual reality parlors called empathy dens. Hidden in basements and the backrooms of hobby shops, empathy dens let their clients experience the exotic past and find the freedom and adventure they crave—by living the lives of poor people in the twentieth century on public assistance. By day, they’re the titans of Wall Street, but at night they become Welfare Queens.

Welfare Queens is a role-playing game about a not-so-distant future America where white collar professionals spend their nights in back alley arcades, living virtual lives of poverty and desperation. Bored and overwhelmed by their day jobs, the stock brokers, accountants, and mid level executives of the late 21st century find adventure and catharsis through their experiences as hookers, drug pushers, trailer trash, and panhandlers.

Download Welfare Queens:

Alpha Draft – Feedback Appreciated

Download the character sheet:

Welfare Queens Character Sheet Draft

 

 
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