So you wanna play-test Pariah, Missouri?

Great.

A couple of things first.

I am running a Kickstarter for the Graphic Novel of Pariah Missouri, a weird-western Occult story set in Huckleberry Finn time. All Backers will get a PDF of these cards to print at home and play, you will need to print out, put them in a stack and run through the game. You can be a backer for as little as $1.00 It took me about 80 hours to do this, NOT including all the art, which came from my comic book series, which I don’t even want to speculate on how long that took us. So, a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears went into making this. www.pariahmissouri.com This is the FINAL version, I already did a LARGE playtesting and this is it, it’s been corrected and streamlined. You don’t need to know the comics to play the game. But I will plug the book and say it’s very well done, and if you like good stories, you might enjoy it.

On the kickstarter page you can also download for FREE preview pages of all the books, 1,2 and 3. Please take a look and see what we are doing there!

T.I.M.E.Stories is a board game published by the French Space Cowboys which I have fallen in love with recently. As a big-time Role-player I found the board game a brilliant way to tell story, and for me, that is always paramount. It’s Quantum Leap, going back in time and finding the cause of a ‘temporal rift’ and correcting the wrongs of the time-stream. You play an Agent of this ‘Temporal Police’ and inhabit a character in the past, who may or may not be all that stable.

Because of the way the game is played, you play the game once, and then you know the mystery, the “who-done it” and it’s kinda over. Sure you can play it with others, but now that you know that Colonel Mustard did it in the Library with the pipe, it loses the excitement. So it’s a one-and-done experience, which at $30 for each story can be pricey. Space Cowboys have published 3 stories so far and looks like each quarter we will get a new one…. but this is where the fun begins…. Space Cowboys also provided a Developer kit. Nothing fancy really, it’s just a collection of PNG asset files so you can make your own story, but think about it, how many awesome stories are out there for creators to make and play!

Once I heard about this, I was hooked. Oh and for those that don’t know, I’m the writer and creator of Pariah Missouri graphic novel series, so HELL YEAH I’m gonna make a horror-western story for TIME Stories using my book!

Making this was no easy feat, and even though I have a bunch of art that I can re-purpose for the game, TIME Stories is a huge mind puzzle and as the puzzle-maker I need to know how this all works. I created a new story, figured out how all the locations worked, all the items and characters. Building this becomes very complicated, because there are certain events that must be triggered at the correct time. After over a month of working on it, I think I have it ready for play-testing and then after those re-visions I’ll be shipping this game off to France to have Space Cowboys have a go at it, and maybe they like it enough to publish. Either way, though I will be providing it for free here on my site for those fans of the game and my books.

Selecting puzzles that are both fun and solvable is the most challenging aspects of this game design. Even if you think it’s too easy, most likely it will not be. Also the types of puzzles to use; word, visual, numerical, riddles, all that has to be figured out, and hopefully make sense in the story. The year is 1854, so I’m not throwing in a scrabble or computer code puzzle, it’s gotta fit the time and make sense for the story.

Here is the Link to the Kickstarter and get your copy of TIME STORIES: Pariah Missouri

If you are experiencing questions about Rules, Locations or things like that, go here to the FAQ Message board!

Pariah, Missouri Rules and FAQ