Ley Lines, Definitive Games, and Schrödinger's Aspects

I saw a few things this week that resonated with me. I post so I can find them again, and you may find them interesting as well.

Ley Lines
Kobold Press wants your short fiction about Midgard in a contest called Ley Lines. The judging panel includes Wolfgang Baur and Ed Greenwood. The judges' top 5 stories get voted on publicly and the top vote-getter wins a paid writing commission. You've got until March 14, 2014 to submit your best 2000 word Midgard story, so get cracking.

Definitive Games
Daniel Solis blogs about game design, and this week he gave us his 5 picks for genre-definitive games. I've never played Chronicle, but now I'm interested to try the "ultimate" trick-taking game. As a free bonus, he gives us 4 ways to subvert and hack these games into something new and interesting. This is well worth the read.

Double bonus: Glitter Meeples!

The Dance Card

Things are proceeding apace. I just wanted to take a few minutes and give a generic update here at the end of February.

Editing
The Whispering Road is coming along. The main book is in layout now, and I'm waiting to proof the PDF. I love the game - it's a fairly simple system of GMless collaborative storytelling, and I love the act structure and conflict system. If you missed the Kickstarter, keep an eye out for it later in March so you can grab a copy.

Mmm... Roaches.

Current Gamer Contests and Blog Challenges

Is it just me, or is this February chock full of contests and challenges?

RPG Superstar at Paizo

This is the 8th year of the contest.

Yes, the open call for the 8th annual contest was back in December, but you can look through the top 16 magic items and vote on the current round if you have an account on the Paizo message boards. This Pathfinder-based contest hopes to develop new talent, and the design advice flying around the boards might help if you're stuck on designing a magic item. The winner gets to design (and get paid for) an adventure published by Paizo. It's a sweet gig for an unknown designer, and the top 4 usually end up getting some paid work. I submitted a couple of times and got some feedback, and then my editing work took off and I no longer felt the need to attempt validation in a huge cattle call.

Life Beyond the Societal Meme

A few things have caught my attention in the past 36 hours, and they've conspired to make me write this. Here's your red herring for the day: I've listed them in reverse chronological order, both in the origin of the words and in my experience of them.

One of the many tasks in life.

Oliver Emberton wrote up a great little post called Life is a game. This is your strategy guide. He covers some great points, like the idea of willpower as an expendable resource and the reminder to assign your time as well as possible. Bonus: I love the 8-bit graphics.

And it makes me wonder...

The Wanderer's Shadows

The village lay still astride the hill
    When Evil came out to play.
The Lord of the Sky piled the snow high
    On the morn of that fateful day.
The wanderer knocked, Sun's servant unlocked,
    And Evil came home to stay.
Her convictions? Pure. Her sword arm? Sure.
    But nobody knew until May.

His cloaked form filled the doorway, haunted eyes pleading. "I seek sanctuary," he croaked.