Hello and welcome back to the monthly crashing of the Rat Wave upon the shore of your inbox. I've had a pretty satisfying month in terms of projects.

The Infinite Dancefloor - Out Now

I released a new game at the end of January.

The Infinite Dancefloor is a GMless rpg inspired by those rough nights that could have been good, if you just stopped sooner. Set to the album Time Flies by Ladyhawke, you’ll use dice and a tarot/oracle deck to determine and overcome Obstacles in your escape from the title venue, such as finding a friend you’ve been seperated, facing down other partygoers and confronting the location itself. The Dancefloor will keep warping you back to the beginning, putting pressure on the cracks in your friendship.

It's a hack of Time to Drop by Marn S. I had a lot of fun working in the space and also thinking about games set to music. Music often plays an important part of my process, whether that's visible in the final release or not. Ladyhawke is an artist I really loved a lot growing up and Time Flies, which came out about two years ago, is an album I liked a lot already but gained a new appreciation for with this game.

It’s on Itch: https://ratwavegamehouse.itch.io/the-infinite-dancefloor

Remastered Follow Me in the Night

I also did a big visual update to Follow Me in the Night; a Cursed Radio. This remastered edition is exactly the original text* but in a new layout that is clearer, prettier and better captures the hardboiled fever dream spirit of the game. Visually it evokes what I did with both Transgender Deathmatch Legend and The Man We Knew.

In Follow Me in the Night; a Cursed Radio you play a weary magic user, wandering dark streets banishing the phantoms that haunt them; phantoms powered by bad memories and cursed music. It is a solo journaling game inspired by film noir movies, Phonogram by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, and many sleepless nights.

Follow Me in the Night was I believe the third game I ever wrote and it seems to have connected with a lot of people since then. I’m really proud of the writing on the game but it was also the first thing I tried to do actual layout on. For a while I’ve felt I could have done a much better pass on this with all I’ve learned since the original release. So I did.

You can get the update if you already own the game (I've also added ePub and MOBI files) at https://ratwavegamehouse.itch.io/cursed-radio or buy a print in demand copy at https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/77zpn6?page=1&pageSize=10

Wild Duelist Update

Another game I did an update to this month was Wild Duelist.

After the small tweaks I did to Wild Duelist last month I felt pulled to do a more significant edit. This is in anticipation of a quickstart adventure coming soon and also a campaign length adventure coming down the road.

As well as preserving the changes from the last update (alt character creation and more guidance on battles) this update:

Overhauls advancement
Adds a d66 table of names as an apendix
Overhauls the zone map sections and provides a d6 table of pre-filled zone maps to pick from
Overhauls how Magic Weapons work (they now use focus to change their range and this can happen as much as the player wants)

Because of how the layout file was for the previous version it was easier to re-do the layout from scratch. Unlike with the Follow Me in the Night remaster this preserves the entire style of the book but if you're very familiar with it you may notice some pages numbers different or art switched around to better accomodate the new flow.

Check that out here: https://ratwavegamehouse.itch.io/wild-duelist

Ballad of the Bastard and the Tinkerer - Coming 22nd February

Speaking of Wild Duelist! In a few weeks I'm releasing a quickstart adventure called The Ballad of the Bastard and the Tinkerer.

The quickstart concerns two characters who've agreed to duel and will travel to the location of their duel together, protecting eachother along the way. It runs through a selection of Battle Scenes and other possible encounters while introducing the basic rules of Wild Duelist.

It is designed for three players, with one player assuming the role of the Narrator; who will narrate the setting and play any supporting characters, including enemies in Battle Scenes. The other players will control the main characters; The Feral Dove Isolda and Avery the Tinkerer.

"It was a ballad I first heard in some dingy tavern, on the border of Estmaire. By then it was old, but still it cast a mournful spell on me.

A tale of dishonour that needed answering. A tale full of hate and sorrow. A tale of the Feral Dove Isolda seeking purpose and acknowledgement and Avery, of the Monastery of Flame, seeking retribution and a remedy to their aching soul.

It was the Ballad of the Bastard and the Tinkerer."

The layout is similar to the core game but slightly distinct; the base public domain art I used is black and white sketches instead of full colour paintings. Creating the main characters was also a fun part of the development here (fun fact; I rolled them both up on the lifepath from the core game then built out from there).

I'll be posting about the adventure more over on twitter/Tumblr/the website before it comes out and will probably write a bit more about it here next month.

General work in progress updates

What else have I been working on this month? I've been putting together a latest pass at Godslingers. It's a game set in the world of Old Gods and Young Guns, you collaboritively create long dead Old Gods and then act out the dangerous lives of the cosmic cowboys who will be consumed by their power. It's moved to a more concretely GMed game to better focus on short-to-mid campaign play where you grapple with the self-destructive power you hold. Currently I'm working in an introductory adventure to include in the game about facing down a dragon on a dusty dead end planet.

I'm also starting a podcast. It's an interview podcast where I chat to game designers about all the things that have inspired or influenced them away from tabletop. I'm recording a pilot series of six episodes (I've recorded two so far and it's been really great digging into stuff with interesting people). I'm considering a pilot series because once I've edited and released these first six I'll have a check in with how much I enjoyed the overall experience of the podcast and if I want to make more (will anyone actually listen also vaguely slots in there). So look out for This is Your Lifepath, somewhere, somewhen.

What would you like to hear about next month?

I'll post more about The Ballad of the Bastard and the Tinkerer once it's out next month but I'm interested in what works in progress you'd want to hear more about.

The current things on my list (sans Godslingers which I talked about already here) include
- Thirty Foes OR Once Again We Are Defeated
- Demon Cage Fireball
- Jukebox Tarot
- Dream of the Thinking Heart
- Bloody Hands Dig Shallow Graves
- Some vague future Transgender Deathmatch Legend ideas

I'll probably also talk more about how the podcast is going.

Until next time
Rat Wave could also imply a rat waving so think of a rat waving goodbye

Rat Wave Newsletter

Dancing, Film Noir, Violence and Podcasting