Current Status
{ August 17th, 2009 }
The game has serious mechanical probs!
I just received some fantastic and thorough feedback from Ken Filewood, dovetailing with feedback I’ve gotten from Ben Lehman and from Meg Baker, and I think I have what I need to go into redesign, at last. The redesign will be deep but focused; expect most of the game to remain intact, but the core of it to better align with its potential.
Once I start work on it in earnest, I’ll put up a T-minus, here and on my blog.
Thank you all for your tremendous help, enthusiasm and patience. I’m committed to a better game coming out the other side, so if I hack up your favorite part, forgive me! It’s only for the good of all.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Glad to hear StWT is back in action. Look forward to the next revision.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:40 am
I’m excited as well! When I first read “high-color crunch-light tactical gamist fantasy adventure roleplaying” on this blog I realized that was exactly what I wanted to play instead of D&D.
I’ll post more playtests if my group plays again.
August 21st, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Despite some flaws I was almost completely in love with the “beta” of Storming. So if you make it better, well…I think we have a serious winner here.
August 23rd, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Man am i going to kill you!!! I spent the last hour looking for this website, which i had stumbled upon the other day. I didn’t remember the game’s title, but man i DID have the feeling the author was the same guy from Dogs in the Vineyard. Should be a piece of cake, right? Wikipedia page, user page at The Forge, hyperlinks… GUESS WHAT: THERE’S NOTHING IN YOUR WEBSITE THAT LEADS US HERE. ‘ANYWAY.’ (LUMPLEY.COM) = NOTHING.
Afterwards I entered the blogs of Paul Czege, Matt Snyder, Eero Tuorvinen, Jared A. Sorensen, a couple more, thinking maybe it was one of these guys and i had it mixed up. See, I’m 22 years old, it’s 16.47 of a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Argentina, and I should be studying; 40 minutes into the search i realized guilt was growing on me, yes, but pride wouldn’t let me move along until i had finally found the site again. Its .pdf, which i plan to compare with Donjon…
So i focused, stared at a blank wall, and the words ‘Storm the Wizard’s Gate’ appeared in my head. Not exactly it, but close enough.
(Close enough to skim through Actual Play forum posts list, that is, because Google didn’t cut it either.)
…
so i guess, thanks for the trip? but you really should do something to be easier to be found. cheers,
- Santiago
August 24th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Oh no!
Well, thanks for the perseverance.
If it’s any consolation, once I actually publish the game I’ll make it much easier to find. Until then I’m not really going to publicize it.
August 30th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Hey Vincent,
Hopefully, some of this feedback is helpful:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=28618.0
We really, really like your game.
August 31st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Great that you’re back
Any changes will be welcome as long as you are working on it again !
October 5th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Awesome! Are the “problems” with combat, or with all the mechanics. I think the hit maps for other types of encounters are brilliant, and wonder if you have something better (I’m considering ripping them off for a similar game with a completely different combat system).
October 5th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
With combat. My plan is to make combat look more like spellcasting, actually - you’ll spend your hits instead of combining pools or whatever.
October 5th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
I can’t wait to see the new rules. Thanks for your work and the related inspiration…
October 6th, 2009 at 9:29 am
What do you mean? Are you planning a “special moves” subsystem in which you can spend hits to achieve special moves effects? It would be great!
October 14th, 2009 at 2:22 am
I’ve been thinking about something along the lines of “special moves” or “special effect”.
Instead of 4,5, and 6 being a hit, have even die results (2,4 and 6) count a hit, and odd results (1,3, and 5) as a miss/failure.
Then there is a “warp” result which is two dice with a total of “7″. So basically a player sacrifices one even hit result and combines it with a failed odd result to generate a “warp”. A “warp” result might be used to activate a “special move” or trigger an event like a bookcase crashing down on a foe.
November 21st, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Lining up to get it when done, Vincent
And- anytime you got a new draft versioned out and want to maybe circulate for reviewing, just see if you want to have me in your list.
15years mastering, landed on iaWA recently (purchased last summer), definitely a fan of your gaming style!
Keep on going, man!
December 5th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Apropos of nothing and by way of encouragement: This is great stuff! I just discovered the game the other day and have already printed out the whole playtest book and started musing about where to set my campaign.
(I know you suggest the Old World bronze age, but my inspiration is to set it right here where I live — San Jose, California — among the Ohlone people before the arrival of the Spaniards. Or possibly just after the fictional arrival of the Chinese explorers, a la Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Years Of Rice And Salt”. The only problem is that the Ohlone were hunter-gatherers, which invalidates a lot of tech (bows, but no swords), and makes their culture more alien to us moderns, thus harder to roleplay.)
As I haven’t played yet I don’t have any good feedback; I’m just offering some psychic energy as you, hopefully, trudge forward with the design. I’m very eager to see a revised book.
[And just for the record, I love big dice pools, though I think coins would work too.]
January 17th, 2010 at 12:40 am
Hi Vincent! Happy new year!
I only wanted you to know that here in Turin (Italy) both my playing group and me can’t still wait for Storming.
We haven’t forgiven this masterpiece at all!
Keep on going, Vince!
January 18th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Argh… It was too late yesterday evening when I wrote that message… Of course I meant “we haven’t forGOTTEN”…
Excuse me! Good luck for your game!
January 26th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Hey, looking forward to seeing the changes. I’ve really liked what I’ve read so far.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Is Sebastian running the version in the PDF or does he have something more recent to work with?
I don’t have a thirteen year old GM yet, but I imagine it would be tough for them to iterate through revisions.
Anyways, hope things are inching forward with this. I’m looking forward to it.
April 16th, 2010 at 3:37 am
I have my fingers crossed that you’ll come back to this game sometime soon!
May 26th, 2010 at 7:55 am
I’m currently running a Dogs game, and am a big fan of your games and your blog. I’ve also been considering running an old-school fantasy campaign, possibly using something like AD&D. Coming across this game is therefore a dream come true. I’m almost certainly going to run a playtest over the summer, at least as a one-shot. If there is a newer set of rules on the way anytime soon, let me know, otherwise I’ll just run with what’s in the PDF.
July 20th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Yeah! I’ve the same concern!
I’ve read on your blog that you’re putting your hands on Storming again… and this new saved my day! Good luck Vincent!
July 26th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Storming is a wonderful fusion of old-school values and new-school design that is a rare find in the gaming scene these days. I’m glad to hear that you are coming back around to it as I was quite impressed with the playtest document. Good luck!
January 24th, 2011 at 9:20 am
Let me try again;
Hi Vincent, I heard on a podcast recently you mentioned that you would start work on this game again now that Apocalypse World is done and dusted…
Any updates? I would like to play this game with my kids!
Cheers,
98
January 24th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
No updates yet! No concrete timeline. I’m working on the game, but it’s taking its sweet time coming together.
February 27th, 2011 at 1:13 am
Any way any of us can help? I doubt it, but I’m here if needed.
I’m beyond excited for this game and willing to give a hand.
- Alex D.
March 6th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
yea, so glad you’re back on the project!
GOGOGOGOGOGO!
April 7th, 2011 at 12:16 am
I love the rules for charged conversations.
April 23rd, 2011 at 10:09 am
Looking forward to this, read through the “old” manuscript again (after a reference on the AW forums about moves) and it looks pretty cool.
Hope you’ll figure out what didn’t work right and how to solve it (and how to move on to the next part(s) as well).
September 19th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Glad to see things are still in the works. Looking forward to the next version. Any idea when this may be coming out?
September 19th, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Not one clue, except that it almost certainly won’t be during 2011.
Almost certainly!
September 19th, 2011 at 9:27 pm
So, does it mean that Dungeon World officially does not do the stuff Storming was supposed to do?
September 19th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
I don’t know yet.
It seems, oh, 80% likely to me that between Dungeon World, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and High Quality Roleplaying, there’ll be no need left for Storming the Wizard’s Tower. It’s only -just possible- that StWT will do anything that those games don’t.
September 20th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
For whatever it’s worth, I’d love to have a (1) relatively rules-lite (2) step-on-up game (3) without built-in D&D tropes (or, at least, not straightforward D&D-tropes) and (4) not AW-esque (or at least not too much - just because sometimes it’s good to play using different ruleset) but (5) with a nice tactical feel and (6) setting-less or at least, an easy to adapt to whatever we’d like setting, and, oh, (7) without OSR-like talk about sandboxes and random tables and rules not guidelines and such.
STwT looked like the way to go for me - Lamentations is not because of 7, 2, 3 (I guess), DW surely not, because of 3, 4. Not sure about HQRP - my guess is that it won’t do 2 and 5. But it’s possible that I don’t get something about Storming or else.
September 20th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
Uh. You might want to design your ideal game yourself, then. That’s a pretty specific combination of design goals.
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:35 am
Yeah, well, could be. Still, from reading (some time ago, I admit), StWT looked like the closest thing to that.
February 29th, 2012 at 4:53 pm
I know where you sleep……finish this game!
(no, I do not actually know where you sleep, but….well, I guess my threat is not that meaningful)
So how about….Please!
May 15th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Hey Vincent,
I love STWT…we played it for the first time when you first put it up here, got distracted (as a group we have a magpie-like proclivity for being distracted by shiny new games), and have recently picked it up again. Somehow it perfectly abets my strengths and buttresses my weaknesses as a GM. Plus our setting (an analog of 15th-century Bangladesh that is occupied by an imperialist Chinese analog) is working really well.
Very shortly we’ll be bumping up against the end of “Fighting Monsters” — too many Heroic stats, too much treasure, etc. Now, I have a whole metaplot sketched out for Levels 2 and 3, and two options for how to proceed once we’re done Fighting Monsters: A) we could put the game on hold until you produce the changed/additional rules (do the magpie thing); or, if this is unlikely to happen, B) we could prowl the internet and pore through the existing rules like mad archaeologists looking for trace evidence of what Levels 2 and 3 would look like, take those scraps, and construct our own edifice around them.
Which would you recommend? However this goes, let me reiterate that we have had a ton of fun playing this game. =)
Thanks!
Jake