Strike! - Blog

What's Next

7/5/2022

Hey Strike! fans, things are busy here at Strike! HQ. I'm just typing this post to let you know all the things we're working on.

For Ariadne and Bob, we're just waiting on proofs to get the physical copies ready to go. Everything else is done.

The next big project is Tailfeathers, a magical school, with spells and potions and adorable little familiars. Tailfeathers is the first school we're publishing for Kazzam! Kazzam is a magical sport that combines Strike's tactical combat with some elements from capture the flag and neutral creeps like in Warcraft 3. We've been playtesting it for a while now, and it is so much fun. The matches are exciting and tense, with a ton of tactical depth. Just like Strike!, you'll be able to reskin Kazzam, so if you're not into the magical school setting, you can still play Kazzam. The sport is so good that I'm hoping to be able to have tournaments where we pit teams of players against one another.

Tailfeathers is also the first place you're going to see some of the changes that will be coming to Strike! when we eventually do a second edition, especially the new version of Roles. All the work I'm doing on other games is also feeding back into what the next edition of Strike! will look like.

I've also returned to work on a fun PvP Strike! scenario called Robbing Mr. Seagull, about two teams of criminals trying to pull off a heist at the same casino, the famous Pelican Hotel, run by the mobster "Bugsy" Seagull. The characters are all anthropomorphic animals like you'd see in Zootopia or Bojack Horseman. It's got a fun cast and a great hook. I had put it releasing the adventure on hold as I was making revisions to Team Conflict to improve that subsystem, and I thought that having that system working at its best was important. I'll be releasing the new and much improved Team Conflict rules along with Robbing Mr. Seagull sometime after the Tailfeathers release.

And finally, I've got a little game I'm working on inspired by a strange and vivid dream I had, called Hellrunners. Hellrunners exploit glitches in the metaphysical coding of the universe to get into and out of the afterlife to accomplish various missions. They are speedrunners breaking reality instead of video games.

If any of these sound interesting to you, let me know! Fan feedback absolutely can move things up and down the priority list. You can contact me through the contact page on this site, or catch me on Twitter @Jimbozig.

The Design Story of Ariadne and Bob

12/19/2021

Ariadne and Bob started when WotC released their Rick and Morty D&D set. I thought to myself "that is a TERRIBLE match. That system will not prompt the types of adventures they have on that show." And I tried to think of what would be a really good match and came up dry… this is a problem that I can solve!

First up, they have a new weird sci-fi premise every episode. Easy. Just make some tables that let you generate stuff like “A ______ that makes _______”. “A portal that makes you de-age” or “A glove that makes things shrink.”

The hard part is getting Rick to work. What’s the right feel? Morty says “Oh no, what is that?!” and Rick explains the dangerous weird phenomenon. Having a classic GM-and-players set-up doesn’t work. Rick doesn’t feel like Rick. The GM is the one who knows all the explanations, not Rick.

So what about making Rick the GM? This also sucks - there is now too much on the GM! They introduce every problem, set every scene, the game revolves around their hypercompetent GMPC who solves every problem except when he creates more… Yuck.

Go GMless? Most GMless games I’ve seen are very symmetrical - each player has more or less the same tools available to them. That doesn’t suit the premise here either. What if I keep the part where Rick is hypercompetent and solves every problem, since that follows from the show, but remove the other stuff and give it to Morty? Morty sets the scenes and introduces the problems and takes on that part of the GM’s role.

Now we’ve got something! Morty’s player can go “Oh no, what is that?!” and then describe some insane weird sci-fi craziness, and then Rick’s player gets to try to explain it and make it make some kind of sense. That’s a fun interaction, and one that we can build the core of the game around. So the moves and agendas for both players are designed with that in mind.

With those moves and agendas in place and the game working, now we can expand from just being a Rick and Morty game to being a game about any pair where a know-it-all drags her poor sap sidekick around. The sidekick boggles his eyes at some weird stuff and the know-it-all rolls hers and explains it. Then they both try to deal with the problem.

That is—basically—the game!

We can just swap out sci-fi random tables for fantasy or horror or any other setting. Or, I realized, I could use this base to play the Jeeves and Wooster game I always wanted! Bertie gets in trouble and Jeeves always has a plan to solve it.

I also added in some stuff with scene structure, using an A-plot/B-plot format because that is a tried-and-true method for episodic storytelling to help keep things on track, because it’s otherwise very easy for players to end up either resolving the plot too quickly or end up spinning their wheels as they wait for someone else to resolve the plot. This lets you do a full story in a predictable length of time over a single session.

And then I added in support for a 3rd or 4th player. This part was pretty easy—they get to have a character who is at sub-sidekick level. (A Jerry or a Summer in Rick and Morty terms) And then they get to do more of the work of taking on the roles of NPCs. With only 2-players, playing NPCs and your main characters in the same scene works fine, but having that 3rd player to take on that task improves the game as it lets the other two focus more on their roles.

So then in a 3-player game of Ariadne and Bob, everyone is the GM and no-one is. You could call it GMless, but I feel like GMful is a better term - there are 3 GMs! Bob gets to set the scenes and introduce the weirdness and start the plot in motion, Ariadne gets to explain what everything is and how it all fits together in the end, and the Chorus gets to play most of the NPCs.

If you are interested in seeing this game in action, back today on Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1835460386/ariadne-and-bob

Ariadne and Bob

12/15/2021

Ariadne and Bob is on Kickstarter now!

Ariadne and Bob is a 2+ player roleplaying game about a know-it-all and her trusty sidekick going on adventures and getting in trouble. Ariadne can be condescending at times, but her ego is not entirely undeserved. Bob is Ariadne's long-suffering partner. The Pinky to her Brain, Morty to her Rick, the Sherman to her Peabody, etc.

This game is an absolute blast to play, and it requires no prep at all. My group has been playing it whenever we have an absence from our main game, and it's perfect. We can bust it out on short notice, it works great with low player counts, and it's built for 1-shots so we can get in a complete story in one session.

I've hired Vel Mini, Paul "Ettin" Matijevic, Austin Ramsay, and Jason Pitre to write playsets to customize the game to other settings and genres.

And for fans of Strike!, I am also throwing in The Ogre, a pair of classes by Gabriel Butche. As The Ogre, you and a friend control two characters in one body. This is one of the most unique tactical combat classes in any RPG, and it's very fun to play

Strike! Now available on itch.io

9/4/2019

I've got Strike! and all its mini-expansions up on itch.io now. If you want to buy the PDF versions, and using the paypal links on this site is not your preference, now you have another option.

Strike!: https://jimbozig.itch.io/strike
Vehicles: https://jimbozig.itch.io/vehicles
The Rogue: https://jimbozig.itch.io/rogue
Trouble in Hogtown: https://jimbozig.itch.io/hogtown
Survival: https://jimbozig.itch.io/survival

Donation made!

12/6/2017

And it's done! $800 to SickKids Foundation through me. There was also another $100 that was donated directly, bringing our total to $900. Thanks again to everyone who helped out!

Here are receipts for confirmation.

The final accounting

12/2/2017

In the end of October, I wrote a post about my 2 year old daughter, Thalia, and her treatment for stage four neuroblastoma, a common childhood cancer. Thalia was diagnosed in Jan this year and has received such amazing treatment from our pediatric hospital here in Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children, informally known as SickKids. I put out the call to all of you to help me raise funds throughout November to make a donation to support SickKids, so they can continue to give impeccable care to children like Thalia. And you blew us away.

In November, I received $282.57 USD from direct PDF orders on my website ($302 minus Paypal's transaction fees). I received $307.14 USD on DrivethruRPG. This adds to a total of $589.71 USD. Converted into CAD, this is $748 CAD. I also received a direct donation of $50, which I will add to the total, bringing the amount to $798 - this is the amount I will be donating in the next few days once the money all gets into one spot. I'll post pics/receipts from the donation once I get that sorted out.

In addition, one person donated $100 themselves to SickKids Foundation. So the total raised was around $900!

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed, who brought in friends who contributed, or just shared the post so it reached a larger audience.

Fundraising update

11/20/2017

Hey, just posting to update everyone on how things are going so far with the fundraiser. As of now I've made $238USD from direct PDF sales on the website and $227USD from drivethru. In addition, I received $50CAD to donate along with the rest of the money. And one person donated $100 themselves.
So all together, we are around $750CAD! That's pretty great, I think! There is still time - you have just over a week before the end of the month to get in on this. Let's see if we can break $1000!
In case this is the first you're hearing about this fundraiser, you can buy PDFs on my website: www.strikerpg.com or you can buy physical books on DriveThruRPG here: goo.gl/bp8Q7s and all the money I receive will go to charity to help sick children like my daughter, who is stuck in the hospital this week for immunotherapy, which is really no fun.
Tell your friends to get in on this before it's too late!

Strike! Against Cancer in November

10/31/2017

As you may know, for the last year I have been on hiatus from working on Strike! because my daughter was diagnosed with cancer (stage 4 neuroblastoma) in January when she was 18 months old. Since then she has received impeccable care from The Hospital for Sick Children here in Toronto. The treatment has been going well so far, but there is still a significant risk of relapse, which is just the nature of high-risk neuroblastoma. I'm posting about this now because I want to repay the hospital for everything they have done for us.

To that end, I will be donating 100% of my portion of all sales on Strike! products in the month of November to the SickKids Foundation supporting the hospital. If you were thinking about buying Strike!, there has never been a better time to do so - you get the game and your money goes to helping sick children, like my daughter. If you already have the game, buy copies for your friends! Christmas is coming up soon, after all.

My goal in this promotion is to make things as easy as possible for you as a customer, so all you have to do is buy the game via the paypal links here on the website (for PDFs) or via DriveThruRPG (for PDFs and physical books), and I will handle the rest. If you would prefer to donate directly to SickKids Foundation yourself, to a children's hospital local to you, or to a kids cancer charity, you can do that, too! Just make the donation in the month of November and email a photo or screenshot of your receipt to me at jimbozig@hotmail.com, and I will send you PDFs and/or discount codes up to the value of your donation (note that I cannot discount a physical book 100% because DriveThru needs to take a cut for printing costs). If you have a charity in mind and aren't sure if it meets my criteria, just send me an email and I'll let you know.

Pledge details: Yes, this will absolutely be 100% of the money coming to me that goes to the charity. I have no control over the portion that goes to Paypal or DriveThru, but every cent I get will go to SickKids Foundation. My donation will happen in early December - it takes a few days to get the money from Drivethru into my Paypal and from Paypal into my bank account. I will make an update on the website December 2nd with a full accounting of the total.

Please share this on social media so we can reach more people and raise more awareness and money!

Updating

3/17/2017

The links in the downloads section are changed now. Dropbox dropped support for public linking like I was using and everything broke. Stuff is re-uploaded now and should be working. Let me know if there are any issues with it!

Also, if you're on a certain set of forums, you already know this, but in mid-January my 18-month old was diagnosed with cancer. Her treatment is going well so far, but it is intense. Because of this, there will be no progress on future Strike! material from me for a while.

Updated PDF

10/10/2016

Hey, I updated the PDF and Print versions of Strike! on DrivethruRPG.com. The print versions will be unavailable briefly as they always are when the files update, but I'm hoping that won't last more than a couple of days. The updated PDF version is up now, along with a PDF FAQ/Errata document available to anyone who has bought the game. If you already own Strike!, go download the new PDFs. If you were thinking of buying it, now is a great time to do it.

None of the changes were major - there are no gamebreaking bugs or anything. There were enough minor tweaks, corrections, and clarifications that I wanted to make that I thought updating the files made sense. Changing the rules is not something I take lightly, but the upshot is this: none of the changes are absolutely vital, but all of them improve the game in some small way, and I recommend you use them.