Hey, gang!
Now that PAX is over and I'm working on getting Home by Dark to a "beta" state, I thought I'd tell you the tale of how it came to be.
I've been roleplaying for almost 30 years. After I played a one-on-one D&D adventure with my stepbrother, I was hooked! I hadn't heard of story games until a certain episode of Tabletop introduced me to it. I'm sure you know the one. It had Wil Wheaton, Alison Haislip, Bonnie Burton, and John Rogers playing Fiasco. I was hooked. I've been playing them since.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, there's an event at some of the local conventions called "Games on Demand." There's a table with signup cards for multiple story games. Since the first time I ran into it, I have spent much of my con time playing games with Games on Demand.
Last spring, I was enjoying some of the Games on Demand offerings at Emerald City Comicon. One of the hosts mentioned that he'd seen me at a few of the events and asked if I'd like to facilitate a game at their next function. Of course, I would!
About a month ago, I received the email for PAX West and immediately signed up to run Fiasco. Have I mentioned my love for Fiasco? Oh, I have? Okay, yeah... I should probably keep going. When I signed up, I noticed that there was a space for an alt game.
The idea is that if your main game doesn't have enough players, then your alt game might. It's a higher chance at filling a slot and, therefore, a higher chance at gaming. I had a few systems I had picked up but wasn't sure which one to run as an alt game.
After reading through 5 of them in the span of a week, I actually had a new system in my head that I wanted to try. That, combined with the fact that Stranger Things was on my mind (and almost every single Facebook post I saw ;) Seriously if you haven't seen it: GO WATCH IT NOW), was where Home by Dark came from.
With only a couple of weeks left, I started writing out the framework for Home by Dark and hijacked my friends for a weekend of playtesting. One weekend later, I debuted it at PAX West's Games on Demand table! And WOW, what a great time that was! I'll be posting a review of Home by Dark @ PAX West within the next day. But for now, that's it!
I hope you enjoyed the story and I hope it didn't seem too self-aggrandizing. :)
- Jason
P.S. If you're curious about Home by Dark's birthday, the initial doc was created on August 19th, 2016.