This snuck up on me, and in fact I had thought I’d missed it, but it turns out it’s tonight! Roguelike Celebration‘s main event isn’t until October, but they’re having a preview event tonight with two long and one short talk. The schedule is here. It kicks off at around 3:00 PM Pacific time, which to convert is 6 PM Eastern, around 10 PM Greenwich, and Midnight CEST.
(EDIT: I had the Eastern times too late by an hour. The event will begin at 6 PM Eastern time.)
Tonight’s show is being done for free, but you still need a (costless) ticket for it, which you can get here. As has been usual the past few events, there will be a live MUD-like chatroom to participate in during the show, for interacting with other audience members, for submitting questions to the queue, and just for bumping around and exploring. The doors open a little before the talks begin, to let people get used to the space, and as a buffer against lateness.
I hope you can make it! Tonight’s talks are:
3:15 PM Pacific / 6:15 PM Eastern / 10:15 PM GMT / 12:15 AM CEST – 45 minutes
Fireside chat with Jon Perry: Host Alexei Pepers and Jon Perry will chat about game design and his contributions to UFO 50 such as Planet Zoldath, Party House, and Mini & Max! (Personal note: this is not one to miss. I have been obsessed with Party House, enough to write a gigantic strategy guide for it.)
4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern / 11 PM GMT / 1 AM CEST – 30 minutes
Building Synergy Networks for better Roguelike Deckbuilders, with Ezra Szanton: Roguelike Deckbuilders live or die on the quality of the drafting decisions they present. When a player chooses between 3 cards, what is going through their head? This talk is about how to achieve deep but accessible drafting decisions which result in memorable games that excite players. Synergy Networks are a helpful lens for creating sets of cards that achieve these aims. Modeling the synergies between cards as a network allows us to use ideas from network theory like path length, density and hubs. Digressions will include characteristics of synergies, broad types of synergies useful for brainstorming, and why anti-synergy is just as important as synergy itself. This talk is informed by my work designing Hellscaper and Mr Magpie’s Harmless Card Game, two roguelike deckbuilders.
4:30 PM Pacific / 7:30 PM Eastern / 11:30 PM GMT / 1:30 AM CEST – 45 minutes
Designing for System Suspense, with Alexei Pepers: The host will give a talk which she gave at GCD and had previously been trapped inside the GDC Vault.
