The RPG Geek DramaSystem Contest 2015

The RPG Geek DramaSystem Contest 2015

by Yohann Delalande

I only discovered Hillfolk a year ago. I was fortunate enough to experience a demo game run by Robin D. Laws himself at the Chimériades, a small French convention with a huge gaming-holiday feel. This experience turned into a real eye-opener.

DramaSystem showed me how to play with characters’ agendas and interpersonal relationships. Finally, I had all the tools I had been looking for to run games based on emotional conflicts.

Then, last February, the stars went right when the announcement of the Bundle of Holding on Hillfolk coincided with a discussion I was having with some fellow members of the RPG Geek community about writing series pitches – Robin’s name for settings you can play with DramaSystem. This is when the idea of a contest suddenly popped up in my mind.

I had already run other contests on this site, so I asked for permission to the community’s administrators and to Pelgrane Press, who both replied positively and were willing to sponsor it. In less than 24 hours, the RPG Geek DramaSystem Contest 2015 was born and launched.

One of the assets of RPG Geek, beyond its huge database of games and designers, remains its international community who constantly strives to uphold some high standards of diversity and inclusion. Everybody is welcome there, whatever their tastes in gaming are. This meant it was the perfect place to hold such a contest.

With such a positive spirit, all the participants were committed to offering their most innovative pitch, but also to supporting each other’s efforts. And although I expected to be positively surprised, we all ended up being absolutely astonished by the fantastic quality of the 22 submissions.

However, as in every contest, there have to be some winners, and despite a fierce competition, three stood out:

• Our 1st place winner, The Unchosen Ones, co-written by Heather Silsbee and Jon Cole, revolves around the faith crisis a doomsday, ecoreligious cult faces when the apocalypse prophesied by their guru does not match their expectations at all.
• Our 2nd place winner, Eagle’s Twilight, written by Charles Picard, brings us back to 5th century AD Britain near the Hadrian Wall when Rome withdraws all its troops, leaving the Britons without any Imperial rule or defence.
• Our 3rd place winner, Game On, written by Wendy Gorman, throws us into the mid-40s US with the creation of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, and offers us to explore the difficulties and the social challenges professional sportswomen faced at that time

Obviously, our 22 Series Pitches will offer you a wide panel of diverse gaming experience to discover and play. All of them are hosted in the RPG Geek database and in the Hillfolk resources page – you can see the full list here – and they can all be downloaded for free.

Finally, there is no better emotional reward for a game designer than knowing that their creations are being played. This is why I would strongly encourage you to play them all and to share your experience with us on social media.