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Your regular game isn't going to go off as planned, and you're looking for something quick and easy to run in it's place? Need a game you can run as a one-shot for a game day or a convention? Just looking to try something a little different for a change of place? Here's a game you can download and be ready to play with minimal preparation.
Sea Dracula is a FREE game about dancing animal lawyers created by award winning designers Nick Smith and Jake Richmond. You can download it for free at the Sea Dracula WordPress site, or buy print copies from Atarashi Games. For $8 you get 10 copies of the game, featuring 10 different covers illustrated by Jake. You can give them away to your friends, or horde them and make your friends all buy their own. The Atarashi online store also has Sea Dracula t-shirts and swag featuring art by Jake.
So how does this game work? Well, there's a crime in Animal City. The player characters are lawyers, who take turns describing the crime scene, and the witnesses. Then you make opening statements and present your case. You can represent the defendant, the plaintiff, the city, a forgein country, the position that ham is delicious, or anything you choose, really. Is your position pertinent to the case? It doesn't matter. You introduce evidence, call witnesses, and get Lawyer Points for doing stuff. The person with the most Lawyer Points at the end wins. Ties are broken by a dance-off.
Oh, yeah, you have to dance. It's a very important mechanic in the game system. If you're too chicken to dance (although you can play a dancing chicken), you can be a member of the Jury, which is sort of an audience mechanic that lets you participate. But someone has to play Lawyers, and Lawyers have to dance.
Why is the game called Sea Dracula? Download it and find out for yourself.
Comments
See, I love the game for its spontaneous hilarity, and I love the idea of sitting around a murder trial trying to prove why ham is tasty. The problem is: I don't dance. Never could, never will. I've been trying to put together a silly and simple dice mechanic that fits the game, otherwise I might never actually play it!
But... the whole point of the game is that gamers can't dance! You're supposed to make a foll out of yourself for the pleasure of your friends.
FYI, we just found out today that Sea Dracula won the 2008 Indie RPG Award for Best Free Game,a dn was a runner up in the categories for "Indie Game of the Year" and "Most Innovative Game of the Year"!
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