Back on the Street

Fifteen years ago, when my exploration of game design was in it's infancy, I decided to try my hand at Game Chef, an annual international game design challenge in which entrants were given a theme and some suggested ingredients, then had around a month to come up with something original.

Well blow me down, not only did I manage to complete a new game design, but it only went and won that year, didn't it? I also had a lot of fun playtesting it at some popular UK conventions, where it went down a storm, though still a bit of a guilty secret. The content of the game is inspired by experiences that are a little too real, that feeling of being young and indestructible, of thinking your life will always be pretty much the same as it is now, and that ain't much.

Anyway, between then and now, I also went through some experiences that were a little too real and Never to Die just got overlooked the way things do; I had new ideas for new games, for one thing, and didn't necessarily want to return to an earlier, rougher design that maybe wouldn't still have the same appeal.

At its heart though, Never to Die is a game about cameraderie and standing with your friends against a world that that feels designed to exclude you, so thanks to the support of some of my regular gaming group, I tentatively brought this game back out into the light of day to see if it was still relevant, but more importantly, not too insenstive to todays standards. It passed muster somehow, so here it is for a wider audience, with some provisos: this is a game about characters who do very unpleasant things, because they have nothing better to do. It's a celebration of that lifestyle but not an endorsement of it or the attitudes of it's time: the PCs in this game aren't heroes, but more like victims of circumstance, a downtrodden underclass whom no-one else cares about, so they don't care about no-one else. Play with your friends, play with a mixed group and play with love.