Announcements - BoxNinja presents Remember Tomorrow

Posted by: Gregor Hutton On: Jun 10th 2010 edited

Remember Tomorrow is a quick and dirty near-future "cyberpunk" game written by Gregor Hutton (Three Sixteen and Best Friends) with a cover by Jon Hodgson. It's a framework for making near-future stories, now, reflecting the short fiction and novels of Gibson, McAuley, Noon et al.

PDF copies retail for $5 from One Book Shelf sites (RPGnow, Drive Thru RPG and affiliates) and IndiePressRevolution.com.
Print copies will be available for $10 from late-July onwards from IndiePressRevolution.com, and at GenCon Indy on Booth 2100 ("Design Matters").
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Remember Tomorrow is a role-playing game set in the near future. Look at the world today, now flash it forward twenty minutes into the future. Sky Cars: Check. Memory Couriers: Check. Everything Else: Slightly Changed, huh, how about that?

Set in a place called Somewhere - maybe it was once Glasgow, Milan, Reno, Auckland or Hong Kong - Remember Tomorrow weaves storylines like the literary fiction that inspired it. Everywhere in the world is Somewhere. Are you Ready, Willing and Able?

This short, snappy near-future game features: easy character generation; an ensemble cast of PCs and Factions; goal-oriented stories built in play; GMless, scene-based resolution.

Author Gregor Hutton says: "Play is more like flying into London from Zurich, heading to a Chop Shop on the Edgware Road (say Little Cyprus, near Camden) and getting made to look like some Dealer's long-lost girlfriend. Of course, when the hit goes wrong the Swiss Pharma Corp that hired you in the first place double crosses you. Did I mention that the Dealer you just tried to kill is another PC? And he thinks you know what the Pharma Corp did to his girlfriend? And you're only doing the job because you're Dying of a neural condition and your Goal is to get cured, right?"
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INFORMATION
BoxNinja is the publishing imprint of award-winning games designer Gregor Hutton. BoxNinja is based in Edinburgh, UK and makes pen-and-paper roleplaying games available as books and PDFs.

Title: Remember Tomorrow
Author: Gregor Hutton
Cover Artist: Jon Hodgson
ISBN: 978-0-9559945-3-1
Pages: 48 b/w pages (6"x9") plus gloss 4-colour outer cover (print); 53 b/w pages including front/back colour covers and 3 US Letter sized playsheets (PDF)
System: d10 (3-dice pool)
Genre: Modern|SF|Literary Cyberpunk
Players: 2-5
GM: none
Age: 15+
Price: $10 (print); $5 (PDF)

Playsheets, play links and extra content on boxninja.com.

Previous hit games include:
3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars
"What Hutton’s game does do is present a superb piece of battle-ready game design, a brilliant evocation of genre, as much satire as you want to chew on, and a fine lesson in minimalism, all at once."-Ken Hite
Best Friends
"Best Friends. Teen queen bees vie for social supremacy. My fave element of this is character generation, where the other players vote on your various stats. Nice clean visual presentation."-Robin Laws

The evocative cover image is by Jon Hodgson ("Fantasy Art for Beginners", WFRP, Warhammer, Paizo, The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings Role-playing Game) and licenced from illodeli.com, the Art-on-Demand service.

Contact:
web: http://boxninja.com | mail: malebox@boxninja.com

Posted by: Malcolm Craig On: Jun 10th 2010

I must admit, having played in a couple of sessions of Remember Tomorrow, that it is a game which will now get added to my pile of quick-to-set-up go-to games.

Alongside Contenders, Geiger Counter, and Shock:, it will be a regular fixture in my gaming bag because of the simplicity, ease of setup, and the fun that comes out of play.

Cheers
Malcolm

Posted by: Andrew Kenrick On: Jun 11th 2010

Do you think it would work nicely as a one-shot/convention game, or does it really benefit from repeated "episodes"?

Posted by: Malcolm Craig On: Jun 11th 2010

Andrew Kenrick:Do you think it would work nicely as a one-shot/convention game, or does it really benefit from repeated "episodes"?

I'd rely on Gregor for an answer to this, but from my own point of view yes, it's eminently possible to use Remember Tomorrow for one shot or convention play. One thing that might be good is to have the characters start with one Ready/Willing/Able tick box filled in, in much the same way that Scott has pre-filled Hidden Agenda use boxes in his Hot War games. That would give PCs a greater chance of achieving their goal within the time constraints of a 3 - 4 hour game.

Cheers
Malc

Posted by: Gregor Hutton On: Jun 12th 2010

Yeah, for one shots the advice is just to play to fill the time available, or to do a round of play after the first exit. And an exit can be as simple as hosing a PC with a Scene Goal of Injured, followed by an Outcome of Dying and an extra Outcome (a "kill shot" if you like) to remove them from play. So, a Margin of 2 Successes with Injured or Dying as the Scene Goal will do it. (Or a plain old Margin of 3.)

For con scenarios I'd be tempted to allow people to treat their PCs like returning unsuccessful characters, i.e. they get to tick a Goal box of their choice for free to start. I'd also be tempted to create PCs and Factions to "prime" the scenario, but it's not necessary.

Play can be very disjointed at first -- if you create characters with quite different Goals the PCs can even be incoherent with each other. But over play these stories should naturally crash, or be forced to crash, into one another. It's important the Factions are based on what you've heard of the PCs. As they are a common enemy/tool for Dealing with.

So, I'd either allow anything goes and just start as a regular game, or pregenerate PCs and leave the Factions to be made in play, or pregenerate the whole lot to fit together.

I wouldn't precreate the Factions and allow the PCs to come up with PCs that might not "fit" with them, if you see what I mean?

Posted by: Gregor Hutton On: Jun 12th 2010 edited

Oh, I hope that the advantage of repeated play is that Fliss might one day get some Goals!

And I'm trying to play this by e-mail at the moment. So far, so good. I'm taking inspiration from David Donachie's Solipsist play that he got done by e-mail. More on this when I've got something worth posting!

Posted by: Gregor Hutton On: Jun 12th 2010

I knew I came here to post for a reason!

The book is now at the printers, so should (fingers crossed) be at IPR in July, and at GenCon in August on Booth 2100.

If you can't wait that long for a print copy then it's also on LULU.com for £7.50.

Posted by: SquidLord On: Jun 18th 2010

Poking around on Collective Endeavor tonight, I ran into this description/thread on Remember Tomorrow, and immediately understood that I had to buy it so that I could clutch it to my chest and run giggling down the street like the twisted psychopath I am.

Anything that results in at least one sale is a good thing. That makes this thread a good thing.

Posted by: Gregor Hutton On: Jun 23rd 2010

And the print copies should be at IPR on the 25th.

Yet again Fidlar-Doubleday have provided me with an excellent printing service. They delivered the print job quickly (from quote to shipping in under 10 days) and efficiently. They checked any queries with me (including where they were just double-checking they had everything just right) and shipped to my two different addresses correctly.

I really do take my hat off to Al Vital and the excellent Kory Cogdill. It was the last job Kory will run for me as he leaves for pastures new. He'll be missed for sure, but I trust FD to keep the same excellent standard of service.

With alocalprinter.com doing a great job on Hell 4 Leather this has been a great year for printing for me.

Posted by: Iain McAllister On: Jun 28th 2010

Looking forward to playing this at some point Gregor. How is the play by mail going and are you using any special software to facilitate it?

Posted by: Gregor Hutton On: Jun 28th 2010

We're just doing it by text in e-mail and rolling the dice ourselves. An example "turn" is my last one introducing a Faction (it follows on from a PC Intro where a dude with a pipe gets killed):
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INTRODUCTION: FACTION
Note I don't have to have a Cross from your scene into my next one, but I'm running with it because I like it.

Faction: The Thralls
Identity: Booster Gang
INF: 4
NPCs: Tonton Macoute, a machete wielding Haitian drug user; Two-Dog, a feral dog-handler and people-finder.
Motivation: Envy
PCon: Hardened, they live a tough life on the street in the blighted east-end of Somewhere
NCon: Coerced, tricked into doing the dirty work of shadowy unknown forces

The words were Sinatra's but the tone and tempo certainly were not. The two dogs, one a pit bull, the other a border collie, stepped carefully around the stairwell noses pointing upwards. Tonton, the larger of the two men, and the one singing, went up the stairs. The shorter man, who had the dogs on leads, waited at the entrance. He looked like his dogs truth be told, a nasty brute of a man.

"Looky, looky here" said Tonton in a lilting Haitian accent as he reached the landing. He jigged through the open doorway and into the room beyond. He effortlessly removed the blood analyser from the band around his top hat and jabbed it into the sticky matted mess on the
floor.
-----
I roll the dice: 3, 10, 10. For one success and a Cross into your next scene. I pick the PCon: Armed.
-----
Whistling Tonton comes down the stairs, "I got you under my skin..." before removing the analyser from his arm. He stopped at the last step and addressed his gangmate. "Same as
before, man. Same killer."
Two-Dog opened his mouth, revealing a row of metal teeth, "Was Pipe-boy...?"
Tonton paused thoughtfully, "Yeah, dead, man. And he got it bad. So, tell the rest no more fucking around with bats and pipes. Tell Way-Long to get us some sluggers and shit."
Two-Dog nodded and flipped open his cell phone. Within minutes the other Thralls were there, arriving in an Otomo MPV with a backseat full of shotguns, rifles and rockets.
----
Over to you and there's a Cross somehow from the Thralls getting Armed to your Faction's Intro.
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When we get to Face-Offs I imagine the Controller will frame the scene and then flip it over to the other player for some exploration of the environment and for them to shoot for stuff. There will be a bit of back and forth and then the Controller will drop the hammer on a conflict or call it a colour scene.