Kill it With Fire

Kill it With Fire (KiWF) grew out of a desire to stop theorising about games design, and actually put it into practice.

The original idea it spawned from, was for a game titled Tranny-Finder General (TFG). Based loosely on the trials and tribulations of transgender blogger Becky Enverite and her quest to rid the world of fake profiles on Flickr, TFG would see players working together to uncover a faker by building a portfolio of evidence. The player taking the role of faker would utilise sockpuppets and Photoshop to cover their tracks.

The actual mechanism proved sound (and got re-used for another project I am working on), but I couldn't get the game to work as an entertaining multiplayer game.

Keeping the theme, but looking for new ideas, I expanded the scope to include the work of another fellow transgender blogger Jo Angel keeping her forums free from trolls.

Around the same time I rediscovered Jim Webster's Peter Pan: The Wargame, a solo game about the UN in Never-Neverland. The game uses a random events table, and managing limited resources to sem the tide of problems. Marrying the two ideas together I ended up at KiWF.

In KiWF the players takes on the role of an administrator or websites. Each turn internet trolls interfere with your websites (and your home life), and you must marshall your limited resources to stop them.

The game is fatalistic, in that it is more about how long you survive rather than winning (although with luck it is possible), but with this I have tried to match the game system to the subject matter, following the doctrine of "System Matters".

I'm quite happy with the finished result, and playtesters have agreed it models an uphill struggle sucessfully (although no-one called it fun!)

See what you think: Download Kill it With Fire from Scribd

What's it all about?

On my main blog I chat about all sorts of things, but I wanted somewhere to post specifically about gaming, and the games I write. Especially now that Geocities is being closed down, and I'll have to re-home some of my older work.

I'm also working on a couple of gaming ideas, and wanted a place to point colleagues from gaming sites to. It would be nice if they didn't have to sift through my ramblings to find it.

Projects in the works-

Re-housing Kill It With Fire
Repurposing KiWF as a castle defence game
Untitled two-player seige game
One-sheets for the Wushu RPG