Jonny Nexus

Category: Gaming

  • 44 Per Cent: A Party Game About Populist Politics

    Type: Party Game Players: 5 upwards (20 is ideal) Duration: ~20 minutes Equipment: Paper and pencils Complexity: Simple Risk of Conflict: High 44 Per Cent is a fun and educational party game that takes its name from the fact that in the 1933 German General Elections, Hiter’s Nazi party achieved a 44% share of the…

  • The True Story Behind “The Campaign for Real Monopoly”

    Seven years ago, as part of the penultimate issue of my gaming web fanzine Critical Miss, I wrote a short filler article about an interesting fact I’d discovered about the board game Monopoly (which was that if you land on a property but opt not to buy it, it gets auctioned off by the bank). Critical…

  • Alas Vegas: A Seventh Holy Relic?

    Ocean’s Eleven directed by David Lynch. Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas by way of Dante’s Inferno. The Hangover meets The Prisoner. A new style of RPG by James Wallis, named by Robin D. Laws as ‘the godfather of indie-game design’, with art from this year’s winner of the World Fantasy Award, John Coulthart. Long…

  • My Next GMing Project

    I’ve fancied doing some GMing (games mastering) for quite a while. (In roleplaying, the GM is the one who sets the overall storyline and runs the game). I needed something that would suit my style and my abilities, as well as hopefully working when done via a Skype video link. This is what I’ve pitched…

  • Last Night’s Game…

    We’re still playing Spirit of the Century, but John has now stepped in to take a turn in the GM’s chair. Moment of the Night: One We were in a room at a museum, talking to an woman who wanted to hire Addison Grey, TAFKAC’s “I see dead people” private eye, to find an item…

  • Campaign Idea: Children Of Selene

    I’ve been having a bit of a hankering recently to do some GMing (games mastering). Given that I’m not only at the other end of a Skype link from my gaming group, but also spending quite a lot of time writing novels, it’s pretty clear that I’d need something that: a) was an abstract game…

  • Boardgame Camp

    Last Saturday I headed down to Richmond to go to Boardgame Camp, a boardgaming “unconference” organised by my friend and publisher James Wallis. I will talk about how it went and what I did, but I should probably first answer the question that’s probably occupying the minds of a good chunk of those reading this,…

  • James Wallis’s Cop Show… Doing Star Trek

    I had an email from John this morning, filling me in on something that came up at last week’s meeting (which I missed due to be at the Discworld convention). They were talking about James Wallis’s (@jameswallis) unpublished game Cop Show, which he was kind enough to let me try out on the guys three…

  • Last Night’s Game…

    The funniest thing last night in our Spirit of the Century game actually related to me remembering an event from the previous session (which was two weeks ago). Now you have to remember that I’m playing a bloke whose brain has been transplanted into the body of a gorilla. We’re at a ski lodge in…

  • My Spirit of the Century Character Takes Shape

    My Monday night group have just started playing Spirit of the Century, a free-wheeling pulp role-playing game based on the Fate system. We’re managing to take our time on character creation (three sessions and counting so far), but as we’re really enjoying it, the system’s looking good, and I’m really chuffed about the characters we’re…