The Tears of a Machine SC is now live and accepting your backing. Help us to make this game something that we can share far and wide. Your support will allow us to transform the text with more art, professional layout, and release in physical and digital formats.
Most importantly, you’ll be funding the recording of the text into audio that can be used as a supplement to the text but also in a read-along accessible audio book.
I’m nervous and excited. Frequently distracted by all the little tasks and to-do’s and occasionally overwhelmed by worry that I’m missing some important piece somewhere. Basically what you’d expect before any creative launch.
Sorry that I’ve gone dark for so long and deprived you of updates! J. R. Blackwell returned the text to me with her editorial remarks and I’ve been making my way through, tweaking, adjusting, correcting, and polishing with her excellent guidance. This is the “how the sausage is made” part of the process, with lots of minutiae so there’s just not much to share. Nothing exciting at least. So while I continue to trawl my way through all these words, let’s enjoy some pleasant distractions. Pilot Launch Suit Design
Jennifer Rodgers, our esteemed illustrator has been working on more designs for the illustrations of Tears and here’s her first draft of the pilot’s Launch Suits.
The astute viewer will notice a few references to religious iconography in the patterns. It will be more obvious once the pilots have their neural exchange halos attached. Continue Reading →
The Tears of a Machine kickstarter campaign has been a success! We’re fully funded to get the game through editing, art, layout, and printing. Here’s the last update of the funding drive.
Offering the book in accessible format did a lot to help me find the support I needed. I’m going to make every effort to keep the level of quality just as high in creating the synchronized audio version of the text.
Thank you once more, to all my backers and supporters.
Some more world-building today. Get to know the most mysterious super-geniuses of the world of Tears of a Machine.
A shadowy organization of cutting-edge researchers and scientists, the Cloistered Research Council are responsible for the robotic SAInts, the floating Citadels of Earth’s Preservation Forces and the MetaTron telepathic communications system that ties them all together. Their knowledge demands respect because it is the best chance humanity has to survive the alien attacks and strike back.Continue Reading →
You’ve seen it in the Tears of a Machine kickstarter project write-up and in the stretch goals, but I’m going to say a little more about the subject of an accessible game manual.
For 13 years I’ve worked at Learning Ally, a non-profit organization that serves students with print disabilities. I’ve gone through dyslexia simulation exercises and teaching sessions about the way that the brain develops to handle written language, all so that I could better understand the challenges that a student with learning differences must face. The simplest way for me to explain it is to imagine that you’re learning algebra but your book is written in a foreign language. You can understand the concepts and the symbols but have to puzzle them out from among the surrounding words, slowly. Bit by bit.
Now, go to your bookshelf or the folder of PDFs on your computer and open up an RPG manual (preferably one of those big 200+ page ones that cost you 50 bucks) and drink in the wall of text. That’s what it is for many people. A wall. Mild dyslexia is almost commonplace; as many as 1 in 5 students could benefit from having access to their school books in alternative formats. There are imaginative and intelligent people who are held back by how information is delivered and by the stigma of “disability.” With the same information presented in a different format they are just as quick to learn as many others. I want to give them the opportunity to enjoy my game without barriers.
How will I make Tears of a Machine accessible? The DAISY Consortium is an international organization devoted to the same goals of Learning Ally, to remove the barriers of print comprehension from information. They provide an assortment of free and open source tools for the creation of accessible books and audio. Because I have access to the raw text I can use many of these tools to convert it into these formats: Continue Reading →
Today I launch the Kickstarter funding drive for the Tears of a Machine role playing game. Here! Tears of a Machine is about the teenage pilots of giant robots and how the ups and downs of their lives give them the strength to fight off an alien assault. The pilot’s hopes, fears, friends, and rivals will help or harm her self-esteem. Getting a love note to the cute guy or girl on the other side of the classroom or winning the volleyball match might save her life when a brutal alien robot falls from the sky to crush a city and she flies to defend the people.
Game mechanics that are speedy and accessible are important to me, so Tears uses 6-sided dice and some simple addition to work out the results of challenges. The outcome of most situations are decided by a single roll but when things get especially tense or dangerous then the rules “zoom in” to cover the back and forth of winning and losing but without sacrificing the opportunity for a dramatic narrative.
Do you want to know more? Check out the kickstarter page. Review the rewards; read about my excellent creative team; look at the beautiful art; download the sample adventure; watch a video in which I try and fail to maintain eye contact with the camera! Tears of a Machine on Kickstarter.com: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robotclaw/tears-of-a-machine
This writing project has been my labor of love over the past two years. It’s undergone multiple full drafts, 50+ hours of play-test sessions, and dozens revisions and rewrites! I’m already happy with what I’ve created already in writing the complete draft of Tears, but seeing it made into a physical artifact will make the accomplishment “real” to me.
Thank you for your attention and for your support!
