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 Game Chef print & play cover 2005 | |
| Designers | Jason Morningstar |
|---|---|
| Publishers | Bully Pulpit Games |
| Publication | 2005 |
| Genres | 1920s academic black comedy |
| Systems | custom |
| Website | bullypulpitgames |
The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a role-playing game by Jason Morningstar, independently published by Bully Pulpit Games.
The game is GM-less and designed for single-session play at the end of which a winner is determined. Its tone is black comedy, lampooning academia.
The game is about the internal politics of a buttoned-down New England college campus in 1919. The titular roach is a soul-eating telepathic insect bent on destroying human civilization. A major part of play is which characters are under the control of the roach and its offspring.
The goal of the game is to be the player with the most reputation at the end of the game. You cannot be the winner if you are currently under the control of the roach, but being under its control allows you to gain reputation much more easily.
Jason Morningstar thought of the core ideas behind The Shab-al-Hiri Roach while thinking about both the topic of Lovecraftian horror and his own personal fear of cockroaches. [1] : 290 Morningstar submitted this game to the Game Chef 2005 competition, where it was among the nine best games chosen from the 38 entrants as one of the "Inner Circle". [1] : 290 The Shab-al-Hiri Roach continued to undergo revisions as Morningstar, Steve Segedy, and Patrick M. Murphy founded Bully Pulpit Games, and the game was in its 45th revision (since they started counting) by Thanksgiving 2005. [1] : 291 The Shab-al-Hiri Roach went on sale on March 10, 2006; the small press company Bully Pulpit printed only 100 copies, and the company ordered a second printing before all the copies sold out by May 12. [1] : 291 Most of those 200 reprints went to the company's new partner, Indie Press Revolution, who got the game into wider circulation and sold their 180 copies by September 26. [1] : 291
Sid Meier's Civilization is a 1991 turn-based strategy 4X video game developed and published by MicroProse. The game was originally developed for MS-DOS running on a PC, and it has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms. The player is tasked with leading an entire human civilization over the course of several millennia by controlling various areas such as urban development, exploration, government, trade, research, and military. The player can control individual units and advance the exploration, conquest and settlement of the game's world. The player can also make such decisions as setting forms of government, tax rates and research priorities. The player's civilization is in competition with other computer-controlled civilizations, with which the player can enter diplomatic relationships that can either end in alliances or lead to war.
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The Diana Jones Award is an annual award for "excellence in gaming". The original award was made from a burned book encased in lucite. The award is unusual in two ways: first, it is not an award for a specific class of thing, but can be awarded to a person, product, publication, company, organization, event or trend – anything related to gaming; second, it does not count popularity or commercial success as a sign of "excellence". The award was first presented in 2001.
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Andrew Scott Gavin is an American video game programmer, entrepreneur, and novelist. Gavin co-founded the video game company Naughty Dog with childhood friend Jason Rubin in 1986, which released games including Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter. Prior to founding Naughty Dog, Gavin worked in LISP at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Indie Press Revolution is a sales network that acts as a fulfillment house and distributor for publishers of indie role-playing games. It offers games directly to the public and to game retailers. Justin Joyce for Polygon recommended it for its selection of games and efficient website. Kristina Manente for Syfy called it a great resource to find indie tabletop role-playing games.
Bully Pulpit Games, based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is a small publisher of indie role-playing games.
Twilight Struggle: The Cold War, 1945–1989 is a board game for two players, published by GMT Games in 2005. Players are the United States and Soviet Union contesting each other's influence on the world map by using cards that correspond to historical events. The first game designed by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews, they intended it to be a quick-playing alternative to more complex card-driven wargames.
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Grey Ranks is a role-playing game by Jason Morningstar, independently published by Bully Pulpit Games. The game is designed for three to five players and puts each of them in the shoes of child soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising, serving as members of the Grey Ranks.
Dungeon Squad is a fantasy role-playing game by Jason Morningstar. It is released as being 'by Jason Morningstar', rather than through Bully Pulpit Games as other of Morningstar's games have been.
Hacker International was a Japanese video game company that developed and published games from 1990 to 2001 for the Nintendo Famicom, NEC PC Engine, Sony PlayStation consoles, and Microsoft Windows PCs. The company was known for its play-for-porn approach to gaming, with such games as AV Pachi-Slot and Soap Panic featuring female nudity as a reward for skilful playing. These games were usually distributed through mail order and sold approximately 30,000 to 50,000 copies each. Many of their games were developed by Taiwanese companies and were released in non-pornographic form elsewhere in the world; however, three were released in the United States for the Nintendo Entertainment System with pornography intact by another Taiwanese company, Panesian.
Fiasco is a role-playing game by Jason Morningstar, independently published by Bully Pulpit Games. It is marketed as a "GM-less game for 3–5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with six-sided dice and no preparation". It is billed as "A game of powerful ambition and poor impulse control" and "inspired by cinematic tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong—films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan."
The Indie RPG Awards were annual, creator-based awards for Indie role-playing games and supplements. They were established in 2002 by Andy Kitkowski. The final round of awards was given in 2017.
Durance is a science fiction role-playing game by Jason Morningstar, independently published by Bully Pulpit Games, who also released Fiasco. The game was a 2011 entry on the annual Game Chef game design competition, and went on to raise $27,458 of its $5000 goal on kickstarter in June 2012.
Jason Morningstar is an American indie role-playing game designer, publishing mostly through Bully Pulpit Games. Morningstar's games often forgo a game master and are set in situations that quickly take a turn for the worse for the player characters. Grey Ranks, for example, is about doomed child soldiers in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and Fiasco is about impulsive crooks pulling heists that are sure to go terribly wrong. With these two games, Morningstar became the only named person to have won the Diana Jones award twice as of 2023. He also won an IndieCade award for Desperation. In addition to designing games, Morningstar works with academia and industry, consulting on using games for teaching and learning in education, with a focus on health sciences.
Game Chef was an annual American contest for role-playing game designers.
