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Submission period: either one week from today at the time of this posting, or 24 hours from when I announce the ninth submission here.

1. Pick two (and only two) of the four terms to be central concepts for your game. This is a big deal. You can't win a Ronny unless I think they really matter. Make sure to exclude the other two terms, conceptually.

2. Write the game during a single 24-hour period. Remember, this is an alpha design and will be assessed as such.

3. Submit it in PDF to the 24 Hour RPG site and email me with the same file attached (ron@adept-press.com). I will be more of a hard-ass about the former requirement this time.

Winning a Ronny means $50 for you and as much promotion and playtesting as I can provide. It's criteria-based; you don't have to beat the other entries to get one.

My best design advice
Free associate off the two terms to find more terms of your own to include, but remember, the original two do have to be central in some way.
Make something you like, and present both the Color and the Reward to help the reader understand why.

Some minor points
It's OK to write something more traditional and/or long-term. Not everything has to be formally turn-based and rife with endgames and full of emotional mechanics.

Feel free to do a little bit of document design to spice up the reading. Nothing major – a font, or layout device, or some quickie illustrations or images ... I promise not to use such things as criteria for Ronnies judgment, but they do make the whole thing more fun for everyone. (See the 2005 entries January's Frost, Left Coast, and Bylina & Bogatyr, for instance.)

And finally, the terms for this round:

whisper wings murder morning

Vroom vroom!

See the sticky thread leading this forum and Questions, concerns, befuddlements for various nuances and details. If you're still curious or confused about something, ask it here in this thread.

Best, Ron

And the first entry is! Nathan Paoletta's The Cycle of the Seasons, using morning and whisper.

Best, Ron

Second entry is Gregor Hutton's Realization Dawning, using morning and wings.

Let's see what the weekend brings us ...

Best, Ron

So far:

wings murder
They Became Flesh by Elizabeth Sampat
Anathema by Devon Oratz

wings morning
Realization Dawning by Gregor Hutton
The Moral Dawn by Eigil Rischel

morning whisper
The Cycle of Seasons by Nathan Paoletta

whisper murder
Haunted by Jesse Burneko

Nothing yet for morning murder or wings whisper

Hi Ron. About to start work on an idea for this one (Using wings and whisper, oddly enough) and I had an inexperience-based question. Would 'author's comments' in the book (or at the end) be useful or detrimental? On one hand in bad sections they might aid in showing where I went wrong. On the other hand the game should be able to stand on it's own and my thoughts can be brought in during the discussion/rewriting phase.

Thanks muchly for providing a reason for me to get off my butt and get back to active game design.

Pat

Hi Pat,

Author's comments sections are a lot of fun for me to read. As far as I can tell, looking at the results of past rounds, they don't hurt or help one's chances for a Ronny.

Best, Ron

Only one more as yet.

wings murder
They Became Flesh by Elizabeth Sampat
Anathema by Devon Oratz
Deathbird Black by Baxil

wings morning
Realization Dawning by Gregor Hutton
The Moral Dawn by Eigil Rischel

morning whisper
The Cycle of Seasons by Nathan Paoletta

whisper murder
Haunted by Jesse Burneko

morning murder / wings whisper: still lonely.

I don't know which entries are more disturbing, the funny ones or the goth ones. You are a bunch of morbid sonofabitches out there, I tell you. It serves me right for including "skull" in the previous round and "murder" in this one. I know! The next terms will include, let's see, "atrocity." No, "torture." Oh, obviously: "death," that'll cheer things up.

Two more, then I'll call the 24-hour signal.

Best, Ron

Oh yeah! All of the entries so far are now available at the 24-Hour RPG site (see link in this thread's first post). You can see what I'm talking about for yourself.

Best, Ron

The bell tolls nine! 24 hours remain from the time of this post, which is just before 10 PM Central Standard Time (U.S.). The titles so far:

wings murder
They Became Flesh by Elizabeth Sampat
Anathema by Devon Oratz
Deathbird Black by Baxil
Wings of Blood by Paolo Davolio

wings morning
Realization Dawning by Gregor Hutton
Moral Dawn by Eigil Rischel

morning whisper
The Cycle of Seasons by Nathan Paoletta

whisper murder
Haunted by Jesse Burneko
Uncle Louis by Steve Mathers

morning murder / wings whisper: no entries yet

Best, Ron
edited to fix formatting

Between ten and twelve hours left. The recent entries have significantly expanded the conceptual range.

wings murder
They Became Flesh by Elizabeth Sampat, Anathema by Devon Oratz, Deathbird Black by Baxil, Wings of Blood by Paolo Davolio, Murderwing by Joe J. Prince

wings morning
Realization Dawning by Gregor Hutton, Moral Dawn by Eigil Rischel

morning whisper
The Cycle of Seasons by Nathan Paoletta

whisper murder
Haunted by Jesse Burneko, Uncle Louis by Steve Mathers

whisper wings
The Volume of Secrets by J. P. Mullen

morning murder
no entries yet

Best, Ron

Annnnnd ... closed! Clocking in at 14 games.

wings murder
They Became Flesh by Elizabeth Sampat, Anathema by Devon Oratz, Deathbird Black by Baxil, Wings of Blood by Paolo Davolio, Murderwing by Joe J. Prince

wings morning
Realization Dawning by Gregor Hutton, Moral Dawn by Eigil Rischel

morning whisper
The Cycle of Seasons by Nathan Paoletta, Memory Quest by David Berg

whisper murder
Haunted by Jesse Burneko, Uncle Louis by Steve Mathers

whisper wings
The Volume of Secrets by J. P. Mullen, Air Patrol by Pat Gamblin

morning murder (at last!)
The Secret Lives of Serial Killers by Willow Palecek

Darn...just missed the cut off.

"Just" is close enough in this case, I say. So wings murder gets one more title, Murder: A Game About Crows, by Michael Wenman.

Best, Ron

Its amazing the effect that two words can have as the seed of an imaginative idea.

Its like you need some little thing just to be the seed, but the less specific the seed, the more powerful the effect on the imagination.

I think it has a lot to do with triangulation. That's why I insist on fully excluding the two terms that aren't used and remind people to free-associate new terms.

More than any other round of the Ronnies, it pleases me to imagine some kind of boxed cover that holds books spine-out, containing all the entries for this round in one glorious collection of separate volumes, once each is brought to conceptual fruition. The games are diverse in all sorts of ways, yet there is some kind of shadowy, aerial, ethereal, gore-spattered unity to them which no single title fully encompasses. The strong motifs across them - angels most obviously - only contribute to the unity rather than define it. Even the comedy in some of them is weird and dark in a way which contributes as well.

Best, Ron