Kuma Pageworks

I’ve simplified and streamlined the site to present just the games and other game-like stuff that we’ve created here. We currently have three categories of documents for download:

• Game design whitepapers and fishwrappers, like AGE Model of Game Play and Design.
• Storylike (i.e. roleplaying) games, like the nearly-award-winning Time Traitor.
• Flat (i.e. board and card) games, such as Cubo.
• Constructible games, such as Boat.

We welcome you to download and enjoy all of our games, and ask only that you consider donating to Kuma Pageworks if you find what we have to say and play informative and/or fun. Commercial products are in the pipeline for the near future – including DEAD, the card-based survival-horror RPG.

Not just a guide to using the Mixotronic (which can be summed up in one sentence: Go to mixotronic.elseworld.org. Hit F5 a lot.), but a set of jumper cables for your creativity. Loaded with examples, the Mixotronic User’s Guide offers practical tips on conceptual design and practical application of weird ideas.

Download the Mixotronic User’s Guide and give your brain a kick in the ass.

Current Version: 1.1.b.

The AGE Model is an ecological approach to games, gaming and roleplaying. Instead of divining the internal motives of the players or the group, it focuses instead on the shared environments of the players – physical, mental and social. It then describes relationships between the players, the players and the environments, and lastly the impact of the ‘invisible player’ involved in the creation of these environments – the game itself.

This last is the most important distinction of the AGE Model – the design and implementation of the game’s rules by the players is fundamental in the construction of the shared gaming environments; by altering the rules and presentation of the game, you alter the social dynamics and the mental models of the players. Therefore, the design of the game is as important to the emergent mental and social spaces of the players as their group history or prior experiences.Part of this distinction is the premise that all games share these same principles: Game, Art and Emulation – but that different games (and different taxonomic groupings of games) reinforce different principles. This is not a new idea. However, the AGE Model suggests that differences between taxonomies is minor, and what may appear to be very disparate forms of games are, in fact, right next door to each other.

As such, the AGE Model seeks to break down the traditional barriers between board games, card games, tabletop roleplaying games and digital gameforms – each of these has strengths and weaknesses, and each can be informed by the design parameters of the other.

Download the lastest version of the AGE Model. 

You are time travelers, bound together by the Laws of Time and awesome technological might, tasked with the protection of the timestream from those who would wish to destroy humanity.

There’s only one problem: one of you is a dirty, rotten traitor.

In Time Traitor, 3rd place finalist for the annual Game Chef competition in 2006, the players try to expose one another as the traitor that has slipped into their midst and destroyed life as we know it. Using a cutthroat bidding system and their own unique spacetime powers, the players set each other up for the inevitable fall – because one of you is the traitor.

Whether you know it or not.

Download the Time Traitor PDF.