Since each author posting a bit of info about their game seems to be customary, I should take the opportunity to clarify a few things about my own game, SEVEN DAYS:
1) Forgot to post my own line in the OGL Section so that people could use the open content. The very last line of the doc should be:
SEVEN DAYS RPG, Copyright 2013, Jeremy Forbing; Author Jeremy Forbing.
2) Did an XP system and some alternate rules (for people who wanted to use more dice or slightly different card rules), then left both moldering in a text file by simply forgetting to cut and paste them. Ugh. The other mistakes, I can chalk up to just having been in a hurry, but this one just makes me feel like a dolt.
3) Made an ugly character sheet, didn't have time to make a pretty one, and then left it out entirely. That was too bad, because I think just having a character sheet in front of you makes character creation easier in any RPG.
4) It occurs to me now that you could easily use stuff from existing d20/OGL games in this, especially bad guys and encounters. Minor bad guys would pretty much just work normally. Major bad guys would just need some descriptive aspects, but could use their d20 bonuses/modifiers normally (forgive the game-speak that only makes sense if you've read the game), pulling one card for aspect, one card for using a classic D&D ability score (replacing SEVEN DAYS' Attributes), and one each for using a skill or power. For balance purposes, my guess is characters from this game are on average about as mechanically tough as 10th level D&D/Pathfinder characters, just with crazier abilities. Had that occurred to me, I could have written a section on conversion rules. Then again, I didn't have time to do all the other things I planned either.
5) Could have auto-generated a table of contents in Word (because I used headings), and forgot that too. Man.
The whole idea for this game was inspired by the contest itself. I actually didn't think I would enter, but then thinking about a 7 Day RPG contest made me think of the Judeo-Christian creation story (the Earth being created in seven days), and the idea of writing a game in seven days about creating (or recreating) a world in seven days gave the whole thing a self-referential (or perhaps self-indulgent) flare that appealed to me. I had the idea, then realized that the idea would never be quite as good outside of the context of the contest, so I decided to really write the whole thing in the allotted week.
So I didn't have one word of this written before the contest, but I knew that to do a really robust game (for some reason, perhaps masochism, I decided not to do a simpler bare-bones game), I would have to draw upon the open game license. I wanted it to feel totally different from a normal OGL/D20 game, but still be familiar enough that most folks reading it could immediately grok the rules. Then I thought of the idea of keeping the basic OGL mechanic almost entirely, but using a different randomizer that would achieve roughly the same results, and making that means of generating a random number customizable based on the character and what they were trying to do in a more story-game kind of way, and I was off to the races.
To do everything a superhero game has to do, and make character creation really meaty, I had to use a lot of open content. But I decided not to port anything in whole cloth, but instead remix, repurpose, or rewrite anything I used. Still, there is no way I could have done this without the OGL. Not in a bazillion years. So making sure to open up just about everything I did to the OGL just seemed right. I really hope someone finds some way to use elements of this in their own crazy game.
Dunno if I will win, but I am sure I am not the only contestant who feels that if even one gaming group ever uses my game and enjoys it, I will be thrilled, and I would LOVE to hear all about that, so if anyone does, please please post about your experience.
Now I'm off to read all the other entries!
