Wrap by Midnight: Director’s Cut

About

This is not a game about recreating a film. It is a game about making one, and fighting over who gets the credit.

Wrap by Midnight: Director's Cut is a miniatures game: two players, ten miniatures, a small 24" × 24" set, a ruler, a few d6. Bring your own figures, from any game or collection, and move them across the set like a classic wargame: inches, dice, alternating activations.

You are a casting associate at Picturing Pictures, the oldest, biggest and least understood film studio in the world. Your rival works there too: same lot, same canteen, same coffee machine. One job between you, and a Casting Director who never comes down to the set. He watches every Take on a monitor.

You each hire five actors: any miniatures you like, they are just "in costume". A Space Marine can play a cowboy. It just won't be convincing.

How it plays

It plays like a classic miniatures skirmish, and it is also, deliberately, a joke about showbusiness.

• Cast like a producer. A budget, twelve kinds of actor, a Star, clauses and demands in the contracts, a crew, and PR to spend.
• Fight on the set. Monologues at a distance, Duets in contact, and the defender improvises. Move, measure, roll, and send your rival's actors Backstage.
• Win the light, not the objective. Each camera puts a pool of light, the Focus, on the set. Whoever shines the brightest scores. What happens off camera was "cut in editing".
• A new set every Take. The Director is not a person: it is a set of tables that builds a new set for each of the five Takes, from scenery and props to cameras and a phone call from Production that is never good news.
• Secret goals. Pick three perks before the film. Do what you promised, and the Casting Director remembers.
• A campaign. Play a whole season of films: your actors become famous, earn Trademarks, and suffer Terrible Consequences.

Play with anything

Grey miniatures, a green cloth for a table, a stack of books for a Backdrop, a shoebox for a Building, a lighter for a Flat. Use what you have and imagine the rest: in post-production, it will all be replaced by CGI.

What exists today

The game is written, balanced with thousands of simulated films, and playtested at the table. Everything is ready:

• The complete rules, readable on a website, with a worked example, a FAQ and a free Army Builder to build your cast.
• Printable PDFs: the rulebook, a quick reference, a production report, tokens, perk cards and campaign rules.
• The whole rulebook written as a screenplay, in a classic screenplay format, about 110 pages.

What this campaign is for

The game is finished. This campaign is to help me recoup what it cost me to make it, and to put it where players can find it: a proper home on its own domain, with the rules free to read.

Stretch goals

The game is finished. Reaching each of these stretch goals lets me work on extra content, and everything we reach is unlocked for everybody: as a PDF for every backer, whatever the tier, and as a chapter on the website, free to read like the rest of the rules. After the campaign the PDFs will also be sold on DriveThruRPG. They unlock in order, and I announce each one as it happens.

750€: the Army Builder

The Call Sheet Generator is the cast builder of the game. You pick your five actors, the Star, the clauses and demands in their contracts and your crew, it keeps the budget for you, and it prints the finished call sheet for the table. Right now it is just something I'm working on. When and if this goal is reached it goes online, free for everyone, with no account and nothing to install: it works in the browser, on a phone or a tablet at the table. 

1000€: the Campaign rules

The Campaign Rules are the part of the game where a set of films becomes a season. You play film after film with the same cast: your actors earn Fame and Trademarks, your office grows, Career Points carry over, and Terrible Consequences follow the ones who did badly.

Between one film and the next you are not only a player, you are a casting associate with a career. You can replace an actor, rewrite the contracts, and invest what you have earned in your office: a press office, a talent agency, a stunt yard and other assets that give you a small edge in the next film. Winning a film earns you more Career Points than losing it, so the Casting Director remembers who delivers.

Your actors have careers too. Every Screen Point they score builds their Fame, from Newcomer up to Screen legend, and each step earns a Trademark, a signature touch that stays with that actor. But an actor that ends a film in Backstage may pay for it: dropped by the studio, sick leave, wounded pride, bad press. A season lasts about four to six films, and ends with the Golden Clapperboard.

1500€: the Special Effects rules

On a real set, nothing steals the show like an explosion. SFX are the special effects done on the set: explosions, smoke, wires, a rain tower. This optional set of rules adds them to the game as a new layer of spectacle. An effect steals the attention of the audience from whoever is standing in it, friend or foe, so a big effect can win you the scene and cost every actor in range the spotlight. The associate who is behind gets to use them.

It comes with effect cards and new Production Crew that work only with it. It sits beside the rules you already have, changes nothing in them, and you can leave it out whenever you like

2000€: a pack of new scenarios

A pack of about ten ready-made films for those who want a game with a story already in it. Every scenario comes with mandatory parameters that change how you build and play: a fixed genre, a fixed budget, all the miniatures In Role, a special Director table, an extra condition for the Casting Director. And a few of them are parody "famous film" settings: you will recognize the film at once, and you will not find its real name anywhere in the book.

Rewards

All rewards are digital PDFs and credits. Backers roll in the end credits of the rules and in the rolling credits of the website, like in a real film.

• Assistant Producer: everything you need to play, and a seat in the credits.
• Producer: plus the rules as a screenplay, the perk cards and the campaign rules.
• Executive Producer (limited to 20): plus your name in the screenplay, as a legend of the old cinema name-dropped here and there.
• Board Member (limited to 12): plus one of the twelve chairs of the board of Picturing Pictures, with your name on a nameplate in the screenplay.

After the campaign, the rules stay free to read online; the PDFs are sold on DriveThruRPG.

I have done this before

My first game, microCrime, was funded here with 1,447 backers and is available on DriveThruRPG. It was delivered in full and on time. This one is already finished, so there is nothing left to build: I only have to send the files.