Five or So Questions on Jinkies!

Today I’ve got an interview with Toby Strauss on the new game Jinkies! Jinkies! is currently on Kickstarter and is very Scooby-inspired, so I’m excited! I hope you like what Toby has to say below.

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Tell me a little about Jinkies! What excites you about it?

First off, I was beside myself with happiness when you spelled Jinkies! with the exclamation point.  During my research, I was amused that the original 1969 “Scooby Doo, Where are You!” used an exclamation point, and not a question mark, on the title card.  Isn’t that odd?  But I love it.  There’s a certain energy to the (incorrect) punctuation that I find kitschy and charming.  I couldn’t not use it for the game.

Jinkies! is a powered by the apocalypse adventure game based on the Hannah-Barbara cartoons from around 50 years ago.  If you’ve ever seen Scooby Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, Jabberjaw, or Dune Buggy, you’re on the right track.  Like Monsterhearts or Dungeon World, the players can choose from playbooks based on the archetypes from the shows.  These characters go on adventures, unmasking bad guys and ne’er do wells pretending to be nefarious monsters.

One of the things that I’m especially excited about is how Jinkies! handles clues.  Visual clues and puzzles are really hard to do right in tabletop RPGs.  Most of the time, the GM drops the “path critical” clues in the laps of the players just to move things along.  I really puzzled over how to handle clues until I realized something important: Hannah Barbara cartoons aren’t about the mystery.  The mystery is just a setting.  The cartoons are really about the adventure, the creepy suspect, and the wacky gang.  Jinkies! approaches clues with the mindset that it is the adventure, not the clue, that’s important.  This means that the bad guy for a given module can change from playthrough to playthrough, but I think that’s ok.  This is why I used PbtA for my mechanics.  Players and GMs in Jinkies! are just playing to find out.

Another thing that I love about Jinkies! is that there is no combat in the game.  Interestingly, combat was in the very first draft of the game . . . and it was a disaster.  The playtesters overwhelmingly rejected it; the genre is nonviolent by design and combat just didn’t feel right.  Instead of swords and hitpoints, Jinkies! turns on scares and “fear” points.  Its a great system that makes the world feel scary and dangerous without misplaced violence.  I’m proud of how it turned out! 

How do the mechanics work to result in scares and fear points, and what do those do?

If you watch one of the old Hannah-Barbara mystery cartoons, you’ll notice that no one gets hurt.  Instead, there’s a sort of asymmetrical nonviolence between the protagonists and the antagonist.  The protagonists act through ensnarement and logic–capture the bad guy and explain the crime.  The antagonist acts through fear–if the kids are scared enough, they’ll run away and let the bad guy finish his misdeeds.

I tried to mirror this in Jinkies!  The player characters “assault” the bad guy by 1) finding clues, and 2) setting and triggering a trap for the bad guy. They cannot inflict fear points on the bad guy, but the bad guy can inflict fear on the player characters.

Fear works a lot like HP, but it is only inflicted by the bad guy, and it leads to fainting from fear, not physical harm.  So let’s say the ghost pirate flies right through Joe the Leader.    That’s pretty scary!  Joe takes a point of fear.

There are a number of ways that fear can be mitigated.  Several playbooks have the ability to avoid taking earned fear points (“Joe, using his inner strength, shrugs off the ghostly attack!”).  The “weird one” playbook (think Shaggy from Scooby Doo) not only gets fear mitigation, he can use fear to fuel unique abilities.  The weird one in these shows is always afraid–I couldn’t help but give him fear fueled powers!

When it all comes together, its a surprisingly seamless experience.  No one seems to miss combat and the asymmetrical nature of the game is almost invisible when the game is played.

What was playtesting like for this game, with the elements of it being so cartoonish?

A lot of my inspirations are obscure and probably unknown to many of my players–but almost everyone has seen something with Scooby Doo in it.  The original cartoon aired way back in 1969 and there have been dozens of spin-offs, movies, and sequels–not to mention the lasting power of syndication.  That ubiquity has made Jinkies! accessible to almost everyone who has played the game.  The vast majority of my play testers have very naturally leaned into the cartoony roots of Jinkies! with little prompting.

I can only think of a single play test where the game didn’t feel like a cartoon.  The players decided play the game really straight.  They even decided that their animal mascot was not magical and could not talk!  It felt like Dragnet, or maybe a Nancy Drew mystery.  It wasn’t a bad experience, but it also wasn’t a funny one.

That play test was early in my process and I did a bit of soul searching to try and figure out how to “fix” what had gone wrong.  It just didn’t feel right.  In the end, though, I didn’t change very much.  Most people who sign up to play Jinkies! are looking for a light-hearted, cartoony mystery adventure.  My game isn’t going to be all things to all people, and that’s ok.  Better to focus on making it the best at what it is!

How are you changing PbtA fundamentals to suit the different tone and themes, like rewriting basic moves and so on?

Interesting questions!

If a player came to Jinkies! from another PbtA game they would find the mechanics familiar.  Jinkies! is still very much a “play to find out” game.  There are basic moves, playbook moves, and animator moves.  Jinkies! uses 2D6 for its randomizer.  Very PbtA in the fundamentals.

I diverge pretty heavily in the moves themselves.  PbtA was developed for a very blood-thirsty setting, after all–and Jinkies! is based on a family-friendly cartoon!  I excised ALL combat moves and added heavily to the investigative moves.  I also changed the Animator moves, hewing closer to the genre than Apocalypse World moves could.

I also break with most PbtA on principles.  One of the guiding principles of Dungeon World, for example, is “think dangerously.”  The world of Jinkies! is sometimes scary, but it is never dangerous.  I’ve rewritten the principle as “think comedically.”  Another principle I changed is saying your moves out loud.  This is a big no-no in most PbtA games but I actively encourage it.  The Hannah-Barbara formula practically requires naming your moves.  When Velma tosses Scooby a treat, she doesn’t just give him a knowing nod, she inquires “will you do the task for a Scooby Snack?”  Scooby snack, in this case, is TOTALLY a move, and the verbal component is a very important (and cartoony) part of creating the feel the game is after.

What are you doing in regards to guiding table content safety, since there’s a lot of ways this could go a little gonzo or maybe just hit an unseen button of discomfort?

To the safety question: every RPG carries risks (bleed, content and trauma triggers, etc).  Jinkies! is no different.  In fact, I would argue that the risks of things going sideways are greater in Jinkies! than in D&D.  First, it’s a comedy game.  Comedy is, by definition, transgressive–and those transgressions can cut in surprisingly deep ways.  Second, there is a certain subtext to the “teenagers with a wacky sidekick solving mysteries” genre that is off-color.  The “Shaggy Busted” episode of “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law” does a great job of poking fun at this subtext, if any of your readers are curious.  Its fun and its funny, but it is also emotionally dangerous waters.

I’ve attempted to have my cake and eat it too by baking in two presets for content control, “normal” and “Behind the Music.”  I certainly don’t object to sex or drugs being in the game–so long as everyone at the table is comfortable with it.  This way the players must actively choose the “blue” version of the game, and it prompts a lines and veils-type conversation.  

Second, I recommend the use of an X card system.  Even in a game where boundaries have been drawn ahead of time, things can get messy fast.  I find that X cards are indispensable safety tools.  Finally, I explicitly instruct against gameplay that I find to be irredeemably offensive, like racism or misogyny.  For example, a common trope in 1970s Hannah Barbara cartoons is the villain kidnapping a woman.  This is lazy storytelling, its sexist, and it makes the game suck for the player who has been removed from gameplay.  Bigotry has no place at my table or in my game.

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Thanks so much to Toby for the great interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Jinkies! on Kickstarter today!