Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Kate Bullock. Kate talks about gaming regularly and Powered by the Apocalypse games!
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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?
I try really hard to find out what people are doing with their characters, what they want in terms of challenges or moments of shining, and I try to give it to them. I try to put my own character out there so that I can help invest in other people’s stories and help them shine. To enhance my own experience, I invest in other players’ characters and so my story is impacted by their story doing well or thriving. I also try to go for what’s good for their characters’ stories over mine, but I find that very satisfying.
Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?
I ask very pointed questions, which is a big part of the PbtA systems. I’ll pause to even ask “What do you want out of this?” so I can help facilitate that into happening. I’ll also do some ground work ahead of time by finding points of story where I can push as my character and come to the table prepared to engage the other characters with new problems or ways to bring forward more story. I also use the X-Card at everything because I find it lets me dig deeper and play darker because there’s a safety hatch in play.
How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?
I play campaign games anywhere from 2 – 6 times a week. I game regularly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and some Sundays. On Mondays I usually blog or podcast. I love gaming. It’s part of my life blood. The best way for me to maintain good energy is to stay engaged and listen and ask questions. I find emotionally investing myself helps a lot and eating good food and having good snacks and lots of water. I also spend a lot of time talking to people online about what they want to see so I have cool ideas before I get to the table, but I’m not beholden to them. I’m happy to let the fiction do its own thing and follow it where it may lead.
What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?
I play for emotionally intense experiences, most often of the sad and dramatic kind. This has lead me down the PbtA road towards Urban Shadows and Monsterhearts a lot. I also really enjoy story games, like Before the Storm, Fall of Magic, Summerland, and a few others. Anything that addresses emotional feedback and payoff. I’m comfortable with almost any game, as I’ve played a lot, but the minute things get very detailed and simulationist, or have a huge expansive world that requires a certain degree of canon knowledge, I’m out.
Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?
Hm. Most of my special experiences are as a GM. But I was playing Monsterhearts a few years ago as the mortal. It was my “job” to make people feel like monsters, but also feel human at the same time and offer salvation and redemption with kindness and love. I had been terrified when all of my friends became their darkest selves, so I made a deal with a fae redcap to let him out of the fae realm if he gave me fairy dust that would remove the monster from my friends. And then I proceeded to find all my monster friends, whom were all guys who had some interest in my mortal character, and blow dust on them, at time when a murderous fae was on the loose (oops). My lover got out of his darkest self, found me, we had sex after saying I love you, and he became the demon darkest self once again. It caused a lot of drama, a lot of issues, and drove story in a great way that included everyone. I dug it.
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Thanks so much to Kate for participating! I hope you all enjoyed reading.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends! If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.
In today’s post, I’ll be talking about my experience at Metatopia 2016, the event I mentioned in my previous post about being a con playtester. This will not be an actual play report, but will include discussion of the games I played and a little about my own time there. I will not be mentioning everyone by name because some of you I don’t know your names, some of them I will have trouble remembering, and some of everything is lost to the winds.
First and foremost, thank you so much to my fellow attendees, and to the event organizers, for making my experience excellent, and for being supportive for me in my time of grief. Going to the convention was a challenge for many reasons, and it was even harder going with the recent loss of my grandmother. You all made my time much, much easier. So, thank you.
Some awesome people.
To the timeline!
I arrived Thursday evening to a bustling lobby and plenty of friendly faces. I mostly just planted in one spot and sat that evening, chatting with friends, and meeting new people who like my blog (hiii!!!). It was a good night to not worry about things. I set up plans for the next day, and conked right out eventually.
Friday morning I woke up earlier than I tend to like for a breakfast with Darcy Ross, who is awesome and you should definitely keep an eye out for the work she’s doing. We were joined by none other than Ron Edwards, the designer of Sorcerer (among others) who also coined GNS theory, who I’d never met.
As with most legacy designers, I was a little apprehensive, since I’m still new and I have a lot of Opinions and Thoughts. My fears were rapidly dashed because Ron was a pleasure to talk to, and initially he, Darcy, and me talked about the game design landscape, tools for content control like Lines and Veils and Script Change (the latter of which both Ron and Darcy said wonderful things about and made me so happy to hear), and what we were playing. After Darcy left, Ron and I continued to the Big Board and further discussed social issues in games, feminism, and a number of other things. It was pretty great! I was happy to meet Ron and I’m hoping I remember as much as I can of what he shared with me, and I hope he finds what I had to say just as valuable.
I didn’t have a game until later, so I mostly just bounced around until then, meeting new friends and seeing older ones, and geared up for Glenn Given‘s Something is Out There, a storytelling game told in third-person inspired by shows like Stranger Things and the movie IT, where young kids are the ones who have to deal with the spooky scary things happening in town. Glenn had asked if I’d play over Twitter, so I luckily got in to try it out.
more here>>>>
Glenn doing prep.
It uses a fun tile-and-dice-based mechanic, somewhat board-game like in mechanism but very narrative otherwise. From the description:
[Something is Out There]…and only you can stop it. Something is Out There is a cooperative storygame of coming-of-age horror in the vein of Stranger Things, IT and Monster Squad. As childhood friends you are the only ones who can defend your community against an unearthly terror stalking your town. For fans of Fall of Magic, Companion’s Tale & The Quiet Year.
The character actions are shared, which makes the story really flow differently. One thing I particularly liked is character creation, where you describe your best childhood friend, and choose their three main traits, then reverse something about them (gender, race, orientation, behaviors). It made the characters both memorable and interesting, which can be hard to do (for me) with children as characters.
In case you were wondering, the baddie was a giant, irradiated, star-nosed mole. We did win after someone blew themselves to allow another character to take out the monster.
The following evening I was lucky enough to have dinner with Kimberley Lam and her wife, along with my husband. Kim’s current project is Blood is Thick, a live-action game about the Cambodian genocide, described on the Metatopia site:
One family struggles with unresolved pain years after the ousting of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal regime by Vietnamese invaders in 1979. “Blood is Thick” is a small group LARP about struggling with the lingering impact of genocide on a family where victims and aggressors reside side by side.
I have heard only good things about the playtest experiences, which is pretty great. Kim has done a lot of research for the project, and I hope this game goes off well.
This weekend carried one unsurprising thing: I would be playing a game by Will Hindmarch. The surprising thing is that somehow I managed to land in three Will Hindmarch games over the weekend: Databank, Adventurous, and Chroma (a follow-up to Always/Never/Now). Will is a great designer, and I always enjoy his game master style and his games, so I’d tried to get into all of them, figuring I’d only get into one. Surprise! I played Databank Friday night, Adventurous Saturday night, and Chroma on a very sleepy Sunday morning.
Databank was really, really cool. From the description:
Don’t dream like an electric sheep. Remix yourself, body and mind, into the person you want to be, whether you were born an android or not. On this derelict colony planet, everything you need to be who you want to be is in the databank, where the top percent lives. You just have to get it.
Each character has a psyche, where you have your general personality, memories, and some basic stats. Using certain tags lets you add dice, and you roll mainly with a d20, adding d6s. The cool part came next.
When Will pulled out the whole character sheet, which is your psyche laid over a body (the chassis in which your personality is housed), I teased a bit because I’ve been messing around with this exact character sheet layout and setup for a shapeshifter game in private. This is actually kind of funny because I like that a lot of what Will does is what I think quietly that I’d like to do (aside from that whole card mechanic situation in Project: Dark ;P), so it was another moment where I felt lucky to share any part of my design sense with someone I admire.
There is interaction between the body and psyche, including gaining memories and therefore abilities from the body into your permanent psyche. I really dug the game, and there are multiple types of bodies that you can switch out, including – I shit you not – a centaur. Now, how the bodies look is up to the players, and we all got very creepy, I have to be honest. So when I saw the centaur body type, I knew I had to have it, so we stormed the location where the bodies were held, and I yoinked it, then described it: a half-formed bio horse that they had to give up on making because it didn’t work, so they added a robotic upper body (why? because science, that’s why!) and started using it for violence. In the end, I got the centaur’s memory from the horse body – the horse body with the skin stretched taut and hydraulically opened compartments in the torso, mind you – of the horse being created, and it gave me battle disadvantage.
Brutal.
I took pictures at a somewhat-off-books Goth Court that will be released after I gain permission from the creators and attendees. I generally ask permission before taking photos, and when I take them in closed games, I prefer to check before I post them.
I spent the night with good friends and good company. It was a blessing, honestly, to be near so many wonderful people. Special, deep thanks to Anders Smith for his kindness, generosity, and shared experiences that will never leave me.
Anders is the best!
The next morning, I had the absolute joy of playing Storybox.
A cooperative storytelling game that has players randomly drawing physical objects from a box at specific moments to help them tell their tale. Everything associated with the object in hand, from physical descriptors to abstract memories, is fair game for adding details and establishing elements about the story. Designed for newcomers and old hands of story games alike, Storybox blends the familiar with the new, creating a uniquely inspired story each game.
I got to play with two people I adore: Jason Morningstar and Amanda Valentine. They’re really great people and really good players, and the designer, Roe Nix, is a fantastically kind and intelligent person. The game is relatively simple and somewhat early in development, I think, but I liked it! You build characters and setting around pieces pulled out of the box of objects, and then pull more to inspire scenes. Did you know you can find junk drawer boxes on Etsy and eBay to play this?
We constructed a kind of heartbreaking story about a family tied around a piece of property and a cobbler’s shop, with three very age-separated children whose parents had just passed and an apprentice of the father who had owned the cobbler’s shop. In the end of the story, we discovered that the parents had sold off the mineral rights to the land and that it was worthless. This kind of game is really my jam, and playing alongside Jason in story games is such an amazing experience for me, every time, so having a game that allowed that to happen without me worrying that the mechanics wouldn’t support our story was great, and I’m really happy about it. I can’t wait until Storybox is in my hands and on my table.
We told a gorgeous story with these items.
I told Roe once they finish the game, I’m going to hack it to make a con-floor game. 🙂
To be honest, most of the rest of the day is kind of a blur. I did the Con Wellness check-in, which went pretty well. Not many people showed up for any particular purpose, but those that were seemed to appreciate the space. I’m hoping to do it both days I’m there all day next year.
I saw a lot of people I loved to see. I got to chat with new friends. I also spent probably over an hour talking to people about behavior in games, conflict types, accessible formats of information about conflict resolution and player behavior for GMs, and a whole bunch of associated stuff. Poor people.
That evening another Hindmarch was up – Adventurous!
Stranded beyond our world and outside of time in a mystical netherworld, the only way to survive is to explore. Delve into ancient tombs. Recover futuristic treasures. Build a new home. Discover hidden secrets of the Islands of the Never. Together, we’ll fist-fight evil and learn how (or why) an airplane got inside an ancient pyramid.
This was really fun! Will has done some interesting things with pacing in regards to having peril that you have to challenge with die rolls to whittle it down, but allows you to add to it by using key phrases on your character sheet. You also use Fate dice!
The +, -, and [blank] all matter to the way the game plays. The + rolls count as successes and can be used to knock off peril and the peril descriptors, and can also be added to the tracks on the table to gather experience for upping stats.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game! I think it did great with pacing for the theme of the game, the characters were really fun and interesting, and I certainly enjoyed when Kevin Kulp’s (of Timewatch) very-well-performed character fought a dilophosaurus-velociraptor hybrid using old batteries. For further reference, Kevin is a hell of a roleplayer – I discovered this at a Bluebeard’s Bride playtest two years ago, and it is still very accurate.
A small note: During this playtest I was introduced to the Edgewise card. The Edgewise card is an accompaniment to the X-card like the O-card that I’ve spoken about before. The purpose of the Edgewise card is to make people aware that you want to interject into a conversation without interrupting. While I see the card has uses and I hope people find it useful, I’m not a huge fan, but unpacking it will have to wait for another time. I just know that the tool was brought up this weekend and wanted to make sure everyone knew I know about it, and that I’ll explain why I personally won’t be using it at some point in the future.
Saturday night I freaked out for a while about being in a room full of femmeness before I was, in fact, in a room full of femmeness. I did makeup and took pictures for the Crystal Council, a late-night event where a group of attendees playedTales of the Crystals, which is effectively a boxed live-action game for children. When I was around… 6? Maybe? I remember seeing it in stores and desperately wanting it, but between lack of money and lack of friends, it didn’t happen. Seeing it brought up on Twitter by Glenn and Meghan Dornbrock made me super excited, but I admit that I slowly realized that I’m not 6 anymore, and that with my current gender adjustments, being in really femme spaces can be pretty fraught. So, I elected to just take pictures, and it was great to watch everyone play the ridiculous game in their tutus and tiaras. I haven’t gotten permission to post the closed-door pictures yet, but I did take some of the play materials.
Play materials from the game box.
Player-contributed materials during the game.
There were also cupcakes and mochi. That made it very much a good time!
I then stayed up inappropriately late, misbehaving as I tend to. I woke up to go to Chroma and I was sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy. But thankfully, Will was great and excused my almost-sleeping-at-the-table fuzziness. I promise to be better next time!
Chroma was a great time. It enabled me to play my character going from masquerading as a bumbling intern at a high tech organization to John Wick-ing the shit out of the place. I killed many. I gave no mercy. *evil laugh*
Chroma has some Lady Blackbird in its lineage, I think, using various narrative tags to add dice to your roll. The experience system looks really fascinating, though we didn’t get to try it out overmuch. We had a really interesting crew of characters, and I want to note that Will has – in every game I’ve played of his that I can recall – included a nonbinary or agender character. It sounds simple, but for me, it’s really great to see.
The big interesting thing for me is the pacing mechanic Will has included.
The game has a small flowchart-esque map, with different stats identified by differently shaped boxes. Each box is a section/room with a challenge of some type, and you can overcome them with tests that match the stat associated with that box. I admit to missing some of the details here due to fuzzy brain, but I really enjoyed it and felt like it did a great job setting pace for the session and giving structure to the adventure.
I want to point something out and I really hope that the people I played with will read this and identify themselves to me here or privately, but, that session of Chroma had some of the best player dialog behavior I’ve ever been a part of. While I can definitely be a dominant player, I can also easily be steamrolled. I play with my friends more often at cons to avoid that experience, and at Metatopia I always have to branch out. The fellow players of mine at this table were amazing. We shared the discussion both during the action and when we were giving feedback, and I was so happy to see that people gave each other space to talk, and not just one or the other of us, not just a gendered permissiveness.
There were multiple times where I made the indication that I wanted to speak and instead of someone else taking an opening when they also wanted to talk, indicated that people should listen to me, and I saw that around the table. Even when we interrupted, we apologized, and gave each other space. This was amazing, and inspired my heart into desiring to play more games with these people, so much. Unfortunately, I lost track of all of their names (thanks sleepy brain). Still, it was wonderful, and gave me such a good end to the con.
I left Metatopia really satisfied with all of the games I’d played, and I was so happy to see all of the people I cared about. It was a hell of a con, and I can’t wait until next year!
Want to have a cup of coffee with me next time? Let me know, and we’ll make plans.
Soy milk, please.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
The lovely creators, Aleksandra Sontowska and Kamil Węgrzynowicz, have sent me an additional copy of The Beast, so I’m giving out TWO copies! Additionally, those who entered will be recieving a discount code to DriveThru Cards for their order of The Beast. The winners have both asked that their names not be released, and so I imagine their explorations will be the darkest secrets. Congratulations to them both!
If you want to check out The Beast, click here to go to the DriveThru Cards page.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Had a brief discussion just now with John about my experience playing Sagas of the Icelanders at Origins this year, and how it was about gender expression, emotional expression, and struggling with my own abilities.
I played The Huscarl, which is like, Super Manly and involves a lot of behavioral cues, from my perspective. I play men or androgynous/fluid people a lot of the time, more often than women, for any number of reasons, but in part because I can’t be a man or androgynous visibly, or perform that, in any other part of my life. I look and am seen as A Woman and I hate it a lot of the time. So, games! And playing against my assigned gender! This game actually was an element in my walk towards coming out officially, too. But!
One of the things I was discussing elsewhere about toxic masculinity and emotional play (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BriannaSheldon/posts/CMKjyQG2f8p) is that there are emotions I can express as a man that I can’t as a woman. When I played this character, I did three things I can’t do when I’m presenting as a woman without being given dirty looks, being shamed, or being told to calm down:
– I was jovial, which if you look at a lot of historical language is not commonly used for women, and I was allowed to be so just as I was.
– I was angry, blustering, and loud each at least once or twice, but no one looked down at me, in character or out (this was in part because of a beautifully arranged group, but they were all men, and allowed me to perform that). At one point in the game, I even got to play out the experience of a good man hurting someone unintentionally out of masculine bravado and egoism, and it was totally great to get that experience – not because I hurt someone, but because of the perspective it offered on the entire scenario and my character.
– I was seen as displaying positive vulnerability when I did seek help in character.
This is not meant to say that men have an easier time of playing, not at all. Men playing to express feminine-coded emotions is definitely a valid thing and I totally get that, because this is my experience expressing masculine-coded emotions, where I’m allowed leeway that I wouldn’t be as a woman. And I tell you this after edging-up-to-20-years roleplaying, there are benefits to playing against gender, or against expectation.
But this also got me thinking of one of the things I addressed in game. One of the questions of the game, which is a challenge for me, was the subject of fertility and barrenness. However, it gave me an opportunity I hadn’t expected. While most people were concerned about the ability of my character’s betrothed to reproduce, when it came to light that her past husband had been infertile, I let my character experience the fear of losing or not even having virility.
For me, however, it wasn’t of “can I have children?” but “do I lack the power to support the ones I love and give them what they desire?” See, from my perspective, the concept of fertility in history has often been tied to virtue (though that’s a very ridiculous thing), and virility is tied to power. Fertility is reproducing and making, virility is inception and creation. They work together, obviously, but there’s a lot of emphasis on virility being related to a man’s power and him being weak if he doesn’t have it – his body is weak, his body has failed him – and for fertility, the woman who lacks it has wronged herself and the world somehow.
These are both shit things, but through those concepts and the setting of the game, with the help of my character’s betrothed and the aunt in the story, I was able to express myself in anger, in vulnerability, and with power, and it was incredibly meaningful. One of my favorite moments I’ve ever had in games was having a touching, emotional discussion with Tracy, playing my betrothed, and sitting next to Eric (playing the aunt) while he encouraged me in character to stand up.
I don’t have a lot of physical power, and my mind is not often at its best. To explore the idea of losing power as something my mind conceived to be a powerful person? That was so helpful to me, to work through some serious feelings, and it echoes even now, months later.
Basically what I’m getting at is that sometimes these games can be super meaningful. We can experience all kinds of feelings and think about all sorts of things, and playing against type can really make a difference in that regard. It was such a beautiful game, and I hope to have many more like it.
In today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature, we have an interview with Kirt Dankmyer! Check out his interview below. Note: Content warning for discussion of negative player behavior including the topic of rape in game. —
What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?
So, like most avid players, I can be somewhat of an attention hog, so one thing I try do the most often is make a deliberate effort to share spotlight. This isn’t entirely unselfish, as watching other people go is great for sparking creativity, and even the most “conventional” fellow player has all sorts of surprising things in them.
Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?
Hmmm. I did improv in college, but I never cross-applied the techniques much, except maybe the principle of saying “yes” to suggestions about what’s going on (yes, we’re brothers… yes, I’m in love with you). That is, avoiding negation when possible, because that slows down the flow of play.
Rather than having a particular grab-bag of techniques I always use, I try to make use of the narrative potential or opportunities created by a particular ruleset and/or setting to its fullest extent. For example, in 13th Age, you in essence make up your own skill list, which can be as flavorful as you like, while still being useful in a generic way. So, given that opportunity, I make sure to take the skill “Burglar Emeritus of the Drakkenhall Rogue’s Guild” rather than just “Thievery.” Even something like old-school AD&D has areas where you can do something like this, though obviously some games provide more opportunities than others.
How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?
I like to game once a week. I used to like to game more often, but I’m in my 40s now and I get exhausted more easily.
As long as I feel like I can actually affect the action in some way, I can usually maintain pretty decent energy. Obviously, a game that pushes my various genre loves (science fiction, post-apocalyptic, cross-genre, urban fantasy) or system preferences (highly focused, indie-style games) helps maintain energy. I’m an introvert, but gaming is one of those areas where I’m super comfortable, so using gaming as an opportunity to interact with people I like and even to meet new, interesting people also helps me maintain energy.
The flipside of the latter is I’m not afraid to drop a game if it’s not working for me, particularly if there’s a personality conflict or some other dysfunctionality. I don’t believe that any gaming is better than no gaming. I’m sad to say I’ve been in several games that were way, way worse than no gaming at all, especially in terms of the amount of negative emotional energy that they generated.
What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?
So, I have a big soft spot for cross-genre stuff, but in terms of “pure” genres, as I mentioned before, I’m pretty big on urban fantasy and science fiction, particularly post-apocalyptic stuff and space opera. Being in a genre I’m a fan of and/or comfortable with is a good start.
Setting aside, as a Forge veteran, I know that system matters. I’m most comfortable with a game that has a very specific thing it is trying to do and does it well, ideally in as a tight manner as possible. Even a “generic” game can do this; Fate covers a lot of genres, but it’s very focused on a particular style of cinematic play and the rules encourage a particular sort of narrative arc. As another example, I’m a big fan of the Powered by the Apocalypse games, particularly the subtle way the chosen list of moves influences how the game runs. Even if I think a system is a little too complex for my tastes, like GUMSHOE, I can respect a decent implementation of a game’s focus, such as the way GUMSHOE handles investigative play and clue gathering. I’m also a huge fan of games that share more power with the players than the “traditional” D&D paradigm.
So, the sweet spot for me is a game that has a focused rules that allow me to exercise some interesting narrative control, and is in a genre that I like. I could spend an entire page giving examples, but in the urban fantasy genre, Monsterhearts comes to mind, especially as rather than eliminating the sex moves from Apocalypse World like most Powered by the Apocalypse games seem to do, Monsterhearts adapted the idea to add the proper tension to a (supernatural) teenage soap opera.
Talking about sex moves reminds me of another comfort issue. This is less about particular games, though some games have a relevant mechanism built in or discuss the sort of thing I’m talking about in the text, but I’m most comfortable where there’s up-front discussion at the start of a campaign as to what people are okay with, and possibly making use of the X Card or a similar mechanism. I’ve been in too many games where lack of such discussions or lack of a safety net like an X Card has lead to serious problems.
Trigger Warning: Rape.
As an extreme example of games where lack of discussion or safety valves lead to an issue, and also apropos of games that are worse than no gaming at all, one should never come back to a game after missing a session to find that the other PCs have allied themselves with a gang of rapists. Yes, this actually happened. I don’t want to get too much into it as it could get into even more serious trigger territory, plus talking about that game, and that terrible, terrible gaming group, is probably a multi-page essay that’s best left unwritten.
So, yeah, returning to a more cheerful topic, a tight game with decent narrative control and in a genre I’m a fan of is likely to keep me extremely engaged.
Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?
Hmmm. This is a level of “toot my own horn” that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with, but I’ll give it a shot. I’m probably going to veer into “let me tell you about my character” territory here, but that seems pretty inevitable, given the question. 😉
One example that comes to mind is a Castle Falkenstein game I was in back in the 1990s. The GM told us the game was going to focus on three daughters of a British military officer, a very tight focus that would lead to more extreme things in a standard Castle Falkenstein 19th century Steampunk/Pulp “Tales of Adventure” sort of way.
I jumped in with both feet, creating a character that was a faerie interested in romance, but had been disappointed over the centuries in that most of his partners seemed to be more interested in what he was rather than who he was. Therefore, as he became attached to one of the daughters, following a standard romantic trope, he disguised himself as an ordinary human, so that he could tell if she loved him for himself rather than his faerie nature. This actually gave the other player characters a lot of chances to shine, as I needed their help to maintain my secret, and several of them rose heroically to the occasion. I also made sure to repay the favor, by helping out the suitors of the other daughters and generally being willing to stick my neck out to help them with their plots, like a proper gentleman faerie.
Aside: While I went that way because it’s a fun trope in fiction, I want to be clear I think “testing someone’s love” in real life is pretty much a total dick move. Keep it in novels, soap operas, and RPGs.
In any case, as many campaigns often do, the game eventually collapsed, but not before I was able to complete my romantic arc and reveal my true nature to my beloved, confident that she loved me for who I was. It was pretty heart warming and it definitely made the GM happy, as it was exactly the sort of thing he was going for, and by that point all the other players were almost as invested in the plot as I was, so they were pretty happy as well. Sadly, apropos of spotlight sharing, I had been looking forward to fading a little more into the background and cede a bit more spotlight given my arc was largely done, becoming largely a support character, and like I said, the campaign collapsed soon afterward. I still feel a bit guilty about that.
In any case, however, I think it’s a good sign of the job I did is that people who were in that campaign, aside from me, still talk about the game, and that character. It came up as recently as a month or so ago, decades later. Ugh, now I feel old…
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Thanks so much to Kirt for the interview! I hope you enjoyed reading these answers!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends! If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.
A performative/participative game inspired by Whose Line is it Anyway?
(This might already have been done, but I felt like writing it.)
You’ll need:
~30 minutes (~10 setup/takedown, ~20 play) 8-10 players Up to 5 audience members Paper and pencil/pen or typed as described Random tokens (at least 10, not more than 25) Props if you like them – anything appropriate to an office or holiday party
Before the game, take ten folded pieces of paper (small enough to hold in hand) and on the outside write a basic description of a normal person who would attend an office or holiday party (name, profession, hobby). On the inside of half of the papers, write a description of a ridiculous character (see examples). You’ll want to mix up, add, and remove some of these every time you play.
At the start of the game, tell everyone that they must play all of the characters they are given. The character on the outside is their regular character. The character inside the card is their secret identity, and they need to act it out as well. They can do this by physical movement, vocalizing, and other behaviors, but can’t explain who or what they are. For those without an identity, they play their outside characters as though they are completely normal, and their job is to keep a straight face.
Set a timer for around 20 minutes. During this time, the players will play their parts, starting out as though they’ve just arrived and settled in at an office party. The scene proceeds as improvised, including people playing one or both character parts.
The audience will be seated near the area where the party is going on. Each audience member needs at least 2 tokens. Tokens count as points. When an audience member particularly enjoys one of the player parts and how they’re acting as a part of it, they can go into the party in a role of waitstaff or family dropping off a beverage or snack by passing a token to the player they want to reward. They can give these awards at any time during the game, but the rule is that they do not interrupt play, and the players do not acknowledge them aside from accepting the token.
At the end of the 20 minutes, play ends, and the players reveal their secret identities, if they have them. There is a round of applause, and the game ends.
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Normal Person Examples:
Bill, who works in accounting. He enjoys golf.
Jenna, a manager. She rock-climbs on the weekends.
Ashton, a programmer. They do cake decorating.
Ridiculous Character Examples:
A giraffe with too short of a neck.
Someone who has just eaten multiple ghost peppers.
Ten tall men put into a small sized suit.
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Today I have an interview with Alessandro Piroddi on the new game Touched by Evil! It sounds really interesting and seems like just the right kind of game for Halloween weekend. Check it out on DriveThruRPG here and give the interview below a read! —
Tell me a little about Touched by Evil. What excites you about it?
I love horror stories.
But the word “horror” can refer to wildly different things.
The specific brand of horror I love is the one that is all about a dreadful atmosphere, a creeping sense of unease, an indefinable sense of wrongness that has no obvious or rational source. One type of narrative that draws heavily on such elements is the Lovecraftian one, with its old fashioned rhythm where tension builds slowly but surely, inexorably crawling up to a final horror.
Traditionally this kind of game experience is considered to be very difficult to achieve even by veteran roleplayers.
What excites me about Touched by Evil is that it manages to deliver exactly this, and that it does so by virtue of system design rather than personal player ability or knowledge of the horror genre.
Can you tell me a little about the mechanics used in Touched by Evil? Are they strictly narrative, or are there tools you use? Why did you choose those mechanics?
First of all the rules outline a clear and specific structure in regards of “who can say what when and how”. It is not as articulated as some of my other games, like FateLess, but it’s definitely not a game where you just freeform-chat your way through the session. Everyone has clear tasks and procedures to perform such tasks.
That said, there is next to no crunch involved.
Most of the structure is focused on achieving the right kind of scene framing and story rhythm; here the main inspirations are Montsegur 1244 and Psi*Run.
Dice are rolled when the fiction demands it, with simple and minimalist mechanics inspired by Cthulhu Dark.
Overall things are set up just so that the Players can feel safe and in control, right up to the point when they are not anymore and realise how safety was always just an illusion. This feeling of being powerless before something you don’t fully understand while at the same time being an obvious protagonist and active agent that CAN get much accomplished, is a focal element in how the game drives home its emotional point.
Where did you pull inspiration for the horror concepts put forth in Touched by Evil?
The first and most important source is with no doubt Graham Walmsley’s essay Stealing Cthulhu. It sparked the idea of doing a horror rpg, to begin with. It revamped my old love for Lovecraftian literature. And gave me the basic tools to build something that FELT like Lovecraft … this is pretty obvious in the name and structure of the five Chapters that make up the story’s Path.
Another hugely important source of inspiration and technical help has been the YouTube series Extra Credits. I found out that most of the video game design concepts they present could be applied verbatim (or almost) to tabletop rpg design. Plus, in time they have built a pretty amazing selection of videos focused on horror games, unpacking and analyzing things like the structure an nature of protagonists, locations, monsters and narrative tropes in the horror genre … with a even a full episode specifically on Cthulhu!
Which, I would like to highlight, says lots of things that would go hand in hand with the concepts expressed by Graham in his own analysis of Lovecraftian literature.
Another important helpful hand came from the book by Kenneth Hite Nightmares of Mine as it put into focus the difference between different kinds of “horror”, helping me discern what was it that I wanted to aim for. I actually talk more about this in an article on my blog, here.
How does an instant setup for Touched by Evil work?
The game presents a default setup that is both the fastest and most effective in terms of emotional impact: you play in this city, in this day and age, a normal person. That’s it.
Then a single Touched Character needs to be generated. This is the one protagonist moved, in turn, but all the players. The procedure is also quick and easy: pick a name, a profession and three “loved ones”, three people that the TC cares about and that are part of their current life.
Finally, a “catalyst event” is generated. This is the event that “touches” the protagonist and kickstarts the whole story. A brief chat, moderated by the game procedures, is all that is needed here.
Done. After that the first Moment of the story is played.
What kind of experiences do you think players will get out of the game, and why should people play it?
The reason to play is the same one for watching a horror movie : you enjoy being frightened (in a friendly and controlled environment).
It is effective because, although by the end of the game you might have a taste of the kind of horror you dismiss easily as “obviously impossible” (monsters, gore, supernatural stuff), the main part of the experience is built on a creeping sense of unease we all can face in real life: something feels off but you don’t know what, something completely normal starts looking weird and menacing but you don’t understand why, everything is as usual but you feel unsafe or even threatened. And then you get isolated, nobody believes you.
That stuff gets under your skin.
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Thanks so much to Alessandro for answering my questions about Touched by Evil! I hope you enjoyed the interview, and that it’s piqued your interest enough to check out the game on DriveThru! Have a good time creeping yourselves out. 🙂
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With Metatopia upcoming, I wanted to talk a little about something I truly enjoy: playtesting.
Metatopia is a convention in New Jersey, USA run by Double Exposure. It is my favorite convention. I get to see a lot of my friends, which is great, and the atmosphere is completely bursting with creativity. I also get to playtest games, most of the time.
What is playtesting?
Playtesting is when a designer or designers gather together people to test out their game by playing it or reading it and talking about it. Typically the latter is referred to as a focus group. There are alpha playtests where the game is in very early stages, betas where it’s in a relatively playable state, and so on. There are also high test playtests, which are really intense, typically made up of experience designers as players, and focused on getting the game to its best state.
Why playtest?
You don’t have to playtest a game. Honestly! You can make a game and put it out there without playtesting it even once. I’ve done this a numberof times and there’s nothing wrong with it. However, the reality is that most of the time your games will be far more refined if you playtest them. You get more input, find more of the squeaky wheels to oil, and have different perspectives. It’s useful!
How do you playtest?
There are articles out there that can walk you through playtesting from the designer or game master perspective. What I’m more interested about is how to be a playtester. After all, it’s my favorite part of games.
I am not the strongest roleplayer, nor do I understand probability basically at all. However, I can get the way games work – I can tell when something meshes well with a setting or idea, and I can help people work through what they are trying to say or do. I also can see patterns of behavior caused by mechanics. These are, thankfully, useful to playtesting.
Below I have some suggestions on what to do if you find yourself at a playtesting table. Hope you find them valuable!
Listen to the designer and how they describe the game and its genre, setting, and expectations. Don’t talk over them or interject your opinion. Let them set the scene. Let them have some space to share their ideas and their concerns, and ensure they know you are listening (active listening is helpful – here is an additional link with the note that obviously, not all people interact the same and eye contact is not required to be an active listener!). Don’t allow others to step over them if they look like they are uncomfortable about speaking up – speak up for them. A simple “Hey, what were you saying?” in the direction of the designer can make a difference. Keep in mind that steamrolling (people talking over others from perceived authority or privilege) can damage a playtest just as much as the designer just giving up and walking out.
Use all of the resources at your disposal. If there are mechanics presented, make excuses to use them in line with what happens in the game or focus group. If there are tools on the table – index cards, tokens, cards, dice – make sure you understand what they are for and make sure you at least try to introduce them to the action.
Ask questions. Always ask questions. If you don’t understand something, ask for clarification. If you don’t know what the designer wants from the situation, ask for their guidance. If you want to take an action and you haven’t already been given permission as part of a scene, ask to permission. If you see something missing, ask if it should be there, and if it should, how you can help introduce it, and if not, why not. If you suspect something is going to go against the theme of the game, ask why it’s done that way. Always, always ask questions – don’t assume, no matter how much of an expert you think you are.
Show enthusiasm and give positive feedback. Don’t jump around and yell, but do respond with positive feedback if you like something, give clear reasoning behind your reasons for liking what is happening, and so on. Be unafraid to smile and give encouragement to the designer, and ensure that at the end of the session, even if it was a hard one, you thank them for providing the game for playtest. You’re helping them, but there’s no point in playtesters if there’s no game. It’s a symbiotic relationship, for good and ill!
Be honest, but kind and respectful. If you think a game sucks, don’t lie and pretend it was great, but don’t be a moldy muffin about it. Use “I” statements if you want to give negative feedback, and feel free to pair them with questions (“I had trouble understanding why we would use a d6 instead of 2d6 for a game Powered by the Apocalypse, could you talk about that a little?” “I felt like I didn’t have a lot of agency in the game because of the strict character roles. Is this a permanent feature of the game, and if so, why?”). You can always tell a designer what you don’t like – after all, playtesting is about making the game better, not pretending it’s perfect. Just be kind.
If something goes sideways with the other players, let the designer know either privately or, depending on immediacy, at the table. If something goes badly with the designer or with other players, let con staff wherever you are know as soon as you can. My major highlights here would be bigoted or hateful behavior, harassment, inappropriate content (18+ with under 18 individuals in the playtest, etc.), and so on. If something is truly upsetting, definitely feel free to leave, but make sure you communicate the issues to people who can make efforts to prevent it happening to other people. We can only make improvements if we know about the problems!
In all, there are a lot of things that playtesters can do to improve a convention playtest and help to get strong results. Sometimes it’s hard because the games can be early in development, or possibly have flawed premises. That sucks, for sure, but we can all work together to make games better, and make our environments better for creating better games and playing better games. If you want to be a part of that, take a chance sometime to participate in a playtest and see if it’s for you. I hope that someday we’ll share a table!
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Today’s What Makes a Good Player feature is with Mike Wood. Mike had some great responses to my questions! Check them out:
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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?
For me, the best part of gaming is embracing the unexpected. I started playing tabletop RPGs pretty late, I guess – I was 25 or 26 when I had my first D&D session. My RPG experience before that was basically from video games, which I love, but they’re a more passive play experience, and that could be frustrating sometimes. When I’d play some game like that, I’d end up thinking “why didn’t they just do X?” a lot – like in a bad horror movie where you’re wondering why they don’t just call the cops. So when I’m playing D&D or similar, I like to push the boundaries a bit in terms of creative solutions, because I really enjoy the freedom of being able to shape the narrative in unexpected ways, or the incongruity of bringing 21st-century common sense into a fantasy world. When I DM I try to be really open to the unexpected, too, because to me that freedom is the best thing about tabletop games.
Of course, how far you can take that sort of thing really depends on the type of game you’re playing, and the type of group you’re playing with. Sometimes trying to come up with crazy solutions for things works great, if your character has a good dynamic with the rest of the party – in my longest running game, I played a sort of Pollyannaish dwarf whose ridiculous ideas played well against the cautious pessimism of one of the other characters, and there’d be some arguments and conflict that made for a good experience. But I try to keep a lid on it if it looks like it’s starting to dominate the conversation. I’m conscious of my showoff tendencies and try to play against them as much as I can.
Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?
Nothing formal, but there’s an improv rule that your response to any question has to be “yes, and…” – as in:
“Did your dog swallow the ambassador’s priceless diamond cufflinks?”
“Yes, and she’s been kidnapped by the mafia!”
I always try to keep that approach in mind while playing – always try to keep momentum moving forward, even if things go in an unexpected direction, or not quite how you want them to. That doesn’t mean don’t plan things out – sometimes discussing how to do something can be its own kind of narrative momentum, as well. If you’re DMing, “yes, and” becomes “yes, but” – “yes, you can try to do that, but X might go wrong.”
How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?
It used to be a weekly thing for me and that was great, then a bit less frequent and that was good too. I think 2-3 times a month is probably about right.
What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?
I don’t have a lot of experience with different systems, but I like games that can support a consistent and fair but rules-light approach that’s flexible enough to deal with lots of different things. I’m sure there are games where you can turn to page 27 of appendix R to find the table to roll on for swinging on a chandelier, but having a general “athletics” roll works better in my book. I think there’s such a thing as too flexible though, I didn’t like FATE for whatever reason. Maybe I just needed time to get used to it.
One game that I really enjoy is Unknown Armies. It runs on a percentile dice system, which is easy for everyone to understand, and it’s got a really nice sanity system, but the real star for me is the way magic works. Magic in UA is based on either obsession (with drugs, alcohol, TV, stamp collecting, whatever) or conforming to a primal archetype like the Mother or the Warrior or the Fool. The book lists a few examples of each but it’s clear that you can make new obsessions and new archetypes, and it’s all built on the premise of player engagement with building the system, and taking things in unexpected directions according to what the players want to do. For me that’s what gaming is all about.
Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?
It’s tough to pick one. Once, during a long-running 52 Pages campaign, the party was on trial for something and we had the option of either doing trial by combat or arguing our case. We ended up deciding to argue, which I think was unexpected since it’s not the usual murderhobo way, and one of us had to be the defence attorney. So naturally I volunteered because I’m a huge showoff. And it was a lot of fun, a really nice change of pace. I ended up doing the sort of Matlock impression you’d do if you’ve never seen an episode of Matlock.
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Thanks so much to Mike for being a part of the interview series! Hope you all enjoyed reading. 🙂
Hi everyone! I have an interview with Amit Moshe from Son of Oak about the new game City of Mist (click here for a free starter set download!), which is on Kickstarter right now! It’s a super-powered detective RPG. I saw in passing a few pieces of art for the game, and it immediately drew me in. After looking at the starter set I knew I had to talk to Amit, and he kindly agreed to an interview! Check out the info below.
Tell me a little about City of Mist. What excites you about it?
City of Mist is a comic-book noir game that explores what happens when ordinary people come in contact with legendary powers. The protagonists (called Gateways) are street-level individuals in whom a legendary force (called a Mythos) has awakened, manifesting as supernatural powers but also driving them to explore its nature and story. The game is set in a haunted modern city forever under the influence of “the Myst”, a mystical veil that hides the work of the legendary forces and makes everything seems ordinary to the unaware residents. As new Gateways, the PCs inevitably become involved in strange cases and unsolved mysteries that gradually lead them to discover who they are and what forces operate beyond the Myst.
There are so many things that excite me about City of Mist, it’s hard to know where to start! 🙂 First, I find the setting very compelling; I have been developing it over 10 years now. As a fan of comic-book noir in fiction like Netflix’s Daredevil and Jessica Jones, detective Batman, Fables etc., I just love the street-level perspective infused with the legendary or super-human, so this contrast is really at the center of the game, with the Mythoi and the Myst fighting over the characters’ lives.
Then, there’s the game mechanics: I really tried to tailor everything to create a cinematic game that will put the mystery, action, and drama at the center. The Roll+Tags system was a breakthrough because it allowed the characters to be totally open-ended, with no archetypes, no classes, and no attributes and still retain the crunch. The other main game aspect that I love is the Mythos vs. Logos non-linear character evolution: you have to sustain your Identities and explore your Mysteries or you start losing parts of who you are, submitting to your Mythos or the Myst. This puts the players’ attention right on the ordinary-legendary conflict I mentioned.
And of course, I love the art and the design. I’ve worked with Marcin for many years and I knew he was the one for City of Mist. His ability to bring characters and scenes to life is just out of this world. And Juancho and Manuel, the graphic designers, managed to find the unique City of Mist style that I was hoping for. So it’s all very exciting!
Where did you originally come up with the concepts for City of Mist, with the Myst and the Mythos – what inspired you?
I have always been into myths and legends, and particularly modern retelling of such stories. The idea that myths and legends encapsulate universal and eternal qualities that repeat in the personal lives of human beings throughout history and particularly in OUR personal lives today has always appealed to me. But it’s evident that most of us are just unaware of it and see life as something very mundane. So for me the Myst is actually real and I’ve just given it a name and put it in a role-playing game. I find that every person I meet has a Mythos inside them waiting to grow. So these game elements are actually an analogue to reality.
The actual moment of conceiving City of Mist was quite cool. I was walking on a street in Jerusalem late at night and you can imagine it’s a very special city. That street had an ancient mausoleum over 2000 years old (!!!) on it but the apartment buildings were built around it, so you walk down the street seeing apartment building, apartment building, ancient mausoleum, apartment building… so it’s very much the mythical built into the city. Just as I was passing it, there was a gust of wind ruffling the fallen leaves; dogs started barking; a car alarm went off; and I could hear police sirens in the distance. There was something about this moment, as if a veil was lifted for just a second, that gave me the idea for City of Mist.
Can you talk more about the mechanics, like how players might build their character and what happens when they encounter challenges?
The idea behind the City of Mist mechanics was to create a very cinematic game that is rules-light on the one hand but packs enough dramatic punch on the other. When facing challenges PCs can employ eight core moves that cover the actions typical to the super-powered noir genre (Investigate, Convince, Hit with All You’ve Got, Sneak Around to name a few) BUT every PC enhances the roll using their unique tags. One PC may Investigate using her hacker skills while another using his charm and good looks to glean information from an NPC. So the way players describe their character’s actions affects which tags they can add to the roll and gives each move a totally unique flavor. Damage and conditions, represented by ‘Statuses’, are also tag-based so PCs can get statuses like Injured and Restrained but also Happy, Frustrated, Infected, Supercharged or anything you can think of, and these have a tangible effect on the character’s abilities when taking actions related to the status.
Another key mechanic is the Mythos and Logos rules. In brief, your character is made of four themes divided between Mythos (legendary) and Logos (ordinary). Also, she has a set of four Mysteries and Identities related to her Mythos and Logos themes, mysteries being questions she seeks answers for and identities being statements she believes in. Should your character ever choose to ignore an opportunity to explore her mysteries or take action that goes against her identities, she gradually wears out that theme and will eventually lose it altogether. She then receives a new theme from the opposite side (Mythos<>Logos). The MC (GM) is specifically instructed to create situations that force the PCs to choose between two or more of their themes. This mechanic keeps the players exploring what really matters the most to their character.
The City of Mist Starter Set includes seven pre-generated characters and some very basic guidelines on how to sketch out your own character. In the full game, we are going to include Themebooks, which are in essence questionnaires that help you create a specific type of theme, e.g. for Logos: occupation, personality, defining relationship or for Mythos: ‘Expression’ for powers that can be projected, ‘Bastion’ for defensive powers, etc. The Themebooks will also include special moves for each theme type. So the process of creating a character will entail choosing the four types of themes central to your character and using the Themebooks to flesh out each theme and choose its tags.
How did you put together a team to work on the game and create the design, mechanics, and art, and make a cohesive vision for the project?
The vision for City of Mist was quite clear in my mind for a long time. I previously worked as a Product Manager, so my job was to hold the vision of the product and derive everything that the team needed to be do from that. From the onset, Neev was my inspiration and soundboard on how to make the game awesome: I actually met him on the the game’s first playtest in a local convention and we clicked. I think the key from that point on was to find the right people to translate the vision into a reality and that meant bringing in professionals to do the job.
When I started looking for talent, Marcin (the illustrator) was already a part of the project. We had been working together closely for a number of years and we both knew he was the one destined to bring City of Mist to life, so we made it happen. For designers, I searched Behance for weeks until I found portfolios which exhibited the skills I needed. After trying with a couple of designers, I approached Juancho Capic who suggested we’d bring Manuel Serra on board and it was a perfect match. Right from the start, these guys produced some seriously high-end work and they were open to receiving my vision and working with it. I am very demanding when it comes to design so it was good to find people who wanted to create something beautiful just as much as I did.
Finally, on the game design front, even though I’ve always worked alone and have already written the mechanics for City of Mist, I realized that no matter how good I thought it was, an editor would only make it better: I needed someone who would force me to think, to improve, to make the game more concise and clear and engaging. I turned to Eran because we already worked on a Cinematic GMing Guide before and I knew he was a really nice guy who would rip my work to shreds if he thought it wasn’t good, and I needed that, because I was adamant on making something awesome.
Throughout the process we worked closely together using tools like Slack (team chat), Google Drive, and Google Hangouts so that everyone was connected to what everyone else was doing. It was a pleasure and we’re all looking forward to the next step of creating the full game.
Ideal game experiences are hard to achieve, but what kind of emotional takeaways do you want players to have from City of Mist? Do you want players to have certain types of character moments or story revelations? Tell me what you hope players walk away from the game having experienced.
City of Mist is first and foremost a game, so my top priority is to provide the MC and players with tools to create their own stories and get what they feel is fun out of the game, be it drama, thrill or laughs (or all of the above). Having said that, City of Mist is built to create stories of inner and outer search, both personal and shared. Each character, as well as the group as a whole, has personal mysteries to unravel and at the same time identities that she is holding on to. I am hoping this will lead players to experience those dramatic moments that make up a good story when their characters discover something new and unexpected about themselves, especially when it happens through a hard choice they must make between two themes. And if that makes players somehow look at themselves as well and become more conscious of the struggle of themes in their own lives… well, that would be the best imaginable outcome of the game as far as I am concerned.
Thanks so much to Amit for the interview! I hope you all have a chance to check out City of Mist either through the free starter kit, the Kickstarter, or both!
