Can you tell me about the genesis of this collection? What prompted you to make a series of games focused around this particular tool, and what was your process for discovery and creation?
I take a lot of selfies, like a really lot. They mean a lot to me! Cell cameras are a vital advance in modern communication and our ability to share our identities and emotions with people around the world, even if we don’t speak the same language. Part of it is also just that I like trying new ways of telling stories and exploring game experiences.
I love dice but it’s fun to take different mechanics from weird things we do. In Literally, I Can’t, one of the games in the collection, you use the MASH (mansion, apartment, shack, house) game that I played as a kid to build characters. That is the kind of thing I want to explore in games!
I also design in response to things. I saw a few games using phone cameras that I felt didn’t do what I wanted. I have had to learn a lot about selfies and myself to use this technology, and needed to apply it to games to get the experiences I wanted.
To make games, I honestly just took selfies. A lot. And I remembered how selfies have been relevant to my life. They are instrumental in my long distance relationships, and a part of how I feel connected to others, but also are ways that I know I can appear to not measure up to expectations or fade into the background if I’m not interesting enough. All of that came through in the collection! Every game has my heart in it, somehow, just with some “how to break it” instructions included!
Using mobile technology as a play aid and intermediary is such an interesting area to explore. Obviously this offered enormous design inspiration, but I’m wondering what challenges it also presented. Does it complicate aspects of design or play?
It certainly does! There are a lot of elements that are challenging. The first, one I’m very aware of, is that not everyone can afford a cell phone with a camera. I hated this, because it’s a reality I wish I could fight, but to make games with this element I had to accept that loss. I am trying to figure out a way to make up for it, but my own financial status isn’t awesome either.
Second, not everyone likes to take selfies, and not everyone even really knows how to take them (there’s not really a wrong way, though, honestly). When I playtested Who Made Me Smile? at Big Bad Con this year, most of my table was people who either didn’t take selfies, or didn’t take them often, and most people approached it with some anxiety. Thankfully, we talked about it and I encouraged them and it went great! I don’t know how it’ll go with others, though.
Third and final so I don’t write ten paragraphs, privacy and safety are huge concerns. For some of the games you’ll pass your phone to other players or share your phone number, for others you’re alone outside, and for some games you’re dealing with emotionally trying things. All of these have their own measures. For sharing contact information and phones I tried to give strong reminders about respecting safety and deleting the other players’ numbers unless they permit otherwise, and I also require that people hide NSFW pictures and content to avoid any consent violation. Being alone during game is risky, so I ask that people have an emergency check-in contact – and I also ask that for the emotionally intense games to help people get support. I also recommend Script Change for all of the games.
It’s all complicated, I think, but it is worth it, I think.
I love the way this collection blends analog and digital and subverts expectations. The four group games imply that the participants will be together physically rather than distributed, and I wonder if you could talk about this choice.
One of the most troubling things I’ve seen with selfies, and one of my secret goals to target with the games, is the negative perception of taking selfies in front of other people. People regularly shame young people for taking selfies in public, and mock tourists who get selfie sticks to take pictures in front of huge landmarks. We don’t mock people who have strangers take their pictures, or people who take pictures of other things or other people. Only people who dare recognize their own existence in public. I struggle, personally, with embarrassment over this – and I wanted to poke at it and prod it to see if I could fix that a little. In the games, you have to take selfies in front of people – sometimes making weird expressions or while feeling complicated feelings. I want to normalize that.
I want to normalize being in an airport crying before you head home after leaving a loved one and taking a selfie to say goodbye to them, or to let the person you’re coming home to see that you’re struggling, but okay. I want to normalize sharing your joy publicly by taking a picture of your smiling face to send to faraway friends. And I want to let that start with an environment that pretends you’re far away from each other, which is where the games make it possible. In Literally, I Can’t you have to take “competent”-looking selfies while all together for play – it’s a challenge against the anxiety and stigma.
It’s also important with Don’t Look at Me, a two-player selfie game in the collection about my personal experiences in a long-term relationship with my husband while he was deployed in Iraq. The purpose of being together, but not facing each other and only able to see each other through selfies, is to create the emotional tension of knowing the person is there, feeling them just out of touch, and not being able to see them except through these constrained circumstances. John and I were, and are, very close, and I always felt like he was with me, but I couldn’t touch him, I couldn’t look at him face to face – everything was through lenses and bytes. I cry every time I think about the game because I know that tension, and it was important to me to make sure that the people playing it could experience it too. In Now You Don’t, it’s important to be around other people to create that experience of physical closeness and emotional ignorance. Surrounded by a crowd, but invisible – almost palpable.
Your games push back against a popular narrative that selfies are trivial narcissism. I feel like these games make selfies tools of meaningful expression, communication, and inquiry. What would you say to someone hostile to, or uncomfortable with, selfies?
Well, honestly, first I’d ask them how they feel about Van Gogh’s self portraits. Maybe those are narcissistic, too, I guess, but I don’t think that would be the majority opinion. I could direct them to the interview I did alongside a professional fine artist where I talk about the use of selfies as a grounding element in life, and where the artist (Robert Daley) says that selfies are simply modern portraiture.
Video by John W. Sheldon
For me, there’s the first aspect of selfies as being about identity and recognizing your own existence, validating who you are, making you feel whole. Then, there’s the second part: it’s just art. Photography is art, most people agree, and so are the oil painting portraits of people throughout history, including those like Van Gogh’s that are self-portraits.
I don’t see what is different about using a modern camera to take a self portrait, aside from it being more accessible to people of all backgrounds (excepting those of very low income who have trouble accessing this tech). It removes the boundary of needing an extensive education in technique to paint yourself! Instead you take pictures in a moment, and learn with every photo how to change the angle, how to adjust lighting, how to open your eyes wider or raise your eyebrow to convey emotion, and how to show you, who you are or even who you want to be. It’s magical, to me. I would just have to tell them that much: selfies are about showing who you are to whoever you want, and they are an artistic expression that’s more easily accessible than many of those before.
You write in your introduction how important selfies are to you as a way to present yourself to the world in images you control. Do you see ways to incorporate either selfies as artifacts or mobile phones and their liberating ability to document a person’s personal vision more generally in other games, old or new?
I would love to see some larger scale larps use selfies for storytelling – specifically, in larps where there are mystery elements or similar things that they could use a selfie to identify a character not in a scene, and distribute it to players. This would be excellent for games where there’s reason to be suspicious of specific individuals. Using selfies that you either take in costume or alter to represent your character in game would, I think, bring a level of personal identification with the character that isn’t often had. It also lets you record the experience of a game from the viewpoint you choose – you frame the moment, not anyone else.
Doing selfie diaries for very emotional or intense games could be exciting – much like The Story of My Face in the collection, combining your words with a visual representation can make experiences feel more vivid. When I did test plays of The Story of My Face for the photos in the book, I really had fun in part because when I looked back at the pictures, I could remember the spooky story I was telling myself. Mid-game selfie logging, much like taking pictures of character sheets or game materials, can help keep memories rich and more easily recoverable. And that latter part, with taking pictures of game material – using phones to document game materials is really awesome because you can refer back to it easily. I also like using texting for “secret” communication in game or for sharing codes – the day someone makes an Unknown Armies-style horror game that uses text messages, selfies, and cell pictures to tell the story and guide players is the day I am pretty sure we win at games.
(by Brie)
— Thanks for your time, Brie!
I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll share this interview and the DriveThruRPG link with all your friends! [From Brie: Thank you to Jason so much for this, it was a really fun experience and I’m so glad to talk more about LMTAS!]
Note: All images except the cover are by Brie Sheldon and excerpted from the collection used to write and layout LMTAS, and the cover is a compilation of Brie’s photos with a super nice layout by John W. Sheldon.
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Hi All! Got an idea today, so I wrote it down. Check out Boy Band: The Game, which will get a fancier version at some point, but until then, get ya grabby hands on it.
FYI, Some of my photos are a little shaky. I was in the middle of an allergic reaction for half of it, and honestly, no tripod when I’m not feeling well makes it lousy. I tried though!
This is, I think, the last installment about my experience at Big Bad Con 2017! —
Gif of selfies and friends <3 (featuring Tanya DePass, Misha Bushyager, and Nathan Black
My experience on Sunday at Big Bad Con was really great. I had a lot of positive experiences, and some really good emotional ones. The morning was mostly socializing – Tanya picked up some Jack in the Box for me, I visited people and talked about all sorts of stuff, and in the afternoon, I got to play games! (I know, gaming at a gaming con, who would have thought?
The first game I played was from my upcoming collection, Let Me Take a Selfie. The game is called Who Made Me Smile? and I played with Tanya DePass, Nathan Black, and Misha Bushyager. It was so fun! The general play is that we each write some three-sentence stories with different mood themes, and then take selfies after we read a selection of them.
Our stories and some selfies. 😀
After that, we talk about it, and take a “neutral” selfie. The most fun part for me is after that, when we look at other players’ selfies and the stories they read to guess which story was associated with which selfie. It’s fun to see how my friends express their emotions!
Google made this.
After that, you match up who guessed which selfie right, and everyone gets the chance to take selfies or write more stories. We didn’t have any need to write more stories, which you do if anyone doesn’t match anything right with another player, so instead we just took selfies together! I loved it so much.
It’s important to note that none of us see each other outside of the internet very much, so being able to share these stories and see the emotions people expressed in their selfies – including people who don’t normally take selfies – was such a great experience! I think everyone else had fun, and it’s something I really enjoyed. Also, it was so cool seeing people play my game!
LOTS more here, including Dialect!>>>
I got to play Dialect in the afternoon with Hakan Seyalioglu running, alongside Vivian Paul, Vera Vartanian, and Kristine Hassell. I honestly can’t get over how amazing this game was. Vera cried a hecka lot, in a positive feelsy way, so we must have been doing okay. 🙂 Dialect is a game about language, specifically the death of it, and to make that happen, you need to build it. It is fascinating to me how integrated the language is with the cultural and emotional development of the characters, honestly.
Dialect table setup.
We played a group of artificially intelligent robots left behind after humans departed from earth known as EIPS (Earth Inter-Planetary Surveillance, “eeps”). The general vibe ended up being that the planet was One Hot Mess and environmentally trash. So our job, we decided, was to do surveillance on the planet so that the humans could someday return. We were there a while, and as time passed, we got better at our jobs, so we ended up with idle time to do less rote things. One of the first words we made was a filler word – ona – that we often said while thinking, interrupting our own speech, and so on. We also developed friendship. These three things are the aspects in the game that we would go on to tie words and explanations to, as well as ourselves.
To me, Friendship was the most important aspect of the story. It came up constantly because our relationships were really deep. EIPS took friendship seriously, and were grateful for those they connected with. Initially, the connections were for maintenance – the EIPS bots would repair each other by linking to each other and doing updates and repairs. During that, they learned about each other, about compassion, and about caring. This is where they made friends – synckeeps. Their synckeeps were bots they really cared for – and our bots were all synckeeps.
I mean, seriously, just thinking about the game has me tearing up, jeez.
In Dialect, you have a character of your own which a card that guides the character’s identity. I was the Explorer, and I associated myself with Friendship – in the game, I tried to explore the breadth of human emotion with my limited artificial intelligence, and got quite far, I think. I played 244-L, known as Leon. Leon was a “life emulator” designed to replicate human existence with the safety of robotic structure. He looked …approximately human, and had human-like skin that could regenerate from pretty much any chemical or environmental exposure. He was the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Leon’s creator had loved the idea of Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth, and Leon was the realization of that – his body would keep regenerating, regardless of what happened. That was the plan, anyway.
Kristine played Jesse, the Jester, who was initially a data entry module. I think Jesse was associated with the surveillance of earth aspect. She was connected to data points all over the place until, as time passed, each one shut down and she was left alone with just us other models. While the settlement of bots was in the thousands, she was just herself. Because of this, she had learned sarcasm, which was her way of dealing with stress and isolation. She reviewed our daily reports for errors, and for so many years they had been static – eventually she started to copy and paste.
Next, there was the heart of our group – Spinner. AMZ013 was played by Vivian, who did a spectacular job making a lot of us feel really squishy. Spinner was a utility bot who had a broken wheel and so, obviously, Spinner spun and wobbled instead of going straight. Spinner was an incredibly interesting character who kept us on track, oddly enough, when the story got more challenging. Spinner was one of us who had a lot to do with how we spent our idle time (see later, “Uplink.”
Finally, Vera played IONI, ECR1147-C, a satellite who was never actually launched. IONI was our technical hub, kind of “in charge” of the situation – her archetype was the Ruler. She monitored all of the goings on, and made a lot of the big decisions. IONI, like Jesse, was pretty much the only one. We found out that IONI had been saying she received contact from the humans, but it turned out that for far too long she had been getting radio silence – what we knew as commfail, the word that described our sadness.
The first big event we had was that Jesse uncovered a discrepancy – a variance – in her reports. She couldn’t just copy and paste. She reported it to IONI, and IONI decided to investigate it with an expedition. As Leon was an explorer both emotionally and on the ground, he would go out on the expeditions with other EIPS units to test the environment. It beat him up pretty bad, and there was always a worry he wouldn’t come back. Because of this, we developed a way to say “good luck.”
When an EIPS unit says goodbye to someone, they send a datapacket to them with silly pictures and cute animals (cute cats, otters, etc.). While EIPS don’t entirely understand the point of all of it, the humans who made them were cheered by them, and they learned to enjoy them over time. Along with this, however, we needed an indication of them doing it, so we came through with . The bots with LED screens could simply flash the hearts, while those who were more anatomically human used their hands to make the heart (see picture).
This pic is super old but it demonstrates the point, yo.
(This was actually inspired by RPG_Dante (Bryant Stone) who I met at CONlorado. He signals to me when we part ways. I may have made everyone tear up with this because of how cute and sweet it is, which is a rare thing for a Brie.)
After Leon came back, it was determined that there was nothing evident in the outside that would explain the variance. We moved forward an age. Each age, you take one aspect and move it into the next circle set up on the table that represents the ages in the game. We chose Idle Time, which was changed into Overtime – we were working past our limits, longer than we had planned with no response from the humans, and running out of glint (our fuel). We were working overtime.
Kristine broke my heart with her character’s story and how she dealt with the loneliness and commfail that the characters experienced, as well as how she brought levity to the table. She was the first of us to express worry – known to us as 404. Her 404 was often founded, as Leon and Spinner got into a mess. There was a holiday known as “Uplink” where we would all power down and just socialize and be calm during a big storm that passed over our compound, and it took a lot of time and energy to give this space to us.
After the Uplink, Leon found Spinner. They hid in a closet and – in one of the most dick moves I’ve ever done in a game – Leon suggested that they might save glint if they put some of the others… out of commission. “Not everyone is necessary all of the time” is I think what was said, and the interaction was so painful, but Spinner agreed that it wasn’t an unreasonable plan. They planned to keep it secret, and had hid out of the range of IONIs base sensors, but they couldn’t get away from Jesse.
Jesse showed up and asked what was up, and in the process of trying to hide their discussion, Leon offered Jesse a can of “Pork nnnn beeens?” (Spinner noted it’s only $2.49) while trying to demonstrate that they were just getting rid of old cans. It didn’t work, and they spilled the (not pork and) beans. Jesse demanded answers in her 404, and Leon and Spinner responded. One of the biggest issues was that they suggested powering IONI down, even though she was their synckeep, and things got very complicated. After getting support from other EIPS, they gathered their courage and reported their thoughts to IONI, presenting themselves as in favor of Eco-Mode (which was a label for their faction, including those who agreed with them). IONI wasn’t happy, but was eventually convinced.
The age turned, and they began putting people into Eco-Mode. The first versions – periods of time where they disabled groups and later reenabled them – went okay, but over a lot of time, they ran into an event that made it harder to move forward: The Wipe. A huge sector of EIPS units were powered down, but when they were meant to go back online, there was nothing there. Their AI had been fully wiped. Unrecoverable. The commfail was immense. Going forward, the synckeeps struggled to stay together and powered on, but as those who had pursued Eco-Mode, some of them felt obligated to version.
Spinner was the first to get boxed up – literally – but was so well loved that the entire community came to wish him as he went into Eco-Mode, heavy with 404 that he might not return, and experiencing commfail at not having him near. This hit Jesse especially hard. Still, as Spinner left, he repeated our unity saying, “We are still here.”
Our aspect for Surveillance of Earth, in the last age, was changed to Survival.
Leon continued to do expeditions, and Jesse found another variance, so he pushed out one day to find out what was there. He was walking along with guidance and wishes of from Jesse and IONI because there were no other life emulators with him, just bots without AI doing utility tasks. There was a lot of interference, and he struggled to hear them while his vision was overwhelmed with environmental waste. His last messages repeated until it cut off – “404. 404. IONI? Jesse? 404. 404–“
IONI and Jesse struggled with the loss of their synckeeps, upset they couldn’t recover Leon because of the environment and their limited abilities. Eventually, they were the only ones powered on. In an act filled with commfail, IONI had Jesse power her down and send her last message out to the humans with the full archive. It was truly heartbeaking, honestly, I swear we were all near tears. Jesse, hugging her pork nnnn beeens, was alone.
After time, utility bots who had been surveying the landscape came across the body of Leon, who – after his skin had been burned away by sulfur waves – was now healed, but still deactivated. Jesse had him brought into IONI’s hangar, and then she brought in Spinner and set him up. She arranged little monitors for IONI, Leon, and Spinner, and played messages and videos. We faded to black.
In the dark, a message blinked on IONI’s status monitor.
“Archive received.”
Final table.
—
HOLY CENA MY FEELS, Y’ALL.
This is one of the best game sessions, and games, I have ever played in my entire life. I’m still crying just thinking about it. It was an amazing experience. Great players, great facilitator, great game. I would love to play Dialect like 8 billion more times. SO good. *dies*
Afterwards, I hung out with the aforementioned Dante and had dinner. I told him about being the messenger of in our game, which I think he liked. We also discussed my new mechanic for Script Change, frame-by-frame, and his own project that sounds like a lot of fun. After Dante left, I talked with Kristine, Tomer Gurantz, and a few other people about Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place and it was a great way to finish out. My flight was early and I stayed up late but it was well worth it.
I can’t wait to go back to Big Bad Con! I had such a good time and it was really amazing.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
This is going to be a little more colloquial than normal, so bear with me. On playtesting in general, I’ve got some Feels™, but later on in the post there’s some more about my recent work on Turn.
I took this of a bison at a local park. 😀
On playtesting while designing in general:
Monkeys on pogo sticks, playtesting is hard. While it is somewhat easier being a player in a playtest for Turn, being a Storyteller is exhausting. Now, it’s not the game. It’s not the players! I’m just an amateur GM and I struggle a lot with it. In both cases (player & storyteller) in playtests, I’m doing double-or-more duty of storytelling/playing and analyzing the ruleset and how it interacts with the players and itself and how the game functions as a whole oh and also I have to worry about how to fix things and where to clarify wording in the main document and ohmYGOD!
BUT. This is really an important part of the design and development process. Not all games need playtested, but many truly benefit from it, and Turn needs this a lot because it is a complicated game with many interlocking pieces and concepts, and for me, it must be perfect.
And like, here’s the deal. I have three major documents in which I maintain Turn’s text – two public facing for players (one for internal playtests, one for external playtests), and one private. When I make an update (which I typically do live), I update all of them. I use comments in the private document if I can’t make immediate documents, and add identical text when I can to each document.
This is essential for my process. I have memory issues that make even taking brief notes difficult because they may be meaningless to me later, so if it’s simple stuff, I change it as soon as possible. I design in-process, on the fly. I can’t rely on future Brie. I need to make the game now, not later. So when I say running and playing these playtests are challenging, it is not simply the act of those things, it is those things and actively designing and critiquing my own work.
I have tried to make games without doing this. I can’t. When I playtest face to face, if I don’t have my tablet at hand, I struggle to fix the things that need updated at a later date. I can play and even storytell, to a degree, while I am making edits. I let players have some chatter while I make notes, or take a quick break. I can roleplay sometimes while I’m trying to determine how a mechanic might impact play, and can sometimes start using it while playing or running instead of waiting to try it later.
I don’t know what I will do if I ever do an even bigger, more complicated game than Turn, but this is my reality right now. I wonder if other people experience this. Do you take notes? Do you edit and change rules on the fly? Can you put off changes until later? I don’t know how weird this is.
—
Beast archetype: Otter
In playtesting Turn specifically, I’ve made some minor changes. The core mechanic has not been adjusted. The secondary and tertiary mechanics and structures, some text and interaction, have been fiddled with. I wanted to just go over some basic stuff.
Firstly, in combat, which I talked about on Twitter this week, I’ve finalized the basics. Shifters vs. small groups of humans is simple – shifters call the shots entirely. Any degree of violence, any amount of harm – but there are other consequences. For shifters vs. groups of humans (4+), it gets more complicated. Shifters can flee, if they want. They could sacrifice themselves for the good of others. Or… they can kill everyone. Everyone. But, that’s all the options they get.
For shifter-to-shifter combat, I’ve added an assortment of options based on the beast archetype that the player has. If they have specifically chosen powers on the beast archetype, they may impact the combat. Then, they pick from a Consequences list to apply to their opponent. It worked alright in my first experience with it, though I did end up clarifying some wording.
Second, I had to clarify some elements of the core nature of Turn. Here is an excerpt from the current Turn document explaining the nature of shapeshifters in game and the stories that have freedom to be told:
How Shapeshifters Work While there are some details players will fine-tune in their game, there are a few items of note for how shifters work in Turn. The most important things to note are that:
There is no concrete origin pre-defined. Shifters are not from any real-world cultural, religious, or scientific background. The designer of Turn asks that, unless you are of a particular culture or religion that has shifter backgrounds, you do not use that background for your game.
If there is magic in Turn, it’s unknown and invisible to mundanes. There are also no external entities that hunt shifters, as that would violate the nature of the individual secrets of shifters and the premise of Turn.
Shifters are assumed to be effectively invulnerable, and any real injuries heal rapidly enough that it doesn’t matter. They have the natural bodily functions of their human and beast forms, however.
Shifters have super strength and super senses appropriate to their available forms – scent, sight, etc.
Shifters live the length of their longest lived form, and age at that speed.
Some of this is not like, totally loved by some people, and to be honest, that’s whatever for me. No one has to play the game, like the game, or even acknowledge it. It’s mine, and this is the game I want to see played. The things that I realized were issues the most are things like: are shifters invulnerable? is there magic? can there be threatening external entities? (yes, maybe, no.)
There are reasons for all of these. Shifters are invulnerable because 1) it’s cool, and 2) physical threats, even things like aging, are not the dangers in this game. For the use of magic, sure! If you want to! But visible magic would be the death of all secrets, exposure would be rampant. So yes: magic is cool, but it should not be a function of the world that is free to mundanes.
The last one – the external entities – are because of a deeper issue in Turn that I hope doesn’t fall to pieces when it gets wider distribution. Turn is not about external threats – not outside the town. The threats are within the town, those close to the PC shifters. It’s about internal threats – themselves, their beasts, their desires and needs. It didn’t strike me until someone wanted to include it, though I had considered the possibility very early in conception. But once I saw it, I had a very harsh emotional and thoughtful response, and had to really dig down at the problem.
Another thing that I’ve run into is people just really not grokking small, rural towns. There are things in small towns, especially USian towns, that are really common, and players have had a little trouble accepting them. The weird one I ran into most recently was the fact that virtually everyone drives in small-town rural US. One player from Scotland stated that he didn’t drive at all, and didn’t even have a license, and I was startled – this was not a thing I had considered at all! But it’s true – especially in places like where I grew up, in small, rural towns, not driving is incredibly rare and also very inconvenient. It was bizarre.
Another I’ve encountered is some people’s very significant resistance towards playing religious characters and an aim to frame religious groups as bad. This is problematic. I’m personally agnostic, but I grew up Brethren, and religion is very common in the US, and can be very passionate in rural places. It’s not inherently bad, either. Frankly, having atheists and agnostics, secular people, in small towns like where I grew up? Not common. And people give them a strong side-eye, frankly. So, this is something I’ll be covering, along with the infrastructure of many small towns, in some of the additional text for the game.
No red pandas yet. Be patient. They are cute and fuzzy still.
I also have been getting some minor grumps from people that my beasts are too focused on the US, particularly places near where I live, and that I’m not making an effort to expand my game, which, please take this as kindly as it can be said: fuck off. I have spoken before in many different places, including this blog, about my attitude towards writing what you don’t know and do know. I have only lived in rural Pennsylvania. I’m writing what I’m familiar with right now.
Also, keep in mind, this game is barely in beta. I have a lot of plans for the future for how I can expand it, make it more accessible and more welcoming to players unlike me and who have different experiences. But holy sweet Cena, stop getting mad because I haven’t started writing about small neighborhoods in Canada or rural China. This is a slow process, and you must understand that I am not trying to deny the possibility of those things – I just don’t know them, and I do my best to not bullshit my way to telling stories that aren’t mine.
Anyway.
It’s been very challenging and very revealing, showing me both ignorance on my part, the part of players, and areas where I frankly just need more time and experimentation. But the core of the game stands strong, and I am still passionate about the future of Turn.
Thank you for reading! <3
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It is dark. You have no one else. You have nowhere to go. It is cold. There is little food, and there are predators at every turn. Beastly monsters have taken your home, so you must leave your sanctuary to find food and find a new shelter. If you don’t find food soon, you will need to make a choice. Your path is perilous. You start to walk.
Both players start with six dice, representing your soul and your life.
You roll dice every time you need to survive.
Every time you feel lonely or afraid you steal one of the other people’s dice.
Whoever has no dice first is the one that kills the other. Their dice are restored to full, and they can find a new companion.
The walk never ends.
This post is not funded, but Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Recently, I participated in a game on Twitter with Caitlynn Belle (@weirdcaitie). She had a weird picture, and for a month, I made daily guesses to what that picture was of. I sadly lost (I believe it was in part on a technicality due to legume furries, but that’s neither here nor there), and had to make a game.
While I’m doing active playtests on my own, I wanted to share the beta document I’ve prepared for Turn. It will be updated as the main private document is updated, but has quite a bit of information together now! If you read or play it, please let me know and share any of your feedback via the contact form.
photo by John W. Sheldon
What is Turn?
Turn is a story-based roleplaying game about shapeshifters in small towns who must try to go through life balancing the needs of their Human and Beast identities, while pursuing the goals that will make them happy and content. The game is primarily focused on social interaction and storytelling. The mechanics are d6 dice-based and have structured actions using low-number ability penalties and bonuses. Turn may approach some difficult emotional experiences and it’s advised to be used with the Script Change content tool, included at the end of this document.
EDIT: The Turn Beta is no longer available but you can find the game at any of these links:
Check out Episode 5 of Designer & Devourer by clicking the post title! We’ll be talking recent posts, upcoming stuff, and then some recent development work on Turn. The recipe this week will be road trip kebabs. J
Interviews coming are kinda being juggled right now, but they’re on the way. 🙂
Road Trip Kebabs
Beef, roughly cubed to 1”x 1”x 2” pieces
Chicken, roughly cubed to 1”x 1”x 2” pieces
Sweet onions, sliced
Sweet peppers, sliced
Salt
Pepper
Garlic
Paprika
Brown mustard
Skewers
Cut meat, chicken, vegetables, and thread onto skewers. You can do all one meat on each skewer, or mix it up. Grill until cooked to your preference of done-ness, but make sure the chicken is at least 165° F or there’s no pink left. Season while it’s still hot, right off the grill. Use mustard as a dipping sauce! Great hot or cold.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
