Tag: game design

Five or So Questions with Eric Simon on Rockalypse

Hi all! I have an interview today with Eric Simon of Four-in-Hand games about his upcoming game, Rockalypse (quick start on DTRPG here!), which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds really cool, but I’ll let Eric tell you all the details! He talks, too, about system choice and how it’s important for how a game plays. Good stuff!


Tell me a little about Rockalypse. What excites you about it?

I’ll start with my usual tagline: Rockalypse is the post-apocalyptic game of musical conflict. The quick high concept is “Scott Pilgrim meets Mad Max,” but it is every movie, comic, or TV show you’ve ever seen where someone pulls out an instrument or takes to the stage and fights someone with nothing but the power of music (or dance). One of the things that continues to excite me about this project is just how many inspirations keep showing up in media. Just this week I’ve watched The Get Down and Kubo and the Two Strings, both of which present different but equally evocative representations of the musical-battle motif. This is a concept that is ripe for play. It seems to be something most people can wrap their minds around fairly easily, simply because of how much source material is ingrained in our pop culture.

Tell me about the system for Rockalypse. What are the basic mechanics, and their inspirations?

Rockalypse is built on Fate Core and is specifically designed to tap into the strength and uniqueness of that system. In particular, collaborative combat and non-physical damage are essential to the feel of the game, and Fate does those things better than just about any other system. The first thing you’ll notice is that I’ve removed Fighting, Shooting, and Provoke, and added in Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, and Rhyme. Melody and Rhyme are now the two main attacking skills, Rhythm and Will are the two main defending skills, and Harmony is an especially powerful support skill. I’ve also built in a bunch of new stunts for those skills and for many of the regular skills for use in combat. Athletics has a stunt that allows dance to be incorporated into the conflict just like the other musical skills, Crafts becomes the main representation of offstage technical work, and even Stealth and Deceive have uses within a performance.

The other key difference is how combat is structured. I really wanted to emphasize the collaboration, so I broke initiative into different “counts” divided by types of actions. The first count is for Overcomes, the second for Creating Advantages, the third for Attacks, and the fourth for any Defends that happen because of those attacks. This encourages the group to really talk through and plan how they’re going to approach each round (or “phrase”). Cooperation is heavily encouraged by the structure and by the stunts attached to the various skills. For instance, a sound and lights technician can use Crafts to create advantages that provide a +3 instead of a +2 when used by their bandmates, but only if they themselves are not performing on stage. Meanwhile, a Rhythm player with the Perfect Time stunt can defend on behalf of her bandmates when they are attacked.

All of the new mechanics are designed around the idea of getting people to engage first with the things that make Fate awesome – aspects, collaboration, narrative positioning, and so on – and second with the fun of describing a musical performance spectacle. Because of the way everything works together, it also makes the Attack and Defend rolls much higher than those in most other Fate games once you get a few phrases into a combat. That helps to give it even more of an epic feel that’s appropriate to the themes.

What would a typical session of Rockalypse play out like?

I strongly recommend a solid session zero at the beginning of your campaign, but assuming you’ve already created your game and you’re into the story itself, Rockalypse resembles many other roleplaying games in how it plays. There’s still adventuring to be done with the usual amount of exploring, talking, and puzzle solving. But when there’s any kind of throw-down, it happens with music instead of fists or guns. I generally aim for a 50/50 split between conflicts and story-driven adventuring. Like most games, that exact balance will vary from session to session, but overall that should be about where you end up.

How did you come up with the concept and what made it fun for you?

This game emerged out of a thought experiment I started a couple years ago. At the time, I was working exclusively on my Steamscapes setting for Savage Worlds, and every once in a while people would ask me if I planned to convert Steamscapes to Fate. My answer was and still is no, because I feel that Savage Worlds is the right fit for that game. But those conversations got me to ask the question, “If I were to design a game that HAD to be run in Fate, what would it be?” After a few months of thinking, I hit on the core idea for Rockalypse, and I’ve been developing it ever since.

Part of the fun in development has definitely come from the great players I’ve had in all my demos and playtests. I love seeing all the different approaches they take to their bands, their characters, and their settings. Both Fate in general and Rockalypse specifically help to bring out the creativity in players, and it’s been a joy to be a part of that.

The other thing that’s been entertaining about the process has been the research. I always enjoy my historical research for Steamscapes, but Rockalypse has allowed me to approach research from a very different angle: watching cheesy movies from couch. And while some of that has still felt like work – I am much more familiar with the Camp Rock oeuvre than I ever wanted to be – I have still managed to find some surprising gems. My more obscure recommendations would include Bandslam (probably the most emotionally genuine teen band movie I’ve seen), Wild Zero (J-Pop stars vs. zombies with a trans-positive romance), and Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks (some may scoff, but it has even better band battles than Scott Pilgrim).

One last thing – you said that this game fit for Fate and that’s where you started. What did you do research-wise to design a Fate game, and how do you think your experience designing Rockalypse has influenced your design style?

When I first started, I did a combination of reading, listening to actual plays, and playing a few pick-up games with people who know the system well. I am also very fortunate to live in a city where I can meet up with other prominent game designers such as PK Sullivan and Tara Zuber, and I get to have conversations with them about the things that they have done with Fate and seen others do with Fate. PK in particular came on very early to help me playtest Rockalypse and give me feedback on the mechanics. He really helped me work out some of the early kinks.

As far as my own design style goes, one of the things I did with Rockalypse was to pull myself away from the heavy setting focus of my other work. Steamscapes is extremely setting-dependent, but I knew I wanted more flexibility with this game. I have enjoyed the challenge of writing a game where the setting is created by the players every time you play, and it has been very rewarding to see that pay off. Otherwise, I really feel that Rockalypse has been a good test and example of my overall design philosophy, which is to always look for the right match of theme, setting, and mechanics. I think the best games are the ones where all three of those things work together to support a cohesive play experience. That’s what I’m always striving for.

Thanks so much to Eric for the interview! Rockalypse sounds like a fun game that can definitely hit some flavor buttons for a lot of people. Check it out on Kickstarter!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Jay Sylvano, Game Chef, and Making Simple Games

Y’all know I love me some simple games.

I make games that are hella simple a lot of the time – little written games, question games, lonely games, those kinds of things. So I love hearing about people making games that are simple, but do more. Ask bigger questions. Challenge assumptions. Push harder.

Jay Sylvano has done that.

I met Jay at a podcast recording for the IGDN (Indie Game Developer Network) in November 2015, for Metatopia 2015. She was a recipient of the Metatopia Designer Scholarship. Her work thus far has been really interesting, and I’m always excited to see more.

Her 2016 Game Chef submission is an examination of a dystopian authoritarian high school, where questions of mind control and propaganda. It’s a live-action game, which is really cool, and I think that it has a lot of possibilities for play that are thoroughly fascinating. 

I’ve put together some of Jay’s words on her project further on, but here’s some background from her:

I’m from South Africa and have been living in Portland, OR for the past 4 years. I’m a full time graphic designer by day and an analog game designer by night, with a specific focus on story games and freeform larps.

I’ve created a number of games now including Shame, a freeform game about “honor” violence and patriarchal killings, Into The Gale, a tabletop story game about differently abled animals coming together to solve mythical problems, and The Illustrious Magnolia Hotel & Spa, a roleplaying game about a group of highly incompetent hotel staff trying to keep their crumbling establishment afloat.

I’m also on the board of the Portland-based nonprofit Games to Gather that focuses on inclusivity and social consciousness through play. My pride and joy is my main monthly gaming event “Ready, Set, Game: Womyn’s Night” that is all about womyn coming together in a safe space to play games, talk about game design and offer support and advice about participating in the typically misogynistic universe that is analog gaming.
This year I also launched the analog game design challenge Vernal Star, which encourages new designers to make games about obscure topics and research the lived experiences of others. The results of this year’s challenge will be announced at the end of July.

Jay obviously has a really nice set of qualifications, and the depth of thought put into her Game Chef submission is pretty great. Game Chef, for a little more context, is a game competition with simple elements that has a very brief turnaround for submission. I’ve tried it, and I was awful at it, but there have been some amazing games submitted, and some have even progressed to full development. Totally worth trying if you’re into it!

When I first asked Jay about her submission, she said:

The ingredients for this year’s contest were Sun, Dance, Alarm and Sketch, and the overall theme was Technology, with particular interest in how technology can influence and be used in analog games.

I was so excited about this theme and immediately wanted to create a game that would combine the isolation we associate with using technology with the in-person interaction and teamwork usually seen in larps. I’ve also been itching to create a game in a dystopian setting.

My final submission is called Intellectual Property. A game that deals with an authoritarian panopticon in a near future dictatorship. It is a freeform game that can take up to fifty players and engages with the trend of dystopian coming of age narratives found in stories like The Hunger Games while using the omnipresent technology on our bodies (and in our smart phones) to create a space for engagement.

Essentially, players take on the roles of high school students going through their first day of government training to protect their minds from terrorist attacks, during recess. The game requires players to make no overt attempts at communication and relies on audio and recorded propaganda to keep players distracted, occupied and frustrated, while still trying to be teenagers and connect with each other. The game was designed to explore the subject of government propaganda and subliminal messages and the effects these have on the ideas, creativity, relationships and sense of safety of the young citizens of a county.

Sounds pretty cool, right? Jay’s integration of technology into analog design with the propaganda being played is something that really piqued my interest. I love technology, so much, and I love the idea of literally influencing thought while playing a game. That’s really freaking awesome, and I wanted to know more about Jay’s concepts and purposes for the game.

I was particularly intrigued with Game Chef’s theme this year because of conversations I’ve been having in my own game groups about incorporating technology into analog games as a way for further conveying a message or reaching a desired goal. There is so much room right now to expand what an analog game is and how it works, and with American freeform being such a new and largely unexplored form of interactive, in-person gaming, I think we’re barely scratching the surface of play as an engaging art form and I can’t wait to see where it will go from here.

The ingredients, sunlight, alarm, dance and sketch were also something that caught my eye and struck me as “happy” words. I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the value in creating a sense of shared joy or euphoria in a group of players – especially considering the trend of freeform games that are considered to provide impactful play experiences being dark, brooding and designed with the intent of evoking sorrow. There’s a sort of in-joke in my Portland freeform community about “waiting to die” games and how every freeform we play is secretly just that. I hope to see more games exploring a spectrum of emotions and themes, and these ingredients looked like something I could utilize to make one that does.

The term “‘waiting to die’ games” is hilarious and terrible and I love it. What kind of experiences do you have designing a Game Chef game? Well…

I’m a notorious procrastinator with a full time job who’s also co-directing a positive action gaming non-profit with 9 monthly events, so as much as I wanted to enter this challenge I was 98% sure I’d fail. It came down to one sleepless night of writing it all, creating an hour long audio track, mapping out the layout and designing a decent cover. I managed to submit it a few hours before the deadline and I was pretty thrilled to have just managed that. It’s not quite the grand vision I had started off with, but Game Chef encourages participants to go back and polish their entries, and Intellectual Property is getting a lot of finishes touches right now. I’m actually hoping I’ll get to run the final product at Metatopia 2016 in November.

What’s the game really about, though? 

The game itself, when it’s really boiled down, is a weird attempt on my part to convey what it’s like to have your voice silenced and your thoughts and sense of identity policed, and then to have to move through the world and interact with others with a smile plastered across your face and no outward signs of rebellion – something women come to accept as the norm from a very young age. This game is an extreme and warped scenario of what patriarchy does to us and the ways we adapt and learn to rebel, often quietly. The constant assurances from the audio track that these measures are in place to protect you, that violating the rules will hurt not only you but those you attempt to enlist in your rebellion, that you aught to be policing others and punishing them for stepping out of line, all of this is a very focused, exaggerated example of what living within a patriarchy is like. Coupled with the highly sexist, exuberant radio commercials that bombard players at intervals, I hope the game will manage to convey this message subtly in the guise of control of the people by the state.

Most of my games are overtly feminist and tend to drive home a very specific point about oppression without metaphors or veiled mechanics. They’re very “on the nose” I guess you could say. While I want to use game design as a platform to raise awareness about things that matter to me, theses games look like serious business to the average consumer and can be pretty intimidating to jump into. I’m generally all about not pulling punches in that sense. This time, I wanted to make something that could convey this message more subtly. I wanted it to be fun and weird and open to interpretation in the hopes that people wouldn’t be terrified of playing it and hopefully didn’t have to fear for their emotional well-being. Men often have trouble in my games with feeling like they have a right to fully participate when themes are so overtly feminist and about the lived experiences of women. That or they avoid the game entirely thinking it’s not “for them”. Hopefully a scenario that’s more subtle and open to interpretation will dispel some of that hesitation and enable everyone to participate freely.

When Jay talked about what she wanted people to take out of the game, I was really happy with her answer:

I hope people will come away from playing Intellectual Property with a sense of camaraderie, since its core mechanic is forming emotional bonds with others in a world where you’re not supposed to. I also hope it will stir up thoughts about how our government and media shape the people we become and how we regard and treat others. If people can walk away from something fun and uplifting and still retain those ideas, I’ll have contributed in a tiny way to making the world a happier, more inclusive, respectful place.

This is excellent. The game itself is a simple concept: kids in high school in a dystopia, with propaganda playing. The questions? There are so many, so many good questions. And the intentions outlined by Jay, to form “emotional bonds… where you’re not supposed to,” and questioning the media and government? I love it. 

Thanks so much to Jay for the interview, and I really hope you all enjoyed reading!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Shadowrun: Anarchy Gen Con Prototype Review

Check out a review for the final product here!

Note: Lots of pictures! Lots of words! Sorry!

Hi all!

As mentioned in my previous post a friend picked me up a copy of Shadowrun: Anarchy, Prototype at Gen Con. The book is not long, but features a lot of basic rules and information. I was pretty happy with it, honestly! I started out in more traditional games, but now often fall into games based on basic rules and simple mechanics.

I love Shadowrun, but getting my friends (when I can ever get them together!) to sit and build characters for as long as Shadowrun takes and then play through? Not as easy as I’d like it to be. When I was at Origins earlier this year, I had a brief discussion with someone about the possibility of a rules-light Shadowrun coming out, and since I’m pretty out of the loop, I was surprised and interested. There was little to be found online, and my attempts at contacting Catalyst directly were denied by their email system (though I doubt getting through would have made any difference, even if I was offering promo). Anyway, I had given up on seeing it when Adam Koebel took a picture of the cover and posted it to Twitter, and I lost my shit, so he kindly sent me a copy.

I have THOUGHTS and FEELINGS, so be warned. With a few notes, though: I have only played 3e Shadowrun, while I’ve read the 5th and 4th sourcebooks, I haven’t played (time investment & lack of interest in a priority character build, not many people to play with, etc.). Nonetheless, I’m a fan of the setting, I loved playing 3e possibly too much, and I actually enjoy a lot of the mechanics. I get so excited when I get to roll a handful of D6s (I think I hit 30 once, playing a drugged up elf archer… I don’t know, he was based on Iggy Pop) that the idea of doing it again really got me amped.

Note: This post will discuss the book and rules presented, but will also include some of my general feelings on Shadowrun, cyberpunk, and how the rules matter. I won’t be evaluating it through what’s already available in 5e, as I don’t feel like lugging books and comparing page by page. My bad. Please excuse the cell phone pics, my energy wasn’t here for a photoshoot right now, I’m so sorry.

Everything has a price. That’s a sexy phrase to kick off with. And it’s true – it’s super appropriate to Shadowrun, because the reality of the setting is that money does run the world. Corps run wild with access to power that sounds scary even in the fucked up modern world, and governments are a hot mess. One of the things I always like to note about SR3e is that it does actually address class. Really! Like, class imbalance is something rarely given genuine attention in RPGs, and in SR3 (and I believe other editions of SR) there are costs of living – essentially, whether you pay money for your livelihood or not matters, from luxe high level apartments to literally squatting. It is something I think is often missed, tbh, and something I miss being a vivid element in Shadowrun. I’m wondering if we’ll see that.

I love cyberware and bioware. In spite of being someone who cringed at doing basic math for D&D, I have spent hours building characters in Shadowrun, trying to get that Essence score as close to 0 as possible without becoming just a chassis. It’s good to see this recognized in the text even in this smaller book, because this book could be someone’s first book and that’s a core element that needs to be recognized – that your body is not promised to be whole just because you can get replacement parts.

This is a shitty cell phone picture, but deal with it. This is here in part because I just wanted to point out how great and dynamic the art in here is. I always LOVE Shadowrun’s artwork, but for such a small piece (though they may have reused art) I thought it was pretty great.

Speaking of art… as you all know, I’m big on representation in art. As I mentioned in my previous post about this, I was pretty happy about the art representation! Three of the 6 offered characters are women, and I enjoyed all of the badass art in the rest of it as well, especially this. Ork ladies are amaaaazing and totally underrated. One thing I’ll note is that pretty much all of them have cleavage showing, but I’m not super bothered. Considering there is not one identifiable woman listed on the entire credits list I’m not surprised, either.

I’m being forgiving in part because of those abs, though. 

Here’s where we dig into the actual meat of things. The first things the book notes is that the GM doesn’t have sole responsibility for story elements or narrative, and this is considered to be different. That’s actually pretty cool, as someone who prefers to contribute to the story, and I think that the new functionality of the gameplay supports it. In the book, they detail new scene play – which is after some of the basic rules and character build instructions, which can be confusing, but hooray! games with lots of stuff to cover have organization issues! – based on turns and narrations, within scenes. Simplified: Each Contract Brief (basically, campaign or scenario, multiple of which are included in this prototype) includes a number of Scenes. The scenes have varying levels of detail and I think that is a little wobbly, but a GM could probably make good decisions based on the material there.

Turns are called Narrations, which are basically player actions. Every turn starts with the GM, then rotates moving to their left until everyone has the chance to take a turn, then a new turn starts. Basically, the GM starts, and they move around the table to address actions. This may sound terrible to a lot of freeform and indie gamers, but I actually love this. One of the problems with games like Shadowrun for me is that so many players are so into it, which is great! Unless you want to get a word in edgewise without shouting. It directly gives the GM control of the scene, but ensures everyone gets a move in, and it also, from what I can tell, removes the complications of combat initiative entirely.

They further discuss things like plot points (points you earn and can use to alter other players’ rolls, your own rolls, situational modifiers, etc.), etc., and cues.

Cues are a part of character generation and also used in Contract Briefs. They’re basically short phrases or quotes to give players or the GM information that can help them push the story along through Narrations and plot. I like the concept – they’re similar in some ways to Fate’s aspects, but not quite. There are also Tags, which are basically markers for what your character is (hacker, elf, etc.) and Qualities which seem to me to be the equivalent of 3e’s Edges and Flaws (one of my favorite things), and I was so excited to see them included in this, I can’t even tell you.

Character Creation includes your standard stuff: the aforementioned Cues, Tags, and Qualities, as well as Attributes (Strength, Agility, Willpower, Logic, Charisma, Essence, and Edge), Skills, and Shadow Amps, which is the catch-all for spells, talismans, cyber and bodywear, adept powers, critter powers, cyberdecks, programs, etc. There seems to be a lot of flexibility for these Amps and what they do, which increased my enthusiasm, but watch me go and be wrong. There are also still Weapons (addressed later in the book, including details on carry limits, no ammo counting, and similar stuff), Armor (which functions, from what I can tell, kind of like damage absorption and gets wiped off before you start taking hits), and Gear. Gear has no stats. I KNOW RIGHT? I think the way they frame gear in general in the text is pretty cool, as they function very narratively, and this is the one area where the GM might have to apply some pressure to keep it somewhat realistic, as much as that matters in Shadowrun. It also includes Contacts under Gear.

Teamwork tests seem pretty cool! I like teamwork mechanics a lot, and in a game with such high capacity for PvP style behavior and play (which I have seen a lot of), it’s awesome to see this kind of mechanic. They actually function hilariously similar to a mechanic John and I were using for Blockbuster, which is you choose the leader who does the main work, then others roll the skill tests, and their successes are added as additional dice to the roll for the original player. It’s a good mechanic, in my experience.

There are also glitch dice which, honestly, when I read about them in 5e I cringed and kind of moved along. However, written here, they sound better. I don’t know if it’s a matter of who wrote it, how they wrote it, or changed context, but I’m more favorable towards them here than I expected.

I’d like to note that around here in the text (page 26), they have a section called “Troubleshooting” where they discuss how to deal with situations where players are struggling with the narrative-focused play and who are new to improv, and it’s good advice and I liked it a lot. Super glad to see it.

Just in case you thought it was sounding too simple for Shadowrun, here’s the “basic dice-rolling mechanic for all combat,” which, as you can see, is like four different things against four different things. It’s pretty awesome. I mean, it’s really just a bunch of D6’s? Which I probably will never complain about. It’s still your standard 5s and 6s are successes, unless you have an Edge die, which can make 4s eligible, or you can reroll those failed dice if you spend the Edge after the roll.

This might sound silly, but the note in the Attack Limits section about what counts as an attack action: “Want to debate the meaning of Attack action beyond that? Have fun, and we’ll be here for you when you’re ready to play!” just made my goddamn night. This is totally a huge discussion had at many a game table, and their specific note that an attack action is “An action that intentionally and directly damages another living being…” sums it up pretty clearly. Nice.

I like the option here for making the game more or less lethal. While most times I want to go and drag myself through the mud to kick some ass, it’s occasionally nice to have a way more chill session or two when things are busy and I just want to feel like a hero. I actually discussed with Morgan Ellis and a few others today on Twitter why Fate doesn’t work for me for cyberpunk and specifically Shadowrun, and that’s because it’s too heroic, too successful! This option here gives people who waver in preference, or just lean one way or the other, the choice! And that’s super great.

There are quite a few more details I didn’t cover. Like, there’s a section on character death that was interesting. The Spells, Spirits, and Astral Combat section was pretty cool, talking about using your Sorcery test (based on your Skills) with the Shadow Amp spell effect to do your thing. Most of this stuff seems pretty standard issue in regards to damage, etc., from what I have read in previous books. The Condition Monitor section is a little confusing and could definitely use some rewording, and I think they need to clarify their +1/-1 etc. modifier wording, as I – someone coming from 3e and used to using target number modifiers was super confused at first, after having read 5e previously.

I mean, I still miss my exploding D6s, but I suppose I can settle for my handfuls of dice.

My general thoughts? I’m in. I’m planning on picking up whatever official, final book Catalyst releases for Shadowrun: Anarchy, and I actually might bug some friends (PAUL STEFKO) to play with me. 

HOWEVER

I was really disappointed by one specific part of the book. What’s this becoming a legend nonsense? I know that a lot of the Shadowrun canon and surrounding media make a big deal out of being The Coolest HaXX0r, and that getting nuyen is awesome, but man, that’s not at fucking all what I’d be promoting in a Shadowrun book – especially one called Anarchy – right now. Extralegal individuals who are dangerous, powerful, and able to pit Corps against each other should be doing a lot more than getting excited over some expensive junk and sitting in hell beside The Smiling Bandit. Making it about notoriety, in my opinion, takes the “punk” out of the pulp.

At heart, for me, Shadowrun has always represented people who have nothing taking something, changing the narrative, and resisting the system. Honestly, in the world we currently live in, I can’t imagine taking a look at the world of Shadowrun and saying that these characters would just give up their bodies for a cool name & some money, when instead they could be dismantling corrupt systems of power while on their payroll. 


That aside, I just want to share below my two favorites of the six offered characters, and I hope you like them too! This is Ms. Myth who is a fucking TROLL FACE which is one of my favorite combos EVER and should ALWAYS HAPPEN. You’re welcome. Also, Strider, who is a Dwarf Parkour Adept, which is fucking aces. Her outfit gives me liiiiiiiiiiiiiife. Enjoy!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Shadowrun: Anarchy Preview First Thoughts

Got the Shadowrun: Anarchy preview book, shipped from Gen Con for me by the wonderful Adam Koebel!

Highlights:

1) This is the first game text in a damn long time I’ve sat down and read in a night, even including super short ones. I realize this is in part because I am a sucker for Shadowrun, but it also was easier reading than many have been, which is awesome.

2) I am guaranteed to pick this up in full form. I think it’s doing some interesting stuff to encourage character-focused play while still maintaining some of the more dice-heavy mechanics I personally really enjoy.

3) 50/50 for gender representation in sample characters, and not all of them are white. I did note that the majority of the women characters featured in the art have cleavage, but it didn’t bug me, tbh, because they weren’t posed sexy or anything, really. I have always, always loved Shadowrun’s art, and it’s often been far more inclusive than people seem to realize. I really value visual representation, so this is super important to me.

4) There are some things missing! There is no indication about how many boxes there are in condition rows, number one. I might note some more stuff later.

5) There are literally zero women, from what I can tell, on the cover credits. This is, imo, a huge problem. I want to see more Shadowrun products with women working on them, and while I know there have been some (including Monica Valentinelli’s work on Court of Shadows), seeing none on here really disappointed me. Get to work, Catalyst.

I’m planning on taking the tons and tons of pictures I took while reading tonight and doing into detail on my thoughts soon, but figured I’d share a first look. 🙂

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Jason Godesky on The Fifth World

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Jason Godesky on his game, The Fifth World, produced with Guilianna Maria Lamanna. The Fifth World is currently on Patreon as an open-source shared universe, and Jason had a lot of interesting stuff to say about the game! Check out his answers to my questions below.

Tell me a little about The Fifth World. What excites you about it?

The Fifth World takes place 144,000 days from now — one b’ak’tun in the Maya Long Count calendar, or just shy of 400 years. Civilization has collapsed, but humanity thrives beyond civilization. Most of the problems we face today have disappeared. Instead, they have to navigate a tangled web of kinship that binds them to a more-than-human world, where people you love and respect may want completely opposite things from you.

I got started with this by combining two things that have excited me for quite a while: creating an open source shared universe, and creating neotribal, ecotopian, animist realist fiction.

Many people have argued before that shared universes like Marvel or DC, Star Wars or Star Trek, Doctor Who, or the Cthulhu Mythos constitute our modern-day mythology. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen what happens when our mythology constitutes a corporation’s intellectual property. They don’t always handle it with the care we’d want them to. We still bring all of our enthusiasm to it and create these wonderful and amazing fan art and fan fiction, but we run into limits with that, too, again because our mythology constitutes a corporation’s intellectual property. What if we could change that, though? What if we could have an open source shared universe, where that mythology doesn’t belong to a corporation, but to the community who loves it? What could we do with an open source roleplaying game designed to explore an open source universe?

That idea actually got into my head first, starting with an excited discussion my brother and I had about what could happen if you took the Open Game License beyond a marketing ploy and instead really ran with it. My wife helped me connect it to the other half, reminding me of something we’d long wanted to explore more deeply that we couldn’t really dig into in any other way.

Giuli and I had both studied anthropology, and that had stripped away a lot of the common misconceptions about life beyond civilization for us, but it was really artist Michael Green’s “Afterculture” project that helped bring it all together for us and really see it. On the project’s homepage, he even describes it as “a return to the rich ‘cultural biodiversity’ that has characterized the human species for most of its sojourn here,” and challenges us “to imagine other versions, other tribes.” Michael Green has amazing talent and creativity, but ultimately he has only his own brain. I can add a bit more to it, but I only have my own brain. Giuli can add a bit more to it, but she only has her own brain. As an open source shared universe, though, where we provide people with tools to imagine life in a neotribal, ecotopian, animist realist future in their own bioregion, we might begin to glimpse what such an incredible, diverse, beautiful, vibrant world could look like.

I think those both speak to things that a lot of us deeply need right now: a mythology that we can really make our own, and a hopeful vision of the future that we can really believe in.

What kind of shared mythologies have you been building, and do you intend to build?

In a world like ours, we can talk about “world history,” because we live in a time of globalization, where the individual strands of local history become more and more entwined, like strings forming ropes, and ropes forming cords. The Fifth World takes that in reverse, letting the big cord of world history unwind into hundreds of thousands of local histories. We want people to join in with local, bioregional histories of the future. I read a lot of indigenous authors who say things like what Joe Sheridan and Roronhiakewen “He Clears the Sky” Dan Longboat wrote about their own experience as Onkwehonwe that “[o]ld-growth minds and cultures mature, emerge, and encompass the old growth of their traditional territory.” Mythology comes from our specific place, and binds us to it. We can’t tell someone in Tasmania or Johannesburg or New Orleans or Taipei what stories that place tells. Instead, we try to make the Fifth World a way for a group of friends to listen to what a place has to say, try to tease it out, and have fun doing it.

That said, of course, the Fifth World does have some lasting legacies from our world. My wife, Giuli, is working on a novel set in the Fifth World called “Children of Wormwood,” which deals with the effect of nuclear waste four centuries in the future. It starts with an idea that Thomas Sebeok proposed to the Human Interference Task Force in 1981, formed by the U.S. Department of Energy and Bechtel to start exploring the problem of how you can establish protocols to protect nuclear waste, when nuclear waste remains dangerous longer than any human culture or language has existed before. Sebeok had the idea of establishing an atomic priesthood that would use ritual and myth to preserve knowledge of the locations of and dangers associated with nuclear waste. The idea has its problems, and when the novel begins we soon learn that these Vulture Priests pay a terrible price to slow the march of an inevitable problem. Without giving too much away, the novel tells the story of how they find a lasting solution by forming an alliance with a very different form of life.

My favorite stories in the Fifth World usually mix hard, mundane science fiction with animist realist sensibilities in just this way. That combination creates stories rooted in the real world, but look at it from a different perspective.

How does the game function mechanically and narratively?

Actually, I really owe you for my biggest breakthrough on that. I believe you had just started this interview series, and Epidiah Ravachol recommended it on Google+, and he said that questions offered the most innovative, powerful tool in roleplaying games today, and pointed to you at the forefront of that. That got me thinking. Today, questions really form the core of the Fifth World RPG.

Your character has some points of awareness (starting with five, but things can happen to change that), and you spend those points on a few things, but most prominently, asking questions. You spend a point of awareness, you ask a specific other player a question from a limited set available to you, and they answer. We talk freely during an encounter, but we don’t know any of those things for sure. We might discover later on that we misunderstood or misconstrued. When you spend a point of awareness and ask a question, we know something for sure, and the knowing creates one new constraint.

I think this really puts exploration at the heart of the game, and it makes the open source nature of the project fit right in with the game’s rules, as the wiki becomes a repository to all of the answers to the questions you’ve asked. Even with this, where we always learn more about the world, we never run out of questions to ask. We always find new corners to explore. One playtester once told me that he appreciated how the game made the familiar unfamiliar. Part of that comes from this focus on questions, because it pulls you in to explore deeper and ask more questions about places you thought you understood.

The other major breakthrough that helped me put it all together came from reading about the relationship between people, places, and awareness. I made awareness a pool of points, rather than a skill that you have, because that better models what we know now about how awareness works. You’ve probably read about decision fatigue, for example. Awareness works the same way. Even without a bunch of psychological research, just thinking it through, when you pay attention to one thing, you can’t pay attention to something else. It turns out, though, that while some environments drain our awareness, others replenish it. Specifically, those places where we have the most exposure to other-than-human life do the most to restore our awareness.

This helped me close the loop on the game’s mechanical cycle, and figure out how people, places, and awareness interact. Awareness accrues at places. People go from place to place and act in accordance with the spirit of the place (e.g., at a sacred place you can gather awareness when you perform a religious ritual, at a melancholy place you can gather awareness when you express your sadness, and at a creative place you can gather awareness when you create something). They spend that awareness to explore the world and pursue their dreams — including, sometimes, their dreams of changing the world, their family, or themselves.

How do you avoid cultural appropriation in such a mutable environment?

I’ve thought about this a lot. You know this: in roleplaying games, we rely heavily on genre. Getting everyone at the table to imagine the same thing doesn’t always come easily, and genre helps a lot. With the Fifth World, we don’t really have a genre to point to. I always end up saying that this book fits except for these parts, or watch the first 30 minutes of this movie, but I find I can’t really write a Fifth World mediography, only an annotated mediography. That can cause a problem, because even if it doesn’t fit, players may turn to stereotypes about native people and use that as the thing to lean on.

We only have four policy pages on the Fifth World website at the moment, but one of them addresses cultural appropriation directly. We cite Susan Scafidi’s “three S’s” — significance or sacredness, source, and similarity. Ultimately, we look at cultural appropriation as really failing to fulfill the project’s goal. We want to imagine a neotribal future. If you imagine a family that has stolen Anishinaabe culture but doesn’t actually descend from modern-day Anishinaabe with the right to use that culture and the knowledge of how to do so, you haven’t done a very good job of imagining a neotribal future. These people come from a different background and face different challenges, so how would something stolen from others help them? I think that alone helps keep us away from anything too similar, and by keeping away from that “s” we can also avoid the sacred. Sweat lodges have a sacred place in the traditions of native nations across the Americas, and with good reason, but why would the descendants of Scandinavians in Wisconsin copy the Anishinaabe madoodiswan and not the Nordic sauna?

We take that approach to questions from the game and extend it to the rest of the project. As an open source project, we expect that we’ll get contributions of questionable anthropological integrity. Usually it happens because of the gaps in anthropological knowledge generally. A lot of the things we know about traditional societies can seem really shocking to people. A lot of people won’t even believe it when you show them the evidence, because it contradicts their beliefs about human nature (I’ve almost finished “Stand on Zanzibar” now, and quite enjoyed how this very kind of thing tripping up the god-like supercomputer Shalmaneser). We don’t treat it as an error, though. Instead, we ask questions. We point out what makes it seem so unlikely, and then we ask, “What do you think happened here, to make such a bizarre thing happen?”

We haven’t had enough contributions from others yet to put this to the test to see if it will work, but I expect it will happen sooner or later: when we get that really shallow, culturally appropriative contribution, I’ll ask more questions about it. I’ll ask about how it developed, where it came from, and what it means. For the moment, at least, I expect questions like that to drive it further and further away from existing traditions, meaning less and less similar, and I would hope less and less sacred. If necessary, we won’t mind altering a contribution, though. Another of our policy pages makes clear that our community works together to make the best Fifth World we can together, and cultural appropriation doesn’t help us do that.

The established power dynamic has a lot to do with what separates cultural appropriation from cultural exchange. Right now, the Fifth World mostly comes from me, a cishet white American man, and my wife, a cishet white American woman, but I don’t want it to stop there. I don’t want to take from other cultures and exclude the people. I want other people to join in, and tell me how they imagine their culture living and thriving in a neotribal future. I can’t tell those stories, and neither can Giuli, and I often worry that people might mistake the lack of stories that we have no right to tell to mean that we don’t want to hear them. I want to see Indigenous futurism and Afrofuturism in the Fifth World. My biggest hope for guarding against cultural appropriation lies in the open source nature of the project, again. I hope it means that we’ll have voices far beyond the one I can offer, telling the stories we each can tell, woven together.

What do you want to see people do with the game beyond just building materials?

I started with the roleplaying game because a roleplaying game provides such an incredible engine for creating setting. It makes our worldbuilding collaborative, which fits in well with our open source nature, and it starts to fill in the world and make it more real. From there, more people will have ideas to do new things with it.

I mentioned Giuli’s forthcoming novel, “Children of Wormwood.” We plan on releasing that as serial fiction, releasing each episode in text and as an MP3 podiobook you can subscribe to. We’ve toyed with the idea of serial audio drama in the form of a podcast — something like “Welcome to Night Vale” with the aesthetics of “The Memory Palace,” but with neotribal, ecotopian fiction instead of surreal comedy. I’d love to make a Fifth World LARP once we have the RPG in a more established place. I’d love to start something like a Renaissance Faire, but with the Fifth World. I’ve mentioned how much I’d love to see a Fifth World play some day. I’d love to see a web comic. I’d love to see people steal any or all of these ideas and run with them.

I can’t tell you what I hope to see most, though, because I most hope to see the thing that will totally take me by surprise, the thing that will make my smack my forehead and question why I never thought of it. Sure, I could’ve claimed to own the Fifth World, that I put these ideas together and so now it belongs to me, but really I’d much rather have the thrill of seeing the amazing things that other people might do with it. I’ll trade intellectual property to take part in an active community any day.


Thanks so much to Jason for the interview! Make sure you check out The Fifth World on Patreon and see what this unusual and fascinating world has to offer, and what you can contribute!


This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Women with Initiative: J Li

Today’s Women with Initiative feature is with J Li! J is a designer primarily in larp, and her recent work has been really fascinating! Her work on emotional immersion in larp has been a significant focus, specifically looking at formats and design elements that capture the experience of Chinese action/fantasy films and anime where there is intense emotional, situation-reaction content. Many of her games are parlor style larps, and her current projects Mermaid and Keymaster use structure and design to encourage specific behavior and emotional involvement. She also has some really cool work on Pattern Language for Larp Design. I asked J a few questions and her responses are below!

What inspired you to start working on Larp Pattern Language and what uses do you think it will have?
This question is actually more like, what inspired me to stop not working on it? 🙂

I’ve always broken down my games in design patterns. For many years, when people would ask me for design advice, I would rattle off numbers and shapes– make sure this person has that many subplots, arrange your room this way, this thing won’t work unless you add more complexity to balance, etc. I think it just came from writing and running a ton of games (I got started making secrets & powers games at Stanford, and there were a lot of them), just common trends that came up. I could visualize it all in my head.

A few years ago, I realized that most people don’t necessarily visualize things the same way, and also that if I wrote about them it might be useful shortcuts for other people. I knew that Jason Morningstar had a similar design philosophy, so I approached him about giving a panel on it. Once we started planning, it became pretty clear that there’s actually a lot of content there.

Since then, we’ve gotten a lot of requests to expand it to tabletop– which actually makes a lot of sense, because it’s really just about human-to-human live interaction design. If you look at visual design, it’s a very advanced field with a lot of key patterns that people use all the time, like grid layout, color theory, typographic principles, etc. And of course architecture is where it started.

My dream is, as larp becomes rapidly more mainstream, for the patterns that we’re surfacing now to form the groundwork of fundamental design theory for live human narrative/creative/social interaction. Someday, live interaction design 101 can cover topics like group size and player energy management, that would be awesome.

Your collection of parlor larps is stunning! Where do you find ideas for larps and how have you developed the concepts?
Thank you! I’m actually not sure how to answer this question because ideas are not really the scarcity for me, but I’ll give the literal answer:

For me, the fire and fuel behind all larp comes from the human drive to feel significant. The desire to be valued, impactful, great in some sense– not necessarily larger than life, but deeper than life? I’m really sensitive to this feeling. So when I look around me, you can see it latent in the way people behave, the stories we tell, the things we do and don’t mention…

The desire to make high-stakes decisions or pass judgments. The desire to be beautiful or hideous. The desire to let go of responsiblity, to be destroyed, to be in the spotlight, to hide, to give up, to try something ludicrous… I pick one that seems to be scarce lately, and make a game about getting to experience that.

Keymaster is about raw desire to be important and dramatic. Mermaid is about making moments of harsh passion while not having many options. Argentin is about getting to interpret your own identity without having a future.

So more specifically:

1. I have this deep-experience component mentioned above
2. I combine it with a strict structural element to elicit it unnaturally strongly (like “you can’t move” or “you’re going to die”)
3. I add an atmosphere that I would love to write or play in, like the ruins of a historical desert empire (Fires of Emsi) or the nature/civilization tension between a raw ocean, the people who survive beside it, and decadent inlanders (Mermaid).

What are your favorite parts of developing larps and examining their elements?

I love the patterns, and I love the part that’s just directly creating beauty– making the atmosphere happen and wrapping it in a unique way around each character. Giving the character a “taste”. And also setting a balance between that and making the character inhabitable by player interpretation.

Thanks so much to J Li for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading this and like checking out J’s work. 

—————

J Li Contact:

G+
Medium
Work
Website, Caldera Games
Spiritual Games Project

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Christian Griffin on Meridian

Today I have an interview with Christian Griffen on Meridian! Meridian is hitting Kickstarter and I’m excited to see how it goes. I’ll let Christian tell you about Meridian in the answers below, and you can check out an actual play as well!

Tell me a little about Meridian. What excites you about it?

Ever since I was little and The Neverending Story came into my life, I’ve been daydreaming of journeys to amazing worlds of the imagination. Occasionally works like Labyrinth or Mirrormask tapped into that same vein and reminded me of how profoundly touching these stories are to me. I’ve always wanted to have that kind of experience with a roleplaying game, but the Hero’s Journey that we get from most adventure RPGs are quite a different thing. It’s only now, after 26 years of playing and 11 years of designing and publishing RPGs that I’ve developed the techniques to bring this dream to life.

What excites me about Meridian is that it provides evocative places, characters, and moments for anyone to go on a fantastical journey, while leaving enough to the group’s imagination to make each experience unique. Of course it’s not exactly the same journey as Atreyu’s in Fantasia or Alice’s in Wonderland, because Meridian is its own place and follows its own laws. It’s my unique addition to the wondrous journey genre, and the games I’ve played with others have been nothing short of magical.


What are the most important elements of the wondrous journey genre that you wanted to bring forth in Meridian?

There is a special sense of fantastical exploration in these stories. Usually the worlds have a dreamlike quality and provide a wonderful canvas for the imagination. We get to experience wonder together with the protagonist, like when Sarah meets a talking fox riding on a sheepdog, or when Alice grows and shrinks because of the foods she ingests in Wonderland.

Though these worlds are dreamlike, they follow their own internal rules. This is true for Meridian as well: every Locale that you visit has three laws, which are generally unbreakable. They also invite imaginative play. For example, in the Midnight Conservatory, anything that’s planted in the soil sprouts and grows into some sort of flower or tree. Players have a lot of playful exploration with this as they figure out what would grow from the various things that the Journeyer has on hand. And most of the time, they’ll find that their subconscious will come up with things that fit, thematically, with the kind of journey they’re on.

What kind of mechanics do you use in Meridian to resolve conflicts and involve story elements?

These journeys are not about conflicts, which sets Meridian apart from most other RPGs. Instead, the mechanics in Meridian focus on changing those who travel through it. Each Journeyer also has an important final decision at the end that’s influenced by the choices made along the way.

Providing story elements is where Meridian really shines. Each Locale has a list of sensory impressions, details, and characters with titles like Helea of the Abandoned Heart or Morok the Shadowmonger. The players use these in conjunction with Cadence cards, which are short, evocative statements such as “a tiny creature, mumbling, eagerly gathering for its collection” or “gauzy walls of gossamer with shadows moving on the other side.” By adding their own dash of imagination, players have a lot of fodder for truly unique characters and moments.

How do you define the different roles in the game – the Journeyer, Guide, Touches, and Companions?

One player controls the Journeyer who explores Locales, interacts with other characters, and goes through changes and choices. Another player, the Guide, is in charge of the Locales and of transitioning the Journeyer among them. The other players start as Touches, who introduce additional characters that interact with the Journeyer. These characters usually remain at their Locales, but a Touch can claim one of them and become a Companion, who will then travel alongside the Journeyer for the rest of the game. There are several kinds of Companions with different roles and options, ranging from a possible romantic connection to a dark aspect of the character’s personality stalking them through Meridian.

Role cards for each player lay out their part in the game and any special rules that apply to them, so players don’t need to pass around the rulebook. It’s a very important design principle for me that players can just focus on their shared imagined journey through Meridian and don’t need much out-of-character talk once they begin.

If you were able to tell a story through Meridian that really captured the essence of the game, what would happen to the Journeyer, and what would you want to have players carry forward?

This is a tough one, because a major part of the design is that every journey is different. I’ve played several journeys through Meridian, both with close friends and with new people at conventions, that have really touched me. In one of them, a Journeyer came to Meridian because, after losing his wife to cancer, he was searching for a way to give his heart away so that he would no longer feel the pain. He thought he would never get better, that his own life was at an end.

As he journeyed through Meridian, he gathered a couple of Companions around him. One was a singer of mournful hymns he met at the Mausoleum of Mirrors. At one of the Locales, she used her progression to sacrifice her own heart to help the Journeyer with his pursuit. They finally arrived at the Midnight Conservatory, where the Journeyer shared the Mournful Gardener’s sorrow and asked him why he was so sad, surrounded by all those beautiful plants. As their tears watered the ground, he realized: “Without sadness there can be no growth.”

So the Journeyer planted his own heart in the soil, and in accordance with the Midnight Conservatory’s laws, a new plant sprung up with fresh hearts growing on it. He took one for himself and gave one to his Companion. He realized now that he had to feel the pain in order to grow, to really live. At the end of that journey, we had tears in our eyes. And we carried something forward from that, something I will always remember as if I’d lived through it myself.

I would love for players to carry their own such insights forward from each of their journeys. But even when a theme didn’t emerge so strongly, we always had moments of beauty, of quirky wonder, of strange but fantastical interactions. And those are always worth the trip.

Thanks so much to Christian for answering my questions! You can check out Meridian on Kickstarter, and see more on Berengad Games’ website.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

How Interactive is Your Game?

As a roleplayer, I have played in a number of different situations. Most people have played home games – at your place, or the home of a friend, in a closed environment. Some people have played at local events, or even large cons like GenCon. With larping, people play in all types of environments – small house events, large outdoor weekend events, convention hall rooms, and so on. Our environments often shape our play – how loud we talk, whether we move around, and our props or costumes.

Today I’m thinking very deeply about interactivity. This is not just “does your game involve you and do you do a thing,” but instead “how much does the player emotionally and physically interact with a game?” I wasn’t able to find a lot about interactivity in relation to tabletop and live-action roleplaying games. If I’m missing something, obviously feel free to share them in comments, but please avoid diluting my points.

I’m proposing some concepts on how to evaluate interactivity in tabletop and larp, and these are key for accessibility and player choice. 

Ask these questions:

  • Will players sit at the table, stand, or move around, or a combination of those?
  • Will players speak in character, use distancing (third-person), or alternate as comfortable?
  • Will players “perform” their character – changing from sitting at the table to standing, entering into other players’ personal space, raising their voice, moving hands more than just standard “talky” movement?
  • Will players be required to do these things, encouraged to do them, or have the option to do them?
  • Is there an opt out option for any of these things, or is the only option not to play?(1) 
  • Will players be in separate spaces, or in one space?
  • Will players need to move from space to space?
  • Will players have assistance moving from space to space if needed?
  • Will players have character sheets, index cards, name tags, props, or other materials to represent characters, powers, abilities, or resources?
  • Will these materials be available in alternate formats, or is there a standard?
  • Is it possible for players to have access to materials in advance?

There are probably more questions to be asked! This is a really complex subject, and it’s come to me from a very specific place: my own fears. Most people who know me are aware that I operate with pretty clear awareness of my fears because without that I can’t make it past them. This comes through in games! I ask for use of X-cards or Script Change or pre-game discussion on boundaries because I can decide then what I’m really comfortable with, and with who. However, the one thing that none of these cover by default or even in some extrapolation is interactivity. 

We rarely discuss at the table “Hey, are we going to talk in-character for this session?” or “Can I stand up if my character wants me to?” or “Can I sit while others are standing in this session?” or “Can I just write these character stats on an index card for while we move around?” However, these questions are incredibly important! Not just from an accommodations point of view for mental or physical disabilities, but also from the perspective of safety and comfort. I’ll give a brief example.

I was playing a local home game with some people I was mostly familiar with. It was an emotional game, for sure, and the situations were pretty intense at times, but after a few sessions, we had still only used descriptions of raised voices or physical action, and that had been okay. However, the GM at this point brought forth a very (for me) scary and intense situation. In playing the NPC character, they stood up, walked over to me, and screamed at me. Repeatedly. As someone with some history involving abuse and raised voices, the combination of the yelling and interference with my personal space completely terrified me. At that point my mental options were to 1) react violently (which I didn’t), or 2) freeze up. I haven’t spoken to the person about it,(2) but that’s partially because I still feel anxious around them.

I can’t be the only person who has experienced this. If I had known that these kind of actions would have occurred in game, I might not have ever played. Did I have good times? Yes. Was it worth that panicked experience? No.

Upon hearing recently that some people at Games on Demand were playing with more intense interactivity (characters were arguing, so players raised their voices and were physically acting), it brought this idea to the forefront. I’m really frustrated that I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about this, actually, because yes, we’re all playing games and having fun. But, not everyone has fun in the same way, and not setting these expectations can ruin someone’s time.

This is normally when people come in with the “if they don’t like it, they don’t have to play!” or “we aren’t writing/running games for people who won’t do improv/aren’t willing to be physical/can’t handle intense situations!” and you know what? Fuck you. I’m actually really tired of it. Games are not just for one specific class and type of people. You can design games and run games in any way you want to, but if you aren’t willing to tell people up front what to expect, you are doing it wrong.

There is no reason I should be unable to play games because I am afraid someone will shout at me at the table. There is no reason I should be unable to play games because I can’t stand for four hours. I might not be able to play all games, but I should be able to play some games, and if someone tells me the situation and expectations, I can determine whether I can meet those expectations of that game. 

If you are designing games and/or running/facilitating games, please take these things into consideration. It may take time! It may even take effort! But if we want people to enjoy our games, why wouldn’t we take time and effort? People have spent decades designing entire adventures with the minutiae of what potions are available in a chest in the sixteenth room of a 25 room dungeon, so I think we could take a half hour to ask ourselves how interactive our games will be, regardless of their type, to ensure that everyone involved has a good time and can contribute to the game comfortably.

Thank you for reading!

(1) The second is not condemnation, it’s just important to note.
(2) If you see yourself here, this is not the time to talk about it. If I ever want to talk to you about it, I’ll come to you.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Women with Initiative: Kira Magrann

Today’s Women with Initiative feature is with Kira Magrann. I met Kira years ago through Gaming as Women, where we both were bloggers. She is well-known for her involvement in Indie Games on Demand as an organizer, as well as for her own design work, art, and her work to create a more inclusive, diverse gaming community. Her games have a lot of feminist and queer concepts in action, and she also has a knack for creating sexy, intimate games that really engage players. I asked her a few questions about her work, and she provided some great answers!

How did you get your start in gaming, and how does it intertwine with your other hobbies and interests, such as art?

I got started in gaming when I bought my first Vampire the Masquerade book at a hobby shop. I took it home and tried to run it for four of my girlfriends and it was a hilarious disaster. BUT my mom then encouraged me to go to Origins (back when it was in Philly) ’cause she thought it would get me off those darn computer games. It worked! I fell in love with vampire larps and all the ridiculous people I met there, who were also spearheading the goth music and club scene in the late 90s in Philly. So that lead to me going to goth clubs and playing Vampire on the dance floor and, well, now I’m the ridiculous human I am now. So I guess to answer your question, there was a lot of crossover with Vampire larps, goth clubs, and kink culture when I was a teen getting into roleplaying. There definitely still is, but, less in the goth arena since Vampire larps aren’t such a cultural sensation anymore.

I think the place where art intersects with my gaming is that it makes me want to make stuff for games! I’m a maker, so creating and designing games has become a thing I really enjoy. I can’t really be a passive game player, I need to get involved and get everyone else involved too. Designing games is so much more complex than a lot of art making (and metalwork and jewelry ain’t simple, lost wax casting involves so much math I can’t even sometimes!). There are a lot of moving pieces in games, and its interactive. I think that challenge really gets my creative artistic side going. I also really like creating interactive art, which is why I enjoy making jewelry more than gallery work or illustration. The ability to make something that someone will wear and interact with is very personal and embodied in a way that is much more satisfying to me than other mediums.

[Interviewer note: I actually own multiple pieces of jewelry created by Kira, specifically my octopus earrings and necklace that I wear constantly. It’s beautiful, and very meaningful, and it really is something that gives me a special connection.]

Your games all have an underlayer of intimacy, whether between individuals or with oneself. What helps you determine the right mechanic to use, or instructions to give, to encourage players to live out this intimacy in game?

Oh, hey, that’s an interesting observation I hadn’t thought of before! Intimacy in all my games!

For mechanics, I usually think about what I would like to do if I were playing this game I’m writing. What actions would I like to take as a player? Additionally, I think its really really important to edit mechanics to the most important ones, like maybe the top two or three, that people might be using. I want to highlight the things that are most important to the themes and characters in the game and create mechanics that support those. So I guess I think of theme and character first, then think of game mechanics that already exist in the tabletop or larp worlds, and then I try to piece them together until something works!

Specifically designing for intimacy though, I kinda cheat and use my sex ed, kink salesperson, kink community, queer community, and feminist theory expertise! I have a huge interest in how humans relate intimately in different settings, and like, how we communicate these things. For my game Strict Machine, which is a kinky power dynamic game where people play tanks that have to describe their body parts in sexy ways, the mechanic is based off of Dan Savage’s rules to talking dirty: say what you’re going to do, say what you’re doing, say what you just did. So I get a lot of inspiration from things like that in creating intimacy mechanics for my games.

I think the best way to get players to interact with intimate mechanics is to get them over their initial discomfort or awkwardness. That first time might be a little silly or uncomfortable, because culture tells us intimacy and sex are that way, but keep pushing through that bias and see where it gets you. Consensually, of course!

You probably saw this coming, but I would really love to know: What did you use for inspiration for Selfie, and what prompted you to make a game about selfies in the first place?

Hahaha! Yes you love selfies! Geez, I do too.

Selfies are like this giant intersection of: new media, new technology, the female gaze, self care, and art making. So like, in the art world, there’s been selfie exhibits and photographers I know haaaaaaaaaaaate them because they don’t consider them art. And in the social media world, selfies skew very feminine and young in our cultural consciousness, but in reality they’re actually very diverse in gender and race! What I love about selfies is that people have control over their own image, and especially feminine presenting people. Often the camera is controlled by cis men! It’s like the first time I looked at a Frida Kahlo painting, or an Annie Liebovitz photograph, and thought YES THAT THAT’S HOW I SEE LADIES. So it’s powerful to create your own image of yourself, right. It’s like the first time I drew a self portrait and was like, oh wow, I’m kind of uncomfortable with analyzing myself that much, but whoa, that’s how I look, and there’s an intimacy in drawing every curve of my nostril and shadow of my cheekbone and line around my eyes. I actually used to be really shy about being in front of the camera, looking at myself, I had very low self esteem because I had bad acne when I was younger and thought I was ugly. Art and photography kinda helped me with that, and I feel like the Selfie self care phenomenon is really similar to that experience except more mainstream, and that everyone should experience it.

The technology aspect is super cool. Basically, our smartphones make us cyborgs, we carry around this technology that is an extension of our bodies and personalities and relationships. So talking about that in a game, and how we are using this tech to examine ourselves and our emotions, is really, really neat. Some ladies in Spain got together and played the game, and then posted their selfies to their blog, and I feel like that’s the perfect example of how cool our level of global technological interactivity is.

Thank you so much to Kira for allowing me to interview and feature her here on Thoughty! It is awesome to share her work with my readers. Below is Kira’s brief bio and some links to her contact information and work. Thank you for reading!
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Kira Magrann creates jewelry at Anima Metals, organizes Indie Games on Demand, and creates sexy, feminist, queer and cyberpunk games. Some games she’s recently designed are Strict Machine, Mobilize, RESISTOR, and Game of Thrones: Play the Cards. Follow her on G+ or twitter @kiranansi. Also on Tumblr as @kiramagrann.

Selfie is a part of the #Feminism nanogame collection currently featured at Indiecade.

Click here to buy RESISTOR, a cyberwitchy social justice zine.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Tod Foley on DayTrippers

Today I have an interview with Tod Foley, who introduced me to his game DayTrippers, which sounds like a cool scifi experience. It’s available on RPGnow and TabletopLibrary, and you can learn more about it on the DayTrippers website. Check out the interview below!

Tell me a little about DayTrippers. What excites you about it?

To answer that, I’ll need to talk about two things: themes and mechanics. This will take a little explanation.

Thematically, DayTrippers is my love letter to weird science fiction. I’ve always been a SF fan, but the appeal was never about the science or technology. For me it was all about the mind, and about questioning the nature of reality. I grew up reading “new wave” authors like Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Michael Moorcock, James Tiptree Jr. and Philip K. Dick. Their works were more about “inner space” than “outer space”. To this day, the movies that affect me most are nominally science fiction, but of the type that messes with your head: from classics like “2001: A Space Odyssey” (which had a powerful and lasting effect on my six-year-old mind) to modern-day brain-benders like “Inception”. For me, the truth is where the weird is. As I got older I began seeing the links between this “weird” school of SF and surrealist artists whose work also affected me deeply: people like Roger Dean, Richard Corben, H.R.Giger and my personal favorite, Moebius (Jean Giraud).

Of course, there have been plenty SF RPGs over the years. I contributed heavily to the “Space Master” line (from Iron Crown Enterprises) in the 80s. But these games tend to lean toward hard science, and follow the common materialist themes of exploration and combat. You know: laser weapons, starship battles, hostile alien “natives” and bug-eyed monsters. These themes never grabbed me as deeply as the new wave had grabbed me. What I really wanted was a game that would get inside players’ heads, and take them to those bizarre corners of existence where sanity (or reality itself) comes into question, like the weird SF I loved from my youth.

These ideas percolated in my head for many years. One day in 2014 I was talking with Mike Burrell on story-games.com, and the subject came around to our love of Moebius and other “Heavy Metal” artists. In the best of these stories, alternate realities and heavy symbolism blend together in a way that’s both technological and surrealistic. We realized there was an opening for a new type of SF RPG, but it couldn’t be just an ordinary “simulation” – because such a game wouldn’t have the deep psychological impact that drives weird fiction and surrealist art. I thought the best way to attain that powerful sense of strangeness and displacement would be to fuse traditional GMing approaches with narrativist and surrealist techniques, and I threw myself into the project with wild abandon. Suddenly everything just *clicked*. Within a year, DayTrippers was born.

Of course, once you decide you’re going to fuse traditional and narrative techniques in a single hybrid game, you run into a lot of roadblocks – none the least of which is the insular nature of player groups and GMs on opposite sides of that imaginary “rift” in our hobby. To appeal to both groups it was imperative that the game’s mechanics be new and flexible, but also simple and narratively-driven. There weren’t many designers who had ever attempted such a fusion.

Two of my main inspirations were Steffan O’Sullivan’s “FUDGE” (from which the original FATE was a branch-off), and Matthijs Holter’s “Archipelago”. From the former I took the idea of a descriptive difficulty scale and lack of a “canonical” setting, and from the latter I took the concept of bipartite action resolution (“yes and”, “yes but”, “no and”, “no but”), along with the contextual and narrativistic interpretation of action results. Everything in the game would come down to a single unified action resolution system. With this core mechanic in place, I was able to create a “toolkit” that could be used in a number of different ways: as a collaborative narrativist game, as a strongly-GM’d traditional game, or (my favorite mode) as a blend of both approaches. The core mechanic has just enough crunch to simulate any type of situation, while the random generators and surrealist techniques add a level of subconscious projection that keeps things from becoming predictable – even for an experienced GM.

I’ve been designing games professionally since the mid 80s. I’ve done both trad and narrative games. But with DayTrippers, I was able to unite the best aspects of both schools, and give people the flexibility to run in whatever style suits their group. That’s what excites me, and that’s why I can’t shut up about it. 🙂

Can you talk a little about the fiction for DayTrippers, both the content in the game and any specific features you think new players would find exciting?

Future settings always require a bit of exposition, and DayTrippers is no different. The game is set in an UbiComp version of the first world, 100 years in the future, although I’m deliberately vague on the details in order to allow GMs to make up their own minds about future history.

The Core Rules book begins with the story of Zayim Diaspora, open-source technologist and inventor of “SlipShips” – those incredible machines that allow travel into alternate dimensions, as well as forward and backward in time. Because slipship technology is open-source, it’s “out of the bag” and no government or corporation can keep a lid on it. This means DayTrippers can come from all walks of life: from high-ranking military or corporate specialists to garage tinkerers with a lot of free time on their hands. It’s a simple conceit that allows for all types of characters to be created, and permits the vast entirety of SF realities to be explored. Total narrative freedom, baby! There’s a massive list of inspirational material by all my favorite authors in the GameMasters Guide; stories of alternate earths, tales of time travel, and explorations of alien planets and other dimensions. No two DayTrippers multiverses are alike. GMs and Players are free to approach the game with whatever inspirations they find appealing. You can do “Star Trek” one day and “Buckaroo Banzai” the next, then follow it up with “Solaris” or “The Man in the High Castle”.


Tell me about LifeShaping, how does it influence character development, and how does it impact gameplay?

“LifeShapers” are things that effect the PCs’ personally. They may be influential events from the characters’ pasts, or psychological issues they’re dealing with in the present. In a game of DayTrippers, Players may begin playing with only a vague idea of who their character is (much like the protagonist of a book or movie in the first scenes, when we have very little knowledge about them). Through a process I call “Progressive Character Generation”, Players can develop their characters in more detail over sessions or campaigns.

This approach lets you get into the game quickly, without being forced to make up a bunch of details about a person you don’t really know yet. It also allows for great surprises to occur later in the game, such as suddenly learning in the third episode that a character has had military training, or was once a famous athlete, etc. It can give you a new view of your character, and allow for skills and experiences you hadn’t considered when the character was first drawn up. If you think about it, this sort of thing happens in movies and TV all the time. DayTrippers embraces it.

Vehicle combat in cyberpunk can be hella complicated. Could you talk about vehicular combat in DayTrippers?

It’s true that there are a lot of variables involved in vehicular combat. But it’s really no crunchier than any other type of conflict in DayTrippers, where everything – and I do mean *everything* – is resolved using the same core mechanic. Vehicular combat just includes more possible variables. Everyone onboard can get involved.

The most exciting thing about vehicles in DayTrippers is building your own SlipShip. My main influence there was “Car Wars” approach to vehicle design. Vehicles in DayTrippers range from massive interdimensional luxury liners to tiny Rube Goldberg-like contraptions. While the rules do allow for heavy armaments and shielding, most of the important action (at least in my own campaigns) takes place outside the ship.

Finally, I’m interested in what you expect, or want, players to get out of a session or campaign of DayTrippers. What would be the ideal takeaway, for you, from playing DayTrippers?

A DayTrippers campaign is like a series of one-shots; each adventure is designed to last a single session and return the PCs back to Earth. At root, it’s a “Genre Sim” for weird science fiction. The rules are basically a toolbox for creating surreal “short stories” that take place in weird worlds and other dimensions. Each session forms a tight narrative arc, but because the action resolution system is loose and interpretive, there’s a wide range of dramatic and unpredictable outcomes for every roll.

A trad game with narrativist elements, the system is optimized for spurious improvisation and high bleed. That’s where the surreal stuff comes from: it’s a combination of GM ideas, the output of random generators, and the “Psychic Content” contributed by the Players themselves. In play, the game tends to elicit ideas that weren’t even considered when the session began, and it incorporates these changes in unpredictable ways. The GM is not playing against you: instead, together you’re creating a story that has bizarre twists in it, and weirdness flows freely as narrative control goes back and forth. For all these reasons, a DayTrippers adventure is capable of surprising not only the Players, but the GM as well.

Thanks so much to Tod for the interview! I really hope that everyone enjoys checking out DayTrippers (and other games by Tod!) and that everyone got something fun out of this interview!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.