I have been working on the Turn Kickstarter since October 2018, and it has been quite a challenge. The Behind the Masc Kickstarter went so smoothly, with so few issues! Turn, on the other hand, had production changes, shipping challenges, and was all complicated by my continued health issues, both mental and physical. The project was a mountain, in a range of mountains so high I have been struggling to overcome them.
My remaining responsibilities for the Kickstarter are fulfilling some books that have been returned, some of which never were returned but never reached the customer (hooray, shipping!); fulfilling the Snake and Cougar backers, which I’ve only just started on and it’s been a snail’s pace – I feel extreme guilt over this, tbh; and completing and releasing the stretch goals, which are nearly done except for the border town supplement which was a late addition and is now on the back burner until everything else is complete. We legit are doing the final edits on the stretch goals, putting the cover on and touching up art, this weekend! It’s just so much more work than it seems, even when you go in expecting to climb Everest.
The reality is, there are always taller mountains.
Not only have I encountered issues with my head injury recovery, but I’ve also dealt with recurring back problems, required pelvic rehabilitation therapy and treatment for digestive and dental issues, and also fought constantly with Medicaid – not to forget struggles with depression, my bipolar disorder, and PTSD. My immediate family has struggled too, and I never manage to be there for them. All of this while I’m still trying to figure out how to contribute to my household – at this point, I struggle pointlessly.
I have taken on editing jobs, sensitivity consultation roles, and small game design jobs, but I’ve had to step out of a few, and those I have finished like the code of conduct used in a number of Pacific Northwest game design playtest groups are ones I don’t really see the fruits of – though the financial benefits were enough to stress out Medicaid.
I’ve supported the Homunculus Assembly Line Kickstarter regularly and will be doing writing and design for it, and hopefully working closely with a partner will make it easier. It’s just a frustrating pattern that there’s work and work and it’s always more than it seems, always this bigger mountain, and when we get to the reward at the end, it’s always smaller. Turn has been out for a while now, and few people have really recognized that – this is not a complaint, this is a recognition that I haven’t reached out to podcasts or reviewers and sent out copies to try to get their attention, because I’m too damn tired.
I’m going somewhere with this, I swear.
The reality is there are ranges of mountains we climb over every day, and let’s be real, the privileged, able, rich people will be able to get over them so much more easily than the rest of us. But it’s easier to do it together, tied together with some rope for safety, trusting in each other. When we fall, we can help each other up.
And people do this for me every day – my partners, my friends, my colleagues. I know I can be a goddamn disaster, but I also know that my openness about my pain and struggles gives people the opportunity to support me and help me, whether it’s through bundles that get me to conventions or gifting me from my birthday wishlist or just a DM to make sure I eat a goddamn meal today.
The mountains are cold and lonely at times, and we will starve if we try to climb them alone. We don’t have to be some sort of superhumans, and we shouldn’t have to be. We should strive to support each other in a network of creators and consumers, loving and caring for one-another. We don’t have to cannibalize each other if we plan for the storms and listen to what wise people say.
That reward at the end won’t be as small if it’s shared between us and used to grow more and greater gardens. We can keep going! We just have to stick together, and find the beauty in the mountains together, and not turn back when it feels impossible.
This is what I’m telling myself, as I keep climbing. Will you tie your rope to me, and hold on tight as the winds blow?
Tell me a little about Last Fleet.
What excites you about it?
The elevator pitch for Last Fleet
is that you’re brave pilots, officers, engineers, politicians and journalists
aboard a rag-tag fleet, fleeing from the implacable inhuman adversary that
destroyed your civilisation. The game focuses on action, intrigue and drama in
a high-pressure situation.
The game delivers the experience I
got when I first watched Battlestar Galactica (the noughties reboot). I
remember the incredible sense of pressure, an exhausted fleet and characters
both on the edge of collapse, the high stakes, and the explosive action. I remember
the simmering political tensions between different factions. I remember how
everyone was under constant suspicion of maybe being a secret traitor, and
sometimes people even suspected themselves. And I remember how all of this was
demonstrated through personal conversations between friends, family members,
lovers, and rivals. That’s what the game is designed to do.
Also, I just flipping love the bad guys in this game. The Corax are a hive mind, an immense extradimensional fungus network that live in the tenebrium, the realm outside normal space that FTL ships travel through. When the Corax fleet attacks, it’s by extruding these huge fungus tendrils out of a dimensional rift and then launching swarms of spore ships.They’re able to absorb their victims’ genetic material and also the information content of their brain, enabling them to create an exact copy of the victim, memories and all, but who is actually a flesh puppet for the Corax. And so, if you lose a fight to the Corax, rather than just getting killing you’re typically paralysed and dragged off to be deconstructed in a biological cauldron. The next time we see you, you won’t be you anymore. Which is pretty horrible.
How does the game mechanically approach
the Battlestar-style relationship environment?
A key part BSG is obviously the
political environment: a military hierarchy, the presence of elected officials
whose interests are only partly aligned with the military, and other factions
such as Zarek’s people, Baltar’s cult, the union and others. I’ve baked that
into the game setup, so that whether you create a setting yourself or use one
out of the box, you’ll generate groups whose agendas will push against fleet
unity. That’s then reinforced by the Call for Aid move, which enables players
to get certain benefits that they can’t get anywhere else – like access to rare
equipment, or the ability to perform an action at a larger scale – often in
exchange for tying themselves more closely to that faction.
Of course, like most PBTA games,
Last Fleet also comes with a set of charged relationships between the player
characters, to get things going. These are handled fairly loosely initially,
just little seeds of friendship or rivalry or a grudge or suspicion. But then
the game’s core mechanic reinforces that. The nub of it is that you can
voluntarily ramp up pressure on your character in exchange for bonuses to your
die rolls – an effect that allows you to succeed at almost any roll, if you
wish. But to get that pressure down, you have to take actions that generate
interesting relationship drama.
There’s three ways to do it:
You can Let Loose, indulging a vice and losing control. Let Loose is an easy, almost-guaranteed way to reduce pressure, but it also automatically puts you in tricky situations: even on a hit you’ll do something you otherwise wouldn’t like revealing a secret, making a promise, or falling into another character’s arms.
You can Reach Out, sharing a hope or a dream or a fear or suchlike. Reach Out reduces pressure by strengthening relationships – but then everyone who you build a relationship with has a bit of that pressure invested in them, so if something should happen to them, the pressure comes rushing back all at once.
You can hit Breaking Point, allowing the pressure to come to a head and then doing something foolish or dangerous. Breaking Point is a bit like getting Marked in Night Witches, in that initially it’s evocative and fun, but do it too many times and you’ll come to a sticky end.
So between all of the above stuff, you get a pretty rich stewpot of political, social and emotional drama.
That potential result with the enemy changing you instead of death sounds really intense – what is the effect of this on the game, and on the players?
That potential
result with the enemy changing you instead of death sounds really intense –
what is the effect of this on the game, and on the players?
It’s not something
I’d typically expect to happen to player characters. The game’s principles
encourage you to build up interesting NPCs and make the players care about
them, partly so you can “kill their darlings” later on. Or better yet
turn them into baddies.
If it does happen
to a player character, you have two options: bring them back as an NPC, or give
them the Sleeper Agent move. Sleeper Agent is a start-of-session move, which
generates bad stuff that your character has secretly been doing off-screen.
Even you, the player, don’t know what it is. How well you roll tells us how bad
it is, how much evidence there is to implicate you, and how much chance you
have to stop it.
Incidentally you can start as a Sleeper Agent by taking the Scorpio playbook.
What do players typically do in
Last Fleet to occupy their time – are there adventures with strange worlds, or
are they more likely to be negotiating in a dramatic scene?
It really depends a lot on what
roles and playbooks are chosen. The roles include soldier types to engineers to
more political characters. The playbooks are slightly more personality-based,
but each one will colour the type of play you’re likely to see, with playbooks
like Gemini bringing in skulduggery, or Scorpio bringing in intrigue, or Pisces
bringing in the supernatural.
There’s always a lot of stuff going
on in Last Fleet, which could include things like:
– Dealing with a tense stand-off
between civilians and the military, or between other political factions
– Handling the results of mass
panic: protests, riots, or other civil disobedience
– Addressing practical problems
like mechanical breakdown or resource shortages
– Investigating suspicious stuff,
which could turn out to be political, or could turn out to be enemy
infiltration
– Handling the fallout from the
above – bomb threats, sabotage, poisoned food supplies, etc
– Battling the enemy, whether in
tense space dogfights or holding off boarding actions
Whichever roles and playbooks are
chosen, the above will be going on at some level, but the emphasis and the
approach to problem-solving will vary massively. So you could get more
politicking, crisis management, investigation, scouting/away missions, or
battle scenes. All interleaved with the interpersonal drama generated by the
pressure system.
How do you control the level of
violence in the game for players to ensure they’re not veering into
monstrosity?
Last Fleet is the first game I’ve
written where violence is explicitly coded into the rules, because the war-time
setting makes it inevitable. Nevertheless in my experience, violence in play is
typically instigated by the enemy who, by definition, are implacable – intent
on humanity’s destruction or (as the canonical bad guys, the Corax have it)
borg-style absorption. Indeed the nature of the setting makes this almost
inevitable. Desperately trying to fend off waves of enemy fighters, protect
civilian ships, hold off boarders, and so on. So there’s violence, but it’s
mostly defensive in nature or (Night Witches-style) action aimed at destroying
military targets.
But violence is a thing that can
get more extreme if an enemy, particularly an enemy infiltrator, is captured.
We see that in the source material as the characters are so desperate to win
the war that they’re prepared to torture or kill in cold blood to get their
way. All I can say here is that the game provides absolutely no benefit to
doing this. The only interrogation moves are in no way enhanced by putting the
target under duress, except perhaps emotional duress (by using the move
“call them on their shit”).
Even so, something about the
setting is likely to make some players go there, let’s face it. My games always
contain a section discussing safety (not yet written for Last Fleet) and
war-time issues like violence and torture would be front-and-centre for an
initial discussion around lines and veils. Every game I’ve run to date has
banned torture from the game before the first scene is played, for instance.
That is what I’d recommend unless a group is keen to explore this very dark
territory.
There
is one particular playbook, Capricorn, who is a risk in this regard. They are
explicitly set up as a character who is willing to do anything to defeat the
enemy, with moves that hard code in collateral damage, for instance. In this
case play is focused on the social and personal consequences of this behaviour:
if you’re lucky you steady the fleet, if you’re unlucky you can cause more
damage than the enemy, and spark panic. In a way the story of the Capricorn
playbook is “can you avoid becoming a monster”, and obviously there’s
a chance that the answer is “no”.
Tell me a little bit about The Last Stand of the Dream Guard. What excites you about it?
The Last Stand of the Dream Guard
is a tragedy that takes place over a single night. The dream guard are toy like
creatures that exist in the dreamlands, the place where we go when we dream. They’ve
been fighting a war against The Nightmares and have all but lost. The adventure
uses player prompts and cues to build the detail and drama for what will be the
final battle of the war and the effect this will have on the few remaining
members of the Dream Guard who will fight it.
What engages me most about the adventure is who the characters will face a battle that will almost certainly lead to their death. Will seek solace in the nobility of their actions, retreat into a cynical fatalism or adopt an angry denial of their circumstances.
One of the Nightmares from The Last Stand of the Dream Guard.
What are The Nightmares and what threats do they present?
The Nightmares are the darkness
of humanity given form. Humans visit the dreamlands when they sleep, with the
dreamlands changing and being changed with each dream. Every human nightmare
left a little mark of evil on the dreamlands that accumulated and aggregated.
The nightmare are creatures of such hate that they bring only violence and
destruction where they go. The longer a nightmare “lives” the larger,
stronger and more cunning it gets. They are an existential threat to the
toylike native inhabitants of the dreamlands and should they be victorious
human dreams will be always tainted by their presence.
A page from Character Creation The Last Stand of the Dream Guard.
Why is death so ever-present and so likely for these characters? Is it preventable, and if so, how?
The Dream Guard have been losing this war since it started. The Nightmares seem to be endless and all attempts at negotiation have failed. The survivors of the Dream Guard have retreated to their last standing holdout where The Nightmares have surrounded them and put them under siege. They know it is only a matter of time before the assault begins. What hope and how forlorn it is is part of the story setup by the players and the story leader. Should they choose to, then perhaps the war could be won but they most hold out until dawn. Mechanically, the three phases of combat have been designed to be highly challenging and would require exquisite luck to pass through unscathed.
The first phase of play sounds intriguing!
How do players mechanically interact with the world and each other – what are the basic mechanics like? What are these phases of combat?
The adventure uses the 6d6 2nd Edition rules set. The basic mechanic is building a dice pool using which of the character’s advantages are best suited for the task at hand. The main body of the adventure takes place over one night that is divided into 6 phases. 3 of these character interaction phases where the story is progressed through prompts, cues and questions asked by the story leader. The other three phases are combat when the nightmares attack the hold out with increasing strength and threat.
What sort of support is there to help players approach these elements that might be very frightening or stressful in play?
The adventure doesn’t include specific advice on this, so I would recommend that the story leader and the players work together to select the safety tools they feel most comfortable using.
I released a new game today on itch.io and I hope you’ll check it out! My Patreon patrons at patreon.com/thoughty get a free copy of the game for download!
Today’s post is by me, Beau, and my husband and business partner, John W. Sheldon. We’re discussing the game Sleepaway by Jay Dragon, and the experiences we had during character creation with the gender options.
All photos in this post are by John W. Sheldon, copyright 2019. I hope you enjoy it!
Beau, on Nice Boys
It is no secret that exploring gender in roleplaying games is kind ofa thingI do, This is part of how I got the courage to come out as nonbinary masculine, it’s part of how I discovered I was queer and what kind of queer I am, and it’s helped me develop my perception of self.
That’s not always been easy, though. In the heyday of online text-based roleplay, I could be whatever gender I want – and in Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fandoms, androgynous characters weren’t as often rejected as they were in other spaces. When I moved to playing face-to-face tabletop RPGs, I do think I encountered some friction with me playing masculine characters or what I now understand were nonbinary (I didn’t have the word at the time), it wasn’t much more than I got for playing pretty or sexy characters or queer characters. But, none of it ever felt… right?
In most of my own designs, I’ve tried to let people write in their own genders, not be restricted by the words and definitions other people are giving them and use to control and oppress them. I mean, it’s not like being “genderfluid nonbinary masculine” like me is actually a thing to anyone else, either, but it’s the closest I’ve got (though I do use “nonbinary boy” as a shortcut these days). But, this isn’t perfect – sometimes people won’t explore without a little help, a little guidance, something to escort them along their way.
When Dream Askew originally was released, I heard about the alternate gender options, and I was so excited! But when I tried to play the game, it was like a square block in a triangle hole – nothing fit, and it was sharply clear. I couldn’t make sense of it – even if I could kind of conceive the genders in my head, I couldn’t make myself want to play those characters.
But when I tried to play [Dream Askew], it was like a square block in a triangle hole – nothing fit, and it was sharply clear. …Enter Sleepaway.
-Beau
Enter Sleepaway by Jay Dragon. This game has been in my to-play for a bit, and my game group – made up of myself (gendered as noted above), my husband John (agender, presents mostly masculine), and my two cis men friends Ed and TJ who are varying levels of into exploring gender and sexuality (no judgement! some of us are just comfortable where we are!). TJ is the one who actually brought the game to the table and is facilitating.
The setup is fun in general – I honestly need to make a strong note to Jay that the writing is just phenomenal, evocative, and powerful in this game. I did a lot of summer camps as a kid, both as camper and counselor, and had some very important and scary experiences while there. The game captures all of it so beautifully and richly that I feel like I could play it a thousand times and have a unique experience every time, and learn something new about myself and my characters each time, as well. It’s also respectful in regards to First Nations and indigenous people’s rights, specifically in how you name your camp and respect the land!
And that comes into the character creation with the gender options, and where this post came from. I was skimming over them originally, until I reached The Lifeguard playbook. The top option for gender is “Nice Boy.” Anyone who knows me knows that my primary character type is something approximate to the “himbo” – a hot masculine person who is considered to be not the smartest, but is generally nice and well-intentioned even if it doesn’t always work out. I like nice boys, and specifically the gender of “boy” (not meaning a child) is one I identify with. The more I read the specific list, the more I was hooked. I knew what it meant to be a Lighthouse in the Darkness, or to be Relatable. I felt so seen by these options – and I could see other people I know in it too.
The Lifeguard gender options.
During and after character build, the table talked extensively about the gender options, especially me and John. John rarely talks about gender – as an agender person, he’s often said it just never clicks with him! I asked him if he could write a little about his perspective, so he has below.
John, on Rusted Swords
I’ve mostly ignored gender in games. I recognize that as a
supremely privileged thing to be able to do, but as a male,
masculine-presenting person, nobody made it an issue for me if I didn’t make it
one for myself. As an agender person, I never really had strong feelings about
gender presentation in games either – I honestly never thought of gender until
other people brought it up.
Playing classic games like D&D and Shadowrun growing up,
gender was usually just a single letter on a character sheet, something I
jotted down and almost immediately resumed ignoring. It didn’t mean anything
to me, and at the time I didn’t understand that it could to anyone else. After
all, it didn’t change any of the rules for my character, or restrict any of
their actions. I won’t pretend that I and my play groups weren’t steeped in
misogyny as a teen, but even if I put the “F” on my character sheet,
I still got treated well because I was, as a player, perceived as a man.
Then I grew up a bit. I realized that, in contrast to my own
experience, other people did have an internal experience of gender.
Their internal gender experiences meant a lot to them, even. I struggle to
apply a useful simile to the situation, but slowly realizing that I was agender
was a bit like a person slowly coming to understand that they were colorblind:
people were experiencing things and making a lot of decisions based on
information that was absent for me.
Then I discovered a wave of independent tabletop RPGs that
dared to fuck with gender. They made it something other than a binary toggle,
and didn’t pretend it was necessarily tied to biological sex. Gender was
queried as a way to ask about look and presentation, and there were lots of
options! I was glad that other people had selections they could use to
represent themselves, but I went right along basically ignoring the whole
category of experience. I dutifully picked an option during character
generation, usually just as a creative choice to help define the look of the
character, then went on ignoring it in play as I always did.
I dutifully picked an option during character generation, usually just as a creative choice to help define the look of the character, then went on ignoring it in play as I always did.
-John
I even tried an early version of Avery Alder’s Dream Askew.
Unlike the other indie titles I’d read which focused on presentation, Dream
Askew gave pick lists for actual gender, but eschewed the standard selections
in favor of evocative phrases. For me, this was actually a problem. With no
internal experience or sense by which to judge these phrases, and no ready
external indicators to associate with them, they just looked like a list of
nonsense words. To me, they might as well have been an actual list of
randomly-selected words. It took me out of the game and made the whole thing
more difficult for me to engage with.
Then, last night, I played Sleepaway. Like Dream Askew, each
character archetype has a list of options for gender, but there was something
different about these. These were written with deep ties to a genre I knew.
More than that: their names resonated with attitudes and behaviors I knew and
recognized in myself. Instead of a list of words that meant nothing to me, I
found myself using these signifiers to imagine different ways of being for
these characters – they were presentation, behavior, and identity all in one.
They were gender in a way I’d never understood or experienced it
for myself.
I found myself using these signifiers to imagine different ways of being for these characters – they were presentation, behavior, and identity all in one. They were gender in a way I’d never understood or experienced it for myself.
-John
Is Jay Dragon a genius because they wrote “Rusted Sword” as an option for a character’s gender? Yes. I’m saying absolutely, definitely yes.
—
Thank you so much John for sharing your perspective on this! I think this has been so valuable to experience for me, and I think it’s a gorgeous piece of design. You can find Sleepaway here and if all goes well, I’ll update with our adventures at Camp Why-I-Otter!
Hey all, today I have an interview with Alex Sprague on MoonPunk, which is currently on Kickstarter! It’s got a lot of awesome stretch goals to hit, so check out what Alex had to say below!
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Tell me a little about MoonPunk. What excites you about it?
MoonPunk is a Powered by the Apocalypse game that is about punks on The Moon. It has a punk zine aesthetic and has praxis and direct action as a focal point for the gameplay. There are 12 Punk playbooks with several mechanics that are fairly new yet simple. We have made a game where when the players see an issue they have total freedom to try to fix it. We give them a few guidelines about how to do so, but I expect to hear about similar problems being dealt with through serious trade negotiations or beating up The Authority.
So MoonPunk is, in essence, a game Jessica Geyer and I made in response to the idea that games shouldn’t be political. Almost everything is political and for many just trying to live has become a political issue. In much the same way I can’t actually slay a dragon, I probably can’t steal a corrupt politicians tea supply and jettison it into space. These stories of political unrest and oppression are stories that people want to talk about. Every fantasy story of a dragon hoarding wealth and eating peasants could be a metaphor for how billionaires act in our current world. So everything excites me about this game, it really feels like a large part of me laid out in game form.
Powered by the Apocalypse games can vary quite widely. How is MoonPunk unique in its design, specifically exploring some of these new mechanics?
Part of the process when making a game for us is trying to find the one element we are hoping it embodies. For our micro-RPGs we were able to really hammer this home. 10 Paces was Western movies, My Mecha has Shark Arms was every Voltron-esk anime, we then did Superheros, Afterschool specials, slang words, road trips, an entire game written as a script for an Action Movie game. For MoonPunk it was taking that core concept, Direct Action, and making it more than a 1-dimensional game. We had the what, then the Where became The Moon and the Who became punks. Each of those came from our own perspective. Our mechanics directly came from that.
Combat is different than other games because even a big guy like me only weighs about 35lbs on The Moon. Low gravity means a punch is going to send both parties just kinda floating backward. So our combat is called Throw Down, and unless you get some leverage, or literally slam someone into something, you aren’t going to do much damage. Our favorite mechanic though is TANSTAAFL (there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch), a term popularized in the book The Moon is a harsh Mistress. This mechanizes the idea of asking favors of others, allowing quest hooks to have a place in the cultural norm of the setting.
Twelve playbooks seems like a lot of variety! How did you find so many opportunities for differences and variety in the playbooks, and what kind of playbooks are there?
The playbooks came along when we were looking for what roles were needed in a revolution. I think the only trope we vetoed was The Spy because it didn’t feel very punk. So our game only has 4 stats, and 3 playbooks embody each stat in a different way. For example, we have the stat Presence: we have Guildy, Politician, and Rocker. Guildy is your hard-working well-liked person around town that just seems to know everyone, you’d have a beer with them. The Politician is your silver-tongued type, they tend to be likable when you are talking to them, but leave a bad taste in your mouth later. The Rocker is a catch-all artist, they might play music and get you riled up, or draw a political cartoon people can rally behind. These different facets of stats and the role they could play in a revolution is how we built most of these playbooks.
When you talk about the punk aesthetic, and about being punks, what does that mean to you and to MoonPunk, in comparison to other potential understandings of the term? How does it affect the experience of play?
The most important part of the punk aesthetic to us is the DIY culture. This is seen a lot within the game but it is also a point we make a lot in our game design. We made a ton of small games live on Twitch to show our process and attempt to show others the act of creation is mostly just starting. Anyone who wants to see a game come to life completely has the ability to get it made. I can basically guarantee even the most diehard D&D fans are homebrewing a little bit, and that little start of tinkering should be embraced; not rules lawyered out of existence.
As far as the idea of being a punk, that is something I have seen plenty of people gatekeep in the past. That is about the only thing I don’t abide, I mean sure people saying “conservatism is the new punk rock” are fucking idiots and wrong, but saying a kid is not punk because they don’t know anything about Milo or why he is going to college is silly. Punk is about individual freedom to me, and I think that comes across in the game.
Tell me a little about the plan of your Kickstarter, including your choice to include an Economic Hardship and a Hardship Supporter level. How has the activist ideal of the game MoonPunk been reflected in your ethical choices with the actual crowdfunding?
The choice to include the economic hardship and hardship supporter tiers came from a few peers in the TTRPG space who had already done it. It’s something we will be doing for all our games if we can, it reflects our attitudes toward gaming more so than our attitude towards activism. We want people to play our games, we want people to take away lessons and truths from these games. The Kickstarter was just about the only way for people without funds to get a game up, and a more diverse group of voices writing and doing art for the game without us having to ask people to work for free. We can work for months on a passion project, and we have, but to ask anyone else to do something for us for free really bothers us.
Tell me a little about The Curse of the House of Rookwood. What excites you about it?
Rookwood is a story game where you play a family with an ancient curse that grants them supernatural powers, but slowly transforms them into inhuman monsters. Since you play as members of a family — parents, children, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins — the game is packed with relationships that your characters value, but did not choose for themselves. The rules support this part of play by giving you tools to create interesting problems that complicate these relationships, and reward you for exploring them during play. I spent the last year running the game for different groups at conventions, and it is exciting to see the different ways that players interpret “family” as a game/story concept. It can be funny, poignant, and sometimes a little bit intense, but it always seems to ring true because family is a common denominator for pretty much everyone.
How do the rules work to connect and structure the family, and complicate those relationships?
Family is defined in the rules on several levels. First, during character creation, players collaborate to answer questions about their progenitor, their ancestor who brought the curse upon the family. Their answers shape the current standing of the family, as well as what resources the family shares. Second, players define for themselves what family roles they want their characters to fulfill — parent, child, aunt, grandparent, etc. It’s up to the players how their family is structured in terms of age, gender, and identity.
Lastly, each player will choose a Skeleton for their character. Skeletons are complications that strain a character’s relationship with another character. This could be a dark secret that will harm the other character, a past mistake they want to reconcile, or an unequal relationship such as a need for approval or being overprotective. Each Skeleton has “bones” — scenes or events that might happen during play that players are rewarded for pursuing. As a story arc comes to an end, players decide if their Skeletons have been resolved positively, which improves the family’s standing, or negatively, which hurts the family.
Family drama can be difficult for some players! How do you provide support for play to help ensure everyone has a safe experience?
Safety tools are really important, especially with an emotionally charged subject like family relationships. The rules include a section on safety tools, which we introduce upfront. We recommend that players make use of Lines and Veils, as defined by Ron Edwards of Sex and Sorcery fame, as well as an X-card/O-card at the table. References to learn more about these tools are included.
What are the general activities of The Curse of the House of Rookwood – what do player characters encounter in play (such as monsters or situations), and how do they interact with it mechanically?
It depends on the Campaign Concept your group selects. You could be secret agents for the British Crown, employed to contain or eliminate supernatural threats. You might play as high society dilettantes, plying your talents as supernatural communicators and hunters. Or you might even play a traveling troupe of entertainers, looking for your next gig. Regardless what situation you place your family in, the core loop of play is trouble presented by the chronicler — a mystery, an adversary, and outright monstrous threat — and the family’s response to that threat.
Each family member has a finite amount of resources available to them to move the story in the direction they want. They have Traits, which are a pool of six-sided dice, and Assets, which can be spent to gain some immediate guaranteed success, or to gain extra dice when a Trait roll goes wrong. Like many rpgs, the game proceeds as a conversation.
When the outcome of what a player wants to accomplish seems uncertain, the GM and the player work out a list of Risks, things that could go wrong, and Rewards, things that could go right. The player chooses how many dice to roll from their pool — 1, 2, or 3 — and Assets to spend. Any dice that roll 4 or higher count as a success, which are used one-for-one to cancel Risks or buy Rewards.
Where it gets interesting is that the number of dice you roll reflects the amount of effort your character is putting forth in the fiction of the game. One die is normal effort. Two dice is extraordinary effort — if you roll any doubles, the effort is stressful and you lose a die from your pool. Three dice is supernatural effort — you must call forth the gift of your curse. If you roll doubles, not only do you lose a die, you also gain a new Mark of your curse.
The descent into monstrosity could reflect any number of fears in metaphor. How is it represented in the game mechanically and narratively, and what does it mean to the characters?
As alluded to above, every time you use the power granted to you by your curse — calling forth crows to act as spies, wrapping shadows about you to conceal your movement, suffocating a foe with a billowing mist — you risk gaining a Mark of your curse. Marks are outward, physical signs of your curse, but could also have an emotional or psychological element. For instance, if you have the Curse of the Rookery, your Marks could be amber eyes of a crow, black feathers instead of hair, literal crow’s feet, or an uncontrollable urge to steal shiny things. Each character can gain a limited number of Marks.
Mechanically, Marks function as a story timer. The last Mark on your character sheet is always “Lost to the Curse”. Using your power can give you a lot of narrative control over the story, but the more you use it, the closer you come to being completely lost. At that point, the character is gone from the story — transformed into a statue, a hideous bird monster hidden by the family in the attic, or lost in an endless void of shadows.
Characters might struggle with identity as their bodies transform against their will, feel dread about suffering the same fate as a lost ancestor with a similar curse, or leave troubled relationships unresolved when they are lost. It’s tragic stuff. And though a character’s fate might be out of their control, it’s important to note that the player does have control over their story. They choose their Skeleton and their Curse upfront, and they choose how the Marks of their curse manifest.
I have an interview today with Rae Nedjadi on BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home, which is currently available on itch.io! This game sounds so fascinating, and Rae talked about some really deep thoughts with me. Check them out below!
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Tell me a little about BALIKBAYAN! What excites you about it?
BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home is a narrative tabletop role-playing game that gives everyone at the table equal creative opportunities!
Specifically
it’s a story about Elementals, beings of Supernatural Filipino Folklore come to
life. BALIKBAYAN takes place in the far future, in a Cyberpunk setting at the
mercy of The Corp, that has enslaved the elementals through machinery.
Over
the generations these machines have infused with the magic, so BALIKBAYAN is
also about wielding machine-magic and using it to stay on the run, destroy the
Corp, and rebirth Magic.
I’m
excited about so many things about BALIKBAYAN, but I’m most excited about
offering a creative playground for everyone to enjoy. I’ve never understood
this boundary between science fiction and fantasy, technology and ritual,
machine and magic. I wanted to offer people to play with these ideas, while
also offering my own modern reimagining of Filipino folklore.
I’m
really happy with the response, and how excited everyone is to enjoy Filipino
games made by Filipino designers! I’m honestly hoping this will encourage more
people to create their own games so we can have more creative voices in the
community.
Another thing that excites me is the game system. BALIKBAYAN is a Belonging Outside Belonging game, which gives everyone more creative control. It’s different from your typical TTRPG experience, where only the Game Master controls most of the narrative.
Many of my readers will be excited to hear about the Filipino roots of the game! What are some of the elements (themes, history, magic) of BALIKBAYAN that players will see that are very much Filipino?
The strongest and most
apparent Filipino themes are present in the Playbooks themselves. Currently
BALIKBAYAN has six playbooks: Tikbalang, Diwata, Saint, Aswang Santelmo, and
the Duwende. I wanted to unapologetically use the original names for these
beings of myth and legend.
I did this mainly because
I come across a lot of Filipinos who are familiar with the folklore of other
countries (most people who play D&D here know about elves, gnomes, and all
that). But when I run a Filipino inspired game and lean into our roots, most of
the people I know, living here in this country, don’t know much about our own
myths. And often they use a western perspective when approaching these myths,
which breaks my heart.
I will say though that I decided to personally interpretat the essence of
these myths and legends. There are some problematic aspects of our folklore
that reflects the centuries of colonization that still influences the
Philippines to this day.
For example I wanted to take the Tikbalang and break it away from just being
an anthropomorphic horse. Horses aren’t even a natural local animal here, and
to this day they’re associated with the elite and privileged. Instead I wanted
to lean into our shamanic and animism roots. The Tikbalang in BALIKBAYAN can
change into any anthropomorphic animal form, and I wanted that fluidity to be
an important aspect of the playbook. I also wanted to reflect how we often look
to spiritual leaders in our community, and the Tikbalang is true to that.
I think the SAINT is another important one. Religion is a big thing here in
the Philippines, for better and for worse. We have so many beautiful stories
about Saints and the mystical miracles they embodied to protect communities. I
wanted to acknowledge that, but once again honor our pre-colonial roots and
have the SAINT be a playbook that interacts with Small Gods, in a Cyberpunk
setting.
I could just go on and on about each playbook!
In general I wanted to
honor our folklore, but I wanted to respectfully bring it into the present and
reflect our modern values, nuances, and struggles. Because I’m bi-racial,
queer, and non-binary, I think that shows in the design. I put so much of
myself, and my complex love for my country, into this game.
BALIKBAYAN also speaks to
leaving behind our masters and becoming our own masters. I wanted this to reflect
in the premise and creative setting, but also in the mechanics and narrative
prompts.
Becoming our own masters is something I want to happen for Filipinos in
general. We were colonized for centuries, and the scars still show. As a
society, we haven’t done the collective and deeply emotional work to decolonize
our perspectives, approaches, and values. In a way we are still bowing down to
Masters that have long left us to rot, and it shows in our governance and
social value systems.
I have faith that we can do the work. Many artists, teachers, and leaders
are already helping their communities to do so. BALIKBAYAN is my own personal
attempt to help along and honor that decolonization process.
BALIKBAYAN seems like a big step away from what we’ve seen from cyberpunk. How have you altered the standard cyberpunk setting to really make it yours and to do something different?
It’s funny, I really get
this a lot! But to be perfectly honest, BALIKBAYAN simply embodies how I’ve
always seen and engaged with Cyberpunk. For one thing, I’ve always gravitated
more to portrayal of Cyberpunk themes in anime, especially from the 80s and
90s. I’ve always appreciated that lens more, and it really speaks to me.
I did want to make magic a big part of the game. This is again deeply
personal. I believe magic and technology aren’t at odds with each other, and
magic shouldn’t be regulated to fantasies chained to the past either. I was
initially inspired by games like Shadowrun, but I didn’t like how the lore and
system created this great divide between magic and technology. So in BALIKBAYAN
I wanted to make that barrier non-existent.
I think the main issue with Cyberpunk as a genre is that we often see the
aesthetic markers and surface indicators of the genre, but we ignore the important
work that POC and queer creators have done in the space. They’ve given me the
permission to define Cyberpunk on my own terms.
And in turn, I want to do the same for the people who will play BALIKBAYAN.
The game asks you to bring about the rebirth of magic and to create a
Revolution, but what that will actually entail is up to the players and is out
of my hands. I believe Cyberpunk, and the Revolution it inspires, is a deeply
personal experience.
Because I don’t think the world will change from one Revolution. I believe it will change, and has changed, from the series of ongoing neverending Revolutions that we bring to life.
There is a lot of discussion about
decolonizing games and how many major games are from a colonized perspective,
so I really appreciate you talking about that! Does any of this translate to
the actual mechanics you use in the game? What are the mechanics like?
I definitely feel that the
decolonization process can be incredibly personal. For me it was in realizing
that the games I used to love to run and play, namely Dungeons & Dragons
and games like it, focused on violence, possession, taking things through
strength, with a focus on exploring the “alien” and
“exotic” and marveling at how “weird” it all was. This was
reflected in the mechanics of the game too, I feel. As a Filipino, knowing that
my own country was treated this way by its colonizers, it left a really bad
taste in my mouth.
In BALIKBAYAN, the Belonging
Outside of Belonging system favors narrative play that is entirely in the hands
of the players. I also added a few mechanics that center on the decolonization
process. First, each playbook asks the players to choose and build on a
“human form” and a “true form”. Because the Elementals are
on the run, this is basically what forms are “acceptable” versus what
they truly look like. I wanted to leave it up to the players and each story
what this means, how do they navigate this? Next the playbooks ask you to
choose “What you hope for”. While the players are tasked to bring
about the Rebirth of Magic (more on that in a bit), I also wanted to give the
players a personal goal to help drive the story. In a way this reflects how I
feel about the decolonization process: each path is unique, deeply personal.
People can talk about what their decolonization process is like, but they
cannot dictate to others what it SHOULD be like. Each of us interacts with
different intersections of class, race, background, and so on. What the
decolonization process is like in America is VERY different from what it is
like in the Philippines, and so on. The individual hope reflects that, but it
also asks each player to balance or find common ground with that hope and the
rebirth of magic.
Which brings us to another mechanic
I added. Originally I just liked the idea of having a sort of countdown
mechanic, to give the players some structure or urgency to the story being
told. There are two clocks running. The first clock is you start ON THE RUN,
but can eventually end up CAPTURED by the Corp again. The second clock has you
start at FADING, your magic is weak and dwindling compared to your ancestors,
but you want to reach REBORN, with the magic being your own.
In my mind, decolonization is not
about returning to what was before our colonizers came. That is in the past,
and much of our history has been rewritten by those more powerful than us. When
I think about what we’ve lost, what we could have been, it frustrates me. When
I think of the privilege I enjoy because of my circumstances that are favored
by a colonial mentality, I feel guilty and ill at ease. For example, I speak
English well and that opened a lot of doors for me, when it shouldn’t have. I
strongly feel that the way forward is in acknowledging the past, while building
our own sense of worth and grace outside of our colonial mentality. In the
Philippines we need to acknowledge that much of our systems and infrastructure
are badly compromised by these centuries of colonization. We need to rebuild,
to be reborn, to reclaim our own magic.
I’m nonbinary too, so I’m always
fascinated to see how other nonbinary designers make games. How do you feel
that your queerness, your nonbinary identity, being bi-racial, and these other
personal aspects of yourself have impacted the design and presentation of
BALIKBAYAN and the cyberpunk world within it?
To be honest, I used to really struggle with the idea of queer design, and what that looks like. I have to truly give credit to the community of indie designers who looked at my work and reflected on it, helping me see the queerness and nonbinary nature of my design. In BALIKBAYAN my nonbinary asserts itself by allowing the players to choose how active or passive they wish the story to flow. There are tools available, but I provide many examples that show how each game can be unique and flow completely differently. As a nonbinary, I believe in nuance and push away from the black and white. There are some cool mechanics tied to that (for example, even if you bring about the Rebirth of Magic, you have to answer the question “Which one of us runs away, and helps rebuild the Corp?”). Though I also have to say that also reflects my colonial pain, many of us resort to acting like our colonial masters in the way of rebirth and revolution (those dang intersections, right?).
But yes as a nonbinary designer, I come from a place of nuance and push that towards the forefront. I think that also gave me the sheer confidence to tackle the Cyberpunk genre. I grew up loving it, and like so many people like me (queer, POC, etc) I also felt disappointed by how so much of its core themes of revolution and self-acceptance were rewritten and downplayed. But I refuse to back down, and I’ll continue designing in these spaces and do my work to reclaim it along with other diverse artists.
Tell me a little about Doikayt. What excites you about it?
Doikayt is a Jewish Tabletop Role Playing Game anthology. The word Doikayt itself is Yiddish, and roughly translates to “hereness”. It is this idea that I am most intrigued and excited by, truthfully. Judaism is a religion and a tradition that isn’t monolithic. It’s founded on the principles of conversation and argument, conflict and interpretation. Riley and I were lucky enough to get pitches and submissions from people that claim vastly different backgrounds and experiences, and subsequently have different ideas of what constitutes Judaism.
I can’t wait to see how everyone’s work comes together, how their worlds influence their ideas and words. For me, the moment I’m most looking forward to is seeing the games complete and spending the time thinking about how my Judaism is a product of my upbringing, and how the themes explored by each designer help to paint a picture of them and their Jewishness.
JR Goldberg and Riley Rethal, the project leads.
Awesome! What about tabletop RPGs do you think makes them a good medium for expressing the different experiences and perspectives of Judaism?
There are a few reasons. First and foremost, the Jewish tradition is steeped in things that could be generally classified as a LARP or a TTRPG. A lot of Jewish traditions, especially ones surrounding the holidays, have been gamified in some way. So I think for many Jews, expressing something that speaks to them about Judaism through a game is something that is perhaps not innate, but at the very least is experiential.
Additionally, Judaism is a tradition and religion that isn’t based on dogmatism. Discussion of everything is encouraged, and learning and discussion of the tenets of faith is encouraged with a partner or in a group. Other perspectives are necessary. I think this is helpful and true for design and for play, as well. My best game experiences and memories have been times when the group coalesced and built something together that would have been impossible to do by myself. While I don’t necessarily think that Jews have a monopoly on that sort of thing, I do think that having it be such a part of the culture will make for some interesting angles with regards to play and design.
What are some of the challenges and benefits of running a project like this for a group of people with such different, but still related, stories they want to tell?
Riley and I were lucky in that none of the pitches we gravitated toward felt too similar. I can only think of maybe one instance where we felt as though we had to choose between two games that were too thematically close to both be included. I think that speaks to the amount of stuff that can be covered, and the amount of stuff that people think of when prompted to make a “Jewish Game”. That being said, we did have to be conscious not to just represent one Jewish tradition.
When we realized that the majority of the perspectives that we got through the submissions were Ashkenazi, one of the first things we decided to do as a stretch goal was to add essays that would be representative of the rich histories that Sephardic, Ethiopian and Mizrahi Jewry have completely separate from Ashkenazi Judaism. We felt like getting context from community members themselves would be the best option, as we certainly did not want to be appropriative in any way.
What are some examples of the kind of games, concepts, and artistic presentations we’ll be seeing from Doikayt and its designers?
Gosh, I think we have some really varied and interesting stuff in the anthology. One thing that we did semi-consciously is try and make games that have original systems in some way. Because we anticipated have a readership that may not know exactly what PbtA or BoB is, having a book full of hacks of existing games might’ve been alienating for some, in that there is an inevitable shorthand used that less experienced players would’ve had a hard time with. But beyond that, we have games that run the gamut.
While we have many designers working on the book, we do have one unifying force: all interior art is being done by Never Angeline North. You can see Never’s first piece for Doikayt on the kickstarter page. She is a recent convert to Judaism, and I think that is a super interesting perspective that will be present throughout.
How does a Jewish approach to games and game design differ from the more mainstream work we’re used to seeing, and what do you most want people to take away from this project?
I’m honestly not sure if I can that question at this point in the process! I know, speaking for myself, I don’t think I can help but have my Judaism permeate all my design work, even the stuff that isn’t expressly Jewish. How that manifests exactly is something that I’m not sure I’m introspective enough to really answer. That being said, I think once we have the book in our hands, we will be able to see the start of something.
My hope is that it is something that defies simple classification, but I can already tell from what we have looked at thus far, it will contain the humor, vulnerability and contemplation that is present throughout most Jewish texts. I suppose that is also what I to leave people with: my Jewish experience was probably different from yours because my life was different than yours. You may not even be Jewish, just a fan of TTRPG and a curious soul. But rather than focusing on the differences or setting up hurdles, through these games, we will be able to find human similarities.
I’ve got another great quick interview with Martin Lloyd, this time about the Big Book of Amazing Tales, currently on Kickstarter! It sounds like a great game resource for kids to add to your Amazing Tales collection. Check out Martin’s responses below!
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What is the Big Book of Amazing Tales, both as
a product and as your vision?
Some of the most fun I’ve had with Amazing Tales has been
playing games with the kids while on holiday, that’s when we’ve played out
campaigns, and the idea of the Big Book is to make it easy for other families
to do the same. So in the book I’m including four campaigns, one
for each of the settings in the book. So you’ll get…
A Dream of Trees – for the Deep Dark Wood setting
The Quest for the Dragon Crown – for the Magical Kingdoms setting
Captain Cadava’s Treasure – for the Pirate Seas setting
The Cryptid Conundrum – for the Adventure among the Stars setting
The Big Book of Amazing Tales should be seen as a companion
volume to Amazing Tales. Amazing Tales gives you all the tools you need to make
up amazing adventures with your kid and get them started on role-playing. The
Big Book of Amazing Tales is about providing you with some really great
campaigns that can take things to the next level.
Before I started writing I set myself some goals. One of
them was to include elements in the games that would bring the games alive in
the real world as well as the player’s imagination. So in the Quest for the
Dragon Crown there is a crown for the players to cut out, colour in and put
together when they find it. It doesn’t look like a conventional crown, but its
form is a clue to what it really does so having it right there in the players’
hands is important. One of the other goals is to include ‘moments of awesome’
for the players, to make sure they have those moments where their characters
get to do something amazing. You really will save the kingdom, slay the dragon,
stop the alien invasion and so on.
It’s also a chance for me to answer two of the questions
I’ve been asked most frequently since launching Amazing Tales. Namely – ‘How do
you use this game in a classroom?’, and ‘Can I use this game to help my kid
with some kind of problem?’. Although to be honest I won’t be the one doing the
answering. Baz Stevens, who is both a teacher and a game designer will be
answering the first question, and Lilly Smith who is a child therapist will be
answering the second.
As an ongoing product, how do you keep coming up for ideas for
Amazing Tales, and keep them fresh?
It really helps that Amazing Tales doesn’t have a fixed setting. So I’m not stuck trying to come up with five different fantasy adventures, or a new twist on space pirates or whatever. If I’m writing a pirate adventure I can make it the most piratey pirate adventure imaginable, a kind of Pirates of the Carribean in RPG form, and try and cram it full of as many pirate ideas as I can. I don’t need to worry about having used all the good stuff and then having to write another pirate campaign next week. * Once a month I publish a set of story seeds in the Amazing Tales newsletter, and those are always a good chance to really interrogate an idea. I pick a simple concept like ‘Temples’ and then try and come up with a set of ideas that do something interesting with that idea – stretching it in different directions. It’s a good practice.
And then there are the games I hear about people playing
with their kids. Often there will be a couple of sentences on Facebook that
sound brilliant, but that’s all there is. So it becomes a jumping off point for
new ideas. Someone posted the other day about an adventure involving a lost
circus in a forest. That’s about all I know, but it’s a great starting point.
An adventure about a lost circus in a forest, it almost doesn’t matter what
genre or system you’re playing – that’s a great place to start.
What
are some of your favorite things in the Big Book and what are they like for
players?
I’m really looking forward to some of the special extras. So in the Cryptid Conundrum, where the heroes need to crack the alien codes, there’ll be a decoder ring for the players to cut out and make. Now a lot of kids will probably make something like that at some point while growing up, but how many of them will get to use it to rescue the victims of an alien kidnapping? In a similar way that bit of research about kids being better at identifying logos than trees really bothers me. So A Dream of Trees will definitely include puzzles that require learning about trees, leaves, nuts and the like. Hopefully that will be enough to make kids a bit more excited by being outdoors, because playing outside is almost as important as role-playing 🙂
* Thinking about it, this is probably one of the reasons the Pirates of the Carribean sequels ended up the way they did…
