My products are temporarily on reverse sale to gear up for tax time I’ve increased the prices by a very nice percentage – hopefully to help me get through this year’s taxes! Buy all of the products for a cool nice $69 – yes, that’s more expensive. Just like taxes!
My goal for the sale is $420. I will not use it for blazing it, just to give a boost to my funds to pay taxes owed. It runs until 4/1/19!
Thank you for any and all support!
We recently posted an update about Turn’s progress, and it’s going pretty well! We may soon be closing pre-orders (which are still open here!) if all goes well with layout, and we are pushing on thru with the stretch goals. I wanted to talk a little about Turn in playtesting, and a big thing that happened recently in our longest-run playtest.
Some people may have heard me talk on Twitter about my character Beau Taggart, who is a professional hunter, the game’s Late Bloomer, a Cougar, and super gay. In his early character background during character generation, we established that Beau had turned for the first time only recently, about six months ago (as required for the Late Bloomer role). When he turned for the first time, he his truck had just been hit by a drunk driver while he was driving down a winding back road.
He got out of the car to check on the driver, but the driver was behaving aggressively, and tried to punch him. Beau knew something felt wrong, but he was scared and panicked, and responded by hitting the guy back. He didn’t know that his body had started to turn, that his super strength had grown. The hit was so hard it broke the guy’s neck, and while Beau was realizing with horror he’d killed a man, he also turned into a cougar for the first time.
His animal instincts kicked in – he hid the body, and ate some of it, leaving his claw and teeth marks on it, desperately hungry in light of the force turn. In his panic, he was found by Camellia, a fellow shapeshifter (Overachiever, Bison) who helped him get back to human form, and over time, he learned better how to calm down. He didn’t tell Camellia, or anyone else, about the drunk driver, harboring his accidental crime as yet another secret.
Not many Turn characters have super tragic backstories, and this one isn’t even all that bad (sometimes people accidentally kill people, and those are small town secrets I’ve heard), but I knew there was a risk of it being an element when people played so I built a character with a high risk background to see how fast we could ramp up to exposure. It still took over a year at our slow playing pace – which is ideal. If we were playing weekly, it would happen more quickly, but it paces out well.
How did I plan this out? Well, I knew the number of exposure marks for towns and town characters, I knew the average number of scenes per session (5-8), how many of those typically risk exposure (4-7), and how many sessions each character is generally in (3-6). I knew that having a higher risk background meant that I would end up on the higher range of everything, and that Beau was starting with a generally positive reputation as a Late Bloomer.
That doesn’t mean I was ready for the exposure to hit max!
Turn has ten marks on the exposure track for the town. You can get positive or negative marks, based on the type of interaction that causes them. You take the marks when you’ve done something that might cause someone to suspect your shifter identity – it can be behavioral, it can be physical, etc. Something like slipping up and saying you spent all night in the woods, or maybe your eyes shine oddly in a photograph.
Beau’s track grew and grew over time, including his town character (TC) tracks, which are separate. One TC of his was Diego, his best friend who knew everything but this secret. Early on in the campaign, I played Beau to slowly reveal his identity as a shifter to Diego, purposefully planning positive encounters. He managed to do so successfully, which was good, because Beau was truly in love with Diego. They later became partners, but it was still pretty quiet, because the town was relatively conservative in that regard. Their own professional hunter in love with his buddy? Beau wasn’t sure they could handle it.
There are three results you can get when you become fully exposed to a TC or the town itself: reviled, which is the lowest result, and results either in a toxic and risky relationship with the TC or you getting run out of town or dealing with violence; revealed, which is the middling result and means you may risk comforts, safety, or gossip but you’ll be able to stay in town; and known, which is the best result, and means you’re accepted in the town or by the TC.
With Diego, Beau got known, so he was able to get together with Diego, stay friends and more, and not have any risk increased from it. Over time Beau had some more positive and some more negative interactions with people in the town, just like you do – simple things that cause conflict last longer in people’s minds than we thing. It was pretty balanced. But, rumors arose when a body was found in the woods that it turned out matched the drunk driver, whose car was found, too.
This combined with Beau acting out of sorts because he found out who his birth mother was and it led to a spectacular new ability – the ability to turn into a Raven, as well! These events combined led to an exposure roll, which is 2d6 plus the exposure track, added up based on the +’s and -‘s on the track, and a + for any known TCs. I rolled poorly, but had enough based on the roll, the track, and Diego, I got the middling result – revealed. That meant no immediate danger, but it meant time had come to face facts.
The rumors spread faster than Beau could do anything for, and before he could even come clean to his closest friends (Camellia and Iris, his cousin and coworker), the cops were at Camellia’s door looking for Beau. He managed to tell Diego what happened, and Diego supported him, but he was going to have to deal with the police at some point. He decided to turn himself in. Meanwhile, on the in-fiction Facebook, his fellow townspeople were spreading memes of the Cougar Killer, claiming he’d murdered the man and mutilated the bodies. This is something that would eventually die out without the police arresting him, but in the moment it was challenging!
A little bit of coordination led to him having enough time to sneak past the deputy posted at Camellia’s (where his truck was*) to tell Camellia and Iris what was going on, then turn himself in with some legal support obtained by Camellia. He confessed to fighting with the guy, but stopped short of admitting to murder. The cops didn’t have enough evidence to keep him. In the end, Beau will still live in Cauldron Springs, unable to leave easily because of the ties that hold him there, and hopefully happy with Diego (because that cat’s outta the bag).
But, once you’re brought in for something this serious, it’s hard for people to drop their suspicions. Combining it with Beau becoming obviously out as queer since Diego went with him to the police station, Beau’s once stellar social standing is pretty decreased. He’ll be able to survive, but he’s not who he once was to these townspeople – many of them will go on believing he actually murdered someone, others will simply struggle with his identity especially when tied with the stigma of being questioned for murder.
So basically it all worked out? Like this is exactly how this sort of result should be narratively. Maybe some people might choose to have the shifter identity be the forefront and have it be more fantastical, some people might want to diminish the fantasy even further, and either is okay – just keeping in mind that people rarely want to believe the most fantastical things, even though they’ll often use fantastical things as metaphor or illusion for the reality.
The pacing for the exposure to max out worked perfectly, the narrative surrounding it hit all the right notes, and all I did was start with some trouble baked in, like so many characters do. It meant a lot to me to play this character** and have it play out so true to what I designed. The game works, it works really good, and it tells the stories I want to be told.
I can’t ask for more, honestly.
I’m curious, what have you worked on in games that you played out in playtesting or just when you released the game that made you have that, like, damn, I did it! moment? A moment with the math lining up just right, or the narrative tone hitting the right button? Share it in the comments, and please share this on social media to talk about those moments of design success!
*Beau constantly forgot his truck at Camellia’s, where he often went to have tea to calm down and to hang out, then turned into a cougar to hit the woods. It actually became a feature on the map! Oops.
**Who some might have guessed was a test run for my chosen name
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Today I have an interview with Jay Iles on Mysthea: Legends From the Borderlands, which is currently on Kickstarter! It plays into some of the thoughts I’ve been having about what happens after rebellion.
Art for Mysthea is by Travis Anderson.
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Tell me a little about Mysthea: Legends From the Borderlands. What excites you about it?
So! Mysthea: Legends From the Borderlands is a game of post-war rebuilding and divided loyalties in a geomantic fantasy world. It’s set in a city that’s in territory contested by two major powers, and now those powers are at war. The war front has passed over this city and is now a distant rumble, and the city is free again – though much worse for wear. Each player creates a faction active in the city, whether they’re an ancient order, a new organisation dedicated to refugee support, or sent by one of the great powers to rebuild the city and pursue their patron’s agenda. You’ll make a viewpoint character from your faction, dive into the politics and struggles of the wounded city, and see how it changes from flashpoint to flashpoint.
I’m excited about:
I like this zoomed in look, and I’m curious about the flashpoints! What does it feel like in play to go from moment to moment in this world, and how is that represented in the game?
A flashpoint starts with you defining its core issue: why have we decided to pick up this city’s story here? Maybe a battalion of soldiers has arrived at the city and demanded supplies? Perhaps a shower of crystal meteors have hit the city, causing destruction and warped the area? Or maybe one of the player factions has decided they’ve had enough, and is going to try and seize control of the city?
So – you’ve set up this flashpoint. To play through it, you’ll jump between the actions of Houses (slow, ponderous, and vast) and Heroes – agile and dynamic, but with their own priorities. We’ve designed the two layers to feel very different in play. House actions add new elements to the map and reshape the city’s balance of power, but use up a limited pool of Decrees. The hero phase feels more like standard PbtA, something like Monster of the Week. Your group of characters have a mission to deal with, and as you play out the moment-to-moment drama of that conflict you’ll test your bonds with your fellows and discover new truths about the world. The two phases flow into each other. Your Houses’ actions set up threats and opportunities for your Heroes to deal with, while your Heroes’ on-the-ground experience of this city and its people can completely change your Houses’ priorities and goals.
How do you approach the idea of consent and agency in a world where people can control things with their mind, able to break rules with a thought?
One of the interesting things about magic in Mysthea is that it adds agency, and its most powerful effects need close friends working together on a common goal. It’s a link between the mental and the material and has been used in-setting to craft crystal prostheses amputees can telekinetically control, and literally give agency to constructed beings of stone and crystal.
There’s the other element too – consent and agency. One person acting on their own can only perform a few tricks with crystal shards and boost their normal actions – to do more, you need to work together. By calling on the aid of those who have strong bonds with you you add their wisdom to yours, letting you work together to go beyond human limits, evoke world-warping auras and more.
The fact that magical potency comes from close bonds and common goals instead of years of arcane research and expensive components is really interesting! What sort of society does that lead to? How does that change how minority groups organise and lobby for their rights? How do autocrats maintain their power, knowing what power lies in their subject’s hands if they work together? I’m interested to find out!
I was just asking people about making games that happen after the liberation! What do you think are the challenges in designing a game with this focus, and what’s exciting about them?
One challenge is definitely the messy complexity of these situations. You can’t turn back the clock – the occupation happened, and it and your ‘liberation’ left scars on this place. Among the city’s citizens you’ll have those who want to restore the old ways, and those who suffered under that regime and want to keep moving forward. Among the liberators, you’ll have isolationists wanting to minimise investment and occupiers trying to claim this city permanently.
That’s a really interesting social situation to drop players into, but it’s vital to keep the difference between dogma and the true situation clear. Part of our solution is to make sure the game prioritises humanity over ideology. We want to humanise all parties involved, though that definitely doesn’t mean presenting all positions as valid.
Finally, we’re aware of the limits of our own perspectives, and have hired consultants to make sure we treat sensitive matters with the appropriate degree of tact and care.
What are some of the more complex aspects of designing a game focused on a whole city, rather than just a few characters?
First, you have to treat the city as a character in its own right, and give it a presence at the table. The map of the city is central to the game: you begin by placing down its districts and landmarks, and as you play you’ll introduce factors to it representing people, places and events crucial to the current flashpoint.
It’s also important to maintain the link between people and their community – to the extent that one of the GM’s principles is ‘name everyone, and know who backs them’. There’s no lone wolves in Legends From the Borderlands, and no faceless mooks – everyone has their own identity, and their own place in the city’s cultural fabric.
Of course, the easiest way to make something feel alive is to have it change. The timeskips between flashpoints are here to establish that, letting the city grow physically and culturally – each time you jump ahead, you’ll describe ways the city’s appearance has changed, and a new festival that’s sprung up to remember the previous flashpoint.
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Thank you to Jay for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Mysthea: Legends From the Borderlands on Kickstarter today!
Today I have five-or-so questions with Thomas Deeny on the vs. KICKSTARTER, a collection of three games that’s currently on Kickstarter! Check out what Thomas had to say below.
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Tell me a little about vs. KICKSTARTER. What excites you about it?
vs. KICKSTARTER began as three small roleplaying games based on Phil Reed’s vs. Monsters. More accurately, they are inspired by his vs. Outlaws, a pared-down Wild West-themed version of his original game. That game was produced on both sides of a multi-panel screen that folds down to a 5-1/2″ square.
A bit over a decade ago, Phil opened the vsM Engine up for others to use. At that time, I had worked a bit on three games based on vsM, but I wound up focusing on completing a BFA and plans for development were pushed back. A few months ago, there was a discussion on twitter about one of the settings I had developed as a vsM-powered game. I looked back at the old files and while that particular game needed a lot of work, I saw that vs. MARS was nearly done. So much so, that a bit of trimming and it would fit on that folded screen template. From there, the other two initial games featured in the campaign followed.
vs. MARS is a game about an alien invasion in a small town. I’ve always been a fan of survival fiction — things like zombie movies where the focus and threat is about the other survivors but there is some external threat pressuring the survivors. vs. MARS really slots into that role. The unlocked expansion opens the game up to leading a resistance on occupied Earth.
vs. MIRRORSHADES is a fast-playing cyberpunk game. I love the cyberpunk genre and my hope is this game falls a bit more into the social change/punk part of cyberpunk rather than the chrome fetishization side. An unlocked two-panel expansion to this adds fantasy races and magic to the MegaCity — it’s the most-requested addition to any cyberpunk game.
vs. PIRATES is a game in the golden age of piracy from our childhood memories. The already-unlocked expansion came first: I’ve always wanted to play a game that was a mashup of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and The Pirates of the Caribbean. Without the expansion, you’re playing more of a Treasure Island or Black Sails game. With the expansion, you’ve got undead pirates, the kraken, and cursed treasure.
We’ve recently unlocked vs. EMPIRE, a game that isn’t so much “Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off” as it is “Star Wars with the serial numbers filled in Play-Doh”.
Initially, I thought the campaign would need $400 to fund and would probably top out at $600 or about 40 or 45 backers. I am excited about the response to the campaign so far! As I write this, the campaign is 500% funded and we are nearing 100 backers — that’s twice the number of backers and nearly twice the amount pledged past a point in my initial spreadsheet where I wrote “we’re probably dreaming at this point”. That these small games are inspiring people I don’t even know to come on board and help make them a reality is just something that surprised me — it really impressed me.
Great! What about this particular mechanical system appealed to you to use in such a variety of settings, and what have you changed to suit them?
When I started designing my initial vs. game, I was interested in survival fiction. Rather than being the proactive monster hunters of vs. Monsters where your characters decide to hunt down monsters, having a setting where you are forced to take on that role appealed to me. You’re a regular person and then something happens: how do you react to that?
I had two different main games I was developing which had the same underlying elements: normality is interrupted by an invasion; you are simultaneously being hunted and take on the role of the hunters. One game was somewhat campy, the other somewhat serious. They combined and the theme of vs. MARS wound up engulfing the other.
Since my initial designs, my preferred game style has changed from one where we’re just players reacting to the twists and turns of the GM’s story to more of a style where there is player collaboration in they way the story is shaped. In vs. MARS, there are rules for scene framing where a player answers two questions: “What is this scene about?” and “Where does it take place?” Adding an element like this helps to emulate the type of fiction vs. MARS emulates — in a setting like an alien invasion, one major element is isolation or separation. By adding scene framing, our protagonists don’t have to be in a small clump of adventuring heroes all the time.
When there is damage involved, conflict resolution now incorporates the suits of cards drawn to speed up determining damage taken. The cyberpunk game, vs. MIRRORSHADES, has a Metal stat that is used whenever cyberware augmentations are used. To reflect the setting’s concept that cyberware is an improvement, using Metal makes the highest card revealed a suit that trumps all others. It effectively guarantees that you’re going to have some effect on the scene if you use these augments.
You know I love small towns, so I’m curious, what do you do to make the town small and still feel worth being in for vs. MARS?
During character creation, one of the things you would choose for your survivor is their concept: something about what they did before the invasion and what they want. This desire is something that should tie them into the town. The current example character is Tabitha Masters, a French major at ETU who wants to get home to make sure her family is safe.
Stock locations are listed for a few things found in and around the town that convey the theme of isolation.
What have you done to make fantasy character types exciting and respectful for cyberpunk, mechanically or setting-wise?
To get to that, I have to work through the constraints of the project. Whenever I see a new game come out the first question I always see asked is: “Can I play Star Wars with it?” (Which is where vs. EMPIRE comes from.) The second question is: “Can I play Shadowrun with it?” When developing the cyberpunk vs. game, it seemed that a straight cyberpunk game with an option to add on the fantasy elements would fit the limited space I had available.
With vs. MAGICSHADES, a player chooses their character’s heritage, which adds a simple one-use bonus to the character. Some implied setting material, such as the elf nation of Tir nAill claiming all elves as citizens, start to bring in some classic tropes of pseudo-Shadowrun.
How are your pirates and their world different from and the same as those we most commonly see in media?
The tagline for vs. PIRATES says the setting is based on the way we remember tales of pirates from our childhood. I feel it is more cartoonish than serious. Even though you could play something straight like the Black Sails television show, I anticipate the default play style would be more like The Pirates of the Caribbean if one stripped out all the supernatural aspects.
The way vs. PIRATES works is we establish the approach one will take to a situation. Our stats in the game are Swashbuckling and Parley. Basically if you’re fighting, your approach uses Swashbuckling. If you’re not, it’s Parley. An antagonist also has approaches, but they are based on their role. So a pirate antagonist would be drawing more cards if they were doing something piratey and fewer if they were doing something outside their role.
Going back to that default play style, adding in the vs. DAVY JONES expansion bumps the game towards that Buffy + Pirates of the Caribbean game, so we can add some more supernatural elements to the antagonists and their goals.
What more do you have in store both for those already-achieved stretch goals and anything else to come?
I really don’t want to overextend myself on this, which is the first Kickstarter campaign I’ve handling myself. While I have been collaborating and working on over a dozen others, I’ve seen a few easy ways how a successful campaign can be twisted into become a financial nightmare.
I’ve spoken to a few other campaign creators when it looked like we were close to unlocking the vs. EMPIRE stretch goal. Nearly every one told me to not add anything else that I don’t feel comfortable with. At this point, the project is funded and will be delivered — with the planning I’ve done for the campaign, it’s all good. I don’t want to take on additional costs that could disrupt fulfillment of the project.
So right now, the last stretch goal was “I’ll add a second topping to a celebratory pizza when this is all over.”
However, I have plans for further developing some of those earlier vsM games into this format, including one game designed to be a 1-on-1 one-shot. I’ll see how fulfillment goes for this campaign first!
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Thanks so much to Thomas for the interview! I hope you enjoyed it and that you check out the vs. KICKSTARTER on Kickstarter today!
I have an interview today with Craig Campbell on CAPERS Noir, which is currently on Kickstarter! Super interested to see what’s up with this new installment in the CAPERS system.
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What is CAPERS Noir, both as a product and as your vision?
CAPERS Noir is the first supplement for my award-winning CAPERS RPG. It provides new character options and new GM tools as well as an alternative setting for the game. It takes the core game setting of the 1920s Prohibition era and moves it forward twenty years to the WW2 years. This alternative setting shifts from gangster shoot-em-ups to moody, atmospheric, crime noir stories filled with mystery and some horror elements. The additional rules and tools help fill out this noir setting but are also perfectly usable in the core Roaring Twenties setting.
This supplement is a test case for me, to see if CAPERS has the legs to become a full game line. The early success of the Kickstarter makes me feel it does. The fan base (old and new) have been very enthusiastic, supportive, and looking forward to seeing more. I have plans to publish at least two more supplements, each about the same size as CAPERS Noir. Each will take a similar path of being an alternative historical period/setting/theme while also expanding options for all other versions of the game. My hope is to explore a variety of “cops vs robbers” themes and tropes with these supplements.
What are the Noir rules like and how do they change CAPERS?
The core rules of CAPERS Noir are still the same (and you need the core book to play). There are some new powers, and I’ve tried some different things with how you gain abilities and boosts, flexing the powers system a bit. The first big difference is that CAPERS Noir includes investigation rules using the core playing card mechanics. This rule subset allows an investigation to move forward (that is, clues keep getting found) without shutting down the whole thing over one bad trait check. Success and failure on the investigation checks instead describes how you gain additional information or add complications to the story.
Additionally, the horror elements brought to bear in CAPERS Noir provides for the possibility that your character’s soul will be corrupted. Temptation lies around every corner. Committing terrible acts at the wrong time can bring you a bit more power, but at a cost. A “shade track” defines how far your character has fallen to darkness and what benefits and hindrances this causes. You can pull yourself back out in a few different ways, most commonly by paying attention to and pursuing your “beacon,” a person, place, or thing that you hold dear and seek to help and protect.
What have you put together to flesh out a 1940s setting and explore that complex era?
Noir fiction and film that developed in the 20s and 30s (and feed forward into the 40s and 50s) are at the core of CAPERS Noir. The crime noir themes of the alternate setting explore the darker side of humanity, nihilism, fatalism, cynicism. Things aren’t what they seem, morally gray characters are everywhere, and the protagonist doesn’t always “win.” It’s a world of mystery and darkness, where the good must struggle simply to stay good and the darker characters are at risk of falling deeper into darkness even more easily. Plus, lots of characters smoking cigarettes in the rain.
The supplement doesn’t deal directly with World War 2, but the ravages of war and its aftermath certainly are on characters’ minds in the game. (And that’s not to say I won’t ever explore the actual war, with super-powered characters taking part, in some future supplement.)
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Thanks so much for the interview Craig, and the promise of more CAPERS! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out CAPERS Noir on Kickstarter today!
The following is an essay by John W. Sheldon, someone you may know as the art director for Turn, or as the creator of Roar of Alliance, playtested at Big Bad Con and elsewhere.
My name is John W. Sheldon, and I’ve been working on a tabletop game called Roar of Alliance for a few years (I used to call it Armored Reckoning). The game is about crewing an Allied tank in an alt-history World War Two and fighting through waves Nazis to set things right. What could be more anti-fascist than that? Lots of stuff, it turns out. The problem is that Nazis aren’t the only fascists, and my game does some things that potentially support fascist ways of thinking. In the political climate of the United States in 2019, it is especially important that we be aware of these things and work to mitigate them as much as possible. I’m writing about my process here in the hopes that others might find a useful example in the steps I’ve taken, and so that people with more experience can point out ways I can further improve.
How does a game about destroying Nazi tanks and blowing up their infantry risk supporting fascist modes of thought? One cornerstone of fascist ideology is that they (the fascists) are oppressed by an enemy that is numerous, pervasive, powerful, and simultaneously inferior (stupid, incompetent, or morally weak). Another cornerstone is that the only appropriate way to deal with that enemy is by force.
The rules of my game do specifically these things:
The enemies you face in Roar of Alliance are numerous (outnumbering the players in just about every engagement), dangerous (their vehicles are often more advanced and better armed), and lack intelligence (their actions are automated by simple if/then statements that they never deviate from). The only way players ever interact with these foes is via deadly force. You will lose the game if you do not destroy their vehicles and disperse their infantry.
So, in these ways at least, my game actually promotes a core set of fascist ideologies. Some of this is hard to avoid, given that the game doesn’t have anyone in a central directorial role to moderate portrayals of the enemy or to restrict player behaviors in direct contact with the enemy outside combat, therefore no character in the game is ever confronted by a Nazi outside the specific circumstance of combat. This is a conscious choice to make sure nobody at the table is ever tasked with portraying a Nazi, and it keeps torture* and certain other types of violent fantasy outside the scope of the game as written. Players also have some leeway in narrating the effects of their actions on the enemy: when enemy infantry are removed from the field, players can choose to narrate the enemy’s retreat or death, and players do the same for surviving crew of disabled enemy vehicles.
Since violence and a portrayal of the enemy as numerous and unintelligent are essential to the way the game functions, and I don’t want to scrap the whole thing and start over, how do I make sure the rest of the game refutes fascism?
I start with something nationalists and fascists hate: I make sure that every other aspect of the game supports and emphasizes diversity and demonstrates how it creates strength. This paragraph kicks off the rulebook:
This game is set during the 2nd World War in Europe, a time when even the historical victors were rife with bigoted beliefs and policies. You should not let those real world bigotries limit the characters you choose to portray and accept. People of all races and genders from six continents and countless backgrounds fought against fascism and Nazism in Europe, and your characters should reflect some of that diversity.
Moreover, players are asked to identify their character’s country of origin, to help emphasize the diversity of geographic origin of the people who challenge fascism. Some of these choices are informed at a basic level by the themes of the character archetypes the game offers. In particular, the Partisan archetype was a resident of Nazi-occupied territory and a resistance fighter before joining up with the crew, the Collateral is a member of a population oppressed by the Allies and nevertheless pressed into service against the Nazis (e.g., Black Americans or colonial subjects of the British Empire), and the Duty was someone who volunteered for the fight because they new defeating fascism and Nazism was the right thing to do.
For actually producing the game, I’m doing what I’d never recommend: I’m doing the rules writing, layout, and illustrations all myself. What this does mean is that I can make sure that all of the art upholds my stated dedication to multiple axes of diversity. The art within the rules documents already portrays people of multiple genders, races, and body types as members of the player tank crew. Additional art I’m working on will include crew members with visible disabilities, crew wearing items of non-European traditional dress, and different cultural grooming standards.
Part of my plan for taking the game to crowdfunding is to offer backers the opportunity to have their portraits included as the card back art for some of the character archetypes, and as the face cards in the crew deck. Since I believe the audience for my game (one about Tanks in World War Two) skews significantly male, white, able-bodied, and cis, simply offering all of these art opportunities on a first-come, first-served basis would further skew the art for my game towards a monolithic default. To maintain my dedication to diversity, I need to give up potential sources of revenue and pre-stack the art with diverse portraits. I’ll won’t be offering backer levels for the Jacks in the Crew Deck, or for half of the character archetypes. Instead, I’ll be creating those portraits before the crowdfunding campaign begins. The portraits for the Jacks will be portraits of non-binary volunteers, and those for the first half of the character archetypes will be of volunteers who are one or more of non-white, queer, or visibly disabled.
Most fascism thrives on mythologizing heroes as paragons of strength, capable of facing great hardship alone and without aid. The heroes of fascism also contain within them a paradox: the enemy they face is terrifying, but they never actually feel fear. Roar of Alliance refutes these mythologized ideas of heroism idea on multiple fronts. The very nature of combat in my game requires players to rely on one another at all times (no person can operate a tank single-handedly). The player characters also begin the game by admitting fear: one of the first tasks of the first session is to identify a fear your character has about the fighting to come.
During the game, player characters will take Stress (the game’s unified resource representing both physical toughness and mental resilience). Characters who max out their Stress during an engagement play out a Last Stand for significant effect, then leave the Crew (the player decides whether they have died or simply become unable for whatever reason to continue on as a tank crew member). While the characters have a limited set of resources called Motivations that the players can expend to avoid stress, the only way to actually recover Stress relies on spending time with the other characters between battles. Only by working together, by comforting one another, and by acknowledging their own dependence on others can characters reduce their Stress and gain new Motivations to help them engage in future battles.
Every archetype has scene prompts that show them needing help, and the whole game requires players to rely extensively on one another. Even the player’s Crew is supported by a company of non-Crew characters that players will occasionally be called on to portray between battles. No lone strong hero, or even small group of heroes, can accomplish the monumental task the players are facing.
Fascism dehumanizes its enemies, making it easier for its adherents to attack, belittle, and eventually exterminate those that oppose it. You can see this in language comparing enemies to animals, assigning them undesirable traits as a group, in racist and anti-Semitic propaganda images that exaggerate enemy features to cartoonish extremes, or even in recent online language where some members of right-leaning web forums call people who oppose them “NPCs” – implying that there is no real individual personhood in those that disagree with their fascist ideology.
In my quest to make the game as hostile as possible to fascist ideologies, I must design the game to humanize the enemies that players face. Everyone should be reminded that the Nazis and members of the Wehrmacht were not inhuman monsters – they were regular people who became willing to commit evil acts because of an abhorrent philosophy. Reminding players of this is important because dehumanizing even Nazis creates an easy defense for modern fascists and authoritarians to mount, in the form of a “but I do these good things over here, I’m not a complete monster” defense. Reminding people that Nazis were regular people, even while they did terrible things, reminds us that we must examine ourselves for the kinds of behavior they exhibited.
Is there more my game can do? Almost certainly. In fact, I’m extremely open to suggestions for additional ways to improve. You can get in touch with me on Twitter, Pluspora, or Mastodon if you want to give me some feedback.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in ways to make your own game hostile to fascist ideologies, check out these two essays that helped inform my own process.
*Despite everything pop culture tells us, torture does not work. It is immoral and wrong in every circumstance, and this would still be true even if it worked – which it categorically does not.
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Today’s quick shot is with Mad Jay Brown on the project By Aecer’s Light!, a setting zine on Kickstarter now! Check it out!
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What is By Aecer’s Light!, both as a product and as your vision?
By Aecer’s Light! is me ‘small scale testing’ a creative project on my ‘someday-maybe’ list of creative projects. I’ve done a few freelancer-for-hire projects and wondered what would a ‘By Mad Jay’ project look like. This Kickstarter is the result of me crafting and running a series of one-shot con sessions using some of the unusual pieces of fantasy, Burning Wheel fantasy in particular. The Roden, which are rat-folk. Wolfen, think fantasy bipedal wolves and a Rakshasi, but jaguar instead of tiger and the absence of a great Elven presence. Wild success for me would be that folks are happy with the zines they backed and find them useful. I break even (at least) and getting to work with fantastic folks like Julia Ellingboe, Kurt Komoda, Johnstone Metzger, Nathan Paoletta and the father of Roden, Peter Tierney.
All of those sound very cool! You talk about your awesome collaborations, but first I want to know, what are you doing in your setting design that is something you see as truly your dream brought to light?
I’m a sucker for outsider stories. The X-Men, Samurai Champloo, Farscape, these are stories about outsider groups. The Roden(Rat folk), Wolfen, the Dark(Spite) Elf, and the Rakshashi are all outsiders. There aren’t many, if any, iconic characters or stories about these fantasy peoples. We’re free to explore and collaboratively make our own.
What can backers expect in the By Aecer’s Light! release and what does it bring hope for in the future?
In the By Aecer’s Light! release players will have a starter setting to begin playing in and Roden and Wolfen as playable ‘races’. There will be immediate conflicts ready to go and room for the players to grow, define, make their own outsider stories. Hopefully, the future brings more playable lore in this ‘after the Elves’ setting.
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Thanks so much to Mad Jay for the interview! I hope you’ll check out By Aecer’s Light! on Kickstarter today!
This post was originally posted on G+ by P.H. Lee on August 28, 2017. It was a significant influence on updates to the Script Change RPG toolbox, and is an essential read in regards to addressing safety in the game community and at every game table. Lee has authorized me to post the text here in full since G+ is dying, which I greatly appreciate – it’s super valuable!
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Preamble
I have PTSD. About 6-7 years ago, more or less, various pan-RPG techniques to control triggering[1] content — The Veil and the X-Card, to name two of a vast diversity — became commonplace in the RPG circles that I played in. Around the same time, I stopped participating in role-playing games at meet-ups and conventions, or anywhere else that these techniques were promulgated. These three things (PTSD, X-Card, and my withdrawal from play) are related. I’m writing this essay to discuss the ways that these techniques cut off my access to role-playing games, and introduce know techniques that, I hope, will point to a way forward in terms of accessibility.
Conflicting Access Needs
Before I go further, I’d like to reference a term from the disability rights movement: conflicting access needs. Disabled people are extremely diverse and our disabilities are also extremely diverse. While an ideal world would have everyone’s access needs met at all times and in all circumstances, in many circumstances, with many disabilities, that is practically or fundamentally impossible.
An example, which I’m paraphrasing from Autistic blogger Mel Baggs: A group home for Autistic people have some occupants who constantly verbalize, and others who are hypersensitive to noise. The verbalizers have a reasonable access need to be allowed to verbalize. The hypersensitive have a reasonable access need for quiet. Both of these access needs are reasonable, but it is impossible to meet both of them in the same space.
For this essay, the point is that, while I’m describing ways that my (and others) access to role-playing games has been cut off, I want to acknowledge that the techniques in question were developed and promulgated — often by people with similar disabilities to mine — to meet a legitimate access need. That they cut off my (and others) access to role-playing games does not mean that they are inherently wrong, bad, or ableist.
I do not want this to turn into “X-Card (or The Veil, etc, etc) is bad” and, even more so, I do not want it to turn into “the people who propagate these techniques are bad.” That’s not my opinion and, also, it’s wrong. I am hoping that by writing this essay I can move the discussion of accessibility of RPGs for PTSD sufferers from “use this technique” to a conversation which can account for different players, different goals, different communities, and different access needs.
A Note on Personal Narrative
I’m going to use a personal narrative throughout this essay, because it is based on my own experiences of both role-playing games and PTSD. But I want to be clear: I am not speaking solely for myself in this. Simply from personal circumstances, I can attest that the problems I have are problems that are shared by a number of other people with triggered mental illnesses.
Likewise, there are people with triggered mental illnesses who have a very different experience — most importantly, there are people with triggered mental illnesses who find the X-Card, The Veil, etc. to be vital techniques for their access to role-playing games. I do not want to erase these people — they exist, and their experiences also matter.
Please do not take my use of personal narrative as evidence that I speak only for myself. I don’t. Likewise, please don’t take my speaking on this topic as someone with PTSD to assume that I speak for all people with triggered mental illness. I don’t.
The X-Card, the Veil, and all that
The X-Card, the Veil, and similar techniques have their roots in a section of Sex and Sorcery, a supplement for Sorcerer by Ron Edwards, where he (roughly paraphrasing) suggests a technique dealing with difficult sexual content in the game by “drawing a veil over it,” basically, describing it in loose terms and then moving on with play, rather than playing it out. This is included together with several other techniques, including actually playing it out and fading to black. From there, like many things from the Sorcerer supplements, it developed on the Forge forums as a more generalized technique that could be applicable to all games.
I first encountered The Veil as a universally applicable technique in the context of public play in the Pacific Northwest — I believe it comes out of the Go Play NW convention, but I could be mistaken. By the time it reached this form, it had mutated considerably — it was something that was invoked by a particular player, rather than a general technique for play, and it generally had the effect of erasing the content of play [2], rather than playing it out in a vague sense and then moving on. It became a widespread meta-technique[3], adopted at a lot of public play events.
Simultaneously [4], in the New York City play scene, John Stavropoulos developed the X-Card as a meta-technique. With the X-Card, the system is formalized. By “throwing the X-Card” (either a physical card marked with an X or just an invocation), a player stops play, and the offending material is erased, and play continues as if it had never happened.
The X-Card grew in popularity and was adopted throughout the indie-games public play culture. By the time that I had largely retreated from public play (~2013), it was fairly universal. Although I have not been in touch with public play culture since, it does not seem (from my outsider perspective) to have become any less widespread.
My Experience
My first reaction to The Veil as a meta-technique was simply “well, I don’t want to do that.” At the time, it was not generally regarded as a universal meta-rule, so that was the end of my encounter with it. However, as it grew in popularity, I began to be increasingly averse to it. I remember a particular event — I think it was at Indie Hurricane, although I could not guess at the year — where it was introduced as a generic rule for all pick-up games. I got a horrified, sinking feeling, my eyes started to flutter and my stomach twisted — familiar signs of a triggering [1] event. I cannot remember whether I then said to my players “I’d like not to use that for our game” or not — I cannot even remember if I ran my planned game or left the scene immediately. Poor memory often accompanies being exposed to triggers.
I tried playing a few games with the rule in place, thinking I could maybe get used to it. Even though, to my recollection, it was never invoked, those games left me an anxious wreck afterward.
I stopped going to convention events as often. I started going to local public play groups, but shortly thereafter the meta-rule spread there as well, and I stopped attending those as well.
I did not at the time understand why this was triggering to me. I’m not entirely sure I was conscious that I was being triggered — it seems obvious in retrospect but I think that at the time I was not able to recognize exactly what was going on.
I made several attempts to communicate my distress — I remember talking on separate occasions with John Stavropoulos and Avery Alder about it — but because I didn’t understand what was going on, I could not clearly explain my problems, let alone propose solutions. Obviously, my attempts at communication were unsuccessful [5].
The Veil was replaced by the X-Card, and the technique continued to spread. I continued to retreat from Indie RPG circles, although I continued to play with personal groups and in non Indie RPG spaces such as AmberCon NW.
As an aside, I should say that this inaccessibility was far from the sole reason I retreated from Indie RPG circles and that, also, I do not regret having done so. My retreat has allowed me to spend more time on fiction writing, on personal friends, and on campaign play of RPGs. All of these have benefitted me both personally and professionally.
The problem
Both the X-Card and The Veil (as practiced in the PNW at that time) have as their core concept that the correct default way to handle triggering material in a role-playing game is to excise the material from the fictional timeline and thereafter to continue play. This is a commonplace understanding of how triggers work — remove the trigger, problem now solved.
This is, for me, a disaster, because it replicates the environment of denial and powerlessness that caused my PTSD in the first place.
Fundamentally, any approach to triggering material that contains any element of “pretend it never happened” is emotionally disastrous for me, because it recapitulates the environment of denial and dismissal around my traumatic experiences. This is not limited to excising the material from play — it also includes attempts to dismiss, deny, or minimize it.
No technique that centers this approach can possibly be functional as an accommodation; furthermore, any game or community that uses a technique that centers this approach is necessarily inaccessible to me, because an environment that centers denial as a coping strategy for triggering material, is in and of itself, a traumatic trigger.
Centering status quo vs centering healing
Fundamentally, these meta-techniques center the status quo — the goal is to “deal with” the triggering event, or the triggered person, and then return to regular play as if the interruption had never happened. I submit that, due the nature of PTSD, this approach is fundamentally flawed.
Once I have been triggered, I am in a traumatic experience. No amount of care or concern or comfort or accommodation can untrigger me. The question is not “how do we return Lee to the status quo?” or “how can we stop Lee from having a traumatic experience?” because those goals are impossible. The question is “what kind of traumatic experience is Lee going to have?” It can either be a damaging experience — one that reinforces the trigger and my PTSD — or it can be a healing experience — one that lets me recontextualize the trigger and its part of the trauma into my normal psyche.
Denial and social pressure to “return to normal” are damaging experiences.
Acknowledgement, empowerment, and story-building are healing experiences.
I believe that, in principle, good techniques for dealing with PTSD in role-playing games will avoid damaging experiences and center healing experiences.
The Luxton Technique
I didn’t post about my problems with X-Card, The Veil, etc for a long time because, among other factors, I did not have a proposed solution or alternative technique. All I could do was say “I’d rather have nothing than this,” but “no technique” is not particularly good rallying cry and it was not really a meaningful solution, just an attempt to get back to the somewhat-more-accessible-but-not-great status quo.
Until last year, I truly believed that there was no technique that would improve access to RPGs for some PTSD sufferers without also excluding PTSD sufferers like myself. But, last year, I played in a role-playing game at AmberCon NW that was specifically focused on traumatic experience and, particularly, centering the trauma of the players in the story we made. In that game, we used a particular technique — which I’d like to call the Luxton Technique after the GM of the game — which I found to be empowering, healing, and accessible to me.
It’s difficult for me to summarize all the parts of this that worked, but, roughly, the Luxton Technique includes:
* An honest discussion of potential traumatic triggers prior to play, in a supportive environment, with the understanding that there is no possible way to identify or discuss every conceivable trigger or trauma, and with no social pressure to disclose particulars of individual trauma.
* When, in play, a player encounters triggering material, they can, if they choose, talk about that to the other players. When they do this, the other players listen.
* As part of talking about it — and possibly the only thing that they need say — the player is given absolute fiat power over that material, expressed as a want or a need. For instance “I’d like to play [character name] for this scene” or “I need this to have a happy ending” or “I want this character to not be hurt right now” or “I need this character to not get away with this” or “By the end of play, this should not be a secret” or “I need to stop play and get a drink of water” or “I don’t have a specific request, I just wanted you to know.”
* A player does not need to use their traumatic experience to justify any requests or demands. We just do it.
* A player does not need to be the one to speak first. We keep an eye on each other and we are watchful for people who seem withdrawn or unfocused or upset. If we are worried about someone, we ask.
* We play towards accommodating that player’s requests.
It’s hard to overstate how much the Luxton Technique (or, really, set of techniques) helped us approach extremely difficult, extremely person material, both for the trauma survivors at the table and for the non-survivors. Rather than having our traumatic experiences — already a disjoint with reality — cause a disjoint in play, we were able to integrate them into play and tell a story about or, at least, at an angle to, our traumatic experiences, real and pretend.
Healing and RPGs
I am well aware that it sounds both pretentious and terrifying to talk about RPG play as a process by which one might legitimately heal from trauma. But I’d like to elaborate on that a little, because I think it’s important.
Fundamentally, a traumatic experience is an experience that is at a disjoint with the narrative of one’s life. Having PTSD means that your trauma exists out of time, out of place, and always in the present tense. A big part of recovering from PTSD, inasmuch as it is possible, is not about excising the trauma or your continued experience of it. Rather, it’s about integrating the trauma into normal memory and a normal narrative of your life.
A big part of that is story-telling, because a story is about incorporating disparate elements into a coherent narrative. And, for me, a big part of that story-telling has been role-playing games. In this essay, I present the choice as a binary — either a game can harm, or it can heal. That’s a lot of pressure to put on something as casual as a role-playing game! But, also, story-telling helps, and the story itself doesn’t need to be traumatic. Any story-telling experience can contribute, constructively, to healing, because PTSD sufferers need to be able to tell our own stories to the world and, more importantly, to ourselves. As an accessible storytelling medium, RPGs can’t be beat. They have been, and continue to be, a great help to me. In introducing these techniques, I am hoping that they can continue to be a help to others as well.
This is not limited to “heavy intense” sorts of stories that directly reference trauma. Ordinary RPGs can be stories about friends sticking together, or triumphing over evil, or just being clever and solving traps and puzzles, all of which have the potential to be healing narratives. Don’t think that I’m limiting the healing potential of RPGs to “serious” games or “serious” stories. I’m not.
It’s a reasonable reaction to say “I don’t want to do anything that heavy in my RPG!” or “I can’t be responsible for this!” And, obviously, don’t play in circumstances that you’re uncomfortable. But RPGs, and the people I’ve played them with, have given me so much healing. It’s wrong for me to dismiss, deny, or belittle that simply because games are a recreational activity. I hope that, in looking at problems of accessibility of RPGs, we can look to their potential to heal as much, if not more, than their potential to harm.
My hope (edited addition)
My hope is that this essay will start / continue a conversation where we look critically at our tools and techniques for RPG play. I hope that we can get to a place, as a community, where we understand that they are not one-size-fits-all and that we are able to take a look at what that means in terms of accessibility. I’d like for us to be able to make better-informed choices about accessibility and our RPG play, and the trade-offs that entails.
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[1] Because I have no alternative vocabulary, I’m going to use “triggering” in this essay to describe images, words, or ideas that trigger traumatic flashbacks, panic attacks, or other PTSD symptoms. I’m aware of the popular usage of “triggering” as a derisive term for an emotional reaction. I am not using it in that respect. Please, also, refrain from doing so in responses. Thanks.
[2] I’m not sure exactly when the pivot from “veil as not playing out blow-by-blow” to “veil as erasing the content from play” occurred. It might have been after this.
[3] I use the term “meta-technique” to mean “a role-playing game rule intended to be used with any game.” In some cases, it is “a role-playing game rule intended to be used with every game.”
[4] I am not sure about the historical relationship between the X-Card and the Veil. It’s possible that there was some inspiration. It’s also possible it was a parallel development.
[5] I do not want to cast any aspersions on John or Avery for our failure to communicate. Both of them listened as well as they could have to my concerns, even though I was unable to communicate them clearly. The failure was definitely on my end, and I want to thank both of them for their patience in waiting this long to hear my thoughts more clearly expressed.
Hey all! Today I’ve got five or so questions with Michael Bacon about the game Dangerous Times, which is currently on Kickstarter! Hope that you like hearing about this game of journalism in the 1920s!
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Tell me about Dangerous Times. What excites you about it?
Dangerous Times is a small role-playing game for two or more players, published in zine form, with a focus on storytelling. It’s about reporters who risk their lives to expose corruption, crime and injustice, all in a version of 1920’s New York that’s just learned stage magic is real. So now magic is everywhere: children play with fire and levitation in the streets, wall street moguls consult soothsayers before making investments, crooks turn hypnotism and escape-artistry to devious purposes… and of course those who seek power are messing with things best left alone.
One of the aspects I’m most excited about is the history involved.
New York of the jazz age is a surprisingly modern time. Broadway is decorated with neon lights, cars fill the streets and the subway rumbles below. There’s even a budding intercontinental network of wires and radio waves used to share photographs and news around the world.
It’s not just the technology that makes the twenties modern, though: so many familiar social issues are present and cultural shifts are happening, often in ways that resonate with the current time.
I’d love it if players were able to engage with all this history, and find ways to incorporate it into their play. I’ve tried to encourage that in the design. So even though the problems they bump into involve the supernatural, I’ve attempted to make those plotlines echo historic reality. It turned out to be… not easy (I’m still not sure I’ve got it right), but at least surprisingly straight-forward. This makes sense, though, because this is the culture that produced so many of those genre-defining fantasy, horror and mystery stories; they couldn’t help but bring reality into the fantastical.
The 1920s were a complex time in New York! I know that many Black Americans and queer people were among those living in the city. What kind of research are you doing to ensure that you have appropriate representation of the history and the people of the era?
I’m glad you brought this up, because how people treated each other during this era has been a major focal point of my research.
I’ve been lucky enough to lean on the work of historians who’ve spent their entire careers studying aspects of this, exploring how specific conceptions of race, gender, sexuality and nationality influenced and were influenced by society at large. There’s even a page at the end of the zine dedicated to resources and references, so that players interested in learning more can know where to start.
Going into this I’d only known the broadest shapes of the era, and I was very excited to learn about ways society seemed to be expressing interest in diversity— this romantic idea that New Yorkers at large were going out to speakeasies, immigrant neighborhoods, jazz clubs, queer dances, and encountering all sorts of other lifestyles and backgrounds— but when I started doing the reading it turns out that these interactions served to reify existing hierarchies as much as they transgressed against them.
And then the years rush ahead through the Great Depression, WWII, and McCarthyism, all of which exacerbate expressions of social backlash and undermine tentative steps made towards civil progress.
All this is to say that the past is a different place, not a kinder one.
I have, however, made a serious effort to research and represent all the people living in the city, not just the ones in most easy reach. What this directly translates to is mention and often discussion of things like the black press, targeted enforcement of new immigration laws, police raids on cross-racial or queer dances, and so forth throughout the zine… though it’s difficult to fit all the nuance required within just 40 pages, especially when those pages also have to convey the core game mechanics and process of play.
One thing that drove me to set the game in the 1920s was this article talking about Harlem’s Hamilton Lodge Ball, where hundred of queer men and women annually danced in joyful defiance of prevailing gender and sexual norms. These events became a sensation, with thousands from all over the city showing up to observe and sometimes take part; notables in attendance include Nora Holt and Wallace Thurman, even the Vanderbilts and Astors. The newspapers at the time treat this with a range between shock and fascination, but I can’t help but smile when I picture it— twirling on the dance floor, fancy suits and gowns, and people from all over the city celebrating.
I’ve tried to make the game as much about players encountering and protecting this positive parts of life in the city, as it is about mystery, magic, and the dangers that are encroaching.
What kind of mechanics do you use in Dangerous Time for things like investigation, violence, and other things that might come up?
This is actually the area that’s seeing the most change, as I continue to playtest and refine what I’ve developed.
The setting and the mechanics are meant to reinforce each-other, but I’ve also tried to keep them out of the way of the real point, which is telling stories. So there’s some simple outcome randomization using six-sided die, but there’s also a mechanic in place that lets players spend this resource— credibility— to ignore the dice.
So for example this lets me keep reporters very squishy, only distinguishing between “healthy”, “injured”, and “dead”, because the transition between these states is almost always intentional.
The idea is that reporters sometimes exaggerate how dramatic a situation is for the sake of selling more papers, so when you spend credibility to succeed at something it actually means somebody, somewhere in this article that your building, was lying.
And of course credibility is important when figuring out the outcome of an adventure, because you might survive the big encounter only to find nobody believes what you’re printing, and then the world gets worse instead of better. Maybe dying for your ideals was the smarter choice.
Then there’s the investigation, which is where I’ve been doing a lot of iteration lately. I’ve been toying with different ways to have players encounter and build stories, but one piece I think I’ve finally got down is the start of everything— the staff meeting.
The latest version has the editor (the player who runs the game) stating a fact about the world and then questioning the other players about it.
So you open the meeting with “Rats and pigeons have been dying”, “Strange sounds drift through the air”, “Discarded bits of clothing keep turning up” and then start asking questions. Why are the rats dying?
Where are they finding the clothing? When are the sounds being heard?
Who told you about this? What does this other group say about it? Make it weirder! Do they contradict each-other?
These become the rumors players investigate, and with a little bit of work by the editor they get incorporated into and reshape the various archetypal plots written in the zine.
What are the kinds of experiences and actions players can have in Dangerous Times? What do they do, and what do they feel?
Mechanically and thematically, Dangerous Times is a game about determining truth, and working out how a bunch of truths all fit together into a narrative.
Players start the game by generating rumors and leads, then tell stories about how their reporters follow up on those leads. Dice rolling is used to give guidance during this process, letting players know when a scene should provide answers or raise more questions. They also make decisions about who pursues what leads, when to use magic or break laws during the investigation, when to split up and investigate more leads, or to focus on one lead together, reducing danger and increasing the chance it’ll pan out.
All the while players are accruing trouble, which eventually comes calling, and they’ll use their dice, skills, and other resources to get out of it— or they go out in a blaze of glory, getting one last epic moment before they fall.
Finally publication starts, and players have to take all these facts and rumors and fit them together into articles, coming up with witty headlines for bonus points. The paper’s credibility, circulation, and debts come together to influence decisions about what gets printed, and then the impacts of the publication on the world and the newspaper’s future are discussed.
Ideally players start out with interest and confusion, and as the story progresses they get that slow, awesome sense of the facts coming together. They feel pressure brewing as trouble builds up, and they make decisions about which risks are worth taking. When the trouble finally happens, they feel excitement and danger, but also in control— players are the ultimate arbiter over their character’s fate, and they’ll have to weigh when sacrifices are worthwhile. During publication they get to look back on the adventure, recapping all those feelings mixed together with hope, satisfaction, or regret.
Finally, in a game called Dangerous Times, I have to wonder, how do you plan to encourage safe and respectful play at the table?
The way tabletop gamers have thought critically on player safety, developing tools and methods to encourage everyone has a good time, is one of the things I like best about this hobby. Coming from video games, where the discussion really isn’t there yet, it’s like a breath of fresh air. So of course I’m happy to reference things like Lines & Veils and the X-card, so players new to the hobby or unfamiliar with these concepts can play with a safety net.
As to the design itself, well. Dangerous Times opens with a staff meeting, and there’s a note in the zine about using starting that off with a quick conversation about the things players do and don’t want to see. It’s my hope that this becomes a natural place to establish boundaries, proffer ideas, and flavor the tone of upcoming play. If someone mentions they find baseball boring but love ghost stories, the group can keep that in mind as they start building rumors and playing the game. With luck this normalizes the times when people need to draw boundaries, whether that’s to avoid deep-seated trauma or just because they’ve had a shitty day.
Addressing the other part of your question, one of the things I’ve been very careful with the plotlines inside the booklet is to keep them (hopefully, respectfully) adjacent to reality— players encounter history and fix fantasy. So there’s no rushing in and suddenly solving real-world injustices that persist into the present, at least in the booklet as written. I think it’s fine if players want to play that way, but it’s not the game I wanted to write. Instead I’ve provided supernatural and imaginary plots, noted parallels to real history, and tasked editors with “making the real unreal”— drawing inspiration from the real world, but making it into something everyone can feel comfortable playing with.
I’d be happy if the experience of playing can be informative and challenging, but first and foremost it has to be enjoyable. It’s my hope that the game can support both hard-hitting encounters with history as well as light-hearted escapism. Groups can and should play at their own comfort levels— the twenties were a terrible, dangerous time, but also one that could have promised a better future. If nothing else, playing in that space should be fun.
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Thanks so much to Michael for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Dangerous Times on Kickstarter today!
Today I’m so excited to share that I have an interview with Dr. Jessica Hammer and Moyra Turkington on their game Rosenstrasse, which is currently on Kickstarter! I hope you enjoy hearing what these amazing women have to say about this project – check it out below!
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Tell me a little about Rosenstrasse. What excites you about it?
JH: The Rosenstrasse story is an incredible story of non-violent protest and resistance to unjust authority. The game puts you inside marriages between Jewish and “Aryan” Germans. You play out what I like to call “ten years of marriage in three hours”; then, at the end of the game, the female characters have the chance to protest the roundup of the Jewish men in their lives. The historical protest we’re exploring was spontaneous, women-led, non-violent – and successful. That’s something we want to remember. At the same time, we remember that even these women, who were willing to stand up to the Reich, didn’t do so until their own families were on the line. We can honor their courage and still aspire to do better next time.
MT: A lot of things! Jess has the first thing that comes to mind – it is history that belies the story we’re told about our effective potential to affect oppressive regimes and that makes it an urgently important story to me in our current political climate. But I’ll also pick one that I don’t often mention – that it’s designed to be very procedurally easy to run! Unlike many games that require GM skill sets that experienced gamers take for granted (world building, scene framing, narrative positioning, mechanical management) Rosenstrasse takes care of the lion’s share of that work for you. In this game, the primary GM skill is emotional calibration – listening to a scene until it has reached an emotional place of fulfillment, asking questions to reveal how characters are processing the events in their lives, and checking in to make sure players are coping with the material. Because these are core emotional intelligence skills rather than specialized GM skills, this makes the game accessible to folks who have historically found GMing daunting – and as a result we’re seeing better representation among facilitators.
What inspired you to create the game specifically as a live action experience?
MT: Rosenstrasse is actually a hybrid larp & tabletop game so groups can play it as a live or tabletop experience. Because most of the gameplay involves the emotional negotiation between two people, the delineation between tabletop and larp start to naturally blur anyway; a scene where a husband and wife have a difficult conversation at a kitchen table looks and feels very similar in either game mode. When I run the game, I tend to do so in larp mode because I find that embodied roleplay is a powerful conduit to adopting the headspace and heartspace of the character, especially when there are strong relationship ties. I think that the emotion follows the body and vice versa.
JH: In contrast to Mo, I tend to run Rosenstrasse closer to a tabletop. Players still get to have meaningful in-character conversations where they embody their characters verbally and physically, but adopt a very different relationship to the game materials. For example, players in this mode often describe experiencing the card deck as a ticking clock, counting down to new horrors. This sense of dread is palpable at the table and very powerful for play.
What is the game like in play – what emotions do players normally experience, and what do they physically do?
JH: The game comes with eight pre-generated characters, and more than eighty scenes for them to encounter. In a typical scene, players get the description of a situation – for example, maybe two of the characters are going to work on the morning after Kristallnacht – and then a prompt for role-play. Prompts typically ask the characters to have a conversation, react to the situation being described, or show how their marriage changes.
MT: The game is meant to feel like an elegy – a thoughtful observance of the loss of security, dignity, freedom, and selfhood incurred under an oppressive regime. But it’s also a game about resilience and resistance – players through their characters struggle to hold on – or sometimes to let go. They discover that in an active genocide, that the minutiae of living and thinking and loving are themselves, resistance. The game play is often quiet, somber and serious – one where everyone shares a deep breath before the next scene because the story just keeps on getting harder. But there’s also moments of lightness, bright love, and true courage that also make it bearable.
What kind of research did you need to do to create Rosenstrasse?
MT: Research for historical games about people in marginalized situations can be hard. And it becomes harder still when you try to uncover their stories from a time where oppressive regimes have a stronghold on the narrative in which even documentation of your own story can be prosecuted as a treasonous crime against the state. You can double this down once more in a locus of war (Berlin) where victors literally displace the regime and with it wrest control of the story to broadcast their own victory. Stories get lost, they get distorted, they get overwritten – the stories of victims get defined by their victimhood in service to the vilification of the enemy and the righteousness of the victor.
For Rosenstrasse we got very lucky in that an academic named Nathan Stoltzfus found the thread of the Rosenstrasse protests early enough to locate people who were actually impacted, and to collect their first hand accounts of the events. Those first-hand accounts became the heart of our research and our design. And since that work, many other academics have focused on the story and it has become a locus of debate in Resistance Studies – so for research we situated ourselves in the lives of people who told their story and followed as many threads as we could find outward until we felt we could create a palpable feel of what it was like to live in that time.
JH: While Mo focused on the historical research, I spent a lot of time looking into the challenges of Holocaust education. I have a lot of experience designing and studying educational games – that’s actually part of my day job as a professor at CMU – but Holocaust education has some pretty specific challenges that we needed to understand. For example, Holocaust games can backfire if they make the player feel that they could have done a better job in the circumstances. That can lead them to have contempt, not empathy, for the targets of Nazi persecution. So, we did research to identify these challenges, looked at what’s been done before, and specifically targeted our design to address them. Our research with the game so far, and our observations of playtesting, suggest that we’re succeeding!
How is Rosenstrasse important to you as a creator, and as a person?
JH: I’ve been making transformational games for nearly twenty years, and I’ve rarely seen a game that has this kind of power. It’s humbling and a bit frightening to know that you’ve made a game that deeply impacts players. But, I’ve brought everything that’s in me to the table – my work with transformational games, my commitment to activism, my expertise in psychology and instructional design, my family history, my love of role-playing games – and I think that creates a special kind of alchemy.
I’m particularly grateful that Mo agreed to dedicate the game to my grandmother, Helen Hammer. She survived five different camps, including Auschwitz, and went on to live a life of intellectual commitment, grace, and dignity. I was particularly close to her growing up. She pushed me to read bigger, think bigger, adventure bigger; she wanted me to have a vision of the world as it could be, not just of the world as it was. She died when I was still in college, so I hope this game stands as a testament to her memory.
MT: Rosenstrasse has a harmony that’s critically important to me. Its historical focus, its design, the story it tells, the player experience, the impact of play, my personal goals as a creative activist, and the design relationship Jess and I have built are all aligned with a harmony that’s incredibly satisfying. I will forever be grateful that Jess agreed to do this work with me – it has been a uniquely fulfilling and powerful experience, and I am humbled by her trust and her courage.
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Amazing! Thank you to Jessica and Moyra both for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it, and that you’ll check out Rosenstrasse on Kickstarter today!
