Tag: gaming

Women with Initiative: J Li

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So more specifically:

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

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

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

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

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J Li Contact:

G+
Medium
Work
Website, Caldera Games
Spiritual Games Project

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

Five or So Questions with Christian Griffin on Meridian

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Interactive is Your Game?

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

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

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

Ask these questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for reading!

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

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

We Need to Talk About Disabilities and Gaming

Talking with John (husband) about disability literacy for the able, how literacy is a weird term, & how to handle being unable to write at a game table.

Virtually every RPG requires the ability to read and write. This is an issue for bringing games to illiterate individuals (who exist!), which is another huge thing that I don’t even know how to address. However, something I can address is my own situation.

I have hand tremors that have grown relatively significant and some minor muscle spasms. I can’t handwrite really at all anymore. I risk tearing paper or very far stray lines, and it’s also really stressful to try to write because it’s embarrassing and difficult (and sometimes painful because of the muscle strain to avoid shaking). The issue here is that almost every single game involves writing at least something on a character sheet and I have no real objection to that. I like customizing characters. However, these days I need a second set of hands to do those things.

When I go to a table and have to ask someone to fill out my sheet, it’s awkward and embarrassing. Most of the time it is eased because I’ll go to tables with friends (this is part of why I seek out friendly, familiar tables). However, I sometimes want to game with new people! I can’t always rely on people I know to help me write down my stats and stuff, and I want to emphasize that having friends at a table will always make this easier, but it is not enough.

There is a huge lack of literacy in regards to disability in the world in general, but I’m surprised at how significant it can be in the gaming world. I realize that it’s hard to achieve this, as schools don’t really address it, workplaces do their best to avoid it, and honestly, disabled individuals can easily be alienated socially too. But it’s really not okay.

If I ask for help at a strange table, I get stared at, awkward mumbles, and eventually someone will help but it’s very hard to feel comfortable at that point. I’ve outed myself. I have to give an explanation. It takes time away from the game, I delay the other players, and I know it’s an inconvenience, and it also puts me in a weird place socially. Now I’m kind of the invalid, I’m a weight on other players. They treat me differently, and it makes me feel really sad.

The issue, in reality, is not that I can’t get help. Most people will (even if begrudgingly) help me. Some are even happy to do it. At friendly tables, it’s awesome because my friends are so supportive. At a stranger’s table, it’s harder. People don’t know enough about disabled people to know how to react when a disabled person needs help. They don’t know that it’s just a simple need, so sometimes they treat me like a child. They don’t know how extensive it is, so sometimes they get annoyed.

I’m writing this massive blargh of text to say this: We need to talk about disabilities and gaming. There are some great people talking about it already (Elsa S. Henry and Shoshana Kessock to name a couple, and I think Matt Weber as well, and I know there are more of you out there!!), which is awesome, but more than a few people need to be talking. We need to ask for accommodation at conventions and events. We need to talk to players and GMs about how to help disabled players at their tables. We need to be willing to help, and to not judge people for needing help.

I’m asking now, as a gamer and designer and player and everything else, for your help in teaching others how to be an ally for disabled gamers, in working with businesses and organizations in gaming to make things approachable for disabled gamers, and in making spaces more accessible.

Here’s the thing. I’m here to support you in this effort, but in part because I _have_ disabilities, I need more legwork from those who have the energy. Speak to disabled gamers to get their feedback, do research online, and be aware of situations that might put disabled gamers at a disadvantage or keep them from participating. This week, I spoke to John Ward at GAMA about Origins, and we discussed some work they’re doing to improve registration next year to make it more accessible. All it took was a polite and well-worded email and a willingness to discuss options, and I think that next year’s registration might be a lot easier for me and players like me. It’s worth the effort.


I hope you’ll join me in this. I know we have a lot of causes and inclusivity movements to keep up with, but if you can take just a little time – even if it just means helping a player out at a con table you share and treating them like a person when you do it – it can really make a difference.


Thank you to my friends who have supported me while I’ve dealt with my illnesses. You’re the best!

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

Women with Initiative: Kira Magrann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five or So Questions with Tod Foley on DayTrippers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five or So Questions with Jaye Foster on Age of Legends

Today I have an interview with Jaye Foster on the 6d6 game setting Age of Legends! Age of Legends was Kickstarted last year and will be available for new customers in May, so I asked some questions about the setting. Check out Jaye’s answers below!

Tell me a little about Age of Legends. What excites you about it?

Age of Legends is a RPG set in Ancient Greece in 370 BCE. After centuries of dormancy, the Olympic gods have begun to select mortal champions to combat and counter the agents of the Titans. Imprisoned within Tartarus, the Titans hope their human agents can weaken Olympian strength enough that they can break free.

The player characters are the champions of the fifteen Olympic gods. When not dealing with Titanic plots, they’ll have glorious adventures fighting monsters, engaging in wars between city states and fending off the interests of foreign powers.

What excites me about the setting is the unique stories you can tell with it. Not only do you get classic swords and sandals action inspired by the Iliad and Argonauts you get deeper roleplay about interactions between devout mortals and capricious gods. We’re hoping to provide enough detail about Ancient Greek life that players can properly delve into the now long past culture.

Can you tell me about how the setting of Age of Legends melds with the 6d6 RPG system?

The setting provides a complete and entirely new set of paths using a lot of new advantages. The paths from Modern Generic didn’t fit at all well with the historical and fantastical setting. No changes have been made to the core rules, but keywords have been added for advantages that allow a player to make use of their patron god’s symbols and realms.

When dealing well-known myths, it could make it challenge to keep things fresh and appealing – what did you do with Age of Legends to draw in players and bring Greek myths to life with new concepts?

Mostly this started with avoiding a lot of the well known stories. A lot of the legends and myths in Age of Legends are focuses on the gods themselves, rather than heroes such as Jason or Odysseus. This meant delving into the less well known parts of the Greek mythology and then adapting them to fit out setting concepts. For a lot of the lesser known gods, like Hestia, Hecate and most of the Titans, the surviving literature is very limited to non-existent. So we got to make up our own legends in the style of Greek mythology.

It’s also partially avoided by these old stories not being the focus of the setting. They’re referenced as inspiration only, for the players to be aware of as they write new myths with their characters. The freshness comes from making new stories rather than roleplaying through the well known ones.

How do you handle making the characters as interesting and heroic as the legendary Titans and monsters they’re fighting against?

This is one of the risks of the setting. We’ve given the players / characters access to their gods realms and symbols. With these advantages, they champions of the gods are able to perform incredible heroic acts. But the roleplay to back that up and put it in context can only come from the players.

We’ve given them a lot of guidance about Ancient Greece and how to build a character suitable for the setting. Hopefully it’ll be put to good use.

How did you put together the history and myths into a cohesive text, and what research did you have to do?

Wikipedia was our most common starting point. We also bought and rented a few books on the lives of ordinary Ancient Greeks to fill in the important cultural aspects that our different from our own.

A really big help was http://www.theoi.com/ a website, now-defunct and not updating, where the creator had gone through large amount of the primary source material and organised it by god and by theme. With it we were able to quickly find stories and myths about specific gods without having to read vat quantities of Ancient Greek literature.

Cohesion came about through organizing the book at the start of the project. We knew what information about each god we wanted to communicate. This saved us having to read lots and then determine what was wanted; instead we went looking for stories that fitted our defined needs.

In example – rather than read all of the stories about Zeus and then pick the ones we wanted, we went specifically looking for a story about his childhood, a story about his favour and a story about his wrath.

Thanks so much to Jaye for answering my questions! Make sure to check out Age of Legends, available this month!

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

Five or So Questions with Craig Campbell on Murders and Acquisitions

I have an interview here with Craig Campbell about his new game Murders and Acquisitions! It’s a game that’s unexpected but sounds like a lot of fun, and it’s currently on Kickstarter! Check out the Kickstarter, and Craig’s responses to my questions below!

Tell me a little bit about Murders and Acquisitions. What excites you about it?

Murders and Acquisitions is a tabletop RPG of subterfuge, espionage, intrigue, theft, and murder in an absurd corporate world. The players portray corporate go-getters who seek money, power, and prestige, by whatever means necessary. The game is a little tongue in cheek with humor thrown in here and there. The game mechanics are simple. The world is very easy to understand. The character sheet looks like a resume.

Firstly, I’m excited to be creating my own RPG. I’ve done freelance for D&D, Pathfinder, Gamma World, and Iron Kingdoms, but Murders & Acquisitions is my own creation. Seeing finally come to fruition is very satisfying. Secondly, it fills a niche that I think most gamers haven’t seen before. When big, corrupt corporations show up in RPGs, they’re usually the bad guys. In M&A, you play within the hostile (deadly) work environment and, hopefully, rise to the top. It’s part fantasy wish fulfillment and part fun, engaging storytelling. With full dental.

What inspired you to make a game about corporate subterfuge and the like?

The initial idea for the game came from my friend Matthew at work. He described a game about corporate go-getters working with each other but also sometimes betraying each other as they rose up the corporate ladder. The game he described felt like a board or card game, maybe a reskinning of Munchkin, where players portrayed company employees rather than dungeon-delving adventurers. My background in freelance RPG design put me in the head space of making this idea a tabletop RPG. I asked Matthew if he’d be cool with me expanding his idea into an RPG and he said, “Go for it.”

Within just a few weeks, I had the basic game worked out. I started playtesting with friends just to see if the game idea had some legs underneath it. Within a month or three, Murders & Acquisitions was in full design mode.

Could you walk me through the mechanics of a basic encounter, such as a character sneaking around trying to steal a rival’s secrets?

Very simple game mechanics. Each character has twelve skills that cover everything you can do in the game. Skills are ranked d4 – d12, higher is better. When making a skill check, you roll this Skill Die along with a d6 called the Synergy Die. Add them up. Compare to a target number for the task. Success/failure as well as DEGREE of success/failure is resolved with this one skill check. If you succeed on a skill check and get a “6” on the Synergy Die, you gain a boon. Your skill check results in a better than normal result. If you fail on a skill check and get a “1” on the Synergy Die, you suffer a botch and the GM describes a problem your character has to deal with.

The skills in the game read like they are “corporate speak” or “resume keywords.” Your ability to “sneak around” is called Bodily Grace. Telling lies falls under a skill called Social Equivocation. Covering up your horrible acts of wrongdoing falls under a skill called Loss Mitigation. Your character’s physical strength is Force Application; the application of force to achieve your ends.

The stretch goal for magic in the game has been unlocked! How does magic impact the alternate reality you’ve built for M&A?

Magic doesn’t affect the core game at all. The core game is built around the idea of our real world, but with some significant differences…how the game world is different from our real world. Companies in the game world are more corrupt and cut-throat that those in our world.

The stretch goals (including the Magic & Spellcasting goal already hit) add optional rules for the M&A game. These optional rules allow players to add fantastic elements so often present in RPGs. Magic. Monsters. Future Tech. Cosmic Horror. And more. These chapters allow the players to create a more complex and unique game world environment. These optional rules are sort of a mix-and-match thing. They all work with the core rules, but provide added dimension to the game. You can pick and choose which optional rules you want to use in your game.

What has your experience designing your first full RPG been like, and how do you think it shows in M&A as a game?

Designing Murders & Acquisitions has been a labor of love. It’s been in development for well over two years and has gone through multiple iterations. Playtesters have offered a ton of advice and revision goals. It’s been tweaked and re-tweaked. I feel the game I’m providing in the Kickstarter is as good as I can make it. 
Despite my past RPG design freelancing, I’m always surprised by Murders & Acquisitions. Playtest and demo players surprise me with their actions. The game supports such surprises, encouraging GMs to “roll with the punches” and help the players create a memorable story of corporate intrigue. The GM in M&A is actually called the “Supervisor.” His job is to supervise the game experience to help everyone at the table have fun and tell an evocative story. It’s an apt moniker, I think.

When it comes down to brass tacks, Murders & Acquisitions is a game where players create stories together. I’m proud that the game supports such a worthwhile endeavor. Stories are what bind us together as a people. If my little game can help the players do that, I’ll consider it a resounding success.

Plus, you can “kill your boss” in the game without having to find a new job afterwards. So that’s pretty fun.

Thanks to Craig for the interview, and I’m excited to see where Murders and Acquisitions goes from here! Remember to check out the Kickstarter and share this interview with your friends!

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

Five or So Questions with Mike Young on A Grandiose Disaster

Today I have an interview with Mike Young, writer and designer of A Grandiose Disaster, a live action roleplaying game currently on Kickstarter through Nathan D. Paoletta. It sounds like a really interesting play experience, so I hope you enjoy the answers I’ve shared below!

Tell me a little about A Grandiose Disaster. What excites you about it?

A Grandiose Disaster is a horror and disaster movie simulation larp. It’s
takes about 3 hours to run in a house, or at a gaming convention, or
wherever people congregate to play games. First the players work together
to create characters that care about each other. Then they go through the
scenario scene by scene, reacting to the disaster and deciding which
characters live and which die.

I’ve been writing larps for many years and I also perform improvisational
theater, and I think A Grandiose Disaster is the end result of all that
I’ve learned doing these things. The ruleset is simple and easy to learn.
It is designed to facilitate roleplaying, making the players feel heroic
at times and despair at other times. The structure of the scenarios
allows for players to focus on roleplaying without worrying if they are
doing something that might harm their character.

And as a larp writer, I really enjoy how easy it is to design a scenario
for A Grandiose Disaster compared to the traditional secrets and powers
larps I’ve written in the past. I love running scenarios for this larp; it
allows me to sit back and watch the roleplaying unfold. I’m really excited
about how everything really works together to highlight the disaster movie
experience.

In A Grandiose Disaster, players create characters that care about each
other. How does this character creation work, and what helps solidify the
emotional connection?

It’s pretty simple. The players get into a circle and form relationships
with the people to their left and right. If there are enough people, then
they get a third relationship too. The relationships can be anything, but
the rules suggest close relationships that have existed for a while:
family members, coworkers, or close friends.

The rules have all sorts of suggestions for creating close relationships.
Players can create a defining event for the relationship giving them
something to discuss and reference during the larp. There are warmups
taken from improv theater that allow the players to roleplay some of the
shared history of their characters to help form a bond. And players can
spend time together discussing the shared history to get as many details
as they want for the history.

What kind of experiences can people expect in the game – are there zombies
or monsters, or are these natural horrors like nature gone wild or
catastrophic?

Well, it really depends on the scenario. I’ve been encouraging blatant
foreshadowing in scenario descriptions so players can create character
that would make sense in such a movie. So players know what to expect in
Trapped in a Mall With Some Zombies, and the descriptions of Fire and Ice
and Space Station Omega make it clear that they are inspired by The
Poseidon Adventure and Alien respectively.

How do the rules encourage both heroism and despair for the players?

The player characters each start with one one-use Ability that allows them
to save a life or learn crucial bits of information or do something else
that breaks the rules of the larp. This allows them to feel heroic as they
drag people to safety or keep people from dying.

However, the scenarios are designed such that characters will die, and
that the players must go from scene to scene in order. The scenes become
more and more horrifying and the players must choose someone to die in
most of the later scenes. Since the players have created deep
relationships with their characters, they will often have to choose
someone they care about to die which can lead to horror and despair.

In an ideal game, what would you want players to take out of the game, in
the end?
I want the players, both whose characters survived and died tragically, I
want them to say they enjoyed the experience. I want them to feel like
they have actually survived a disaster movie and that they had some
genuine emotional responses because of it.

Thanks so much Mike for answering my questions! Make sure to check out A Grandiose Disaster on Kickstarter, and Mike’s other projects if you like his style.

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

Five or So Questions with Alek­san­dra Son­towska and Kamil Wegrzynow­icz on The Beast


Today I have an interview with Alek­san­dra Son­towska and Kamil Wegrzynow­icz on their game, The Beast, a single player, long-play, narrative game. I played The Beast in an early playtest, and it was fascinating – an experience I could never repeat, but certainly a game I’d try again to see something new! See their answers to my questions below.

Note: The Beast is targeted for adults, and the game and this interview both contain sexual content.

What excites you about The Beast?
Kamil: For me it’s about body horror and physiology. It was about breaking boundaries about what I can do with my body and how can I perceive it. There’s a lot of tension and excitement with breaking, rearranging the body, the way it works, experimenting with it.

On the other hand there are feelings involved. What do I feel about sexuality, how do I approach my physiology. How can I deal with all the things that turn me on. So, yeah, these are all the things I found in Barker and Cronenberg and was fascinated by them and I wanted to put in the game.

Aleksandra: One of the things that excites me most about Beast are secrets. The Beast is a secret. You can remember that when I was organizing playtests, the playtesters reveal sparingly what happened with their Beasts, what they looked like, what they wrote in their diaries. People told me what cards didn’t work and why, but without details. They pointed which cards were triggering, but not why. Even now, when there are 2 or 3 actual plays online, I feel there’s so much more, hidden behind what was said or written.

I know, too, that the fact that the game explicitly says to burn or hide the diary makes people uneasy. There’ll be a reason for them to do it.

And I too won’t tell what happened with my Beast. I too shivered with desire and disgust of vivid imagery that came to me.

When you were designing The Beast, what sources did you use for inspiration?

Kamil: I was this brooding and rebellious art geek for a long time, so it was my hobby to find transgressive and weird media. Right now I’ve mellowed but there’s counterculture guy still inside – besides the most important here and mentioned before – Clive Barker and David Cronenberg there was JG Ballard, Kathe Koja, Dusan Makajevev’s Sweet Movie, cinema of transgression, Coum Transmissions’ art and so on. Not always obvious and not always mentioned, we didn’t have enough space, but I guess I owe them a lot.

Also, we were thinking about and designing games about sex and sexuality before. This is what you get when two game designers become a couple. For my part it was a follow up to our earlier game project – Mistress and Sexbot – and the thought that we couldn’t finish this game was nagging me. The Beast first appeared from this design frustration.

But most important and inspiring thing for me here was Aleksandra’s input – her emotions, ideas, and sources she found. They really pushed The Beast forward.

Aleksandra: My sources were more personal . I suddenly discovered pleasure of sex, and then I was reading everything I could find. Mostly these were articles about sex and interviews with people into BDSM and kink. Kvinden der drømte om en mand was an important movie for me, showing a woman sexually obsessed with a man – who was an asshole, really, but it didn’t matter for her. Not often can you find a movie showing sex from woman’s perspective.

What about The Beast do you think causes players to dig so deep into their dark fantasies?

Aleksandra: Is it so? I think important part of this experience is that we’re upfront what the game is about. And when I say: “in this game you’re fucking the monster in your basement” most people will know in a second whether they’re excited or disgusted by the idea (or both). If they’re excited, we’re just helping them.

Kamil: First, long term play. You get used to the beast, and even if question you get is triggering or uncomfortable, you have whole day to deal with your emotions. And long term play makes The Beast part of your daily routine.

Second, questions. Every question had to:

  • be presupposing and provocative, and,
  • involve one or more of four categories: sexual, physiological, personal, social.

This way almost every question should push story forward and affect the player even though the player doesn’t have to answer them. And with all the categories, some questions will hit the player hard and make them think and feel.

With the secretive nature that Aleksandra mentioned, how did you encourage players to both share and keep secrets, using the game’s mechanics and language?
Aleksandra: And why haven’t you shared your Diary widely? ‘Hide or burn’ is for a reason. The Beast is obviously skewed toward keeping silence about what happened during those 21 days, mostly because in the game you’re playing yourself or someone similar to you. It’s the reason the game feels personal – and why players don’t go around talking about it.

Kamil: As of both sharing and keeping secrets – it’s a funny thing. When players are in “honeymoon phase” of the gameplay, by which I mean the moment they bought it and later on the first five or six questions, they are really eager to show off their game and enthusiasm. But later when they’re become invested in the fiction and the game hits them hard they go silent. And even when someone plays The Beast in public it’s visible for me there’s a lot more than what they show to the world.

Most of the instructions and the way it was written is Aleksandra’s work. She really tried to take care of the player and make them feel safe. I think this part is important here. It guides the feel of the gameplay.

What is the most intense experience you have had (that you are willing to share!) with The Beast on your own?
Kamil: For me it was realization how mean and cold I could be in a relationship. I perfectly knew the game tricks me to feel this way but I was still caught off guard when it happened. And even now I’m writing “this happened” instead of ”I thought and decided in the game”.

Second thing in the same gameplay was also realization how my fantasies were growing in unexpected direction. At first I wasn’t sure of my beast, it’s not really my kink, I thought, but let’s see what happens. Later in the game I started to like it and experiment with it. It was scary.

Aleksandra: Excerpt from my Diary:

“Someone knows about the Beast, why aren’t they talking about it?

I panic.

‘I’ll give you a blowjob, just don’t tell anyone about it’.

Kneeling, I clench my mouth on his dick. I’m doing it like the Beast is with my whole body. I swallow his penis, I’m choking, I’m swallowing it again, I’m vomiting his penis and full dinner.

He runs off.

He won’t tell anybody.”

—

Wow! Thank you to Aleksandra and Kamil both for their answers, for sharing their experiences, and for this brilliant look into The Beast. Make sure to check The Beast out on DriveThruCards!

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