Tag: guest

Five or So Questions on Turn

As I have my game Turn currently on Kickstarter, Tracy Barnett and J. Dymphna Coy were kind enough to ask me some questions. Check out my answers below!

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The Turn logo with a vine growing out of the T in the word Turn, with leaves in various stages of growth, and above it a half circle with footsteps transitioning from human to beast

Tell us a little about Turn. What excites you about it?

Turn is a slice-of-life supernatural roleplaying game about shapeshifters in small towns, where the shifters try to seek balance between their beast and human identities while finding community with shifters and mundanes alike. It has relatively simple mechanics, a lovely town building system, and the play is quiet drama about life in small towns as a shifter. 
I’m excited about Turn because it is the game I designed to satisfy myself! I was looking for a game that scratched a particular itch, and couldn’t find it in other games I played and learned about. But Turn has that play experience, it is the game I was looking for. I get to play out quiet scenes, intimacy that explores a range of emotions, have some fun and cheerful moments, and explore the identity of my character, and the game supports all of that.

What do you think of popular portrayals of rural life? How does your game differ from those (or not)?
There aren’t a lot of popular portrayals of rural life, to be honest, and many portrayals are negative. See any depiction of West Virginia hillbillies for what I mean. Obviously that’s not the route I chose for writing about real rural life. There is one portrayal of rural life that doesn’t perfectly sync up with Turn but is not super far off, and that’s…Letterkenny.
For those unfamiliar, Letterkenny is a Canadian comedy set in the fictional small town of Letterkenny, population 5000. It follows a number of characters, but primarily Wayne and Katy, siblings who run a produce stand and farm, and their friends. There’s not an exceptional amount of violence in the show, but when there is violence, they show that it hurts and has consequences, which I value. Most of the show is just their day-to-day lives at the produce stand or the farm, time spent socializing between characters, and important events to the town like elections of local officials and the St. Patrick’s Day party. 
The pacing is so simple, and there aren’t typically the biggest stakes, but they’re stakes that matter when push comes to shove. Relationships are vital, people comfort each other, and people learn. And there’s always chorin’ to do! So I love that, and a lot of that comes through in Turn for me.
What doesn’t come through is that there is no representation of the shifter aspect, so that’s definitely something different, and Letterkenny is also hilarious as heck, which Turn isn’t as much of. There’s definitely some goofing off in Turn and some funny moments, but I wouldn’t ever expect the banter of Letterkenny levels in Turn. And that’s okay! Turn’s meant for a more mixed bunch of emotions. 
A bear dangling in a tree while digging into a stash of fancy and expensive things
A Bear by Rhis Harris.

What do you find compelling about stories centered around shapeshifters?

Aside from like, it just being kind of cool to be able to turn into an animal and have superpowers and regeneration and wanting to explore what it means to have a body that’s functioning at peak rather than dwindling at minimum?

Well, shapeshifters are great for the metaphor. See, people ask me sometimes what the shapeshifters represent, and I did a podcast recently where they were like “oh, we thought it was about being the other!” when I had just described how some of the inspiration for the shapeshifters had been rooted in my experiences with bipolar disorder and mixed episodes. The thing is, I’m queer, I’m nonbinary, I have invisible disabilities, I have mental illnesses. I am other, in a lot of ways. So when people read into the shapeshifters a sense of other, that’s not unintentional.

But it also wasn’t always intentional. People read a lot from shapeshifters because the nature of their second identity, so different from their surface identity, and the nature of secrecy – these are things that the “other” experience, too, in many situations. We talk about going stealth as queer and gender nonconforming people, and passing, and so I see a lot of that too, but not just with queerness, not just with gender, not just with disability, not just with mental illness, or any other kind of other we are as humans.

Shapeshifters represent what you want them to represent, I think, which makes them an excellent narrative focus.

How are your experiences growing up in small towns reflected in Turn?

They are Turn. Honestly, it’s hard not to see it when I play. In things other people do (even people who aren’t from small towns!), in things I do, in the way the Town Manager pushes people together to fiddle with their secrets and relationships, in the map of the town. Even in games I haven’t participated in, some stuff is unmistakable as what I built into it.

My favorite bits are when people instinctively realize how long it’s going to take to drive to the other side of town or that the local store/hospital/police/whatever isn’t going to be as well staffed or supplied or that their family members are like, absolutely going to hear about this, and when we’re building the town and people are like “well obviously rowdiness goes real close to the town and connects directly to a bloodline” or something like that – not all of these things are “rules” but they’re small, rural town things that reflect in the game and I really do count some of that as my design, and the rest of it on the weird small town knowledge we culturally share.

When people expand to Italy or other countries like in the stretch goals, who knows! Maybe someone else’s experiences will shine through most!

A bearded person struggling while using a tablet, clipboard, and cellphone
The Overachiever by John W. Sheldon.

What’s the most compelling thing to you about focusing on the tension between a person’s animal and beast sides, rather than, say, violence?


So, violence for me is three things (sometimes combined, often separate): repulsive, spectacular, and catharsis. And it’s also in 99% of other games, movies, tv shows, books, and other media. It’s everywhere. Even in shapeshifter media, you will far more often find people exploring violence and brutality than you will find them exploring issues of identity. And that’s boring!

Like, don’t get me wrong, violence can be amazing to watch for a variety of reasons, and playing it out can be really incredible. But, violence is also all around us. Our world is violent. We’re constantly discussing it, experiencing it. And maybe, I guess, I wanted a game where you could do violence, but you had to fucking deal with it, too. So I did that. And it didn’t need to be explored so deeply? Like if you can do whatever you want with violence but just actually have to deal with consequences, not just take a potion and leave the bodies in the road, that conversation is already happening.

Digging into identity is more fascinating to me because majority culture is cool with dealing with exploring the identity of the average white cis man of privilege, but like, there’s a fucking lot of the rest of us. Using shapeshifters as our embodiment in the game when in rural, small towns you’ll immediately run into like bunches of other intersections. We’ve had queer characters, poor characters, characters with trauma.

You end up with these deep questions of self and community when you look face on at poverty, drug use, family struggles, loss, and so on. And when you’re struggling with yourself, you have a harder time addressing them – so you gotta try and work stuff out! It leads to these introspective, intimate, caring, emotional scenes! Like, we have – in our longest running game – a weekly tea party with our three characters who are trying to figure this shifter crap out, while one of them is trying to get their shit together, another is trying to come out as a gay man and keep his life, and one didn’t realize until just lately that they didn’t have their shit together. We play these out, and they’re wonderful, and also constantly at risk of running afoul of the hectic lives these shifters lead.

So I’d say it’s more interesting because it’s not what we’re doing every day, and because it opens opportunities to tell moments of stories we sometimes forget to tell. And a cougar, bison, and wolf having tea is just *chef’s kiss.* Moments I truly treasure!

four wolves exploring a set of human clothing
A wolf pack by Rhis Harris.

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Thanks so much to Tracy and Dymphna for asking me some questions! I hope you enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Turn on Kickstarter here today!


Tracy Barnett’s Work
Tracy on Twitter @TheOtherTracy
J. Dymphna Coy’s Work

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approachable theory: Complexity in Game Design by Jacob Kellogg

The approachable theory logo, with the text "approachable theory" and an image of two six-sided dice with one pip showing, with a curved line below it to make a smile. The dice are black with cyan for the pip and yellow with black for the pip.
The approachable theory logo.

Today’s approachable theory post is by Jacob Kellogg, creator of the new Journey Away rpg on Kickstarter, and is about complexity in game design! Find out more about Jacob after the post! Please read and enjoy. 

Jacob Kellogg, selfie portrait.

Complexity in game design can be a touchy subject. Sometimes a game is so complex that it feels more like work than play, or deters your loved ones from wanting to learn it. Other times, a game might be criticized for not being complex enough, with critics saying it’s been dumbed down. In some cases, you might even find both opinions regarding a single game.

If you’re designing a game (or even just like to ponder game design theory), this can leave you with some confusion about the role of complexity in design. How do you know if a game needs to be simpler or more complex? What does complexity offer to your design? What does it cost you? I hope to shed some light on this issue by defining complexity, detailing its relationship to the separate concept of depth, and sharing some other considerations about the role of complexity as well.

Before we get started, I’d like to give a shout out to the Extra Credits team, specifically this video, for the lessons I’ve learned on this and other topics thanks to their hard work. Check them out!

Now, we can’t really discuss complexity until we’re all on the same page about what it means. When I refer to complexity in terms of game design, I’m talking about all the details and rules that you have to learn (and all the gameplay actions that are required) to play the game. For example, if you have to roll a die to determine the success of an action, that’s more complex than if the action just succeeds by default, because you have to know the rule about how that die roll works. If a player might have a special quality that lets them re-roll the die if it comes up as a 1, that’s another rule to learn, and therefore another layer of complexity.

Now that we’re all on the same page about complexity, what does it contribute to our games? While there are a few answers to that question, the primary role of complexity is the creation of depth. What do I mean by depth? Depth in a game refers to the number of meaningfully different gameplay experiences that can be had. That is, if there are two different ways of doing things in a game, having those two paths actually FEEL different in play is depth. For example, if playing a speedster in a superhero game genuinely feels different than playing a hulking brute, that’s depth. If they feel the same in play, the depth is missing.

Picture of the Shadow Amps section of Shadowrun: Anarchy & note from Brie: here’s a place where you have to look at the depth and complexity of different mechanic. Does this math result in greater depth in play? What do you think?
If we want to add depth to our games, we have to put some sort of rule or mechanism in place to differentiate the different play options, to make them feel different. Doing so is the definition of adding complexity. Therefore, the way we add depth to our games is by adding complexity.

But there’s a catch.

Not every unit of complexity produces the same amount of depth. Sometimes the addition of a small, simple rule will create a multitude of gameplay experiences, while other times the creation of a vast and detailed system will hardly be felt at all. Let’s look at another example.

Say we’re designing a traditional heroic fantasy RPG and deciding how different weapons compare to each other. If we want a two-handed greatsword and a little dagger to feel different in play (and we probably do), we need to add some complexity to define their differences. So, we decide that the greatsword deals a lot of damage and uses two hands, while the dagger deals piddly damage but only uses one hand and is easy to conceal under your clothes. Great! Now players can have genuinely different gameplay experiences (depth) with these two weapons, thanks to us adding a little bit of complexity.

Now let’s say we want to go a little further: we also want shields in our games, which can’t be used with a greatsword, but it feels weird for shield-users to be restricted to daggers for weapons, so we create a longsword to sit between the two. It deals less damage than the greatsword, but more than the dagger. The degree of depth between the longsword and either of the other weapons is smaller than the gap between the greatsword and the dagger, but it’s probably still noticeable, offering real depth to players.

But let’s go even further. I mean, there are more than three types of blades in the world, right? So we start adding bigger knives, smaller swords, axes, swords with different degrees of curve to the blade, and so forth. Conscious of creating depth, we make sure that each of these weapons is technically unique: most of them deal different amounts of damage from each other, and when we ran out of unique damage amounts, we started giving the redundant weapons special abilities, like slight bonuses to disarming your opponent or breaking their shields.

By the time we’re done, we have a two-page chart of weapons, but they’re so close to each other in their abilities that a character with one weapon could swap it out for a similar one and never notice the difference. We’ve added quite a bit of complexity: the player has to read two pages of listings and learn what all the abilities mean before they can make an informed decision about their weapon choice. And yet, we’ve added precious little depth: while the high-damage weapons feel different from the mid- and low-damage weapons, everything else feels the same. The feel of gameplay is almost identical to what it was when we only had three weapons.

This is what we must watch out for as designers: just because game options are technically different (complexity), that doesn’t necessarily mean that they feel different (depth). Before adding a layer of complexity to our games, we must ask ourselves whether the resulting gameplay options will feel meaningfully different from each other. If not, we are not creating depth in our game, and we need to seriously consider whether adding that complexity is truly a good idea.

Dice rolling on a white table, by John W. Sheldon.
The creation of depth is the main purpose of complexity. However, sometimes complexity can offer other benefits by reinforcing the theme of your game. For example, intentionally overwhelming your players with complexity can create a sense of panic that might enhance gameplay (a good example of this would be Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, whose complexity-induced tension is half the point of the game). Alternatively, if your game is meant to be a faithful representation of something else, making sure you cover everything might be worth the complexity even if it’s not reflected in the depth of gameplay (for example, the Elements of Harmony in Tails of Equestria have literally no effect on gameplay, but fans of the source material might have scoffed at an omission).

Complexity is an important part of game design. While some games need complexity to support their themes, its main purpose is as the main source of depth. Designers must decide how much depth they want in their games, figure out how much complexity will be required to get there, and then reconcile the two until our games have sufficient depth without excessive complexity. We’re looking for that sweet spot.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you find these concepts as helpful for your own designs as they’ve been for mine. All the best to you and yours, and best of luck in whatever your next adventure is.

Thank you so much, Jacob, for writing this post and simply sharing some thoughts about complexity!

About the writer: 
Jacob S Kellogg, he/him
Describe your role in the gaming community.  
I’m a fledgling new game designer, and founder of Purple Aether Games.

What do you love about games and gaming?  

I love how games can bring different people together and give them a shared experience, and how it can help people think about things differently.

Links: 

@JacobSKellogg on Twitter
@JacobSKellogg on Mastodon (dice.camp)
@PurpleAetherLLC on Twitter
@PurpleAetherGames on Mastodon (dice.camp)
https://www.patreon.com/jskellogg
Journey Away RPG Kickstarter

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Approachable Theory: Coming Friday!

The approachable theory logo, with the text "approachable theory" and an image of two six-sided dice with one pip showing, with a curved line below it to make a smile. The dice are black with cyan for the pip and yellow with black for the pip.

Hi all, I have a new series (only a few coming up so far, but it’s here) called approachable theory that’s going to focus on writing posts about game theory, design, and similar topics in a tone that’s approachable for new gamers, non-academics, and designers who are getting their start. I’m going to try to do some of my own once I get done with grad school, but in the meantime, I’m hiring other writers!

The criteria I have for the posts are that they’re under 2000 words, hopefully under 1500, and I have to be able to read them without using Google more than 3 times. Youns know I have trouble reading research at times due to its dense text and unfamiliar terminology, and I wanted theory posts that I could learn from on my worst days.

To pay the writers, I’m going to be using the patreon.com/briecs payout from each post, and pay any remaining funds personally to ensure they’re paid $0.05/word, which is just the best I can do right now – and hopefully you will all consider it a valid rate. I’m still taking pitches for it, and I’d love to get more diverse writers on the schedule over the summer.

Coming up first will be Jacob Kellogg, who has a game on Kickstarter right now called Journey Away. Jacob’s writing about complexity in game design, and I’m really looking forward to you all seeing the post!

All I ask is for you all to join me in treating the series with respect. Please don’t interrogate the writers about “what a game is” or if the subject is “really theory” – that’s antithetical to this series. Remember, also, that not everyone has a well-educated, well-read background and that some people were born well after the original D&D could drive. If you find that something is legitimately factually incorrect or ethically problematic, please do raise the question. Just don’t be a jerk, and be enthusiastic for the material.

Thank you all! Looking forward to another series of posts and hoping it makes game design and games more…approachable.

<3

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Directing Anarchy: Guest Post by Paul Stefko

Hi all! Paul Stefko (Patreon) from Nothing Ventured Games is a good friend of mine, a fantastic designer, and a fellow blogger! He also is a bangin’ GM and ran Shadowrun: Anarchy for +John W. Sheldon and me a little while ago. I had a great time! Since I don’t typically run games, and Paul knows a lot about being a GM and how GM mechanics worked, I asked him to do a brief guest blog. I hope you enjoy it!

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This pic is so wonderfully Paul, I can’t even.

I picked up the Prototype edition of Shadowrun Anarchy on the last day of Gen Con 2016. I was intrigued by the idea of a slimmed down, narrative-focused take on the Shadowrun setting. And the price was certainly right at $5. (In fact, it was the last $5 of my discretionary “ooh, shiny” money.)

I had chosen to pass on Shadowrun 5th Edition because it wasn’t really different enough from the 4th Edition I had already invested a lot in. Anarchy certainly was different, but not so much that it felt like a complete disconnect from Shadowrun’s past. It had familiar features like dice pools, Edge, and karma, and of course all the orcs and trolls and magic of the Sixth World.

But at its core, Shadowrun Anarchy is still an implementation of Catalyst’s Cue system, which is far more narrative than the stalwartly traditional mainline Shadowrun. What would it be like at the table? The Cue system features round-robin narration, a currency of plot points to let players shift outcomes in their favor, and a pared down adventure set-up called Contract Briefs.

I got a chance to put Anarchy through its paces late last year. I met with a couple friends, and over Chinese food, we made their characters and played through a complete adventure — the Street Sweeper brief from the Anarchy rulebook — in about three and a half hours. I certainly couldn’t complain about speed!

The session was fun, and the rules acquitted themselves well enough, but there were a few places where I felt the system rub up against its own rough edges. By default, Anarchy plays out as a series of “narrations” — each player has a chance to describe how the scene progresses until their character performs some action that requires a roll. All the GM does is set the scene’s initial conditions and play NPCs (including rolling for them in opposition to the player’s action, when appropriate).

This style of narration requires the players to be both comfortable with and adept at framing their own scenes and setting themselves up for interesting opposition. My players were fairly comfortable with this paradigm, but I still noted they were not really pushing the scenes very far or very hard. At the time, I chalked this up to being unfamiliar with the mechanics beyond just the narration system, but I think now that I was relying too much on the back-and-forth of a traditional GM role. They were asking questions and looking to me for the answers rather than just declaring what happened next, and I was too quick to jump in with additional scene details.

This is probably going to be the biggest source of friction for most gamers, as the rest of Anarchy is actually a pretty standard set of action resolution rules. Once you get to a point in the scene where the outcome of an interesting action is in doubt, the way you roll the dice and count successes is going to feel familiar to most gamers. But getting to that point is the more interesting and less obvious part, and unfortunately, even the full Anarchy rules don’t give a lot of advice on how to manage your narrations.

Still, I had a lot of fun running, the players had fun playing, and we decided to give it another try. The second session went just as well, but again, I felt like I was running it too “trad” precisely because the rules didn’t provide enough direction to run it any other way. When I get Anarchy back to the table again, I definitely plan to push harder in the direction of player narration, encouraging the players to drive the scenes ahead even farther before with get down to resolving an action.

I think the key to Anarchy is in its name: it wants a little less authority and a little more freedom to push boundaries. I’m looking forward to finding out what that feels like.
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Thanks so much Paul for sharing your thoughts and experiences with Shadowrun: Anarchy as a GM! Check out Paul’s blog and Patreon for games, design talk, and more!

Patreon proceeds for this post will be distributed to Paul for his contribution to the blog. Thanks for your support!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

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