Note: Today seems pretty packed with pics because this particular style of design and art appeals to me a lot, so please excuse this indulgence.
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Tell me a little about yourself and your work. What’s your background like and how has it led you to Dissident Whispers?
My name is Jeremy and I did the layout for ‘Hopebringer’ and ‘Rhemati’s Spring’ for DW. I’ve been tabletop gaming for around 6-7 years and creating stuff for around 3 years. I am a Warden (moderator) on the Mothership discord and active in a few others. One day “Silver Goat” posted up a request seeking volunteers for a BLM project, as a mixed race man (black and white if it matters) who lives in a rural area I had been struggling to find my place in the protests, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get involved.
The interior of Dissident Whispers, on the pages for Hopebringer, showing a diagram of an arena.
What other projects have you worked on that you’ve brought forward knowledge to working on Dissident Whispers?
I have been working on writing and laying out a Mothership Hack called Gordinaak for way to long, and recently released a very dumb nega tower called ‘Why is there a Wizards Tower in this Dump?’ on Itch with my writing partner.
Tell me about Dissident Whispers. What kicked off such a project concept and how did it come together? What’s the pitch?
Dissident Whispers is a collaborative compilation of adventures for various systems. For me, it all started when I saw a message on Exalted Funeral’s Discord looking for volunteers to do various pieces for a project. As we were talking about logistics the projects founder, Silver Goat, mentioned posting on the Mothership Discord. It just so happened that I warden there (moderate) so I reached out to Sean Mccoy about it and then it just kinda took off. As far as a pitch goes I’m pretty terrible at that so I guess it’s a book with a bunch of dungeons and adventures so anyone who plays games needs it.
The interior of Dissident Whispers showing the Mirstone Manor adventure – on one page, a detailed map, and on the other, an unusual pink creature.
How is planning the content of such a project impacted by the increased focus on inclusivity and a specific message?
I think for everyone involved it was different, some people made things that were topical while others did stuff that was standard adventure fare. For instance one of the adventure’s I did layout for, Hopebringer, was very stick it to the man and defeat the oppressors.
What are some examples of the adventures in Dissident Whispers that players will have to dig into?
There are soooooo many, I did the layout for Hopebringer, and Rhemati’s Spring, both very different, both system agnostic. There are some really interesting ones for Mork Borg, and I actually played one for Mothership called Ghost Ship, on the night we finished everything, which was amazing.
The interior of Dissident Whispers, focusing on the College of Acoustic Ministration, showing alien creatures and men with lobster hands.
What were some of the best parts of working on this project and putting together the collection for players to experience?
My favorite part was probably watching a flood of talented people get involved, one day it was a few people then the next the discord exploded. It was just amazing watching everything develop and how cohesive everyone was moving as a unit. I’m still in awe of what was accomplished.
The interior of Dissident Whispers showing the Snake Temple Abduction adventure, with a beautiful illustration on the right page in blue and white and a simple but useful map in blue and white on the left, along with the guiding text.
The images for the book are by Janna Heidersdorf (Illustration) and Jen McCleary (Layout). (update 7/37/202)
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Sharang Biswas, for the Medici Group.
I appreciate you taking time for the interview, Sharang! Would you share with me a little about you and your experience? How did you end up in games doing the kind of work that you’re enthusiastic about?
I’m a game designer, interactive artist, and writer currently based in NYC. I started formally learning game design under Mary Flanagan at Dartmouth (though I studied engineering), and then went to ITP at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU to get a Masters in Interactive Design. Since then I’ve made numerous games, won an IndieCade, 2 IGDN, and a Golden Cobra Award, exhibited my games at galleries and art museums, mounted interactive theatre productions at various venues, and given a bunch of talks at conferences and universities. I’m also currently on the faculty at both Fordham University and Bard College.
I’m actually pretty enthusiastic about many different kinds of work, so I try and keep myself being by doing different stuff all the time. My major project right now is co-editing Honey & Hot Wax: An Anthology of Erotic Art Games with Lucian Kahn. I’ve been into the idea of procedure and process for a while, and about how mundane actions, when placed in a game context, can convey artistic meaning. I explored this in my games Feast & Verdure, and out of that line of inquiry came the thought: “Can games use sex acts as game mechanics, where the acts themselves are not the sole goal of the game?”. From that arose the idea of the book, though Lucian & I expanded the scope to also include games that discuss sex, sexuality, and related topics, without the use of sex acts between players or characters.
Lucian and I were very keen to make this project come to life in a way that uplifts artists and game designers, and so we decided to apply for a grant from the Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity. We received two consecutive grants, and are basically using all the money to pay the creators involved!
That’s so fantastic to hear! Honey & Hot Wax sounds really brilliant, and also like a unique challenge. One curiosity I have is how you handled ensuring that the games in the collection use consent and are responsible, considering how sex can be. What was your approach to safety and boundaries?
It is my firm belief that art can and should discuss difficult topics–art is one of the ways people, both as individuals and as societies, make sense of the world. However, such art needs to be practiced with care and sensitivity, and as such, Lucian and I were very concerned about issues of consent and safety in the games included in the anthology. To begin with, when we were soliciting proposals, we took a very broad definition of what sex is, and relied on the Effing Foundation’s definitions of “sex-positivity” and “inclusivity” (which you can read here). This was to ensure that everyone was on the same page regarding the goals of our project, and what sorts of depictions of sexuality we would be considering.
Once the finalists were selected, we commissioned Maury Brown for an entirely separate chapter on consent and safety in LARP and TTRPG, to act as a general set of guidelines when playing any of the games in the collection (or indeed, any roleplaying game at all). In the rules for their games, each game designer also included their own sections regarding safety and consent practices, to uniquely address the idiosyncrasies of the experience they were creating.
Additionally, each game was thoroughly vetted by Lucian, myself, Cat Tobin from Pelgrane Press, and Kit Stubbs from the Effing Foundation, a diverse set of eyes to ensure that the games all represented the values we wanted to promote, and that consent language was clear. As director of the Effing Foundation, Kit, in particular, offered valuable insights concerning such matters!
Finally, we were very serious about the playtesting requirement for each of our accepted games; holes and gaps in rules are hard to predict without playtesting. Running my own game with a trusted friend, for example, showed me places where I could clarify language about safety!
Of course, and unfortunately, no safety mechanics can handle every eventuality, or account for bad actors. It is in the nature of participatory, non-linear stories to defy our expectations and predictions, so to all the players of our games, we ask you to exercise judgment and pay attention to your own boundaries!
The Honey & Hot Wax cover.
Is this the first game you’ve applied for grants for? It sounds like you’re pretty great at it! What did that process entail and how do you think it’s impacted how the games are designed?
Grants, like most sorts of applications in this world, are partially about luck, so “being great at it” doesn’t mean as much as one might think! But this isn’t the first grant I’ve received to make game-like work, and hopefully won’t be the last!
When Lucian and I sent in our proposal to the Effing Foundation, we were very clear about what the grant-funding would be used for: paying the folks involved in the project a fair amount. This was paramount. All our funding went to the writers and designers involved in the book.
The creation of any kind of art requires time and space. Time and space are luxuries reserved for those with money. Good art is impossible to make (consistently, at least) if an artist is forever worried about where their next rent check is coming from. As such, Lucian and I were hoping to do our small part in supporting and uplifting indie designers. At the very least, we’ve managed to create a space where artists who might otherwise not be able to make games about risque topics, have the ability to do so, and in a way that’s financially viable!
It might be good to note here that in addition to support from the grant, each designer is also receiving royalties, and a portion of sales is also going towards charitable causes that promote sex-positivity and sex-education!
The Sleepover by Julia Ellingboe and Kat Jones.
It is great to hear that everyone is being well-paid and that you and Lucian are working to support charitable works! What do you enjoy about working on larger projects like this with lots of collaborators? How does it contrast with how you enjoy working on individual projects, and how that affects your design? (note: please feel free to give examples of your specific projects!)
I really enjoy working on group projects. Most of the work I’m proudest of is in collaboration with others. However, I wouldn’t call this a “group project” per se. Lucian and I were editors and curators of other people’s work. It was their designs…we just helped them. Granted Lucian and I have games in the book as well, but each of those was an individual work (albeit, with help from others). The book wasn’t really a group project in the same was as some of my bigger, interactive theatre pieces, for example.
For example, when Nick O’Leary and I made the Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance LARP for the Museum of the Moving Image, it truly was collaborative, both with each other and the museum education department. We went back and forth with each other for ideas, to refine mechanics, to flesh out bits and to write content. None of that really for H&HW.
Feeding Lucy, written by Jonaya Kemper.
What are some lessons you’ve learned through design over time that you think your particular path is the only way you would have learned them – as in, if I hadn’t done x, I would never have learned y?
Lol, I feel that’s a weird line of thinking. Who knows what I would or would not have learned under different circumstances or different decisions? Besides, I think looking at other people’s paths is at best an exercise in inspiration. Stories of paths taken ALWAYS leave out some aspect of luck or privilege, and few can ever emulate the advice given in these sorts of tellings.
Maybe the only truth that I can say that has a high probability of working for others is 1) constantly making stuff and pushing yourself to try things you haven’t done before is how you learn and improve; and 2) being kind to people is not only the nice thing to do but more advantageous for you in the long run!
What are some of your favorite projects you’ve worked on in games and what makes them stand out amongst the rest? How were you able to put your unique experiences into play while designing them?
Hmm… this is a fun question because it made me look back on my work, and turns out, I’ve made a fair amount of stuff!
I wrote an interactive fiction piece for Sub-Q magazine called “The Book of Chroma“. That I’m quite proud of. The concept–gay priests– was actually my first idea for my submission to Honey & Hot Wax, but I couldn’t get a LARP version to work…glad it worked ut here though. It’s also my first IF piece with a significant puzzle component! I also added a sort of Indic feel to the fantasy religion I made up, because many such religions tend towards a Christian feel…
I was just nominated for an IGDN award for my short game “An Elegy From the Hive Witches“, making it the third time in a row I’ve been nominated for the Most Innovative category (hopefully it’ll also be my third win!) Looking back on the game, I really did enjoy it. It’s vaguely anti-colonial, uses words and language as game mechanics, stuff I’m really interested in!
Pass the Sugar, Please, written by Clio Yun-su Davis.
In Honey & Hot Wax, what are some of the specific pieces that you’re particularly looking forward to seeing people talk about and seeing the impact on the design landscape from? Were there any you learned from?
I mean, Clio Davis’ “Pas the Sugar, Please” has already generated conversations, after it got picked up by Intramersive Productions as an interactive theatre piece, so that’s great. Otherwise, I thinkLucian and I curated a decent selection of game, each of which has something new and interesting to offer to the gaming landscape. Lol, obviously, I’d love it if people talk about my game and how (queer) sex can be more normalized in culture!
What is Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello, as a project and as your vision?
Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello is the second anthology of chamber larps written by the Italian Chamber Orchestra, the community of roleplaying enthusiasts of Laiv.it. We are doing our best to make it a wonderful book with twelve interesting games, but to us it’s so much more than that. Three years ago we created the first Crescendo Giocoso, thanks to our community and our backers on Kickstarter. It was an incredible experience, kind of similar to Pavarotti & Friends: my games and the games of Italian game designers who I esteem, developed to be accessible to a wider public, from different countries and backgrounds.
It turned out to be the show of confidence our community needed in order to focus on our own way of designing games. With a format that worked for us as a starting base, we were able to start organising conventions not only to play games, but to write them together. Our player friends became authors and the same Italian Chamber Orchestra that was born as a joke became real, going from nine authors to almost thirty. Bigger communities of Italian larpers started to get interested in chamber larp and people from all around the world got to know our way of playing.
So in a way Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello as a book is the end point of a journey (we like to say “a grand tour”) made of writing workshops, online chats, conventions, sleepless nights on graphics and texts. In another way, we hope it could be a new starting point for our community, a demonstration that there’s people out there willing to hear our voices as game designers and that “anyone can cook” as in Pixar’s Ratatouille.
What are some of the themes players will see in the different larps in Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello?
In terms of settings, players are spoiled for choice: from the Bronze Age to the Italian Years of Lead passing through XVIII° century Venice and fantasy worlds. Alzh & Imer is about a love story between tow elderly people, one of them afflicted by Alzheimer’s, and Pantheon Club is about social pressure: each player is invited to anonymously put into play a personal “silence” (something you don’t speak about with everyone, because you’re afraid to be judged) and someone else is going to play a Greek Deity who shares or hates this same silence. The truth is we put emphasis on game mechanics above all, so players will pull colored strings to create an imaginary village or scotch tape to build a prison without actual walls, they will play in complete darkness or utter silence, they will play in the same room or in different ones, they will create scene in reverse chronological order or play the same character in different moments of life. There’s only one fixed point: everyone in the gaming group is going to play and have fun. We’ve got nothing against game masters, I’ve been one for my entire life, but my days of watching one of my larps from outside, maybe to step in and just tell the epilogue in the end, are over: I want to play with my friends and as an author I’m not going to ask someone else to just stare at the others as they play. Sharing all this experiences and putting so many heads together has been a great way to explore very different ideas and everyone can find a complete list of previews for all the scenarios on our Laiv.it website here.
The layout of this playlist looks *chef’s kiss* glorious.
The concept of the Italian Chamber Orchestra and coming together to write each of the scenarios is really brilliant and feels very collaborative. How do you work together and address disagreements, conflicts, or even just overrunning enthusiasm in such an environment?
To me the keys are transparence and dialogue. We try to create the ideal environment from the very beginning: even if a hotel with all the comforts would be awesome, we prefer to rent a house and take care of things ourselves, as a group. Maria is in charge of the logistics, but everyone brings something to eat and there are no assigned rooms. Everyone knows that we put authors first in every convention: we ask players which game they’d prefer to play of course, but we also make sure to tell them that is only a preference and they could end up in another game instead. A game is written by a person who deserves space and respect, as well as a player has the right to know what they are going to play. So, when we invited our players to become authors, we found a very sensible and open-minded audience. In order to share this way of doing things with newcomers, in our writing workshops we split up people who already know each other or who have similar experiences in order to create more diverse bands.
The starting points for every collective game in LarpJam is the Crescendo Giocoso model, so we don’t have to discuss which kind of game we’re going to create, and a theme chosen by the director of the band. The director has no special creative control outside of it, they are just a veteran author with the task of coordinating work after the workshop, in order to make sure the draft is ready before the deadline of the next playtesting convention. Everyone can get involved as much or as little as they want: do you want to join in LarpJam to share ideas and then not write a single line of text in the next months? No problem, just tell it to your band. Writing a game, as well as publishing Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello, is a way of giving voice to our creativity and the feeling of being heard is essential. We do our best to create a free space where people can be honest without being judged and where conflict is an healthy part of the process.
A note: Thoughty always welcomes Italian interviewees, even as my interview style will be changing soon, and interviewees from all around the world – of all races! Even if we need to find a translator, I’m interested in helping you tell your stories. <3
I am very lucky to have been able to interview Brandon O’Brien, fighting past the pandemic delays, about his amazing writing and game design work! While I am a few days delayed past his birthday, here’s the interview below talking about Brandon’s cool creations!
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Brandon O’Brien.
Hi Brandon and thank you for the interview! Tell me a little about yourself and your experience. What is your work like and where did you start your journey into games and writing?
Hi! I’m grateful for the opportunity to talk about my work!
My journey into games started fairly recently, when one of my writing colleagues mentioned Avery Alder’s Emerging Designers Mentorship to me in early 2018. At that point, I didn’t even really think that I wanted to make a game. It was just that I saw the link, and it made me think of a thing that I could make, and I was prepared to just put it in the back of my mind. But as time passed, the idea started looking more and more like a really interesting game, so at that point I wanted to make it, so I signed up. Since then, the tabletop game design community just kind of opened up a little bit. I started getting to know other creators, reading and playing their games and getting to know them, and it started to feel more welcoming, and that made me want to experiment more.
As for my writing, that’s a far longer story. I’ve been writing in some form since I was much younger, especially poetry, which eventually led me to performance poetry, and then I met other Caribbean science fiction and fantasy writers, like Karen Lord and Tobias Buckell, and I realised that this was something I could actually do, and other people wanted to read it. And since that point, I’ve been committed to creating all of these things, and I’ve found that they complement each other very well–good verse becomes a good game, a good science fiction or fantasy premise becomes a good game, a good mode of play can potentially become an interesting way to hold an audience’s attention. So experimenting with them all has been a lot of fun!
Tell me about a couple of your favorite works, both games and writing, and about your process for making those works into fully realized projects. What were the exciting parts of those processes? What was more challenging? Did your level of experience or background at the time help or hinder?
In terms of games, I’ve been eagerly working on a project called Soundclash, a Forged in the Dark game about making music in a world where music has been touched by magic and the music industry has changed as a result. I’m still on my way to finishing it, but the work is always really inspiring. I’ve enjoyed retooling parts of the system to fit music and musical performance, and the idea of a world where singing is your ‘combat’. I don’t think it’s perfect so far, and I have so much more to learn and ask, I think, but the process of learning and asking has been refreshing. That’s what excites me, to be honest. Funnily enough, I feel like it’s a small part of why I haven’t finished yet, combined with whatever level of fear is still there about making a whole big game. I’m intrigued to get closer to a sense of making the stakes of just performing a song the same as breaking into a stronghold or winning a fight.
I’m in a similar experiment with How To Unmake It In Anglia, a weird mystery story about finding a missing person in a world where every word you say or write instantly comes true. Narratively, a lot of it is a big experiment, asking a question about the world that changes the way that people speak in it and respond to words in it, and that has an effect on how I write their relationship to those words, too. But it’s also serial, so I’m trying to tell a long story but also make each part accessible and interesting and engaging, which is a slightly different state of mind than a whole novel.
I consider myself lucky, though. When you’re writing a story or a novel, you have an editor, someone who looks at your work and wants to help you get better at it. In my mentorship, Avery has been instrumental in a very similar role, helping me recalibrate how I even think about play. I consider that editing, in a way, and I’m really thankful to have people I can trust to see me through those stumbling blocks, especially on the gaming front.
Both with your writing and your design, what are some themes and ideas you have been exploring that you don’t see as much in the standard American fare? What are the things that you bring from your unique experience that you most love to share through these mediums?
If I’m being honest, I don’t think I’m doing much that isn’t in the space already. From my experience, science fiction writers and indie designers are asking some of the most interesting questions, and so many of them are important to the present. I think my work is really focused on the question of what people use to create the context in their world, especially when it’s art. In my writing, I’ve been confronting a lot of very specific things that seem distinct, but I feel like they fit really well. I only recently noticed that Soundclash has a lot in common with some of my stories, when it comes to asking the question of what art does and who it serves. Sometimes it’s also music, or sometimes it’s a robot, or sometimes it’s the very bodies and identities of a community’s artists, but my characters ask a lot what it means to make something in a world where the thing you make, or the person who makes it, can become a commodity, and that’s what Soundclash is trying to ask as well: when you just wanted to make music, how do you navigate a world where you have become a tool, a weapon, for the industry to exploit?
I’m also really interested in how we make things to heal within each other, which is also in that same idea-space. I wrote a small game last year called TheRefraction, which is played by writing poetry to each other. You can’t move from one stage of play to another unless you’ve shared your work and been shared with in turn. It’s also what influenced some of my Belonging Outside Belonging games, like Evokers’ Pact, where there are new moves that specifically emphasise how conflict and reconciliation between two or three people can impact entire groups, because at the time when I wrote them I was really thinking about how conflict isn’t often about one person making trouble, but about how two or three people misunderstand each other or talk over each other’s desires, and I wanted to find a way to ask players to think about what those misunderstandings are as part of play, and possibly challenge them to think about those things as they leave play, too.
The description of Evokers’ Pact by Brandon O’Brien.
When you get an idea, how do you decide whether to make it into a piece of fiction or poetry, or a game?
Very rarely, things materialise one way in my brain, and I will get fixated on the notion that it has to exist in the medium I imagined it. A few games are like that. The Refraction was always going to be a game, because I wanted to make a poetry game, and once I knew what this one was, I didn’t want to give up on that. And that happens a little more often with fiction or poetry, too. I’ve spoken to other writers who agree that sometimes, when we decide to write a story, it’s actually because the idea in our head is something we would really like to read. That it’s kind of a craving for something, that we’re hungry for a certain kind of story, and we get fixated on finding it and consuming it because that’s what we’re in the mood for. And then a part of our brain goes, “well, you’ll have to write it yourself”. Like it’s a literal craving, but you can’t order it from a fast food place, so you make up your mind that you have to cook. That’s what a story feels like sometimes–It’s in this medium because I made up my mind that I want to read this, and want other people to find it like this.
But more often I have notes about a thing and have no idea what I want it to be. I have loads of notes on things that could be stories, but they could also be comic books, and the only reason they aren’t yet is because I can’t draw! Or there are nuggets of things that would make fascinating game mechanics, but I don’t have something meaningful to do with them yet, so they’re just waiting in a notepad app for me to find a way to make it important. Ideas are free. I have too many of them to use. So I try to be less rigid about them whenever possible, and consider how they can find value in another format if I’m struggling.
A lot of the RPG world can seem dominated by homogenous cultures and perspectives. What are some projects of yours where you’ve really had the opportunity to express your own culture and perspective, and how did you work through that creative process?
Culture is a difficult thing to try to parse in any medium, especially when you’re a Black diaspora creator working with cultural objects that may seem foreign to many other people. But I like exploring the cultural objects that I know because they’re the lens through which I make sense of the world and my place in it.
For instance, I’ve been really focused on a particular character in Trinidad and Tobago folklore called a lagahoo–a creature cursed to transform into a monstrous shape, but also to have a coffin chained to them, to drag it with them wherever they go. I’ve been fascinated by that image for a while now: why is this person so cursed? What could be in the coffin? And as I was processing certain parts of my work, my relationship to my culture, and even some of my own personal experiences, I began reevaluating the lagahoo, viewing it as an image of rage, of frustration, of righteous anger, someone for whom this curse is actually a kind of dark mission. That understanding shows up in my fiction and my poetry, but I struggled for a while to put that in game form.
So I put out a game, coincidentally called Lagahoo, which is a slight adaptation of the party game Werewolf with that added flavour, because that felt more interesting and more real to me. It (hopefully!) turns the game into a world where you know there are monsters lurking in the dark, preying on your community, but they’re not the things that turn into beasts with fangs and claws, they’re the ordinary people who hide their cruelty and their viciousness under cover of night. And the game doesn’t really care if you can tell. You just have to keep your community safe.
I want to experiment more with those perspectives. Folklore opens a really interesting window for us to reevaluate the modern world, not always through the mechanics of most fantasy stuff–like, it doesn’t always have to be violence or conflict, or the threat of loss. It can also be an opportunity to reconnect with history, or ask questions about what we think we know or trust. And Caribbean folklore is rich like that, so I want to play more with those characters and what they could teach us, while also using that opportunity to share that part of my culture with others.
With The Refraction, how did you integrate games and poetry to make a synthesis of the two? How have players responded, and what makes the game exciting to you?
I just really wanted to tinker with a game where playing was writing. I wanted to use play to hopefully make a safe space for folks who probably don’t write as often, or have never attempted writing a poem or may think that it’s hard or needs to exist a certain way, to be free to share among themselves and not feel like they need to do any one thing to write a poem. But I also wanted to use those fantasy tropes, of the downtrodden villagers who obviously have a lot to say and no force of power to speak out, as a prompt for those poems. I actually want to do much more with The Refraction, to create more of those play-spaces soon and give people more worlds and characters to inhabit and write from.
I believe people really like it! It’s one of my Itch games that people ask about and talk about the most. I wish folks would be willing to share their poems with me! But I won’t force it! I’m just grateful to make space for folks to write, and I hope it helps people discover something through writing the way poetry does for me. I really like poetry’s capacity to use space and brevity to tell a story, and how we communally attach personal depth to it because of its format. I can only hope that it’s encouraging people to tinker more with the form and maybe write their own things. And I want to make more opportunities just like it–where telling the story is not just making the world, but is about discovering how you feel and what you want to do about it, and gaining power from telling people. I mean, at its core, what is a roleplaying game but telling people that you’ve been moved to do something? And I’m beyond hype that I get to make room to do that, but they get to toy with writing among friends, without feeling judged.
Brandon O’Brien.
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Thank you so much to Brandon for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed this interview and that you’ll check out Brandon’s website and itchio!
Tell me a little about Princess World. What excites you about it?
Princess World, “A Game of Girls who Rule” is a Powered by the Apocalypse role-playing game about playing diverse Princesses from varied realms who are trying to work together, despite their differences, to address problems in their world. The most exciting thing about the game is that it was inspired by my daughter, she literally pitched it to me when she was three-and-a-half (She’s six now) and she’s been a great help in generating ideas and concepts for the game. Princess World is designed to be accessible and engaging to new players, particularly younger ones, and deals a lot with the power and meanings of words, and how phrases can be reinterpreted in different ways. Every character in the game is defined by four essential Truths, which are short narrative phrases; when players start to grasp how to use these Truths to expand the narrative power of their characters in the game, using them as springboards for their imagination. Seeing a player’s eyes light up when they think of a new way to use a Truth makes the whole game worthwhile for me.
The Truths on the character playbooks.
I’m super curious about the Truths! What are the four Truths and how are they presented to players?
Truths are probably my favorite part of Princess World! Truths are the “powers and abilities” of each Princess, like if you’d list four special things a character in a story or book are good at or known for. Each archetype/playbook has a unique list of four Truths that the player must express about their character. Some are extrinsic to the character, like equipment or things and some are intrinsic to the character, like experiences or legacies, and some purposely blur the line, so that the player can decide.
These Truths are narrative statements, not just descriptive, that give the character options and abilities others probably don’t have access to. For example, a Fairy Princess’s player wouldn’t just say, “I have green hair.” There’s not much they can do with that in a story; it’s mainly just description. If, instead, they said, “My hair consists of the intertwined flowers of Spring.”, then we can think about all the various narrative ideas and options we can unpack from that. Maybe they can use the scent of their hair to calm others, or maybe they can cause other plants to thrive, or maybe they can call on powers of growth and renewal. We’d play to find out the creative options the player could come up with, based on that Truth.
Truths are usually written in the character’s favorite color, unless they’ve been deemed to be Unpleasant, in which case, they’re usually written in black. Before a player writes down a Truth, they express it to the table of players first, and the other players judge the Pleasantness or Unpleasantness of that Truth, before the player writes it down. Being Unpleasant, just means that the other players can immediately see how said Truth has the potential to cause problems for the character, though they could be bad or dangerous as well, but the player can still call on them!
If a Truth is judged to be Unpleasant, the player has the option to accept that trouble or to rephrase the Truth in a way to address any concerns. Most players seem to enjoy having potential trouble brewing for their characters as it can lead to interesting stories.
The Truths can be as direct or as flowery as the player desires, but they’re usually a single sentence. For example, there was a Skateboard Princess who expressed this: “I can’t digest normal food, I eat batteries.” and the table of players was astonished and intrigued. The player went on to explain, “I’m a robot!” Now, they could’ve just expressed the Truth as “I’m a robot.”, but the whole “I eat batteries.” was thought of something more in line with what one would read in a story about a robotic Skateboard Princesses!
As a nonbinary creator, I’d be lax if I didn’t think of kiddos like me – is there space for nonbinary or masculine players or characters in this world, or is it strictly about embracing the feminine “girl” power and identity? How are you framing gender identity for the princesses, with this answer in mind? By this I mean, are there princesses with different body types and presentations like in She-Ra?
I think it’s going to be very tough to overcome the assumption
that “princess means girl” in Western culture, but that is not an
assumption I make in Princess World; we say “Anyone can be a
Princess.” I lean more towards my daughter’s interpretation of
princess which is “Someone who is capable and competent, and also pretty
cool.” Some of the playbooks lean towards the feminine side, for
certain values of feminine, such as the Proper or Fairy Princess, but the
player of such characters is not bound by that at all! There are
self-defining Skateboard Princeses, rough and tumble Warrior Princesses, and
characters that are free to blur the lines in any way the players wish, like
the Shadow or Pauper Princess. In the actual text I tend to lean towards
female (she/her) or gender inclusive (they/them) pronouns unless I’m talking
about a specific character or person who has specified their pronouns.
For the player, if the gender of their character is
important to them, they can work to include it in the Truths about their
character; if it less of a factor in their interest in the character, it can be
included in their descriptive details. In actual play, their have been
girl, boy, neither, amalgamated, changing, and artificially gendered
Princesses. It’s my goal that players can make character that reflect
their desires and interests in what is cool or exciting. Variations in
age, body shape, gender, orientation, and even species have all occurred in
actual play of Princess World. For me, it’s really exciting to see the
fantastic directions players take their character creation in, thinking both
inside and outside the box of the archetype they’ve picked. The new
She-Ra cartoon has definitely been a touch stone.
With all that being said, there is, in very early development, a playbook that is specifically called the Boy Princess; my daughter wanted that included (she generated the seed ideas for fourteen of the sixteen playbooks we’re working on) and I’m excited to see how players will interpret and expand on that concept!
The character portrait is very important!
Awesome! The Boy Princess sounds my style. Speaking of style, I see that you’re using a system Powered by the Apocalypse. What led you to choose this system, and how have you modified it to suit your unique needs?
Well, I really fell in love with Apocalypse World when I was first introduced to it; it really mapped to my style of facilitating games and gave me words and structures to actually explain what I was doing. Also, it allowed for a very low level of pre-game preparation, something I’m really liking as I have less time to game. I feel that the PbtA approach worked really well for being a Weaver, what we call the “game master” in Princess World, as we stress that they are there to help the other players tell a story about their characters, not a story the Weaver makes up to put the princesses through; that collaboration between all the players, collectively creating the fiction of the narrative is what I find most satisfying in playing PbtA games.
For Princess
World, I narrowed things down to four basic moves; all of which are ways of
dealing with obstacles or problems that the characters face. Essentially: order
things to do what you want, try to change their minds, evade things, fight
things; they seem to cover all the ground I want for the players to explore
when making choices for their characters. There’s a single auxiliary move
that is dependent on how connected a Princess is to another Princess, using a
currency we call Threads, which are statements about the characters’
relationships, written down on strips of paper and handed out to other
players. As well, every Princess has a special knowledge move that
reflect their unique perspective on Princess World, though other Princesses can
use their Threads to tap into another Princess’s way of looking at things.
Apocalypse
World, and many PbtA games, tend to be pretty loose on framing and pacing
scenes; I’ve put a little more structure for that in Princess World,
specifically using number of scenes to measure the difficulty or challenge of a
situation; the more difficult a challenge is, the more scenes will be required
to overcome or resolve it. I’m hoping this will make pacing of the story
and sharing spotlight time easier for newer players to grasp and use.
There’s no lists of equipment or gear in Princess World, basically, if it makes sense for a Princess to have access to something, the Weaver is encouraged to say “Yes!”, especially if it’s something the player can narratively unpack from one of their Truths! Encouraging creativity and experimenting with ideas is strongly encouraged!
As a parent, being able to create a world for your kids to play in has got to be amazing. I can see some of this in the Truths, but what are the values and principles you’ve considered in design, and the emotional experiences, that you have made an effort to ensure come across in play?
Yes,
it’s been amazing both from a design perspective and from a playing one.
Sebastian, my son, has already played Princess World; he created the first
Dragon Princess and did an amazing job with her, creating a monstrous Princess
who was both scary and kind! Freya hasn’t played yet, but has done
some basic role-playing with her cousins. All seem to have really enjoyed
it and I’m looking forward to more games with them.
One of the core experiences I wanted to have in Princess World was for the players to have to grapple with the question of “What is important to my character?”, with the subtext asking, “What is important to me?” Many moves and options revolve around choosing to help yourself, to help others, or to help the greater world around you and that, often, you won’t have enough to do all three at once so you’ll need to make hard choices. I interviewed a lot of kids, aged 9-13, during the early development process and I wanted the game to reflect what that age group wanted in a game: that their characters had agency, that they could make important choices, and that their choices mattered; I’m really hoping that Princess World will provide that for players, both new and experienced. So far, it seems to be working.
Heck yeah playing on the floor!
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Thanks so much to Kevin for the interview and to the Weaver Princess, Freya, for being such an inspiration! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Princess World on Kickstarter today!
Tell me a little about Rebel Crown. What excites you about it?
Rebel Crown is character-driven rpg with a player-facing campaign. Each character playbook focuses on a unique relationship with the claimant and gives that character a driving motivation to remain on this quest. The claimant is its own unique playbook, which thrives on sharing the spotlight with their allies and acting on their council. The campaign is driven by player choices: which factions to ally with and which holdings to pursue. As you group, you play to find out whether the claimant can take their throne and what sacrifices must be made along the way.
What are the various playbooks like, in a few examples of their abilities and how they interact with the game, and what power do they have in the narrative?
A lot of our design process started in
the playbooks. I tend to get the most out of campaigns where the
characters are deeply connected to one another and have a shared commitment to
a goal or objective. Since the premise of a succession crisis lends
itself to focusing on the relationship between a Claimant and their allies,
that created an opening for us to create purposefully asymmetrical
playbooks. Most of that asymmetry has to do with the Claimant
playbook. There must be a Claimant at the table, and the other playbooks
are sworn allies of the Claimant. This playbook is at the heart of
the campaign, but we didn’t want to make a game that follows the story of one
player character at the exclusion of the others. So we made the Claimant’s
player explicitly responsible for spotlight sharing and reinforced this
responsibility through their XP triggers:
The Claimant playbook triggers.
The result has been that the
Claimant is constantly pulling other characters into the scene to ask their
advice, to request a sacrifice, to reward their loyalty. The other playbooks
have XP triggers that reward them for taking initiative, to not wait until the
Claimant asks for their advice or intercession. Here’s the Devoted:
The Devoted playbook triggers.
The flow from these rewards has been really satisfying, and character motivation and relationship is constantly at the center of play.
The
playbook special abilities reinforce character dynamics without being too
restrictive (especially since special abilities may be chosen from other
playbooks).
The Idealist playbook triggers.
A sample of the Devoted’s special abilities suggests different approaches to protecting the Claimant (guarding them in battle, defending their name in a public forum, or engaging in duels on their behalf). The Devoted is defined by their love of the claimant, but there are many ways a player might take action on that motivation.
To dig in deeper, in the case of the claimant in play, how does the game guide the player toward a just and moral leadership that would make their claim to power morally superior to the claims of the usurpers?
The moral righteousness of the Claimant’s quest is in many ways the core fruitful void of this system: it’s a driving question that the game can’t answer for you without closing off some of the explorations that make RPGs really compelling. However, we try to direct play toward this question in thoughtful ways.
One way is the way that each sortie generates Unrest for the retinue, and more destructive sorties produce significantly more Unrest. The sortie objectives push the retinue to gain new objectives and ingratiate themselves with powerful factions, but the consequences of this expansion often impact the common people of your holdings the most. Here are the Entanglements you might roll at the highest level of Unrest:
The Unrest rules.
Unrest provides a slow creep of consequences for the people your Claimant has sworn to protect and provide for. How they address these consequences is an unavoidable topic of play.
The playbook that most explicitly focuses on the question of just rule and moral leadership is the Idealist, who has allied with the Claimant because they believe it is a path to the greater good. The Idealist’s XP triggers put pressure on the Claimant to do the right thing even when it’s not expedient and encourage the Idealist to keep that question of moral leadership right at the forefront of play.
Draft playbooks with some fun thematic details.
I note that you talk about expressing your heritage, background, or trauma. How are players supported within the game in regards to traumatic or triggering content, and also, speaking of heritages, are you involving sensitivity readers in the project?
Trauma is a term from Blades in the Dark that appears in many Forged in the Dark games. We replaced that mechanic with ‘Scars’. When a character’s Stress exceeds their limitations, they must choose whether to take one final action before collapsing or to pull themselves together and carry on. We both wanted to avoid the term Trauma given its specific meaning in the context of psychology, and we wanted to rework the mechanic to provide more player choice in the moment.
We’re working on integrating safety tools into the rules text. I’ve been influenced in this regard by playing with some folks through The Gauntlet’s community. We want to provide clear prompts on CATS (content, aim, subject matter, tone) that people could leverage when introducing the game to a group. We’ll also encourage the use of Lines & Veils and the X cards. When we run are games at Games on Demand, these are the tools we’ve used and we want to provide the same resources to folks running it on their own.
The design team is just Eric and me; we haven’t brought in outside readers, though our playtesters have given a lot of valuable feedback on how we can directly address the more problematic aspects of any fiction set in a feudal setting.
What does an average session look like, including the sorties you mention (a term some of my readers may be unfamiliar with)?
A typical session runs through three phases:Recon: In which the retinue (the Claimant and the allies) gather information about other factions and identify an objective.
The Sortie: The main ‘mission’ of the session. This could be an attack on an enemy faction, a diplomatic meeting, or an attempt to drive off wraiths from a vulnerable holding. The goal of a Sortie is typically to gain a new Holding (some property or asset) for the Claimant’s Domain, to strengthen relations with another faction, or to weaken an enemy faction in some way. The retinue may also seek to vassalize another faction, bringing them under the Claimant’s rule without seizing their Holdings.
Downtime: In which the retinue recovers from injury and stress, engages in long terms projects, and trains their skills. Downtime abstracts weeks of time as the player character pursue their own interests, discuss their long-term priorities, and seek solace together from the difficult campaign.
The Domain sheet includes a calendar for players to track their Sorties, Seasons change every two Downtimes, providing a richer sense of time scale and place.
At the end of the session, players asses how they earned XP based on their playbook, and whether their character’s Beliefs and Drive changed based on the events of the session.
What is THE VIOLET SANCTION, both as a product and as your vision?
i’m working on a zinequest game for kickstarter called THE VIOLET SANCTION, a cooperative urban fantasy adventure that takes place in seattle’s capitol hill neighborhood. it’s one of the epicenters of queer culture in the area, and it also happens to be my home. as a product, the game is a multiplayer choose-your-own-story style gamebook, divided into episodes. episodes, which are named after streets in the neighborhood, are non-linear, crossing paths with each other frequently, leading to a grand finale in the epilogue.
the game eschews dice, leveling, experience points, and most combat (there are social encounters, certainly). as a vision, THE VIOLET SANCTION is my first art project in a very long time, after years of processing life’s many traumas. a mid-life crisis, transitioning to nonbinary, escaping a job that was devouring me; this game is more than just a reincarnation of my artistic spirit, it is a manifesto for social change, for art, for evolution. i’m new to this whole process, but i’m hopeful in ways i haven’t been in ages.
This sounds like such a fascinating project! How do you handle resolution of any conflict or social encounters in lieu of dice?
the gamebooks express the setting and obstacles similarly to
an adventure game, with a lot of the puzzles requiring specific actions at the
right places. this can include dialogue choices, magic being cast, classic
inventory puzzles, etc., but the charm of the system really comes from the
cards. every character has their own customized deck, which are written on,
manipulated, and sometime removed. a various points, the game queries cards in
hand or on the table, then directs you to the next scene accordingly.
my favorite example is the 9 of hearts, which signifies the
9 lives of the cat-human shapeshifter class. as they “lose” lives,
pips are shaded in or crossed out. rumor has it that cats on their last life
share a drink at a speakeasy hidden down a dark alley…
other scenes are resolved by playing cards from your hand to
determine outcomes, and one character class can even trade cards with other
players. however, cards are never randomly drawn, instead it’s a strategy
puzzle of figuring out what goes where and how.
As a nonbinary person, I’m always curious how other nonbinary people’s identity has influenced their design. How do you feel your transition to nonbinary identity has influenced the design and flavor of THE VIOLET SANCTION?
being nonbinary absolutely affects my writing and design. the game is largely de-gendered, with the exception of a few specific characters, like death herself, which was chosen intentionally. using THE VIOLET SANCTION as a platform for dismantling the gender binary and helping to solidify new language was incredibly important to the overall design. identifying as queer in general impacts the type of subjects i choose to tackle.
all art is politics, and education, and i think visibility for the queer spectrum is vital to our future. i spent my entire adolescence being told that my sexuality shouldn’t define me, that it was only a part of who i was, but then was simultaneously told i was a very small percentage of the population. as i’ve grown older and wiser, i meet people like me everywhere i go. i want the next generation to hear these stories and be able to do better for themselves.
What is The Watching Book, both as a product and as your vision?
The
Watching Book is a diegetic setting zine told as the journal of oracles. It
presents the religion, culture, and rituals of a fictional people through the
eyes of the women who guide them. Accompanying the zine is a short paperless,
gm-less rpg. In this, players take on the roll of children to enjoy a game of
mystery-solving and oral storytelling. Both the game and the zine are in-world
artifacts that can be used to enhance a campaign setting or be given directly
to players as found items during a game.
This zine is the second foray into the world of Soothsayer, my boardgame from 2019. The project started as a gift for my wife, and consequently the world is built around centering the lives and accomplishments of lgbt characters. By using different viewpoint characters throughout, I also get the chance to examine the ways in which the same ritual can take on different meaning to different people, even within the same group. I really wanted the world built by these games to explore real faith in fantasy by leaving some questions unanswered.
This sounds very cool! What are some of the ways you set boundaries and encourage creativity, either mechanically or otherwise, for players in The Watching Book?
The
Watching Book is more of a setting than a game in and of itself. But carrying
through from Soothsayer one of my design goals was to make sure to avoid
encouraging a “dark” look at the world. The problems faced within the
text are natural disasters, disagreements, or mysteries rather than acts of
intentional violence or hate. I primed the world to be not a utopia, but a
relatively peaceable sort of place where brutal content is very clearly
out of place and inappropriate. There are a lot of games and settings where
those topics can be explored, but this is not one of them.
As for
creativity, I stay away from explicitly answering any of the religious and
spiritual questions that exist about the world. Are the spirits actually real?
Are they real, but different than how most people interpret them? Readers and
players in the setting have room to develop their own opinions and explore
beliefs without being handed a yes or no answer within the text.
It’s lovely that this was inspired by your wife. In what other ways than the people is The Watching Book a queer game and product?
I made
sure that at every step of the way I tried to include people of different
outlooks and communities. Ezra, the artist, describes themself as a Queer
Jewitch Farmer. That’s a material way I’m using my work to give back; hiring
other LGBT people to work with me.
Additionally
I am happy to adopt a policy that’s gaining traction in the ttrpg community; as
part of the campaign I have included Community Copies of the zine. These are
donated copies from generous people that are available to anyone, no questions
asked. In this way I can make my zine a little more accessible to those having
a hard time.
What is The Last Place on Earth, both as a product and as your vision?
The Last Place on Earth is a tabletop role playing game inspired by the Heroic Age of Exploration and by Robert F Scott’s fatal 1912 expedition to the South Pole. It’s a game about the hardships of Antarctic exploration and the arrogance of men who believe that they can or must overcome nature. It’s designed as a one or two shot experience with black and white zine of rules accompanied by archival photos and an illustrated map of the route to use a play aid.
This sounds like an intensive research project! What kind of research have you been doing for the project, and how have you found that research to be useful in designing the game?
My research started with a much broader scope as I was
interested in a game about historical exploring. I was reading about mountain
climbing which had a lot of juicy material: harsh environments, bad equipment,
improper safety procedures, great scenery, but almost all that history engages
in indigenous erasure. As a white designer, it is not my place to write that
game so I turned my attention to the South Pole, and Scott’s Terra Nova
expedition drawn in by the photographs and journal entries. The journal
entries.
The journal entries are fascinating because they provide insight
into the thought processes of the expedition members during their ill-fated
march. We can read about the dynamics within the group and later what they want
to be remembered in the history books. Journaling is included as a mechanic in
the game as a form of monologuing, and as a stretch goal, I will be writing a
solo RPG variant that relies on journaling extensively. In the end, the
emotional arc of the expedition became the focal point, and the technical
aspects of exploration were relegated to window dressing. The best gameplay comes
from exploring the attitudes and relationships of these men at the end of the
earth.
I like the way you say “the arrogance of men who believe they can or must overcome nature.” Can you expand on this perspective and how it shapes your design and your approach to this project?
Beneath the mechanics and setting, the Last Place on Earth is about colonialism and masculinity. These men traveled to a place with temperatures of -45 degrees Fahrenheit and winds regularly over 100 miles an hour so that they could claim the glory of reaching the center of an uninhabited continent. This toxic mindset is just so deeply ingrained in their identities. For example, they viewed skis as children’s toys and barely used them instead they walked almost all of the 900 miles to the pole. It’s also apparent in their words. One of Scott’s last journal entries reads, “we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen. I regret only for the women we leave behind.” Or Lawrence Oates’ last words were, “I am just going outside and may be some time,” then he walked into a blizzard with no boots.
In the game, the characters are created to evoke the absurdity
of these historical attitudes. During the game, the players explore how
characters with this mentality deal with intense physical hardship, failure,
and possibly even death. They form close bonds with fellow expedition members
and see if they can weather the storm as their entire world is challenged. I
hope that the critique offered by the game will lead players to think about
their own beliefs on nationalism, masculinity, and the natural world.
What is Thistle and Hearth, both as a product and as your vision?
Thistle and Hearth is a game of belonging outside belonging that combines a dark fairytale aesthetic with the experience of growing up as a Lutheran in Minnesota. Inconvenient spirits, punishing winter, and mercurial fae challenge the community. True Names, vows, and acts of creation bring them comfort.
To be honest, the idea for Thistle and Hearth literally came to me in a dream. It was some sort of high-action romp, but the things that stuck with me were the aesthetic notes of deep forest, deep winter, and elk riders. These aesthetic notes weren’t really enough to turn into a game until I shared them with my co-designer, Natalie (@rpgnatalie). The most exciting thing about designing this game has to do with genre – a thing I love playing with in games and game design.
To me, a lot of the indie game space for the past decade has been in pursuit of genre. Apocalypse World gave an approachable toolkit for replicating specific fictional genres in games, leading to countless hacks. Dream Askew//Dream Apart followed a number of years later, using similar tools to subvert existing genres, rather than just replicating them. What Natalie and I have done with Thistle and Hearth is create a genre that exists nowhere else by making playbooks and motifs that assume archetypes for this genre-that-doesn’t-exist. People expect playbooks to rely on tropes, but we’ve created playbooks without the tropes, and it turns out that creates a really unique play experience.
A Thistlefolk by Mahar Mangahas.
It sounds like you’re bringing forward a very specific experience. How does the life of a Lutheran in Minnesota connect to dark fairytale aesthetic, and what are some examples of how players will experience this?
So the game is influenced by Aven’s experience growing up in a Lutheran community and Natalie’s experience in community with people who were part of the church. The way the church manifested was heavily influenced by the local climate – months of winter where it was too cold to go outside, with too little sunlight, where the climate becomes a thing you have to guard against in certain ways. The game has five motifs that determine the themes and forces that will be at play in your game, and each one reflects a different aspect of our experiences.
This is represented in the game very literally with the Winter motif, which brings scarcity to the community, and asks how do you make do with less than you need? This can also lead to tension between playbooks. For example, the Forged and the Morning Frost respectively represent a tension between repurposing what we have in order to get what we need, and making things that bring joy or beauty but may be a frivolous use of resources.
The church also often had an insular narrative – we didn’t necessarily think things that were outside of our community were bad, but we didn’t understand them, and there was a prominent narrative that we did not belong out there – in the cold, in the wider world, or, in Thistle and Hearth, in the Woods. A part of this was coping with the fact that we lived in a place where living is hard and grueling most of the time – by making the unfamiliar undesirable, we made the familiar desirable.
A ghost by Mahar Mangahas.
The Thistlefolk, our name for the fae, represent how power works sometimes in communities of faith. There are often people who you know little to nothing about but who either you as an individual or the wider community are beholden to – they hold power over you and their rules must be followed. Both the Thistlefolk and Family motifs explore questions over how power is distributed, and how it affects someone who is part of the community in ways that are not explicitly violent or economic.
Lutheran communities often build their identity around shared histories, but these are not always true to what actually happened. In Thistle and Hearth, the dead can come back to speak their truths, and that may complicate the things that the community hold as sacred, or it can be used to reinforce this shared history. They can also function metaphorically as a representation of people who have left the community but still have a connection to it, and can demystify the unknown in ways that breaks down the in-group/out-group narrative.
Exploring genre, or the surpassing of genre, is something that fascinates me. How did you use the Belonging-Outside-Belonging system to develop this new genre and how does it influence play?
PbtA games use move-like-mechanics to establish what people do in the world, and the fictional consequences of acting in those ways. This is used to reinforce genre by recreating the paradigms of action found in therein. Belonging Outside Belonging games go a step further by codifying what kinds of action makes characters vulnerable, and what kinds of action allow them to advance their agenda.
In Thistle and Hearth we included moves and grouped them in ways that either subvert existing genre influences, or else completely ignore them in favor of something new. For example, one of the Forged’s weak moves is “lash out in anger.” In other genres, this would probably be a strong or regular move for a physical-strength oriented playbook like the Forged. In this game, and this genre, it is something that they do to show their vulnerability.
If moves and their categorization makeup one part of the genre of the game, another important mechanical aspect of genre is the motifs. Motifs (which might be called “situations” or “setting elements” in other BoB games) establish fictional powers in the world, and the players together control them and influence how they are used in play. The group’s collective experiences, while perhaps based on their existing cultural knowledge, create a new genre when combined together.
The Woods by Mahar Mangahas.
Without shared control of the motifs, it would be up to individuals in the group to understand, synthesize, and then reproduce for everyone else. That would be much, much harder, and it would be more likely for the player’s existing cultural knowledge to leak into their creation of the genre. The motifs may be familiar to players individually, but the game leads to play that explores how they connect to each other to define a fictional world. The space between the different motifs has a somewhat defined shape, but it is only through play that a group can discovers what fills the empty space.
In contrast to Dream Askew, the lists that players pick from to define motifs are quite broad in Thistle and Hearth. There is a tendency towards higher variation between the motifs from game to game. The genre that the players explore together can have a vastly different texture depending on the options they choose. In one playtest, the Thistlefolk hoarded secrets, so much so that they sent a member of their brethren into the community to steal a particularly juicy secret. In another, the Thistlefolk craved music and violence; we elaborated on them as extravagant party-throwers who could appear at the drop of a hat and stay for days, leaving little time for sleep or solitude.
Such a lovely title treatment! By Mahar Mangahas.
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Thank you SO much to Aven and Natalie for this interview!! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Thistle and Hearth on Kickstarter today!
