Tag: LARP

Harassment in Indie Games: Part 2 – What

Content warning: sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual violence, threats, online harassment, threats of violence, harassment and assault of minors, statutory rape, rape, mental illness, anxiety, social ostracizing

Harassment in Indie Games: Part 2 – What

This is the second post (post one) in a series about sexual harassment and assault in indie RPGs, larps, and spaces. I put out a survey to ask people about their experiences. This post is going to cover What (what is being done as a harmful act, what the result of the harm is, and what we are doing right now).

As I said before, this has not been an easy task for me or, especially, for the people who shared their stories. I am incredibly grateful to the people who responded. Whether they chose to be anonymous or to share their personal information, I think it takes a lot of fortitude to talk about our experiences.
Follow the cut for the post.

WHAT

What is being done to harm people?

There are actually a ton of things that are happening. Sometimes, reading through these was really hard because of the things people have done. To protect the emotional safety of my readers, I’m going to be vague with some of these things, and other things may be paraphrased to protect the respondents. Others I may have to discuss in more detail, so I will try to provide adequate warnings.

It is important to note that some of the responses features things that were done to players’ characters either by someone exercising power, trying to break the in-character/out-of-character boundary and violate the responding player, or out of general disregard for agency and autonomy. Even in more casual games, our characters can be an avatar for us, and insisting that our characters are raped, sexually objectified, violated, or otherwise often appears to be just a way to mimic doing that to us as players. Responses included people openly hitting on them, pursuing relationships after they were turned down, and so on, even beyond fictional scenarios.

One respondent spoke about an experience in a group of queer women,

I played in a group limited to queer women, because they claimed men were toxic and dangerous, and it ended up being the worst experience of my life. One player was forced against her wishes to roleplay naked mud wrestling. Tons of sexual comments were made in and out of game, despite me making it clear that I was uncomfortable, especially because I am a sex-averse asexual. We had a female character who slept with anything that moved and had a bra of holding… exactly the sort of character the DM claimed was offensive when men played it, but somehow it was ok for a woman?

People being inappropriate at the table is a pretty common issue, and players, even from marginalized groups, ignoring intersectional identities while pursuing their own enjoyment isn’t acceptable or okay.

Most of the responses for both fictional and real life interaction included some variety of verbal violation. Some of this was unwanted flirting, some of it was derogatory language or categorical dismissal (women aren’t “real developers” language by Mike Mearls on Twitter, regarding a panel at Gen Con 2016 – reported by two of my survey respondents), or threats of rape or violence through verbal means. Beyond these verbal violations, others went farther into groping and physical threats.

— Content warning for sexual harassment and assault —

A respondent spoke about going on a radio show that was held at a con while wearing a dress. When they went in, they said “…the DJ groped my breast and laughed about it on the air. … There were several people, mostly men, in the room. They laughed, especially when I got upset and left. They should not have laughed.

— End content warning for sexual harassment and assault —

A respondent talked about how a man they knew offered a comfortable space in a hotel room at a con, knowing the respondent had back problems.

— Content warning for physical threat but not rape or invasive assault —

The issue was, however:

What I didn’t find out until I got there was that the bed that was available was his bed. A double sofa bed. I should have left, but felt too awkward. From there, things escalated way past what I was comfortable with. He didn’t rape me, but I don’t know how many hours I spent trapped with his arm wrapped around me while he spooned me from behind and I prayed that nothing more would happen.

— End content warning for physical threat but not rape or invasive assault —

Physical threats like these are a serious issue, and this is not the only instance of deception for unwanted physical intimacy I saw. This is about control in so many ways, and one of the ways it appears is in where these things happen. I will note that I also received response outside of the survey (for greater privacy) about instances of domestic violence, and how it impacted the individual’s ability to participate in the gaming community. One thing abusers can do is try to groom others into being their victim, and as someone who was a target for this in the gaming community, I can tell you that domestic abuse doesn’t stop with their partner.

What is the result of this harm?

The immediate harm done in these situations is enough reason to make changes. However, it goes even further than that. It is rare that harm from sexual harassment and assault ends with the initial incident, something I am aware of as a survivor who has to be treated for PTSD from sexual assault piled onto childhood trauma. Below are some of the responses to the question of what has happened as a result of the harm.

— Content warning for discussion of results of trauma after sexual assault and harassment. —

– I had to have a year of therapy to stop having panic attacks, and even now I don’t fucking trust men who are too nice to me at cons.

– I fear my career in this industry may suddenly end without warning if it hasn’t already due to the level of influence this small abusive group has within the industry. [referring to coordinated online harassment]

– I never again felt safe at a con, and as soon as I could, I made sure I never went to one again.

– …I have been diagnosed with panic disorder. I cannot see a [person who resembles the bad actor] without becoming hyper vigilant. I cannot see the type of car he drove or smell coffee (something he brewed all the time at his house) without getting anxious. I have managed to only be able visit conventions he might be at twice in the past 10+ years and both times I rushed around and never felt comfortable.

– This happened very early on after I came out, it had a very serious impact on how I perceived my body and my sexuality at the time. The fact that he was never questioned on this made it feel like maybe I was wrong for not feeling fine with this, that I should have been fine with this kind of attention. The fact that he was very clear about his sexuality also caused a lot of trauma for me about people only being able to see me as a man in sexual situations which I am still having trouble with 2 years after this all happened. [The respondent here is a trans woman talking about an openly gay man who harassed her in and out of character. Transmisogyny is a significant issue!]

– …For me, personally, it made me less trusting of a community that I thought was better. It made me not able to participate in a live-action game the next day, because I was hyper sensitive to people swinging boffer swords near me. It solidified my feeling that I would never be able to participate in boffer combat, an opinion I have formed due to many such incidents in the gaming community. It distanced me, once again, from a community that I feel I could contribute positively to. [referencing threats of real-life violence related to participation in a boffer larp, including the bad actor negging the respondent.]

– I’m more cautious about where I go at parties in general, but especially at cons. I don’t leave younger friends to wander around on their own– I look out for them, whether it’s at a convention or a work event.

— Content warning for discussion of results of trauma after sexual assault and harassment. —

A number of respondents explained that the events they experienced made them uncomfortable attending events, playing games, or being around people who were involved in this community. Many, as these quotes show, have experienced panic, anxiety, fear, and the mental and physical impacts of those experiences. It is clear that these traumatic experiences are significantly impacting people in games.

What are we doing right now?

Frankly, in a lot of cases we’re doing shit diddly. By which I mean: many people responded with statements that no one helped them. When I asked “What did those involved do to help with the situation or protect you, as a victim?” I heard a lot of variations on that theme:

– Not a damn thing. [from two different respondents! One was in regard to online harassment, which is a significant trend – the lack of action for online harassment was well-noted as at times being worse than face-to-face.]

– The groper in question was with other people helping him. I was too shocked to do anything at the time. Afterwards I didn’t bother. It was Gencon. Gencon doesn’t give a shit.

One respondent explained that they were told the offender was “mostly harmless” when the respondent asked for someone to be removed from a group for repeatedly pursuing underaged people. The responses continue:

– My attacker tried to come to dinner with me and some friends. I panicked and told a second make friend he had to tell my attacker he couldn’t come. A third male friend showed me pictures of his kid and chatted about inconsequential shit while I cried while second male friend talked to attacker to tell him to fuck off. We went to dinner and I pretended to be normal and failed. At some point I told second male friend what happened, and he told me what happened was sexual and not okay, which I hadn’t realized before that.

– I questioned this at the time and was ignored. [in response to a GM allowing players to “roll for sex” after declaring a player’s cleric PC was part of a faith that practiced “ritual prostitution.”]

– Nothing. They blamed me for being a girl, saying I shouldn’t have acted/dressed/been that way if I didn’t want the attention. I stopped turning them in after a while because it brought up all of my shame from earlier assaults. [when the respondent raised questions over adult men pressuring younger women (including the respondent) for nudes and oral sex.]

— Content note for mention of statutory rape ––

– …No one cared that a 25 year old was sleeping with a 15 year old. The two people I told he had forced me (I told them I had been uncomfortable with continuing to do stuff) within a week or so of it happening (two members of the gaming group we were in) did not care.
— End content note for mention of statutory rape ––

– The other people in this community didn’t really do anything, a few times one person was like “Oh he seems to be going a little far” but never did anything about it. [in response to an adult gay man harassing an underage trans girl.]

– Nothing. I was seated with a large group of people, of mixed gender. But they were the employees of the person harassing me. He is an indie game publisher. I’m sure they felt pressure to assume that nothing was wrong, or, if they could see what was happening, to ignore it. Although I know some of them casually (online), none of them has ever said anything to me about this incident afterwards.

Finally,

– Absolutely nothing.

US Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
– Chat https://hotline.rainn.org/online/terms-of-service.jsp

US Domestic Abuse Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
– Worldwide chat: http://www.thehotline.org/about-us/contact/

US Suicide Hotline 1-800-273-8255
– Chat http://chat.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx

 

I apologize for not having non-US numbers at this time. The chats should be accessible for anyone, and if you still need help, please contact me directly via contactbriecs@gmail.com. I’m sending good vibes to you as well as I can. Thank you!

 

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If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Harassment in Indie Games: Who, What, Where, Why, and HOW Part 1

Harassment in Indie Games: Who, What, Where, Why, and HOW
Content warning: sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual violence, threats, online harassment, threats of violence, harassment and assault of minors, statutory rape, rape, mental illness, anxiety, social ostracizing

Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Part 1 – Introduction, and Who

Recently I put out a survey to ask people about their experiences with harassment and assault in indie rpgs and larps, as well as spaces around them like conventions. I wanted to gain some context to talk about it.

The purpose of this blog series is to talk about:

  • Who: who is being impacted, who is taking harmful action,
  • What: what is being done as a harmful act, what the result of the harm is, and what we are doing right now,
  • Where: where the events are happening,
  • Why: why is this happening right now, why do people do this, why it’s happening where it is, and,
  • How: How we can respond to it, how to avoid it in the future.

This has not been an easy task for me or, especially, for the people who shared their stories. I am incredibly grateful to the people who responded. Whether they chose to be anonymous or to share their personal information, I think it takes a lot of fortitude to talk about our experiences.

The first thing about this, which I knew beforehand would happen, is that I didn’t receive piles of responses. While people are fine with speaking about their experiences in closed spaces, or in places where they could easily delete their posts, etc. I am not sharing the exact numbers of people publicly because I don’t want to increase any risk to people who have shared. I also want to point out that what I’m sharing here is pieces of the responses. I had to select carefully because it was, even with the responses I got, a ton of dense and very important information.

Edit for definition: I was asked to give a definition to indie games by a reader. The definition I offer here is just mine and what I used.

I allowed respondents to define it by their own awareness since it is a flexible term, but what I was looking for is primarily independent and small publishers (so as small as a single person, but not really bigger than Margaret Weis Productions) focused on tabletop RPGs and larp, and the spaces where those games are played and promoted (even within larger events, like Gen Con and Origins).

I was made very aware of my own circle of influence during this project, and I know that I actually ended up having to play the dodging game with people who I know have done harmful things.

Full Disclosure

Three of these posts are paid posts on my Patreon (Patreon.com/briecs), and I’m accepting support and donations through PayPal (PayPal.me/briecs) as I normally do. The final post proceeds will go to RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest Network).
 
Additionally, I want to give full disclosure for my perspective. I have been:

— Content warning for list of traumatic experiences related to sexual violence —

  • assaulted,
  • drugged and assaulted (to what degree, I actually am not sure…because I was drugged),
  • harassed, stalked, groped, and negged*,
  • recipient of erotic fanfiction about myself and the person in my inbox without permission and also when I was too afraid to say no because the person might kill themselves,
  • hit on and solicited by men at least 5 years my senior up to 40 years even when I was underage, from known ages,
  • recipient of rape (including explicit description) and death threats (of the “raped-to-death” variety) by strangers and by people I knew,
  • emotionally manipulated into sex, and,
  • body shamed in the context of a sexual relationship.

[*Negging is when someone insults you to lower your self esteem so they can give compliments and influence the individual towards them. It is popular with pick-up artists and it’s bullshit.]

— End content warning for list of traumatic experiences related to sexual violence —

A fair amount of this stuff occurred in game communities, others in adjacent geek communities. I have been sexualized by older people since I was at least 5 (yes, I’m sure of that), online and face-to-face active verbal and physical harassment started in my teens, and so on. I also know personally of two domestic abusers in the community, a few men who have harassed or assaulted people, and multiple people who I wouldn’t want to be alone with because of their behavior, and not all of these identities are known or public.

This context is so people understand, yes, I am biased. I am biased against people doing bad acts. I don’t think bad acts only happen to women or that only men commit it, or anything like that, and I do fully believe that in most cases people can change and stop doing bad things, and try to do better things. That takes work, though, so with no apologies and no change, people remain in a bad spot with me.

I also believe victims. If it turns out someone has been falsifying things, that’s pretty shitty, yes. Most of the time, though, victims are more likely to keep the secret forever than risk the stigma and vilification that most victims experience. Victims are not treated with respect in most situations, and it can be downright dangerous to speak out against people who hurt them.

SO, with that in mind, let’s get started. Follow the cut!

Note: Quotes from the survey may be cropped or have sections excluded to remove names of individuals involved in the situation or to reduce the length of the post – I am doing everything I can to maintain the voice of the respondents and this post is reviewed by the respondents for their approval.

WHO

Who is being impacted?


The survey was open to basically any gender, and I received a majority of responses from cis women (less than 50%, but the whole of theirs was larger than any other category), but also from trans women, nonbinary people, genderfluid people, and men. It is pretty well known that cis women are often recipients of sexual harassment and violence, but it is important to me to note that people were being impacted across the gender spectrum. This is not only a “[cis] women’s issue” – it’s an everyone issue.

Keeping in mind that cis men, trans men, and masc people overall are even more unlikely to report their abuse because of the stigma that comes with it, I’m not surprised that I received few reports from those individuals – less than ⅕ of the responses were from them, in part because a couple who responded are being counted as responses from women because some men reported on behalf of their partners. Still, it’s important to note that men did respond – in part because of a comment I got that stuck out to me.

When I asked what could be done to support victims, they responded “I have no idea. Criminalize men?”

Men are significantly noted as the bad actors here, but cis and trans men are impacted by harassment from women as well as others, and this kind of commentary discourages them from being able to acknowledge the harm done to them (by any gender, including other men). I want to make sure we don’t ignore other individuals who are causing harm (including women against women, and so on), and ensure we’re listening to all survivors.

I didn’t ask for participant ages, which I may change if I revisit this, but about a third of the people who responded talked directly about underage people (themselves or others) being harmed by sexually-charged behaviors, whether it was sexual assault or harassment, or manipulation and controlling behavior. Emotional abuse is a factor here across the board, and it really impacts younger people.

One person who responded said that they received a lot more harassment when they were younger, but now nearing age 50, they receive less – but it hasn’t stopped.

I did not include race or disability on the survey, which may be considered if I ever pursue a future survey. I left those out to ease people’s entry into responding and reduce the risk of identification by outsiders who read my article. I hope that’s understandable!

Who is causing harm?

It is unfortunate here that many of the respondents did note that the person who harmed them was a man. However, not everyone mentioned the gender of the person (I didn’t ask in case people wanted to share multiple experiences, which they did), and there were women reported as being the bad actor. People of all genders were noted as bystanders, as well, which was disappointing.

The bad actors skewed adult – almost all of the responses were grown adults, but teenagers were mentioned as some of the offenders, as well. This is important to note because of the age power differential, as well as the spaces where these things happen.

Importantly, not all of these were heterosexual interactions, or done by straight people. One instance has a confluence of issues:

I had a game master/member of a community that I was a part of harass me multiple times over the 2 years I was around in said community. The individual was a cis man who identified as gay, even though I am a woman and was identifying as a lesbian at that time he would constantly make sexual jokes about me. He pretty constantly made these jokes and also would offhandedly talk about wanting to have sex with me/wanting to see me nude even though I identify as a woman AND I was underage at this point (He was in his late 20s). [from a trans woman]

This includes the underage issue, the gender issue, tacks on transmisogyny, and also frames this as within a community. More on spaces soon, but in the next post, I want to talk about what’s being done.


US Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
– Chat https://hotline.rainn.org/online/terms-of-service.jsp

US Domestic Abuse Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
– Worldwide chat: http://www.thehotline.org/about-us/contact/

US Suicide Hotline 1-800-273-8255
– Chat http://chat.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx

I apologize for not having non-US numbers at this time. The chats should be accessible for anyone, and if you still need help, please contact me directly via contactbriecs@gmail.com. I’m sending good vibes to you as well as I can. Thank you!

edited 12/1/2017 correcting language re: cis women/women/trans women in paragraph after figure, ditto for cis men/men/trans men. Sorry for the errors!

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.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Boy Band: The Game

Hi All! Got an idea today, so I wrote it down. Check out Boy Band: The Game, which will get a fancier version at some point, but until then, get ya grabby hands on it.

Boy Band: The Game

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Five or So Questions with Glenn Given on Slash 2: Thirst Blood

Today I have an interview with Glenn Given from Games By Playdate about the new game, Slash 2: Thirst Blood. Slash 2 is the sequel to Slash: Romance Without Boundaries, a card game about shipping – the fandom kind – and is a really fun and exciting game! Check out Glenn’s responses below.

—

Tell me a little about Slash 2: Thirst Blood. What excites you about it?

Slash 2 is a standalone sequel to Slash: Romance Without Boundaries. It is a fan fiction shipping party game where players compete to create their favorite One True Pairing while swapping stories and micro-fictions. The thing that excites me the me the most about Slash 2 is the opportunity to incorporate everything we have learned since we began making games (the Original Slash was our very first project). We have researched hundreds of new fandoms and used player feedback and fan communities to better balance our characters while maintaining diversity and accessibility. I am also terribly excited to introduce remix game modes to Slash. We have had loads of fans telling us how they play and they have been some of the most creative and rewarding contributions so we are sharing those with the players as best we can.

Tell me about the different modes of Slash 2: Thirst Blood. What did you do to develop them? Which were the most challenging to codify?


We looked at what other games were popular and said “you know what, I bet you can use Slash for that” and it turns out that works pretty well. Seriously though we took a look at the Board Game Remix Kit, at the litany of party games these days and at fan suggestions about new modes and ran with that. There are simple adaptations that don’t require any further materials like using Slash for your game of Fishbowl. We’ve added a light RPG/larp that riffs off of Ghost Court to try and get more players into the storytelling side of the game and so forth. The most challenging thing was taking these game modes and really distilling them down to a few paragraphs or less of clear and inspirational rules. 
Glenn Given, potentially lurking.

What were some of your favorite new cards to add to the game?

Hands down my favorite new character is “Every Punch Thrown in the film The Raid.”

What was different between this game development experience and the original game’s development?

We were consciously developing this product. With the original it came out after a 3 day bender at PAX East from a rented house full of geeks. We drove from Boston back to my job at the time in NH and printed copies that evening to play at the con the next day. With Thirst Blood we took a look at what worked and at how the landscape of fandoms have grown, how fanfiction in general has evolved in just 3 and a half years, and built something directly for those people. The characters are a better reflection of the audiences rather than me just stuffing every Disney Afternoon character into the set.

What are you most looking forward to seeing when the game is out in the wild?

I am really excited to see people look at the new characters and to look at the new rules and have the realization that what they have enjoyed can be played in a completely different way. I hope that they will see that games like this aren’t just rules ad cards but that they are toolkits for having a good time.
Obey your thirst, y’all.
—

Thanks so much to Glenn for the interview! Please check out the Kickstarter page for Slash 2: Thirst Blood and share with your friends!

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

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Big Bad Con 2017 Saturday & Panels

I attended Big Bad Con 2017 in Walnut Creek, CA on a scholarship from the con. This is post two! Find post one here.
— 

I got room service to make sure I finished my homework. >.<

I woke up after like, real sleep for the first time in a while, and wrote a paper for school before messing about hanging around with people until my next panel. I was brought a handy towel by Dante so I didn’t ruin the hotel towels and, tbh, I couldn’t find the towel before I left Monday morning, so no idea what happened there.

The next panel I was on was Gaming and Emotional Safety, with Mickey and Misha. Everyone knows I’m a pretty woobie heart person so I get emotional a lot, and I also have had some trauma in my life that I struggle with and that can (sometimes nonsensically) come up in game. We reviewed many of the various safety tools (though not all), noting that they’re not one size fits all and that people should use what works for them.

We discussed the importance of pregame discussion of content and tone, debriefs, and emotional safety as a whole. Games might not be everyone’s standard definition of “fun” but we aren’t there for abuse. It’s important to be on the same page, respect each other, and check in. I reminded people that even if they’ve had the same group for decades, they may make their games more fun for everyone by talking to their friends about their preferences. This included discussing racism, sexism, homophobia, mental illness, and so on.

more here>>>>

Games here that have risks in them: Misspent Youth, Lovecraftesque, Night Witches, Dread… that’s just a few. They are awesome games, but we gotta be safe. This is taken when I realized that games I worked on were for sale (Lovecraftesque), but handy for demonstrating games with inherent issues – like the racism and mental illness stigma in Lovecraft.
I also noted the difference between a squick and a trigger. Squicks are things that gross you out, make you a little uncomfortable, etc. They can stick with you, but are unlikely to have long term mental health impact. Treat these with respect – make sure people are okay with them, ensure they’re tonally appropriate, and be willing to alter content if it needs to be done. Triggers are typically tied directly to trauma and can result in panic attacks, nightmares, and activation of things like paranoia and mania (in my case). Don’t approach people’s triggers without checking in and getting their permission! And if you know about common triggers, ask your group before including them, but don’t require details. There’s also phobias, which I suggest treating much like triggers. Always check in.

There are some people comfortable with approaching their triggers and phobias on purpose, which Mickey and Misha discussed a bit. It’s not something I normally venture into, but they talked about how it can be helpful to work in that abstracted environment. Really loved that part of the panel!

Finally, we talked about inclusion, exclusion, and bad actors. The key points were 1) it is always okay to leave a game for any reason and especially if you don’t feel safe; 2) if you include people who hurt others with the content included in their play, you are excluding those who will be hurt, including excluding people of color in favor of racists, excluding women in favor of rapey men, etc.; and 3) you can always eject someone from the group. Always. If someone is hurtful, if they’re unsafe, don’t give them a space to be that way.

I was reminded later in the weekend how vile in-game violation of consent is. If you force a player or a character to do ANYTHING they don’t consent to, including ignoring at-the-moment objections, you are behaving inappropriately and you’re hurting people. Reconsider your role until you learn how to play games without hurting people.

I was lucky enough after the panel to meet up with Brian Vo, who made me a cocktail! It was nice to meet him and the drink was great. 😀

My nerding out in clothes for fandoms I’m not in.
The final panel I participated in was Adult Themes in Gaming: Adult versus “Adult” with Mickey Schulz, Clint “Ogre” Whiteside, and Jason Morningstar. It was a really great panel and I was excited for it because this is a topic that’s meaningful to me, specifically: what content is really mature content, how to present it, the tools we have to manage it, and adult content that isn’t just sex.

(It’s always funny when I run into Jason because we’re both typically busy, and we have these mini conferences like “what are you doing?” “what are YOU doing?” “I’m doing THIS!” “OMG tell me more about this!” and it sounds silly maybe but running into him like that is always awesome.)

We talked about the content we include in games – Mickey and Ogre include pretty much everything that their table is safe with, which is a lot (sex, romance, violence, and other stuff that needs to be approached with caution); I tend towards having lighter content, emotional interaction, some tougher topics, and I don’t approach sex very much; and while Jason covers a lot of more complicated stuff like grief and war, he doesn’t really touch the subject of sex at all in his games, though he discussed a recent experience playing a happy, healthy married couple and how transgressive it felt. It was so cool to see a variety of experiences at the table.

One note: Mickey commented on this and is making changes for future panels, but everyone at the table was white. This is something that is actually common to happen, but it wasn’t intended and it’s not a good trend, so more effort going forward will happen.

We talked about the difference between having content exist and be played out (which some people might consider more pornographic in regards to sex), and having content that fades to black or is glossed over. This is something I think really needs to be discussed in detail with players and GMs at the table, making sure everyone is comfortable.

Some people might want to push their own boundaries, too, which is dependent on a lot of factors. Specifically, I might be willing to address sexual content at a table full of close friends, but at a table with strangers it might not be okay. Likewise, there are non-sex topics that are challenging and mature. Violence is one of them! We use violence freely, but that’s not necessarily because it’s appropriate. We should be more considerate of this – Jason even said he’d like to explore more ways to resolve conflict without violence (my mini pacifist high fives this idea). Grief is another subject.

Before this con, and before last year’s Metatopia, I had a grandparent pass away (my grandmother first, then grandfather). I still went to the cons, and played in games where grief was relevant. At a lot of tables I might have stepped away or asked not to cover it, but both of these times I had people I trusted (last year was Jason, Amanda Valentine, and Roe Nix playing Storybox and this year was Hakan Seyalioglu, Kristine Hassell, Vera Vartanian, and Vivian Paul playing Dialect), and who I knew wouldn’t treat me badly if I cried a little or if I needed a break.

Honestly, the newest addition to Script Change, frame-by-frame, is here so that when people want to explore topics that are challenging, they can do so. It’s not always easy, but making a safe environment matters. Safety tools, discussion among players, developing a social contract – these things matter.

Useful tool (yes I’m reusing this picture) even at its base mechanics – using more of them can make games better.
One of the things we discussed was about deciding not to play or leaving groups. Just like in previous panels, we talked about ejecting harmful people and bad actors, but we also talked about self-selecting your group. Stepping away if the space isn’t safe, tapping out, or leaving groups: these are all okay. It’s okay to say no. We need to make it normal to leave games, to step away, and to take care of ourselves. That’s part of handling adult content.

After the panel, I had a bit of a breakdown. I was still processing grief (I still am!), I had done three panels without a panic attack which is amazing, and I’d been traveling and surrounded with people and writing a paper… I was exhausted. I burst into tears when I was alone by the elevator, fell to the floor, and just sobbed until Stephanie Bryant found me. Angel that she is, she made sure I was okay, took me up to my room, and reassured me it was okay to be upset. I’m so grateful for that!

I spent some time talking with Tanya and some Twitch and gaming friends of hers, & one of them who had attended the panel said the work I was doing was “so important, so valuable” and it really felt amazing to hear. I don’t often think of anything I do making a difference, but hearing other people say it is super awesome. It matters a lot to me. Thank you to anyone who thinks well of my work – I appreciate it so much.

I’ll have one more post covering Sunday with my games of Who Made Me Smile? and Dialect. Thanks for reading!

SNEAK PREVIEW! Dialect table!

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Script Change has been updated!

All,

Please check out the updates to the Script Change RPG tool on the Thoughty website! There have been some minor text edits for clarity and an addition, as shown below!


Frame-by-Frame is a mechanic that lets players express that they want to take it slow moving through the next scene. When a player calls “frame-by-frame,” they are indicating that the upcoming scene may be new, sensitive, or even just a topic they’re unsure about, and they want to let the group know that they want to move carefully through the scene. The player who originated it should say “play” when they want to indicate that regular play can be resumed.


This can be used when players are purposefully encountering content that they’re sensitive about, or when they experience new topics or content in game. The group should be considerate of the player’s needs. Continue introducing the topics or content that was originally planned, but pause occasionally to check in with the player who called frame-by-frame and ensure they are still okay with continuing. This allows the opportunity for that player to feel safe using other Script Change tools without feeling like they’re interrupting the game.


Frame-by-frame may also be announced at the start of a game or session so that when these subjects are encountered, the group can take it slow. Consider making notes of these topics on index cards for the GM.

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

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Five or So Questions with Ed Turner on By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan

I have an interview today with Ed Turner about his new game on Kickstarter, By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan! It’s a really interesting game that can get pretty…wilde! Check out what Ed had to say below.

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She looks so sassy. Judging you.

Tell me about By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan. What excites you about it?

By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan is a game about putting on an Oscar Wilde play.

More specifically, it’s a story game about a group of actors who, through a spectacular level of mismanagement by their producer and director alike, have reached opening night without having held a single rehearsal. Or picking up a script. They don’t even know what they’re supposed to be putting on… all the marquee out front tells them is that it’s a lesser-known play by the master of the Victorian farce, Oscar Wilde. And with that to go on, they’ll just have to wing it.

Which means that players are doing two things at once. On the one hand, it’s a story game made for telling narratives in the vein of The Importance of Being Earnest or An Ideal Husband: self-important people who tell big lies about petty things, and then fall over themselves trying to keep their deception from being discovered. Everyone looks foolish, everyone embarrasses themselves, but in the end everyone gets a happy ending whether they deserve it or not, because that’s how these things go.

But on the other hand, and this is the part of it that I’m the most excited about, it’s very much a game about putting on a live performance. Windermere is inspired by my experiences in school and community theater; it’s a game about being thrust on stage, underprepared, and doing your best to keep things moving by any means necessary. If you’re on-stage, you’re in character, and you’re responsible for keeping up the pace. As games go, it’s kind of exhausting, because you don’t really get time to think once an act starts. You need to keep the chaos in control. When you make mistakes, and you will make mistakes, you have to run with them.

But that also makes it exhilarating! It’s frenetic, and unpredictable, and even though the stakes are low it still feels very rewarding to survive to the final curtain. Whether the play you put on ends up being a really admirable Wilde pastiche or just a complete trainwreck, you still overcame all odds and put on a dang show. You can take a bow, because you’ve earned it. That’s the moment that I was really trying to capture with this game. That is what I’m most excited about.

I have a lot of interest in learning of interactivity in games. During play, are all players interacting at once? Are there different levels of involvement? 

Once the game starts, everyone is interacting. There are a couple different levels of involvement, but players will be shifting between them over the course of an act. Players might be onstage or offstage, for instance, and each has its own limits and responsibilities. Most of your time playing will be onstage, when you have to be in character and move the plot along. If you’re offstage, you have some more breathing room… you don’t have to react as quickly, and can watch the action without participating it. You can also do off-stage specific things like calling out sound effects or changing costume (which allows you to come back onstage as an NPC). Players will switch between being on and offstage often, and just like in real theater, even when you’re not onstage you are still part of the play.

The other variable in players’ levels of involvement is the spotlight. At any given moment, one player’s character is the Spotlight Character, which just means that they are currently the focus of the action. Specifically, that’s when characters get confronted about the lies they have been telling, and respond by telling a bigger and harder-to-defend lie. When the spotlight is on you, you’re stuck onstage, and can’t leave until you’ve dug a bigger hole for yourself. But once you’ve done so, you pass the spotlight on to another player, and now THEY become the focus of the action. Everyone takes their turn in the spotlight.

“Effigy of Joseph Johnson,” John Thomas Smith, 1815 (provided by Ed)
What materials are part of the game? What is tactile, and what is supposed to be all in the minds of players?
For the most part, it’s little index cards. You are limited in the number of props you have access to, so before the play starts the players brainstorm a bunch of useful items and write each down on a card. Once the play starts, these become a tactile element: if you want your character to be holding an item, you need to be holding up the appropriate card. That way, you can’t just make up items, and if there’s an object you want to use, you have to track where it actually is. Costumes work similarly; you all come up with costumes for NPCs during setup, and while you’re playing you change costumes by physically taking that NPC’s card and plopping it over your own character sheet.

There’s also a spotlight token; this is just some visible object to indicate which player’s character is the focus for the moment. I usually use a hand fan. When you as the spotlight character have told your lie, you pass the token to the player you want to see take the spotlight next, and the action seamlessly shifts to being about them.

Finally, there are audience favor tokens; beads or coins or similar small objects, used to indicate how much the audience likes you. Players start with three tokens, and there’s a pile in easy reach. When you break character on stage, you toss one of your tokens in the pile. When you think another player said something especially funny, you take a token from the pile and give it to that player.

Both the spotlight and audience favor tokens are using tactile interaction to communicate, without breaking the action of the play.

Where did you pull inspiration for the development and structure of play?

As far as development goes, this started as an entry for the Game Chef design competition back in 2014. The theme of the year was “There is no book,” and one of the optional ingredients was “wild.” A little willful misspelling later, and the idea of performing an Oscar Wilde play when you didn’t have the script was born.

By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan owes a lot to story games like Fiasco and Kingdom. Games in which you set up a scene, then dive into the action, letting characters bounce off one another however they see fit without a lot of rules or guidance. Windermere pushes that same structure a little farther; instead of short scenes frequently punctuated by breaks to control the overall flow of the story, there are huge and endurance-testing acts, making it easy for players to lose control of the overall flow of the story.

Beyond that, obviously Wilde’s plays were an inspiration, especially The Importance of Being Earnest, but I also got inspiration from other sources, like Noises Off, a comedy about putting on a play that you aren’t prepared to perform, and even Frasier, a show that really codified the structure of a farce. 

Was everyone in this era judgy? Sweet monocle tho.
Do you have any controls in place for the game if a player needs to pause or they want to back up and reconsider something that was introduced? How much content control do the players have when other players act?
On the one hand, when it comes to the safety and comfort of the players, I take that seriously. I outline a simple “safety valve” mechanism, and am explicit that groups who have another they prefer (X-card, Lines and Veils, whatever) can and should be using it. It’s important to me than having all the players be able to feel secure that they are playing in a safe space.

But when it comes to more minor matters of how the plot is developing, there you’re a bit out of luck. A lot of the tension in the game comes out of having to roll with unexpected developments that come both from the other players and from yourself; what’s said stays said, even if you didn’t quite mean to say it. What you do have are intermissions; between each act, all the players get the chance to stop, and breathe, and talk about where the play’s going. Think of it as an opportunity for course-correction; you can choose to drop a plot thread, or change the trajectory your character is on, or even express concerns about where you think another character’s story is headed.


Finally, what do you want people to feel at the end of play? What memories do you want them to carry on, and what have you seen players who have experienced the game so far take forth?

At the end of the play, I want everyone to be tired but proud. Usually, they are; there’s a definite sense of accomplishment that comes from surviving the play in most of the games I’ve been a part of. Mostly, I want them to be smiling; ultimately, the players are putting on a comedy, so the memories I want them to take with them are the funny moments. The really good one-liners, the delightful twists of the plot, and even the collapses, when for whatever reason the play totally fell apart. Like a Wilde play, the overall plot is pretty incidental… it’s a structure on which you can hang beautiful moments. 
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Thanks so much to Ed for the interview! I hope you all will check out By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan on Kickstarter today! Make sure to share the interview with anyone you think might be interested – don’t let them miss out!

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Five or So Questions on New World Magischola: House Rivalry!

Hi all! Today I have an amazing interview with Maury Brown on the New World Magischola: House Rivalry board game! It’s currently on Kickstarter and just a really gorgeous project that sounds like a ton of fun. I hope you all enjoy reading Maury’s responses below:

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Tell me a little about New World Magischola House Rivalry. What excites you about it?

New World Magischola House Rivalry is our first foray into board/card games design and publishing. That’s both awesome and scary! When we decided two years ago to open a wizard school live roleplay experience in the United States, we realized that to do it the way we wanted to required us to write a whole new magical world that was specific to North America and its history. We wanted to be both respectful and inclusive of the many peoples and cultures — and magical traditions — of North America, and to also honor and engage thoughtfully with our fraught history of Colonialism. While we originally set out to design a larp, we ended up writing a world, and now we have an intellectual property that exists beyond the larp, with stories that can be told in many media, including board/card games, RPGs, books, and more. 

So for me, I’m excited because we are opening up the world of the Magimundi and the experience of going to wizard school in it to a lot more people than those who are able to attend our 4-day signature wizard school events. They get to experience at the table some of the fun, whimsy, and magical mayhem of Magischola by taking courses, joining clubs, and using conjures to improve their progress or hinder a rival’s. They get a feel of navigating school because you have to pass your courses with a B or better to get credit, and you earn more points for completion the higher your grade is. It’s definitely a competitive game, since only one House can take the Trophy, but there are lots of opportunities for roleplay and fun engagement with your friends around the table.

There are two other things I’m pretty excited about regarding House Rivalry:

1. The deliberate design choices to be inclusive in the playable characters. Of the original 6 PCs, 2 are people of color and also have Hispanic names: Martín Spinoza and Soledad Reyes. We also designed Jax Slager to be deliberately agender or nonbinary, and we ensured our art showed different ages and body types or sizes. It is very important to us to not fall into the same sorts of fantasy art that we often see in posters, games, and comics. This is a diverse and inclusive world, and we want everyone to imagine themselves as being part of it. We have to do that through the fiction and the artwork. Of the five House founders of New World Magischola, there are two women of color (Tituba and Marie Laveau), one white male (Étienne Brûle), one white female (Virginia Dare) and one indigenous nonbinary (Calisaylá). We paid homage to the diverse peoples who form the history of North America: indigenous peoples, people from Africa & West Indies, British, French, and Spanish. All too often people have a tendency to over-simplify our history and our fictions, rather than showing the tensions and the multiplicities within it, and we wanted to embrace that instead. The Magimundi is for everyone, even though it’s not a utopia.

2. I’m excited because this game is designed for mixed groups of gamers. All-too-often we can get into conflicts by identifying as *either* a “gamer” or a “hard-core gamer” or a “casual gamer” or a “non-gamer.” We, as a gaming community, can gatekeep in these ways, subtly asking “are you one of us?” One of the ways we do this is by designing games that are more complex and have a lot of rules to master, or that take a long time to learn. Some gamers look down on casual games as not being challenging enough, and even make fun of these games and the people who play them. It can be difficult to prove your credibility as a gamer, and some gamers don’t want to take the time to include newer gamers to their gaming groups. House Rivalry is designed as a bridge game. It’s complex enough that the more hard-core gamers have something they can do and enjoy. There are multiple strategies and different tactics to manage your resources, choose your actions, and use the variable player powers of your character and House. However, the game is easy-to-learn, and there are lots of party game elements, especially in the Clubs. What this makes House Rivalry really good for are mixed groups of gamers: the hard core and the casual and the in-between. It’s a great game to get people together and to play when you don’t have the time to teach a complicated new system, but you want some strategy. It blends luck and strategy in a way that feels satisfying to all levels of gamers. For me, getting different groups of gamers of varying abilities and credibilities around the table is a great aspect of the game, and one I’m most proud of and excited about.

MORE MAGICAL GOODNESS AFTER THE CUT:


Tasty tasty board game bits.

What were the greatest challenges mechanically for making a themed game that is appealing for mixed groups?

The greatest challenge was finding the balance between being easy-to-learn, but also having depth and strategies that are not necessarily apparent to the casual gamer. We know that frequent gamers prefer strategy and meaningful choices, which should mean that if you play well, you will win. Casual gamers are more tolerant of luck and randomness in a game; too much “swing” and a hardcore gamer will not want to play. One of the things that our developer, Mike Young, did so well was apply math to the game, figuring out the “worth” of each action, and balancing the effects of cards so that when you took a calculated risk, you got a calculated reward. Another thing is the balance of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Everyone has been to school in their lives, so they have some idea of how it works. You take classes (only so many at a time) and you study to improve your grade, or do extra work to finish the course faster. So the actions of Enroll and Study are pretty intuitive, and easy to pick up even for young players. The third action, Conjure, is when you use some resources in your hand to your advantage. This is where the hardcore gamers love to evaluate the different resources they have, and calculate the effects of them based on their turns and time. More casual gamers might choose a Conjure just because they like the art, or because they want to say “take that” to a rival. Either way, because the game is carefully balanced, the effects are going to be similar. A good player will be able to prioritize and stack these resources to greater effect, but a new player can just throw some spells and make things happen. 
We also designed the game with some party mechanics that each player has choice over playing. This is done with our Clubs, which were a new addition to Dylan’s game idea. About one-third of the Clubs include roleplaying party mechanics to earn (or lose!) House Points for the RP. These include singing while in Kokopelli’s Choir, whispering while in the secret society Obsidian Circle, and starting every utterance with “Wrong!” while you’re in Debate Club. Those who love this sort of thing enroll in those clubs and have a great time with it! Others have to catch them messing up, which is fun. If these active, party mechanics are not your jam, you’re not required to enroll in those clubs, and can instead get your club requirement through another club, such as Crossed Wands Club, where you manage your time and resources in a more traditional manner.

What we wanted was to hit the “sweet spot” where the casual gamers could learn to play quickly and have fun, and the hardcore gamers could see the layers and strategize toward victory at the same time. That means the game has to be seemingly simple and surprisingly complex, accessible as you learn, and then a later epiphany of “oh! I see how this works!” after playing a few times. The game introduces casual gamers to the concept of resource management and variable player powers, but moves along quickly with a series of rounds that include chance-based mechanics such as the Magischola deck, which keeps the hardcore strategists from necessarily running away with it in a mixed group. Definitely a tough balance, but our playtesting shows that we’ve done a pretty good job! (there’s a quote on our Father Geek review that sums this up rather nicely).

The school crest. They’ve got turtles, y’all.
How did you integrate the fiction and themes into the mechanics? Did you leave anything specific out that might feature in other formats?
Ha! Yes, the Magimundi is really deep, and there was no way to include all the elements into this game. One thing we had to leave out that I wish could have had more play is the presence of the House Founders of New World Magischola. It’s one of my favorite parts of the lore, and where the inclusive nature of the world and its engagement with North America’s Colonial past comes through. Otherwise, the game is 2-5 players because there are 5 houses of New World Magischola, and you play by House. We had to name the actions taken by the players to feel like something they would do in magic school. Enroll and Study are definitely school actions, but they’re also rather mundane. The third action was originally called “Dominate” but that didn’t feel very magical, and it also felt too punitive or hyper-competitive for the feel of the game. It took us a while to come up with Conjure, but that has the magical feel of casting spells or using the magical artifacts at your disposal, which either help you along magically, or hex your rivals. There are definitely some easter eggs on the cards for those who are more familiar with the world or the larp. Things like the Wendignado card, which is a reference to the tornado that hit our location during the inaugural larp — while students were in the woods casting elemental wind spells against a wendigo. Rather than call one of the cards “Sugar Rush,” it’s called “Hot Fudge in the Dining Hall,” which was a refrain in our third run as participants discovered the chocolatey goodness was available at every meal, and began to top everything with it. We had created a lot of creatures and lore, so the wizard courses are the actual NWM curriculum, as well as the clubs. The creatures expansion are all from our book, the Compendium of North American Cryptids & Magical Creatures. 
A photo from the New World Magischola larp, the inspiration behind the board game.
What motivated designing a board/card game for Magischola – why move away from roleplaying?
We realized that a lot of people loved the world we created, the lore we had built, and the creatures we’d imagined. We own this work as an intellectual property, so leveraging it into multiple media makes sense. We’re already at work on a collaborative storytelling board game, also set in the Magimundi, but with completely different play. We definitely aren’t moving away from roleplaying as a company! This game has a roleplaying element, the next one does to an even greater extent, and we have two (maybe three!) RPG scenarios coming out in 2018! The world is rich with opportunity so we wanted to have the chance to tell stories within it in a variety of ways. We also realized that we have a lot of fans who can’t attend the premium larp experiences, but want to interact with the world. It’s definitely been a challenge! We’re newcomers to the board game industry and trying to gain a foothold. But it’s a huge market, if we can successfully break in! We want others to know about the Magimundi!
Larpers at a Magischola event repping their house. 🙂
Tell me about the role of competitiveness in New World Magischola: House Rivalry. What made you choose to make a competitive game? How does it further the goals that you have for the game, and the stories you want to tell? 
This is a tough one! I consulted with Ben to answer this one, to talk through my feelings about it, because it’s complicated. One of the things people wanted from their magic school experience at New World Magischola larps, was the kind of fierce competition for House Points that they had seen in the Harry Potter books and films. While neither I nor my partner Ben Morrow are very competitive people (and our larp design is based around consent, cooperation, and relationships), our players were motivated by the competitive aspect of the First House Trophy. It drove a great deal of enthusiasm, creating an external motivation for taking an interest in their magic school classes and engaging in plot that could lead to a points reward. Also, getting recognition feels good, and the adrenaline rush that can come from healthy competition also feels good.

Dylan’s initial idea for the game, long before he met Ben and me, was to capture the feel of being at magic school, and helping your House win the day. When he made his pitch to us, we knew that the competitive play for points was a motivating force for many of our players, and we thought that offering that kind of feeling through a board game would make the game feel like the magic school experience that they had read about, and had been waiting to experience for quite some time. Since the object of the game is to win the First House Trophy, this game is not the most ideal generator of stories, but it does share our world. Players can look at Jax Slager’s card and wonder about their story, and Jax does have a fairly big story waiting to be discovered in some of the other media that’s forecoming. Similarly, our magical creatures book can give players more info about the Ghost Helicoprion when they see its tooth whorl on a Conjure card. Ultimately, we wanted to entertain, and we’re hoping that our game’s content and artwork invites the curious to find out more about our magical world, and the stories within it. The *next* game, already in development, is very collaborative and storytelling-based, akin to Mice & Mystics.

What is your house, what’s your favorite spell, and why? 🙂

Now, I’m the organizer and designer! I can’t have a favorite House! But I will say that I test into Calisaylá, with Laveau close behind. Favorite spell? Hmmm. A young person at Gen Con created and cast a “Fair Wages” spell. I think that one is pretty awesome. If I could cast “Fair Wages” and “Universal Health Care” on everyone, I would. Otherwise, I really like Pàgakwàn (PAH-guh-kwahn), which is from the Algonquin, and creates a protective shield against physical attacks. 
Go check it out now!
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Thank you SO much to Maury for this fantastic(al) interview! I’m excited to see more from Magischola, and hope you’ll all check out the Kickstarter today! Share this interview with your friends, too, so more people can read and enjoy. <3 

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

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Five or So Questions on Night Forest

Hello! Today I have an interview with Ross Cowman and Mo Golden on Night Forest, which is currently on Kickstarter. The game looks fascinating and I’ve heard really cool stories about it, so I hope you enjoy what they have to say!

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Tell me a little about Night Forest. What excites you about it?

 Ross: Night Forest is a ritual game where we play wandering memories. It is a practice in self reflection, embodiment, and deep witnessing.

Mo: As for what is exciting, one thing for me is our collaboration and the meeting of our two disciplines and perspectives. I think it is a jumping off point for more interdisciplinary collaboration.

Ross: Yeah! Totally. I feel like watching your work in expressive arts has really inspired me to pay more attention to transitions and the process of immersion. This had a big impact on my work Fall of Magic and it is great to be able to now design something together.

What inspired you to make a game about memories, especially ones that can be forgotten?

Mo: There’s so much that happens in our lives that we forget. By working with embodiment and evocative images, we can often retrieve what has been forgotten, which is really powerful and inspiring to me. Night Forest offers an opportunity to look at what we remember and what is lost.

Ross: We wanted to create a space where people could share things about themselves that they don’t normally have cause to share. There is something precious about these rarely visited memories.


Why do players use a candle to signify their lasting memory? Is their physical presence otherwise important? (Along that, do you think this could play remotely?)

Ross: The candle does a lot of work in Night Forest, it creates an intimate space, it constrains your movement, it requires care and is actually kind of a burden. Becoming forgotten is a relief of that responsibility and also of the responsibility of having to share and explore your memories. Now you just listen.

Mo: The flame is alive and has to be cared for. It slows us down and focuses us. I wonder if it could be played remotely… My concern with that has less to do with the candle and more to do with moving around. Movement and having a physical experience are central to this game. I would be curious to see how that could work virtually.


How do you see players interact with each other when they share their memories, and do you see much variety in the memories they share?
Mo: There’s a ton of variety, which is cool to watch. Even with the same card, there are infinite possibilities. It’s a very personal and intimate experience, yet somehow really accessible. There’s a tenderness I see in people while they’re sharing.

Ross: There is a lot of listening and smiling and serious looks. For me it has been a reminder of how much we can still communicate without our voices. How much we can connect with just our faces and our energy. 

How did you design the content of the cards, as well as the appearance, and make them seem coherent and consistent?

Ross: The cards and images are designed to pull at each other. Contrast is a source of energy in nature, and it is the same with our imaginations.

Mo: I loved illustrating the cards. It was like swimming through a dream, making associations and letting myself be surprised by my pen. The choice to use black paper and metallic ink was so that the image would shine in candle light. The over all aesthetic takes players into a dark, wooded, magical place… even if they’re looking at the cards in an office building in the middle of the day.

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Thanks so much to Mo and Ross for their responses to my questions! I hope you all enjoyed reading and that you’ll check out Night Forest on Kickstarter now!

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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Five or So Questions with James D’Amato on Dungeon Dome

I have an interview today with James D’Amato from ONE SHOT who is talking about his current project, Dungeon Dome, which is currently on Kickstarter. Dungeon Dome is an unusual project – an actual play project with… gladiators? Let James tell us more!

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Tell me a little about Dungeon Dome! What excites you about it?

The Dungeon Dome is a new actual play project that I’m hoping to produce through Kickstarter. The basic Idea is D&D meets professional wrestling. Players take on the role of fantasy gladiators fighting for wealth and glory in an arena full of deadly traps.

There is a lot that excites me about this project. Actual Play is rapidly becoming a major part of the RPG landscape. Shows like The Adventure Zone, Critical Role, and to a lesser extent my own ONE SHOT have shown that you can indeed export the experience of RPGs to a mass audience. So far, actual play games have been traditional, just putting a mic or camera in front of a normal game. I’ve reached a point with my audience where I feel comfortable messing with the formula.

The Dungeon Dome is the type of campaign that wouldn’t really work without an audience. The players are disconnected, the story is primarily moved through one type of play, PVP is usually only fun for the winning parties, and the only person playing who experiences the whole thing is the DM. With an audience, these disconnected stories play out in a way that other people can experience. Having people observe play heightens the drama inherent to combat. The PVP element is fun win or lose because in wrestling a lose can be as beneficial to a character as a win. I can also use competitive challenges that would feel out of place in a traditional game.

I’m also folding in mechanics that allow the audience to actively participate in the game. By cheering on the team they support that can grant that team special abilities to use in the game. This is a chance for me to experiment with the form of observed play, a style I think we will see more of in design over the next few years.

Also, on a more personal note, if The Dungeon Dome funds, it will allow me to pursue game design and performance gaming full time. That would be rad!

How have you developed the initial project – setting, concept, and so on?

I drew inspiration from a few places. Primarily the WWE and Yuri on Ice.

For the past few years I have been lightly getting back into wrestling. I watched a little when I was 10, but I wasn’t a die hard fan, eventually I grew out of it. However, a lot of the podcasters I listen to are huge wrestling fans, and there are a surprising number of wrestling fans in nerdy spaces. More accurately it surprised me initially. Now the parallels between wrestling, superhero comics, LARP, and improv are glaringly obvious to me. I guess I was pretty mired in the perception of wrestling as “low art” which is really stupid.

Anyway, after watching some matches I saw a lot of things that I could appreciate, and a lot of things that frustrated me. There is still a lot of old fashioned misogyny and toxic masculinity in big company wrestling. To the point that I can’t really watch it regularly. I see that it has merit, and understand what people enjoy, but there is a lot that grates on me. I also don’t see enough of the kind of theatrical experimentation in televised wrestling. Like, Lucha Underground comes really close but I want really wild storytelling. I want to see Shakespeare plays told through wrestling matches. Mainstream wrestling, understandably, was not going to do that.

Competition is one of the main levers in traditional games. Crunch games really show off the wargaming DNA in RPGs, and war gaming is really competitive. People who know my work know I don’t feature a ton of tactical, crunchy games. I think ONE SHOT, for the most part, doesn’t lend itself to those games. Yuri on Ice, among other things, is a really good sports story. You love almost everyone in it, they are all driven and fierce, and in the end only one of them can win. Even as a written thing it had beautiful, surprising highs and lows. It was so good it made me long for competition drama at the table.

The Dungeon Dome became a way for me to explore competitive games, sports narratives, and the things I like in wrestling.

One final note, after I started work on this I discovered X Crawl through the podcast. It was another attempt at arena Dungeon Punk competition. It was neat there there were similar ideas in game design. We’re in slightly different places but I want to give them a nod.

What tech will you be using to bring Dungeon Dome to the people in accessible ways?

ONE SHOT has a production studio in Chicago outfitted with a four camera setup, good audio equipment, and decent lighting. I think we have one of the best-looking setups on twitch, at least for the space we can afford. I really wanted to have solid audio quality be cause it was important to me that folks be able to hear us clearly. We’re exporting all of our episodes to backers as podcasts as well, so folk how prefer/need to listen don’t need to bother with video files.

Ideally, I want to have some sort of replay transcript, but this might have to be a down the road priority. It bothers me that hearing impaired listeners don’t have access to so much of what we do. Stuff like subtitles and transcripts are a priority if we go far enough over our funding.

Elaborate a little on your reasons for liking actual play. What are your personal reasons for liking it, and your reasons as a creator? How do you think it’s influencing the heart of games?

Actual play excites me for so many reasons. The best way to grow the roleplaying hobby has always been to show people how much fun it is. The problem has always been that the experience of an RPG is difficult to show off. Games usually serve smaller groups, and explaining them has a “you had to be there” element for a lot of people. With actual play, people can actually be there. It’s experiencing RPGs second hand, but you still get to experience them. It completely changes the way the hobby grows.

On a personal and somewhat selfish level, games are the form of artistic expression that works best for me. I have Dyslexia and ADD as a result, I write very slowly. On top of that, just about everything I produce takes a lot of editing. I love storytelling, but writing has a major prohibitive barrier for me. A ton of traditional storytelling mediums require heavy writing: novels, films, TV, plays, ect. For someone in my position, that sucks.

Stories in games flow naturally for me. The improvisational nature of gaming drops all of those barriers. The performance aspect plays to one of my other strengths. At the table I feel confident and excited, it feels effortless. At times it feels like my ADD is an asset more than a liability. Actual play means that a games are viable performance space. Thanks to actual play my creative outlet is a career. I cannot express how huge that is.

How do you handle tone and support players when it comes to content in a game that’s effectively live? What happens when there is a “no”?


This is something that Kat (my best friend and business partner) and I have talked about this. Right now the plan is to just have an X Card. So far we haven’t run into X Card issues. The Dungeon Dome falls into a much more cartoony depiction of violence and triggering subjects. However you never know. Like, if a player has a phobia and a monster exhibits qualities of that phobia we’ll be in a tough spot. Especially if the monster is audience submitted. Thankfully games are flexible, so you can make changes on the fly.

For those who are curious, if an X Card shows up, we will say we have an X Card and explain what it means to the stream. Normally, you don’t do this. You don’t call attention to that sort of thing to protect the player. ONE SHOT is in a different position than normal games though. People look up to the network as community leaders. So If we get an X Card I want to show the audience how it is used. I want players advocating for X Card at their tables to be able to point to us and say “ONE SHOT does it.” We won’t force people to tell us why we need to change what we are changing, just show of that it is happening and the method we’re using to organize it.


Last thing – tell me about these audience participation mechanics. How do they work? Just how much can one person influence the game?
Boy howdy this is a good question! The Dungeon Dome is part performance, part live playtest. I fully expect The way The Dungeon Dome operates episode 1 of season one to be different than the way it works episode 15. We will testing out, adding, and changing audience participation mechanics throughout Season 1 if we fund.

Right now we have a few ways we know the audience can influence the story:

Backers can buy the right to directly collaborate with me on monsters, traps, items, and NPCs that will show up in The Dungeon Dome and directly affect matches, the overall story, and the game’s world.

During streams the audience can grant the team or performer they support Inspiration (a D&D 5e mechanic.) Normally inspiration is something the DM awards, but I have taken it completely out of my hands. I won’t be able to do it even if I want to.

In The Dungeon Dome games I ran before the Kickstarter, folks did this by spamming the chat with team hashtags. Now we are Twitch Affiliates, so we have access to Bits and Cheer. These are a gamified currency Twitch uses to allow a viewing audience to tip streamers. For The Dungeon Dome it could be a more effective and noticeable way for folks to influence the stream live.

Also in the pre-KS Dungeon Dome if a character dropped below 0 HP the audience could vote whether that character succeeded or failed on their Death Save. 3 failures would kill a character permanently. The audience still has this power and I think it’s pretty buck wild how much this could change the story.

That’s what we know. I fully expect to create more avenues for interaction but I need to experiment in order to find them.

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Thanks so much to James for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading and that you’ll check out Dungeon Dome on Kickstarter today!

note: Thoughty is on hiatus until probably July 31, 2017. Hopefully this interview, and past ones, are enough to re-read if you miss me. <3

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