Today I have an interview with Kira Magrann, talking about her new live action game Something Is Wrong Here, which is currently on Kickstarter! It’s a very different game, from what I can tell, and that makes it all the more interesting to me. I hope you like reading Kira’s responses!
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Tell me a little about Something is Wrong Here. What excites you about it?
Something Is Wrong Here is a roleplaying game inspired by the dark and uncanny work of David Lynch. It’s atmospheric, emotional, and personal, and THOSE are the things I’m most excited about in the game! A lot of Twin Peaks style games have been more like small town murder mysteries, which is great and fine, but my love of character relationships, dopplegangers, and personal horror is bleeding like, all over this game. I designed it to FEEL like a David Lynch gig more than follow the PLOT of one of his things. So its a pretty emotional experience, and I love that about it.
You talk about following David Lynch’s creative process in the Kickstarter video. What was the creative process? How did it affect the game in comparison to other processes you’ve used?
David Lynch’s creative process is very fine art and drawn from his subconscious. It’s so weird I love it, especially the fine art stuff. I’m a sucker for surrealist painters like Francis Bacon, who David Lynch’s uncanny films have often been compared to! He was a painter before a filmmaker, and he sees films like moving paintings. I see roleplaying games like fine art experiences, immersive and social performance art, so I really connect with this correlation of the cross contamination of art media. His ideas are drawn from meditation and dream images. He often says “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.”
I thought I would experiment with this process while making a game inspired by his work, draw from my background as a fine artist as well as my own dreams and subconscious. I thought, what scares me the most in David Lynch things? What do I connect to the most? How can I make the narrative more from my queer non-binary perspective? I thought and dreamed and meditated on it for awhile. From there it was easy to focus on the identity issues that are so relevant in his work that I also deeply relate to. Issues that focus on multiple selves, and what we really need emotionally from relationships with people, and of course that feeling of creeping dread that I really do enjoy (I love being scared and always have).
Character cards!
What is the structure of the game like, and how do players mechanically interact with the narrative?
The game’s structure is somewhat fluid in the plot sense, in that the plot isn’t the most important thing about the game. The characters are the focus, and the scenes that unfold are there just to focus on the each character’s personal feelings, and how their relationships with the other characters might influence their decisions in the final act. There are two acts basically, and the mechanics are card based, in addition to a Facilitator who helps frame scenes, keep time, and play music. The cards change and serve different functions as the game goes on. At first they are emotional prompts, then they are acting prompts that happen in scenes, and then finally they are cues to how to make decisions in a suddenly uncanny environment. The players are encouraged to dive deep into their character’s minds, and perhaps see correlations between those minds and their own. This, in addition to atmospheric props like a box and a mirror, create some deep emotional play.
How did you playtest and develop a game with this kind of complexity – and how replayable is it, with playtest experience in mind?
I actually just playtested it as normal! It played excellent both at home, and at a convention. It’s oddly simple once it gets going actually, as the rules are easy and repetitive, like a ritual, and the facilitator really just needs to guide the scenes and the timing. It’s reasonably replayable, because the spoiler doesn’t reaaaaaaaally matter to the story, its more what happens to the characters and the decisions the players make that are the heart of the game. People could play different characters, or you could end up spending more or less time in different setting options, and I bet it would present a different emotional journey each time. Although it is designed to be a unique, one night experience!
How is Something is Wrong Here different from the works it reflects? I think you address this a little with looking for queer, nonbinary aspects – how do you think that shows most in the game?
Hahahaha well, I love David Lynch but he is an old white guy with some problematic ideas about gender and hardly represents people of color in his work, etc etc problematic faves. My work obviously attempts to diverge from those problematic aspects of his. This game doesn’t have representation in it per se… the character archetypes are very flexible and undefined so you can make them whatever you want them to be. The clearest setting elements are “America” and “a forest, a living room, a diner, a roadhouse” so you could imagine perhaps a small American town, but it doesn’t say where. SO really, the queerest and most non-binary parts of this game are about questioning dualities and pre-determined endings. Like, at the end, each character has a choice when they’re confronted by themselves. How can you confront yourself? Are parts of your identity different than other parts? Those are pretty essential to my personal non-binary thinking. My identity is complex, and made of fluid moving parts, and sometimes I analyze different parts of myself like different parts of a big whole, right. So those themes about the complexness of identity are really central to Something Is Wrong Here.
Tell me a little about Gather: Children of the Evertree. What excites you about it?
Gather: Children of the Evertree is a worldbuilding game built around a freeform/LARP style of play. I call it a “roundtable LARP” because while you’ll be immersed and in-character from start to finish you’re still sitting around a table with friends while you play. In Gather, you take on the role of Speakers – each of you an elected representative chosen by your respective Kinship or community – that have crossed the vastness of the Evertree to attend an annual meeting known as the Gather. In theory, the Gather is a great idea. Every year the Kinships of the Evertree may send a Speaker to go the Gather and discuss the previous year, talk about shifts and changes, discuss the affairs of the world, and so on. However, the Gather is a meeting so saturated with laws and customs that trying to conduct this meeting is often frustrating, limited, and feels almost alien and otherworldly (to the players) in its execution. The rules that govern the Gather don’t only limit what you can talk about, but how you can talk about it.
Practically, the game is played out with a deck of cards. The game is GM-less, zero prep, you just draw the first card and dive right in. The cards explain how to play, provide a little bit of information about the world in which you live, and then present the heart of the game – a number of Question cards. You’ll draw a card, ask the question to the group, and then the answers to these questions form the “discussion” of the Gather. What’s exciting about this is that every question and answer helps to shape the world around this meeting. Not just in abstract ways, but in how the world relates to the Kinships gathered at the meeting. We see the world through their eyes, and that’s what shapes it. A few small pieces of setting at the start, along with the questions, provide the edges of the world, but you fill in the rest of it as you play – what’s going on in this world, how do these Kinships interact, what threats are out there, what has happened, what is going to happen. It’s all hashed out as you play, and presented as it relates to the people who live within the world. In that way, the world is built less by images on a map, and more by the relationships and connections that fill it, which means that the parts of the world that you’re going to really dig into and flesh out are the ones that you’re interested in, and that you want to see more of.
How did you write the question cards and keep them from being boring or repetitive?
Every time you play, you’re playing with twenty question cards. Twenty-one if you count “By what name is your Kinship called?” which is always the introductory example question given near the start of each session to get players accustomed to how questions are asked and answered. Of the twenty remaining questions, five are set. Essentially, how large is your Kinship, what do you have a lot of, what do you have a shortage of, how many have joined your Kinship this past year, and how many have left or died. Thematically, these five questions were the ones asked at the very first Gather ever to be held, and so they have been asked at every Gather since. Conveniently, these also help players setup the boundaries and pillars of the world and Kinships so we can see the stakes we’re working with.
Beyond these, there are fifteen additional question cards. There are pulled, at random, from a deck of fifty when you’re setting up for your session. Thematically, these are questions that have been asked at other Gathers that have come and gone in previous years, since each time the Gather meets a new question is added to the collection (more on that in a bit). This provides you with a lot of variation when you play. Every time you sit down for a session you could choose to revisit a Kinship you’ve played before, or make one entirely new, and this may change how you play and the interactions you have with others. However, changing what the questions are from session to session and, just as importantly, changing the order in which they’re asked will drastically alter how players approach the game, and the themes that are present at your table.
After these twenty question cards have been gone through, every player has a chance to ask one question of their own design to the group. Once these have all been asked and answered, a vote is held, and a single player-generated question is added permanently to the game for a chance to be asked at all future Gathers.
Tell me more about the Kinships. How are they made up? What meaning do they have?
Your Kinship is the community, family, guild, nation, or assembly that you have come to the Gather on behalf of. It’s your job to represent your Kinship as their Speaker. Every player takes the role of a Speaker, each of them from a different far-flung Kinship scattered across the Evertree. To take up the role of Speaker is a heavy responsibility because within the Gather you don’t even speak as an individual. Every word you speak carries the weight of your entire Kinship behind it, so it is tradition to hear Speakers use words like “we”, “us”, and “our” rather than “I” and “me”.
Kinships start as nothing more than a name. While you’re learning how to play the game players are given an introductory example question which is: “By what name is your Kinship called?” Everyone then has the opportunity to name their Kinship. You know a little bit about the world at that point, about the Evertree in which you reside, but beyond that the name of your Kinship is entirely up to you. You’ll announce it, and then write it down on a notecard for all to see. Maybe you’re The Branch Tenders. Maybe you’re The Forgotten. Maybe you’re the Astral Cardinals. Maybe you’re Those Whom The Rot Found. Whatever you’d like. After the Kinships are named however, and you start into the first few questions of the Gather, magic happens and these communities that didn’t even have a name fifteen minutes ago suddenly come to life. All of the Gathers questions relate back to these Kinships, how they’re doing, what they need, and what they have to offer, so every time someone answers a question you learn a little bit more about what that Kinship is, who they are, and how their little corner of the world works.
Video by Galactic Network talking with Stephen about Gather.
How does player interfacing with the layers of tradition and rules at the Gather influence storytelling?
To really explain this, let’s delve a bit into the mechanics behind the Gather, because how the “laws” of the Gather force you to engage in this meeting directly influence how storytelling takes shape. Once players have gotten past the setting cards and the “how to play” cards they’re left with the core of the game – the question cards. When a Speaker flips a question card they read it aloud. As an example, the question might be “Has war been brought upon you by another this past year, whether by words, stones, powder, or hex?” All of the Speakers then consider their answer to this question, and at the moment the Speaker who read the question discards the card all of the Speakers answer the question on behalf of their Kinship in unison. This unified answering is a critical component of the laws that govern the Gather as a sign of respect to all Kinships. No one Kinship’s voice is more important than another. Every Speaker begins the game with three tokens, and after this cacophonous answer is given to a question, Speakers may offer their tokens to their fellow Speakers, offering them to anyone they’d like to hear more from. This could be if you heard someone give an intriguing answer through the din, or for any number of other reasons. Once all of these tokens have been handed out, if you’ve been granted such a token (and have accepted it) you have the opportunity to state your answer once more. This time, you’ll say it by yourself, and may elaborate on it if you’d like.
For example, if you heard me say something about hexes amid the united answer, you might offer me a token to hear more because hey, hexes are cool. If accepted I would repeat my answer and elaborate on it. For instance, I might say “Yes, a war of hexes. We believe the Rotchildren have laid a hex upon our crops. They do not grow, they only crumble and spoil in the fields.” Maybe I’ve just called out another one of the Kinships at the table, or maybe I’ve invented a new one. Now that I’ve given my answer, any Speaker may offer me another token to speak further, but these must be paired with a question. If I accept the token I must answer the question. So, you might ask me: “Believe? Do you have any proof that it was the Rotchildren?” If I accept your token, I’ll respond. “Technically, no. But we know the ways of the Rotchildren. This is how they work. Everywhere they travel in the Evertree they bring destruction with them. They have always looked on our lands with envy.” Again, any Speaker might offer me a token with a new question, and this will continue until either all questions have been asked and answered or until I refuse to answer a question. Perhaps the Speaker for the Rotchildren offers me a token and asks “And who exactly did that land of yours belong to before you stole it away?” If I hold up my hand and refuse to answer (sometimes a far more dramatic choice than answering) my time to speak is done and we move on to the next Speaker who was given one of the initial tokens.
While everything outside of the question cards and the initial setting information is entirely improvised and created by the players during play, this playstyle of questions and answers creates built-in prompts for storytelling to build off of. You’re never presented with a blank canvas and told to “go!” instead you’re guided more easily into collaborative storytelling by building off of each other’s prompts, questions, and answers.
What themes and setting elements do you think Gather does best, and what unusual possibilities are there to explore in the worldbuilding?
The structure of Gather’s gameplay is very similar to the Evertree itself. A good way to think about the game is to think about the question cards and the answers given in unison as the trunk of the tree. These are the solid foundation of the world. A question tells us things about the world, and the answers tell us things about the Kinships. From there, players have the ability to go down these tangents of questions and answers, literally off-shooting from the trunk like branches. These branching paths of answers, questions, more answers, and more questions allow you to follow these paths of story and worldbuilding as far as you’d like, letting players focus in on what is cool to them and really digging into the threads that excite everyone, before coming back to the trunk and shooting off onto the next branch. Finally, when all the branches you want to explore have been explored, we move up the tree to the next piece of the trunk.
I know that freeform, live action, or improv-heavy games can be intimidating to more traditional tabletop groups, but as with many of my games I have endeavored to make Gather a more guided experience. It’s like an improv with a safety net. Even if you’re not quick on your feet with creating answers that doesn’t matter as much because you can just speak quietly and let you half-answer get lost in the din. Not interested in exploring your thread further? You can always reject tokens. There are a lot of options here even for people who may not be as comfortable spinning worlds off the top of their heads.
What’s especially fun to explore in the worldbuilding is that there are very few boundaries. This world can truly be what you’d like it to be. And even if you play the same Kinship session after session, that doesn’t mean that anything about the world or the Kinships within it will stay the same. Are there societies and cities in the Evertree’s branches? Are you human? Are you a nest of birds? Nearly anything is possible, so the possibilities from session to session are endless. I anticipate that this is a game that will fuel fantastic, terrifying, and beautiful concepts for Kinships that will keep you wanting to come back to the table with it to try out your next great idea.
Lovely image of the Gather: Children of the Evertree title.
Hi all! Today I have a post by Selene Tan on Types of Fun! Selene is a game designer who is always up for a design competition, and writes about games and GMing. This post is about types of fun – the ways we enjoy games – using a variety of existing theory and talking about how we can understand those things in our own experiences. Selene said she loves “interacting with dynamic systems that produce unexpected and inspiring outcomes, and it’s even better with friends!” So let’s see what she has to say! I ask that you remember the requests I put forth about treating my writers with respect and understand that a lot of game design theory is still growing, so definitions can be a little fluid. —
A collection of materials for a game of Roar of Alliance (Game and photo by John Sheldon.) during play.
Whether you call it “fun,” “enjoyment,” or “involvement”: when you’re playing the right game, there’s something that makes you want to play it, and keep playing. But not all games are fun in the same way.
The fun of tactical miniatures combat in D&D 4th edition is different than the fun of a collaborative story/map-making game like The Quiet Year. There are many types of fun, and while people have preferences, none is intrinsically better than any other.
We can sort these different types of fun into categories. Sorting and labeling experiences is a good way to analyze them, and analyzing game experiences is a key skill for game design. There are schemes that classify games or players, and schemes that classify fun directly. I find schemes that classify players reductive. As a player, I enjoy many kinds of games, depending on my mood and situation. Classifying games is more useful, but again, most games combine different types of fun. I prefer to classify fun because as a designer, those are my building blocks. The types of fun I want to focus on are a key part of my design vision.
It’s worth comparing several schemes to learn what works for you. The main factors that I consider when deciding on a scheme to use are:
how applicable it is to the kinds of games I want to classify. If there are a lot of experiences not covered by the scheme, some of the types are unused, or most experiences go under one type, the scheme is a bad fit.
how easy it is to remember. If there are too many categories, or the names are confusing, it’s hard to remember the scheme.
how easy it is to apply. The categories should clearly describe what experiences belong to them, and most experiences should clearly belong to one or two categories, without confusion.
I’m including links to several others, but here are three schemes with different approaches that I find
useful for analyzing RPGs.
Schemes of Fun
8 Kinds of Fun
My personal favorite scheme, and the one that started me on categorizing fun, is 8 Kinds of Fun, originally described by Marc LeBlanc as part of the Mechanics/Dynamics/Aesthetics framework (overview).
Chris Sniezak at Gnome Stew has written in more detail about the 8 Kinds of Fun for RPGs. Here’s a quick summary of the types:
Sensation: Game as sense-pleasure. e.g. playing with miniatures and detailed terrain, background music, or props; drawing; manipulating dice.
Fantasy: Game as make-believe. e.g. exploring a world from the point of view of a character. This is the most “RPG-y” kind of fun.
Narrative: Game as unfolding story. e.g. playing through a story with cool set-piece encounters, crafting a story together with other players.
Challenge: Game as obstacle course. e.g. dungeon crawls or combat-focused games, any encounter where the point is for players to overcome it with skill.
Fellowship: Game as social framework. Playing as an excuse to hang out with friends. e.g. Kaleidoscope, where you “remember” (invent) a movie with friends and discuss it.
Discovery: Game as uncharted territory. e.g. sandbox games, hex crawls, and dungeon crawls.
Expression: Game as soap box or self-discovery. e.g. drawing your character or other game elements, creating detailed characters.
Submission: Game as mindless pastime. In RPGs, this is usually combined with Fellowship. e.g. Kick-in-the-door play where the goal is to defeat baddies without thinking too hard.
Pros
Classifies types of fun, not games or players
Flexible enough to apply to RPGs, board games, and video games
The eight categories cover a wide range while being easy to remember
Cons
The categories have a video game bias
Some of the word choices seem awkward (submission, soap box)
I used Roar of Alliance because it has a variety of materials and two parts of play, with strategic combat and “downtime” roleplaying making up the game – both could be very different kinds of fun. (Photo by John Sheldon.)
Quantic Foundry Gamer Motivations
Another scheme is Quantic Foundry’s Gamer Motivations. It classifies reasons that people play games, where each reason is a type of fun. There are two schemes, one for video games and one for board games. The video games scheme has 12 motivations in 6 groups, while the board games scheme has 11 motivations in 4 groups.
These are the video game groupings:
Action, containing excitement and destruction, e.g. fast-paced combat like Savage Worlds, or causing mayhem in towns.
Social, containing competition and community, e.g. combat in Agon, where whoever deals the killing blow gets more Glory; most D&D play where the party works together; or D&D Adventurer’s League play, where you’re part of a larger community.
Mastery, containing challenge and strategy, e.g. dungeons, combat, and character build optimization.
Achievement, containing completion and power, e.g leveling up, stomping enemies, and completing quests.
Creativity, containing discovery and design, e.g. hexcrawls and sandboxes, creating characters, or coming up with unusual uses for items and spells.
Immersion, containing fantasy and story, e.g. speaking and playing in character, following elaborate pre-planned plots, or playing dynamic characters that create emergent plots.
Pros
Data-driven. Quantic Foundry used a combination of survey questions about preferences and favorite games to create clusters of users, then labeled those clusters to get the 11-12 motivations.
Comprehensive. It’s hard to think of anything not covered.
Cons
Since the schemes are for video and board games, some categories are barely used while others are heavily used for RPGs.
It’s hard to remember all 11-12 motivations.
The category “Immersion” has a different meaning than its usual meaning in RPGs
Threefold Model and GNS
The third scheme is the Threefold Model (Drama, Simulation, and Game), including its descendant, Gamism/Narrativism/Simulationism (GNS). The Threefold Model and related models classify play styles or modes by what aspect of RPGs is their highest priority.
Gamism is a play style where the highest priorities are challenge and competition. One example is the Dungeon Crawl Classics “character funnel,” where each player starts with multiple Level 0 characters and tries to keep at least one of them alive to Level 1.
Narrativism/Drama is a play style where the highest priority is exploring theme through character. Different characters address the theme in different ways, and highlight it through decisions. For example, every playbook (character class) in Apocalypse World has a unique take on surviving in the wilderness, from solving everything with guns to building a community.
Simulationism/Explorative is a play style where the highest priority is to experience a world or characters that have deep, consistent internal logic. Investigating crimes in Mutant City Blues, where the Quade Diagram describes how mutant powers relate to each other and therefore what kind of mutant criminal you’re looking for, is an example of simulationism/explorative play.
Pros
Created for RPGs
Only three categories to remember
Cons
Lots of arguments and confusion about the definitions of each category
Ignores some common types of fun, e.g. Sensation or Creativity: Design
One way to use a classification scheme is to analyze play. I’ve adapted Nathan Paoletta’s Two List Method for this.
Make a list of all the things you like and dislike when playing RPGs.
Then play an RPG session with that list in mind. Afterwards, write down a new list of things you liked and disliked from that session. If you won’t get to play for a while, make a list from your most recent session, but it’s best to do this while it’s fresh in your mind.
Pick a scheme and classify your list items. For each like, write down the type of fun. For each dislike, write down the type of fun it interferes with, and if applicable, the type of fun it promotes. Don’t worry about forcing things to fit: it’s okay to have some lone items. But if there are a lot, you might want to pick a different classification scheme!
For example:
I like to play characters that help people. (Fantasy, Expression)
I dislike games where everyone plays backstabbing schemers who are out to get each other. (Inteferes with: Fellowship, Submission. Promotes: Challenge, Expression.)
You’ll see trends arise from the lists. Some categories will have more items than others, and some reasons will keep showing up.
The categories that keep showing up in your likes are the types of fun you enjoy the most. You have the most experience playing and creating that type of fun, and the strongest intuition for them. You’ll also find complements: groups of types that keep showing up together, or types that show up occasionally on your list of likes but not in your dislikes. The types that show up on your dislikes list interfere with or detract from the types you enjoy.
When you’re designing a game or wrestling with a mechanic, ask yourself what types of fun you’re aiming for. If the mechanic doesn’t seem to be working, is it encouraging a different type of fun than the one you’re aiming for? Is it related to a fun that interferes with your goal? If you have a design that feels like it’s missing something, try adding one of the complementary fun types.
If you want to read more about classifying and analyzing fun, here are some resources:
Unit 3: Play from Rules of Play, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (book)
Roar of Alliance is a fun game to play, and now after reading Selene’s article, I can’t stop wondering how someone would evaluate the game in regards to the type of fun – what type of fun is your favorite game?
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Thank you so much to Selene for the excellent article and for making the theories of fun a little more approachable! I learned from reading this article, so I hope you did, too! Please share and keep checking back for more approachable theory!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
For the past several months I’ve been gearing up to start a new project called Leading with Class. Leading with Class is a web series I’m doing to teach leadership theory and practice using roleplaying games! It’s so exciting to have it together!
There’s a Patreon for the project and I have a Twitter set up that I’ll be trying to use for the project as well. It’s a dream of mine to teach important skills and make knowledge more approachable using games, and this is a great opportunity to use my experience and my education to put some good into the world. I hope you’ll join me!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Hi all! Thanks to friends on G+, I was able to get in touch with Juhana Pettersson to interview him about Chernobyl, Mon Amour, which is now on IndieGoGo! Chernobyl, Mon Amour is the English translation of Tšernobyl, Rakastettuni, which was published in 2016 by Juhana. The themes of the game sounded haunting and beautiful, and I wanted to hear more! Check out Juhana’s answers below.
BCS Note: It’s so odd but I never realized how beautiful Finnish is! Lovely to even read over without knowing the meanings.
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Cover art of a couple in front of a ferris wheel, with their skeletons highlighted in red. By Joel Sammallahti.
Tell me a little about Chernobyl, Mon Amour. What excites you about it?
It’s a very personal game for me, in some ways that are obvious and others less so. I visited Chernobyl with my wife and that certainly affected how I saw it. It was in the early summer, and the quiet, the light were beautiful. At the same time, the history of Chernobyl is horrible. I remember when I was a child, five years old, when the news of the radioactive cloud hit Finland. My parents were watching the tv news. I didn’t understand very much, but I sensed the fear and the panic. If you look at a visualization of how the radioactive particles traveled in the atmosphere after the accident, it seems as if they were almost willfully zooming straight for Lapland.
Something in that combination, the peace of Chernobyl as it is now and the terror of the story seemed like it could form the basis of an interesting roleplaying game.There’s also a book by a Belarusian journalist called Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl, which had an enormous effect on me. It collects the stories of individuals who were involved with the accident or its aftermath.
I like love stories in roleplaying games, but they seem very underrepresented in the games that have been published so far. The Romance Trilogy of games by Emily Care Boss is obviously a huge inspiration, but I think the roleplaying field could take more than what we have now.
As a less obvious thing, the game is also an attempt to communicate the specific roleplaying game culture in Helsinki, Finland, where I discovered roleplaying and still play. Through international contact I’ve come to believe that the community has some unique and interesting ideas about roleplaying, and I’ve struggled to express some of them here, especially relating to very freeform-style character based social play.
Juhana Pettersson
What struck the romantic tone in Chernobyl, and how do you bring it to forefront in the game?
I’ve always liked love stories in roleplaying games, both as a player and as the GM. I think they’re fun to play and very well adapted to the social situation of a tabletop game. A lot of a real life romance consists of talking, and talking happens to be the one thing that we can do in a tabletop game with minimal or no game mechanics.
I played my very first roleplaying game romance scenes when I was sixteen years old and just starting with Vampire: the Masquerade. Because we didn’t actually have much real life experience with love and relationships, these scenes tended to be kinda awkward and heartfelt. In retrospect, it almost feels like we were using the game to practice for real life. Later in life, there’s been a shift in content on what kind of relationship roleplaying works in the games I play in. They’ve become more about exploring things we don’t necessarily want to experience in real life and fictionalizing actual experience either for fun or to come to terms with it.
Because of this experience, I knew for a fact that romance in roleplaying games can be very good stuff. Since the selection of published material was so sparse, I figured it would work for a game book like this one. However, I also felt that when it came to pushing the theme, subtlety was not going to work. This is why I tried to put romance front and center and have everything orbit around it. The game has two themes, radioactivity and romance. The radioactivity theme is much more perverse, involving an essentially self-destructive impulse. Yet my intuition was that it would come easier to a lot of players.
Aged and detailed map of nuclear zones. By Miska Fredman.
How does the game work mechanically? Does romance interact with the mechanics?
In terms of game mechanics, Chernobyl, Mon Amour is an attempt to broaden the scope of what we consider game design. It has no real mechanics to speak of in the traditional sense. No stats, xp, combat rules. Instead, I’ve attempted to code the design into the world description, the character creation guidelines, the preparatory workshops and so on.
Fundamentally, I think the goal of game mechanics is to create a definite kind of experience. Following the rules you experience what the game wants to convey. Chernobyl, Mon Amour follows a similar kind of logic in that by doing what the book says you should do, you’ll have the experience. It’s just not facilitated by mechanics but instead by the other guidelines. In this sense, it shares a lot of the same thinking as Nordic Larp does. Instead of designing a game, the goal is to design a very particular social situation.
Because of this, I suspect that it’s also a little harder to run than most roleplaying games, and perhaps more limited in who can play it together. However, I’ve also found that this style can be appealing to many people who find more mechanics-oriented roleplaying games difficult to approach.
How did you playtest Chernobyl, Mon Amour, if you did playtest? If you did not, what makes you feel confident about the game succeeding?
I ran playtest games before and during the design and writing process. When I first had the idea, I wasn’t sure of its viability, so I ran games to try it out. After those, I felt more confident that I was able to make a game out of this. From a playtesting perspective, this is an unusual game. Often playtesting means making sure that the mechanics of the game work robustly, but this time there isn’t really any of that. Rather, playtesting is about the ideas and concepts, as well as the functionality of the exercises for creating the right social atmosphere with players. These are much more subjective in terms of whether they work or not, and more prone to confusion created by differences in basic cultural assumptions.
In terms of success, I see this as an experimental game. It’s an attempt to convey a culture and style of roleplaying in a format that should make it possible to replicate it. I hope people will find it interesting, good and worth trying but I have a suspicion that I will be surprised by what people will do with it. Which is of course great, and a part of the appeal of roleplaying games in general.
Kuva, a person with long brown hair and dark skin in a hoodie. By Joel Samallahti.
What kind of workshops do you include with the game, and what sort of content and safety mechanics do you have to help players in the intimate scenario?
At least in the Finnish roleplaying scene, using workshops in tabletop games is highly unusual. I’m not really aware of anybody else even suggesting it. However, in Nordic Larp they’re routine and extremely useful. I figured that if these social tools work in larp, why not in roleplaying games? And I’m under the impression that in other countries, there’s been successful experiments with this.
The goal of workshops in Chernobyl, Mon Amour is get the participants aligned with the subject matter of the game and become more comfortable with each other. Because of Finnish cultural characteristics, the exercises as they are now are pretty talky, and I was planning of adjusting them a little for the English version to take into account the fact that in my experiences, international players are better at this than Finns are.
As for safety, I take it seriously. I’ve had experiences in tabletop roleplaying games myself where I’ve felt that my personal boundaries have been crossed in a negative way. Roleplaying based on intimacy and trust is powerful stuff, and it means that sometimes things can go bad emotionally even if all the participants are doing their best to accommodate each others’ limits. The game as it exists now has some simple safety mechanics to help with these situations, but this is another thing I wanted to adjust for the international version to give participants more tools.
Perhaps the simplest and most important safety technique, if you can call it that, is to make sure that everybody really wants to play it together, that everybody wants to play a roleplaying game about romance and death in an emotionally raw way. Sort of “enthusiastic consent” of roleplaying games, if you like.
“Valokuva 2,” distant image of buildings and industrial structures. Juhana & Maria Pettersson.
Earlier today I tweeted about a tweet by John Harper on the subject of loving your work and how it impacts others. For ease of access, I’m going to include the thread here, and then write the rest of the post. This is… a long post. John’s post:
Hey, creative friends. No matter what you feel inside, go ahead and tell everyone that you love your work and you’re excited to share it. Lie if you have to. Your enthusiasm will shine though and others will pick it up. Don’t do the bs self-effacing shit. It’s kind of awful.
I don’t think that it’s best to lie about how you feel about your work. My suggestion, to meet some of this ask, is “I’m working on something that I want to love and be proud of, but I’m struggling with that. Can you help me find good things in it?”
I’m not great at this yet!
As someone with mental health disorders, it’s really freaking hard to not speak negatively of my own work, especially when my work rarely succeeds or gets recognition and ESPECIALLY when I try to speak well of it and instead it gets trashed or I lose followers because of that.
It is far more encouraged for men, typically cis men, to praise their own work. The rest of us can get called egotistical, or have people say we’re over promoting/praising work more than it deserves.
I want to speak well of my work but I struggle with it constantly.
I get what John is saying here and I appreciate the intent, but I also know that lying about your feelings can hurt you so you should work on how you express them more than how to hide them, & that being positive about your work doesn’t always bring good returns and that hurts.
John’s method can work for many people, probably. But for me, that would be painful & harmful to me, with my past luck as example, & would not be successful as an exercise.
Just saying: nothing bad about John’s words for many people, but it’s okay if it’s not right for you.💜
—
So, let me get the hard parts of this out of the way:
I’m not mad at John. I think he’s great and he’s been kind and honest with me in the few bits of time we’ve had together talking. We just don’t always agree, which he has always seemed to be cool about. I’m not arguing with him over this because I don’t see a point, it’s not like he’s bad or something.
I don’t personally think lying about your feelings is healthy. Some people can fake it to make it, and that’s great! But not all of us can, so I suggest if you do John’s method (which is totally fine!), be careful and respect your own needs. Performing self-love publicly sometimes needs to take a backseat to living and functioning, and I know that’s not a popular thing to say. It’s still true.
I know not all men benefit from the things I’m talking about here. I have many men I care a lot about who have struggled intensely with receiving recognition with their work, who struggle for people to value their work, and who have received negative responses to their promotion of their work. I know and love them, and I am not trying to belittle their experiences. Please understand that.
It’s okay, even though it sucks. It’s hard to look at your hard drive at your projects, or down at your drawing tablet, or whatever your work happens to be, and feel that sinking disappointment in yourself. It can be related to success, or completely unrelated. It can be in spite of the love of your fans and friends, or it might be related to trying to meet their standards. It’s okay. I’m going to say something that you’ve probably heard before, and I’m sorry to be repetitive. But let me try.
Your work is not what gives you value. There is no amount of work you can do that will make you valuable. You don’t deserve things based on what you’ve made, and it’s not about deserving in any case. You are valuable because you are. You are part of all of this world and your work may never be recognized but you mean something, you matter, and you are bigger in the scheme of things than your work ever could be.
Van Gogh could not have made Starry Night if he did not exist in the first place. You must be for any of your work to be, and you make your legacy, not the approval of other people.
I get it. I do. I look at my work sometimes and I scream inside (or sometimes outside) about its inadequacies. It’s failure. I lament loudly on Twitter that no one wants to interview me. I whine that I haven’t sold much of my work, and that no one posts about my work on social media or reviews it. I hurt. I hurt so much. I pour hours into my work and I hurt, and my work is no good. Nope. I hate it.
I bet you think that too, sometimes. And that’s okay.
The idea that you have to love your work for others to love it is probably not entirely what John was referring to, but I bet some people took it that way. Loving your work is not the only way to succeed and to make others love your work. It’s not! But there are things you should do. You know I love questions, so I’m going to give you some questions to ask yourself to make hating your work useful. (click thru for more!)
—
Sorry, this is my favorite quote and is appropriate. Description: Andy Samberg as Jake Peralta saying “Eyes closed, head first, can’t lose.”
This is an exercise to try to find out what you can do to solve your negative feelings about your work, or at least move past them. This is something I’ve actually done, and I found it helpful, so I’m not just bullshitting you. You’ll need at least 5 minutes per piece of work, potentially more like 10.
Go to look at a few pieces of your work that right now, you feel bad about. Yeah, it’ll suck. Just go. Take something to record your thoughts. Ready? Ask these questions about each piece of work, briefly. You can go back with details later.
How am I feeling while I look at this work?
Do I feel disgust?
Do I feel sad?
Do I feel angry?
Do other people tell me they feel this way about them?
How do other people feel about them?
If you haven’t shown them to anyone, show them to someone after the exercise.
Why do these pieces make me feel this way?
Is it because of their structure?
How should they be structured?
Can I change their structure?
How?
Do they look bad?
How do I want them to look?
Can I make them look that way?
How?
Do they not function?
Can I make them work?
How?
What tools do I need?
Do they relate to something negative in my life?
Can I talk to someone about that?
Can I change it to ease that connection?
How?
Has someone said something bad about them?
Were their complaints valid?
Can I solve any valid issues the person presented?
How?
Are they unfinished?
Can I finish this?
Do I need to?
Can I set it aside officially and return sometime?
Are they not what I planned for them to be?
What did I plan for them to be?
Can I make changes to make them that?
How?
Did they not give me the success I wanted?
What was the success I wanted?
Do I need to rely on that success?
Can I ask for help to find it?
Have I been too busy to work on them?
Do I want to make time to work on them?
Can I make time to work on them?
How?
Look back at your “how?” responses. Which of these is 1) something you want to do, 2) something you can do (by yourself or with the help of others), and 3) something you think will make any difference in the way you feel about those pieces of work? If you have multiple things for one piece of work, put them as a bundle together.
Description: Taraji P. Hensen taking a picture with a phone camera captioned “you’re doing amazing, sweetie.”
Once you’ve figured a few out, look at your calendar and your current to-do list. Set aside a half hour in three days and then another half hour in a week to look at one of the items you think you can address, focusing on one set of questions and responses at each of these scheduled times. So maybe you think, “this drawing sketch doesn’t function the way I want, it doesn’t convey the emotion I’m looking for, but if I take it into Illustrator maybe I can strip out this section and draw in a new one.” You work on that.
Even if you just think about it for a while and write some notes, that’s okay! Keep setting aside just brief 15-30 minute appointments to address these questions, and work forward on execute the “how?” If you reach a hiccup or feel frustrated, seek support. Choose one or two people – only one or two – whose opinions on this project would be valid and you would trust. Tell them, “I’m struggling with solving this problem. Can you talk with me about it and tell me your positive and constructive thoughts?” Work from there to see if you can complete what you said you could do.
If you find that a piece of work doesn’t answer yes on any of those “something you want,” etc. questions, set it aside. Unless it is paid work, step away.
With other people’s projects, remember you’re satisfying them, not you. Contact the person you’re working with, and explain some of what you’re seeing, ask if they feel the same way. If they do, ask what options there are to address it (“someone said the draft of this NPC sounds like nonsense, can we look at it together and consider rewrites?”). If they don’t, just finish the project to what they ask. It might be hard or frustrating, but sometimes, we do paid work for no satisfaction. But, don’t hate that work – it’s over when it’s over. Archive the files, put it away, whatever you need to do: put it out of your mind. You’re done.
Description: Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple saying “Okay, I’m done.”
Here’s the thing: you might not love the work after you’ve worked on this. Make an effort to execute your “how?” and ask for help when you need it. After that, you might feel better. But, you might find out it’s not what you wanted. You can return to the questions, or with your own projects, you can set it aside until you want to jump back on that boat. Or you can toss it out. You are in control of it.
Now you know why you feel bad about it, and can try to do something about it. Just disliking your work and not knowing the reason can burn you up inside. And the best part is, sometimes, figuring out the why and whether you can fix it and how is the path to liking something, or for getting rid of something. Asking these questions and thinking about it practically puts more power in your hands to either do something or not do something, and neither decision is morally or ethically wrong.
—
You might hate that exercise more than you hate your work, so that’s something. But really, friends, think about why you make things. Creation is power. Creation is beauty. When we make something, we put something into the world that otherwise wouldn’t exist. It’s amazing! So why wouldn’t we work? Why wouldn’t we make?
And we are the biggest part of that. We control the work, as much as is realistic. We control how we market it, we control how we consume it, we control how we engage with our work. This is a choice we make.
I just wanted to use this. Description: Pink text reading “baby bok CHOICE”
Speak up when you feel dissatisfied with your work if you want, but try to do it with purpose. I felt upset with Turn because people kept on calling it Powered by the Apocalypse, so I thought it through, and I made the changes I needed to do to make myself stop being angry and disappointed with it. A few word changes and it bloomed. I felt frustrated with Shoot to Kill, but after I realized it was because I felt ethically strained about it, so I am making changes to fix it. It sucks to think about why you dislike your work, why you’re frustrated, but it makes it possible to change it and feel better about it!
People will see your enthusiasm over your work, or even your constructive discussions and growth, and want to enjoy your product with you. It will encourage them and it will benefit you. It is hard to do, but I think it is a challenge any of you are up for.
Hating your work won’t make work better, and yeah, it might not make it worse either. But couldn’t loving it make it great?
Description: Terry Crews saying “You know Terry loves love.”
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I have mentioned a few times that I’m working on a project that is based on the concept of the John Wick universe with assassins, etc., called Shoot to Kill. It’s a pervasive larp that I’m working on an augmented reality app for. I’ve been pretty excited about it! However, it’s being revamped. Here’s why.
(Content note: discussion of gun violence and mention of suicide.)
(This will contain my personal feelings on gun use. I honestly Do Not Care if you disagree. *shrug*)
—
Description: A United States flag over an illustration of ships, with the words “knock knock. it’s the United States.”
Well, in case you’re unfamiliar with the United States, we have a fucking problem with guns. While there are recent events that are particularlynotableexamples, our incidences of mass shootings are common and significant. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.
I grew up in an environment with a lot of guns. Like, my dad, pap, and cousin owned probably nearly arsenals and my brother wasn’t far behind (I don’t keep track of how many they own these days). While my pap was shot twice (by someone else, once when he was a kid – in the eye – and once while hunting small game – in the dick, no lies), in our direct family I only know of one other incident of gun violence in my family, which was a different cousin who committed suicide.
I’m pointing this out because when I was growing up, guns were used “responsibly,” as in, we didn’t use them in unsafe ways, we were taught gun safety very early, etc. I shot a rifle for the first time when I was like 9. I actually own guns (that may be changing, I’m not sure). So these people misusing guns, they were not us, they weren’t responsible gun owners. But I totally grew up right next to some of the classic trash bags who own a shitton of guns and want to use them to hurt people. You can be “safe” with your guns all you fuckin’ want but when it comes to mass shootings, that’s not about how well you can avoid accidentally shooting someone. Like, let’s be real. Responsible gun ownership means shit right now. People are electing to go kill people, in public, en masse, with guns. For like, a whole host a reasons that are… okay nah. There’s no good reason.
Description: Andy Samberg as Jake Peralta pressing a button to speak to someone who has been arrested, saying “Cool motive! Still murder.”
(My official opinion on guns: it would be nice to have strongly regulated gun use for those who hunt and stuff, but otherwise, fuck it, we don’t freaking need them. If I’m wrong, you can shoot me later.)
How does this relate to games, you ask? I was writing a game about shooting people in public. I have thought about this so deeply. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. And I can’t make a game about shooting people in public. I especially can’t make one that’s supposed to be actively played at conventions in-between other games. Like, there’s a whole host of problems with pervasive larps that involve finding other people in the first place.
So, the original game was, you’re professional assassins like in John Wick and you find people who are also playing the game and “shoot” them (originally just getting in touch with them and marking off their shots). There were gold coins, armor piercing rounds, and armor. It had (still has) varying levels of engagement, both performative and participative, with players becoming NPCs after they’re taken out. It seemed like it would be really fun. It also served an important purpose: getting people to meet new people and engage over something.
Still, every time I design stuff, I try to think of ethical issues or any way the game could be misused (this is why there’s like an entire two pages in the Turn essays about what you should really fucking not do with the game). This is because people can be stale bagels and also I’d rather not bring further harm into the world. So many people hurt people with games and otherwise already.
Yeah, I’m throwing a little Obamas in here. Description: Michelle Obama saying “When they go low, we go high!”
I’m revamping the game. I’m using the title Headshots because I’m going to try to subvert the violent/game standard use of the term for instead taking pictures of each other – taking “headshots” like in modeling. In this, the fiction will be that you are still professionals, but you’re doing reconnaissance instead of assassinating people. You’re finding people and identifying them to break their cover stories, and you can use trackers to break cover stories or fake passports to get new ones.
I’m hoping people still like it, and I’m planning to work on it more after I finish school. It sounds fun to me, and it has the elements I thought would be the most fun. I’ve retained the varying levels of participation, the ability to meet new people and engage with them, and the network of people in the fiction. I’m pretty happy about it, but I feel weird about the fact that some people might think I’m overreacting!
I’m not, tho. So like. Chill for a minute if you were getting those thoughts in your head.
Description: A picture of a parrot with the text “Alas, there is no fruit on my fuck tree.”
See, the reality is that game designers have just as much responsibility as every other creator to do their best to make ethical choices in design. I have talked about this before, and it goes beyond cultural appropriation and sexism and all. I don’t give a bit of a shit what people’s actual political beliefs are. It is very obvious that the use of guns in the US is not handled well, and that the casual attitude towards violence in media contributes to that.
And no, I’m not saying “violent video games and movies cause violent behavior.” No. What I’m saying is: if I make a game that could potentially make others (who are not playing a game but are in the place where it is being held) feel unsafe because I don’t consider the fact that we live in a society where there are active and persistent threats of violence using the method in my game? I’m not being responsible.
Responsibility is so, so important. We talk about responsible gun owners, right? They can’t solve this problem. But as creators, we can choose to be responsible. We can make products that people can engage with without harming themselves or others. We can make products that engage people in the activity that is enjoyable and provide a good fictional backdrop without doing something toxic or harmful.
I’m making this change because I have seen too many body counts, and because I want to be the best I can be. Let’s all think of the world and what we can do in it, and for it.
Be better.
Description: A picture of an angry possum with the words “Do no harm, take no shit, beg no man pardon.”
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