What is Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello, as a project and as your vision?
Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello is the second anthology of chamber larps written by the Italian Chamber Orchestra, the community of roleplaying enthusiasts of Laiv.it. We are doing our best to make it a wonderful book with twelve interesting games, but to us it’s so much more than that. Three years ago we created the first Crescendo Giocoso, thanks to our community and our backers on Kickstarter. It was an incredible experience, kind of similar to Pavarotti & Friends: my games and the games of Italian game designers who I esteem, developed to be accessible to a wider public, from different countries and backgrounds.
It turned out to be the show of confidence our community needed in order to focus on our own way of designing games. With a format that worked for us as a starting base, we were able to start organising conventions not only to play games, but to write them together. Our player friends became authors and the same Italian Chamber Orchestra that was born as a joke became real, going from nine authors to almost thirty. Bigger communities of Italian larpers started to get interested in chamber larp and people from all around the world got to know our way of playing.
So in a way Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello as a book is the end point of a journey (we like to say “a grand tour”) made of writing workshops, online chats, conventions, sleepless nights on graphics and texts. In another way, we hope it could be a new starting point for our community, a demonstration that there’s people out there willing to hear our voices as game designers and that “anyone can cook” as in Pixar’s Ratatouille.
What are some of the themes players will see in the different larps in Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello?
In terms of settings, players are spoiled for choice: from the Bronze Age to the Italian Years of Lead passing through XVIII° century Venice and fantasy worlds. Alzh & Imer is about a love story between tow elderly people, one of them afflicted by Alzheimer’s, and Pantheon Club is about social pressure: each player is invited to anonymously put into play a personal “silence” (something you don’t speak about with everyone, because you’re afraid to be judged) and someone else is going to play a Greek Deity who shares or hates this same silence. The truth is we put emphasis on game mechanics above all, so players will pull colored strings to create an imaginary village or scotch tape to build a prison without actual walls, they will play in complete darkness or utter silence, they will play in the same room or in different ones, they will create scene in reverse chronological order or play the same character in different moments of life. There’s only one fixed point: everyone in the gaming group is going to play and have fun. We’ve got nothing against game masters, I’ve been one for my entire life, but my days of watching one of my larps from outside, maybe to step in and just tell the epilogue in the end, are over: I want to play with my friends and as an author I’m not going to ask someone else to just stare at the others as they play. Sharing all this experiences and putting so many heads together has been a great way to explore very different ideas and everyone can find a complete list of previews for all the scenarios on our Laiv.it website here.
The layout of this playlist looks *chef’s kiss* glorious.
The concept of the Italian Chamber Orchestra and coming together to write each of the scenarios is really brilliant and feels very collaborative. How do you work together and address disagreements, conflicts, or even just overrunning enthusiasm in such an environment?
To me the keys are transparence and dialogue. We try to create the ideal environment from the very beginning: even if a hotel with all the comforts would be awesome, we prefer to rent a house and take care of things ourselves, as a group. Maria is in charge of the logistics, but everyone brings something to eat and there are no assigned rooms. Everyone knows that we put authors first in every convention: we ask players which game they’d prefer to play of course, but we also make sure to tell them that is only a preference and they could end up in another game instead. A game is written by a person who deserves space and respect, as well as a player has the right to know what they are going to play. So, when we invited our players to become authors, we found a very sensible and open-minded audience. In order to share this way of doing things with newcomers, in our writing workshops we split up people who already know each other or who have similar experiences in order to create more diverse bands.
The starting points for every collective game in LarpJam is the Crescendo Giocoso model, so we don’t have to discuss which kind of game we’re going to create, and a theme chosen by the director of the band. The director has no special creative control outside of it, they are just a veteran author with the task of coordinating work after the workshop, in order to make sure the draft is ready before the deadline of the next playtesting convention. Everyone can get involved as much or as little as they want: do you want to join in LarpJam to share ideas and then not write a single line of text in the next months? No problem, just tell it to your band. Writing a game, as well as publishing Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello, is a way of giving voice to our creativity and the feeling of being heard is essential. We do our best to create a free space where people can be honest without being judged and where conflict is an healthy part of the process.
A note: Thoughty always welcomes Italian interviewees, even as my interview style will be changing soon, and interviewees from all around the world – of all races! Even if we need to find a translator, I’m interested in helping you tell your stories. <3
We recently posted an update about Turn’s progress, and it’s going pretty well! We may soon be closing pre-orders (which are still open here!) if all goes well with layout, and we are pushing on thru with the
stretch goals. I wanted to talk a little about Turn in playtesting, and a
big thing that happened recently in our longest-run playtest.
Just a picture of a cat to start us off right.
Some people may have heard me talk on Twitter about my character Beau Taggart, who is a professional hunter, the game’s Late Bloomer, a Cougar, and super gay. In his early character background during character generation, we established that Beau had turned for the first time only recently, about six months ago (as required for the Late Bloomer role). When he turned for the first time, he his truck had just been hit by a drunk driver while he was driving down a winding back road.
He got out of the car to check on the driver, but the driver was behaving aggressively, and tried to punch him. Beau knew something felt wrong, but he was scared and panicked, and responded by hitting the guy back. He didn’t know that his body had started to turn, that his super strength had grown. The hit was so hard it broke the guy’s neck, and while Beau was realizing with horror he’d killed a man, he also turned into a cougar for the first time.
This gif is not an accurate representation of Beau. It’s just funny!
His animal instincts kicked in – he hid the body, and ate some of it, leaving his claw and teeth marks on it, desperately hungry in light of the force turn. In his panic, he was found by Camellia, a fellow shapeshifter (Overachiever, Bison) who helped him get back to human form, and over time, he learned better how to calm down. He didn’t tell Camellia, or anyone else, about the drunk driver, harboring his accidental crime as yet another secret.
Not many Turn characters have super tragic backstories, and this one isn’t even all that bad (sometimes people accidentally kill people, and those are small town secrets I’ve heard), but I knew there was a risk of it being an element when people played so I built a character with a high risk background to see how fast we could ramp up to exposure. It still took over a year at our slow playing pace – which is ideal. If we were playing weekly, it would happen more quickly, but it paces out well.
How did I plan this out? Well, I knew the number of exposure marks for towns and town characters, I knew the average number of scenes per session (5-8), how many of those typically risk exposure (4-7), and how many sessions each character is generally in (3-6). I knew that having a higher risk background meant that I would end up on the higher range of everything, and that Beau was starting with a generally positive reputation as a Late Bloomer.
That doesn’t mean I was ready for the exposure to hit max!
Turn has ten marks on the exposure track for the town. You can get positive or negative marks, based on the type of interaction that causes them. You take the marks when you’ve done something that might cause someone to suspect your shifter identity – it can be behavioral, it can be physical, etc. Something like slipping up and saying you spent all night in the woods, or maybe your eyes shine oddly in a photograph.
Beau’s track grew and grew over time, including his town character (TC) tracks, which are separate. One TC of his was Diego, his best friend who knew everything but this secret. Early on in the campaign, I played Beau to slowly reveal his identity as a shifter to Diego, purposefully planning positive encounters. He managed to do so successfully, which was good, because Beau was truly in love with Diego. They later became partners, but it was still pretty quiet, because the town was relatively conservative in that regard. Their own professional hunter in love with his buddy? Beau wasn’t sure they could handle it.
There are three results you can get when you become fully exposed to a TC or the town itself: reviled, which is the lowest result, and results either in a toxic and risky relationship with the TC or you getting run out of town or dealing with violence; revealed, which is the middling result and means you may risk comforts, safety, or gossip but you’ll be able to stay in town; and known, which is the best result, and means you’re accepted in the town or by the TC.
With Diego, Beau got known, so he was able to get together with Diego, stay friends and more, and not have any risk increased from it. Over time Beau had some more positive and some more negative interactions with people in the town, just like you do – simple things that cause conflict last longer in people’s minds than we thing. It was pretty balanced. But, rumors arose when a body was found in the woods that it turned out matched the drunk driver, whose car was found, too.
This combined with Beau acting out of sorts because he found out who his birth mother was and it led to a spectacular new ability – the ability to turn into a Raven, as well! These events combined led to an exposure roll, which is 2d6 plus the exposure track, added up based on the +’s and -‘s on the track, and a + for any known TCs. I rolled poorly, but had enough based on the roll, the track, and Diego, I got the middling result – revealed. That meant no immediate danger, but it meant time had come to face facts.
The rumors spread faster than Beau could do anything for, and before he could even come clean to his closest friends (Camellia and Iris, his cousin and coworker), the cops were at Camellia’s door looking for Beau. He managed to tell Diego what happened, and Diego supported him, but he was going to have to deal with the police at some point. He decided to turn himself in. Meanwhile, on the in-fiction Facebook, his fellow townspeople were spreading memes of the Cougar Killer, claiming he’d murdered the man and mutilated the bodies. This is something that would eventually die out without the police arresting him, but in the moment it was challenging!
A little bit of coordination led to him having enough time to sneak past the deputy posted at Camellia’s (where his truck was*) to tell Camellia and Iris what was going on, then turn himself in with some legal support obtained by Camellia. He confessed to fighting with the guy, but stopped short of admitting to murder. The cops didn’t have enough evidence to keep him. In the end, Beau will still live in Cauldron Springs, unable to leave easily because of the ties that hold him there, and hopefully happy with Diego (because that cat’s outta the bag).
This cat, specifically. a Cougar, by Cecilia Ferri
But, once you’re brought in for something this serious, it’s hard for people to drop their suspicions. Combining it with Beau becoming obviously out as queer since Diego went with him to the police station, Beau’s once stellar social standing is pretty decreased. He’ll be able to survive, but he’s not who he once was to these townspeople – many of them will go on believing he actually murdered someone, others will simply struggle with his identity especially when tied with the stigma of being questioned for murder.
So basically it all worked out? Like this is exactly how this sort of result should be narratively. Maybe some people might choose to have the shifter identity be the forefront and have it be more fantastical, some people might want to diminish the fantasy even further, and either is okay – just keeping in mind that people rarely want to believe the most fantastical things, even though they’ll often use fantastical things as metaphor or illusion for the reality.
The pacing for the exposure to max out worked perfectly, the narrative surrounding it hit all the right notes, and all I did was start with some trouble baked in, like so many characters do. It meant a lot to me to play this character** and have it play out so true to what I designed. The game works, it works really good, and it tells the stories I want to be told.
I can’t ask for more, honestly.
I’m curious, what have you worked on in games that you played out in playtesting or just when you released the game that made you have that, like, damn, I did it! moment? A moment with the math lining up just right, or the narrative tone hitting the right button? Share it in the comments, and please share this on social media to talk about those moments of design success!
*Beau constantly forgot his truck at Camellia’s, where he often went to have tea to calm down and to hang out, then turned into a cougar to hit the woods. It actually became a feature on the map! Oops.
**Who some might have guessed was a test run for my chosen name
There are any number of reasons why – some are simple, like “I can always get a glass of water” or “There are easy to read pronoun flags” or “The game offerings are amazing,” but some are far more complex, and today I want to talk about those more complex reasons. I’ll tell you a little about what I did first!
My Big Bad Con 2018 was intense. I was busy as hell, the entire trip. Somehow, though, I still recall distinct moments of calm and chill, even though my schedule was probably the fullest of any convention I’ve done and I had some of the most stressful events I’ve ever participated in. But that’s Big Bad Con, right? I’d say almost anyone who has gone there would say something similar – hell yes, I was busy! But I had a good time, and I don’t feel like my soul’s been ripped out at the end.
I love Big Bad Con because Big Bad Con loves me. If you go to Big Bad Con, I expect you’ll enjoy it, because Big Bad Con doesn’t just care about you, Big Bad Con cares for you.
I attended Big Bad Con last year and it was a remarkable experience. I talked about it in three bigposts. I had never felt the way I did at Big Bad Con, not at any other con. This year, I was insistent that John attend with me – John is not huge on conventions, but this one felt so different, I just needed him to try. Plus, he had a game to promote this year. And he did the Tell Me About Your Character booth!
Over the course of the convention, I hosted the Soda Pop Social, was on two panels by others (Expanding Fantasy, Other Paths) and one of my own (Beyond the Binary), ran Turn, ran my Leading with Class workshop for non-GMs, and played Roar of Alliance. That’s a lot for me at a con – like, GMing alone kills me, I never expect to survive it. But in spite of all of the overwhelmingness, I feel pretty good about the con.
I’m going to summarize each event here, but there may be more detailed posts about them in the future. I just want to give some framing for the core of what I want to talk about.
Soda Pop Social I arrived and immediately was escorted by the fantastic Jeremy Tidwell to pick up sodas for the Soda Pop Social. We picked them up, then I set up the event for a soda pop tasting that was quite fantastic, I think. We honestly got amazing feedback! Sean Nittner, who is kind of the guy in charge at the con, ensured I had tons of backup regular sodas for the guests and made sure my space was available.
We had such awesome response that Sean’s already asked about my hosting the social next year – in a bigger room, so more people can attend! It was awesome because my plan for experienced and new gamers and creators to connect worked (supported by people like Meguey Baker stopping by), and having a welcoming event for sober socializing was a real thing. Special thanks to Ken Davidson for helping me hold the door, because it was a very exciting event and I was a very anxious boy!
Expanding Fantasy The Expanding Fantasy panel was great, and DC (who did an excellent review of Big Bad Con here) did an awesome job running it. Kelsa Delphi and Lauren Bond were both awesome but I admit I felt a little intimidated. I was, I think, a little harsher and less kind than the rest of the panelists. I ended up getting a compliment on that afterwards, weirdly but nicely. But, it was good to talk about the ways we can approach fantasy that are more inclusive and less tied to the historical faves.
I wish I could remember the panels clearly enough to give a bunch of detail, but the general gist was to not reflect back on traditional media just to copy it – try to break down things and do it differently. I specifically recommended, if you do decide to pull from older media, looking back at old political cartoons from the era and see where the racist and otherwise bigoted stereotypes show up in the character descriptions, then move away from them.
Other Paths Other Paths was a great panel where we got to talk about alternatives to interpersonal violence in games. Anna Kreider ran it, and I was there alongside Meguey Baker and Katherine Cross. Everyone had really excellent things to say about why we are interested in having media that has alternative options to interpersonal violence (for example, because the world is super violent and if you only offer a hammer, every problem is a nail, and it translates back to the real world), and how we approach it.
I got to talk about Headshots and how I took something violent and changed it into something altogether different. That was cool, and I’m still reeling a little over getting a round of applause!
Turn This will end up with its own post at some point, but I want to especially thank my amazing players for being just the damn best – Jeremy Kostiew, Alex McConnoughey, Vivian Paul, and Karen Twelves. We had a foggy little island town with shifters who all had a lot going on, and in spite of a bunch of interruptions from outside we kept a smooth pace. I hadn’t been able to pre-prep the town like I’d planned, but we still got almost a balance of worldbuilding+character building and actual play.
Alex’s feedback after that the pacing was just right for em really made me happy – pacing for Turn is unusual and not everyone will like it. I am making a few small adjustments to the current text and process of Turn but it still feels very strong, and ready to go to Kickstarter at the end of the month. Having a private room to run the game made a huge difference – I would never have been able to run on a crowded con floor.
Leading with Class – Leadership in Games: Not Just for GMs The workshop went unbelievably well. I was assisted by the excellent February Helen, who had just the right of support and positive energy to get me through something very meaningful but very stressful! The workshop attendees were fantastic – thank you to all of you! – and engaged well with the materials. I messed up on my script early on and had to recover, but everyone was patient with me, and when I was back on track it was super smooth.
Helping my attendees build their leadership character sheet was so fun, and the feedback afterwards (including that it was better than scrum sessions and that it was easy to follow and exceptionally well organized!) really boosted my hope for Leading with Class, which is something many people know I have been struggling with lately.
Beyond the Binary Beyond the Binary was the only thing I was truly upset about afterwards, and it was entirely my fault. My panelists – DC, Krin Irvine, Venn Wylde, and Jason Tasharski – were all great. The big issue was that the room hadn’t been changed to a conference setup when I first arrived, which hadn’t been an issue for the previous panel but considering our estimated attendance was going to be an issue for us. What ended up happening is I had a room full of about 20 people trying to get me to fix the room to meet their needs, while trying to get started on the panel that had to start late in the first place. This was my bad planning – I should have asked Sean to change the room orientation before the panel prior, since the setup was originally done for LwC in the first place – and my bad response.
I struggled to respond to so many people at once because I was anxious about the panel and the panelists and about giving a good impression, and I failed. I also physically couldn’t help, and while trying to manage all of the things at once, I made myself feel helpless and it completely fucked up how I handled the rest of the panel. We had to skip tons of questions because I’d been too ambitious and I did a bad job. On top of that, at the end of the panel I slipped and said “guys” and I’m still incredibly angry at myself for it. So, my fault, but still hard to deal with. Everyone was very kind about it, and supported me even though I fucked up.
One important thing I want to note is that it was indicated I didn’t give equal time to the panelists, and that I gave voice to white panelists over people of color. And I’ll be honest: I didn’t notice I did it. But, I trust that it’s true. It’s potentially partially because I mostly had white panelists, which I didn’t do on purpose – I sought out the only nonbinary person of color I knew was a guest for the panel, but it’s legit that this isn’t enough. I’m not happy that I fucked up on this (AND I let nonbinary cred issues prevent me from wrangling time better), but I’m recognizing it as a note for change. I’m not sure how to do it, but I’ll do my best.
ETA: Overall the panel was good – the panelists had a lot of great stuff to say and their perspectives were super valuable. A lot of it came down to there being a broad variety of ways we all interact with gender identity and expression and how we should always talk to people first to find their unique perspective. Thank you to the panelists, and I’m sorry for being so negative here – this is my disappointment with my performance, not yours.
Roar of Alliance I got to play an amazing game of Roar of Alliance with John, Rose (not sure of last name), and S. Tan, all excellent roleplayers and strategists. I was feeling pretty rough due to the panel and some emotional stuff afterward, but everyone was really supportive and the private game room allowed me to recline on the couch briefly when I got a bad headache. That was super valuable. Honestly, it’s just such a great game that you can play with varying levels of energy and the players were so fun to play alongside! I had a great time, in spite of how rough I was feeling, and we told a lovely story.
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So, now I want to talk about why Big Bad Con matters so much, and what Big Bad Con DOES.
I’ve studied a little about leadership, you might say, and I’ve witnessed a bunch of different ways people run conventions in and out of games and how they lead in general. What the leadership team – cuz that’s what the staff is – at Big Bad Con does is create a culture change, a community, so influential that it impacts everyone who attends, from what I can tell. I think that some of this might be related to the culture of the key leaders on the teams, but everyone at every level at Big Bad Con is doing big things.
A recent Twitter thread by Alex McConnaughey sheds light a bit onto the mentality at the convention, where ey say “I feel like the folks running BBC never forget that the goodness of the community comes from the work put into it.” This is powerful, because it’s right – the people at Big Bad Con never seem to be coming at the convention from the perspective that they are good, but instead that they’re doing good. In the LwC episode on Values and Perception, I talk about my rule that there are no good people (3:18).
This applies to Big Bad Con well, because the people at Big Bad Con are doing good, they are acting good, but their behavior never comes with the sense of pride and self-distancing that comes with thinking that they are inherently good. Which brings me to another point that I mentioned earlier, in ethics. Big Bad Con practices caring ethics, from the best I can translate to convention organizing.
This sounds super weird, right, because they’re a convention! Aren’t they supposed to be about unfettered capitalism, productivity, and unbelievably high standards of goal-meeting? That’s the vibe I frankly get from a lot of conventions. Cuz they are like that – many of them are simply money-making measures and focused on Doing The Things The Most, and lose track somewhere of the fact that we’re all people. Instead, Big Bad Con seems to approach with caring first.
Like, one, check out their community standards. They’re explicit, and they are something you have to accept before you can sign up for the con. They also have really serious consequences for doing things that are harmful, and they’re posted all over the con and reinforced regularly. They also have an entire page dedicated to safety and calibration tools, which they made into a deck of cards this year! And these things aren’t afterthoughts, they’re regularly visited throughout the con, accessible, and the yellow bandanas worn by staff constantly remind you that there are people there to help who are friendly and enthusiastic.
Two, every event that I held, Sean and the rest of the staff were there for me. The fact that the panel didn’t go perfectly was entirely on me – I know for SURE if I had asked Sean for help, it’d have been resolved. But I didn’t. I know that because before the Soda Pop Social, Sean and Jeremy checked in with me and got me a huge ice bucket, a bottle opener, and helped me set up.
I know that, because the night before my workshop, Sean checked in with me specifically to ensure I had the equipment I needed AND supported me as a friend and colleague with kind words AND when he realized I could use an assistant, had it arranged for February to meet with me ahead of the workshop the next morning, fully ensuring I was going to make it through okay. I would have been a disaster without that support, and I hadn’t asked for it – Sean saw the need, and made sure it was addressed. And he made sure I had support, not someone to step over me.
Sean has also passed on a Viking helmet to me.
Which brings me to
THREE: Everyone I interacted with at Big Bad Con, staff or otherwise, approached basically every situation with How can I help? rather than You should do this. This is a huge problem for me professionally and especially at conventions – tons and tons of people approach every one of my anxieties and stressors with fix-it bandaids, as though I’ve never had a thought in the world about how to address my issues. I get instructions rather than support. It’s not universal, but it’s the majority, especially when it comes to running games and events. And…that didn’t happen here. Not last year either!
I noticed it especially surrounding things like the Leading with Class workshop, where I routinely feel like people correct me and tell me what to do, and running Turn. Would you believe, not a single person gave me GM advice? They just asked about the game, and asked how they could support me. This, to me, is the difference between caring about and caring for. At a lot of conventions, people care about you, but they don’t do the emotional work to care for you. And it’s not always the place, but approaching with caring for makes a difference.
Like!
Four! The convention has adequate water for attendees, quiet rooms for individual games, events like the Soda Pop Social and the Stitch and Bitch, and there was a low-key dance party on Saturday night. Some of this is thrown by the participants, but I also didn’t feel unsafe at the dance party – it speaks to the culture of the con that no one seemed overly intoxicated, that they checked with each other on the volume of the music, and so on. I saw people checking before they touched each other, even! Plus, Sean and me left the remainder of the sodas donated from the social to be accessible to all – and I know that rescued more than one person from discomfort.
Including me, to be frank.
And there was also stuff like how Jerome Comeau “held court” when injury and discomfort prevented him from participating in the normal events, and in doing so, created this gorgeous social space! John even commented on how nice he found it that he could just go hang out and be quiet or be social, at his own pace (this is the first convention John has not retreated to the room for extended periods!). I often feel free to just sit and be quiet at Big Bad Con, when I’m overwhelmed, and listen to others – I don’t get pressured into joining games or into having conversation. My point with this is that body needs and mental health needs are well respected – there’s peace, there’s sustenance, and different habits are respected.
Five, and this is a big one, is something talked about by DC in their post. When talking about Nathan Black and his exemplary behavior, DC said this:
“That standard became clear to me in many ways. I was on three panels, and I attended a few more. I was surprised to find older cis white men sitting in front of me, taking detailed notes on how to be better about diversity and inclusivity in setting creation. They were in panels on gender fluidity and non-binary players and representation. On working with children. On all sorts of things. They didn’t sling white guilt at me or my co-panelists. They didn’t raise their hands to make statements. They didn’t approach me after with emotionally draining stories. They said thank you, told me how much they appreciated my work and time, and maybe had a question that came from their 3 pages of notes.”
And this rings super true to me. Even the standard issue cis white guys that attend Big Bad Con, for the majority, are there to care and learn. DC notes they were often misgendered, and I get that, too, and that there is still bias (including colorism and so on) in the environment, but in my experience, the level of prejudice and enaction of it is so much less than other cons. I didn’t feel like people were sexist to me like at other conventions, but maybe that was because there are so many more openly gender nonconforming people at the event that fewer people assumed I was a woman?
I did TRY to look more…not a girl.
I recently started using Beau as an alternate name (I use both Beau and Brie pretty equally), and I had the pleasure of a lot of people I know at the con using it, checking which one I’d like to use, confirming my pronouns, and so on. It was really affirming, and leads to my final note (for now!).
Six: Big Bad Con includes positive masculinity in its progressive basis of caring. I am going to try to break this down simply, because it’s kind of a lot, but we can start with DC’s points about Nathan Black. Nathan represents a lot of what I think about with Big Bad Con as a community: relentless positivity, respect, honesty, kindness, generosity, and passion. And DC is right – that’s not just Nathan, though he is definitely pinnacle of it. I see that same behavior and energy in every Big Bad Con staffer I met, including ones who operate in masculinity like Nathan.
Sean, for one, is a man who I see as a brilliant leader. Then there are people like Jeremy Kostiew, who has a particular warmth I truly value. And Alex McConnaughey (who worked on Behind the Masc, writing the Minotaur skin for Monsterhearts), who understands masculinity in a truly fantastic way. And there are women and nonbinary people on staff who can express masculinity just like anybody else, too, so my point here is that these people on staff don’t erase that masculinity. They don’t label all masculinity as toxic and try to box it out of the events where caring is focused. There were spaces for people who weren’t masculine, but also mixed spaces, and an overall environment that said to me so long as you are doing good with yourself, you can be whoever yourself is.
I feel like somehow because of who all is involved in the convention – women, men, nonbinary people, trans people – Big Bad Con has made an environment that welcomes people of all different kinds. It’s not perfect, but I felt okay being a nonbinary masc person when I was feeling that way, and I felt okay being nonbinary neutral, too. Being nonconforming felt welcomed, even when it wasn’t femme. Because the leadership exemplified a variety of expressions, many of which included masculinity, I felt like my expression was safer and more respected.
And I think this reflects on the caring nature of the con, and why – as DC mentioned – these older cis white men are part of that community in a greater way than they might otherwise be. When you see people like you, even just a little bit, you’re more likely to engage. But it only works if they’re actually a good example! And I just think that the Big Bad Con community is such a good example.
I can’t wait for next year!
P.S. – I forgot to mention the HUGE amounts of charitable good that comes from the con itself with the food bank, the Wolf Run, and so on – it matters, and is part of the caring perspective!
Post-con Brie Beau’s status.
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Hey all, I’ve got a great interview with Elizabeth Chaipraditkul on the new tabletop game Familiars of Terra, which is currently on Kickstarter! Liz got in touch and when I heard “familiars of Terra is a tabletop roleplay game set in a beautiful world where everyone has their own animal familiar” I knew many of you would be super amped to check it out. So here’s the interview!
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A dark skinned person with a beard, wearing a fancy shirt with a fur collar, with an animal that l can only describe as a poodle with wings. SO CUTE.
Tell me a little about Familiars of Terra. What excites you about it?
Familiars of Terra is a tabletop roleplay game set in Terra, a fantasy world in which every person has an animal familiar. As a heroic Seeker you travel the lands with your familiar healing the devastation of a war which left nations scared and people scattered. The game is all about exploration, adventure, and heroics. If you’re a fan of the Golden Compass or Pokemon you’ll probably enjoy our game.
What makes me most excited about Familiars of Terra is that it is a very positive game. Yes there was a war, yes your main job as a Seeker is to make sure something terrible like that never happens again, but behind all that is hope. Being a Seeker is about making the right choices when they matter most and when there are grey decisions – helping, healing, and thriving. I wanted to make a game that left people feeling good about themselves, that built them up, and also had a bunch of awesome animals in it. 🙂
What was the initial design and conception process like? If you just woke up one day and wrote it, what was the spark? If it took a longer road, how did you find your way?
After I finished WITCH I kinda needed a break from the dark. I love dark, dramatic games, but focusing so much on that type of world was really exhausting. You can’t live in shadows forever it isn’t healthy. So Familiars of Terra really came from a place of wanting to design something happy and uplifting. I wanted to write about heroes and cool animals. That’s where the game really began. From there I started testing different mechanics with dice and then eventually with cards – once we had the base system it took off from there. Funnily enough, I had a really clear picture in my mind of what Terra looked like right from the start, so the mechanics was where I had to invest a lot of development time.
Left to right: a person with a beard and mustache, a necklace with a big shiny gem in it, and a fancy shirt and collar in blue and beige; a dark skinned person with round pigtails, in a cream colored midriff shirt and beautiful facial jewelry; a white person with red hair wearing a brown vest with a fluffy collar over a light blue dress; a dark skinned person with dreadlocks, wearing a purple-ish scarf and a long green vest; and an indigenous-appearing person wearing a strappy vest, with organic lines down their cheek in red, carrying a large stick on their back.
When you say grey decisions, what do you mean by that, and how does it tie to the heart of the Seeker-familiar relationship?
By grey decisions, I guess I mean very real decisions. Life is really difficult with out any supernatural threats and the choices we make as humans are tough. In Terra I wanted to tackle real problems, but then in a fantasy world. You basically play a modern day hero and that means the decisions you’re faced with are realistically tough – we don’t have many true villains in the game, but we do have a lot of people who think differently than one another. We have people who hurt people to help themselves (or their families) and Seekers are often faced with greed. However, as a Seeker you fight for the greater good – you’re part of the generation that will heal the world. It’s your job to make the tough calls and practice radical empathy and creative problem solving. You’re faced with grey decisions, but you play hope :).
A person wearing flowing clothing with beautiful geometric patterns who has a red line across their cheeks and nose, carrying a harpoon-like weapon and standing beside a large deer with a saddle.
How do the mechanics tie in with your familiar and that relationship?
Actually, in Familiars of Terra you have one character sheet for two characters. Half your sheet is for your familiar and half your sheet is for yous Seeker. You can make checks with either and as a player it’s basically like playing one soul in two bodies. Also, familiars are always the one to fight! Humans are weak compared to familiars, so in order to protect their companions, familiars are always the one to get into a scuffle. We have lots of cool Combat Powers for you to pick and customize how your familiar fights. Finally, each familiar gets a legacy which is both story and mechanics. By following a story you create to your familiar’s epic destiny you earn cool new Traits which alter how your familiar looks, moves, and even fights.
How do players engage the mechanics to express empathy, and how do the familiars help with that?
A lot of our mechanics work by ‘defining’ things. You can buy Items and then in the moment when you want to use them – you define the item’s history and how it is used. This encourages player’s creativity and allows people to take different paths to problem solving. A lot of times you make a check and you’re done – you succeed or fail and sometimes that’s absolutely terrible when you’re trying to do something kind or empathetic. When I was creating Familiars of Terra I really wanted to make sure doing something empathetic or creative (or anything really) relied on more than that. By having a mechanical work around your character can use one check isn’t the end of empathy, it’s a challenge and an encouragement to use the items you have at your disposal to still reach your desired outcome.
Familiar-wise, even though familiars can fight, they definitely don’t have to. In fact, lots of familiar’s traits are based around healing, comforting, and empathizing. For example, you can have a comforting familiar who can calm situations and make people feel better in their presence – much how ‘mundane’ therapy dogs do as well :).
A red-haired person in a green jacket and yellow dress reaching their hands up to the sky where cats with wings are flying, with the text “Familiars of Terra” over the background of a seaside sunset.
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Thanks to Liz for the great interview and for sharing Familiars of Terra with me and you all, my readers! I hope you enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out the Familiars of Terra Kickstarter and maybe help it reach its goal!
P.S. – I tried to find out if it was okay to use “dark skinned” as a descriptor and I saw it used in some places where it seemed okay, but if it is not, please email contactbriecs at gmail and I will update the post as soon as possible. Thank you.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
Can you tell me about the genesis of this collection? What prompted you to make a series of games focused around this particular tool, and what was your process for discovery and creation?
I take a lot of selfies, like a really lot. They mean a lot to me! Cell cameras are a vital advance in modern communication and our ability to share our identities and emotions with people around the world, even if we don’t speak the same language. Part of it is also just that I like trying new ways of telling stories and exploring game experiences.
I love dice but it’s fun to take different mechanics from weird things we do. In Literally, I Can’t, one of the games in the collection, you use the MASH (mansion, apartment, shack, house) game that I played as a kid to build characters. That is the kind of thing I want to explore in games!
I also design in response to things. I saw a few games using phone cameras that I felt didn’t do what I wanted. I have had to learn a lot about selfies and myself to use this technology, and needed to apply it to games to get the experiences I wanted.
To make games, I honestly just took selfies. A lot. And I remembered how selfies have been relevant to my life. They are instrumental in my long distance relationships, and a part of how I feel connected to others, but also are ways that I know I can appear to not measure up to expectations or fade into the background if I’m not interesting enough. All of that came through in the collection! Every game has my heart in it, somehow, just with some “how to break it” instructions included!
Using mobile technology as a play aid and intermediary is such an interesting area to explore. Obviously this offered enormous design inspiration, but I’m wondering what challenges it also presented. Does it complicate aspects of design or play?
It certainly does! There are a lot of elements that are challenging. The first, one I’m very aware of, is that not everyone can afford a cell phone with a camera. I hated this, because it’s a reality I wish I could fight, but to make games with this element I had to accept that loss. I am trying to figure out a way to make up for it, but my own financial status isn’t awesome either.
Second, not everyone likes to take selfies, and not everyone even really knows how to take them (there’s not really a wrong way, though, honestly). When I playtested Who Made Me Smile? at Big Bad Con this year, most of my table was people who either didn’t take selfies, or didn’t take them often, and most people approached it with some anxiety. Thankfully, we talked about it and I encouraged them and it went great! I don’t know how it’ll go with others, though.
Third and final so I don’t write ten paragraphs, privacy and safety are huge concerns. For some of the games you’ll pass your phone to other players or share your phone number, for others you’re alone outside, and for some games you’re dealing with emotionally trying things. All of these have their own measures. For sharing contact information and phones I tried to give strong reminders about respecting safety and deleting the other players’ numbers unless they permit otherwise, and I also require that people hide NSFW pictures and content to avoid any consent violation. Being alone during game is risky, so I ask that people have an emergency check-in contact – and I also ask that for the emotionally intense games to help people get support. I also recommend Script Change for all of the games.
It’s all complicated, I think, but it is worth it, I think.
I love the way this collection blends analog and digital and subverts expectations. The four group games imply that the participants will be together physically rather than distributed, and I wonder if you could talk about this choice.
One of the most troubling things I’ve seen with selfies, and one of my secret goals to target with the games, is the negative perception of taking selfies in front of other people. People regularly shame young people for taking selfies in public, and mock tourists who get selfie sticks to take pictures in front of huge landmarks. We don’t mock people who have strangers take their pictures, or people who take pictures of other things or other people. Only people who dare recognize their own existence in public. I struggle, personally, with embarrassment over this – and I wanted to poke at it and prod it to see if I could fix that a little. In the games, you have to take selfies in front of people – sometimes making weird expressions or while feeling complicated feelings. I want to normalize that.
I want to normalize being in an airport crying before you head home after leaving a loved one and taking a selfie to say goodbye to them, or to let the person you’re coming home to see that you’re struggling, but okay. I want to normalize sharing your joy publicly by taking a picture of your smiling face to send to faraway friends. And I want to let that start with an environment that pretends you’re far away from each other, which is where the games make it possible. In Literally, I Can’t you have to take “competent”-looking selfies while all together for play – it’s a challenge against the anxiety and stigma.
It’s also important with Don’t Look at Me, a two-player selfie game in the collection about my personal experiences in a long-term relationship with my husband while he was deployed in Iraq. The purpose of being together, but not facing each other and only able to see each other through selfies, is to create the emotional tension of knowing the person is there, feeling them just out of touch, and not being able to see them except through these constrained circumstances. John and I were, and are, very close, and I always felt like he was with me, but I couldn’t touch him, I couldn’t look at him face to face – everything was through lenses and bytes. I cry every time I think about the game because I know that tension, and it was important to me to make sure that the people playing it could experience it too. In Now You Don’t, it’s important to be around other people to create that experience of physical closeness and emotional ignorance. Surrounded by a crowd, but invisible – almost palpable.
Your games push back against a popular narrative that selfies are trivial narcissism. I feel like these games make selfies tools of meaningful expression, communication, and inquiry. What would you say to someone hostile to, or uncomfortable with, selfies?
Well, honestly, first I’d ask them how they feel about Van Gogh’s self portraits. Maybe those are narcissistic, too, I guess, but I don’t think that would be the majority opinion. I could direct them to the interview I did alongside a professional fine artist where I talk about the use of selfies as a grounding element in life, and where the artist (Robert Daley) says that selfies are simply modern portraiture.
Video by John W. Sheldon
For me, there’s the first aspect of selfies as being about identity and recognizing your own existence, validating who you are, making you feel whole. Then, there’s the second part: it’s just art. Photography is art, most people agree, and so are the oil painting portraits of people throughout history, including those like Van Gogh’s that are self-portraits.
I don’t see what is different about using a modern camera to take a self portrait, aside from it being more accessible to people of all backgrounds (excepting those of very low income who have trouble accessing this tech). It removes the boundary of needing an extensive education in technique to paint yourself! Instead you take pictures in a moment, and learn with every photo how to change the angle, how to adjust lighting, how to open your eyes wider or raise your eyebrow to convey emotion, and how to show you, who you are or even who you want to be. It’s magical, to me. I would just have to tell them that much: selfies are about showing who you are to whoever you want, and they are an artistic expression that’s more easily accessible than many of those before.
You write in your introduction how important selfies are to you as a way to present yourself to the world in images you control. Do you see ways to incorporate either selfies as artifacts or mobile phones and their liberating ability to document a person’s personal vision more generally in other games, old or new?
I would love to see some larger scale larps use selfies for storytelling – specifically, in larps where there are mystery elements or similar things that they could use a selfie to identify a character not in a scene, and distribute it to players. This would be excellent for games where there’s reason to be suspicious of specific individuals. Using selfies that you either take in costume or alter to represent your character in game would, I think, bring a level of personal identification with the character that isn’t often had. It also lets you record the experience of a game from the viewpoint you choose – you frame the moment, not anyone else.
Doing selfie diaries for very emotional or intense games could be exciting – much like The Story of My Face in the collection, combining your words with a visual representation can make experiences feel more vivid. When I did test plays of The Story of My Face for the photos in the book, I really had fun in part because when I looked back at the pictures, I could remember the spooky story I was telling myself. Mid-game selfie logging, much like taking pictures of character sheets or game materials, can help keep memories rich and more easily recoverable. And that latter part, with taking pictures of game material – using phones to document game materials is really awesome because you can refer back to it easily. I also like using texting for “secret” communication in game or for sharing codes – the day someone makes an Unknown Armies-style horror game that uses text messages, selfies, and cell pictures to tell the story and guide players is the day I am pretty sure we win at games.
(by Brie)
— Thanks for your time, Brie!
I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll share this interview and the DriveThruRPG link with all your friends! [From Brie: Thank you to Jason so much for this, it was a really fun experience and I’m so glad to talk more about LMTAS!]
Note: All images except the cover are by Brie Sheldon and excerpted from the collection used to write and layout LMTAS, and the cover is a compilation of Brie’s photos with a super nice layout by John W. Sheldon.
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
FYI, Some of my photos are a little shaky. I was in the middle of an allergic reaction for half of it, and honestly, no tripod when I’m not feeling well makes it lousy. I tried though!
This is, I think, the last installment about my experience at Big Bad Con 2017! —
Gif of selfies and friends <3 (featuring Tanya DePass, Misha Bushyager, and Nathan Black
My experience on Sunday at Big Bad Con was really great. I had a lot of positive experiences, and some really good emotional ones. The morning was mostly socializing – Tanya picked up some Jack in the Box for me, I visited people and talked about all sorts of stuff, and in the afternoon, I got to play games! (I know, gaming at a gaming con, who would have thought?
The first game I played was from my upcoming collection, Let Me Take a Selfie. The game is called Who Made Me Smile? and I played with Tanya DePass, Nathan Black, and Misha Bushyager. It was so fun! The general play is that we each write some three-sentence stories with different mood themes, and then take selfies after we read a selection of them.
Our stories and some selfies. 😀
After that, we talk about it, and take a “neutral” selfie. The most fun part for me is after that, when we look at other players’ selfies and the stories they read to guess which story was associated with which selfie. It’s fun to see how my friends express their emotions!
Google made this.
After that, you match up who guessed which selfie right, and everyone gets the chance to take selfies or write more stories. We didn’t have any need to write more stories, which you do if anyone doesn’t match anything right with another player, so instead we just took selfies together! I loved it so much.
It’s important to note that none of us see each other outside of the internet very much, so being able to share these stories and see the emotions people expressed in their selfies – including people who don’t normally take selfies – was such a great experience! I think everyone else had fun, and it’s something I really enjoyed. Also, it was so cool seeing people play my game!
LOTS more here, including Dialect!>>>
I got to play Dialect in the afternoon with Hakan Seyalioglu running, alongside Vivian Paul, Vera Vartanian, and Kristine Hassell. I honestly can’t get over how amazing this game was. Vera cried a hecka lot, in a positive feelsy way, so we must have been doing okay. 🙂 Dialect is a game about language, specifically the death of it, and to make that happen, you need to build it. It is fascinating to me how integrated the language is with the cultural and emotional development of the characters, honestly.
Dialect table setup.
We played a group of artificially intelligent robots left behind after humans departed from earth known as EIPS (Earth Inter-Planetary Surveillance, “eeps”). The general vibe ended up being that the planet was One Hot Mess and environmentally trash. So our job, we decided, was to do surveillance on the planet so that the humans could someday return. We were there a while, and as time passed, we got better at our jobs, so we ended up with idle time to do less rote things. One of the first words we made was a filler word – ona – that we often said while thinking, interrupting our own speech, and so on. We also developed friendship. These three things are the aspects in the game that we would go on to tie words and explanations to, as well as ourselves.
To me, Friendship was the most important aspect of the story. It came up constantly because our relationships were really deep. EIPS took friendship seriously, and were grateful for those they connected with. Initially, the connections were for maintenance – the EIPS bots would repair each other by linking to each other and doing updates and repairs. During that, they learned about each other, about compassion, and about caring. This is where they made friends – synckeeps. Their synckeeps were bots they really cared for – and our bots were all synckeeps.
I mean, seriously, just thinking about the game has me tearing up, jeez.
In Dialect, you have a character of your own which a card that guides the character’s identity. I was the Explorer, and I associated myself with Friendship – in the game, I tried to explore the breadth of human emotion with my limited artificial intelligence, and got quite far, I think. I played 244-L, known as Leon. Leon was a “life emulator” designed to replicate human existence with the safety of robotic structure. He looked …approximately human, and had human-like skin that could regenerate from pretty much any chemical or environmental exposure. He was the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Leon’s creator had loved the idea of Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth, and Leon was the realization of that – his body would keep regenerating, regardless of what happened. That was the plan, anyway.
Kristine played Jesse, the Jester, who was initially a data entry module. I think Jesse was associated with the surveillance of earth aspect. She was connected to data points all over the place until, as time passed, each one shut down and she was left alone with just us other models. While the settlement of bots was in the thousands, she was just herself. Because of this, she had learned sarcasm, which was her way of dealing with stress and isolation. She reviewed our daily reports for errors, and for so many years they had been static – eventually she started to copy and paste.
Next, there was the heart of our group – Spinner. AMZ013 was played by Vivian, who did a spectacular job making a lot of us feel really squishy. Spinner was a utility bot who had a broken wheel and so, obviously, Spinner spun and wobbled instead of going straight. Spinner was an incredibly interesting character who kept us on track, oddly enough, when the story got more challenging. Spinner was one of us who had a lot to do with how we spent our idle time (see later, “Uplink.”
Finally, Vera played IONI, ECR1147-C, a satellite who was never actually launched. IONI was our technical hub, kind of “in charge” of the situation – her archetype was the Ruler. She monitored all of the goings on, and made a lot of the big decisions. IONI, like Jesse, was pretty much the only one. We found out that IONI had been saying she received contact from the humans, but it turned out that for far too long she had been getting radio silence – what we knew as commfail, the word that described our sadness.
The first big event we had was that Jesse uncovered a discrepancy – a variance – in her reports. She couldn’t just copy and paste. She reported it to IONI, and IONI decided to investigate it with an expedition. As Leon was an explorer both emotionally and on the ground, he would go out on the expeditions with other EIPS units to test the environment. It beat him up pretty bad, and there was always a worry he wouldn’t come back. Because of this, we developed a way to say “good luck.”
When an EIPS unit says goodbye to someone, they send a datapacket to them with silly pictures and cute animals (cute cats, otters, etc.). While EIPS don’t entirely understand the point of all of it, the humans who made them were cheered by them, and they learned to enjoy them over time. Along with this, however, we needed an indication of them doing it, so we came through with . The bots with LED screens could simply flash the hearts, while those who were more anatomically human used their hands to make the heart (see picture).
This pic is super old but it demonstrates the point, yo.
(This was actually inspired by RPG_Dante (Bryant Stone) who I met at CONlorado. He signals to me when we part ways. I may have made everyone tear up with this because of how cute and sweet it is, which is a rare thing for a Brie.)
After Leon came back, it was determined that there was nothing evident in the outside that would explain the variance. We moved forward an age. Each age, you take one aspect and move it into the next circle set up on the table that represents the ages in the game. We chose Idle Time, which was changed into Overtime – we were working past our limits, longer than we had planned with no response from the humans, and running out of glint (our fuel). We were working overtime.
Kristine broke my heart with her character’s story and how she dealt with the loneliness and commfail that the characters experienced, as well as how she brought levity to the table. She was the first of us to express worry – known to us as 404. Her 404 was often founded, as Leon and Spinner got into a mess. There was a holiday known as “Uplink” where we would all power down and just socialize and be calm during a big storm that passed over our compound, and it took a lot of time and energy to give this space to us.
After the Uplink, Leon found Spinner. They hid in a closet and – in one of the most dick moves I’ve ever done in a game – Leon suggested that they might save glint if they put some of the others… out of commission. “Not everyone is necessary all of the time” is I think what was said, and the interaction was so painful, but Spinner agreed that it wasn’t an unreasonable plan. They planned to keep it secret, and had hid out of the range of IONIs base sensors, but they couldn’t get away from Jesse.
Jesse showed up and asked what was up, and in the process of trying to hide their discussion, Leon offered Jesse a can of “Pork nnnn beeens?” (Spinner noted it’s only $2.49) while trying to demonstrate that they were just getting rid of old cans. It didn’t work, and they spilled the (not pork and) beans. Jesse demanded answers in her 404, and Leon and Spinner responded. One of the biggest issues was that they suggested powering IONI down, even though she was their synckeep, and things got very complicated. After getting support from other EIPS, they gathered their courage and reported their thoughts to IONI, presenting themselves as in favor of Eco-Mode (which was a label for their faction, including those who agreed with them). IONI wasn’t happy, but was eventually convinced.
The age turned, and they began putting people into Eco-Mode. The first versions – periods of time where they disabled groups and later reenabled them – went okay, but over a lot of time, they ran into an event that made it harder to move forward: The Wipe. A huge sector of EIPS units were powered down, but when they were meant to go back online, there was nothing there. Their AI had been fully wiped. Unrecoverable. The commfail was immense. Going forward, the synckeeps struggled to stay together and powered on, but as those who had pursued Eco-Mode, some of them felt obligated to version.
Spinner was the first to get boxed up – literally – but was so well loved that the entire community came to wish him as he went into Eco-Mode, heavy with 404 that he might not return, and experiencing commfail at not having him near. This hit Jesse especially hard. Still, as Spinner left, he repeated our unity saying, “We are still here.”
Our aspect for Surveillance of Earth, in the last age, was changed to Survival.
Leon continued to do expeditions, and Jesse found another variance, so he pushed out one day to find out what was there. He was walking along with guidance and wishes of from Jesse and IONI because there were no other life emulators with him, just bots without AI doing utility tasks. There was a lot of interference, and he struggled to hear them while his vision was overwhelmed with environmental waste. His last messages repeated until it cut off – “404. 404. IONI? Jesse? 404. 404–“
IONI and Jesse struggled with the loss of their synckeeps, upset they couldn’t recover Leon because of the environment and their limited abilities. Eventually, they were the only ones powered on. In an act filled with commfail, IONI had Jesse power her down and send her last message out to the humans with the full archive. It was truly heartbeaking, honestly, I swear we were all near tears. Jesse, hugging her pork nnnn beeens, was alone.
After time, utility bots who had been surveying the landscape came across the body of Leon, who – after his skin had been burned away by sulfur waves – was now healed, but still deactivated. Jesse had him brought into IONI’s hangar, and then she brought in Spinner and set him up. She arranged little monitors for IONI, Leon, and Spinner, and played messages and videos. We faded to black.
In the dark, a message blinked on IONI’s status monitor.
“Archive received.”
Final table.
—
HOLY CENA MY FEELS, Y’ALL.
This is one of the best game sessions, and games, I have ever played in my entire life. I’m still crying just thinking about it. It was an amazing experience. Great players, great facilitator, great game. I would love to play Dialect like 8 billion more times. SO good. *dies*
Afterwards, I hung out with the aforementioned Dante and had dinner. I told him about being the messenger of in our game, which I think he liked. We also discussed my new mechanic for Script Change, frame-by-frame, and his own project that sounds like a lot of fun. After Dante left, I talked with Kristine, Tomer Gurantz, and a few other people about Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place and it was a great way to finish out. My flight was early and I stayed up late but it was well worth it.
I can’t wait to go back to Big Bad Con! I had such a good time and it was really amazing.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
This is going to be a little more colloquial than normal, so bear with me. On playtesting in general, I’ve got some Feels™, but later on in the post there’s some more about my recent work on Turn.
I took this of a bison at a local park. 😀
On playtesting while designing in general:
Monkeys on pogo sticks, playtesting is hard. While it is somewhat easier being a player in a playtest for Turn, being a Storyteller is exhausting. Now, it’s not the game. It’s not the players! I’m just an amateur GM and I struggle a lot with it. In both cases (player & storyteller) in playtests, I’m doing double-or-more duty of storytelling/playing and analyzing the ruleset and how it interacts with the players and itself and how the game functions as a whole oh and also I have to worry about how to fix things and where to clarify wording in the main document and ohmYGOD!
BUT. This is really an important part of the design and development process. Not all games need playtested, but many truly benefit from it, and Turn needs this a lot because it is a complicated game with many interlocking pieces and concepts, and for me, it must be perfect.
And like, here’s the deal. I have three major documents in which I maintain Turn’s text – two public facing for players (one for internal playtests, one for external playtests), and one private. When I make an update (which I typically do live), I update all of them. I use comments in the private document if I can’t make immediate documents, and add identical text when I can to each document.
This is essential for my process. I have memory issues that make even taking brief notes difficult because they may be meaningless to me later, so if it’s simple stuff, I change it as soon as possible. I design in-process, on the fly. I can’t rely on future Brie. I need to make the game now, not later. So when I say running and playing these playtests are challenging, it is not simply the act of those things, it is those things and actively designing and critiquing my own work.
I have tried to make games without doing this. I can’t. When I playtest face to face, if I don’t have my tablet at hand, I struggle to fix the things that need updated at a later date. I can play and even storytell, to a degree, while I am making edits. I let players have some chatter while I make notes, or take a quick break. I can roleplay sometimes while I’m trying to determine how a mechanic might impact play, and can sometimes start using it while playing or running instead of waiting to try it later.
I don’t know what I will do if I ever do an even bigger, more complicated game than Turn, but this is my reality right now. I wonder if other people experience this. Do you take notes? Do you edit and change rules on the fly? Can you put off changes until later? I don’t know how weird this is.
—
Beast archetype: Otter
In playtesting Turn specifically, I’ve made some minor changes. The core mechanic has not been adjusted. The secondary and tertiary mechanics and structures, some text and interaction, have been fiddled with. I wanted to just go over some basic stuff.
Firstly, in combat, which I talked about on Twitter this week, I’ve finalized the basics. Shifters vs. small groups of humans is simple – shifters call the shots entirely. Any degree of violence, any amount of harm – but there are other consequences. For shifters vs. groups of humans (4+), it gets more complicated. Shifters can flee, if they want. They could sacrifice themselves for the good of others. Or… they can kill everyone. Everyone. But, that’s all the options they get.
For shifter-to-shifter combat, I’ve added an assortment of options based on the beast archetype that the player has. If they have specifically chosen powers on the beast archetype, they may impact the combat. Then, they pick from a Consequences list to apply to their opponent. It worked alright in my first experience with it, though I did end up clarifying some wording.
Second, I had to clarify some elements of the core nature of Turn. Here is an excerpt from the current Turn document explaining the nature of shapeshifters in game and the stories that have freedom to be told:
How Shapeshifters Work While there are some details players will fine-tune in their game, there are a few items of note for how shifters work in Turn. The most important things to note are that:
There is no concrete origin pre-defined. Shifters are not from any real-world cultural, religious, or scientific background. The designer of Turn asks that, unless you are of a particular culture or religion that has shifter backgrounds, you do not use that background for your game.
If there is magic in Turn, it’s unknown and invisible to mundanes. There are also no external entities that hunt shifters, as that would violate the nature of the individual secrets of shifters and the premise of Turn.
Shifters are assumed to be effectively invulnerable, and any real injuries heal rapidly enough that it doesn’t matter. They have the natural bodily functions of their human and beast forms, however.
Shifters have super strength and super senses appropriate to their available forms – scent, sight, etc.
Shifters live the length of their longest lived form, and age at that speed.
Some of this is not like, totally loved by some people, and to be honest, that’s whatever for me. No one has to play the game, like the game, or even acknowledge it. It’s mine, and this is the game I want to see played. The things that I realized were issues the most are things like: are shifters invulnerable? is there magic? can there be threatening external entities? (yes, maybe, no.)
There are reasons for all of these. Shifters are invulnerable because 1) it’s cool, and 2) physical threats, even things like aging, are not the dangers in this game. For the use of magic, sure! If you want to! But visible magic would be the death of all secrets, exposure would be rampant. So yes: magic is cool, but it should not be a function of the world that is free to mundanes.
The last one – the external entities – are because of a deeper issue in Turn that I hope doesn’t fall to pieces when it gets wider distribution. Turn is not about external threats – not outside the town. The threats are within the town, those close to the PC shifters. It’s about internal threats – themselves, their beasts, their desires and needs. It didn’t strike me until someone wanted to include it, though I had considered the possibility very early in conception. But once I saw it, I had a very harsh emotional and thoughtful response, and had to really dig down at the problem.
Another thing that I’ve run into is people just really not grokking small, rural towns. There are things in small towns, especially USian towns, that are really common, and players have had a little trouble accepting them. The weird one I ran into most recently was the fact that virtually everyone drives in small-town rural US. One player from Scotland stated that he didn’t drive at all, and didn’t even have a license, and I was startled – this was not a thing I had considered at all! But it’s true – especially in places like where I grew up, in small, rural towns, not driving is incredibly rare and also very inconvenient. It was bizarre.
Another I’ve encountered is some people’s very significant resistance towards playing religious characters and an aim to frame religious groups as bad. This is problematic. I’m personally agnostic, but I grew up Brethren, and religion is very common in the US, and can be very passionate in rural places. It’s not inherently bad, either. Frankly, having atheists and agnostics, secular people, in small towns like where I grew up? Not common. And people give them a strong side-eye, frankly. So, this is something I’ll be covering, along with the infrastructure of many small towns, in some of the additional text for the game.
No red pandas yet. Be patient. They are cute and fuzzy still.
I also have been getting some minor grumps from people that my beasts are too focused on the US, particularly places near where I live, and that I’m not making an effort to expand my game, which, please take this as kindly as it can be said: fuck off. I have spoken before in many different places, including this blog, about my attitude towards writing what you don’t know and do know. I have only lived in rural Pennsylvania. I’m writing what I’m familiar with right now.
Also, keep in mind, this game is barely in beta. I have a lot of plans for the future for how I can expand it, make it more accessible and more welcoming to players unlike me and who have different experiences. But holy sweet Cena, stop getting mad because I haven’t started writing about small neighborhoods in Canada or rural China. This is a slow process, and you must understand that I am not trying to deny the possibility of those things – I just don’t know them, and I do my best to not bullshit my way to telling stories that aren’t mine.
Anyway.
It’s been very challenging and very revealing, showing me both ignorance on my part, the part of players, and areas where I frankly just need more time and experimentation. But the core of the game stands strong, and I am still passionate about the future of Turn.
Thank you for reading! <3
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
While I’m doing active playtests on my own, I wanted to share the beta document I’ve prepared for Turn. It will be updated as the main private document is updated, but has quite a bit of information together now! If you read or play it, please let me know and share any of your feedback via the contact form.
photo by John W. Sheldon
What is Turn?
Turn is a story-based roleplaying game about shapeshifters in small towns who must try to go through life balancing the needs of their Human and Beast identities, while pursuing the goals that will make them happy and content. The game is primarily focused on social interaction and storytelling. The mechanics are d6 dice-based and have structured actions using low-number ability penalties and bonuses. Turn may approach some difficult emotional experiences and it’s advised to be used with the Script Change content tool, included at the end of this document.
EDIT: The Turn Beta is no longer available but you can find the game at any of these links:
Hi all! I’m seeking online playtesters for my current project, Turn! I’m also soliciting playtesters for John Sheldon’s game, Armored Reckoning! Details below!
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Turn Summer Online Playtest: Seeking 3-4 players (Respond by 5/31)
Turn tells the story of shapeshifters in small towns struggling to balance their human and beast needs and desires. It is a narrative story game with mechanics focused on social interaction and story development. This online playtest is intended to be a 4-8 session campaign with regular feedback provided.
Player preferences: Experience with narrative story games (in the style of PbtA, Fate, Archipelago) Interest in supernatural stories and legends Comfort with emotional, tight-knit social storylines Willingness to commit to a code of behavior for the game Willingness to provide clear, considerate feedback on game mechanics and interpretation Reliable availability for dates noted below
Schedule: Online Tuesday or Wednesday nights Eastern Starting 5pm or later, ending no later than 10:00pm Sessions no shorter than 2.5 hrs
Sessions will be rescheduled only if there are fewer than 2 players available (GM + 2 players = game on.) APPLY HERE by May 31, 2017
Armored Reckoning Online Playtest (Respond by 5/31)
World War II hasn’t worked out the way the Allies planned. In a deadly and inexplicable Second Blitz, German tanks have overrun Allied lines. Nazis now threaten Paris, Rome, and Warsaw with renewed occupation. Your company of soldiers and freedom fighters, trapped behind enemy lines with barely-operational light tanks, may be the last hope for the war effort.
Work with your teammates in this GM-less roleplaying game to wreak havoc behind German lines. Uncover the source of their renewed military might, and put a stop to it. Alternate between tense engagements using a card-based tactical system and narrative downtime scenes, where characters and conflicts take center stage.
2 to 5 players, 4 to 6 online sessions (each 2 to 4 hours)
Preferred nights are Wednesday or Thursday, starting after 7pm Eastern, online
