A new sale on itchio of my games! The Wouldn’t It Be Nice? sale hopefully will cover any of my COVID-19 testing costs and related expenses. Wouldn’t that be nice? $40 for all my games on PDF!
Runs the length of a quarantine so get it while it’s good 😉
https://itch.io/s/28845/wouldnt-it-be-nice-sale
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Kevin Petker about the game Princess World, which is currently on Kickstarter! The game has some fun beginnings – read all about it in the responses below!
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Tell me a little about Princess World. What excites you about it?
Princess World, “A Game of Girls who Rule” is a Powered by the Apocalypse role-playing game about playing diverse Princesses from varied realms who are trying to work together, despite their differences, to address problems in their world. The most exciting thing about the game is that it was inspired by my daughter, she literally pitched it to me when she was three-and-a-half (She’s six now) and she’s been a great help in generating ideas and concepts for the game. Princess World is designed to be accessible and engaging to new players, particularly younger ones, and deals a lot with the power and meanings of words, and how phrases can be reinterpreted in different ways. Every character in the game is defined by four essential Truths, which are short narrative phrases; when players start to grasp how to use these Truths to expand the narrative power of their characters in the game, using them as springboards for their imagination. Seeing a player’s eyes light up when they think of a new way to use a Truth makes the whole game worthwhile for me.
I’m super curious about the Truths! What are the four Truths and how are they presented to players?
Truths are probably my favorite part of Princess World! Truths are the “powers and abilities” of each Princess, like if you’d list four special things a character in a story or book are good at or known for. Each archetype/playbook has a unique list of four Truths that the player must express about their character. Some are extrinsic to the character, like equipment or things and some are intrinsic to the character, like experiences or legacies, and some purposely blur the line, so that the player can decide.
These Truths are narrative statements, not just descriptive, that give the character options and abilities others probably don’t have access to. For example, a Fairy Princess’s player wouldn’t just say, “I have green hair.” There’s not much they can do with that in a story; it’s mainly just description. If, instead, they said, “My hair consists of the intertwined flowers of Spring.”, then we can think about all the various narrative ideas and options we can unpack from that. Maybe they can use the scent of their hair to calm others, or maybe they can cause other plants to thrive, or maybe they can call on powers of growth and renewal. We’d play to find out the creative options the player could come up with, based on that Truth.
Truths are usually written in the character’s favorite color, unless they’ve been deemed to be Unpleasant, in which case, they’re usually written in black. Before a player writes down a Truth, they express it to the table of players first, and the other players judge the Pleasantness or Unpleasantness of that Truth, before the player writes it down. Being Unpleasant, just means that the other players can immediately see how said Truth has the potential to cause problems for the character, though they could be bad or dangerous as well, but the player can still call on them!
If a Truth is judged to be Unpleasant, the player has the option to accept that trouble or to rephrase the Truth in a way to address any concerns. Most players seem to enjoy having potential trouble brewing for their characters as it can lead to interesting stories.
The Truths can be as direct or as flowery as the player desires, but they’re usually a single sentence. For example, there was a Skateboard Princess who expressed this: “I can’t digest normal food, I eat batteries.” and the table of players was astonished and intrigued. The player went on to explain, “I’m a robot!” Now, they could’ve just expressed the Truth as “I’m a robot.”, but the whole “I eat batteries.” was thought of something more in line with what one would read in a story about a robotic Skateboard Princesses!
As a nonbinary creator, I’d be lax if I didn’t think of kiddos like me – is there space for nonbinary or masculine players or characters in this world, or is it strictly about embracing the feminine “girl” power and identity? How are you framing gender identity for the princesses, with this answer in mind? By this I mean, are there princesses with different body types and presentations like in She-Ra?
I think it’s going to be very tough to overcome the assumption that “princess means girl” in Western culture, but that is not an assumption I make in Princess World; we say “Anyone can be a Princess.” I lean more towards my daughter’s interpretation of princess which is “Someone who is capable and competent, and also pretty cool.” Some of the playbooks lean towards the feminine side, for certain values of feminine, such as the Proper or Fairy Princess, but the player of such characters is not bound by that at all! There are self-defining Skateboard Princeses, rough and tumble Warrior Princesses, and characters that are free to blur the lines in any way the players wish, like the Shadow or Pauper Princess. In the actual text I tend to lean towards female (she/her) or gender inclusive (they/them) pronouns unless I’m talking about a specific character or person who has specified their pronouns.
For the player, if the gender of their character is important to them, they can work to include it in the Truths about their character; if it less of a factor in their interest in the character, it can be included in their descriptive details. In actual play, their have been girl, boy, neither, amalgamated, changing, and artificially gendered Princesses. It’s my goal that players can make character that reflect their desires and interests in what is cool or exciting. Variations in age, body shape, gender, orientation, and even species have all occurred in actual play of Princess World. For me, it’s really exciting to see the fantastic directions players take their character creation in, thinking both inside and outside the box of the archetype they’ve picked. The new She-Ra cartoon has definitely been a touch stone.
With all that being said, there is, in very early development, a playbook that is specifically called the Boy Princess; my daughter wanted that included (she generated the seed ideas for fourteen of the sixteen playbooks we’re working on) and I’m excited to see how players will interpret and expand on that concept!
Awesome! The Boy Princess sounds my style. Speaking of style, I see that you’re using a system Powered by the Apocalypse. What led you to choose this system, and how have you modified it to suit your unique needs?
Well, I really fell in love with Apocalypse World when I was first introduced to it; it really mapped to my style of facilitating games and gave me words and structures to actually explain what I was doing. Also, it allowed for a very low level of pre-game preparation, something I’m really liking as I have less time to game. I feel that the PbtA approach worked really well for being a Weaver, what we call the “game master” in Princess World, as we stress that they are there to help the other players tell a story about their characters, not a story the Weaver makes up to put the princesses through; that collaboration between all the players, collectively creating the fiction of the narrative is what I find most satisfying in playing PbtA games.
For Princess World, I narrowed things down to four basic moves; all of which are ways of dealing with obstacles or problems that the characters face. Essentially: order things to do what you want, try to change their minds, evade things, fight things; they seem to cover all the ground I want for the players to explore when making choices for their characters. There’s a single auxiliary move that is dependent on how connected a Princess is to another Princess, using a currency we call Threads, which are statements about the characters’ relationships, written down on strips of paper and handed out to other players. As well, every Princess has a special knowledge move that reflect their unique perspective on Princess World, though other Princesses can use their Threads to tap into another Princess’s way of looking at things.
Apocalypse World, and many PbtA games, tend to be pretty loose on framing and pacing scenes; I’ve put a little more structure for that in Princess World, specifically using number of scenes to measure the difficulty or challenge of a situation; the more difficult a challenge is, the more scenes will be required to overcome or resolve it. I’m hoping this will make pacing of the story and sharing spotlight time easier for newer players to grasp and use.
There’s no lists of equipment or gear in Princess World, basically, if it makes sense for a Princess to have access to something, the Weaver is encouraged to say “Yes!”, especially if it’s something the player can narratively unpack from one of their Truths! Encouraging creativity and experimenting with ideas is strongly encouraged!
As a parent, being able to create a world for your kids to play in has got to be amazing. I can see some of this in the Truths, but what are the values and principles you’ve considered in design, and the emotional experiences, that you have made an effort to ensure come across in play?
Yes, it’s been amazing both from a design perspective and from a playing one. Sebastian, my son, has already played Princess World; he created the first Dragon Princess and did an amazing job with her, creating a monstrous Princess who was both scary and kind! Freya hasn’t played yet, but has done some basic role-playing with her cousins. All seem to have really enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to more games with them.
One of the core experiences I wanted to have in Princess World was for the players to have to grapple with the question of “What is important to my character?”, with the subtext asking, “What is important to me?” Many moves and options revolve around choosing to help yourself, to help others, or to help the greater world around you and that, often, you won’t have enough to do all three at once so you’ll need to make hard choices. I interviewed a lot of kids, aged 9-13, during the early development process and I wanted the game to reflect what that age group wanted in a game: that their characters had agency, that they could make important choices, and that their choices mattered; I’m really hoping that Princess World will provide that for players, both new and experienced. So far, it seems to be working.
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Thanks so much to Kevin for the interview and to the Weaver Princess, Freya, for being such an inspiration! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Princess World on Kickstarter today!
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Michael Dunn-O’Connor about Rebel Crown, which is currently on Kickstarter! Check out the responses to my questions below!
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Tell me a little about Rebel Crown. What excites you about it?
Rebel Crown is character-driven rpg with a player-facing campaign. Each character playbook focuses on a unique relationship with the claimant and gives that character a driving motivation to remain on this quest. The claimant is its own unique playbook, which thrives on sharing the spotlight with their allies and acting on their council. The campaign is driven by player choices: which factions to ally with and which holdings to pursue. As you group, you play to find out whether the claimant can take their throne and what sacrifices must be made along the way.
What are the various playbooks like, in a few examples of their abilities and how they interact with the game, and what power do they have in the narrative?
A lot of our design process started in the playbooks. I tend to get the most out of campaigns where the characters are deeply connected to one another and have a shared commitment to a goal or objective. Since the premise of a succession crisis lends itself to focusing on the relationship between a Claimant and their allies, that created an opening for us to create purposefully asymmetrical playbooks. Most of that asymmetry has to do with the Claimant playbook. There must be a Claimant at the table, and the other playbooks are sworn allies of the Claimant. This playbook is at the heart of the campaign, but we didn’t want to make a game that follows the story of one player character at the exclusion of the others. So we made the Claimant’s player explicitly responsible for spotlight sharing and reinforced this responsibility through their XP triggers:
The result has been that the Claimant is constantly pulling other characters into the scene to ask their advice, to request a sacrifice, to reward their loyalty. The other playbooks have XP triggers that reward them for taking initiative, to not wait until the Claimant asks for their advice or intercession. Here’s the Devoted:
The flow from these rewards has been really satisfying, and character motivation and relationship is constantly at the center of play.
The playbook special abilities reinforce character dynamics without being too restrictive (especially since special abilities may be chosen from other playbooks).
A sample of the Devoted’s special abilities suggests different approaches to protecting the Claimant (guarding them in battle, defending their name in a public forum, or engaging in duels on their behalf). The Devoted is defined by their love of the claimant, but there are many ways a player might take action on that motivation.
To dig in deeper, in the case of the claimant in play, how does the game guide the player toward a just and moral leadership that would make their claim to power morally superior to the claims of the usurpers?
The moral righteousness of the Claimant’s quest is in many ways the core fruitful void of this system: it’s a driving question that the game can’t answer for you without closing off some of the explorations that make RPGs really compelling. However, we try to direct play toward this question in thoughtful ways.
One way is the way that each sortie generates Unrest for the retinue, and more destructive sorties produce significantly more Unrest. The sortie objectives push the retinue to gain new objectives and ingratiate themselves with powerful factions, but the consequences of this expansion often impact the common people of your holdings the most. Here are the Entanglements you might roll at the highest level of Unrest:
Unrest provides a slow creep of consequences for the people your Claimant has sworn to protect and provide for. How they address these consequences is an unavoidable topic of play.
The playbook that most explicitly focuses on the question of just rule and moral leadership is the Idealist, who has allied with the Claimant because they believe it is a path to the greater good. The Idealist’s XP triggers put pressure on the Claimant to do the right thing even when it’s not expedient and encourage the Idealist to keep that question of moral leadership right at the forefront of play.
I note that you talk about expressing your heritage, background, or trauma. How are players supported within the game in regards to traumatic or triggering content, and also, speaking of heritages, are you involving sensitivity readers in the project?
Trauma is a term from Blades in the Dark that appears in many Forged in the Dark games. We replaced that mechanic with ‘Scars’. When a character’s Stress exceeds their limitations, they must choose whether to take one final action before collapsing or to pull themselves together and carry on. We both wanted to avoid the term Trauma given its specific meaning in the context of psychology, and we wanted to rework the mechanic to provide more player choice in the moment.
We’re working on integrating safety tools into the rules text. I’ve been influenced in this regard by playing with some folks through The Gauntlet’s community. We want to provide clear prompts on CATS (content, aim, subject matter, tone) that people could leverage when introducing the game to a group. We’ll also encourage the use of Lines & Veils and the X cards. When we run are games at Games on Demand, these are the tools we’ve used and we want to provide the same resources to folks running it on their own.
The design team is just Eric and me; we haven’t brought in outside readers, though our playtesters have given a lot of valuable feedback on how we can directly address the more problematic aspects of any fiction set in a feudal setting.
What does an average session look like, including the sorties you mention (a term some of my readers may be unfamiliar with)?
A typical session runs through three phases:Recon: In which the retinue (the Claimant and the allies) gather information about other factions and identify an objective.
The Sortie: The main ‘mission’ of the session. This could be an attack on an enemy faction, a diplomatic meeting, or an attempt to drive off wraiths from a vulnerable holding. The goal of a Sortie is typically to gain a new Holding (some property or asset) for the Claimant’s Domain, to strengthen relations with another faction, or to weaken an enemy faction in some way. The retinue may also seek to vassalize another faction, bringing them under the Claimant’s rule without seizing their Holdings.
Downtime: In which the retinue recovers from injury and stress, engages in long terms projects, and trains their skills. Downtime abstracts weeks of time as the player character pursue their own interests, discuss their long-term priorities, and seek solace together from the difficult campaign.
The Domain sheet includes a calendar for players to track their Sorties, Seasons change every two Downtimes, providing a richer sense of time scale and place.
At the end of the session, players asses how they earned XP based on their playbook, and whether their character’s Beliefs and Drive changed based on the events of the session.
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Thanks so much to Michael for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Rebel Crown on Kickstarter today!
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Cody Trotter from scaryridge creative house about THE VIOLET SANCTION, which is currently on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2. It sounds very interesting! Check it out below!
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What is THE VIOLET SANCTION, both as a product and as your vision?
i’m working on a zinequest game for kickstarter called THE VIOLET SANCTION, a cooperative urban fantasy adventure that takes place in seattle’s capitol hill neighborhood. it’s one of the epicenters of queer culture in the area, and it also happens to be my home. as a product, the game is a multiplayer choose-your-own-story style gamebook, divided into episodes. episodes, which are named after streets in the neighborhood, are non-linear, crossing paths with each other frequently, leading to a grand finale in the epilogue.
the game eschews dice, leveling, experience points, and most combat (there are social encounters, certainly). as a vision, THE VIOLET SANCTION is my first art project in a very long time, after years of processing life’s many traumas. a mid-life crisis, transitioning to nonbinary, escaping a job that was devouring me; this game is more than just a reincarnation of my artistic spirit, it is a manifesto for social change, for art, for evolution. i’m new to this whole process, but i’m hopeful in ways i haven’t been in ages.
This sounds like such a fascinating project! How do you handle resolution of any conflict or social encounters in lieu of dice?
the gamebooks express the setting and obstacles similarly to an adventure game, with a lot of the puzzles requiring specific actions at the right places. this can include dialogue choices, magic being cast, classic inventory puzzles, etc., but the charm of the system really comes from the cards. every character has their own customized deck, which are written on, manipulated, and sometime removed. a various points, the game queries cards in hand or on the table, then directs you to the next scene accordingly.
my favorite example is the 9 of hearts, which signifies the 9 lives of the cat-human shapeshifter class. as they “lose” lives, pips are shaded in or crossed out. rumor has it that cats on their last life share a drink at a speakeasy hidden down a dark alley…
other scenes are resolved by playing cards from your hand to determine outcomes, and one character class can even trade cards with other players. however, cards are never randomly drawn, instead it’s a strategy puzzle of figuring out what goes where and how.
As a nonbinary person, I’m always curious how other nonbinary people’s identity has influenced their design. How do you feel your transition to nonbinary identity has influenced the design and flavor of THE VIOLET SANCTION?
being nonbinary absolutely affects my writing and design. the game is largely de-gendered, with the exception of a few specific characters, like death herself, which was chosen intentionally. using THE VIOLET SANCTION as a platform for dismantling the gender binary and helping to solidify new language was incredibly important to the overall design. identifying as queer in general impacts the type of subjects i choose to tackle.
all art is politics, and education, and i think visibility for the queer spectrum is vital to our future. i spent my entire adolescence being told that my sexuality shouldn’t define me, that it was only a part of who i was, but then was simultaneously told i was a very small percentage of the population. as i’ve grown older and wiser, i meet people like me everywhere i go. i want the next generation to hear these stories and be able to do better for themselves.
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Thanks so much for the interview Cody! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out THE VIOLET SANCTION on Kickstarter today!
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Sarah Rowan about The Watching Book, a project on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2 right now! It seems really interesting and has a really romantic element behind its creation. Check out the interview below!
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What is The Watching Book, both as a product and as your vision?
The Watching Book is a diegetic setting zine told as the journal of oracles. It presents the religion, culture, and rituals of a fictional people through the eyes of the women who guide them. Accompanying the zine is a short paperless, gm-less rpg. In this, players take on the roll of children to enjoy a game of mystery-solving and oral storytelling. Both the game and the zine are in-world artifacts that can be used to enhance a campaign setting or be given directly to players as found items during a game.
This zine is the second foray into the world of Soothsayer, my boardgame from 2019. The project started as a gift for my wife, and consequently the world is built around centering the lives and accomplishments of lgbt characters. By using different viewpoint characters throughout, I also get the chance to examine the ways in which the same ritual can take on different meaning to different people, even within the same group. I really wanted the world built by these games to explore real faith in fantasy by leaving some questions unanswered.
This sounds very cool! What are some of the ways you set boundaries and encourage creativity, either mechanically or otherwise, for players in The Watching Book?
The Watching Book is more of a setting than a game in and of itself. But carrying through from Soothsayer one of my design goals was to make sure to avoid encouraging a “dark” look at the world. The problems faced within the text are natural disasters, disagreements, or mysteries rather than acts of intentional violence or hate. I primed the world to be not a utopia, but a relatively peaceable sort of place where brutal content is very clearly out of place and inappropriate. There are a lot of games and settings where those topics can be explored, but this is not one of them.
As for creativity, I stay away from explicitly answering any of the religious and spiritual questions that exist about the world. Are the spirits actually real? Are they real, but different than how most people interpret them? Readers and players in the setting have room to develop their own opinions and explore beliefs without being handed a yes or no answer within the text.
It’s lovely that this was inspired by your wife. In what other ways than the people is The Watching Book a queer game and product?
I made sure that at every step of the way I tried to include people of different outlooks and communities. Ezra, the artist, describes themself as a Queer Jewitch Farmer. That’s a material way I’m using my work to give back; hiring other LGBT people to work with me.
Additionally I am happy to adopt a policy that’s gaining traction in the ttrpg community; as part of the campaign I have included Community Copies of the zine. These are donated copies from generous people that are available to anyone, no questions asked. In this way I can make my zine a little more accessible to those having a hard time.
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Thanks so much for the interview Sarah! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out The Watching Book on Kickstarter today!
I have a quick few questions with Eli Seitz on The Last Place on Earth, a Zine Quest 2 project on Kickstarter! Check out the responses below.
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What is The Last Place on Earth, both as a product and as your vision?
The Last Place on Earth is a tabletop role playing game inspired by the Heroic Age of Exploration and by Robert F Scott’s fatal 1912 expedition to the South Pole. It’s a game about the hardships of Antarctic exploration and the arrogance of men who believe that they can or must overcome nature. It’s designed as a one or two shot experience with black and white zine of rules accompanied by archival photos and an illustrated map of the route to use a play aid.
This sounds like an intensive research project! What kind of research have you been doing for the project, and how have you found that research to be useful in designing the game?
My research started with a much broader scope as I was interested in a game about historical exploring. I was reading about mountain climbing which had a lot of juicy material: harsh environments, bad equipment, improper safety procedures, great scenery, but almost all that history engages in indigenous erasure. As a white designer, it is not my place to write that game so I turned my attention to the South Pole, and Scott’s Terra Nova expedition drawn in by the photographs and journal entries. The journal entries.
The journal entries are fascinating because they provide insight into the thought processes of the expedition members during their ill-fated march. We can read about the dynamics within the group and later what they want to be remembered in the history books. Journaling is included as a mechanic in the game as a form of monologuing, and as a stretch goal, I will be writing a solo RPG variant that relies on journaling extensively. In the end, the emotional arc of the expedition became the focal point, and the technical aspects of exploration were relegated to window dressing. The best gameplay comes from exploring the attitudes and relationships of these men at the end of the earth.
I like the way you say “the arrogance of men who believe they can or must overcome nature.” Can you expand on this perspective and how it shapes your design and your approach to this project?
Beneath the mechanics and setting, the Last Place on Earth is about colonialism and masculinity. These men traveled to a place with temperatures of -45 degrees Fahrenheit and winds regularly over 100 miles an hour so that they could claim the glory of reaching the center of an uninhabited continent. This toxic mindset is just so deeply ingrained in their identities. For example, they viewed skis as children’s toys and barely used them instead they walked almost all of the 900 miles to the pole. It’s also apparent in their words. One of Scott’s last journal entries reads, “we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen. I regret only for the women we leave behind.” Or Lawrence Oates’ last words were, “I am just going outside and may be some time,” then he walked into a blizzard with no boots.
In the game, the characters are created to evoke the absurdity of these historical attitudes. During the game, the players explore how characters with this mentality deal with intense physical hardship, failure, and possibly even death. They form close bonds with fellow expedition members and see if they can weather the storm as their entire world is challenged. I hope that the critique offered by the game will lead players to think about their own beliefs on nationalism, masculinity, and the natural world.
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Thanks so much Eli for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out The Last Place on Earth on Kickstarter today! Also, take a look at Eli’s other ZineQuest project about rules, pomegranates, and arguing, Fruit of Law.
Hi all! I’m excited for this interview with Aven Elia McConnaughey and Natalie the Knife about Thistle and Hearth, which is on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2! Check out the responses below!
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What is Thistle and Hearth, both as a product and as your vision?
Thistle and Hearth is a game of belonging outside belonging that combines a dark fairytale aesthetic with the experience of growing up as a Lutheran in Minnesota. Inconvenient spirits, punishing winter, and mercurial fae challenge the community. True Names, vows, and acts of creation bring them comfort.
To be honest, the idea for Thistle and Hearth literally came to me in a dream. It was some sort of high-action romp, but the things that stuck with me were the aesthetic notes of deep forest, deep winter, and elk riders. These aesthetic notes weren’t really enough to turn into a game until I shared them with my co-designer, Natalie (@rpgnatalie). The most exciting thing about designing this game has to do with genre – a thing I love playing with in games and game design.
To me, a lot of the indie game space for the past decade has been in pursuit of genre. Apocalypse World gave an approachable toolkit for replicating specific fictional genres in games, leading to countless hacks. Dream Askew//Dream Apart followed a number of years later, using similar tools to subvert existing genres, rather than just replicating them. What Natalie and I have done with Thistle and Hearth is create a genre that exists nowhere else by making playbooks and motifs that assume archetypes for this genre-that-doesn’t-exist. People expect playbooks to rely on tropes, but we’ve created playbooks without the tropes, and it turns out that creates a really unique play experience.
It sounds like you’re bringing forward a very specific experience. How does the life of a Lutheran in Minnesota connect to dark fairytale aesthetic, and what are some examples of how players will experience this?
So the game is influenced by Aven’s experience growing up in a Lutheran community and Natalie’s experience in community with people who were part of the church. The way the church manifested was heavily influenced by the local climate – months of winter where it was too cold to go outside, with too little sunlight, where the climate becomes a thing you have to guard against in certain ways. The game has five motifs that determine the themes and forces that will be at play in your game, and each one reflects a different aspect of our experiences.
This is represented in the game very literally with the Winter motif, which brings scarcity to the community, and asks how do you make do with less than you need? This can also lead to tension between playbooks. For example, the Forged and the Morning Frost respectively represent a tension between repurposing what we have in order to get what we need, and making things that bring joy or beauty but may be a frivolous use of resources.
The church also often had an insular narrative – we didn’t necessarily think things that were outside of our community were bad, but we didn’t understand them, and there was a prominent narrative that we did not belong out there – in the cold, in the wider world, or, in Thistle and Hearth, in the Woods. A part of this was coping with the fact that we lived in a place where living is hard and grueling most of the time – by making the unfamiliar undesirable, we made the familiar desirable.
The Thistlefolk, our name for the fae, represent how power works sometimes in communities of faith. There are often people who you know little to nothing about but who either you as an individual or the wider community are beholden to – they hold power over you and their rules must be followed. Both the Thistlefolk and Family motifs explore questions over how power is distributed, and how it affects someone who is part of the community in ways that are not explicitly violent or economic.
Lutheran communities often build their identity around shared histories, but these are not always true to what actually happened. In Thistle and Hearth, the dead can come back to speak their truths, and that may complicate the things that the community hold as sacred, or it can be used to reinforce this shared history. They can also function metaphorically as a representation of people who have left the community but still have a connection to it, and can demystify the unknown in ways that breaks down the in-group/out-group narrative.
Exploring genre, or the surpassing of genre, is something that fascinates me. How did you use the Belonging-Outside-Belonging system to develop this new genre and how does it influence play?
PbtA games use move-like-mechanics to establish what people do in the world, and the fictional consequences of acting in those ways. This is used to reinforce genre by recreating the paradigms of action found in therein. Belonging Outside Belonging games go a step further by codifying what kinds of action makes characters vulnerable, and what kinds of action allow them to advance their agenda.
In Thistle and Hearth we included moves and grouped them in ways that either subvert existing genre influences, or else completely ignore them in favor of something new. For example, one of the Forged’s weak moves is “lash out in anger.” In other genres, this would probably be a strong or regular move for a physical-strength oriented playbook like the Forged. In this game, and this genre, it is something that they do to show their vulnerability.
If moves and their categorization makeup one part of the genre of the game, another important mechanical aspect of genre is the motifs. Motifs (which might be called “situations” or “setting elements” in other BoB games) establish fictional powers in the world, and the players together control them and influence how they are used in play. The group’s collective experiences, while perhaps based on their existing cultural knowledge, create a new genre when combined together.
Without shared control of the motifs, it would be up to individuals in the group to understand, synthesize, and then reproduce for everyone else. That would be much, much harder, and it would be more likely for the player’s existing cultural knowledge to leak into their creation of the genre. The motifs may be familiar to players individually, but the game leads to play that explores how they connect to each other to define a fictional world. The space between the different motifs has a somewhat defined shape, but it is only through play that a group can discovers what fills the empty space.
In contrast to Dream Askew, the lists that players pick from to define motifs are quite broad in Thistle and Hearth. There is a tendency towards higher variation between the motifs from game to game. The genre that the players explore together can have a vastly different texture depending on the options they choose. In one playtest, the Thistlefolk hoarded secrets, so much so that they sent a member of their brethren into the community to steal a particularly juicy secret. In another, the Thistlefolk craved music and violence; we elaborated on them as extravagant party-throwers who could appear at the drop of a hat and stay for days, leaving little time for sleep or solitude.
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Thank you SO much to Aven and Natalie for this interview!! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Thistle and Hearth on Kickstarter today!
(edited to add second interviewee, my bad)
Hey all! Today’s Quick Shot is with Kate Jeanne about Winter Harvest, which is currently on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2! It sounds really interesting and reminds me of some tales from my childhood!
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What is Winter Harvest, both as a product and as your vision?
Winter Harvest is a small roleplaying game set in a small world. Players are woodland animals using the power of memories, food & community to thrive as the seasons turn. The game runs 4 sessions based on the seasons. Session 4 concludes the game with a real-life (and in-game) Midwinter Feast. Goals of Winter Harvest are to focus on domestic life within an inter-connected community, and to have each table develop custom lore for their home through invoking oral history that will be recorded by the Librarian. It should feel horizontal because no player “keeps” the role of facilitator/Storyteller, it rotates each session. The physical product will be a 20-30 page, black-and-white handmade zine with custom ink art of adorable animals at work and play, publishing around October 2020.
This sounds great – I love food, and I love woodland creatures! How did you develop the perfect mood for play to help encourage the interconnected nature the narrative demands?
Before jumping into play, a group beginning Winter Harvest will make two types of choices that set the stage for feeling that they are part of a close-knit and inter-reliant community. First, each player developing a character card will choose two professional skills. For example, if I were making a rabbit gardener character, I might choose skills like physical endurance and herbal knowledge. Any time I use my skills from my gardening job to confront a challenge, I’ll get bonuses to help the group resolve problems.
Defining what characters do day-to-day instantly sets the stage for relationships–my gardener character probably knows the cook quite well, for instance. Second, the table will have to reach a consensus on the key features that define their home in the Burrow, which sets the stage for understanding that protecting and caring for your shared space is essential to everyone’s wellbeing. Throughout play, these choices will interact with narrative decisions, including when players confront challenges stemming within the Burrow that have social causes and consequences each session.
A rotating facilitator role is so great. What does Winter Harvest do to help support the facilitators and bind together their unique perspectives?
Mechanically, regardless of a facilitator’s style or experience level, each will be physically writing in the same book as players invoke stories & legends to have a connected record evolve (which is why the role is also called The Librarian). Players can revisit stories that were invoked in past seasons to get powerful bonuses without spending a limited resource, which adds incentives to have past themes and stories brought up several times as the game progresses.
There’s no obligation for every person at the table to take a turn as facilitator, and hopefully taking on this role will feel voluntary and exciting rather than intimidating. Since Winter Harvest is a compact and quite simple game, it should not be time-consuming for facilitators to become familiar with the whole text. Running it requires no memorization or math. I’m very interested in thinking further about how the game can be designed to ensure that facilitators feel well-supported throughout!
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Thanks so much to Kate for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Winter Harvest on Kickstarter today!
Hi All! Today I have an interview with Magnus T. Hansen on Red Rook Revolt, which is currently on Kickstarter. Check out what Magnus has to say below!
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Tell me a little about Red Rook Revolt. What excites you about it?
Well, that’s sorta like choosing between my babies. There are three things which really excite me. The first is the combat system, which is inspired by the game Hyper Light Drifter as well as Strike!: A game of heedless adventure! It uses a single d6 for every roll, almost every attack deals one damage, and people have very low hit HP. In playtests, it has given us fast, tactical, and dangerous combat. Melee attacks always hit, but expose you to danger, while ranged attacks can miss, and require you to spend Dark Power, which you get from melee attacks, which forces people in and out of dangerous situations and helps ensure more dynamic encounters.
Another thing that excites me is the memory and corruption system. For a long while, I struggled with making a cool way both to portray relationships and the creeping demonic corruption that happens once you start powering up the summoned demon in your gun. But I solved both, by having a system where you have specific memories with the other party members.
During each adventure, you can gain more, but you can also draw on those personal connections to keep away the demon’s whispers. If you fail, however, those memories can get twisted. Memories of your brother supporting you through hard times get reinterpreted to into memories of your bother being smothering or controlling. Memories of supporting your friends when they needed you become memories of your friends being needy and needing constant support, and so on. This isn’t necessarily permanent, but the fight against the demon is one of the central conflicts of the game.
The last thing I wanna mention here that excites me is the setting, which i am currently writing! I’m drawing on English and Roman history, and focusing down on a single empire and the rebellion happening there. That allows me do to more than just a cursory look at the place, and detail culture and religion to a greater extend, show some of the ways the rebellious areas differ in culture from the main empire, but also the ways they are the same, the things they share. Some central cultural concepts are birds as ancestors, and the actual, literal magic which is at work in most things of cultural significance, including community rituals and festivals, and a strong tradition of communal stews.
What inspired your interest in these cultures to build this specific story, and how are you building this story while being respectful to the cultures themselves?
To be clear, when I say I draw on British and Roman history, I mean mostly – but not entirely, as I’ll get to! – in terms of structure, in terms of how the empire works, how they extract resources from their conquered territory, how they justify their imperialism. That also helps answer the first part of your question: I needed empires to draw from for my evil empire. I had already decided on guns as an element, as the game started as a small combat engine and I didn’t want modern time, so 19th-century England was right there. As I worked on the culture and the history of the people of the empire, I had some ideas which resonated with Roman history, and the empire ended up as something like a Roman empire that had evolved into a modern empire, though more territorial.
I do use some roman culture – aspects of its religion and visual aesthetic, the importance of the Familias, the prevalence and importance of omens and minor magic. I have a friend working with me on some of the writing who knows his Roman history very well, so I’m not afraid to accidentally misrepresent it, though much of it isn’t what I’m using as inspiration. And while there are possibly some that would have issues with using, say, roman gods, I’m not doing that, just some aspects of how society was structured in antiquity.
Tell me more about memories! How do the players typically respond to these when they play them out, and how do they interact with other parts of the game?
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able playtest this part of the game at the time of writing, so how players typically respond is unknown to me, but I will have the chance to playtest it soon!
I can talk about how they interact with other parts of the game, though! The memories represent the character’s relationships with each other, and during their adventures, they get strengthened and weakened.
The game is structured around a mix of downtime and adventuring. During the adventuring portions, the players get into battle and accrue corruption tokens as they draw on the dark magic of their demons. Afterward, they roll to determine if they get corrupted. If they fail, their friends have to help them, reminding them of their relationship with a memory; if that succeeds, the memory is simply exhausted from the emotional stress, and can’t be used for a while. Otherwise, it gets corrupted, twisted somehow, and the relationship weakens. Actions in battle and their willingness to win at all costs thus affect their relationships and their memories.
This, in a sense, forms the central conflict, and a central theme of the game: the importance of relationships, friendships and organization as you struggle for liberation, and resistance to forces that would separate you, make you try to fight the world alone with just you and your gun. During downtime, exhaustion and (with more difficulty) corruption can be healed, as can physical wounds, and new memories can be made. Downtime, in a bigger way, ties into what adventures you go on, what battles you fight and so on, which feeds back into corruption and memory.
What is the general activity of the game – like what do the players mostly do in each session, or are they intended to do? How does the game support these actions?
The general activity of the game is fighting imperialist scum. You play as members of the red rook commune, which is under attack from the cruel Imperium Alarum, and throughout the game, you keep the pressure on to prevent them from turning their full attention towards the commune. You sabotage railways, distribute propaganda, organize general strikes, assassinate generals, and lead battles against the enemy. When things go wrong and the empire turns their full might upon the Red Rook Commune, you man the barricades and drive back the invaders! In between hectic fights and missions, you rest at the commune and rebuild your strength. This is when you heal and reaffirm your friendships.
As for how the game supports these actions, it is built around that structure of mission/rest/mission with the first result of failure being an attack on the red rook commune. If you aren’t putting the pressure on the empire, they will attack your home and deny you the chance to heal and rest.
What made you elect to use Hyper Light Drifter and Strike! As inspirations for design, and how have you differed from them?
I didn’t so much choose to use hyper light drifter as an inspiration as the other way around: the appeal of Hyper Light Drifter’s smooth, flowing combat rhythms is what inspired me to start working on what would become Red Rook Revolt. Hyper Light Drifter is a video game with an incredible combat loop, and I wanted to capture that particular loop, that particular flow, in a tabletop game, something, quick, smooth, and tactical.
That’s why I turned to Strike! for inspiration for the combat. That game uses a single D6 for combat, rolling on a table of hits, misses, and critical hits, and It goes rather fast for that reason. Strike, of course, also has a lot of other things going on, but I liked that particular idea and I took inspiration from that in designing my combat system and combined it with the things I liked and wanted to replicate from Hyper Light Drifter.
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Thanks so much Magnus for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check out Red Rook Revolt on Kickstarter today!
Hi all, today I have an interview with Matt Bohnhoff on Campfire Memories, which is currently on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2! Check out the interesting responses from Matt below!
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What is Campfire Memories, both as a product and as your vision?
Campfire Memories is GM-less one-shot game about families going on a difficult camping trip and then looking back on the experiences fondly later. It’s going up on Kickstarter as a Zine Quest project from Feb 4 through 16. I want this game to be an accessible, light way for people to get talking. In addition to the camping problems in the fiction, it usually brings up real anecdotes from the player’s own trips, which is perfect! Interestingly, after talking with my editor, the safety tool we settled on is the Luxton Technique from your website!
My experiences camping as a kid always had a fair share of troubles to encounter! What sort of troubles do players in Campfire Memories encounter that make their time difficult?
The complications in Campfire Memories are best framed as man-vs-nature obstacles. These can take the form of broken gear, bad weather, animal encounters, or other things. The important part is that they pit the characters against their environment, not each other. Characters can, of course, get upset with each other but that becomes more of a sub-plot than the focus of the game. When a player has their turn setting a scene, it’s the job of the player to their left to come up with the complication.
What do you do, mechanically or otherwise, to provide structure to the camping trip and story for the players and keep them engaged?
There are a couple mechanical widgets that keep players engaged in the game. Players all take turns setting scenes and creating complications. In my experience, most folks are super excited for the chance to do one of those. Also, characters are built with a goal, the kinds of experiences they want to have on their trip. This provides a lot of direction for players to push their characters in during camping scenes. The goal comes back into the play during the reflection phase, as the characters look back on their trip!
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Thanks so much Matt for the interview! I hope all my readers enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check Campfire Memories out on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2 today!
