I have an interview today with AdamD from Game to Grow about Critical Core, which is currently in preorder! It sounded like such a fascinating project focused on helping autistic gamers! Check out Adam’s responses below!
—
Tell
me about Critical Core. What excites you about it?
Critical
Core is a starter set for therapeutic tabletop role-playing games. We’ve been
using games to help kids and teens build social skills for around 8 years now,
and have always wanted to reach a larger audience of people than we can reach
directly in the greater Seattle Area. At Game to Grow we’ve been saying for
years that we think the world would be a better place if everyone played more
games together. This is our opportunity to get a game into more homes,
hospitals, schools, clinics and libraries around the world.
What are the backgrounds like for
the various people working on Game To Grow? What motivated you to apply it to
games?
Adam Johns is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I (Adam Davis) have a masters in education with a specialization in Drama Therapy. We met in grad school at Antioch University Seattle and started working together running drop in groups using Dungeons and Dragons with socially isolated youth. As we ran the groups we realized the potential that the game has as an intentional intervention for building social competence. We created Wheelhouse Workshop, a for-profit company, in 2013 dedicated to using RPGs to build social skills. After several years of running groups and serving the local community, they formed Game to Grow in 2017 to continue to expand on the use of games to help people learn, grow, and change.
Game to Grow was formed as a nonprofit to reach a larger audience to help with a wider range of challenges. Another member of the development team is Virginia Spielmann, who is a British-trained Occupational Therapist with more than 20 years experience working in pediatrics. Virginia is a specialist in the DIR Floortime™ framework of developmental intervention. Virginia approached us with the Critical Core project as a collaboration with the ad agency Mcgarrybowen Hong Kong, who sought to use their creative talent in design and project management to serve the autistic community in Hong Kong with an innovative idea. Critical Core was born from this international collaboration.
How does the starter kit work and
what is included in it?
The starter kit contains three main
components: the rules and materials for a simplified and easy-to-play
role-playing game, a facilitator’s guide with the best-practices we have
developed over the near decade of experience we have running groups and using
this method to help clients, and adventure modules in which the in-game
scenarios are targeted developmentally to real-world areas of social growth.
The goal is for new game masters to be able to pick up the starter set and learn a simple game they can use to help and connect with their family, students, clients, or community. They can use the modules and facilitator’s guide to improve the outcomes of their game and provide some support for kids, whether they’re on the autism spectrum or not. Experienced game masters will be able to apply the wisdom in the facilitator’s guide and adventure modules to other game systems and use the games they already know and love to help their community. Trained therapists, educators, and other community support will have a new tool in their repertoire to help their community in a way that is, fun, safe, and enriching.
How do you approach accessibility for
those with disabilities like blindness, or who have mobility issues?
Our approach to accessibility is that, as our colleague
Mike Fields said during a presentation: ”An impairment is only a disability
when there is no accommodation.”
We also recognize that every individual is different
and may need a different level of modification or accommodation for them to
fully participate. The key element to
accessibility is open dialogue around what a participant needs and how we can
help. There
are obvious ways we can improve accessibility, i.e., by making sure paths are
clear for wheelchairs and walkers, or by providing braille dice, though it is
impossible to be 100% prepared for everything so we must be open to
conversation about how we can make sure our table has a place for everyone.
How do these starter kits work for people who aren’t
experienced professionals, based on your testing?
We’re still developing the kit to make it the best it can be to professionals with less experience using RPGs to help. Our “official” beta-testing with Critical Core kits hasn’t begun, though in the trainings we’ve conducted over the years using the wisdom and best practices that will go into the facilitators guide, we’ve seen the largest area of growth is making sure that the professionals new to facilitating RPGs for growth remember that they are also a player, and that SO MUCH of the power in the work comes from relationships and play. So we’ll make sure that the kits have a clear outline of the game structure, but also explain in depth how to use the game to maximum impact. Not just the what, but the why and the how. Much of that will be in the facilitator’s guide included in the Critical Core box.
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Nora Blake on Dust Wardens, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds awesome and promotes a lot of values I appreciate, so I hope you like the responses below!
—
Tell me a little about Dust Wardens. What excites you about it?
This is a game I’ve been working on in one form or another for almost
two years; it’s technically a hack of a game that doesn’t exist
(anymore). I think the most pressing influence is Vonnegut’s Cat’s
Cradle and the way it talks about bonds between people and places and
things (words like karass, wampeter, and granfalloon do not appear in
this book, but honestly they might as well!). Those themes have stuck
with me for a long time and are really important to me, especially as
someone with almost no ties to, for example, blood family. It’s nice to
think about my connections to the world and which connections are really
mine.
The game focuses a lot on relationships, and this is mechanized in Vows. How do Vows work and what do they mean to the players?
Essentially, Vows are promises; specifically, they should be “I will”
statements that drive you toward action. I’ve seen them end up as
anything from things like “when the time comes I will give you my
moonlight” to “I’ll always hold the pieces together when you feel
broken”. They help to define your relationships through a lens of action
and devotion, which are very important to me. I’m the type of girl to
make big romantic promises with an inside context only the two of us
know.
Polyamory and queerness feature heavily in Dust Wardens. I’d really love to hear more about this! How did you prioritize including it, and how do these elements affect the gameplay?
I talk at length about polyamory and queerness in the text itself,
and how pivotal these things are to it. The world of dust wardens is a
dangerous one, and humanity exists on the fringes of life on the planet.
There is no bastion of “civilization” or state controlling their lives
or coming to save them. On a more somber note this is how it can feel
sometimes to be a queer trans person in the world doing my best to build
my own pockets of community in a wider, more dangerous world. I won’t
call it a metaphor, but it’s an applicable framework.
Why did you elect not to use playbooks, and how does this enrich the game for players of different backgrounds?
To be honest I thought about using playbooks a few times in the
course of development but I never found any that really felt right. I
have no idea how I would sort dust wardens into categories. It’s
something I might revisit someday, but as it stands I like that things
are more freeform. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be able to make
yourself in this game and play the game with someone on a date.
Dust Wardens cover art by Anna Landin.
The choice of using cards as a mechanic is really cool! How do the card mechanics differ from traditional PbtA type mechanics, and how do they better support Dust Wardens as a game?
The tools we use in play have an immense impact on tone and impression. I think about the Quiet Year a lot and how the map is such an integral piece of its tone. Originally this game used playing cards, and had a much stronger Americana theming, but as time went on I began to want something better than America. I’m sure part of that is from thinking about hope a lot more these days. A better tomorrow is out there, even if it’s on the other side of an apocalypse. The world of dust wardens isn’t there yet, but it’s on its way.
Tell me a little about Grimmerspace. What excites you about it?
Grimmerspace is a Starfinder compatible sci-fi horror setting. It allows you to game through a gritty brand of sci-fi wherein the concepts are mind-bending and terror is outright palpable. I’m darkly zealous for the chance to raise the bar on these two genres that Brundlefly together so harmoniously.
While success in all genres hinges on achieving certain desired instant reactions from an audience, such as romcoms that always end with one lover leaving the other for good but it all gets turned around because of an impassioned and revealing speech that leaves us misty and full of hope for a more positive tomorrow, or a tearjerker that absolutely requires our investment in the story’s characters enough that we genuinely find it sad when the crops die and the family bloodhound contracts dropsy, the horror genre is actually more like the humor genre in that there is a binary pass-fail with no shades of gray between. You somehow conjure a primal fright or a laugh or you do not. And there is the expectation to create that effect many times in a row, which is demanding. But if you fail to deliver memorable terror or a symphony of giggles, it just wasn’t that good, was it?
Grimmerspace is a chance to pull upon ten thousand threads of speculative wonderment and dread from films, books, TV shows, graphic novels, daydreams, and true life experiences from my past leading all the way back to childhood and then tangle them together to form a web that traps your imagination. It’s an artistic holy mission to create something next level for gamers. That’s ambitious sounding, but that’s who I’ve always been. If brass rings were five feet off the ground we wouldn’t ever mention them.
What does horror mean in Grimmerspace? What do players encounter that can shake them to the core, giving them memories turned to nightmares?
Horror is as widely sourced in our science fiction setting as it is in any Earth-based fiction. While you could play a game that’s entirely along tonal lines of say, Alien or Event Horizon, those films merely scratch the surface of the dread storytelling possibilities we left in the GM’s toolbox.
Grimmerspace horror is like any horror fiction that ever shook you, regardless of where it was originally set. We’ve excised the quivering heart of such tales and placed them on distant worlds and in the cold and deadly space between them, and woven science fiction inextricably throughout them.
Lou Agresta and I identified fifteen subgenres of horror we’re working with in Grimmerspace, and when Iron GM Games designs an adventure we look at which subgenres were present and then label them according right up front so GMs will know what they’re in for, be it any particular combination of the following horror subgenres: Apocalyptic, Body, Comedy, Cosmic, Crime, Dark Fantasy, Erotic, Gothic, Occult/Religious, Psychological, Rural, Splatter, Surreal, Survival, and War.
You don’t find horror merely in having beasts and monsters, and the darkest natures of people on display. It’s in how you frame a scene. That’s where the terror comes from. An excerpt from my essay About Horror in Grimmerspace (which is what I hand out to our writers to orient themselves in my idea of storytelling) goes like this:
A vampire skulking around a gloomy castle in D&D can provide fun at the gaming table, sure. But do you find that vampire inherently scary? In D&D, a vampire is usually just viewed as a potential level drainer and you already have a pretty good idea of how to kill the thing (if not, you’ve really got to step out of the sensory deprivation tank). However, if a GM had a flair for inspiring dread or put in a solid amount of work, they could make that vampire the most chilling encounter the players ever experienced. That same GM could also spend that very same effort to make Keep on the Borderlands scary, right? But that’s a lot to ask from a GM. Grimmerspace is there to make it easy by offering the recipe for effective horror right there on the page, so just follow our suggested directions.
Let’s get back to that vampire (not that there are traditional vampires in Grimmerspace). What if we wanted to make a vampire that was actually scary? How about one that, once surrounded by a party, spins growling to face each of the PCs one by one in preternaturally quick jerks that cause one NPC ally’s dead lover – dangling by his/her neck in the vampire’s maw – to sway like a broken mouse? The vampire isn’t all that scary on its own. But the dominance of its prowess certainly is. The loss of a loved one is. The NPC couldn’t save the lover… the person who just before had so much light in their eyes is now but a sad, limp prop who only moves when their devourer makes them move, and in a horrid way you’ve never before imagined. Humans are supposed to be exalted beings but clearly, we are animal prey just like any other beast of the field. Ta-da. Genuine discomfort!
Our adventures can’t be horror just because maybe you saw a corpse or spines removed from bodies. Not that these gruesome sights don’t help establish horror. They most certainly do. But horror also has to be baked into the plot itself, not superimposed ala “Well… maybe this could be scary if we made the monsters gooier.”
Very cool! When you talk about a horror sandbox, just how
big is that box? If someone’s hanging by the tether of their spacesuit, what
are some examples of horrors they might witness before they feel the sudden
jerk of the limit?
That sandbox is as wide as a galaxy and then some, and rife with locales that each engender particular blends of horror subgenre. This particular question offers a serious challenge to my desire to be pithy because you have me wanting to essay here. Worry not, I’ve been court ordered not to.
There are remote planets all around the less explored edge of the G-Rim, and each of them has individual characteristics that make it unforgettable and unique. The ineffable locha trees of Paravesh that exude chaos itself. That which lies dormant under the sands of Tarmire but will come alive with your sweat. That which beckons to and changes you on the ocean world of Sensica V. The City of Morn promises the chance to speak to the dead, but Grimmerspace is a ravenous place that often takes more in return than is deserved.
And while unthinkable threats in remote zones are solid choices, we’re not limited to them. For instance, the planet of Attien Prime is studded in eight mega-arcologies, each reaching from the ground to well past the clouds and each huge enough to house a billion person nation. That set-up precludes certain types of horror tales because a blade-wielding maniac with the Friday the 13th ch-ch-ch-ah-ah-ah soundtrack playing behind him would be taken down in a heartbeat by a law enforcement drone. But there are horror stories that ideally pop off in overcrowded places. In a tightly contained realm full of rich and poor, segregated into separate cities and work areas, you can imagine how any outbreak or revolt could turn into something quite ugly. All those people packed in with no way out. All of that bubbling resentment or screaming panic. So while you won’t see the lone and wordless slaughter lovin’ maniac in the woods who proves so effective in rural horror, you might witness a swarm of mayhem gush across a city like a tsunami wave of blood ala World War Z. One minute of that might have you wishing you were taking your chances back at Camp Hockey Mask.
Now, what horrors might you find in the killing space between the stars of the G-Rim? Well, we’ve made space less empty than most would like. There are things that can get you out there. Things outside your ship. Things within it. Thing is, Grimmerspace offers heroism in the face of all of that horror. Our heroes have been through too much to let the monsters win, and they battle on even if it costs them their sanity or their life. Same goes for the villains. One example, there’s a predator that floats through interstellar space on cosmic wind, waiting to feed upon the energy of the passing ships it ensnares. However, the Shung Corsairium, a deeply evil and dangerous pirate organization, capture and weaponize these creatures, using them to immobilize other ships in electro-absorptive netting.
All of this to say that when you first experience things that go bump in the night or that scratch at the ship’s hull, it ought to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. But like Ash and the Evil Dead, eventually, you’ll been pushed past the edge and you resign yourself to fight back until you’re strong enough to overpower your monsters. Our setting is grim, to be sure. And horror can certainly be disempowering. But in Grimmerspace you can and likely will become the very thing that makes the boogeyman lose sleep at night. Fear is something to be confronted. It asks you questions that you can answer if you try hard enough. Fear can be beaten.
Finally,
how does Grimmerspace work within, or defy, the confines of the Starfinder
mechanical structure? How might players who like Starfinder be drawn in, and
how might they be pleasantly surprised by new elements?
Horror gaming is often best served with a narrative touch,
and so our challenge at Iron GM Games is to gently add that touch to Starfinder
which is an inherently crunchy system.
We offer tips throughout our adventures for how to convey and maximize the effect of horror. How NPCs are developed and used is a major part of this. Foreshadowing. Explaining the nature of why things frighten us and why we want them to. An optional sanity system that is ideal for the cosmic horror subgenre (or any other subgenre in my opinion). There are so many more tricks up our sleeves than what I’m alluding to, but when the book release, you will see what we’ve done. You will see and despair. The darkness will come for you and you will become the darkness. But hey, in a FUN way!
I’m very excited to share this big interview with you today! It’s an interview with the San Jenaro Co-Op about their Short Games Digest, Volume 1, which sold over 100 copies on its first day released! They also have a Kickstarter coming out on June 15, 2019 for the Roleplayer’s Guide to Heists! Today you’ll get to hear from Liam Ginty (L.G.), Ken Rountree (KR), Chris Falco (CF), Olivia Hill (OH), Galen Evans (GE), Magnus Hansen (MH), and Dyer Rose (DR)! Hope you like what they have to say!
—
Q: Tell me about Short Games Digest and your role on the project! What excites you about it?
L.G.: I’m a writer and one of the mentors heading up the Short Games Digest. SGD is a collection of shortish TTRPGs made by a variety of designers both new and old that serves as our flagship project for getting new writers published in the industry. I really love the collaborative process of the project – everyone chipping in to create something better than any one of us could, I also really enjoy reading everyone’s games – some first time designers have made some really excellent work and it’s been a joy watching some folx grow so fast and so much over the course of the volume. KR: I’m a writer for the first two Short Games Digests. Specifically, I wrote “The Gods Play Dice” for the first volume, and am working on something heavily cat related for the second volume. The SGD is my first time writing for roleplaying at all. I’m excited because I feel we are a group of friends with a common goal rather than a traditional roleplaying company. We don’t just care about the games we make individually, we support each other in making each other’s games. The awesome mentoring and editing teams made the impossible into the achievable.
CF: I’m also a writer for it, and personally, I find the lower barrier of entry combined with the community surrounding it to be the best part. Games can be anywhere from short to long, freeform to mechanics-heavy, and it allows for a diverse number of writing styles and experience levels to go into it.
OH: I write and do some layout work for the Short Games Digest. I’m excited to see so many new names moving from repeatedly saying they want to make a game to being able to say, “I’ve made a game.” It’s really great seeing the diverse approaches the various creators have taken to this project, and all the different ways they’ve creatively answered the completely strange questions posed as part of the design process. It’s also amazing seeing creators excited to build something for the collective benefit, and not just a crapshoot of “will my game be the next D&D?” I like the idea of using the act of building games as a method of building community.
GE: I wrote my first game, “Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today” for Short Games Digest Vol.1 and served as one of the community editors. The idea of a project of so many cool games and settings and mechanics is very exciting and I am proud I am a part of it, but the most exciting bit is being a part of a co-op with such a diverse and talented membership. Getting to collaborate with this group and work to produce really amazing and ethical work in this space is a joy.
Art from Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today.
Rad! So what kind of content do we see in Short Games Digest, and how did you work together to make this content happen?
GE: You can expect to find over 10 RPGs, all less than 30 pages, with their own unique systems and settings. Do you want a OSR rogue-like game of brutality? Check out “Clerics”. Do you want a expressive dungeon diving game? “The Great Instrument” should be right up your alley, do you want a action packed fast moving space opera? “Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today!” is a action packed fast moving space opera. Do you just want a expressive game of courtly romantic queer love? Try out Filamina Young’s “Lonely Knights” and have a blast.
As to how we made it come together, Liam Ginty did a lot of the organizing work, and handed out to everyone a prompt to start writing, we all chatted about concepts together, but started work writing a game, Olivia handed out a design doc to help us prepare our work for layout, and we requested Dyer to make art for our games, During the process, myself, and the rest of the editing team would receive works in progress, add comments and offer tweaks and suggestions. It was a very natural process. In many ways, the game was the baby of whomever was authoring it, with the rest of the co-op acting as support and sounding boards.
MH: One of the wonderful things is the vast array of different content you get in the SGD. I made a weird fantasy dungeon crawler unlike anything i’d made before, and when i needed to fill up another page of space for layout reasons, I got to make a short, 1-page larp for two, as well, a game about lying to your friend – two incredibly different games. And there are so many others, like the game about lonely and very queer knights, or a game about competing for a good position in a new dimension you’ve found yourself in. That said, even though we have a wide variety of games, the strangeness of some themes, and the page constraints do mean the games have a tendency towards the experimental, the new, the interesting. And our community is very inclusive, so there’s quite a bit of Queer content in there as well.
Once I finished a script, people commented on it, and helped me turn my ideas into a cohesive whole, and Galen edited it into readability. Not to mention that Dyer Rose provided the (very pretty!) pictures. It means that even though The Great Instrument is my game, it’s not just the wholly-formed child of my mind. There’s a bit of Galen’s editing style there, there’s Dyer’s visual style, and of course, the creativity of whoever gave me the theme “War In Heaven (Celestial Mecha)”
What’s it like being part of a co-op, and how do you do things like dividing responsibilities and sharing creative loads?
GE: It’s a blast! It is like having a group of friends who are all driving towards the same overall goal. We are still figuring out a lot of things as we go, but as one of the “new blood” in the TTRPG publishing scene, it has been great to have mentors like Olivia, Filamina, Magnus, and Liam. as they offer overall strategies, they give us a free hand to execute what needs to be done. Everyone is very respectful and honest about their capabilities, capacity and needs and it makes for a wonderful collaboration environment.
CF: It’s pretty cool, and gives you a lot of opportunity and ability to get yourself some experience that you might not have managed otherwise. The “prompt” system of the SGD itself means you always have a direction to aim for so you’re not just wondering what your next little game should be. Responsibilities are mostly divided into the organizers and then everyone else; the organizers say what needs to be done, and then everyone else claims what duties they want. It might sound a little unorganized, put that way, but it works out pretty well (and in a given project it might be a little more specific than that).
DR: It’s been a real blessing to get involved with these folx and form this co-op, everyone is supportive, kind and understanding (people first!) and everyone has something to offer. We complement one another’s skills well while helping to improve or teach completely new skills to others with interest.
Responsibilities are all completely voluntary, from beginning to end. Even the process of choosing to take the lead and pitch a project. For instance, let’s say someone comes in and is like “Hey! I got this idea I think is really cool! *explains project* Is anyone interested in getting in on that?” and if there is interest at that point you put a call out for people to sign up, you put together a contract that delineates things like share splitting/remuneration and any other important bits. And the people who want to work on the project sign up as a writer, artist, editor, layout, and whatever else the project might need.
At the moment, creative loads have all seemed to be managed by the people on their end, and how much they volunteer to take on. As an artist, I get a few prompts and when I’m getting my way through those, if there is still time, I’ll reach out for anyone else that needs art. Everyone knows I am but one man and can’t necessarily do art for everyone and that’s okay (again: people first.).
KR: Everyone is supportive and filled with awesome beans! We signed up for specific roles in the beginning and generally stick to them, but people step up when something outside of their expertise pops up all the time. There’s a lot of anxiety involved with a lot of newer people creating games when they maybe hadn’t published anything AT ALL before. I think we all have a good instinct on when to give constructive criticism and when somebody is just looking for some validation. As silly as it might sound to a certain type of human, someone saying, “Hey, you’re doing great. You’re going to create a game and it’s going to be cool af,” is valuable.
OH: It’s really nice because this isn’t a primary gig for any of us, so it’s something easy to step into and step out of as the time and energy arise or fall. If you need to step away for a couple of weeks, you can do that. If you’ve got time on your hands and want to pick up some slack, you can do that. It’s like Marx said, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. We’re all individuals with different situations. I’ve been in gaming development projects before where one person’s situation got in the way of the whole project moving forward. With this model, those same hurdles happen, but we’re more open to step in and say, “Hey, can I get that for you?” In the end, it makes for a much, much smoother development.
How does being a part of the co-op positively influence projects like the Digest, and how does it complicate it?
GE: It democratizes the work and makes it far easier to create the hype train. Also it works as an incentive to do work, As a new TTRPG designer, I’m not sure when i would have gotten off of my butt to make my game if it was not for the Digest and the timeline, and even if I had gotten off of my butt and made my game, I still don’t know layout, or how to best market an indie RPG, I would just be yet another person out there with their own system, instead thanks to the help of the co-op I can say that I am a published game designer 🙂 because of the hard work of everyone else, I am able to live my dream, and all it costs me is helping others live theirs. Where it does become complicated is in project management, we have a huge and diverse group of collaborators and there is a bit of a wrangling cats issue, however, because we have so many people it is often easy to distribute needed work to someone else if things fall through.
DR: Positively influencing projects? Man, honestly I have to say how does it not? Okay that’s your second question, and I have one of those, but seriously… It’s just absolutely amazing. You have so many kind and creative people that are all trying to not only succeed, but help you succeed, they are always there if you need a second, third, fourth set of eyes on a project, they are there to fill in gaps and knowledge, and teach you those skills if you want. And they are there to encourage you, having a constant hype train around your lil project, your lil 4 page game or your illustration is such an awesome driving force to keep going. It’s infectious, everyone is so excited, not just for themselves, but everyone else. As for the issues, Galen kinda touched on that above me here, but the main issue I notice is something we are looking into at the moment, where currently are tasks are all kind of spread across some discord rooms and Google Sheets, and it can be a bit chaotic at time. But we haven’t run into any real complications with that, currently have someone designing some work flow stuff on trello, so i expect that chaos to be toned down a lot before we get to a point where its a problem.
KR: When I first started in the Co-Op, I missed the deadline for my game due to life circumstances. I was so used to the normal boss based business model that knots formed in my stomach. I apologized seventy three point five times, and said some very self-deprecating things. But everyone was supportive and understanding. I was so used to people screaming at me over minor things from places I had worked, and here everyone was being super cool and supportive. I worked harder and came out with what I consider a high quality game. If I was working in a traditional model, I may have been fired or worse. But not only did I finish the first game, I’m completing a second as well as a microgame for volume 2.
CF: The Co-op model is honestly perfect for something like the games digest, since it allows so many different people to all just write in their own style without trying to blend everything together. If someone has a problem, it’s easy to say “No big deal, put it in the next volume” and still have plenty of games in it so we don’t need to worry about it. As others already mentioned, everyone’s really friendly and supportive, which helps people get comfortable in writing their games in the first place, too.
What is something in the Digest that you just cannot wait for people to see, whether it’s because of the work you or someone else did or just because it’s cool?
GE: Aside from all of Dyer’s amazing art you mean? It’s really hard to pick just one thing, there are so many cool things packed into this digest and I know there is something in it for everyone, so I guess I will talk about my own game, “Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today” the thing i am really excited for people to see and try out is the game plotting mechanic I call “That Cosmic Swing” which endeavors to keep action going and keep the pace of game frenetic and fun by removing any delineation between narrative and structured time that many games have. When I run games I often have an issue of getting things moving while wrangling players, and I have come up with hacks and ideas to keep things moving and get the story going and I took those ideas and formalized them as one of the key components of the game, and to be honest, I think its super slick…
DR: Oh man. I honestly have to say, just like every last game in that book. It’s bringing in so many unique voices and design philosophies, so many unique systems that each one is its own unique treasure in its own way. Just seeing the WIPs and Write Ups in discord has left me hungering to get a copy of this into my hands, and I’ve already seen most everything in it!! I will say I think the thing I’m most excited about, to narrow that down abit more, is the number of people in this book that will be able to say for the first time “I have a published game” that’s SO COOL, especially for someone that had NO IDEA they’d be able to have that happen 3 months ago.
KR: Doogans and Dogans. That’s all I’ll say for myself. The Tony Hawk inspired RPG by CF fills me with joy just by it existing.
I love this logo!
—
Thank you so much to the San Jenaro Co-Op for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Short Games Digest Volume 1 today!Watch out for the Roleplayer’s Guide to Heists Kickstarter mid-June!
The game industry can be a little rough. Our community just as much! I have wanted for a while to do a little recognition, a little positivity, for myself as well as everyone else. So, I decided to start something new – something you can contribute to!
The new thing is called Friday Hi-Day, and it’s going to be a weekly roundup of recognition from your submissions to the forms I’ll be posting every other month on the Friday Hi-Day page!
This month’s submission form is https://forms.gle/aLD2hAgJ99XTBgXE9. Fill it out! The first stream will be next week, at twitch.tv/BrieBeau on Friday, June 14, 2019 around 12:00pm Eastern. Come see what’s up, and celebrate each other!
Tell me a little about Moonflower. What excites you about
it?
moonflower is a story game about a journey to the Moon, set
in a dreamlike world in which a sweet and alien flower is blooming. The main
characters are called the Pilgrims, who are seeking the Gardeners, who live on
the Moon, for help that they may or may not be able to provide. moonflower is a
simple GM-less game designed exclusively for one-shots, each session taking
around 3.5 to 5 hours.
It’s not a game where players have to fight monsters or race
against time. The end of every moonflower story is defined before any session
starts – the Pilgrims reach the Moon and meet the Gardeners. However, the focus
is on the journey itself. As the story goes, the players must sacrifice their
inner selves and compromise with their circumstances. It is, by design,
impossible for a Pilgrim to achieve their goal without having compromised.
Either they will have changed from how they started the journey, or they will
have inflicted changes on others.
What excites me about this game is that moonflower places
strong emphasis on the process, rather than the result. By rules, every Pilgrim
finds success, but that is shaped by the context, which is the decisions and
choices the Pilgrim made to get there. The game uses tarot cards to guide the
story instead of a single facilitator. Each major arcana card (upright or
inverse) has a story hook associated with it and players draw five every
Chapter. Three are used as the actual story hooks and players briefly discuss
how they interact with each other. And I’ve designed the game so that story
hook combinations almost always demand a tough choice.
So even though moonflower is a short game and the end state
is always the same (except the potential epilogue, of course), it creates a
wide variety of stories.
Another thing, outside the game, is that moonflower is a game produced by a team of Korean artists. It’s also the first Korean TTRPG that is being brought to the English-speaking part of the community. This is an honor, but it is also very frightening!
How does moonflower’s use of tarot cards help players
explore the story?
moonflower has its own reading of tarot cards, unique to the
game. For example, The Tower being drawn may suggest that a great, physical
disaster happens within the story. The Empress, on the other hand, would
suggest that the Pilgrims encounter a being of unfathomable wisdom in a hostile
setting. For another, there’s The Devil, which suggests that a life-or-death
decision must be made urgently. Each individually is just a story hook, but in
moonflower, players briefly discuss how they will come together before a major
scene starts. So with those three, one of the Pilgrims may have fallen sick and
must be treated with a rare medical fruit, but it grows on a fragile and sacred
tree. As they climb it, a branch snaps and centuries of growth is lost – and
the ancient creature that’s been guarding it comes to question the Pilgrims
whether their well-being was so important to risk the sacred tree.
That’s simply one way of interpreting those three cards
among many. The main story driver is the 22 major arcana cards. Whether they
are drawn upright or inverse matters, so that’s 44 story hooks that can be
combined in units of three. I’m not very good at math, but I think that leads
to a very big number of potential stories. But the important thing is that the
cards’ stories keep driving the characters toward points where they must choose something.
Another thing is that moonflower’s tarot reading is deeply
intertwined with the setting. The Tower, which traditionally hints at
catastrophic change, is interpreted to mean a literal collapse of a great tree
(and trees are a big part of the setting). That’s a literal take at the image.
However, players may have decided during the Dreams phase that an elder tree
grows from the burial ground of an ancestor, in which case a tree’s fall is
more than just literal in the story.
It seems like the idea of change and sacrifice is really
vital to the game. Why did you choose to explore these themes?
This is a rather personal issue, but let’s talk about fun
bits before we get to that. moonflower initially started as an exercise in
rapid game design. I asked people to give me three game design ingredients and
forced myself to make a game based on them in 72 hours. The very first version
of moonflower is fondly remembered, the way one remembers adolescent years.
Since then, I’ve refined the core game idea and experimented with it over six
months.
Since it started as an exercise in rapid game design, I did
not have the luxury of fine-tuning themes. Though, after the work was done, I looked
back and wondered why moonflower seemed to say something. Then I noticed that
it’s about change, sacrifice, and – most importantly – compromise. The first
version of moonflower was drafted when I had been working for a rather
prestigious organization as a translator. Until then, I had been sailing
smoothly along that career path, but I hit a wall while working on that
project. The stress was intense and the hours I had to put in were
unreasonable, but I told myself I had to do it because the pay was beyond
acceptable. I had little free time and I was drained of any kind of energy when
I got home, but money was good.
It turned out that I had been thinking about compromises
without a break back then. Am I doing this for the money? The prestige? The ability
to tell my distant relatives that I’m doing something “serious” with
my education? What if I went the other way? How would I afford the lifestyle
that I was enjoying? And most importantly – is this what I wanted to do when I
first decided to work with words?
At the end, I realized that compromising on things is
necessary to keep going in life. It’s not failure – it’s just another kind of
change.
I read before that any kind of media that says anything at
all is propaganda. moonflower is propaganda in the sense that it says refusing
to change and compromise may hurt. It’s propaganda aimed at myself. Fun
propaganda to play with friends, though!
If that was too personal, I apologize.
Bringing Korean games to English-speaking audiences
Fortunately I had been working as a translator for a long
while, so bringing moonflower to English has been somewhat convenient. For one
thing, there was no need to clarify with the author about intent or motive. The
most challenging part was not actually about the language, but about audiences.
The Korean TTRPG community is thriving, but it’s truth that it’s less active on
the game design side of things compared to the English-speaking counterpart.
moonflower is its own thing – the only game comparable to it available in
Korean is Polaris by P.H. Lee – and, at first, I’ve seen rather negative
feedback on it, saying it’s “bad Polaris with flowers”. I figured it
was because the game was a bad rip-off. But by chance I shared an early version
in English and I actually got a praise on that exact point, that it’s like
Polaris in many positive ways. Of course, different peoples, different
cultures, different tastes, and all that. But it was puzzling to see something
like that in first person. Working on this game in both Korean and English, I
tried hard not to prioritize one audience over the other. This is quite
difficult, actually!
The challenge itself is also the benefit, I think. The
bilingual nature of moonflower meant it could attract diverse perspectives.
Different experiences lead to different interpretations and they all have
contributed to moonflower’s growth as a game. Had I been working on moonflower
exclusively in one language, I would not have had half the conversations about
it. Then moonflower would only be half as good.
What do you feel is the most valuable part of focusing on
the journey in moonflower?
The journey in moonflower is both literal and symbolic – the
Pilgrims are walking on a path toward the Moon, which is both a physical and
emotional place. This leads to metaphorical stories rather smoothly. In some
games, going to the Moon might involve three-stage rocket launches, but more
likely it will involve deciding what the trials and crossroads mean.
The journey from the start to the end is always different.
The same tarot card may mean radically different things depending on when they
come up. This is because the journey up until that point gives each card a
different context. But, then again, people who play moonflower again (or read
the Voice of the Forest table before) may know what to expect. I think it’s
kinda like taking a journey along a known route, in real life. One knows what
will be where, but no sight is ever the same. A familiar landmark along the way
from home to work might evoke different feelings depending on things like what
happened that day or something mundane like weather and time of the day.
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Nicolas Ronvel, a.k.a. Gulix, creator ofFacing the Titan, a game that just successfully funded on Kickstarter! The crowdfund may be passed, but you can still follow the Kickstarter and pick up the game upon release! It has amazing titans and I’m excited to feature some work from the French gaming community! Check out Nicolas’s responses below!
—
Tell
me a little about Facing the Titan. What excites you about it?
Facing
the Titan is a GM-less RPG. It features a group of heroes, the Company, against
a gigantic being: the Titan. The Company’s fate is to defeat the Titan, and the
goal of the game is to tell that story. But it’s not a tactical game. In Facing
the Titan, the Companions will remember the past, share their memories, tell
each other their journeys and what they prepare for the grand finale. Then, and
only then, they will face the Titan. It’s a lively discussion game.
Facing
the Titan is my first “big” game. I wrote several micro-RPG over the
past few years. But this one is the first I push to get a full RPG that will
get a physical life through a book. It’s a big achievement for me. That’s what
excites me.
And I want to see Facing the Titan get its own life. I playtested it while always participating in the game. I want to see actual plays, to read stories from the game. I want to see how people use the game and maybe change it.
Since
Facing the Titan isn’t a tactical game, what are the mechanics and gameplay
like?
The mechanics of Facing the
Titan are based on those from Swords Without Master.
First, there are the Tones.
When, during the discussion, you want to be at the center of the attention, you
grab the dice (or someone give them to you), and you roll them. During each
Phase, one specific Tone is associated with each Dice. For example, in the
World Phase, you play with the Tones Ruins (Black Die) and Wonders (White Die).
The higher die tells you which Tone to use. And you frame what you say around
the Tone. You can use it for the subject you talk about, for the mood of your
story, the way you tell. It’s open to interpretation.
If you roll a Double, well,
the Titan steps in and you use one of its Tones. And special rules apply.
Then, there are the Motifs.
During play, you will record words, expressions, feelings, images other players
are saying. And when you got enough Motifs, the current Phase ends and you can
get to the next one (there are 5 Phases). The further you get in the game, the
more Echoes you will have to write as Motifs. Echoes are Motifs that recall a
previous Motifs, while being different. That will bring a common thread in the
game, with the end game reflecting ideas and themes seen all through the game.
Those are the Mechanics :
Tones and Motifs.
What kind of threats do the
Titans pose – what are they like, and how do people feel about them in the
fiction?
It depends on the Titan. Each one of them has a different story, a different stature in its Setting. And each one comes with a different Setting.
Generally, they pose a threat by their size. They crush villages, destroy buildings and wanders without even noticing it. But some are evil or malevolent. Some are causing damages knowingly.
The Titans are described briefly, because I wanted to give prompts, ideas. Not fully fledged creatures. So each group, each game will set what is the level of threats the Titan pose. The illustrator was chosen because of this. I didn’t want photorealistic pictures of the Titan. I wanted pictures describing them broadly but leaving a great place for the players imagination. Roger Heal managed to do that with great talent.
What is an average session like, in the
rise and fall of play?
First of all, a game of Facing the Titan is not prepared. Of course, you will need at least one person who knows the rules, but that’s all. As with Fiasco, we choose a Playset and go for it. Here, we choose a Titan, the associated Setting, and we go for it.
The first part of the game involves choosing the elements of the setting that you want to use. Then we really start the game.
The first Phase, the Companions Phase, allows us to create the characters, to start discovering them. This Phase is in two parts. We start in a disembodied way, and we tell the story of the successive entrances of our characters into a place that we have just defined. Then we play our characters. They haven’t been together for a long time, and they’re going to discuss the past.
The second Phase moves away from the characters to focus on the Titan. Who is it? What is it? What is it capable of? Through vignettes told like scenes from a movie, we will show it.
The third Phase goes back to the characters and their discussion. Through them, we will share about their travels and talk about the world.
The fourth Phase continues the discussion but changes the subject: what have we prepared to face the Titan?
Finally comes the last Phase of the game, the Clash Phase. In this one, a player will lose his character to play the Titan. Then, like a choreographed duel, the Titan then the Companions then the Titan again then… will take control of the story and narrate the duel. With the objective of making it epic, memorable and giving a beautiful exposure to all the characters.
Finally, the game ends with an Epilogue, where each player can tell what happens to his/her character.
This division into five Phases forces the story told and the scenario that will be created around the table, even if each game will turn out to be different by the choice of the Titan, the Setting and the ideas that the players will bring with them. Each Phase also offers different Tones. The dice roll will determine the tone to be used when speaking, and each Phase will have a very different theme.
What sort of media do you use as reference
to help inspire you while designing a game about something fantastical like the
Titans?
When I started working on the game, I didn’t have any graphic resources. Just ideas, images. Then as I went along, I accumulated images of gigantic creatures in various monster manuals, on the subreddit /r/ImaginaryBehemoths, in galleries on DeviantArt and ArtStation. I also used landscape images a lot. Nature and its power have inspired me for some of the most raw Titans.
Contrary to what some might think, I didn’t really take inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus. It hangs around in my subconscious, of course, but I had to use at most one fan art of the game in the process of creating of the game. The game was called Facing the Colossus at first. But I didn’t want to mention Shadow of the Colossus too much for the difference in the way the game was played (a group game against a solitaire game, a narrative game against a riddle game).
When I found Roger Heal and started receiving the first drafts of Titans, the game’s different worlds began to take shape. Some Settings have been extensively modified following details of his illustrations. Illustrations that were based on my concepts of Titans. There was a very interesting ping pong on that side.
Hi all! Today I’ve got an interview with Elizabeth Chaipraditkul about Afterlife, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds really fascinating, so check out what Liz has to say below!
—
Tell me a little about Afterlife. What excites you about it?
So, here’s the elevator pitch taken right from our Kickstarter page:
Afterlife: Wandering Souls is a macabre fantasy game set in surreal plane known as the Tenebris. You take on the role of a Wanderer—someone who died, but didn’t end up in Heaven, Hell, or any other traditional afterlife. Devoid of any memories of your life on earth, you find yourself in an endless desert filled with gateways. Search different planes of existence for clues of your former life – or a semblance of one. Along the way you’ll encounter strange inhabitants, alien cultures, and other humans who’ve lost all hope and are bent on destroying you.
Afterlife is Alice in Wonderland meets What Dreams May Come set in a world inspired by the works of Guillermo del Torro, Hayao Miyazaki, and surrealist artists. *A few things really excite me about Afterlife: Wandering Souls (AWS) first, the concept of exploring forgotten memories has always called to me in rpgs. My favourite part of running games for people is having those poignant moments with players delving into their personal stories.Whatever type of game your playing – a sprawling adventure, a strange mystery, or a political nightmare – play is always heightened for me when characters have their own personal stories going on. In AWS you travel through strange worlds and get to experience a look into your character’s past. I love that!
On a more personal note I’m excited about this project, because it’s the work (for my company) that I am most proud of to date. I’ve learned a lot through my years of freelancing and I feel it’s culminated to this. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that you need a great team around you – and this project has the biggest team to date! When you have so many talented people working towards one goal – that excites me!
How does Afterlife work mechanically, just the basics, to demonstrate this surreal plane and the way you interact with it?
The basics of Afterlife’s mechanics are rolling a pool of d6’s and getting the number of successes required by the Challenge set by your GM. Around those base mechanics we’ve built in a lot of cool systems that help reflect the setting you’re playing in. For example, each Wanderer has an Approach which is a martial item that can warp and shape based on their personality. The more players define what their Approach does the more unique it becomes – but also mechanically it gives them a bonus to their checks. We also have something called Death Marks – which are tattoo-like markings on a Wanderer’s skin. Each Death Mark is linked to a memory the player helped develop during character creation and each gives a special mechanical benefit. Throughout the game people unlock their Death Marks by interacting with their memories.
What do you do to support players with the potentially difficult subjects that come up in game, considering the references like What Dreams May Come?
We encourage GMs to have an open and honest conversation about what player’s expectations are of the game before they start, along with going over themes that the players aren’t comfortable with. For public games where you might not know each other well or convention spaces we suggest GMs use safety tools like the X-card which can be easier for players to interact with when they don’t know everyone well. Afterlife is all about strange exploration and (OC) enjoying all the drama that comes with experiencing past memories and bringing them into play. To paraphrase what we’ve written in the corebook – Afterlife is a game where you play a dead planar traveler with magical powers searching through alien worlds for memories – arguing someone should re-live traumatic memories they’re not comfortable with because it is realistic is just obtuse.
Memories seem really important in Afterlife! How do players interact with their memories mechanically and in the story itself?
Within the game we have a mechanics called ‘naming a fragment’ whereby you as a player see something that you’d like to have relate back to your past life and denote its importance to your GM. When this happens you GM uses that person, place, or thing you named to create a small side scene for you known as a Break. During a Break your character goes into a catatonic-like state and they re-live a memory of their past life. When your Wanderer comes to, they have a better idea of who they once were and what their memories mean to them. Aside from getting some awesome play out of naming a fragment, it also has mechanical benefits. One of the best ones is unlocking a Death Mark, which gives you a cool power and also means you’re one step closer to the end of your Wanderer’s journey.
What are the alien worlds like and what influence do characters have on the world around them?
In Afterlife: Wandering Souls the alien worlds are known as Limbos. Each is strange and often macabre. For example, we have a Limbo in the book known as the Drowned Lands filled with shipwrecks, ghosts of the dead, and strange sea creatures. In another Limbo we have is a giant wall of roses under a rolling grey sky – daring to look into one of the roses could spell doom for your Wanderer as they contain memories of the living world.
Characters are encouraged to be active participants in the Limbos they visit. Without interacting with the world around them, they are unable to find memories of their past lives and therefore risk falling into Stagnation (a loss of hope). To put it in the simplest terms – Wanderers are encouraged to be the stereotypical adventurers getting embroiled in plots, going on adventures, and interacting with NPCs. The amount of influence a Wanderer wields is based on how they interact with the Limbo itself – if people like them, if they are helpful, if they can do something of us.
The people living in those flatlands, they don’t know true horror. They’ve never heard its sound. They’ve never had to run, run downhill to the flats and hope there ain’t just another hill to come, hearing the growls, hearing the scream, the baaaaaaah it roars, the sound of its four feet pounding unevenly behind you. In the hills, we know. The hills don’t have eyes. They have the phimf.
Tarnin Covalesky, woodsman
This blessed image is of the Hillside Phimf by Thomas Novosel.
Background
The Hillside Phimf is a cryptid. The most elusive kind, that is, until you’re on a hillside at night. Then it’s just nearer than near, its hot breath just bristling your hair and its rage tenable, just behind you. It’s a perilous beast, and like none you’ve ever heard of. There are some who try to compare it to a sidehill gouger, but those beasts are sweet creatures in comparison to the giant Phimf.
It might sound the opposite of terrifying when it’s stuck to hillsides, but you’ll only think that until you spend some days in a region where there’s more sideways than straight. The creature walks on two short legs and two long ones, gripping the hillside, and reaching out with four arms to capture anyone caught unawares on the slope. It rarely goes hungry, and only ranges where dips and valleys make their home.
The screaming roar it makes seems to echo through the hillsides, but is never heard inside the thick-walled homes. The trees buffer its baahhhhing, its cry to the wind. The Phimf is said to be half gorilla, some sort of ape, with large grasping hands and fearful teeth, and half goat, with clopping hooves that find even steep cliffs no trouble at all. Where it comes from, no one knows, but we do know where it goes – ’round the hills, soon as dusk falls, and not stopping until its growls turn into satisfied grumbles from a good meal. If there’s no folk around to have a bite, it’s not afraid of partial cannibalism, eating everything from other goats to spare possums trying to find their way home in the night. All along it stalks the hills.
The Phimf has their weird goat eyes, rectangular pupils and wide, with a legendary ability to see in the dark. Bright lights shy them away, but if they’re hungry they’ll just eat the light. Goat gut’ll digest anything, so they say. They might yell while they do it, truth be told. Their bleating yells reveal squat, square teeth that crush more than shear. They batter on their chest with apelike hands that have long reach and strong grip.
The way to get at them, supposedly, is a crew with strong stomachs who can round it up onto the flat. Its strengths become weaknesses then as it’ll topple to the side, struggling between its short and long legs. It’s still grabby as all get out, but it’ll eat anything you put in front of it – even if that snack happens to be sleep-inducing or worse. No one knows for sure whether it’ll work, but someone had better do something to protect these hills.
All Arms. The Phimf has four arms and is always counted as having reach in all directions, and cannot be flanked.
Actions
Multiattack.The Phimf makes two attacks: one with its bite and one with its hands. It can make both attacks against the same target.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 33 (4d12 + 7) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 17). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the Phimf can’t bite another target.
Grasping Hands. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 17). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the Phimf can’t grab another target.
Disgusting Roar. The Hillside Phimf has eaten ungodly things and its stomach works hard to digest it. When the Phimf roars to frighten its prey, anyone caught in the 20ft. cone must make a DC 10 Constitution save or suffer nausea and dizziness for 1d4 rounds (Temporary Constitution & Dexterity Penalty of -2).
Facilitator Notes
Drives
Driven by unending hunger.
Driven to find the tastiest food the most easily.
Doggedly pursues anything that smells like food regardless of when it last ate.
Interactions & Reactions
The Phimf is almost never seen during the day, seeking caves, shadowed cliffsides, and abandoned houses or barns to hide in when the sun is out.
If attacked, the Phimf will only try to fight back or resist. It will never try to run away. At most, it will seek cover when the sun is rising.
The Phimf is always hungry, and has no restrictions on its diet.
The Phimf is a large – some would say gargantuan – beast that has four cloven hooves like a goat, two short on the right and two long on the left, that make it easy for them to travel over hillsides, with a stout torso that’s heavily muscled and four gorilla arms and hands, as well as a ape-like face that’s long in the snout like a goat, and four pointed horns – perhaps the creature’s only point of pride.
Other System Notes
The Hillside Phimf has 8 hit dice.
Grasping Hands equivalent damage: Maul or Heavy Two-Handed Weapon.
Bite equivalent damage: Greataxe – three attacks for each bite.
Hillside Phimf for Monster of the Week
Monster: Devourer (motivation: to eat everything tasty)
Powers
All Arms: The Phimf has four arms and is always counted as having reach in all directions, and cannot be flanked.
Disgusting Roar: The Hillside Phimf has eaten ungodly things and its stomach works hard to digest it. When the Phimf roars to frighten its prey, anyone caught in the blast takes 1-harm close messy.
Teeth and Hands Attacks: Bite: 3-harm hand; Grasping Hands: 4-harm hand close.
Armor
Tough Skin: 1-armor.
Harm Capacity
12.
Weakness
Hunger & daylight: If the Phimf is tricked into eating something that could harm it, it takes harm more easily (no armor against ingestion). It also is weakened in daylight, but mostly in that it will cower and try to hide.
