Tell me a little about Pigsmoke. What excites you about it?
Pigsmoke is a game about playing jaded academics at a magical college — an amalgamation of Harry Potter and The Thick Of It, to use two cultural touchstones that everyone probably knows about.
What excites me about Pigsmoke — or any game, really — is the potential of the stories it helps you tell. And Pigsmoke is, as far as I know, breaking new ground by telling stories about the lives of academics under impossible demands. Like, ‘magic school’ RPGs are plentiful but you’re always playing the students, and RPGs where you play wizards are plentiful, and RPGs where you play academics are… Ars Magica. But Pigsmoke sits in a neat little intersection between all those that none of them really explore.
Also it’s PbtA, and I’m a huge fan of PbtA as a system.
What have you done with the PbtA system to make it suit the concept and themes of Pigsmoke?
I haven’t done much with the PbtA system, at least not mechanically — there’s a system for tracking time-consuming actions that acts as a limit on how quickly you can do certain things, and I’ve replaced ‘+1 forward’ with a system of advantage and disadvantage stolen pretty much entirely from 5th edition D&D — but I’ve completely replaced all the basic moves to more accurately simulate the life of an academic in a black comedy about bureaucracy. (Imagine a lengthy digression here about how in PbtA the fiction is the mechanics, so changing the fictional triggers and outcomes of the basic moves is changing the mechanics of the game…)
For example, let’s say you want someone to do you a favour. There are no moves for simply asking someone for a favour; if you want someone to do you a solid you either have to butter them up (with the schmooze move), or shout at them until they do what you want (with the scathe move). In fact if you do just ask someone for a favour, that’s likely to trigger an MC move and those are almost always bad for you.
As a result, in the world of Pigsmoke it’s impossible to have a straightforward conversation and exchange of favours. You have to lie to people or intimidate them, and then deal with the complex social tangles those actions generate.
Unless you’re the Networker, which is a playbook built around just being able to ask people for favours, or in the Department of Mindbending, which contains several moves for simply compelling obedience. But in those cases you’ve specifically chosen to be that sort of character doing that sort of thing.
How does magic conceptually and mechanically work and integrate in Pigsmoke?
Conceptually magic in Pigsmoke is vague as anything — it’s meant to be defined as necessary by each group. All that’s required for Pigsmoke to function is a) that magic is something that can be researched and studied in an academic setting and b) that it’s something that can be taught to other people. For other questions about the nature of magic — for example ‘Can anyone learn it, or only the gifted?’ — the real question is ‘Is this relevant to the game right now?’ If no, it’s not important. If yes, make the decision at the table and that’s how it works in that game.
Mechanically, all characters have a Sorcery stat and (except the Fake) access to the cast a spell move. When you use your magic to solve a problem you roll cast a spell and on a hit the problem’s solved — at a greater or lesser cost. If the magic you’re using is outside your department’s specialty, you roll at disadvantage. On top of that the department playbooks have various moves which address specific use of magic — maintaining a mob of walking dead if you’re with Life and Death, predicting the future for Foresight, and so on.
If you’re familiar with Masks you can probably see the influence of the ‘don’t sweat the details’ way that system handles superpowers, which was a strong inspiration for this approach.
What is the fiction of Pigsmoke like?
Goofy.
I mean, it doesn’t have to be that way — the fiction of Pigsmoke is wide open for definition at the table and has room for black, black comedy or even totally serious play if the group is up for it — but pretty much all the prompts in the book lean goofy because that’s the kind of game I run.
Who do you hope will enjoy Pigsmoke and what have you done to make it inclusive for more audiences?
Well naturally I hope everyone enjoys Pigsmoke. I wrote it using singular they instead of he or she, tried to keep explicitly gendered options out of the playbooks (and made sure that the sample names span as many nationalities as I could think of), and I’ll be paying special attention to the characters depicted in the art — I want a good mix of genders, ethnicities, body types, able-bodied vs not, etc. My intent is that anyone should be able to look at this book and see someone at least a little bit like them.
That said, as a hetero-cis white man I’m not really the best at judging this sort of thing — so I’ve hired Katherine Cross (https://twitter.com/Quinnae_Moon) to do a diversity consult for me, and write some additional material about marginalisation and academia so that those issues aren’t just quietly swept under the rug. She’s agreed to do the job but I haven’t seen what she’s written yet, so I can’t really tell you much more than that.
— Thanks so much to Chris for the interview! If you’ve liked reading the interview and have an interest, check out Pigsmoke on Kickstarter right away – only a few days left!
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Tell me about Dreamchaser. What excites you about it?
Dreamchaser is a game of destiny! It empowers the players. What do they want to achieve? What do they want to experience in a roleplaying game? We build a story around the that goal—that mutual experience. Once we know what the story is, each player can create a role and a personal experience for that role, in their story. The collective of these character experiences is placed in a sequence to create a road map to our dream, the Dream map.
That Dream Map is a framework handed over from the players to the Game Master. It is a goal for their game and the experiences they want to have along the way. Not all the experiences! The ones they want to be rewarded for and critical to the story. This eliminates guesswork on the GM’s part. Guesswork that can lead to burnout. Guesswork that can keep you up at night planning. The Dream Map also creates investment! Players work together to imagine the experience they want their game to be and ask the GM to run it.
Each game is refreshing for the GM. You go on a bit of a journey yourself. We all know where we are headed but the story is in how we get there. Kind of like watching a movie trailer. You get just the right amount of what it is about before you watch the movie. Hopefully, this excites or compels you to check it out.
I could go all day, so the last thing I’ll leave you with, is this. Dreamchaser is about imagining goals and visualizing success. Whether you want to play out a story to slay a dragon, create a blockbuster movie, or win over your true love, Dreamchaser can help you. Explore your own personal passions or aspirations. Maybe you wanted to be a New York Times Bestseller…maybe you want to cure cancer….maybe you just want to take a stab at being your own boss. The options are endless and Dreamchaser adapts to you.
Obviously, I have a lot of excitement about it! ;D Can you tell me about the mechanical or procedural aspects you’ve designed for Dreamchaser?
Certainly! Dreamchaser is designed to provide immersive experiences.
How do we do that? The players work together to imagine the game they want to play. They do this by creating a goal for their game. They imagine the most important—the most fun roles to play in that story. They imagine an experience they want to have with that role, in that story. Then, we make those characters. The whole process is collaborative and creative! Like a creative brainstorm session where there are no bad ideas. No limits beyond the other players at the table. This creates player investment, fuels player agency, and ignites player enthusiasm. The process helps players imagine what they want and equips GMs to better illustrate it!
Dreamchaser is not only about imagining stories, it is about visualizing success. Every roll a player makes in the game, represents the visualization of the character. How will that character respond? What are her strategies for success? How does she view the world. This is performed with the use of Soul Skills.
Dreamchaser has a Mind, Body, and Spirit rating that represents the mental, physical, and social/morale aspects of each character but these ratings are really just health scores. The real stats or attributes in the game, are the Soul Skills. There are two, Imagine and Reason. Every roll you make is filtered through the lens of imagining or reasoning an outcome. You roll 2d10. 1d10 represents a Soul Skill and 1d10 represents the Skill or Ability you are pulling from. You roll both, hoping each rolls under their respective 1-10 rating to succeed. This creates 3 outcomes. You achieve everything you imagined, you succeed but there’s a catch, or things did not work as you planned and a new problem arises. I’m a firm believer in fail forward with this game. Each outcome moves the story forward with a solid outcome. Roll doubles and you get a critical version of your outcome.
Task resolution is rounded out by the use of tags. Each character has at least three descriptive words or phrases that detail who the character is. When characters fail to succeed or think they can do better, they can revise their visualization by redescribing their action with a tag. This allows them to reroll failed dice by roleplaying more true to their character. The exact uses of tags are limited by a governing stat, Belief.
Besides getting character upgrades for achieving Milestones(those player created experiences), characters also gain or lose Belief. Belief is another rating on a 1-10 scale. 1 is the worst and 10 is the best. It acts as a representation of how the character is growing in the story. If you continue to succeed in Milestones, it will grow. If you continue to fail in challenges along the way, it will wither. What Belief does, is grant progressively better uses of tags and gives players a way to take back creative control when they demand it. Spend your Belief to get what you want when your story demands it or save it and Neo your way through your character’s most important moments. Belief is the confidence your character has in herself and in how she views the world. When you believe, the universe will conspire to help you achieve it!
I have so much more I could say…you’ll just have to buy the book! The game is designed to be ready on the fly but also provides GMs with a framework to prepare sessions better than any other roleplaying game. No more time consuming NPCs, monster, or trap prep work! Create them on the fly in relation to the situation and characters at hand. Introduce new players to the game without them ever having to open a book. Talk about welcoming new players to the hobby! Character creation is a fun collaborative creative experience. The game works on a 1-10 scale. Roll under to succeed. No difficulty numbers or math for each roll. Simple and elegant!
What are some of your inspirations for Dreamchaser and it’s structure?
Fate opened the door for Dreamchaser. Lady Blackbird made Dreamchaser feasible. Apocalypse World inspired the fail forward mechanics. Burning Wheel inspired some of the goal setting and belief concepts. Fluxborn and Monsters & Other Childish Things helped me find simple and elegant. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho inspired the vision. The motivation to gamify life skills like goal setting and visualization are a part of who I am. I love talking to people about their passions. What they want want to do with their life. I think most of us struggle with the big questions and the worst thing we can do is hesitate. Maybe, we just need to chop them big questions into bite sized goals(Milestones) and make daily progress(Belief) toward our passion projects(Dream). Even if you head in the wrong direction, you’ll eventually get where you’re going. If you don’t move, you aren’t
going anywhere but here.
Can you describe how a session of Dreamchaser might begin and setup for play?
Pulling from our earlier conversation:
The players work together to imagine the game they want to play. They do this by creating a goal for their game. They imagine the most important—the most fun roles to play in that story. They imagine an experience they want to have with that role, in that story. Then, we make those characters. The whole process is collaborative and creative! Like a creative brainstorm session where there are no bad ideas. No limits beyond the other players at the table. This creates player investment, fuels player agency, and ignites player enthusiasm. The process helps players imagine what they want and equips GMs to better illustrate it!
Beyond that, the character sheet has step by step information on how to build a character, kind of like White Wolf/Onyx Path games. So, with a GM to guide you, it’s child’s play. Vision rolls are a mechanic to gather more information from the players prior to each Milestone. Milestones become like session or mid session goals for our players. Vision rolls give GM’s more fuel for the story, an idea of how each player thinks their character might act, and a little insight into their expectations.
What are some stories you have seen played in Dreamchaser that you think really give a good idea of how the game plays? The possibilities are endless! It is a story building game. I’ll give you three, in a one Milestone per Character sequence, that leads to a Dream. Just like you would get from players in an actual game. Take a look and observe how your mind begins to connect the dots when you give it a sequence of goals or experiences. Imagine how they work if you move them around. Different stories, right?
Example Dream #1: Liberate the Moon, Save the Earth
Get the Lead Cheerleader to go to Prom with Me
Zero Gravity Sword Fight
Save my Creator
Liberate the Moon, Save the Earth
Example Dream #2: Thanked by a Stranger for being an Inspiration
Ah Ha Idea Moment
Start “Color Wars” Movie Production
It’s a Wrap!
Record “Joyous Revelation” Single
Thanked by a Stranger for being an Inspiration
Example Dream #3: Find a Hidden Civilization
Find the Source of the Mysterious Light
Find a Secret Map
Survive the Labyrinth
Find a Hidden Civilization
Thanks Brie! Sorry for writing you a book here! ;P
— Thanks to Pete for the interview! If you readers like the sound of Dreamchaser and want to check it out, remember to go to the Kickstarter to see what’s new and back the project, and keep an eye on the news on the Facebook page! Thanks again!
Today I have an interview with Paul Mitchener and Ryan Danks on their new RPG Age of Anarchy, which is currently on Kickstarter! It sounds pretty cool, and I hope you all enjoy hearing about it!
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Tell me a little about Age of Anarchy. What excites you about it?
Paul:Age of Anarchy is a game set in Norman England, during a twenty year period of uncertainty and civil war, when King Stephen and the Empress Matilda both claim the throne. It’s based on player characters serving a patron- a feudal lord or lady- struggling to survive and better their status and influence amidst the strife.
I’m excited by the patron idea, where the players jointly create their lord, and each contribute with issues. These issues generate adventures, and the success or failure of these determines whether the patron rises or falls in status.
I’m also, if I may have two things, excited by the time period. There are so many cool events, betrayals and alliances. In my current game, the Anarchy has turned into actual war when the player characters worked to free bishops, who King Stephen imprisoned when he feared they opposed him and were fortifying.
Ryan: What excites me is the system (PME), but that’s the part I worked on. 🙂 The Perpetual Motion Engine was developed from the ground up to make our core concept function: that the player characters serve a cause or Patron, with the goal of taking that cause to the heights of power and influence. Paul had the idea to place the system’s first run in The Anarchy, a period of Norman English civil war, and it worked perfectly! But I’m most excited about the system we created and to be able to play with it in the future.
Can you tell me about the patron creation, and how it influences the characters and story?
Paul: Patron creation is a major part of the game. The characters all work for the Patron, and the group works together to create issues for the Patron. At the start of a game session, the players choose an issue for the scenario.
Success or failure in addressing an issue governs whether the Patron the patron rises in status or falls, and player character advancement. Further, an unaddressed issue can “explode” and create problems along with a loss of status.
Ryan: The patron system is my favorite part of PME. Everyone at the table makes the patron, signaling what kind of game they want to play by the issues they give to the patron. Then, players get to choose what kind of adventure they want by telling the GM which issue they want to try and resolve. It brings out the shared storytelling experience that I’m so big on.
Are you making any efforts to make Age of Anarchy inclusive, especially considering the time period in question?
Paul: Right, this is important. Norman England was undeniably patriarchal. But of the two contenders for the crown, the Empress Matilda, the one King Henry named as his heir, is of course a women. And other women are influential during the Anarchy; for example, Queen Maud at one stage leads forces to rescue her husband King Stephen from imprisonment.
In terms of player characters, nobles, merchants, outlaws, and scholars are all possible, and these are not gendered roles. Female warriors will be rare in the era, but “rare” is certainly no obstacle when it comes to player characters.
This diversity is reflected in both characters within the game book, and in the art.
Ryan: We are making an effort. In fact, we’re only spending money on art for this reason. There is plenty of royalty-free art about the time period that we can use for the game, and we fully intend on doing so. There are some great paintings out there. But in an effort to be inclusive, we’re going to add in stock photos that are rendered in a painting style. Fact is, there isn’t a lot of diversity in ancient paintings, but there are a lot of models on Adobe Stock that help us make create a more diverse feel for our game.
Tell me a little about the Perpetual Motion Engine (PME). How does it work? What do the mechanics “do”?
Paul: The Perpetual Motion is simple at its base: players roll, add a skill, try to hit a target number based on the challenge level of an opponent or obstacle. Failure means there’s a complication or something goes wrong, and is not typically just a straight “no”. Degree of success reflects how good or bad things are, and you might have assets coming from your patron which give leverage (boosting the degree of success for certain checks if you succeed).
Social conflicts and combat are on the same footing, and both can be handled with either a single roll or a series of actions where everyone is involved.
The philosophy is to enable play without having to do much preparation for a session and to keep things moving avoiding “dead” space and dice rolls where nothing happens. There are instructions on how to quickly structure a mission coming from an issue to enable this.
Ryan: In a nutshell, you roll 2d6 vs. a target number (or 1d6 vs. 1d6). If you succeed, then you get what you want, which may include a complication for the scene or setting. If you fail, you suffer a complication. There are modifiers, numerical damage (a form of complication), etc., but that’s the core of it. Fans of Fate Core and Apocalypse World are going to love it, as it’s sort of a combination of the two methods.
What kind of adventures will players have in Age of Anarchy? What challenges might they face, and what rewards might they receive?
Paul: Player characters go on missions for their patron to deal with their issues. Examples in my game were to gather support and convince a stubborn earl to support Queen Matilda and stop thinking of the patron as a traitor and dealing with a land dispute from a local abbey whose corrupt abbot had hired local ruffians to seize control of a local village. For me, it’s been political intrigue punctuated by outbreaks of violence.
Character issues can complicate missions. For example, one of the characters in my game has a dispute with a powerful earl who holds his family lands, and claims the character has debts to him.
In terms of rewards, characters both advance on their own and receive assets when a patron advances. The real object of the game is to advance the patron’s cause, and in so doing rise with them. It actually has an end point, when the patron has risen to a position of unassailable influence or falls so badly in status they lose everything.
Ryan: The adventures and challenges are based on the patron they create. If their patron is a merchant, then PCs may face thieves, competitors, shipment negotiations, etc. If the patron is a knight, then PCs may fight off brigands, face the opposing faction in battle, or parley in court. The rewards players receive come in the form of paths and assets. Paths are abilities the players earn as they level, and assets are gear and allies the players gain access to as the patron levels up. Also, there’s the game not ending when the patron falls too low in influence. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as a reward, too.
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Awesome! Thanks to Paul and Ryan for the interview! Take a look at the Kickstarter if Age of Anarchy sounds like your thing, and please share!
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I did a quick poll today on my G+ (a public post) about what gender your GM for your local/regular group is. The results were… ouch. I posted it around 2:00pm on 12/18 (today) and this is the current result:
I am kind of gobsmacked. I like to think my followers on G+ are pretty diverse, and many of them are! But it unfortunately seems like we still have a lot of men running games in comparison to women. There were a few clarifications in the comments (we have multiple GMs, but most are men, etc.), but for the most part: GMs are more often men. By a lot.
I will add a picture of the final results to this post after the poll ends (I think tomorrow). I just wanted to share it for awareness. There will be follow up post to this with more questions, and hopefully some ideas from my own perspective about this issue.
Do you think this is something we should keep working to change? (Note: Some groups like Contessa have already been making strides for con games run by women, which is great!)
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Of late, there have been a lot of people making efforts to design table techniques and safety techniques. This is great and I’m happy to see design work and attention to communication and safety at the table! …however, I have some thoughts.
I’m going to be judgy. I know, what do I know? Nothing more than what I know, which is my experience, emotions, and background.
I think the Support Flower is interesting and has good intent. However, the design is an issue. With the arrangement of the flower, if I (someone with relatively short arms) tried to reach across the table to tap or point to the red center, what if I could only reach the green petals, or someone thought I was just pointing at the slow down petals? Maybe I’d have to move it closer to me, moving it farther from other players and also setting up an implication that I would control the content, as well as possibly distracting from the game.
As well, the slow down or gentle option can be confusing. Without discussing what content is troubling, how do you be gentle with it? Isn’t it just as much of a disruption of the game to pause to clarify because “hey I’m uncomfortable with or nervous about this content” is very vague and can be an issue? (I have seen this with the X-card, too, and complained about it.) These are things that worry me.
For Edgewise, it has two issues. One, the introduction of the card comes across as an admission that there is no trust for basic respect at the table and no attempt at gaining or giving it. It says “None of you will let me talk, so here is a tool that I’m going to have to use to work around you.” This is different than safety cards because we can all assume people want to talk, but knowing what will trigger someone or bother them requires a deeper discussion.
It also, secondly, completely disrupts norms of communication. It says “I am not listening to what you are saying, I’m just waiting my turn to speak.” It gives no respect to people who might just be making their point and not steamrolling if the person who wants to use it is just barely holding back at talking over that person and ignoring their point. I also know it can be used as a means to take control of the discussions at the table.
We have a tendency as gamers to avoid communication. We may not ask each other about how things make us feel. We can be afraid to share the things that make us uncomfortable because people might judge us. We can be afraid to say “Hey, stop, I don’t want to see this.” But we can learn. We can step up as players and designers and GMs to say “Ask people what is okay for them. Give people space to express *openly and explicitly* what’s not comfortable for them.” And if people judge others for being uncomfortable with certain content? The uncomfortable people should be the ones who get to stay at a safe table.
We may excuse misbehavior as social awkwardness. We may say that someone is too awkward to know when it’s okay to speak, or that some people have trouble using social cues. And for some people, these things are true. For autistic individuals and people with anxiety, I can see a lot of these troubles and accommodation is important. But this is not all of us. We can’t excuse everyone because of some people’s genuine needs. We can learn and grow and get better at talking to each other and learning body cues. Hell, even people with anxiety typically have the capacity to learn these things.
If those of us who can learn these things and can design for these things and support these things don’t make those efforts, we don’t give space for the people who really need support and space. We can learn how we can act and be open and honest about our feelings and perspectives so that people who can’t feel safer and if they can, someday might be able to do the same thing.
I see the meaning and intention here, and I know no tool is perfect. This is just where I am seeing flaws and why I wouldn’t like these tools at my table.
ETA: I was talking with John about some of the user design issues here and we noted the issues of visual impairment and colorblindness, as well as ability to physically access the tools. (I have in Script Change that you can vocalise the tools, but I haven’t seen this as an option in many other tools.) Accessible tools matter!
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Hi All! I recently contacted Avery Alder about doing an interview for Monsterhearts 2, the second edition of Monsterhearts that is currently on Kickstarter, and she accepted! The original flavor of Monsterhearts is one of my favorite games and was one of my first steps into the story gaming culture and gaming style, and I’ve written about my experiences while playing it a little bit in the past. I hope you enjoy reading this interview with Avery!
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Tell me a little about Monsterhearts 2. What excites you about it?
Monsterhearts 2 is a game about the messy lives of teenage monsters, exploring what it means to have a body and desires that are changing without your permission. It’s written with a queer lens for understanding desire, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that every character you play is going to be queer. I think the project is really exciting for me personally because it’s an opportunity to focus on refining something I was already proud of. I published the first edition of Monsterhearts in 2012, and since then people have often told me how lucid and inspiring the text and design are. And looking back at it, I agree that it’s solid. But I also see all these ways that it could be tighter, that I could better contextualize the mechanics, that rough edges could be smoothed down. And so it’s exciting to have a chance to do that work.
I’ve played Monsterhearts quite a few times and the issue of attraction and asexuality has come up a lot. I saw in your new sneak-peek of the game you address this. Could you talk a little more about how you’re addressing it and the motivations behind it, for the readers who haven’t delved into the material yet?
Definitely! Monsterhearts explores what it means to have shifting, confusing desires. There are rules about turning people on and gaining power over them. The way those rules are designed intentionally challenges some of the dominant narratives that our culture has about how sexuality works – that it is fixed, that it is predictable, and that it is binary. I think challenging those narratives works out really well in play, too. It means that every session is surprising and feral.
But there was this other dynamic that the first edition introduced, of unwittingly reinforcing another set of dominant narratives about sexuality – that everyone is sexual, and that everyone is equally available for sex. And I think that in designing the game the way that I did, I did a disservice to asexuals and to survivors of sexual trauma. I aligned myself with dominant narratives that erased and hurt them. Since 2012, I’ve had people bring that to my attention and I’ve sat with their criticism. I knew that the core of the game should stay the way it was, but that I needed to create space for these other stories as well. I’m still figuring out how to introduce these new mechanics into the game gracefully!
A subject near and dear to my heart is boundaries and safe experiences in games. You’ve written about it in Safe Hearts, and I’m interested to know more – what are your goals with your new chapter on the subject? How do you personally, as a creator, approach tough subjects while still allowing for the inherent mistakes in social interactions that are so common for teens?
Part of my approach in writing Safe Hearts (an essay from 2014 that’s being adapted into a chapter in the new book) was to establish priorities. It’s easy to over-simplify questions like “How do we take care of each other’s emotions while doing something emotionally vulnerable together?” It’s also easy to over-think them until you feel anxious and immobilized! And so my approach was to suggest a list of priorities: focus on this first, then focus on this if you have the capacity, and then finally this. The three concentric circles of priorities that the essay outlines are: first to ourselves, then to others at the table, then to the characters we’re portraying.
The text I wrote in that essay isn’t being revised very much as it makes its way into the new book. I feel like what I wrote on the subject in 2014 remains solid. Most of the revisions are just adjusting the way it flows to make it fit better as a chapter in a larger text.
Strings are a really interesting in-game currency. Can you tell me a little about what new you’re introducing for them and how you hope it will impact gameplay?
Strings are at the core of Monsterhearts. They tell a story about how power is unevenly and intimately distributed between characters. They represent the way that leverage is gained and used. The biggest change to Strings in the new edition is that they’ve been streamlined. This was really important, because in the first edition people would work to acquire Strings, but then they’d just sit there idle on the character sheet. The mechanics for actually spending Strings were a little too cumbersome for new players to grapple with, so they would get ignored. And other bits of the game (like the Manipulate an NPC move) directed players away from figuring out how to use the Strings economy. In the new version, the mechanics for spending Strings are more simple and more visible.
What do you hope to personally take away from your experience working on Monsterhearts 2, beyond satisfaction in a job well done?
I published the first edition of Monsterhearts while I was still figuring out where my place in queerness was. A year later I started coming to terms with being trans. And throughout that time, I started to gain recognition from wider audiences. Returning to write Monsterhearts 2 is exciting because I’m in a different place now personally. I’m a queer trans woman, I know my own politics better, and I’m excited to bring new voice and perspective to bear on this text.
Another thing I’m excited to take away from my experience working on Monsterhearts 2 is a better understanding of how to synthesize community feedback and incorporate it into a revision process. I’m holding four years of feedback in my brain. I put out a survey to learn more about people’s experiences and it garnered 766 responses. But at the same time, I’m the person most intimately acquainted with the game’s goals and pitfalls. How do you make sense of all that data, honour all that feedback, while still remaining confident in your own instincts and vision? I’m learning new skills.
For a game about queerness, Monsterhearts & Monsterhearts 2 could seem hard to approach for someone out of the queer community, and I’ve seen your work raise a lot of awareness for people like that. What do you think straight, cis people can gain by playing a game like Monsterhearts – or what would you hope they do?
I think that everyone has confusing, complicated memories about what it was like to be a teenager. And a huge part of Monsterhearts 2 is telling those sorts of stories, exploring those sorts of feelings. While queerness adds an important dimension, I think that everyone is able to bring their own life experiences to the table. And I hope that straight, cis people feel invited to engage with these themes and be challenged by them.
or like, I hope everyone plays Monsterhearts 2 and I hope it makes them gay.
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Thanks so much to Avery for the great interview! I really enjoyed talking with her and I hope you all enjoyed reading it. Check out Monsterhearts 2 on Kickstarter now, if it sounds like your kind of game!
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Today I have an interview with Ben Robbins on the game Follow, which is currently on Kickstarter. You may have heard about Followon Google+ or other blog posts, but I hope you’ll find something interesting in his responses below. Enjoy!
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Tell me a little about Follow. What excites you about it?
Follow is a deceptively simple game: you pick a quest, make a group of characters to tackle it, then play and see what happens. The quests provided cover a variety of stories, from slaying a dragon, to colonizing a planet, to getting a candidate elected — anything where people are working together to accomplish a goal.
I sit down and play with random groups all the time — many strangers and many people who have no experience with this kind of game — so I’m keenly aware of the challenges of teaching games and getting people on the same fictional page. I made Follow to be a game you could whip out when you wanted to just sit down and get straight to the good stuff. I wanted it to reduce the barrier between wanting to play and actually doing it.
People have joked that getting our characters to work together in the quest reflects what’s happening at the table — trying to get the players to work together to play a game — and they’re exactly right.
Can you tell me about the mechanical and structural setup for a standard game of Follow?
Quest templates provide the framework for your game. You pick one and that walks you through setting up your situation, establishing what makes your quest difficult, and creating the fellowship of characters that will try to tackle it.
Play centers around challenges. Each is a chapter of the quest and establishes the next step the fellowship needs to take to move closer to their goal. We play scenes to see how the fellowship deals with the challenge (and each other) and at the end of each challenge we draw stones to see whether we succeeded or failed, plus any fallout to the fellowship. We might lose characters or even be betrayed by someone in the fellowship.
What about Kingdom and Microscope prepared you for designing Follow, and what do you think is really different about the game?
I play my own games over and over again, both before and after I release them, so I really get to know all their strengths and weaknesses. I try not to harbor any illusions about them.
Because I play pickup games a lot, I’m very focused on the game as a set of instructions that someone at the table is trying to process and execute in real-time. Anything that slows that process down or requires a lot of page flipping or causes confusion can really kill the fun. Microscope is conceptually a very unusual game, but put a lot of work into making the process of play easy and intuitive. Simple actually takes a lot more work than complex.
Thematically, Follow shares some similarities to Kingdom. I love Kingdom, and it makes incredibly good stories at the table, but I’d be the first to admit that there are a lot of rules to absorb for a one-shot. There’s a pay-off but there’s definitely a learning curve. With Follow I tried a very different approach to capture the “united but divided” feeling of Kingdom but make it much simpler and easier to play.
How did you go about designing the game for replayability? It’s a huge challenge. What keeps players from getting bored or feeling like they’re just running over the same ground?
Replayability is a huge priority for me. I really can’t overstate that. Every time you learn a new game, you spend minutes or hours just processing rules. Playtime is precious and rare, so if you don’t play that game a bunch you’re getting a minimal return on that time investment.
To maximize replayability, I start with a structural concept instead of something specific to a setting or genre. Microscope makes histories. It doesn’t matter if it’s science fiction or a zombie apocalypse or the Wild West. Kingdom is about communities. Any kind of community works, because the game focuses on how people interact and influence their community, rather than a particular type of organization. Same with Follow: “Working together to accomplish a goal” applies to a vast range of situations.
The trick (I think) is to really drill down to the heart of the structure or pattern you’re modeling. If you get that right, it works. Like the power/perspective/touchstone breakdown in Kingdom: once you see that distinction you start to notice it in organizations all around you. I want my model to feel like something that’s true, rather than an artifact of the game.
Do you have any mechanics or tools in place to help guide content and keep players comfortable as part of Follow?
When I started running Story Games Seattle back in 2010 and really started gaming with strangers all the time, I included an abbreviated version of Lines & Veils from Ron Edwards’ game Sorcerer as part of the welcome spiel at the start of every meetup. We’ve done that ever since, though we recently switched from calling it “the Veil” to “the X” (as in, “let’s X that out”), partially to eliminate some confusion about how we differed from the original Veil concept but also to make the phrase more similar to the X-card, which had gained a lot of popularity — they’re not exactly identical, but if you’ve used one you’ll go “ah, got it!” when you encounter the other.
An important part of the X is that it is *not* part of the rules of the game. It trumps the rules of any game you’re playing. That’s a very important distinction, because we’ve seen cases where players mistakenly thought they couldn’t X something out because of a particular game they were in. So I think the proper place for these kind of overarching “social contract” rules is sidebars that explain that, and also encourage using them in *any* game you play.
Honestly I think we’ve only scratched the surface of this kind of communication & consent in role-playing games. We’re way behind where we should be after decades of role-playing. And as a designer I’m a little concerned that if I codify something it will be antiquated or even seem counterproductive to me by the time the game is a year old. It’s not such a big deal to have out-dated mechanics for stabbing dragons in your game, but giving out-dated advice about how to handle player discomfort is potentially much more serious. At least that’s how I see it. It’s a discussion and exploration that’s happening right now. The technology is evolving as we speak.
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Thanks so much to Ben for participating in the interview! I hope you all check outFollow on Kickstarter, and that you enjoyed reading Ben’s responses.
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In today’s post, I’ll be talking about my experience at Metatopia 2016, the event I mentioned in my previous post about being a con playtester. This will not be an actual play report, but will include discussion of the games I played and a little about my own time there. I will not be mentioning everyone by name because some of you I don’t know your names, some of them I will have trouble remembering, and some of everything is lost to the winds.
First and foremost, thank you so much to my fellow attendees, and to the event organizers, for making my experience excellent, and for being supportive for me in my time of grief. Going to the convention was a challenge for many reasons, and it was even harder going with the recent loss of my grandmother. You all made my time much, much easier. So, thank you.
Some awesome people.
To the timeline!
I arrived Thursday evening to a bustling lobby and plenty of friendly faces. I mostly just planted in one spot and sat that evening, chatting with friends, and meeting new people who like my blog (hiii!!!). It was a good night to not worry about things. I set up plans for the next day, and conked right out eventually.
Friday morning I woke up earlier than I tend to like for a breakfast with Darcy Ross, who is awesome and you should definitely keep an eye out for the work she’s doing. We were joined by none other than Ron Edwards, the designer of Sorcerer (among others) who also coined GNS theory, who I’d never met.
As with most legacy designers, I was a little apprehensive, since I’m still new and I have a lot of Opinions and Thoughts. My fears were rapidly dashed because Ron was a pleasure to talk to, and initially he, Darcy, and me talked about the game design landscape, tools for content control like Lines and Veils and Script Change (the latter of which both Ron and Darcy said wonderful things about and made me so happy to hear), and what we were playing. After Darcy left, Ron and I continued to the Big Board and further discussed social issues in games, feminism, and a number of other things. It was pretty great! I was happy to meet Ron and I’m hoping I remember as much as I can of what he shared with me, and I hope he finds what I had to say just as valuable.
I didn’t have a game until later, so I mostly just bounced around until then, meeting new friends and seeing older ones, and geared up for Glenn Given‘s Something is Out There, a storytelling game told in third-person inspired by shows like Stranger Things and the movie IT, where young kids are the ones who have to deal with the spooky scary things happening in town. Glenn had asked if I’d play over Twitter, so I luckily got in to try it out.
more here>>>>
Glenn doing prep.
It uses a fun tile-and-dice-based mechanic, somewhat board-game like in mechanism but very narrative otherwise. From the description:
[Something is Out There]…and only you can stop it. Something is Out There is a cooperative storygame of coming-of-age horror in the vein of Stranger Things, IT and Monster Squad. As childhood friends you are the only ones who can defend your community against an unearthly terror stalking your town. For fans of Fall of Magic, Companion’s Tale & The Quiet Year.
The character actions are shared, which makes the story really flow differently. One thing I particularly liked is character creation, where you describe your best childhood friend, and choose their three main traits, then reverse something about them (gender, race, orientation, behaviors). It made the characters both memorable and interesting, which can be hard to do (for me) with children as characters.
In case you were wondering, the baddie was a giant, irradiated, star-nosed mole. We did win after someone blew themselves to allow another character to take out the monster.
The following evening I was lucky enough to have dinner with Kimberley Lam and her wife, along with my husband. Kim’s current project is Blood is Thick, a live-action game about the Cambodian genocide, described on the Metatopia site:
One family struggles with unresolved pain years after the ousting of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal regime by Vietnamese invaders in 1979. “Blood is Thick” is a small group LARP about struggling with the lingering impact of genocide on a family where victims and aggressors reside side by side.
I have heard only good things about the playtest experiences, which is pretty great. Kim has done a lot of research for the project, and I hope this game goes off well.
This weekend carried one unsurprising thing: I would be playing a game by Will Hindmarch. The surprising thing is that somehow I managed to land in three Will Hindmarch games over the weekend: Databank, Adventurous, and Chroma (a follow-up to Always/Never/Now). Will is a great designer, and I always enjoy his game master style and his games, so I’d tried to get into all of them, figuring I’d only get into one. Surprise! I played Databank Friday night, Adventurous Saturday night, and Chroma on a very sleepy Sunday morning.
Databank was really, really cool. From the description:
Don’t dream like an electric sheep. Remix yourself, body and mind, into the person you want to be, whether you were born an android or not. On this derelict colony planet, everything you need to be who you want to be is in the databank, where the top percent lives. You just have to get it.
Each character has a psyche, where you have your general personality, memories, and some basic stats. Using certain tags lets you add dice, and you roll mainly with a d20, adding d6s. The cool part came next.
When Will pulled out the whole character sheet, which is your psyche laid over a body (the chassis in which your personality is housed), I teased a bit because I’ve been messing around with this exact character sheet layout and setup for a shapeshifter game in private. This is actually kind of funny because I like that a lot of what Will does is what I think quietly that I’d like to do (aside from that whole card mechanic situation in Project: Dark ;P), so it was another moment where I felt lucky to share any part of my design sense with someone I admire.
There is interaction between the body and psyche, including gaining memories and therefore abilities from the body into your permanent psyche. I really dug the game, and there are multiple types of bodies that you can switch out, including – I shit you not – a centaur. Now, how the bodies look is up to the players, and we all got very creepy, I have to be honest. So when I saw the centaur body type, I knew I had to have it, so we stormed the location where the bodies were held, and I yoinked it, then described it: a half-formed bio horse that they had to give up on making because it didn’t work, so they added a robotic upper body (why? because science, that’s why!) and started using it for violence. In the end, I got the centaur’s memory from the horse body – the horse body with the skin stretched taut and hydraulically opened compartments in the torso, mind you – of the horse being created, and it gave me battle disadvantage.
Brutal.
I took pictures at a somewhat-off-books Goth Court that will be released after I gain permission from the creators and attendees. I generally ask permission before taking photos, and when I take them in closed games, I prefer to check before I post them.
I spent the night with good friends and good company. It was a blessing, honestly, to be near so many wonderful people. Special, deep thanks to Anders Smith for his kindness, generosity, and shared experiences that will never leave me.
Anders is the best!
The next morning, I had the absolute joy of playing Storybox.
A cooperative storytelling game that has players randomly drawing physical objects from a box at specific moments to help them tell their tale. Everything associated with the object in hand, from physical descriptors to abstract memories, is fair game for adding details and establishing elements about the story. Designed for newcomers and old hands of story games alike, Storybox blends the familiar with the new, creating a uniquely inspired story each game.
I got to play with two people I adore: Jason Morningstar and Amanda Valentine. They’re really great people and really good players, and the designer, Roe Nix, is a fantastically kind and intelligent person. The game is relatively simple and somewhat early in development, I think, but I liked it! You build characters and setting around pieces pulled out of the box of objects, and then pull more to inspire scenes. Did you know you can find junk drawer boxes on Etsy and eBay to play this?
We constructed a kind of heartbreaking story about a family tied around a piece of property and a cobbler’s shop, with three very age-separated children whose parents had just passed and an apprentice of the father who had owned the cobbler’s shop. In the end of the story, we discovered that the parents had sold off the mineral rights to the land and that it was worthless. This kind of game is really my jam, and playing alongside Jason in story games is such an amazing experience for me, every time, so having a game that allowed that to happen without me worrying that the mechanics wouldn’t support our story was great, and I’m really happy about it. I can’t wait until Storybox is in my hands and on my table.
We told a gorgeous story with these items.
I told Roe once they finish the game, I’m going to hack it to make a con-floor game. 🙂
To be honest, most of the rest of the day is kind of a blur. I did the Con Wellness check-in, which went pretty well. Not many people showed up for any particular purpose, but those that were seemed to appreciate the space. I’m hoping to do it both days I’m there all day next year.
I saw a lot of people I loved to see. I got to chat with new friends. I also spent probably over an hour talking to people about behavior in games, conflict types, accessible formats of information about conflict resolution and player behavior for GMs, and a whole bunch of associated stuff. Poor people.
That evening another Hindmarch was up – Adventurous!
Stranded beyond our world and outside of time in a mystical netherworld, the only way to survive is to explore. Delve into ancient tombs. Recover futuristic treasures. Build a new home. Discover hidden secrets of the Islands of the Never. Together, we’ll fist-fight evil and learn how (or why) an airplane got inside an ancient pyramid.
This was really fun! Will has done some interesting things with pacing in regards to having peril that you have to challenge with die rolls to whittle it down, but allows you to add to it by using key phrases on your character sheet. You also use Fate dice!
The +, -, and [blank] all matter to the way the game plays. The + rolls count as successes and can be used to knock off peril and the peril descriptors, and can also be added to the tracks on the table to gather experience for upping stats.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game! I think it did great with pacing for the theme of the game, the characters were really fun and interesting, and I certainly enjoyed when Kevin Kulp’s (of Timewatch) very-well-performed character fought a dilophosaurus-velociraptor hybrid using old batteries. For further reference, Kevin is a hell of a roleplayer – I discovered this at a Bluebeard’s Bride playtest two years ago, and it is still very accurate.
A small note: During this playtest I was introduced to the Edgewise card. The Edgewise card is an accompaniment to the X-card like the O-card that I’ve spoken about before. The purpose of the Edgewise card is to make people aware that you want to interject into a conversation without interrupting. While I see the card has uses and I hope people find it useful, I’m not a huge fan, but unpacking it will have to wait for another time. I just know that the tool was brought up this weekend and wanted to make sure everyone knew I know about it, and that I’ll explain why I personally won’t be using it at some point in the future.
Saturday night I freaked out for a while about being in a room full of femmeness before I was, in fact, in a room full of femmeness. I did makeup and took pictures for the Crystal Council, a late-night event where a group of attendees playedTales of the Crystals, which is effectively a boxed live-action game for children. When I was around… 6? Maybe? I remember seeing it in stores and desperately wanting it, but between lack of money and lack of friends, it didn’t happen. Seeing it brought up on Twitter by Glenn and Meghan Dornbrock made me super excited, but I admit that I slowly realized that I’m not 6 anymore, and that with my current gender adjustments, being in really femme spaces can be pretty fraught. So, I elected to just take pictures, and it was great to watch everyone play the ridiculous game in their tutus and tiaras. I haven’t gotten permission to post the closed-door pictures yet, but I did take some of the play materials.
Play materials from the game box.
Player-contributed materials during the game.
There were also cupcakes and mochi. That made it very much a good time!
I then stayed up inappropriately late, misbehaving as I tend to. I woke up to go to Chroma and I was sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy. But thankfully, Will was great and excused my almost-sleeping-at-the-table fuzziness. I promise to be better next time!
Chroma was a great time. It enabled me to play my character going from masquerading as a bumbling intern at a high tech organization to John Wick-ing the shit out of the place. I killed many. I gave no mercy. *evil laugh*
Chroma has some Lady Blackbird in its lineage, I think, using various narrative tags to add dice to your roll. The experience system looks really fascinating, though we didn’t get to try it out overmuch. We had a really interesting crew of characters, and I want to note that Will has – in every game I’ve played of his that I can recall – included a nonbinary or agender character. It sounds simple, but for me, it’s really great to see.
The big interesting thing for me is the pacing mechanic Will has included.
The game has a small flowchart-esque map, with different stats identified by differently shaped boxes. Each box is a section/room with a challenge of some type, and you can overcome them with tests that match the stat associated with that box. I admit to missing some of the details here due to fuzzy brain, but I really enjoyed it and felt like it did a great job setting pace for the session and giving structure to the adventure.
I want to point something out and I really hope that the people I played with will read this and identify themselves to me here or privately, but, that session of Chroma had some of the best player dialog behavior I’ve ever been a part of. While I can definitely be a dominant player, I can also easily be steamrolled. I play with my friends more often at cons to avoid that experience, and at Metatopia I always have to branch out. The fellow players of mine at this table were amazing. We shared the discussion both during the action and when we were giving feedback, and I was so happy to see that people gave each other space to talk, and not just one or the other of us, not just a gendered permissiveness.
There were multiple times where I made the indication that I wanted to speak and instead of someone else taking an opening when they also wanted to talk, indicated that people should listen to me, and I saw that around the table. Even when we interrupted, we apologized, and gave each other space. This was amazing, and inspired my heart into desiring to play more games with these people, so much. Unfortunately, I lost track of all of their names (thanks sleepy brain). Still, it was wonderful, and gave me such a good end to the con.
I left Metatopia really satisfied with all of the games I’d played, and I was so happy to see all of the people I cared about. It was a hell of a con, and I can’t wait until next year!
Want to have a cup of coffee with me next time? Let me know, and we’ll make plans.
Soy milk, please.
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Had a brief discussion just now with John about my experience playing Sagas of the Icelanders at Origins this year, and how it was about gender expression, emotional expression, and struggling with my own abilities.
I played The Huscarl, which is like, Super Manly and involves a lot of behavioral cues, from my perspective. I play men or androgynous/fluid people a lot of the time, more often than women, for any number of reasons, but in part because I can’t be a man or androgynous visibly, or perform that, in any other part of my life. I look and am seen as A Woman and I hate it a lot of the time. So, games! And playing against my assigned gender! This game actually was an element in my walk towards coming out officially, too. But!
One of the things I was discussing elsewhere about toxic masculinity and emotional play (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BriannaSheldon/posts/CMKjyQG2f8p) is that there are emotions I can express as a man that I can’t as a woman. When I played this character, I did three things I can’t do when I’m presenting as a woman without being given dirty looks, being shamed, or being told to calm down:
– I was jovial, which if you look at a lot of historical language is not commonly used for women, and I was allowed to be so just as I was.
– I was angry, blustering, and loud each at least once or twice, but no one looked down at me, in character or out (this was in part because of a beautifully arranged group, but they were all men, and allowed me to perform that). At one point in the game, I even got to play out the experience of a good man hurting someone unintentionally out of masculine bravado and egoism, and it was totally great to get that experience – not because I hurt someone, but because of the perspective it offered on the entire scenario and my character.
– I was seen as displaying positive vulnerability when I did seek help in character.
This is not meant to say that men have an easier time of playing, not at all. Men playing to express feminine-coded emotions is definitely a valid thing and I totally get that, because this is my experience expressing masculine-coded emotions, where I’m allowed leeway that I wouldn’t be as a woman. And I tell you this after edging-up-to-20-years roleplaying, there are benefits to playing against gender, or against expectation.
But this also got me thinking of one of the things I addressed in game. One of the questions of the game, which is a challenge for me, was the subject of fertility and barrenness. However, it gave me an opportunity I hadn’t expected. While most people were concerned about the ability of my character’s betrothed to reproduce, when it came to light that her past husband had been infertile, I let my character experience the fear of losing or not even having virility.
For me, however, it wasn’t of “can I have children?” but “do I lack the power to support the ones I love and give them what they desire?” See, from my perspective, the concept of fertility in history has often been tied to virtue (though that’s a very ridiculous thing), and virility is tied to power. Fertility is reproducing and making, virility is inception and creation. They work together, obviously, but there’s a lot of emphasis on virility being related to a man’s power and him being weak if he doesn’t have it – his body is weak, his body has failed him – and for fertility, the woman who lacks it has wronged herself and the world somehow.
These are both shit things, but through those concepts and the setting of the game, with the help of my character’s betrothed and the aunt in the story, I was able to express myself in anger, in vulnerability, and with power, and it was incredibly meaningful. One of my favorite moments I’ve ever had in games was having a touching, emotional discussion with Tracy, playing my betrothed, and sitting next to Eric (playing the aunt) while he encouraged me in character to stand up.
I don’t have a lot of physical power, and my mind is not often at its best. To explore the idea of losing power as something my mind conceived to be a powerful person? That was so helpful to me, to work through some serious feelings, and it echoes even now, months later.
Basically what I’m getting at is that sometimes these games can be super meaningful. We can experience all kinds of feelings and think about all sorts of things, and playing against type can really make a difference in that regard. It was such a beautiful game, and I hope to have many more like it.
Today I have an interview with Alessandro Piroddi on the new game Touched by Evil! It sounds really interesting and seems like just the right kind of game for Halloween weekend. Check it out on DriveThruRPG here and give the interview below a read! —
Tell me a little about Touched by Evil. What excites you about it?
I love horror stories.
But the word “horror” can refer to wildly different things.
The specific brand of horror I love is the one that is all about a dreadful atmosphere, a creeping sense of unease, an indefinable sense of wrongness that has no obvious or rational source. One type of narrative that draws heavily on such elements is the Lovecraftian one, with its old fashioned rhythm where tension builds slowly but surely, inexorably crawling up to a final horror.
Traditionally this kind of game experience is considered to be very difficult to achieve even by veteran roleplayers.
What excites me about Touched by Evil is that it manages to deliver exactly this, and that it does so by virtue of system design rather than personal player ability or knowledge of the horror genre.
Can you tell me a little about the mechanics used in Touched by Evil? Are they strictly narrative, or are there tools you use? Why did you choose those mechanics?
First of all the rules outline a clear and specific structure in regards of “who can say what when and how”. It is not as articulated as some of my other games, like FateLess, but it’s definitely not a game where you just freeform-chat your way through the session. Everyone has clear tasks and procedures to perform such tasks.
That said, there is next to no crunch involved.
Most of the structure is focused on achieving the right kind of scene framing and story rhythm; here the main inspirations are Montsegur 1244 and Psi*Run.
Dice are rolled when the fiction demands it, with simple and minimalist mechanics inspired by Cthulhu Dark.
Overall things are set up just so that the Players can feel safe and in control, right up to the point when they are not anymore and realise how safety was always just an illusion. This feeling of being powerless before something you don’t fully understand while at the same time being an obvious protagonist and active agent that CAN get much accomplished, is a focal element in how the game drives home its emotional point.
Where did you pull inspiration for the horror concepts put forth in Touched by Evil?
The first and most important source is with no doubt Graham Walmsley’s essay Stealing Cthulhu. It sparked the idea of doing a horror rpg, to begin with. It revamped my old love for Lovecraftian literature. And gave me the basic tools to build something that FELT like Lovecraft … this is pretty obvious in the name and structure of the five Chapters that make up the story’s Path.
Another hugely important source of inspiration and technical help has been the YouTube series Extra Credits. I found out that most of the video game design concepts they present could be applied verbatim (or almost) to tabletop rpg design. Plus, in time they have built a pretty amazing selection of videos focused on horror games, unpacking and analyzing things like the structure an nature of protagonists, locations, monsters and narrative tropes in the horror genre … with a even a full episode specifically on Cthulhu!
Which, I would like to highlight, says lots of things that would go hand in hand with the concepts expressed by Graham in his own analysis of Lovecraftian literature.
Another important helpful hand came from the book by Kenneth Hite Nightmares of Mine as it put into focus the difference between different kinds of “horror”, helping me discern what was it that I wanted to aim for. I actually talk more about this in an article on my blog, here.
How does an instant setup for Touched by Evil work?
The game presents a default setup that is both the fastest and most effective in terms of emotional impact: you play in this city, in this day and age, a normal person. That’s it.
Then a single Touched Character needs to be generated. This is the one protagonist moved, in turn, but all the players. The procedure is also quick and easy: pick a name, a profession and three “loved ones”, three people that the TC cares about and that are part of their current life.
Finally, a “catalyst event” is generated. This is the event that “touches” the protagonist and kickstarts the whole story. A brief chat, moderated by the game procedures, is all that is needed here.
Done. After that the first Moment of the story is played.
What kind of experiences do you think players will get out of the game, and why should people play it?
The reason to play is the same one for watching a horror movie : you enjoy being frightened (in a friendly and controlled environment).
It is effective because, although by the end of the game you might have a taste of the kind of horror you dismiss easily as “obviously impossible” (monsters, gore, supernatural stuff), the main part of the experience is built on a creeping sense of unease we all can face in real life: something feels off but you don’t know what, something completely normal starts looking weird and menacing but you don’t understand why, everything is as usual but you feel unsafe or even threatened. And then you get isolated, nobody believes you.
That stuff gets under your skin.
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Thanks so much to Alessandro for answering my questions about Touched by Evil! I hope you enjoyed the interview, and that it’s piqued your interest enough to check out the game on DriveThru! Have a good time creeping yourselves out. 🙂
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