Today on approachable theory we’re talking about meta accessibility tools, and we’re going to start by breaking down what I mean by that term. Read more!
Today on approachable theory we’re talking about meta accessibility tools, and we’re going to start by breaking down what I mean by that term.
Continue reading “approachable theory: Meta Accessibility Tools”This is the first in my #33in28 reviews series for the month of February celebrating my birthday (I’m 33 on the 4th). I’ll do one individual review on Monday of each week, then a collection of the rest of the reviews that week on the following Sunday. Not all reviews will be the same length, but I’ll try to be thoughtful as always. I’m mixing in a few reviews of games I’m familiar with or that I just want to play, because I can (and as example reviews). Luckily I have good taste!
*This game is currently being funded through itch sales, so what I reviewed is not the final product, just what is available prior to the creator hitting their sales goal. Full disclosure: I will be editing the text and I have drawn art to be used for it, but this is the first time I’ve read the text myself.
Genre Tags: multiplayer (3+ players & facilitator), fantasy, tarot cards, heists, coins
Replayable? Yes!
Actual Play Available? Some examples in text
Length: Short (One-shot)
Today I’m reviewing A Greeblin’s Journey by Thomas Novosel! A Greeblin’s Journey is a solo fantasy adventure game in zine format funding through itchio. I have played it with Thomas’s help before (handwriting for me, primarily, for a playtest) and I’m excited to check it out again!
The zine itself is well written and clearly laid out with a cute and fun cover piece by Thomas. I think the guidance at the start of the zine about themes you’ll encounter is really great, and is a good guideline for how to inform players about content so they can consent and play actively. Really a good starter.
“A player should before they play take note of what they are comfortable with for themes, as the game’s story is meant to edge the line of victory through luck and will, and what it is like to need to move. The feelings associated with your bones requiring a change of space and life after an entire life of sitting comfortably alone.” – A Greeblin’s Journey, Thomas Novosel
This in particular really resonated with me, as someone who has been in one place for a long time, and who wants to go from one place to another. The elegance of this section’s explanation of the game to come is very true to my experience of play.
Another section that I really like is the description of Greeblins, which can be any kind of thing really, and this part in particular:
“While every Greeblin is different, and there is no core definition of what or who a Greeblin is, there is a feeling. Anyone can look at a Greeblin and sense that they are a Greeblin. Whether it be the way they communicate with others, or the way they look up at the natural world around them, or the curiosity they have with the constructions of civilization.” – A Greeblin’s Journey, Thomas Novosel
As the game states, a Greeblin doesn’t have a name. As someone who only recently acquired their name, I feel very Greeblin-like a lot of the time. This feels really queer in the design, though I honestly don’t know if Thomas intended it that way. Playing the game and coming to the end of the Greeblin’s story felt very reflective of many journeys, but as a queer person, I saw my own journey in it while experiencing a fantastical adventure, which is a great achievement of design.
Speaking of design, the game uses simple two die rolls and narrative prompts (which the game encourages you to replace if there is trouble with content) and then you journal your response to the prompt. I would call A Greeblin’s Journey a being game very much, because while you detail what you do, it’s about being a Greeblin and experiencing their journey. Each Chronicle of the story adds up to a goal of 21 to reach the end of your story, just like in Blackjack (card game). This allows you to time play effectively, but also paces the story well, and gives a chance of failure that is truly bittersweet considering my previous paragraph. It may take a second read to fully understand the mechanic since it’s not our standard fare, but the game does recommend one anyway to clearly understand the rules and play guidelines.
The mechanics include an Impetus die, determining what prompted the Greeblin to journal today, and the Topic die, which determines what they are writing about. There is also the Substitution, which allows you to swap a number you roll for a 1 to allow you to control the pacing of the game (a really smart mechanic, imo), and the Freebies, which are 2 free Impetus, allowing you to replace an Impetus roll with a different Impetus and set the score for it at 0.
I won’t spoil the prompts, but they’re quite evocative and inspire a lot of introspection about how the Greeblin interacts with the world, how you as the Greeblin feel about those things, and what matters to you on the journey. I admit that in my playthrough for the playtest I was blessed with Thomas’s dulcet tones reading aloud as he inscribed my responses to the prompts, but I still feel reading through it today that this is a truly fun, and very thoughtful, game for a solo player. Reading the prompts and responses aloud to yourself is genuinely enjoyable, and Thomas’s writing is flavorful and weird.
I created a Greeblin to demonstrate how flavorful it is, using only options (bolded) in the book. Here are how the prompts came out:
My Greeblin…
has tattoos that move in the breeze,
prizes their magic spoon, as its reflection shows what they desire,
is coming from the tall forest with no stars or moons,
and is going to the pink salt ocean and its salt towers.
Like, yes. This is my jam entirely. If Thomas hadn’t been designing this completely separate of me (I’ll edit in the future, but I had no input on design or writing aside from proofreading if he asked), I’d swear he put some of this in here just for my tastes. Tattoos that move in the breeze? I imagine my Greeblin with a pretty mermaid on their arm, though they’ve never seen the sea, who reaches out for passing dandelion puffs. I imagine a forest so bright that it blinds any stars or moons and the only reprieve is the shade, but the trees are so large there are many shadows to lurk in. The spoon shows them a real ocean, with stars overhead and dark skies making the sea look like blood. That ocean – it remains to be revealed, but the Greeblin has many imaginings of what it holds. They intend to lick the salt towers, as would be expected. Who wouldn’t?
The Greeblin’s Journey is a solo game zine by Thomas Novosel currently funding on itchio. It is an exploratory experience with simple mechanics that feels much deeper than skin and simply is good fun and storytelling. Check it out today to create your Greeblin and help them take their journey!
Devlog on Itchio: https://briebeau.itch.io/script-change/devlog/209532/script-change-update-2021
Hey all!
I’m excited to announce that Script Change has experienced a significant update with three more tools and a new layout! You can find the new free text version at briebeau.com/scriptchange and the PDF plus the handouts are still free with option to donate at briebeau.itch.io/script-change. I have raised the suggested donation to $5 because of the sheer amount of time and effort I have put into Script Change over the years, and the continued creation of new content. I hope that’s okay!
In 2021, I’ve added Bloopers & Outtakes, a formal wrap meeting structure, the Editor’s Notes with picks, squicks, and icks to help guide content and response, and Two Thumbs Up to help with quiet check-ins and for less verbal players. These changes have been developing for a while, and I’m so excited to release them for you all!
Note: For the time being, please use the previous revision’s handout to put out descriptions on the table for reference, as I need more time to do the layout work and nothing’s changed on it. Also, in the new Bloopers & Outtakes section, I managed to only write “bloopers” on each Reel listing, but I’ll fix this soon if I can. I apologize for missing it!
Thank you so much for your continued support!
P.S. Sorry for the borked links earlier, I still haven’t mastered WordPress.
I recently had the pleasure to read and review James D’Amato’s Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide, which is currently available online for purchase! James contacted me for the interview, but in true Beau fashion I took forever to review it (sorry!).
Full disclosure: I was given a free review copy and I think James is pretty rad.
Photos in this review are by Brie Beau Sheldon.
I approached the review in a weird fashion, to try to get a full perspective. The book itself is basically a tool to help you build the background of your character for RPG play. Some elements of it seem to trend towards games with levels, but I think this could be used for most roleplaying. It uses die rolls for randomizers at times, but also a lot of it is pick lists and freewriting to flesh out the character.
The way I approached this was to have three separate sessions of exercises (there are so many included in the book)! with three different people, and each of them had their own individual characters, while I kept the same character through the whole test. Each of the character had varying levels of previous information – mine, for example, was made up on the spot! I also spent a fair amount of time looking at the book
The book itself has a fun orange, black, and greenish color scheme and is relatively well organized. I will note there are a few spaces where the text contrast is not as comfortable for me to read, but aside from that, the book is pretty clear to follow and read.
The biggest comment I’d have about this book? The questions were often wonderfully open. I am not good with constraints on my creativity – I like a lot of free space to wonder along. There is guidance for a lot of the questions, plus the random rolls, but enough of the questions allowed me to explore where I wanted to go.
I really appreciate James’s thoughtfulness in providing subjects that range from death to relationships to magical objects and places – it feels like there’d be something here for basically everybody! Special love for the “Damn Merlinials” exercise, too. The exercises vary in complexity, with some including random rolls resulting in skipping forward sections, and others just simple fill-in-the-blanks, and some even have a combination of methods to answer all of the questions.
Overall, I think that it’s really useful tool for someone who wants to create deep, complex characters with a lot of history, flavor, and support for their perspectives and beliefs.
A note on pronouns: One thing that I didn’t like in the book is that all of it uses he or she pronouns, even when it’s quite clunky. This was also noted by all three of the other players I tested with. I do know, however, that James didn’t want this in the book and he even consulted with me on how to address it, and I wrote a statement to his publisher. I appreciate James’s intent a lot and wish his publisher had followed it. I bring this up because I know I have many nonbinary readers and the use of binary pronouns from one of our own can feel a little jarring, and I want you to know that James had the best intentions, but couldn’t push it through. That’s basically the only major issue I ran into with this book though!
I’m including the full text of the responses to the prompts I played through, but they only include the answers to the questions – for those you’ll need to get your own copy of the Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide by James D’Amato on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble!
Hi! I’m Brie Sheldon, and I am queer games.
June is Pride month, which is when we recognize the adversity queer people face and overcome, marked especially by remembering the Stonewall riots. When police raided a bar where queer people were gathered – trans people, gay and lesbian people, bisexuals, and all – the patience of queer New Yorkers ran out. Martha P. Johnson, a black transgender sex worker, is credited with initiating the riot as response to police aggression**. A number of other black people and people of color headed up the rejection of prejudice in power, alongside many queer resistors. Pride matters. When we talk about resistance and the pursuit of freedom, we should look to the best parts and most important parts of Pride.
Those parts are the people. So, as a gamer, I’m a people. I wanted to offer a way to connect with other queer people, and to have an easier way to frame who I am as a queer person – while showing how it matters to things I love.
This video includes a series of questions that I’ve responded to below. If you’re a queer gamer or queer person-who-plays-games, please consider answering these questions in your preferred format – video, social media, blog – and use the hashtag #IAmQueerGames.
This is supported by my Patreon at Patreon.com/briecs, as part of my community outreach and efforts in recognizing diverse creators. Thank you for watching! Here we go!
1) Who are you?
I’m Brie Sheldon, formal game designer, journalist, and editor. I run a site called Thoughty were I talk game design and do interviews, supported by my Patreon. I’m a graduate of leadership studies and creator of Leading with Class, using games to teach leadership, which is supported by Patreon.com/leadingwithclass.
I use either they/them or he/him, whichever is easier and makes more sense.
I’m genderfluid nonbinary-masculine, queer in orientation.
4) What are your intersections and chosen labels?
On the marginalized side, I’m disabled and have mental health stuff. For privileges, I’m white, well educated, and married to a cisgender man with a decent paying job and live in a safe neighborhood. On the fun end, I’m polyamorous, a gamer, and an artist.
5) What’s your gender (or lack thereof) and what does it mean to you?
I describe my gender as genderfluid nonbinary-masculine because my gender identity – the inside part of me – fluctuates between nonbinary androgynous and nonbinary masculine, where I am never a man but I have some masculinity. I call myself a boy a lot because the soft masculinity that I associate with boyness is basically where I am then.
My gender is very important to me. I struggled with it for 24 years before coming out on a small scale and 26 before I told my family. It’s who I am and I love to live it freely.
6) What’s your orientation and what does it mean to you?
I am queer, and I call myself queer because it makes the most sense to me. Being a fluid person and being non-cisgender, I fluctuate a lot on how I define my relationships, but basically I’m attracted to people of pretty much every gender. My attraction is different with different people – sometimes romantic, sometimes sexual, sometimes both, or sometimes aesthetic or none at all, and I also have a lot of platonic attraction. It’s all important to me! I feel a lot of feelings, and they find homes in many different places.
7) How do you present yourself, and how do you want to present yourself, including clothes, makeup, body mods, and anything else?
My ideal presentation is moving between soft masculine and edgy androgyny, but both with boobs. I like my boobs and hate that having them decreases my masculinity, and my androgyny. I wish that I could be those things and still have boobs, and still wear makeup – which I do enjoy. I like wearing masculine or more unisex clothes – I could live in simple jeans, ballcaps, and tee shirts – but I super dig getting to wear those alongside low cut tops and stuff. It suits me.
I’m not planning on getting any further body mods than my piercings and tattoos – except more tattoos. Gender affirmation and hormones aren’t what will make me whole, from what I know.
8) What’s this got to do with games – gender, queerness, Pride?
Games have a good dose of queerness in them already once you realize how easily you can put on another gender and orientation and have it be the identity you perform for a session, event, or campaign. If you think you’ve never touched queerness, think of how many times you’ve played a character of a different gender or who was attracted to a gender you aren’t. It doesn’t make you queer, but it shows how you can connect those things.
Gender and orientation are so tied to our experiences at the table because they’re tied to our real lives. Mechanics and settings in games can encourage queerness, and safe environments encourage engagement with identity questions – when we’re playing a game, it is a safety buffer. It’s a way to explore with training wheels. And when the wheels come off, we can tell stories we want to be told, since good media for us is so hard to find.
We must tell our own stories. We can make them rich and interactive for queer and not-queer people alike. It’s an amazing medium to dig into both queer reality and queer fantasy, and it gives us a unique power to frame the mechanics of the worlds we play in when we design queer games – how we handle violence, how we handle sex, how we handle stigma. The control it gives us to realize queerness is really important.
Honestly, it started when I was playing Harry Potter text based roleplay when I was in my early teens. I started playing androgynous characters – very clumsily – and exploring who my characters could be attracted to. In my mid-teens I played some androgynous characters in D&D and flirted with the ideas of queer characters like lesbians and gay men, and even pansexuality.
But it was not well executed. We need games that support queerness and identity questioning, where it’s okay to explore these things and encouraged to explore them, and done with support in the text and community. Games can’t hold these spaces alone, they need support from those making them and playing them who know about queer culture and life.
10) What can cis straight people do to help?
Listen. Look at your life, look at your choices. If you’ve fucked up, apologize and don’t do it again. Remember that kink isn’t inherently queer. Donate money and time where you can. Honor our history. Hire queer creators. Support sex workers. Don’t write about us without doing research and consulting us. Use people’s proper pronouns. Be better than you ever have been.
Things are a hot damn mess right now, but we can make it through. Pride month is a big deal but it’s not the only month of the year we need to raise our voices, support each other, and keep moving forward. No queer person is alone in their queerness – we can find ways to work together. We need to recognize black queer people, queer people of color, trans and nonbinary people, bisexual and pansexual people, queer Jewish and Muslim people, and asexual and aromantic people.
Don’t forget that sex workers, disabled people, and people with mental illnesses are queer people sometimes, too. We need to remember we are in this together. Don’t let the pressure from privileged bigots crush you. And if you are still keeping private – it’s okay. We’ll be here when you’re ready.
I’m doing this because I want to see queer people in games be recognized and welcome them, as well as talk about why these things are important. I want to highlight the diversity in games that is so often brushed under the rug. I also want to open up the floor for queer voices. If I can do that for even one person, make just one person be heard? Yeah, I’ll like that.
This post is supported by Patreon.com/briecs patrons like you! Please feel free to support my work there or donate through the donation links in the description.
Note: In my video, I state that Marsha P. Johnson (a black trans woman) was the one who started the riot at Stonewall. According to this tweet: https://twitter.com/BlackFemmeinism/s…, the riot was started by Stormé DeLarverie, a Black Butch lesbian, and Marsha P Johnson & Sylvia Rivera (a Latinx trans woman) founded & organized PRIDE. I apologize for any errors – finding consistent information was pretty challenging.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.
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| The approachable theory logo. |
Hi all! Today I have a post by Selene Tan on Types of Fun! Selene is a game designer who is always up for a design competition, and writes about games and GMing. This post is about types of fun – the ways we enjoy games – using a variety of existing theory and talking about how we can understand those things in our own experiences. Selene said she loves “interacting with dynamic systems that produce unexpected and inspiring outcomes, and it’s even better with friends!” So let’s see what she has to say!
I ask that you remember the requests I put forth about treating my writers with respect and understand that a lot of game design theory is still growing, so definitions can be a little fluid.
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| A collection of materials for a game of Roar of Alliance (Game and photo by John Sheldon.) during play. |
Whether you call it “fun,” “enjoyment,” or “involvement”: when you’re playing the right game, there’s something that makes you want to play it, and keep playing. But not all games are fun in the same way.
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| I used Roar of Alliance because it has a variety of materials and two parts of play, with strategic combat and “downtime” roleplaying making up the game – both could be very different kinds of fun. (Photo by John Sheldon.) |
Another scheme is Quantic Foundry’s Gamer Motivations. It classifies reasons that people play games, where each reason is a type of fun. There are two schemes, one for video games and one for board games. The video games scheme has 12 motivations in 6 groups, while the board games scheme has 11 motivations in 4 groups.
Make a list of all the things you like and dislike when playing RPGs.
Then play an RPG session with that list in mind. Afterwards, write down a new list of things you liked and disliked from that session. If you won’t get to play for a while, make a list from your most recent session, but it’s best to do this while it’s fresh in your mind.
Pick a scheme and classify your list items. For each like, write down the type of fun. For each dislike, write down the type of fun it interferes with, and if applicable, the type of fun it promotes. Don’t worry about forcing things to fit: it’s okay to have some lone items. But if there are a lot, you might want to pick a different classification scheme!
For example:
I like to play characters that help people. (Fantasy, Expression)
I dislike games where everyone plays backstabbing schemers who are out to get each other. (Inteferes with: Fellowship, Submission. Promotes: Challenge, Expression.)
You’ll see trends arise from the lists. Some categories will have more items than others, and some reasons will keep showing up.
The categories that keep showing up in your likes are the types of fun you enjoy the most. You have the most experience playing and creating that type of fun, and the strongest intuition for them. You’ll also find complements: groups of types that keep showing up together, or types that show up occasionally on your list of likes but not in your dislikes. The types that show up on your dislikes list interfere with or detract from the types you enjoy.
When you’re designing a game or wrestling with a mechanic, ask yourself what types of fun you’re aiming for. If the mechanic doesn’t seem to be working, is it encouraging a different type of fun than the one you’re aiming for? Is it related to a fun that interferes with your goal? If you have a design that feels like it’s missing something, try adding one of the complementary fun types.
If you want to read more about classifying and analyzing fun, here are some resources:
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| Roar of Alliance is a fun game to play, and now after reading Selene’s article, I can’t stop wondering how someone would evaluate the game in regards to the type of fun – what type of fun is your favorite game? |
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.
I gave writing a game in six tweets a shot yesterday. It’s below!
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Take a coin, paper, pen. Write words & numbers, 1-5: fight, cry, love, sleep, run. Write again 6-10: need, want, hate, ache, hurt.
Write a name, job, home, purpose. Answer: Old or young? Strong or weak? Alive or dead? Alone or together? Interpret as desired.
Draw a map, simple’s fine. Mark home, mark place of purpose. Line from one to the other & mark four risks. You name the challenge.
Write your story from risk to risk. Who do you meet? Name them. Why are they there? Write this. At each risk, flip the coin twice.
The path from risk to risk is yours, but the coin chooses one each 1-5 & 6-10, & tells you what you encounter. Write how you fail.
You continue after failure to your place of purpose. When you arrive, flip the coin twice. Write how your purpose is fulfilled.
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.
This post has been crossposted from the Imaginary Funerals blog that has since been discontinued. Posts are hosted on the Imaginary Funerals G+ page.
There will soon be a follow-up post to this, so keep an eye out!
PLAYING WITH IDENTITY (link to main host)
by +Brie Sheldon (originally posted 8, 2014)
So like, there’s this thing about growing up in small rural towns that are filled with blue collar workers and legacy families and all that jazz. It’s insular and you don’t always learn about stuff outside of your own little reality. You end up getting taught some pretty weird stuff.
Like racism.
Sexism.
Bigotry.
These are the kind of things that you learn, often without the intent of your parents (at least in my generation). Sometimes it’s the influence of other relatives. Sometimes it’s just the fucking culture.
Where I grew up, there were white people for days but not so many people of color hidden in there. Those that were around were probably not treated much better than they were talked about, which wasn’t so good.
Being different was a mark. One of my fellow 4-Hers and a friend of the family was a lesbian, and my only real exposure to homosexuality except TV and the internet (which I later discovered had LOTS of information on homosexuality, and everything else). She was treated like an oddity – something to be observed and commented on. Some people treated her like a human being, but enough didn’t, including me for a while.
Where I grew up, gender roles were pretty fixed and solid. Playing with what gender feels like is something I started doing shortly after I started gaming. I would play men, or androgynous characters (before I even knew what androgyny really was). I played them more than I played women (although I’d later learn that some of that was due to some internalized misogyny). It wasn’t until I started writing for Gaming as Women and met some awesome trans folks that I had the shocking realization that maybe I wasn’t stuck being a girl in the strict sense of the word.
I have no desire to transition. I’m as fine with my body as a woman with low self esteem in this age can be. But, I don’t always feel like a girl (or woman, as I finally allow myself to be called sometimes), and it took some heartfelt talks and some experimenting with characters in-game to realize that it was okay. I can’t help but feel that maybe someone else might have had the same kind of experience, and I want to say “hey, isn’t it cool to find out that feeling like something other than what you thought you had to be is okay?”
And sexuality, whoa, buddy.
I realized I liked girls when I was in my early teens. Maybe 12? 13? I remember the very night it happened. I also remember that shortly after that night, rumors spread that I was a lesbian, and shut down any of my hopes that I might be accepted like I thought my 4-Her friend was. I was confused further by still liking boys, just the same as I liked girls.
I explored some of the feelings I was having in Harry Potter fandom text-based roleplay. The characters I played had fluid sexuality for the most part, and while I had to keep it totally secret from everyone I knew, that roleplay experience was a safe space for me to explore who I was and what sex was to me.
I was still really ashamed of my sexuality, and I’m only just coming through that period, but one big thing that helped was the community of acceptance I found surrounding certain parts of gaming. There are people who are openly kinky or poly or gay or all three, and hell no, you do not find that often in rural Pennsylvania.
I played some Monsterhearts, which was actually kind of a huge deal for me. I had ruled out sex and relationships in RPGs because it made me uncomfortable, but a few sessions of Monsterhearts and I was looking at things differently.
Most recently, I’ve been getting schooled by some pretty brilliant people on race. I have learned that there is no real difference in ability between me and people of different races. I have learned that other modern cultures than mine not only exist, but are rich and complex. I learned that class and race intersect (and that your race should not mean you are forced into a specific class or that you belong in a specific class), and that gender intersects with both of them. These might sound simple and like common sense, but they weren’t, to me.
What I’m trying to say here is that gaming and the gaming community has opened up my perspectives and shattered my assumptions. It’s allowed me to play away from type and find secrets that I kept even from myself. It’s even helped me learn how to respect other people and their differences from me.
And that’s awesome.
This post is free, but Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.
