{"id":1316,"date":"2019-05-31T12:52:18","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T16:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=1316"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:46","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:46","slug":"five-or-so-questions-on-moonflower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/05\/five-or-so-questions-on-moonflower\/","title":{"rendered":"Five or So Questions on moonflower"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi All! I have an interview today with Sangjun Park about moonflower, which is on Kickstarter now<\/a>! Sangjun made a video about how the game works<\/a>, and I’ll update this post with the Kickstarter link when it’s live! Until then, check out the interview below!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me a little about Moonflower. What excites you about\nit?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

moonflower is a story game about a journey to the Moon, set\nin a dreamlike world in which a sweet and alien flower is blooming. The main\ncharacters are called the Pilgrims, who are seeking the Gardeners, who live on\nthe Moon, for help that they may or may not be able to provide. moonflower is a\nsimple GM-less game designed exclusively for one-shots, each session taking\naround 3.5 to 5 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not a game where players have to fight monsters or race\nagainst time. The end of every moonflower story is defined before any session\nstarts – the Pilgrims reach the Moon and meet the Gardeners. However, the focus\nis on the journey itself. As the story goes, the players must sacrifice their\ninner selves and compromise with their circumstances. It is, by design,\nimpossible for a Pilgrim to achieve their goal without having compromised.\nEither they will have changed from how they started the journey, or they will\nhave inflicted changes on others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What excites me about this game is that moonflower places\nstrong emphasis on the process, rather than the result. By rules, every Pilgrim\nfinds success, but that is shaped by the context, which is the decisions and\nchoices the Pilgrim made to get there. The game uses tarot cards to guide the\nstory instead of a single facilitator. Each major arcana card (upright or\ninverse) has a story hook associated with it and players draw five every\nChapter. Three are used as the actual story hooks and players briefly discuss\nhow they interact with each other. And I’ve designed the game so that story\nhook combinations almost always demand a tough choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So even though moonflower is a short game and the end state\nis always the same (except the potential epilogue, of course), it creates a\nwide variety of stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing, outside the game, is that moonflower is a game produced by a team of Korean artists. It’s also the first Korean TTRPG that is being brought to the English-speaking part of the community. This is an honor, but it is also very frightening!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does moonflower’s use of tarot cards help players\nexplore the story?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

moonflower has its own reading of tarot cards, unique to the\ngame. For example, The Tower being drawn may suggest that a great, physical\ndisaster happens within the story. The Empress, on the other hand, would\nsuggest that the Pilgrims encounter a being of unfathomable wisdom in a hostile\nsetting. For another, there’s The Devil, which suggests that a life-or-death\ndecision must be made urgently. Each individually is just a story hook, but in\nmoonflower, players briefly discuss how they will come together before a major\nscene starts. So with those three, one of the Pilgrims may have fallen sick and\nmust be treated with a rare medical fruit, but it grows on a fragile and sacred\ntree. As they climb it, a branch snaps and centuries of growth is lost – and\nthe ancient creature that’s been guarding it comes to question the Pilgrims\nwhether their well-being was so important to risk the sacred tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s simply one way of interpreting those three cards\namong many. The main story driver is the 22 major arcana cards. Whether they\nare drawn upright or inverse matters, so that’s 44 story hooks that can be\ncombined in units of three. I’m not very good at math, but I think that leads\nto a very big number of potential stories. But the important thing is that the\ncards’ stories keep driving the characters toward points where they must choose\nsomething<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing is that moonflower’s tarot reading is deeply\nintertwined with the setting. The Tower, which traditionally hints at\ncatastrophic change, is interpreted to mean a literal collapse of a great tree\n(and trees are a big part of the setting). That’s a literal take at the image.\nHowever, players may have decided during the Dreams phase that an elder tree\ngrows from the burial ground of an ancestor, in which case a tree’s fall is\nmore than just literal in the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems like the idea of change and sacrifice is really\nvital to the game. Why did you choose to explore these themes?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a rather personal issue, but let’s talk about fun\nbits before we get to that. moonflower initially started as an exercise in\nrapid game design. I asked people to give me three game design ingredients and\nforced myself to make a game based on them in 72 hours. The very first version\nof moonflower is fondly remembered, the way one remembers adolescent years.\nSince then, I’ve refined the core game idea and experimented with it over six\nmonths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since it started as an exercise in rapid game design, I did\nnot have the luxury of fine-tuning themes. Though, after the work was done, I looked\nback and wondered why moonflower seemed to say something. Then I noticed that\nit’s about change, sacrifice, and – most importantly – compromise. The first\nversion of moonflower was drafted when I had been working for a rather\nprestigious organization as a translator. Until then, I had been sailing\nsmoothly along that career path, but I hit a wall while working on that\nproject. The stress was intense and the hours I had to put in were\nunreasonable, but I told myself I had to do it because the pay was beyond\nacceptable. I had little free time and I was drained of any kind of energy when\nI got home, but money was good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turned out that I had been thinking about compromises\nwithout a break back then. Am I doing this for the money? The prestige? The ability\nto tell my distant relatives that I’m doing something “serious” with\nmy education? What if I went the other way? How would I afford the lifestyle\nthat I was enjoying? And most importantly – is this what I wanted to do when I\nfirst decided to work with words?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end, I realized that compromising on things is\nnecessary to keep going in life. It’s not failure – it’s just another kind of\nchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read before that any kind of media that says anything at\nall is propaganda. moonflower is propaganda in the sense that it says refusing\nto change and compromise may hurt. It’s propaganda aimed at myself. Fun\npropaganda to play with friends, though!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that was too personal, I apologize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bringing Korean games to English-speaking audiences<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately I had been working as a translator for a long\nwhile, so bringing moonflower to English has been somewhat convenient. For one\nthing, there was no need to clarify with the author about intent or motive. The\nmost challenging part was not actually about the language, but about audiences.\nThe Korean TTRPG community is thriving, but it’s truth that it’s less active on\nthe game design side of things compared to the English-speaking counterpart.\nmoonflower is its own thing – the only game comparable to it available in\nKorean is Polaris by P.H. Lee – and, at first, I’ve seen rather negative\nfeedback on it, saying it’s “bad Polaris with flowers”. I figured it\nwas because the game was a bad rip-off. But by chance I shared an early version\nin English and I actually got a praise on that exact point, that it’s like\nPolaris in many positive ways. Of course, different peoples, different\ncultures, different tastes, and all that. But it was puzzling to see something\nlike that in first person. Working on this game in both Korean and English, I\ntried hard not to prioritize one audience over the other. This is quite\ndifficult, actually!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge itself is also the benefit, I think. The\nbilingual nature of moonflower meant it could attract diverse perspectives.\nDifferent experiences lead to different interpretations and they all have\ncontributed to moonflower’s growth as a game. Had I been working on moonflower\nexclusively in one language, I would not have had half the conversations about\nit. Then moonflower would only be half as good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you feel is the most valuable part of focusing on\nthe journey in moonflower?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journey in moonflower is both literal and symbolic – the\nPilgrims are walking on a path toward the Moon, which is both a physical and\nemotional place. This leads to metaphorical stories rather smoothly. In some\ngames, going to the Moon might involve three-stage rocket launches, but more\nlikely it will involve deciding what the trials and crossroads mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journey from the start to the end is always different.\nThe same tarot card may mean radically different things depending on when they\ncome up. This is because the journey up until that point gives each card a\ndifferent context. But, then again, people who play moonflower again (or read\nthe Voice of the Forest table before) may know what to expect. I think it’s\nkinda like taking a journey along a known route, in real life. One knows what\nwill be where, but no sight is ever the same. A familiar landmark along the way\nfrom home to work might evoke different feelings depending on things like what\nhappened that day or something mundane like weather and time of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks so much Sangjun for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out moonflower on Kickstarter now<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi All! I have an interview today with Sangjun Park about moonflower, which is on Kickstarter now! Sangjun made a video about how the game works, and I’ll update this post with the Kickstarter link when it’s live! Until then, check out the interview below! — Tell me a little about Moonflower. What excites you … Continue reading “Five or So Questions on moonflower”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[390],"tags":[20,25,8,15,12,26,23,18,158],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","tag-five-or-so","tag-interviews","tag-roleplaying-games","tag-rpg","tag-rpgs","tag-story-games","tag-tabletop-games","tag-tabletop-rpgs","tag-tarot-cards"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-le","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":80,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2018\/06\/five-or-so-questions-on-champions-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":1316,"position":0},"title":"Five or So Questions on Champions Now","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"June 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi all!I did an interview with Ron Edwards on his Kickstarter project, Champions Now! 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