Shattered Mirrors: Structure & Procedures (#3)

(Shattered Mirrors is a storygame I’m writing, blogging the process here to entertain and hopefully get some advice/feedback. For the introductory post that lays out the design goals of the project, look here.

To check out the last storygame I produced, head over to gamesfromthewildwood.itch.io/endlesssea. To read the history of its design, check out the 'across the endless sea' tag on this blog).

Alright, so let’s pick design for Shattered Mirrors back up. Things haven’t advanced as much as I originally intended, because I accidentally tripped and designed an entire other game from scratch, but I’m pushing on regardless.

I think it’s time to talk about mechanics.

Firstly, I think this game draws a distinction between what for now I’m going to call (titles pending) ‘vignettes’ and ‘scenes’. The former is framed entirely by one player – it’s pure narration, pure storytelling. The latter involves two or more players, and is framed around a conflict.

This game has a distinct and deliberate structure of three (or maybe five, and lean Shakespearean?) Acts, with different lengths, tone, goals, and mechanics for each.

Act One

The first Act is a series of vignettes. Each of the core fictional playbooks (The Child, The Departed, The Ghost, The Authority) takes it in turn framing a vignette that illuminates and introduces certain elements of the story, and answers certain questions.

This is where we see the despair of the Ghost and how the Child is affected, this is where we see that the Departed is a hole in the life of the family, this is where we meet the Authority and see this tyrannical controlling force that insists it knows best for the child (benevolent, well-meaning).

During these vignettes, each other player is allowed (but not mandated) to request elaboration or doubling-down on a particular element that interests them.

This Act ends with the Authority’s vignette, in which we see the arrival of supernatural badness.

Act Two

The second Act is a series of scenes. It is far and away the longest of the Acts, as it contains the bulk of the story. This is the portion of the game in which the Child’s quest for the return of the Departed is carried out, as well as much of the build-up involving contact with the Authority’s agents and possibly (indirectly, through a dream or in the world) the Authority themself.

The draft procedure for what these scenes will look like goes something like this.

1: The Child decides what the next scene is about. Where are they going? What are they doing? Is this scene about healing the Ghost, or following the Departed’s quest, or [INSERT OTHER CHOICES?] This is where they set the stakes of what is at stake to be won.

2: Based on that choice, the Antagonist playbook passes to either The Departed or The Authority. Whichever didn’t take it, claims The Judge playbook.

3: The Antagonist

onsults the choice that they’ve made on their playbook and thinks about where the story is currently at, and frames the scene.

4: Narration goes back and forth between the Antagonist and the Child. The latter says what they do, the former introduces opposition / monstrosity / difficulty and describes what it does.

5: The Judge and the Guide watch and listen closely. When their roles call for it, they decide how well things work and tell the Child what and how many to choose.

6: Once the question of the scene’s stakes (the next step in the Departed’s quest, an attempt to help the Ghost, an attempt at exerting control by the Authority) has been resolved through play, the Antagonist closes the scene.

(This question, given the genre we’re emulating, isn’t really a question about if the Child wins what they wanted. It’s more a question about what it costs them, and how much they gain).

Act Three

The third Act is made up of one scene and then maybe a few vignettes. It is, essentially, the final confrontation and then the epilogue. The Antagonist is always the Authority, in this scene, and the Departed is always the Judge.

Otherwise, I think it probably plays out normally? The exception is that here it is possible to fail – this is where we get the ambiguous tragic Pan’s Labyrinth ending. Whether that’s just a player choice about tone or a different list for Things Lost, I’m not sure.

With all that structure in mind, all that really remains is to specify and refine the mechanics for resolution. And here, I think, I’m just going to double-down on what worked very well in Across the Endless Sea by doubling the number of players who get to assign choices.

Hence:

• When the Child and the Antagonist’s forces come into opposition, the Judge decides how it goes (it works completely, it works partly or at cost, it doesn’t work) and how much is won or lost.
• When the Child calls on the magic of the Otherworld, the Ghost decides how it goes (it works completely, it works partly or at cost, it doesn’t work) and how well it works and how much is cost.

So we end up with one player advocating on behalf of the Child and another arbitrating on no-one’s behalf but in a way and with a set of priorities and mechanics that will necessarily favour the Antagonist (simply because the Child will usually lose something, or pay a price, and thus end up weaker by the time Act Three arrives).

And that's what I'm currently looking at. Without a doubt the next step is to actually write a playbook and work out what those will look like, as well as figuring out how these rules will actually be communicated.

That's design work I'll probably try to do on stream? 

No set thoughts on timing yet, but if watching me work on a game and getting to make suggestions is something that interests you, the time and date for that will no doubt be posted up on my Twitter eventually.

Otherwise that about wraps things up for this week's project. Hopefully by next time I'll have some excerpts of a playbook ready to show y'all (or maybe something to celebrate my resurgent love for Monsterhearts 2...)

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff like this. You can get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make. 

When the Patron really gets up and happening I'm planning to start running playtest sessions of my games with patrons, so go get in on that potential action!).

Shattered Mirrors: Mechanics (#2)

(Shattered Mirrors is a storygame I’m writing, blogging the process here to entertain and hopefully get some advice/feedback. For the introductory post that lays out the design goals of the project, look here.

To check out the last storygame I produced, head over to gamesfromthewildwood.itch.io/endlesssea. To read the history of its design, check out the 'across the endless sea' tag on this blog).

So, I've got an idea for a game, and some vague ideas about narrative archetypes. What comes next? 

I'm going to do something slightly different with today's post, and just share the personal notes I transcribed yesterday from a bunch of voicemails I left myself while walking to work and while on the bus (otherwise-"dead" time that's excellent for being creative). 

These notes aren't polished, and they aren't mechanics yet, but in them the basic shape of this game is starting to emerge. 

I hope that seeing what things looks like now, and then later seeing what this is solidified into, will be at least entertaining and maybe even interesting or educational. So, without further ado, here's the current state-of-thought regarding how this game will work:

We have four characters who all have clearly-defined domains of things within the story that belong to them (ref. Polaris roles). These also all have within them choices that structure what the story is about – the Absence choses the Quest, the Authority creates their Agents, etc. These characters are:

The Child:

You are a child who has known loss in your family and watched it destroy those you loved, even the survivors. Given time, it may destroy you too. Your family is broken now. Ruined. You want only one thing in all the world: to have your family back as they were: loving, and together, and here. You will do anything to make that happen.

You frame your own actions, and the memories you have of your family. These may be scenes that truly happened, or imagined reunions to give you strength to go on. You also make the initial aesthetic decisions of the game: what kind of real world is this, what kind of Otherworld?

The Departed (a Parent, a Sibling, a Friend):

You are the absence that makes this family broken. You are distant, you are missing, you are long-dead. Whatever the reason, you are gone. It is the wounds of your loss the Child must heal, your return their goal. You are their quest. You too want to reunite, of course, but for whatever reason (choose 1 - including "you are dead") you can’t.

You frame the object for which the Child is searching, the quest that drives them through the Otherworld. You frame the obstacles that they must confront, too. This may be literal, as in Kubo and the Two Strings (The Armour of Three Parts), or it may be more figurative (the quest for Saoirse’s heritage in Song of the Sea).

The Ghost (a Parent, a Sibling, a Caregiver):

You are the emotional anchor of this story, your healing the drive behind the Child’s quest. To have you back, as you were, is the burning desire that drives them through perilous wonder and beautiful danger. You want do right by them, to be better. But you are burdened, and so weary, and without help you can’t.

You frame the beauty of the Otherworld: the magic of love and compassion and childhood wonder that the Child can draw upon, and the friends who will help them along the way. This help may be direct (the transformation of Kubo’s mother into Monkey and her gift of magic, in Kubo and the Two Strings) or from more diverse sources (the magic of the Selkie Song, the Great Seanachai).

The Authority (a Grandparent, a Family Friend):

You are the force of benevolent well-meaning tyranny that stands in the Child’s way, both in the real world and the Otherworld. You want them removed from the Ghost and in your care, for both of their own good of course.

You frame the Servants of Darkness, the creatures of the Otherworld that try to stand in the Child’s way (in Song of the Sea, the owl-familiars of Macha; in Kubo and the Two Strings, the two Star-Aunts). You frame the darkness and hopelessness that creeps into their heart, and seek to keep them from their destination. 

The Child definitely has something that resembles the decision of Our Destiny that Andrew wrote into Girl by Moonlight. They make choices at the start of the game that shapes what the win-state of this story looks like. 

They also start with an ally/companion – not physically powerful, but offering emotional support and guidance. This is Cu from Song of the Sea; this is paper Hanzo in Kubo & the Two Strings.

How does play actually work?

The First Act is very very structured. There are mandatory scenes framed by each character. It opens with the Child, it closes with the Authority and the intrusion of supernatural badness. Pre-defined pre-ordered scenes, prompts on the character sheets for choices what they’re about.

This is where we see the despair of the one left behind and how the Child is affected ,this is where we see that the Absence is a hole in the life of the family, this is where we meet the Authority and see this tyrannical controlling force that insists it knows best for the child (benevolent, well-meaning).

Then we enter the game proper, we’re now in the Otherworld – this means a different structure.

In any given scene the Protagonist always lays parameters (they chose position/effect, to borrow a Blades metaphor). They control what the scene is about – what are the stakes. They don’t get to frame what the scene is.

Whichever character has authority over what the scene’s about frames the scene.

This is a four player game, therefore it must have four distinct mechanical roles that may or may not match up with / be linked to narrative roles. Like Polaris, each player needs something to do.

Here is what they are:

• The Protagonist – they frame expectations, they make most decisions
• The Antagonist – they frame the scene, they set actual stakes? Maybe a negotiation process?
• The Guide – helps the Protagonist through
• The Judge – representative of the rules & the game structure

Instead of the Judge role and the Antagonist resting in the hands of the same player, they are deliberately separated out.

Lean into Ash’s observation about Across the Endless Sea and choices & lists. All the Judge can do is distribute choices from lists, but that’s the greatest authority of all. As the scene goes back and forth, based on what is common-sense and what seems fair (and maybe a tonal/genre guiding tool in terms of how severe this story should be and how often success should happen / with which costs) they assign consequence/victory for other players to choose from.

Can you resist these consequences, like in Blades? Maybe. Is it a limited resource? Yes.

As in Endless Sea, the lists are distinct between playbooks  They are unique. Probably the Child has a list of Things Won and Things Lost, and then the others have lists of moves they can make / things they can inflict. Choices from these lists are incorporated into fiction as the scene goes on, rather than at the end of the scene (as mostly happens in Endless Sea).

Where there is conflict, the Judge resolves the outcome: usually either “you can have this but it costs you” or “you can’t have this but you gain something”. These choices are assigned, they immediately feed back into the narrative, play rolls on.

I imagine probably that a scene will run for 20-30 minutes. Assuming a 3-hour run time we’ll only really get 4 set-piece scenes but that sounds about right to the genre.

Some kind of mechanical structure that we shift into for the Big Finale Scene where everything is put right (or if this is the tragic version, where things are ambiguous - think the closing of Pan's Labyrinth).

So, there's what I've currently got! 

At this point I'm expecting that the manifestation of this requires 8 playbooks: 4 narrative ones for the Child, Ghost, Departed, & Authority; 3 mechanical ones for the Protagonist, Antagonist, & Judge; and then one mixed narrative-mechanical playbook for the Guide. 

The Child & the Protagonist playbooks always go together, but otherwise the roles of Antagonist, Judge, & Guide circulate between the other players depending on which intention/stakes the Child declares for a given scene. 

It's possible though, looking back over my notes above on narrative roles, that the Guide & the Ghost always go together, and the Guide is explicitly framed as a representation of the relationship-that-was before the Ghost fell into despair. 

At that point we're now just circulating antagonism between the Departed's Quest, by which the Child can get them back, and the Authority's attempt at establishing control.

Hm. I kind of like that better? 

And I think it's more in keeping, actually, with the key texts I'm drawing from. 

Anyway, that's enough for now. Next time I should have an actual write-up of some game procedures, samples of the text from the mechanical playbooks to describe how the game will actually run. If you've got any questions about the notes above (clarifying my meaning is always a helpful exercise) or any thoughts/suggestions on what I'm currently thinking, please leave them below as a comment and be part of this design process.

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff like this. You can get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make. 

Whenthe Patron really gets up and happening I'm planning to start running playtest sessions of my games with patrons, so go get in on that potential action!).

Shattered Mirrors: Introduction (#1)

So, Across the Endless Sea is finally finished, published, and out in the world. I wrote a game! It’s still a surreal feeling, and more so every time someone actually buys it or a game designer I respect helps to spread the word.

(If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check the game out at gamesfromthewildwood.itch.io/endlesssea).

With that project now done (pending expansions, etc), though, I find myself looking for the next project.

And there’s another very specific mini-genre/set of literary motifs dear to my heart that I’ve wanted to see a good game about for years.

I love stories about children travelling to fantasy Otherworlds.

I always have. From the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland to the poignant darkness of Pan’s Labyrinth, there’s something about that archetype of crossing the threshold between the mundane and magical on a bildungsroman-style journey that speaks to me.

Now, there are already games about that.

The main one I’m familiar with is Heroine (I watched it played once, but didn’t get to play), but it’s more Labyrinth and Alice in Wonderland than what I’m picturing.

Because the stories about these Otherworldly coming-of-age journeys taken by children that I love are those that center on family. Stories about children with a lost mother or father, or estranged parents, or some other intimate familial trauma in their background.

Stories about children who find the members of their broken family doubled by creatures and figures in the Otherworld, and through their journey find some resolution of their troubles.

I’m thinking of Song of the Sea and Kubo and the Two Strings as recent examples of this motif, though casting the net wider also draws in works like Pan’s Labyrinth (the doubling isn’t explicit, but it’s there: Captain Vidal and the Pale Man, for example).

So once again I have a desire for a game that is far too specific to already exist, and thus no recourse but to design it myself.

So: Shattered Mirrors (name extremely placeholder, please suggest something better).

I think this will be a smaller game than Across the Endless Sea: more intimate, and for fewer players.

This time it absolutely is a game about playing specific characters, and owning them and their secret pains.

Once again I think I’m going to borrow the basic language of playbooks and moves from Vincent Baker, as well as borrowing some of the ideas about distributing narrative authority/responsibility from Polaris. I also feel like this is going to be a very structured game: with a sequence of scenes framed by the various playbooks in specific order, playing to find out how things happen rather than necessarily what happens.

But those are thoughts for a future post. For now, like last time, I want to talk about design intentions.

So, my goal is to create a game that captures the sense of poignant longing for a family that is whole again that is core to the various source texts. I want antagonism to come from all characters, for everyone save the child to be culpable in the breakdown of the family, and for villains to be people who are hurting in their own ways.

• I want forgiveness and empathy to be the way to resolve problems, not violence and not rage.
• I want it be GMless, so all the players equally own the messy family drama that unfolds (and so I can play).
• I want it to build messy and broken family units whose love and issues both feel real.
• I want it to evoke both how magical and threatening the world is as a child, and the reality of children’s complexity and capabilities.
• I want to make use of ritual phrases. I really enjoyed them in Polaris, and I think it’s a shame more games don’t use them.
• I want to do something interesting for a mechanic. Perhaps something like Endless Sea, perhaps something new. I haven’t yet decided.
• I want to playtest it sometime in August, and hopefully release it for first-stage playtesting on my Patreon by mid-September.

Across the Endless Sea: Second Playtest (#5)

So, the initial playtest with my housemates had proved that the game, at the most basic level, worked.

The resolution mechanism was functional; the game produced interesting play; and the flavor of it was interesting to a group of people broader than just me.

I took away the feedback from people and made several changes: some major, some minor.

Being able to ask too many questions when investigating encounters was breaking the game a little - allowing players to work out a plan that would certainly succeed rather than having to take chances – so I revised the number down. The wording of some of the moves was confusing; as was the layout of the moves on the sheet.

There was also a request for more substantial information about the People, which was coupled with an observation I made during the game: not having all the choices made about the People centrally listed was slowing play.

So, I also created a playbook for the People as a whole, intended to be printed A3 to everything else’s A4.

It has space to record choices made about the People; a list of evocative names (drawn in equal parts from proto-Indo-European syllables and Pacific Islander cultures); some basic details about the technology levels and beliefs of the People; and a listing of the twelve months of the People’s journey and their traditional names (for flavor).

Thus armed, I was ready for a second playtest.

I was lucky enough to get in contact with EricVulgaris of Once Upon a Game, a Twitch show that streams storygames and indie RPGs, who kindly agreed to host a playtest.

Eric was a phenomenal to play alongside, as was our third player, and if you’d like to see the tragedy we unfolded you can watch it here.

Some really useful feedback came out of the session, as did a deepening confidence in the game seeing how enthused two experienced storygamers were by what we created as a group and the way that the system facilitated that.

Unsurprisingly, one major piece of advice was that the game needed to include mapping.

Storygamers seem to really love their maps. I think the craze might have started with Avery’s The Quiet Year, but I don’t know the scene well enough to be sure. Regardless, they were right about the coolness of mapping the People’s voyage and so that advice is now in the game.

The session also highlighted the importance of reincorporation to the game, and so I’m now slowly building a “player advice” document to help ensure groups have the best experience.

What really became clear during the session, though, was the issue of timing.

I’d written the game originally to assume 12 – 24 encounters per game, but what both playtests had made clear was that encounters take far too long for that to be viable. Even playing with just 3 players, we only made it through about 6 encounters over the course of 3 hours. Of course, that includes a bunch of extra time costs unique to doing a Twitch show, but still.

Something had to give.

So the year-long journey is now a half-year, meaning there are five standard encounters (one each for the first five months, which also allows every player to take a turn as the Endless Sea) plus an extra three: one for the Voice’s choice of what has changed since the People last made the voyage; one for the Eyes’ choice of what sign reveals that the People are coming close to their destination; and one for the Hands’ choice of the final challenge that awaits the People.

Eight encounters seems like a much more manageable number, and the option to play an extra encounter per month is still preserved if a group really wants to settle in for a long game.

Of course, this was all theory. It needed testing, to check that the game could fit into 3 hours.

Luckily, my workmates and I had a PD trip coming up and an evening set aside to play a game of some kind that they agreed I could commandeer…

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

Want a copy of this game I've been talking so much about? 

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff and get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make).

West Marches PbtA Hack + Bonus DW Content

(For those just looking for the homebrew Dungeon World bonus content, skip to the bottom of this post).

Next week will mark almost 8 months since I started running All Things Under Heaven, my East-Asia-inspired West Marches campaign. 

Over the course of that time (and the preceding few years, when I avidly watched Steven Lumpkin run Rollplay's epic West Marches show) I've come to a realisation: Dungeons & Dragons just can't handle the kind of West Marches game that I want.

This isn't a slight on the system or designers, just a comment on the fundamental difference in genres.

For the West Marches I want magic that feels inexplicable and wondrous rather than systematised, and operates in discrete unique units each with their own underlying logic. I want characters to grow outwards rather than upwards, to become more broadly-empowered rather than straightforwardly powerful, and to be able to lose things through their own choices and through the hardships the game throws at them.

I want a world that is dynamic and has systems that encourage that dynamism, I want unique regions that all feel definitely and meaningfully distinct, I want to plan broad strokes and fill out the details in play based on what makes sense, what comes before, and what my players suggest and achieve.

I want, I've realised, a Powered by the Apocalypse game.

Spells and items and rituals as individual moves; character growth/loss fluid in the style of the "change playbook" option; a GMing structure that replaces Threats and Fronts with the individual regions of the Wastes.

And so I've begun working on the skeleton of a system, a (very) loose hack that draws equally from Dungeon World and Apocalyse World.

Since there was no session of the Twitch ATUH campaign yesterday and thus nothing that needed to be done with my usual hour of streaming GM Prep, I started to actually put some flesh on those bones: designing the initial very-rough draft of what the Basic Moves might look like.

They're still in early stages, but I'm liking how this system is coming together.

It feels cohesive, and like it should deliver the experience that I want (of course, playtesting will undoubtedly demonstrate otherwise).

So, here's a couple of the draft moves. Feedback and commentary very welcome!

(For an insight into my thought process as I put some of these together, check out the video here.)

*****

When you go into battle, roll +Force. On a hit, you do harm to your opposition and they do harm back to you. On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose 2:

• You strike especially hard, inflicting extra harm on your target/s.
• You defend especially well, taking less harm from your target/s.
• You are a flurry of motion, engaging multiple foes.
• You push forward, gaining ground or momentum
• You drive the enemy back, creating an advantage or an opening

On a miss, you take a nasty hit. You may still do your harm, GM's choice.

When you push through danger, ask the GM to name the danger/s you risk and roll +Force. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7-9, you still do it but choose 1: you survive but some equipment doesn't, you charge right into something worse, you falter and lose the initiative. On a miss, prepare for the worst.

When you read the lay of the land, roll +Insight. On a hit, you can ask the GM questions. Take +1 when acting on the answers. On a 10+, ask 3. On a 7-9, ask 1:

• What happened here recently?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• What, if anything, appears out of place (or is not what it seems)?
• What is the safest position I can take?
• What is my best way out / way in / way past?

On a miss, you overlook something important but ask 1 anyway.

When you notice something unusual, roll +Insight. On a 10+, ask 2. On a 7-9, ask 1:

• Is this a thing of the civilised world, or of the wild magic?
• Is this thing created, caused, or naturally occurring?
• Is this something that might have value or use to me?
• Is this something that might be dangerous or helpful to me?
• What, from what I know and sense, might happen next?

On a miss, ask 1 anyway and it is older and stranger than you thought. 

*****

BONUS CONTENT! Supplementary Special Moves for Dungeon World

When you ask around for information before a journey, roll +CHA. *On a 10+, hold 3. *On a 7-9, hold 2. Spend your hold 1 for 1, now or during the expedition, to gain the following information about your destination:

• Directions to a significant or interesting location
• General information about the region, its terrain, and inhabitants
• Names of a few powerful local figures, and a little more about them
• Information about dangerous predators or creatures in the region
• Warnings against a common threat or danger to travellers
• Rumours of a great treasure or magical artefact

On a miss, hold 2 anyway but the GM will answer one falsely (their choice).

(Plus, for those wanting something a little more specific than Defy Danger)

When you steel yourself against magic or outside influence, roll +WIS. *On a 10+, you do it and gain an impression of the motive behind the attempt. *On a 7-9, you do it but choose 1: some lesser trace of it lingers, your resolve is shaken by the effort, your resistance or refusal is obvious. *On a miss, prepare for the worst.

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff and get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make).

Monsterhearts Homebrew: the Brownie

Avery Alder's Monsterhearts is one of my favourite roleplaying games of all time.

I love everything about it: the genre and tropes it revolves around, the heavy focus on inter-party drama and intense and messy character relationships, the idea of keeping a story "feral", the ways it took the principles of Apocalypse World and leapt boldly forward with them (Hx into Strings, the evolution of moves that affect agency over a character's emotions, etc).

Most of all I love how unapologetically it puts forward its insight: supernatural teen drama/romance is, and has always been, queer as hell.

I've read it cover to cover more times than I can count; I've played in campaigns from online to 8-hour convention contexts; I've GMed it a few glorious times and have plans for more; and I even had the privilege of reading and giving feedback on some very early drafts for the Second Edition.

Monsterhearts is a game that I love.

And so being a game designer and somewhat of a nerd, of course I set out to write a bunch of homebrew content for it. I've written a handful of custom Skins for the game, informed by my desire to see an integration between monster archetype / high-school drama archetype / pattern of teenage dysfunction.

Until now these Skins have all lurked on my hard-drive gathering dust, but now that I have a blog it seems a shame not to share them.

Apologies that they aren't properly formatted and laid-out: that's not one of my skill-sets.

If I can talk my friend John into it, I might try and pull something of the sort together for people who want consistency of appearance with the standard Skins.

So:

The Brownie

Your friends and loved ones mean everything to you – you cannot imagine a warmer glow of satisfaction than knowing you’ve helped them nor a worse feeling than watching them suffer when you can do nothing to intervene. You chase that feeling of approval and thankfulness, delighting in service and praise and willing to shoulder burdens that are none of your business just to feel needed and useful and wanted. 

Stats

Hot -1, Cold -1, Volatile +1, Dark +1

Name

Abdul, Alexis, Deacon, George, Leto, Ophelia, Paige, Sergius, Stuart.

A servant’s name, a forgettable name, a weak-sounding name, a peasant name.

Look

ragged, casual, servile, polished, mismatched

needy eyes, watchful eyes, insecure eyes, protective eyes, demanding eyes

Origin

diminished house-spirit, born to serve, searching for purpose, oath-bound, indentured for a term

Your Backstory

You have one friend who is very dear to you. Declare one person to be one of your loved ones. Give them 2 Strings on you. Take one String on them. 

You were there for someone in a moment of emotional vulnerability. Ask them what secret they confessed to you, and you gain 1 String on them.

Brownie Moves

You get this one and choose two more:

[x] Family of Choice. You may have any number of loved ones. The first is chosen during your backstory. Every time you choose another loved one, give them 1 String on you. Whenever you subjugate yourself to the needs of your loved ones, carry 1 forward and gain the condition needy.

[ ] Love Hurts. Every time you forgive the ones you love for hurting you, and make excuses for them, gain a String on them.

[ ] Invisible Helper. When you defend someone you love without them ever knowing about it, mark experience.

[ ] Bond of Service. If you and another character have a total of 5 or more Strings on one another, gain 1 to all rolls against them.

[ ] Shoulder to Cry On. You crave to be useful, and feel that is all you’re good for. When others dump their emotional problems on you, roll with dark. On a 10 up, they lose all their conditions, and you choose one: mark experience, carry one forward, or gain a String on them. On a 7-9, they choose one:  they lose all their conditions or they gain a String on you.

[ ] Self-Sacrifice. When you leap into the way and take the blow instead of someone you love, roll with Volatile. On a 10 up, you take the harm instead of them, but reduce it by 1. On a 7-9, you take the harm instead of them. On a success, gain a String on the loved one who you saved or give them the Condition guilty.

[ ] Unloved and Unwanted. When you are needy and then gaze into the abyss, carry +1 forward to your roll. 

Sex Move

When you have sex with someone you cannot help but crave their approval. Add them as one of your loved ones (including giving them a String on you) and then trigger the Shoulder to Cry On move even if you have not taken it.

Darkest Self

You can’t bear the ingratitude of the people around you – you bleed and sweat and slave away to make their lives easier and they dismiss your efforts as invasive and unwanted? Make them realise how much they need you - destroy every good thing in their life until they need you back to fix it. You escape your Darkest Self when you go too far and harm one of your loved ones, or when you admit that they never asked for the level of devotion you gave them.

Advancements

-Take another Brownie move

-Take another Brownie move

-Take a move from another Skin

-Take a move from another Skin

-You belong to an Obeisance of Household Spirits

-Add 1 to Hot (max 3)

-Add 1 to Cold (max 3)

-Add 1 to Volatile (max 3)

-Add 1 to Dark (max 3)

Playing the Brownie

Needy, taken for granted, overlooked, craving importance. The Brownie is about trying to take all of your loved ones’ problems onto yourself for the rush you get from approval and being needed and useful.

You are at your strongest when helping others: Family of Choice makes you much more effective when you are pursuing the interests of your loved ones, and if it involves giving away some Strings then Bond of Service can also turn that into a strength. Unloved and Unwanted allows you to take the needy Condition and make it work for you.

Love Hurts, and Shoulder to Cry On can all provide a source of Strings to fuel Bond of Service and allow you to push back against your loved ones if they are trying to shut you out or prying where they shouldn’t. Invisible Helper provides a handy source of experience, as can Shoulder to Cry On if things go well.

Self-Sacrifice is your move of last resort, endangering yourself to protect your loved ones and either gain Strings on them or give them a Condition that you can leverage into them needing a Shoulder to Cry On.

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff and get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make).

Across the Endless Sea: First Playtest (#4)

(Across the Endless Sea is a storygame I’m writing, blogging the process here to entertain and hopefully get some advice/feedback. For the introductory post that lays out the design goals of the project, look here.)

It's been a while since I've last written about this project, and in that time a fair bit has happened! 

After finishing up the Aspect playbooks, I press-ganged my housemates into service as additional sources of ideas and rolled right on to designing the Threat playbooks.

At the present moment they're fairly barebones: some open-ended options for the aesthetic and the dangers that can be chosen for each encounter and then a summary of the Threat player's side of the encounter rules. 

I then spent a leisurely afternoon going through the various choices presented by the Aspect playbooks (the tales known by the Voice, the warnings known by the Eyes), some randomly-selected inspirational tweets from @str_voyages, and the imagery that's been coalescing in my head around this setting for years to extract a list of 35 encounter prompts.

As it stands I think that number is a little thin, but I didn't want to force ideas.

In the end I think I'll probably end up aiming for 50, ten from each Threat (Dwellers, Islands, Travelers, Waters, Weather).

More importantly, with all the basic elements needed to run the game in place, I ran a playtest!

My housemates and I sat down after dinner, and we ran through the game. Nothing caught fire, no friendships were destroyed, and everyone seems keen to play again and actually finish so I'd call that a rousing success!

To be a little more serious, it was a very enlightening process. 

There's certain things that didn't occur to me but that it's clear the game needs: a list of names (to establish a shared feel), a sheet to summarize the resources of the People, a more detailed outline of exactly how the encounter process works.

It turns out that to someone who isn't living in my head, the procedure I wrote isn't quite as clear as I thought. Who knew...

On the plus side, the core game is great. The resolution mechanic works great, and won over even those who were skeptical about a lack of dice; the game seems to have some real replayability given that I knew all the prompts ahead of time and was still engaged and surprised, and the setting and mood of the game was a real hit. 

To return to my original design goals for a moment, here's where things are at:

• I want it to be GMless, not least so that I actually get a chance to play it (unlike anything else I write).
• Done! It's definitely GMless, though I do want to see other groups run it or my group run it with me taking a back seat to figure out if it's clear enough without me to explain.
• I want it to be inspiring, the text capturing a mood to put the players in the game’s tone and mood.
• Big success here. Everyone was very invested in the setting, and adding in some great stuff.
• I want it to be invisible, a framework that helps create great stories and guides creativity in organic and unobtrusive ways.
• This is where a lot of work still needs to be done. There's the promise of an invisible system, but the explanations of mechanics need a lot of clarifying/expanding to get there.
• I want it to play with ideas of collaboration and opposition in RPGs/storygames, allowing fluid movement between the roles of environment and explorers.
• Another big success. Everyone tonight got a turn at both, and seemed to enjoy moving between the two roles.
• I want it to leave a space open for groups to shape their emotional landscape: longing, or bittersweet, or joyous, or desperate, as the group deems appropriate
• Assessing this will have to wait on more playtesting and more folks playing it. Early signs are good? 
• I want to be able to release it for first-stage playtesting on my Patreon by the end of April

On this last point I'm actually a good month ahead of schedule! 

Even though there's work still needed, I'm happy to say that the game in its current state is already complete enough for preview playtesting on my Patreon. Hopefully by the end of April I'll have the entire thing done!

Next steps: write the new material needed, playtest a whole bunch more, and talk to my dear friend John about layout and making it look nice.

Stay tuned for another post sometime in the next fortnight...

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

Want access to the playtest preview documents to give the game a run yourself? 

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff and get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make).

Across the Endless Sea: Mechanics and Playbooks (#3)

(Across the Endless Sea is a storygame I’m writing, blogging the process here to entertain and hopefully get some advice/feedback. For the introductory post that lays out the design goals of the project, look here.)

I’ve had a week to think about last week’s draft for a resolution mechanic for Across the Endless Sea.

In that time, I’ve reread my Patreon preview of Vincent Baker’s The King is Dead. I’ve reread my copy of Jason Morningstar’s Skeletons. I’ve rewatched some of Adam Koebel’s games of A Sundered Land.

On Monday at work I sat with a bunch of kids making up stories: about their characters, about the campaigns, about key NPCs they admire. After a particularly beloved mentor died of old age, one kid very sincerely told me that “nothing happens to me, because I’ve died of a broken heart”.

Seeing the strength of the narrative moments that can be generated just through using commonsense/fairness and asking provocative questions, I’ve come to a decision:

There will be no randomization or dice in Across the Endless Sea.

They just feel unnecessary. There’s an existing body of storygames that demonstrate that diceless non-random games can be done, and done well.

I want Across the Endless Sea to have something of the feel of traditional storytelling, to lean into Vincent Baker’s model of “roleplaying as conversation”. I want, as I mentioned in my design goals, for the mechanics of this game to seem invisible.

I also want this to be a game that requires and teaches trust of the other players at the table.

(Trust in their integrity, trust in their creativity, trust in their support as you imagine and improvise.)

So, with all that in mind here’s another attempt at that core resolution mechanic, and one that I am much happier with:

Time passes, triggering an encounter. A random encounter prompt is drawn.

The group determines which Threat the encounter belongs to. The Threat player gets to answer some questions and maybe ask some leading questions to flesh out their vision of the encounter.

They then give an initial description of the encounter.

The rest of the group determines which Aspect player will meet the encounter.

The Aspect player gets to interrogate the fiction of the encounter before they resolve it. Each playbook gives them a list of questions to choose from; this lets the player signal what about the encounter interests them. It also lets them steer the encounter a little: creating openings or weaknesses.

The Aspect player then begins the encounter.

They choose (from a playbook list) how the People meet the encounter, and then draw on their earlier questions and the established resources of the People to describe what that looks like.

The Aspect player asks the Threat player if their course of action works. There are no mechanics for this; the Threat player considers what was described and what they know about the encounter and answers according to what seems fair and truthful.

IF the course of action works completely, the People win something.

IF the course of action works at a cost, the People win something and lose something.

IF the course of action doesn’t work, the People lose something and then the Aspect player has to choose a new course of action.

Whenever things are won or lost, the Aspect players gets another player to choose them;  (either off a playbook list or from scratch, as that player chooses).

So, there it is!

We now have five basic moves that are going to part of every Aspect playbook-

• One that determines the investigative questions you can ask
• One that determines the courses of actions you can take for resolution
• One that determines what may have been lost
• One that determines what may have been won
• One that establishes some fictional resources the People have access to through this Aspect

and then choices that design the encounter that occurs when the People reach their destination.

There needs to be a clear trigger for what sets off the encounter at the destination: at this point, I’m thinking that the game happens over the course of an in-fiction year.

Each month, there may be one or two encounters (at the players’ discretion) and once they come to the twelfth month the next encounter involves their destination and what happens there rather than the normal deck of prompts.

I loved the chapter on little cultural details that John Harper wrote for Blades in the Dark, so I might do something similar with the months and their traditions of the main rules sheet.

That’s about all for today, I think.

I’m currently halfway through drafting the Aspect playbooks, and things are looking promising. I’ll probably post some of that next time around, along with some thoughts about what the template of the Threat playbooks should be.

And then there’s the question of the encounter prompts…

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog? 

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff and get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make).

Across the Endless Sea: Structure and Game Resolution (#2)

(Across the Endless Sea is a storygame I’m writing, blogging the process here to entertain and hopefully get some advice/feedback. For the introductory post that lays out the design goals of the project, look here).

So, what does Across the Endless Sea look like as an actual game? This is the first and most important question that needs answering.

Every other mechanic and piece of writing must flow from this basic place: What is the structure of the game, and what is the resolution mechanic?

Let’s begin with structure.

Some years ago, I read Avery Alder’s Dream Askew: a GMless hack of Apocalypse World that presumes a slower-motion apocalypse and the formation of alternative and queered societal models to cope with this advancing frontier of weirdness and apocalyptica.

I haven’t yet got a chance to play it, but one thing stuck with me: players with multiple Playbooks to run.

In Dream Askew, every player is running two Playbooks at once: a character (slightly different from the normal AW list, but essentially similar) and a part of the world’s apocalyptic state.

The fictional tapestry controlled by the GM in Apocalypse World is carved up and parceled out among these “GM Playbooks” that give narrative authority over the aspect they describe: the world’s Psychic Maelstrom; a Warlord leading other survivors, violent and opportunistic; Grotesques and their cultists and believers.

Every player controls an aspect of the world and generates antagonism that originates from that thing. Every player controls a character who can confront the aspects of the world’s badness, except for one.

(Sidenote: The idea of making thematic statements by pre-determining these links is an interesting one. Whoever plays the Gunlugger must also play the Maelstrom; guns have no power over the bleeding psychic hole at the heart of the world. Whoever plays the Brainer must also play the Warlord; psychic fuckery cannot stop a soldiers well-led and armed with bullets. But this is a thought for another time…).

So: in Across the Endless Sea each player controls an Aspect of the People whose journey we tell the story of and a Threat of the Endless Sea upon which they travel.

This idea has been part of the game since very early on. One of the earliest things I wrote was:

• One set of them [Playbooks] represent the Aspects of the People (that’s what they call themselves). You might be the Heart of the People, the Hands of the People, the Eyes of the People, the Memory of the People, etc.. Your sheet offers choices that define some of the cultural practices and values of the People, and your Moves provide ways to interrogate the fiction regarding things that the Endless Sea presents and ways to overcome them.
• One set of them [Playbooks] represent the Threats of the Endless Sea. You might be the Weather of the Endless Sea, the Tides of the Endless Sea, the Islands of the Endless Sea, the Dwellers in/on the Endless Sea. Your sheet offers choices that define the environmental aesthetic of the game and the world the People move through. Your moves provide ways to flesh out and elaborate the randomly-generated prompts for what the Endless Sea presents, and establish challenges for the People to overcome.

As mentioned in the text above, inherent also in the design of the game has been the idea that the encounter that the People have on the Endless Sea are drawn at random from a deck of prompts.

There is a Twitter account that I dearly love called @str_voyage, a bot that generates an “endless nautical story” using random procedural generation.

The content it produces doesn’t always make sense, but more often than not is evocative and provokes the imagination. If a simple bot can produce coherent consistent story using procedural generation, I’ve always wondered, what could a table of creative and cooperating players do with a similarly-limited set of basic building blocks as their source material.

All that being said, then, here is the basic structure of the game:

1. There are playbooks for the People and for the Endless Sea. Each player runs one of each.
2. The structure of the game involves a series of encounters, prompts for which are drawn from a deck.
3. One player, controlling a suitable Threat, fleshes out the encounter.
4. One player, controlling a suitable Aspect, leads the People in confronting the encounter.

This is basically all there needs to be. 

I have an idea that there’ll be some special mechanics for the end-game, when the People arrive wherever they’ve been going, but the overwhelming majority of the game’s rules and play are going to rest on having these encounters.

What do these encounters look like, mechanics-wise? Here’s the current draft:

1. Time passes, triggering an encounter
2. An encounter card is drawn
3. The group determines which Threat the encounter belongs to
1. The Threat player should get to answer some questions (define some things) and ask some leading questions (force others to define some things)
4. The group determines which Aspect player will meet the encounter
1. The meeting of it should be a group effort; the lead Aspect player directs the confrontation, but choices/moves of the others may be involved
5. Mechanics happen – roll dice? draw runes? look at Blades & Sundered Land for inspiration –that resolve how well/badly things go. 
1. Possibly modified by whether the Aspect was a good choice to meet the Threat in question?
6. Consequences occur as a result of the encounter; something is lost, something is gained, something is learned
1. Are these the choices made by other players? Maybe?

Recently I’ve been watching Adam Koebel play Vincent Baker’s forum game A Sundered Land on his Twitch channel (slightly adapted), and a lot of the way this resolution mechanic is shaping up is inspired by that.

I’m loving the way A Sundered Land uses leading questions as a central mechanic: it’s entirely functional, it emphasizes those old AW ideas of “make the world seem real” and “always say what honesty demands”, and it leads towards fiction that is both compelling and non-generic/unique.

Interestingly, it’s the dice mechanic for combat in A Sundered Land that I find least interesting.

The most evocative confrontations in the several games Adam played were when he and Twitch-chat went slightly off-script and forgot about the combat dice.

So maybe the resolution mechanic for Across the Endless Sea should involve no dice or randomization at all.

Hm. A thought to return to in a future post, I think.

Land of a Thousand Autumns: Introduction (#1)

Nearly a decade ago, as a teenager, I was exposed to two pieces of media that left a real impact on me: Hayao Miyazaki’s legendary Princess Mononoke, and the Tales of the Otori trilogy by Australian author Lian Hearn.

Both presented a mythicized fantastical version of Japan, using the supernatural as a lens to draw out and enhance the cultural distinctiveness of tribes and ethnic groups that had once roamed the islands.

Both were also infused with classic Buddhist themes - impermanence, fleeting beauty, mortality and morality - and the most integral conflict in traditional Japanese fiction: the clash between giri (duty) and ninjo (human feeling).

Years later, around the age of 18, I was exposed to a game that called back to these works: Timothy Kleinert’s The Mountain Witch.

Though I remain unconvinced about certain aspects of that game mechanics, I was compelled by its atmosphere, the story it framed, and the basic premise of a Reservoir-Dogs-style blood opera of betrayal and suspicion. I was also deeply impressed by my favourite mechanic from the game: the giving and spending of Trust, which enables the rōnins’ passage up the mountain (through teamwork) but becomes a knife in their hands when their secrets and destinies turn them in on each other at the end.

The Mountain Witch is a game I’ve been coming back to for almost 5 years now: I’ve run it straight, written alternate mechanics to fit around the Trust system, discussed it and loved it.

Someday, if I’m lucky, I may even get to play it.

***

In 2015, inspired by the existence of a Mountain Witch hack for playing desperate soldiers in an Apocalypse Now-like context, I drew from all the parts of the game I loved to create my second convention game: To Tread the Spiral Path.

“Mythic Ireland. Five outcasts quest for a chance to regain their honour and place in society.

Five warriors, five wanderers, five exiles. Bear, Fox, Hare, Lynx, Wolf. Five lost souls offered a chance to reverse their exile.

These three things stand in their way: the spirits and little gods of the Otherworld; a druid dark and rotten as the corpse of a kinslayer; the weakness and frailty that doomed each to exile and leads them on towards a tragic wyrd.”

It was an excellent con.

I ran the game 9 times, and all but one session embodied the tonal and thematic ideas – uncertainty, betrayal and trust, the bonds of honour versus the bonds of feeling – that I had responded to in The Mountain Witch and set out to explore and evolve.

 And at some point, in that fruitful void between what I remembered and learned from the con and a rewatch of Princess Mononoke a few weeks after, the seed of another game was planted.

***

Land of a Thousand Autumns is that game.

It is a mythic Japanese setting filled with tribal peoples drawn from Japanese history and folklore, strange magics and gods, and dangers that duty demands must be confronted whatever the cost.

It is inspired by the “symbolic neverwhen clash of three proto-Japanese [cultures]” presented in Princess Mononoke and the clear cultural barriers that separate social groups – the nobility, the monks of Maruyama, the pacifistic Hidden, the Tribe – in Tales of the Otori.

It is concerned with that same set of themes: loyalty and trust, uncertainty and betrayal, the ways we make relationships on an individual level and to higher concepts: religion, tribe and village, culture.

It aims to tell stories of tribal champions sent out to deal with the threats that endanger the precarious survival of their people. It aims to tell stories of the heavy burdens these champions carry, the hopes and fate of their people and the chains of duty and obligation. It aims to tell stories about the messy ways that people come to love and connect with each other, and how the heart is just as dangerous as sorcery or the sword.

At heart, Land of a Thousand Autumns is a game about people with strong ties to their village and culture and heavy obligations to them, torn between the demands of those duties and the human feeling they have found in their fellows. 

I ran a conceptual playtest (an alpha test, to borrow Australian convention-writing parlance) back in November to see if the idea was worth running with. I learned (with total consensus from players) that the answer was yes, and learned more besides about the structure and nature of the game.

Currently I've finished a round of updating the basic moves and playbooks, and am starting to look at another playtest once I get the GM stuff for the first session worked out. 

I hope to report back soon!

Across the Endless Sea: Introduction (#1)

When I was around 11, my mother brought me a compiled edition of C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

It was a thing of beauty: tall and hardbound, and very heavy indeed to my child’s hands. The front cover was blazoned with a watercolour map of Narnia, giants marching and Aslan’s great head peering out at me. I must have read it a dozen times cover-to-cover as a child, my insatiable hunger for fantasy latching on to the world presented within.

I loved all of the Narnia books, but my favourite was the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

These days my relationship to Narnia, and Lewis’ work, is more complicated. The sheer transparency with which he parallels Christian motifs and symbols I find jarring; his treatment of Susan (and Lucy) I find uncomfortable. But still, I find a magic in reading about the Dawn Treader’s voyage across the sea into the East: about the islands encountered along the way and the mermaid kingdoms just below the surface of the ocean. 

It’s a magic that’s far from unique to C. S. Lewis, of course.

The closing chapters of A Wizard of Earthsea, as Ged departs to chase his shadow and sails the Archipelago, have the same wonder (as do parts of its sequel The Farthest Shore).

Terry Brooks’ trilogy The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara spends the first and third books telling of an airship voyaging across strange and distant seas, sailing amidst the clouds and stopping at strange and enchanted islands, and captures the same essence.

The ancient Irish folktales of Immrama concerned the same motifs, as do animated films like Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Kubo and the Two Strings.

Even works like Moby Dick and its many cousins have something of the quality in question about them.

There is a long and proud tradition in storytelling of this motif: the surreal fantastical voyage across uncharted and dream-like seas. Bizarre creatures lurking in the deeps below, savage weather raking the deck, islands and impossible encounters delaying the journey’s progress.

And so, Across the Endless Sea

Across the Endless Sea is a storygame, a collaborative experience for up to five players chronicling the voyage of the People (as they call themselves) through the Endless Sea.

I’m going to be chronicling the design process publically here on this blog, opening the refinement of this inchoate game up to outside scrutiny and hopefully starting a dialogue of commentary and feedback that will allow me to make this game better, stronger, and stranger than I could have on my own.

Mechanics-wise, I’m going to be borrowing from the Playbook/Move structure of Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World, and the innovation of having each player take on both a protagonist and an aspect of the story’s antagonism from Avery Alder’s Dream Askew.

My goal is to create a game that captures that feeling of wonder and dream-like reverie that I loved in Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a child.

• I want it to be GMless, not least so that I actually get a chance to play it (unlike anything else I write).
• I want it to be inspiring, the text capturing a mood to put the players in the game’s tone and mood.
• I want it to be invisible, a framework that helps create great stories and guides creativity in organic and unobtrusive ways.
• I want it to play with ideas of collaboration and opposition in RPGs/storygames, allowing fluid movement between the roles of environment and explorers.
• I want it to leave a space open for groups to shape their emotional landscape: longing, or bittersweet, or joyous, or desperate, as the group deems appropriate.
• I want to be able to release it for first-stage playtesting on my Patreon by the end of April.