The Blog
In days past, I didn’t really “get” the appeal of hacking existing games. (A tentative definition of hacking, for anyone who doesn’t already know the term: taking an existing game system and modifying it until it’s a new game.) I thought that it was lazy design that produced incoherent results.
While I still believe that hacking has some big wide pitfalls to avoid, I have seen the light. Hacking is a liberating and accessible design process. It allows people to create based upon their strengths instead of their needs. It lets designers dialogue with one another, and stand on one another’s shoulders. It creates diy communities instead of diy lighthouses. I’m going to unpack each of those statements, and then relate it back to Monsterhearts, my hack of Apocalypse World that tells teen monster drama stories. The post is going to end with a preview of Monsterhearts, if you want to skip the big unpacking.
Hacking Has Some Big Wide Pitfalls to Avoid
Games are designed to accomplish certain things – to create a specific type of story, to have a specific impact on players, to support specific tactics or approaches. And the tricky thing is that not all of those goals are going to be listed on the outside of the tin. When you hack a game, you risk removing the critical element that makes the game fun and magical. The best practice here is that if you’re going to hack, you must do so in a critical and self-examined way. When designing systems from scratch, you need to spend lots of energy making the system do what you want it to do. When designing systems by hacking, you need to spend lots of energy learning why a system does things the way it does them.
I think that it’s only in the past 10 years that people have really wrapped their head around how to make good hacks. It isn’t about creating new weapon lists and character classes, it is about learning how and why a game works, and then getting up to your elbows in that structure so you change it and make it into something new. Simply replicating a system for a new setting or media property is going to lead to either a drab game or an incoherent game.
Now, with the words of warning out of the way, here’s what I’ve learned about the joys of hacking!
Hacking is a Liberating and Accessible Design Process
Glancing up at my menu bar, you can see that I’ve designed a number of games. When you start a game from scratch, you need to make a thousand interrelated decisions. Those decisions are contingent upon one another, meaning that it can be hard to isolate what works and what doesn’t work throughout the design process. If part of the game falls flat in playtesting, you need to ask yourself so many questions: are my design goals valid and appropriate? Do the mechanics I’ve designed here actually uphold my design goals? Is this specific mechanic too complicated or too simple? Do I need to fix the problem at the specific and immediate level, or by overhauling the whole system? Should this game actually be diceless? Because that’s how designing a new game system works, you need to ask yourself all these questions simultaneously.
When you hack a game, you don’t need to ask yourself all of those questions. You’re starting with a complete set of answers, and you’re only changing the ones that matter to you and to your game concept. You’re liberated from having to weigh important decisions that you don’t particularly care about.
Monsterhearts is a hack of Apocalypse World. Anything I didn’t really care about answering for myself, Vincent Baker had already provided me an answer for. I really cared about how relationships were represented and changed via the mechanics, so I spent a lot of time developing those answers for myself. I didn’t really care about how success/failure worked – just that I wanted characters to sometimes get their way and sometimes land themselves in a sticky mess – so I leaned upon Apocalypse World’s existing answers, here. “Roll 2d6 + a stat, with 6- being a failure, 7-9 being a mixed result or hard bargain, and 10+ being a clean success” is simple and fun, and crafting my own mechanics from scratch here would have been arduous and uninteresting to me. Hacking Apocalypse World liberated me from having to craft my own answers when I didn’t have strong feelings one way or another. Though, pleasantly enough, as I continued to work on the design, I found myself continually getting invested in more of the questions. But that process was never forced at gunpoint, the same way it is when you design from scratch.
It Allows People To Create Based on Their Strengths, Not Their Needs
This point is pretty similar to the first one. A game needs a lot of things in order to work and to achieve all of your design goals. As a designer, you have a set of design strengths. Your strengths and your needs aren’t always going to overlap, even if you’re designing a project that’s “just right for you.” There’s a couple different ways to respond to that a-synchronicity. First, you can just work really hard and design through your weaknesses. Sometimes you overcome them and design something brilliant, sometimes your design is generally brilliant but held back in ways. Second, you can outsource the parts of the design process that you don’t excel at. Many of us already do this with editing, layout, and art. You can partner your creative wellspring mind with a big-picture analytical mind, or vice versa, in order to lift one another up. And finally, you can hack an existing game, one that is already successful and strong in the design areas that your strengths aren’t situated.
It Lets Designers Dialogue with One Another, and Stand On One Another’s Shoulders
A hack is more than just a method for producing a game. It’s also a method for interacting with a game you really like (or, in some cases, a game you really want to like but identify problems with). It’s a dialogue between designers. Whether it’s your goal or not, you’re creating a community of exploration, each of you proving new applications to a core set of ideas. They show you a cool idea, you respond with your own cool idea that builds on it. Yes, And.
What I like about Apocalypse World is the sense of desperation and the messy and transitory relationship webs. I like that the only constant is a lack of constancy. When I look at those things, my mind leaps to a different place than post-apocalyptica, though. It leaps to the volatile emotional journey that is adolescence. Monsterhearts is a big “Yes, and” statement to Apocalypse World. It’s a way for me to do more than just buy Vincent’s art, but to instead engage it and reply to it.
It Creates DIY Communities Instead of DIY Lighthouses
Let me tell you about a really motivating force that I had behind me while I was publishing Monsterhearts: I was not alone. This design path that I was walking, it wasn’t lonely. I was walking a path that Vincent had carved, and there were other pilgrims sharing the road with me. I might be doing things that didn’t apply to those other pilgrims – like designing the Strings mechanic or Darkest Selves – but I still felt the symbolic support of a community.
Hacking creates diy communities, whereas independent from-scratch design often creates diy lighthouses.
So, Monsterhearts
It started as a joke (most of my games do). I was playing around with the idea of using Apocalypse World to run Twilight, and then I sort of realized that I’d struck gold. Melodramatic teenage monster drama makes for fantastic storytelling, because it has a strong genre formula to lean upon as well as rewarding us for playing volatile characters involved in intense-and-immediate situations.
This is the first hack that I’ve seen through to publication, and it was a really rewarding design experience. Being able to stand upon the shoulders of a giant helped me reach the mountaintop in one piece. Having a hyper-focused design community around me gave me support and critical eyes whenever I needed it.
The game’s currently available for preorder on IndieGoGo. To give people a taste of the game, and to thank those who have backed the game so far, I’m releasing a little excerpt from the game: the long play example that will be located in the back of the book. As the final text is still with the editor, this is a draft version that might be changed or revised before printing.
I have some pretty big issues with capitalism, as an ethos. As someone who sells games for money, it plays into that exchange. And I’ve spent some serious time thinking about that, and thinking about how to move forward. What follows is my interrelated set of solutions.
You can now pay for Perfect Unrevised (and future games I release) in two different currencies: dollars, or purposeful acts of social good. If you pay in dollars, some of those dollars are going to be donated to charities that support the kind of social causes championed or explored by the game. Details follow.
A Portion of Proceeds
$5 from every sale of Perfect Unrevised (PDF or Print+PDF) will be donated to PEN Canada. It’s an organization that provides advocacy and support to authors whose freedom of expression is under attack – including authors who are facing exile or imprisonment for their journalism and prose.
In the future, when I release Monsterhearts, I plan to donate a portion of the proceeds to It Gets Better, or a similar organization that provides outreach and support to queer youth.
Purposeful Acts of Social Good
I’m going to try offering people a new way to obtain my games without buying them or stealing them. It is this: do purposeful acts of social good, tell me about those purposeful acts of social good, and then you get the game. I’m going to start this experiment with two PDFs, as I face zero risk in doing so. In addition to Perfect Unrevised, the other PDF on the table is The Grotesque, a new Apocalypse World playbook.
AW: The Grotesque
A new Apocalypse World playbook that I wrote. It was workshopped with Johnstone, who’s really good at workshopping Apocalypse World design stuff. You are a mutant, a physical mirror for the maelstorm and the apocalypse. You are unpredictable and alien, but you also have something good to offer the community that accepts you. Oh, and you can have nested drones or retractable claws or you can produce food spores.
“Purposeful acts of social good” is a pretty abstract currency to be working in, obviously. So I’ll just paint a picture of roughly what I envision, and then whatever you do will be correct. Perfect Unrevised is worth about 3 of these acts of good, and The Grotesque is worth 1.
- Baking bran muffins for everyone on your block/in your apartment building.
- Offering to walk your over-burdened neighbor’s dog once a week.
- Volunteer to do an hour of work at a community co-op radio station.
- Donating ten dollars to a worthy charity.
- Organizing a story games club for a local middle school.
- Spending an hour walking around downtown telling strangers about how they’re beautiful.
- Give a ride to a hitch-hiker, and go out of your way to deliver them to their destination.
- Spend half an hour cleaning up garbage in a local park.
- Do something subversive that provokes thoughtful discussion about the world we live in.
Once you’ve completed your purposeful acts of social good, email me at mcdaldno. That’s a gmail address. And I’ll hook you up with your PDF.
It should be stuff you weren’t planning to do already, if there’s a distinction. Go out of your way and do good, and that’s how you can pay for Perfect or The Grotesque. If this works, I’ll open the stage up for all my games, print and digital, maybe.
Why Not Free?
So, why not just give away my games for free? The answer comes down to what I want to get out of making games, and putting them into people’s hands. I want to foster an exchange and dialogue with people interested in my games. I want to feel validated for my efforts. I want people to understand these are major efforts with great worth. And, finally, I want these games to contribute to social good. I feel like, at the moment, these goals are best met by adopting a different type of exchange, rather than just giving them away. I’d love to hear other ideas, though, and to engage that conversation with you more. Comment!
Winter was a difficult time for me, this year. I was unemployed and in a pretty isolated living situation (in a cabin, up a mountain, surrounded by heavy snowfall, without a driver’s license). My game design energies oscillated from frenetic to exasperated, but just couldn’t find a balanced resting place.
Spring brought with it a lot of hope and opportunity. But unexamined hope and opportunity bring with them their own mania, if you’re not careful. I was dreaming big, but still hitting that blank page syndrome that I’d experienced in winter. The gap between my vision and my practice was widening.
So I made a pact with myself, one that turned out to be a really good one. If I sat down to my computer, or to the table with a notebook in hand… if I wasn’t actually writing and creating within five minutes, I’d get up and do something physical instead. I cleaned my room. I went through everything I owned and got rid of a bunch of stuff; Salvation Army received an entire car-load of donations from me. I started a garden. I expanded the garden. I expanded the garden again. That garden’s now growing squash, pumpkins, zucchini, two types of beets, radishes, carrots, two types of cucumbers, lettuce, chard, tomatoes, scotch bonnet peppers, and about 10 herbs.
It was feeling really good to work with my hands, to see tangible results, and to know that I was doing something real and good. I decided that if the inspiration didn’t strike me, I’d just not return to any of my writing and design projects. Indefinitely.
And then something really cool happened. A burning need to continue working on The Quiet Year (my newest project) surfaced. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was important. It was vital.
Other projects have been resurfacing as vital, too. Recently, I published a setting hack for Perfect Unrevised, allowing you to play games set in New Phyrexia (a setting from Magic). It was a fun little afternoon project. It wasn’t something I’d even thought about before that day. But when it arrived in my mind, it felt necessary. It felt vital.
I’ve got a couple observations I’m taking forward, from all this. The first is that it’s easy to burn out without realizing it. This is especially true when all of your projects are similar – all creative design endeavors, or all physical labor endeavors, or all experimental music endeavors. Pulling back from your insular bubble helps you see what’s important and what’s not. Contrast is rejuvenating.
On the topic of rejuvenation, I’ve got two Buried Without Ceremony announcements, of a sort. The first is that I’ve begun talking publicly about The Quiet Year, a game of post-collapse community building. There’s a page for it on this site, and it’s worth checking out.
The second announcement, much more visually obvious at this point, is that I’ve redesigned the look of the site, including making up a new logo. The old one presented some difficulties as a brand logo (difficult to place on a variety of backgrounds, too textured), and I feel like I’ve outgrown the dandelion. So, a rejuvenated look. What do ya think?
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive beyond that. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a post-apocalyptic community, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.
The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.
The Quiet Year is currently being playtested. If you’re interested in playtesting it, reply here or send me an email, and I’ll share the playtesting kit with you.
So, if you play collectible card games, you might already know that the newest Magic: the Gathering set was released today – New Phyrexia. It explores what happens when the Phyrexians dominate and corrupt the plane of Mirrodin, leaving only a few struggling pockets of Mirran resistance in their wake.
And you probably already know that I released Perfect Unrevised this year, a story game about being a criminal in a dystopian steampunk world. I have a certain love for dystopian and nightmarish worlds, where the hive mind attempts to slowly erode and dismantle the agents of free will. Throw in a heavy measure of body horror and weird fantasy, and I’m a happy kitty.
So I spent a couple hours today creating a little something: Compleat, a setting hack for playing Perfect set in the world of New Phyrexia. I’m hoping that Wizards of the Coast (the company that publishes Magic: the Gathering) lets it live, as its a loving and enthusiastic homage to the cool creative work they’re doing. We’ll see.
If you’re excited about this idea, but don’t yet own Perfect, then here’s a deal. Use the coupon code “Phyresis”, and you’ll save $2 on the PDF (knocking it down to a scant $8).
Here’s: Compleat, and Compleat Facing.
The print copies of Perfect, Unrevised have arrived. The pre-orders have shipped out, and several people have mentioned that they’ve received their copies already (including international orders). Shipping turned out to be quite a bit more than I’d anticipated, and the cost of shipping the 39 pre-orders was about $250 more than I charged. Yikes! Canada Post is awful.
Nevertheless, the game is finally done and released. We had a release party in Nelson last Friday – eating chili and cornbread, playing Ticket to Ride, and finally playing a short game of Perfect. It feels really good to be done such a monumental project. I’ve never spent so long on any single endeavor, in my whole life.
Interested in seeing a couple shots of the hard copy books?
I’m really proud of this product. People are saying awesome things about it, too.
If you want to pick up a copy for yourself, click the Perfect link on the site’s menu!
I’m writing the new draft of Monsterhearts right now. I just finished sketching out a skeleton for the document, in Scrivener. I’m now working on the introduction.
I’ve decided that I want a “what is a story game” section at the front. So I put a few sentences to paper, without thinking very critically about what I was writing. And then, looking back, I was really happy with this one gem that I saw nestled in there.
And so, the opening paragraph of Monsterhearts, at current:
This is a story game. To play, we invent characters and roleplay as them. We say things, and in response to some of those things we roll dice and interact with rules. The rules are there to keep the story feral – no matter how gorgeous and perfect we imagine our characters to be, they are never given the luxury of domesticating their fate. They are always in the lurch, which means they are always interesting. The rules are there to make sure that it isn’t my story, and it isn’t your story. Instead, it’s something emergent and raw and spellbinding.
“The rules are there to keep the story feral.”
I feel really good about that line.
So, the print version of Perfect Unrevised has been 99% complete for the last month. Or, at least, at any given moment, I’ve been under the impression that it was 99% done. But then as I round the final hump, I encounter a frustrating setback, and it puts yet another hump between me and finally ordering this print run.
Here’s where I’m at now: I’ve received the proof, and with a friend gone and checked it page-by-page, line-by-line. I noticed some typos, as well as some sentences that would be clearer with revision. The border graphics for Chapter 5 looked really muddy, and I decided they should be replaced with something similar.
I made all those changes, and then the file I was working in corrupted. I had made a back-up shortly before ordering the proof, thankfully… but I still lost several hours of tedious work. I’m on the road right now, still, and so made a new plan: when I arrived at my next destination, where my friend owned a computer with ID CS4, I’d re-do my work there. But, his computer was a Windows machine, and the fonts that I’m using are Mac formatted… so it’s not possible here. So, when I move on to my next city (Olympia, once more), THEN I’ll be able to re-do those edits and send in updated files and order my print run.
So, I guess this is just a status update, to say: in a week, I’m going to be able to make all the edits that I made half a week ago. And then I’ll be able to order the print run. And then I’ll be able to ship them out. And then I’ll be able to hold a book in my hands, smiling, and say, “I made this.”
Soon!
This is an entry in the solitaire game design challenge. It is meant to be played alone. It qualifies for these challenges: the stuff in your domicile; The schehezerade challenge; the sharing challenge.
Teen Witch
This is a game about being a teenage girl who is a witch. It is played all alone. It will help you find strength and beauty, but it is dangerous.
To play the game, you need:
•A candle, with a few hours of burn time
•More candles, in the future
•Something to annoint with: blood, paint, mud, wine, honey, else
•Simple, potent things: ginger, garlic, dried sage, bay leaves, salt, coriander, various powders and perfumes, spices, potpourri, essential oils, else
•Something to mark the floor with: paint, chalk, ash, permanent marker, blood, else
•If you don’t want to mark the floor, something to cover it with: a sheet, mats, cardboard, else
•A few simple containers: a bowl, a small drawstring bag, a wine glass, a shoebox, else
On Truth
There is an important truth about the world that must be understood and trusted if this game is to work.
That something is a fiction doesn’t make it any less real.
The Secret Place
In order to play Teen Witch, you need a secret place. It needs to be a place where no one can see you, and no one can hear you as long as you only whisper. It needs to be somewhere where you can light candles, mark the floor, and whisper secrets.
Your bedroom will likely work, unless you share your room and the person is home. The forest will work. A bathroom or storage locker or attic might work, too.
Before Playing
In order to play this game, you must be a teenage girl who is a witch. If you are not these things already, you must become them before playing.
If that task seems impossible, go back and re-read “On Truth.” You need to create this fiction and explore it until it becomes real.
If there are things you don’t know, about being a teenager or a girl or a witch, then you make it up and you explore it until it feels real.
Convincing yourself that you are a teenage girl witch will be tricky. Perhaps begin by walking slowly about your secret space. Notice how you place your heel when you step. Place it more tentatively. Now, more confidentally. Which one left you feeling closer to your goal? Good. Walk like that. Explore changes in your breathing, how you carry your shoulders, how your arms sway. Try licking your lips as a teenage girl might. Try licking your lips as a witch might.
The fiction doesn’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to convince yourself absolutely. It doesn’t need to be 100% real. As long as there’s some part of you that’s convinced that you might be a teenage witch, you can move on to play.
On Witchcraft
Before we move on to describing play, a mention must be made. We know, perfectly well, that magic doesn’t exist. We aren’t stupid. But this is one of those things – just because it’s a fiction doesn’t mean it’s not real.
To Play
Sit in your secret place. Be still. When you are ready, light your candle.
At no stage should you feel rushed or pushed to do something you don’t want to do. If the game feels weird or uncomfortable, first be still. Think about that feeling; hold on to it. Perhaps the feeling will pass over and through you and you can continue.
Lighting your candle lets the magic in. It will be weak and tentative at first, and you will want to coax it.
Over time, you might develop little rituals and incantations that coax the magic. At first, though, the key is simply to become familiar with the tools and the feeling of witchcraft. Try pouring some of your annointing fluid into a container – a bowl or glass, perhaps. Swish it about. Smell it. Put two fingers in it. Spill some onto the floor, and leave it there. Crush a few bay leaves, draw a small circle on the floor in front of you, else.
This gentle play will coax the magic in, and at the same time it will allow you to build a relationship with your ingredients and your secret place.
Take as long as you would like to. If you never move beyond the stage of experiencing your ingredients, this is okay.
Eventually, you may be ready for a spell. Spells are taxing work, and under normal conditions, you’ll only want to do one or two per session. It is essential that you believe your own fiction, before moving onto spells. If you don’t, then you should retreat back to earlier steps and spend more time in them – until the whole experience becomes palpable and real. If you have to keep going back to the first stage, where you become a teenage girl, then do that.
When it feels real, and you are ready, begin your spell.
There is one spell included with this game, located at the end, called Secret Beauty. When first learning to be a witch, start with Secret Beauty. If it doesn’t work the first time, try again in your next session, and again, until it does work.
Once you’ve succeeded at Secret Beauty, you are ready to try new spells.
Spells are very personal. They rely on logics that are developed and contained within your secret place. Remember when you took the time to learn and experience your ingredients?Think about the inner truths that you learned about those things. Did cardamom feel impossibly old? When you draw a circle very slowly, what do you suppose that means? I’ve used honey and interlocking triangles to forgive the dead, but that probably won’t work for you – you’ll need to utilize your own secret logics and your own lived ingredients.
Generally, annointing yourself will bring the spell inside of you in some way. Annointing the floor will bring the spell inside of the floor, else. Marking the floor will generally make some piece of the puzzle more tangible and manipulable. Playing with potent ingredients generally alters the substance and tone of a spell.
When you make a new spell, it’s a mixture of interpreting and deciding. You’re like a raft captain.
To do more than one spell under a single candle will strain the candle. Be careful about this – figure out how to keep the magic strong and the candle peaceful. If I plan to do more than one spell under a single candle, I take time to coax the magic between spells. I sprinkle cinnamon on the ground around me, and taste just a pinch of it. Cinnamon is used for appeasement and seduction, in my secret place. You’ll want to figure out your own logics for this sort of thing.
When you are finished whatever spells you are doing, thank your secret place. Don’t just whisper the word – touch the bowl you annointed yourself from, trace your fingers across any markings on the floor, experience your ingredients once more, chant, breathe deeply, be still, kiss your own wrists, else.
Then pack up and hide your tools.
More Candles
At the start of each new session, you may grant yourself a new candle. You don’t have to, but you may.
You may also bring with you new ingredients, new annointing fluids, new containers. You will, of course, need to learn to communicate with these things. When I got seriously into magic, I often found myself browsing the spice aisle in strange specialty grocers, buying things I’d never heard of. Don’t buy ingredients from magic shops, though. You’ll find them to be strained and bound, censored even. It’s like bringing an impertinent professor into your place of private study.
Back to candles, though. You may add one to your collection each session, if you wish. Don’t feel like you must, though – that is greed, and it will weaken your connection to the candles.
During play, you may light additional candles in order to welcome more magic into the room.
You may light additional candles for bravery.
You may light additional candles in order to do additional spells.
You may light additional candles in order to trap a spell or a thing inside of them. If you wish to bless a person, perhaps with Secret Beauty or with something else, then place the spell within the candle and blow it out. Give the candle to the person. If they light it, they will release the spell – if it works.
Sharing Witchcraft
There are two ways to learn to be a teen witch. The first is to read this book. The second is to have someone teach you.
If you want to teach someone to be a Teen Witch, the process is straightforward but hard. You must both be teenage girls. She must create a secret place and invite you into it. These steps are very hard! Remember this, and be patient. Perhaps wait outside the space while your friend becomes settled in their fiction – she can invite you in when she is ready.
You must present her with her first candle, and introduce her to her first ingredients. The process of becoming comfortable with her space and her ingredients will be doubly hard with you present. You will have to lead gently, at every step of the way. Be obvious in your demonstration – use elongated motions when you move, breathe deeply when you smell a spice, else. Make sure that she joins in, and does more than simply imitating you.
You will teach her the first spell – it can be Secret Beauty, or something you have discovered. Don’t try to impress your friend with fancy or dangerous spells – no conjuration or spirit channeling, else. Start with something comfortable, and trust that she’ll learn the rest in her own time.
Be especially sure to thank the space when you are done, for you were a trespasser upon it. Say blessings, be still, dust cinnamon, kiss the wrists of your host, else.
Future Sharing
You may feel the desire to do witchcraft with someone again, after teaching them. This is good, and allowed. Both of you should still gave sessions of Teen Witch on your own, at least from time to time. It’s important that your magic never be contingent on the will and whim of another.
On Attire
You might wonder what clothing is best suited to witchcraft. The first priority is that you feel comfortable and safe. To this end, sweatpants and a t-shirt are a good starting option. The second priority is that you feel like a beautiful teenage girl. To this end, fabrics which feel smooth and delicate can be good. Items which feel sexy to wear can be good also, so long as you feel safe and comfortable in them. If you are not actually a teenage girl, make sure that your attire makes the fiction seem more real and not less.
The third priority is that you wear what helps you do your magic and be a witch. To this end, you might want to explore little baubles and trinkets, items of black and purple, whatever you think adept witches wear.
If you are brave, maybe you will perform your magic in bare flesh. Only do this if it makes you feel comfortable and safe. Only do this if it makes you feel like a beautiful teenage girl. If you try it, you will likely find your magic to be quite potent and sexy. Personally, I felt a little startled and overloaded by the experience, and went back to clothes within two sessions.
Attire, like everything else, ultimately depends upon your secret logics and lived experiences. Experiment, session to session.
On Malicious Intent
You might wonder if magic can be used to do harm. Yes, it can.
However, listen closely to your ingredients. Pay attention to what your annointing fluid wants, when you place it upon your brow. You will quickly realize that most ingredients do not want to do harm. You could always force them to, but it would only distance you from them.
There are some ingredients, however, that do wish harm and malice upon the world. Cayenne is one of them. I personally don’t touch these ingredients, because I don’t want to be poisoned by them. You must ultimately make your own choices in this matter.
Secret Beauty
To begin, draw a wavy and crooked circle around yourself, on the floor. Annoint the circle, and then yourself. This establishes, in a way, that you are the circle.
Take the harshest ingredient you have. Use your judgment in determining which ingredient is the harshest, or what that even means. Crush some of that ingredient up, and toss it on the floor in front of you. If you have hate for yourself, expunge it now, as best you can.
Draw the circle again, a little more evenly. You are becoming more even, more true, more centered. Take the next harshest ingredient you have, and crush a little bit up. Scatter it. If you still have hate for yourself, expunge it now, as best you can.
Continue this process, until you circle is true and your ingredients are soft. With your hatred expunged, you will realize your secret beauty.
If it doesn’t work the first time, do not worry. You will have become more familiar with your ingredients, and will have expunged some hate. It will be easier when you try again, in future sessions. Eventually, the spell always works.
This is a truth spell and a healing spell.
Perfect, Unrevised is for sale. This is one of the most exciting announcements of my life. Folks can pick up the PDF for $10, and preorder the book for $22 + s&h.
This moment has been a long time coming. I’d like to share with you how I got here, and link you to some reviews and AP along the way.
In late 2005, I started reading The Forge. I participated in one or two little design contests, before stumbling upon my big RPG idea in early 2006. Imagine a game where your character sheet only told you about the things you can’t do? Imagine if play was about finding out how to work around that?
That idea in and of itself didn’t prove to be very exciting, but it did lead to Perfect. Impatient and seventeen, I rushed to design and release the game as soon as was humanly possible. I was at Gencon with the game in hand that very same year – about 6 months after my initial idea.
That’s, uh, a stupid way to design a game. In May of this year, I blogged about some of the lessons I learned in that experience.
I published the game, and was initially really excited about it. I heard some really lovely compliments from Paul Czege, who was my game design idol. Ron Edwards played it, and then played it some more. He encountered some glaring hiccups, but generally liked it. Malcolm Craig played it too. He encountered some glaring hiccups, but generally liked it.
Over time, the glaring hiccups came to occupy more and more of my mental real estate, and reports of people having “generally liked it” were less exciting. Some time in 2007, I pulled the game off the market. I was determined to refine it and re-release it once it had been, well, perfected.
I assume this process will take about three months. It takes over three years. The game receives about 100 playtests over this period, some led by me and some blind. I posted about one session here.
I almost abandoned the game several times, because the work of editing and refining turned out to be hard. Gasp! What a surprise!
It’s then that fans and supporters came out of the woodwork, to help push me to keep going. Gary Breinholt is one of those people. He playtested every iteration of the game I put out, for years, and always came back with critique and encouragement. I shared some of that process here, in 2008.
Finally, in the early Summer of 2010, I had something that felt complete, that told the kinds of stories I wanted it to, that was easy and compelling. Playtests started to soar. Feeling immensely confident – cocky even, I put the game up as a Kickstarter project, asking for $7,000 in funds to publish the game. I managed to raise an exciting $2,660… and am ultimately glad that I failed to raise more. The game design was done, but the physical product was still far from complete.
I worked with editor Josh Roby, who was fantastic. And then I spent months slaving away in inDesign. I learned a lot about graphic design in the process, predominantly that it is a much slower craft than you would think it is.
Come to think of it, I’ve learned something about all crafts: they take much longer than you’d think. Artistry isn’t something you can just vomit onto a page. It takes years of training, honing, doing, refining, re-examining, doubting, and trusting.
It’s been exciting to actually go through that process, and give every step its due attention. At the height of my wit, I named this second edition Perfect, Unrevised – a nod at the dystopian, history-erasing setting it exists within. But truth be told, this is the project that’s taught me the value of revising – the value of hard work.
I talk about some of the important mechanical changes here. The folks at the tremendously good Ninja Vs Pirates podcast explore the mechanics and the structure of the game, with me, here.
And now, finally, it’s ready. You can buy it if you want to. Wilper did, and he reviewed it the very next day. The review is really good and comprehensive, albeit short.
