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.
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?
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.
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.
Brian Peters asked me:
“Can you tell me some about what’s sweeter and tastier about this new edition [of Perfect]? Game-wise, I mean.”
Brian, I’d absolutely love to tell you about some of the changes I’ve made from the first edition book and the upcoming one. Right now, I’ll focus on two: I’ve changed how Aspects work, and I’ve added Holds.
In the first version, a large part of character creation was creating Aspects. You’d give them a name, and then spend time fiddling with balancing out levels and numbers and strategizing, all before knowing how the game played out or what your choices really meant. The system for building your Aspects was broken – there were a few winning combinations that you’d be silly not to take. Some of the decisions you were making at this pre-game stage (specifically, choosing Fallouts) would have mechanical significance that as a new player would be extremely hard to predict – Fallouts are dangerous across multiple rounds or even sessions of play, not so much in an immediate, concrete moment. Before play, Aspects were complicated and hard to get a grip on.
During play, Aspects were tedious. Since your only way to get ahead in the game was to constantly rely on your small number of Aspects, you are struggling to work “Scent of My Mother’s Perfume” and “Vicious Like a Caged Animal” into every single scene. So the system was leading you down a stale and contrived path.
That whole system has been cleaned up, in a major way. You have a Resources score. In a given scene, you decide what your Resources are in that scene, and invoke those numbers that way. During character creation, your choices are dead easy: you can have Resources 6, or you can have Resources 5 and take 2 points worth of Contacts (a slightly more volatile option). The named-traits-called-Aspects thing still exists, in a different role. You create 3 Aspects, which are phrases that demonstrate things you rely on: Sharp Wit, Flawless Liar, My Father Taught Me a Code, Unremarkable Face, etc. You can invoke 1 per cycle, for a re-roll (a BIG deal in Perfect). So, now almost all of the mechanical strategizing has been taking out of character creation, and getting started with the game takes about fifteen minutes less. Play is much more about manipulating immediate resources, and much less about rely on fallback strengths.
The other new thing is Holds. I saved it for last because it’s best. In the old version of Perfect, the inspectors were always after you, once you’d committed a crime. There were lots of chases and interrogations and invasive home searches, even when it didn’t fit a character’s narrative, because that’s how the game was structured.
There was no, “Jacob, you don’t know me. My name is Inspector Raleigh. I’ve been watching you for quite some time. I’m glad you managed to make it.”
There was no Inspector looming in the shadows, collecting evidence and building a repertoire of perfect emotional weapons, biding his time. And mechanically, there wasn’t any way for the antagonist to build up resources without just intentionally losing a bunch of times, which really weakened the authority of the inspectors! Now, when you’re the antagonist, you have two choices: do you attempt to capture the criminal, or do you establish a Hold?
Holds are things that will come back to haunt the protagonist character later. They come in two flavours: Minor Holds (evidence, witness testimonies, etc – things that help the antagonist win a test), and Major Holds (secret fears, emotional weaponry, hopes and dreams, the names of loved ones – things that both help the antagonist win a test, and double the stakes). Holds change the pacing of the game. They lend it “quiet, too quiet” moments, and then they bring the hammer down and smash everything to pieces.
Source material where Holds are ruthlessly accumulated and then dropped all at once: A Clockwork Orange. Source material where the antagonist is focused on constantly weedling down a character: Quills. Holds in A Clockwork Orange might be stuff like: He loved the music of Beethoven; “Singing in the Rain”.
So, those are two changes I’m really excited about with the new system. Mechanical resources that don’t require a lot of forehead-scratching during character creation, and that lend themselves to dynamic and fluid stories; and, a way for the antagonist to bide their time, to get their dirty little strings deeper into your head before they start tugging.
Hopefully that stuff excites you too!
I hate Facebook.
There’s lots of reasons to hate it, but I hate it for the reason that it is obtuse and sprawling. The worst part is that I used to love it. And back then, when we were starry-eyed for one another, I swear that it was a different creature altogether. I swear that it changed, more than I did.
This is going to get around to talking about story games in a minute, but give me time to bitch about Facebook first, okay? See, Facebook is now a mess of Walls, status updates, pages, groups, events, apps, social network games, ads, albums, chat windows and boxes. I have a hard time looking at a Facebook page and establishing a clear vision of what it’s supposed to do.
Facebook used to have a vision, right? College students and alumni could sign up with a college email, and then they’d be able to find their friends, write on walls, and view people’s pictures. It was a time magnet for people wanting to creep the hundreds of photos that their ex Courtney has up. Excellent. A simple and elegant social site. Now, it has traded in that vision for extra tools. It’s become a big, sprawling box of tools, something unwieldy.
Perhaps I’m weird, but I want everything in the world to have a clear and immediate purpose, to have a clear and immediate big picture. I don’t care if it’s important or not, I just want it to know what it is.
And now, I want to take a moment and share with you some of my favourite stuff on the internet, and unpack why it’s my favourite.
Twitter
Twitter is the perfect example of what I wish Facebook was comfortable being: a site with a clear role. A simple, single-purpose elegance. Twitter is a place where you can talk to yourself about what you’re doing, name-drop the people you’re hanging out with, and watch other people do the same. It’s like a perpetual, narcissistic chatroom. You can reply and retweet, follow people and whatever. Or not. You can just spit out little 140-character tidbits about what you are doing on your day off.
Now, Twitter is constantly adding new features, just like Facebook. So, how are they different? First of all, Twitter’s features are unobtuse and unobtrusive. Some (hashtags, @replies, new search options) are an increase in functionality without an increase in visible stuff. Others (lists, retweet button) are quiet & available, obvious in their purpose. In all cases, Twitter’s features increase functionality without detracting from core elegance, and reinforce what Twitter is supposed to be about: dropping little updates, and watching your friends do the same.
750Words
I’m absolutely in love with this site right now. It’s a beautiful middle-ground between Livejournal and Nanowrimo and Twitter. Here’s how it works: you log onto a private journal. Along the top of the page, there’s a very-sleek simple calendar showing you which days this month you’ve written and which you’ve missed. On the bottom of the page, there’s a word counter. Write until you have 750 words or more.
It’s inspired by an exercise called morning pages, wherein a writer starts their day by writing three pages. Usually journals and untidy thoughts. So, a really simple purpose. What does 750 Words bring to the table? Well, first of all, the main journaling page is simple and tidy. There are no distractions in your virtual workspace. The calendar along the top (just a series of thirty checkboxes, with completed days filled in) is a powerful, powerful motivator – seeing a skipped box isn’t fun, and there’s a drive to fill today’s. The real-time word count along the bottom is another powerful motivator. So, the main workspace is motivating and uncluttered, a perfect environment in which to write. It’s also accessible from anywhere, a bonus over real-world journals that you need to lug around with you if you want them handy.
But here’s the cool bit! Once you’ve hit your goal, click the little word count link. It takes you to an analysis page, which breaks down your words-per-minute, total time, number of distractions and total words written. It graphs that in comparison to your record best. And then it analyzes your post and tells you about your mood, your writing topics, and your common words. It’s not always right, but it’s a fun feature. FINALLY! You can earn badges for writing a certain number of days in a row (badges at 1, 3, 5, 10, 30, 100).
So, there are all these features. But, here’s the cool thing: they don’t cloud the site’s functionality. They support the core vision (daily writing and self analysis). The badges motivate, the analysis tools invite you to take a look at what you’re writing. Everything about the site supports its core vision, and every feature is unobtrusive and purposeful.
Canabalt
Perhaps the best video game I’ve ever played. Canabalt follows a man in a tuxedo, only a couple pixels tall, as he makes a “daring escape” from a crumbling city. He runs along rooftops automatically, and you click your one button to make him jump. Jump from rooftop to rooftop!
The game is super, super slick. Great music, great graphics, great pacing. And it’s simple: your only control is jump. He’ll run progressively faster and faster, and the only way to slow him down is to crash into some obstacles (there are crates and garbage cans scattered across these roofs). Some buildings are covered in cracks, and start collapsing the moment you land on them. Sometimes, you need to jump through a “window” and run through a building. Finally, there are two types of bombs: little ones, that land on top of a building and that you shouldn’t hit; big ones, that obliterate a building upon contact, that you need to jump on top of to make it through the level. There’s a “tweet your score” button, and you can tweet how many meters you ran before falling. That’s it. On the ipod version, you have two different soundtrack options.
So,
This all relates to story games and game design. You can already see how, right?
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Let this post act as a primer, for anyone who’s interested in story games. Too few people know what story games are. There is a huge wealth of amazing, creative, social people in the world. People I’d love to play games and tell stories with.
This post is an attempt to paint a picture for those people. If you’re one of them, welcome. Here’s this thing I do:
Stories are vital. They’re the reasons our hearts beat. They’re how we make sense of emotions, and fortunes, and the days of our lives. When we don’t take time to honor and cherish stories, we fall back upon only the necessary ones. The ones that help us cope, that reinforce our pre-made choices. We fall back upon the belabored and uncontested stories.
When we step outside of ourselves, and seek stories out on purpose, we hit a great diversity. There are things we hate, and love, and things that change us. We change some things in return. Exploring a story can fill us with awe. It can also be tiring.
Games are vital. They are playful, and engaging. They give us a chance to succeed, but also the freedom not to fret over our success. If you don’t win at a game, your life is still OK afterwards. When something takes the form of a game, it becomes instantly lighter and more playful.
So, marrying these two things, that’s a pretty obvious first step, right?
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This is the second post in a series I’m calling Design Diary, where I revisit past game design efforts and unpack some of the lessons that I’ve learned from them. The game in question this time around is cheap, which requires participants to dive headlong into a nightmarish world where they are trapped in someone else’s story, exploited by some unseen narrator. Only by noticing and exploiting the patterns and symbols of the narrator’s story can they ever earn a chance to take down their dark master.
It was a game about exploitation, victimization, manipulation, strangeness, absurdity, and revenge. And it had potential. It was messy and intense, but it had potential. But I crashed that potential into the ground, by trying to design cheap‘s reviews rather than cheap itself. Allow me to unpack that.
Design The Game, Not Its Reviews
I decided, pretty early on, that cheap was going to be a cutting edge game, an intense game, an avant garde game. I dreamed of its potential, and how it might be received. While I didn’t realize it at the time so much, I made bad design decisions in an attempt to manufacture those dreamed-of reviews. I didn’t make the design decisions that best expressed the game, or my goals for the game, or that achieved any certain effect on play. I made the design decisions that I thought would get excited, shocked, anxious reactions.
I dreamed of various bizarre distribution schemes for the game. One being that only those who had beaten the game and killed their narrator were allowed to learn the rules of the game. And, if they wanted to be “certified” to re-teach the game to others, they could pay a licensing fee to do so. Like, really bizarre ideas. 100% gimmick. Oh, context: you’re never told the rules of the game. You figure them out through playing.
To design a game from intended reaction upward… is to be self-indulgent, conceited, to disservice your game. Design the game, not its reviews.
That’s it, the one lesson learned from this one. The game has the potential to be awesome. All I have to do is stop trying to make it awesome, and start trying to actually make it.
