jburneko

[jburneko]

It's amazing how many RPG "design problems" go away when you assume that the game is going to be played by curious adults who care about each other and have all their own tools (yes, even the neurodivergent ones) for managing their social context.

[jburneko]

Haunted: The Book Was Too Long

Between 2011 and 2020 I had played numerous Haunted games and made numerous tweaks to its rules. Nothing I did seemed to solve the problem of the murderer either dying, going mad or ending up in prison most of the time. I had begun to accept that maybe that's just how the game functioned. Those endings aren't necessarily unsatisfying. I just had hoped that I'd see at least one or two "he got away with it" stories in that time. So, I decided it was time to turn toward publishing it.

Many things had started to inform Haunted's form factor. Apocalypse World had gained a lot of cultural ground. I had experimented with presenting The Ghost, The Murderer and The Supporting Character in a "playbook" format with explicit principles to play those roles well and a rules summary from each role's perspective.

I had also started taking the courses offered at Adept Play The content of those courses would end up shaping Haunted's future more than I knew at the time. One thing I took away from those courses is that having too many places in a design where things are left to open collaboration or "group consensus" leads to murky play. It's instead much stronger to assign clear authorities over select game content and then assume the group is a bunch of functioning adults who are capable of having a conversation and that the person with the appointed authority isn't going to act like a dictatorial monster. If you're interested in this subject, I recommend this recorded workshop: In/Over

I went through the haunted rules and any place where I had "the group" make a decision I clearly appointed a specific player for making the decision and clarified any constraints on their choices. The ghost selects the setting. The murderer frames scenes unless specifically yielding to a supporting character player. The supporting character players makes certain alterations to the characters they're current playing. The murderer decides when the game ends.

Another take away from those classes was that a book can not be an instruction manual, a teaching guide and reference text all at the same time. So, I decided to divide Haunted's text into three parts. The first part was raw instruction with a detailed running example of each and every step of play. The second section was the teaching guide comprised of a set of deep dive essays on each role in the game including a section for whoever was facilitating the game. And the last section was a set of bullet point reference material for the rules. This is where my "playbooks" went, as well as a couple of "quick start" setups for play.

The resulting text was rather long and I even had an editing pass done on it by a friend of mine. I was convinced I was going to publish Haunted near the end of 2021. And then I had an epiphany and I decided to junk it. I'll tell you all about that in my next post.

Haunted will be released by Halloween 2025. There will be a short Kickstarter prior to that which you can follow here to be notified when it launches: Haunted on Kickstarter

[jburneko]

I have a lot of respect for the people behind Eureka RPG. They have their heads screwed on right about how play operates. (There's one or two places where I think perhaps they're overcompensating for some problems with wider RPG culture, but whatever, those are minor).

If you were to ask me why I play RPGs I'm actually going to talk a lot about story and characters. I'm in it "for the story" but I realized that I don't think I mean the same thing as other people who say the same thing.

Here's my hottest take: I think mass media has really fucked up our ability think about, enjoy and even create stories. Mass media has one purpose: keep you hooked for the next thing.

How much of television fandom is all about speculating about the future? The next episode? The season arc? Predicting "the twists". Identifying "the big bad". Like when was the last time a television fan just went on about one great scene or moment in the episode they just watched. Franchise movies are exactly the same now. The exist primarily to setup the next one, or the spin off. They've imported serial media fandom into the cinema. Novels aren't much better. Go read Big Fiction by Dan Sinykin if you want to understand the homogenization and commodification of literature.

The point is, we've adopted and overly structuralist idea about storytelling. "Acts", "Genre" "Tropes" "Beats" "Reveals" these are all structural assumptions that we assume "must be" arranged in a particular way or it isn't really a story.

We've trained ourselves to look for story everywhere but the present moment. We look forward, "Where is this going?" We look backward, "What is the lore?" We look at the container, "What genre is this?" We conform to expectations instilled by our consumerist culture. Our minds are never on what we are doing.

You don't need to "architect" or "manage" a story if (a) what is happening right now is compelling in an identifiably authentic human terms and (b) the next moment is constructed from the consequences of the current moment.

A scene/encounter/obstacle/whatever-you-want-to-call it can be incredibly dynamic but it's all just sound and fury if the next scene/encounter/obstacle/whatever-you-want-to-call it is fixed in content. If we're just moving from fixed-encounter-to-fixed encounter (even if there's some branching in there) it doesn't matter how dynamic the individual encounters are, they're just performative.

The game must exist and be played in "the now" and the future must be contingent on the outcome of "the now". If each "now" is compelling and follows from the previous "now" the result is a story. That's why rules can never "get in the way of the story". Rules simply constrain the textural dynamics of play.

When the situation is compelling, all possible outcomes of that situation are also compelling. And if that's not the case then here's my hotter take: I suspect that you're dealing with shallow trope-y content that derives most of its value from its conformity to anticipations and expectations. If the rules undermine those expectations then the content is "ruined".

I don't care if our story is a structural mess from a consumer product perspective. We're folk artists, not a corporate mass media writers room.

everyone has somehow got it in their head that the purpose of a TTRPG is to produce a conventionally satisfying novel-like narrative instead of being a game

[jburneko]

Natasha Lyonne is a comedic national treasure. Natasha Lyonne doing distaff Colombo in Poker Face is a gift we do not deserve, and yet, there it is. Enjoy it while you can.

Poker Face really feels like the sort of show that people on this website would go crazy for and yet I feel like no one on here cares about it, like Natasha Lyonne as a Colombo-style nomadic detective with a borderline supernatural ability to tell when someone’s lying who calls herself a “grown ass man” and “just some guy”, a murder of the week style plot and weekly episode releases as opposed to the entire season dropping at once, created by the same guy who made Knives Out and potentially even takes place in the same universe considering the main character appeared in Glass Onion, and a colorful, 70s aesthetic YALL GOTTA GET ON THIS SHIT

[jburneko]

Bloodthorn Press Back Stock

I have put the remaining print copies of Love Songs of the Death Goddess on sale here: Bloodthorn Press Store: Love Songs of the Death Goddess

Also, I do still have a few print copies of Unchained Mysteries left: Bloodthorn Press Store: Unchained Mysteries

[jburneko]

This is weirdly relevant to something I'm planning on writing about concerning my game Haunted. If you've been reading my posts about it, you'll notice I keep bringing up this issue of how 99% of Haunted games end badly, like really badly, for the murderer. It took me a while to realize it wasn't (entirely) about the game's design. It was about the people playing it. I think it would be wise for all of us to consider these questions, but more importantly what it means to enact the answers in practice.

Questions I think to myself a lot when confronted with certain kinds of Online Posting:

Do you want a better world, or do you want revenge on those you think aren’t doing enough to improve it?

Do you want a more just world, or do you want to see bad people suffer merciless punishment?

Do you want a less oppressive world, or do you want the reins of power for yourself?

Do you want to do the right thing, or do you want to feel righteous?

[jburneko]

Everyone has gotta stop treating TTRPGs like there's this dial between "rules" and/or "combat" and "narrative" and/or "roleplaying" and as one goes up the other must go down.

[jburneko]

I am an artist. I am broke. Every single month.

I love what I do. But as a self published artist and game designer I don't make very much money. Like, almost nothing. I live in a single room I rent from friends. My brother and I have to rent a studio space for our business because neither of us have room to work at home. Every month starts with me paying about half my total monthly income to cover my business expenses. If I'm lucky, over the month we'll sell enough books/PDFs that I can recover that, which then means I can pay rent, groceries, medication and utilities.

Many months we don't sell enough books, so I end up doing commissions or some illustrators to make up the difference. This will add 10 or more hours to my 70 to 80 hour work week.

Most months I walk to work about half the time to save money, instead of taking the bus.

Money is always tight. That's just how it is when you're an artist. I've been making free Modest Medusa comics every week for almost 15 years. I have a Patreon you can support. I have books you can buy. I'd really appreciate it.

My brother Nick and I have been working on our game The Magical Land of Yeld for half a decade. You can buy the book or PDFs. We release new content for the game every month.

I'm used to not having much income. And I'm lucky to have the support I do have! I wish I made more money creating my art, but I'm not going to stop making my art. I cant. There's no version of life where that happens. Sometimes I do have good months! Sometimes I get to take our game or my comic to a convention and make a few hundred extra bucks. When I have a good month, I buy things I need (or want). I pay bills and put money into our business. There's never anything left over. I don't have savings. That's fine! Being poor is part of the whole thing. What I do makes me so happy, and its all I care about. I'm never NOT going to work 70-80 hours every week making art, even if it generates no money at all. But life is SO MUCH EASIER when my art does bring in some money.

If you like what I do, if you've enjoyed my comics and games, I could use your support. I'd really appreciate it. You'd be helping out an artist who spends every day working hard. Sharing this post helps too! - J My Patreon Modest Medusa Store Yeld Store Yeld on Drivethru Yeld on itch Yeld Patreon Ko-fi

[jburneko]

Some friends and co-workers of mine have a fan-show of their own D&D game it is delightful:

https://open.spotify.com/show/04mgpXevqjreBB7JJQXSN2?si=02e194bb904a41a1

[jburneko]

If what was holding you back from purchasing a copy of The Extraordinarily Horrible Children of Raven's Hollow was that it did not come in an encompassing box for both rules and deck then I have news for you: The Extraordinarily Horrible Children of Raven's Hollow (GameCrafter POD). It's stupid expensive and I almost can not in good conscience urge you to get it (the DriveThru POD version is vastly cheaper) but if you must have a box and feel like splurging, who am I to deny you?

(I make the exact same amount of money on either copy).

[jburneko]

Haunted: Hollywood Hijinx

I spent a long time tinkering with various mechanisms in Haunted. One mechanic that got revised a lot was how the ghost helping the murderer and regenerating influence worked. A design goal from the beginning was that I wanted the murderer to be more effective if he gave in to the ghost's demands. So, for a while, the ghost gained influence whenever the murderer acted on their advice and the ghost could hand their influence as bonus dice to the murderer whenever they wanted. This ultimately was not the final form of this procedure, but I believe it's the construction the game I want to write about today was played under.

The murderer was a movie director who killed the producer on his current film. The murderer's ambition was simply to complete the movie according to his vision. The producer had been having an affair with a young starlette and had forced the director to put her in the movie. The producer's unfinished business was that he had never made things right with his wife.

What this meant in practice was that the murderer had leverage over the ghost. He could threaten to expose the ghost's affair to his still living wife thereby forever ruining her memory of him. Of course the young starlette was around and fully expected to still be in the film. The producer's wife, of course, had an interest in seeing that her late husband's final film was a success.

You can see how this feels more like the setup to a comedy than a horror story. Indeed, it played a bit like a buddy-flick between the murderer and ghost. There were so many awkward scenes involving the starlette and the wife. And, of course, everyone's vying for control of the movie production. It was pretty hysterical.

This game was when I began to suspect that Haunted wasn't a single session game anymore. We were playing at a convention and we didn't really reach a conclusion by the end of the slot. We just kind of mused about an potential epilogue. It was the first time I'd seen the murderer come close to achieving their ambition and actually get a little help from the ghost along the way.

Sometimes, I tell people about this game and they ask me if I think I need to change something about the design. They seem to think that this game was out of scope for what the game is about. Absolutely not! I was pleased to see the game express some range in subject matter and tone. I hold this game as one of Haunted's great successes, second only to the original play session.

I started honestly thinking about Haunted's final form in 2020 and next time I'll post about the dangers of over-writing role-playing games.

Haunted will be released by Halloween 2025. There will be a short Kickstarter prior to that which you can follow here to be notified when it launches: Haunted on Kickstarter.

[jburneko]

I'm begging anyone who thinks they know what "PbtA" is to please go back and read original Apocalypse World and consider it deeply in isolation from whatever "PbtA" design culture has become.

[jburneko]

Artist: Jeff Himmeleman

Book: "Kingdom of Nothing" (2011)

Gameline: "Kingdom of Nothing"

Publisher: Galileo Game

[jburneko]

IYKYK

Real roleplaying has never been tried

[jburneko]

Bloodthorn Press Back Stock

I have put the remaining print copies of Love Songs of the Death Goddess on sale here: Bloodthorn Press Store: Love Songs of the Death Goddess

Also, I do still have a few print copies of Unchained Mysteries left: Bloodthorn Press Store: Unchained Mysteries

[jburneko]

I don't know if representing community copies with pitchforks and torches iconography is a good idea... but I certainly find it a funny one.

[jburneko]

no artist can ever make anything as relatable as edward gorey drawing a shrewd little man looking out upon a barren ass landscape & the only caption he chose to describe this intensely bizarre scene is “hoo.”