Happy Gregorian New Year! It’s hard to believe that we’re halfway through January already. Here’s what I’ve been up to this past month:
Estate of Play
At the end of 2023, I re-released my first solo game, Estate of Play, with a new logo, illustrations, and layout by Ennio. Ennio was wonderful to work with–he executed the visual vision skillfully while putting his own spin where it was most needed. Estate of Play is a murder mystery game where you play as a probate lawyer facilitating a world-spanning competition to determine the heir of your client’s fortune…all the while trying to determine which one of the contestants murdered your client. It’s The Westing Game meets The Amazing Race. Purchase a PDF of my game on my itch.io page, or wait to purchase a print copy soon on IPR!
Designer Spotlight: FMB
Kelly M. Tran and I participated in the latest Designer Spotlight, hosted by Valiant Dorian. Val gave an insightful interview where we discussed our TTRPG background, design philosophy, and goals for Fetch My Blade. This was the first time I’ve been interviewed about my game design, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk about the design choices we made for the game. It makes me all the more proud of the final product.
Furthermore, Fetch My Blade sold out of its first print run! That means 150 people bought a print copy of the game. That’s probably the most purchases of a game I’ve released up to this point. A second print run (with print issues addressed since the first print run) just arrived at IPR, so the game will be available for purchase once again shortly on IPR.
You can watch the Designer Spotlight interview on Youtube.
Showcase Zero
Playtest Zero is a discord community that hosts playtest sessions every fortnight on Tuesdays at 8 pm (GMT +8) and on Thursdays 9 pm (Eastern Time). Folks bring their games in whatever stage of development (the unofficial motto is “no draft too rough”) and playtest their games in 1-hour increments. I found out about this community from its organizer, Aaron Lim, at Big Bad Con 2022. This incredibly welcoming community has been instrumental in my growth as a game designer.
In January, the Playtest Zero community hosts Showcase Zero, where members of the community give short presentations on one of the games they playtested the previous year, and the lessons they learned through the experience. I gave a presentation on one of my in-development games, Drawn from the Wellspring, and how I tried to achieve a ludonarratively resonant resolution mechanic. Drawn from the Wellspring, and other games that were playtested as part of Playtest Zero, are available for purchase on itch.io as part of the Showcase Zero bundle for the rest of January. I highly recommend checking out these awesome games made by amazing designers.
PREQUEL
Development of PREQUEL continues! I decided to seek a collaborator for this game and am working with James Quigley as a co-designer. James expressed interest in and enthusiasm for the themes of the game back when I was first writing development diaries for Prequel. This is my first time working closely with someone else in developing a game from the ground up and I’m looking forward to seeing how our collaboration enhances the creation process. We just had our first development meeting and aim to hash out the structure of character creation and the one-shot session structure by next month.
Resolution Mechanic: The Chain
During the last week of 2023, I was struck with inspiration for a new resolution mechanic for a combo-based TTRPG that emphasizes working with your group and building upon the actions and results of your teammates. I’ve been developing this game for the past few weeks and I’m excited with the possibilities. As part of Prismatic Wasteland’s New (Year’s) Resolution Mechanic Blog Challenge, I thought I would share the basics of my resolution mechanic: The Chain.
The Chain is designed to resolve Trials in which all characters are participating (or have to participate). A Trial is an entire scene, so this resolution mechanic not only resolves single actions, but resolves the entire scene as well. This is similar to the contest-based Paragon system by John Harper and Sean Nittner.
The GM announces the Target Number of the Trial. The Total Contribution of the Chain must meet or exceed this Target Number to be successful. The first character contributes to the Chain by rolling a dice pool of up to three dice of any combination of d6, d8, d10. Pick one of the numbers rolled as the result, and this result becomes the Contribution and the Initiative of the action. The first character always succeeds in their action. The Chain begins.
The second character then assembles their dice pool, again picking one of the numbers rolled as the result, which in turn is the Contribution and the Initiative of the action. The action is only successful if the Initiative of this action is equal to or greater than the Initiative of the previous action, thus signifying that this action is building with or upon the previous action. The action fails if the Initiative is lower than the previous action, you don’t add this action’s Contribution to the Total Contribution, and the entire group suffers a consequence. On a success, this action’s Contribution is added to the previous Contributions to make up the Total Contribution. The Initiative then becomes this successful action’s Initiative such that the next action needs to meet or beat this number to be successful. You keep going until an action fails or no one else wants to contribute an action, building up the Total Contribution while the Initiative gets higher. The Chain ends either voluntarily when no more actions are contributed, or involuntarily on the first occurrence of a failed action.
Once the Chain ends, the group compares the Total Contribution against the Target Number of the Trial. If the Total Contribution meets or beats the Target Number, the Trial as a whole is a success. In this way, you have four end result states:
- Chain ends voluntarily (no consequences) / trial a success (you get what you want),
- Chain ends voluntarily (no consequences) / trial ends in failure (you don’t get what you want)
- Chain ends involuntarily (suffer consequences) / trial a success (you get what you want)
- Chain ends involuntarily (suffer consequence) / trial ends in failure (you don’t get what you want)
The goal of this mechanic is to lean into the idea of building upon the actions of others, and having the characters win and lose as a team. It also creates this “momentum building” effect where each successive successful action is more effective (i.e, higher Contribution) than the previous action such that a successful Trial culminates in this “finishing blow.” It also introduces group dynamics, such as determining who gets to go first, who gets to go next, and who gets the blame for causing the group to fail. The game I’m working on expands on these concepts, as well as incentives for being the last successful action (the highest contribution) so that the push-pull of working together is emphasized. I plan on sharing more about this game in the coming months!
Looking Ahead
In the next month, I’m planning on making further progress on PREQUEL and this Chain mechanic game, as well as working on some small contributions for a few collaborative projects. My main goal for the 2024 is to release at least one multiplayer TTRPG. This will likely take considerably longer to develop and playtest (playtesting multiplayer games runs into similar problems as playing multiplayer games…mainly…scheduling), but I’m excited to delve into the process at my own pace.