#144: Helping Others Do The Thing

a follow-up tip

I. Dear Reader,

I. One of the games I’m in currently is a fortnightly game of Becky Annison's Bite Marks. It's a very cool RPG where you play a pack of werewolves with messy inter-personal dynamics and suchlike. I picked the Alpha playbook, which is exactly what it sounds like. The game mechanizes how the Alpha can order the pack around and how someone can challenge and usurp the Alpha. It's neat. But here's the thing: it's hard to "feel" like the Alpha by yourself. It requires other people to behave in certain ways.

In my game, there were two main instances where I felt most like an Alpha werewolf, like the leader of my pack. One was when the MC asked me to make a difficult decision on how best to protect the pack. Do I let one member drift away from the pack or do I put everyone in danger? Great stuff. The second instance was when another player leaped to protect me, drawing danger onto them because "they had to protect the Alpha".

II. Related to the recent post about Do The Thing, it's a great practice to constantly look for opportunities to setup other characters to do their thing. This apples to all sorts of games. If someone has ice powers, ask them to chill your drinks. If someone is really great at talking, get tongue-tied at wrong time so you need their help. But its particularly important when you're playing a game where all the times are interpersonal. If someone is playing the leader, ask them what you should do (and then do it while grumbling, chefs kiss). If someone is playing the newbie, throw them a chance to prove themselves.

III. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, the character creation process is a way of communicating what you want the game to be about. This is sometimes referred to as "flags", a term that already has a great article about it over on the Indie Game Reading Club.

I guess they're called flags because they're a signal. Usually, we talk them as signals for GMs but they're also signals for other players. Generally, the trend in storygame design has to take the stuff that is supposed to be mysterious and just making it explicit. Instead of keeping your desires secret and hoping everyone will read your mind, you just communicate your goals early: "I'm choosing the Alpha playbook because I want to be a weary leader who eventually finds someone else to take over." Oh, sweet. That's great. Now, other players can play toward that. Someone else's arc could potentially be about how they became the new Alpha. That means, they can start out being the most unlikely candidate and then slowly, transform into the person who becomes the Alpha. That sounds really narratively satisfying! And it isn’t as much planned as just flagged early so people can factor it into their play.

So yeah, to summarize, help others Do Their Thing and check this out this article about flags if you want more.

Back from vacation,

Thomas

PS. There was supposed to be an itch roundup for April which I missed. I’ll combine April and May together and might continue doing two months at a time in the future. Cheers.

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II. Media of the Week

Nothing this week!

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• We hit 50 patrons! Thanks for your support in keeping this newsletter going!

• If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.

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III. Links of the Week

• Another fun little post about building factions from the Deeper in the Game blog. Combines well with this one from earlier about faction leader personalities.

• On Skeleton Code Machine, a combat system based on bidding mechanics from the Rising Sun boardgame. I really like posts that are basically “how to steal a cool idea from boardgames” and need more of them!

• A nice guide to finding collaborators to work with on your game projects.

• The Goatsong blog continues its series on “designing for gamefeel” with a post about aesthetic distance i.e. immersion; “A large amount of distance creates a sense of separation between the player and the fictional world, leading to less attachment to their character and a greater ability to see the world as a fictional place that can be manipulated for the sake of play. A small amount of distance creates a greater sense of player-avatar identification, and can result in much more emotionally intense play.”

• On Polygon, Lindsay Eanet speaks to designers of games that are solarpunk or other hopeful genres.

• On the Wyrd Science newsletter, an interview with Zach Cox about Inevitable, an Arthurian Western RPG, and Soul Muppet Publishing.

• Gabo Kerr tries to analyse his game, Velouria, using the Elements of TTRPGs that I linked to earlier and the results are interesting.

• UK-based publisher Rebellion has purchased the license to Tunnels and Trolls, one of the oldest RPGs and promises an updated edition.

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IV. Small Ads

All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.

• Become one of the Tafts as they scour the foreboding Appalachia mountains for their missing father in this dark journey of discovery. Of Sorrow and Clay, a Miskatonic Repository Scenario.

• Play both witch & familiar in Witches of Midnight, an urban fantasy TTRPG where you change the world with reality bending wyld magic. Simple FitD mechanics & versatile magic system. Unleash your inner witch!

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

• Honor + Intrigue, a game of swashbuckling action.

• Iron Kingdoms, a 5e-compatible setting of industrial fantasy.

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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!