#44: Prep Games and Artifacts š
I. Dear Reader,
This week, Iām excited about worldbuilding games that result in artifacts that you can use in other RPGs. This is something that a lot of people associate with Microscope. Itās famous for being a game that you can use to build a world that you want to use for a longer-term or campaign game. And I think Microscope is great if youāre playing it with the people who are going to be in the campaign. But if youāre not - if youāre playing it with some other group - then itās not so great. Why? Because Microscope builds lore. Lore in a format that isnāt directly usable in play. You can find a way to make it game-able - but thatās extra work. Communicating all of that to players who werenāt there when it was made up? Not for me!
But compare that to iām sorry, did you say street magic, a game thatās based on Microscope but is used to build cities. I played a session of the game over the weekend and the output feels totally different from Microscope. In iām sorry, did you say street magic, you sketch out neighbourhoods, landmarks and people on notecards. And each of them usually has two levels of detail - the obvious, superficial one as well as āwhat they really areā. When I looked at the results of the game a few hours later, you know what the cards looked like to me? A GMās prep notes. It was locations, cool details, NPCs and plot hooks. It was uncanny! And Iām pretty confident that the game wasnāt designed with this mind! I highly recommend trying this and then telling me all about it.
It also made me think that map-making games do something like this as well. The map you make becomes an in-game artifact that you can just hand out to your players. Because itās in-game, it can be wrong in places - which to me, makes it even better! Maps are always wrong anyway!
Worldbuilding games can lead to really cool, unique settings. Theyāre great fun by themselves. But when they make it easy to take those settings and use them in other games? Thatās even better!
Yours synergistically,
Thomas
Weāre at Issue #44 now. Really feel like I should do something cool for Issue #50. Incentivize my musings by letting people know about this yellow button.
II. Media of the Week
At Freeplay, an Australian games festival, there was an excellent panel on comedy games. I really appreciate how the panelists minimized ludonarrative dissonance by being very funny the whole time.
III. Links of the Week
Obscure History: Distributing RPGs in Mexico in the 1980s and 90s.
Judd Karlman has a great follow-up blogpost about using bingo squares for XP. Iāve said it before and Iāll say it again: I love this idea and will be talking about it for years.
On Cannibal Halfling, some excellent advice for anyone who wants to try a new system but is pondering how they should go about it: āIn short, then, start with newer stuff, look for systems that complement what you want to do, and above all, know that thereās almost no downside to trying something new.ā
On the Gauntlet blog, a two part series on asking better questions as a GM. Lots of excellent advice that will work for story games of all flavours.
Luka Rejec has some good advice on coming up with names and systems of naming.
Sean McCoy, designer of Mothership, has some good advice on patterns that makes violence or combat more interesting.
IV. Small Ads
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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. Iām half-man, half-beast, half-journalist, half-game designer.
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