#51: Token Games Are Not About Tokens
I. Dear Reader,
After four issues wandering the dark and proclaiming the good word of FitD, I think it’s time to take a break. That was July, this is August! So let’s talk about token games and how they’re not about tokens.
First of all, this is a provocative title but it’s not really a controversial statement. Are games with dice about dice? Nope. Dice are a toy that adds something to the game - specifically, they add randomness. (They also add other things but this is the main one.) What do tokens add?
The basic thing they do in most No Dice No Masters games like Sleepaway or Dream Askew is that they add “pacing”. Some actions can be done at any time. But other actions can only be done with tokens - which makes them rarer. Now, if you want a dramatic story, which ones should be “the player succeeds in an uncomplicated fashion”?
In July, I played about 3 sessions of Good Society, a Jane Austen inspired RPG. It’s a lovely game that uses tokens called “resolve tokens”. And you essentially trade them between players when you want other characters to do certain things (like trip and fall at an awkward time) or when you want to take narrative control of the world (like a thunderstorm breaks and everyone has to abandon the picnic). In our game, we didn’t end up using tokens much. You can totally play the entire game without even exchanging one. It works fine! In our case, it was because the players were more or less all interested in the same things so they didn’t need tokens to incentivize them. They were happy to trip and fall at all the awkward times.
So if tokens aren’t the defining feature of these games, what is? Everything else really. The poetry of the moves in No Dice No Masters. The structure of play in Good Society. The setting, the theme, basically everything else!
Yours tokenistically,
Thomas
PS. Also, a cool newsletter update! If you haven’t yet seen our new header, the Fate SRD is now sponsoring the Indie RPG Newsletter for the next 50 issues. I see it as a wonderful act of support as well as a vote of confidence in what I’m doing here in my little corner of the internet.
II. Listen of the Week
Villagesong is an RPG from Storybrewers, the designers of Good Society. It sounds really lovely and I really want to play it.
III. Links of the Week
Spelltoken Press is a new review site that looks at indie games between 15-30$. Their first review is Our Stormy Present, a Final Fantasy style ttrpg. And there’s a nice summary of their review ethos.
Fantastic article from Vincent Baker on some tricks for drafting moves for PbtA games.
On the Gauntlet blog, Lowell Francis writes up 36 challenges to sprinkle into your sci-fi heists. My favourite so far: “The target has a number of body doubles which are nearly impossible to distinguish from the real thing.”
Picaresque Roman is a Japanese indie RPG about gangsters where one player is always a traitor. It’s got stunning art from the original manga and is getting an English translation soon.
Cortex is building a digital toolset in the vein of D&D Beyond for Tales of Xadia, their Dragon Prince RPG.
A huge fan-sourced catalogue of LARPS that you can play online with every parameter you want listed out.
Downfall is a beautiful storygame and Ben Robbins is trying to figure out how to make last longer than one session.
Advice for those designing games based on For the Queen.
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.
BROKEN LUCK zine supplement for Troika! is live on Kickstarter. Be a Child God, a Cursed Fortune Teller, a Holy Beast, fight the Gods! 28 full-color pages of (un)godly madness.
In Two Summers, play the same characters as teenagers in the 1990s, living an unforgettable adventure, and as adults 30 years later, coming back to the same place!
Project Cassandra is a game of psychics trying to prevent an apocalyptic vision from coming to pass and stop the Cold War from turning Hot.
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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. I’m half-man, half-beast, half-journalist, half-game designer.
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