#97: Making Mysteries

I. Dear Reader,

I had a playtest last week of a mystery game I’m working on and I came out of it… well, relieved. It’s a game based on For The Queen. Which, for those who missed me blabbing about it earlier, is a game entirely consisting of taking turns, drawing cards, and answering prompts on the cards. There isn’t a GM, a setting or even a “plot” in the typical sense. As you answer prompts, you invent and discover the setting and your own characters. It’s super easy to learn. The resulting narrative is always interesting…but not particularly “story-shaped” if that makes sense.

But I like stories with shape in them, damnit!

So with my game, I wanted to see if a table could generate a particular story shape - a mystery - with basically the same mechanics (and maybe some gentle additions from Lovecraftesque). “Detective solving mystery” is a story shape that is so common and so well-known, right? So I was hoping that all I had to do was basically let my players know that was the genre of the game and they would answer questions in such a way as to make that happen. And yes, it basically worked. We got some real hard-boiled, noir-ish, weird fantasy, detective fiction.

Extremely table-dependant, of course. But I think that is true for any game based on For the Queen - or any prompt-based storygame for that matter. So nothing major to report. Sometimes you go into a playtest just hoping to see if something hangs together!

Yours relieved,

Thomas

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II. Listen of the Week

• Very tangentially related to RPGs but on the Ludology podcast, Aaron Reed talks about his new book on the last 50 years of text-based videogames.

• On the Gauntlet, Donogh (who I’ve had the pleasure of gaming with) runs a Learn How To Play Blades in the Dark session with a focus on playing and learning the mechanics.

  • Also a good time to link out to this popular playlist of videos that teach the mechanics of Blades.

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III. Links of the Week

• If you like random tables and want the crash course on all the different types to help you pick what’s right for you, check out Goblin Henchman’s Field Guide to Random Tables. It’s PWYW as well.

• Linda Codega lists 26 Tabletop Roleplaying Games by Queer Game Designers

• An article in LifeHacker (?!) about solo RPGs and how they can be fun actually

• Liber Ludorum collects a list of all the go-to recommendations for new designers looking to learn how to layout and publish their first game-book-PDF thing.

• It felt inevitable and it finally happened. BackerKit announces that they’re getting into crowdfunding. They were a very successful pledge manager but even more than that, they were the primary marketing engine behind all the biggest TTRPG kickstarters last year so I’m sure they’re going to succeed.

• John Battle launched a new tabletop gaming journalism site, Nerves, this week. Started as a print magazine, Nerves has a handful of lovely articles up already: a defense of power fantasies, why graphic design is like hiphop, and others!

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IV. Small Ads

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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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