This post was originally sent to my email subscribers on June 1, 2024. It is being reposted here to create a more easily searchable archive.

Hello, my lovely owls! It’s been about a month since our last missive, and it has been a hectic month to be sure! In truth, I haven’t gotten as much done as I had hoped, just due to other factors requiring my time and attention (Nothing bad! But sometimes even good things take your time and attention away from what you want to be doing!). But let’s get into what has gotten done!

As an important opening note, the TTRPGs for Palestine bundle has launched! This is a charity bundle of games to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians – hundreds of games for just $10 going to a really good cause. I have a game in the bundle, as do many other designers! Please support this work, either by buying the bundle, or donating on your own. 

Project Updates

Blood of the Covenant

Last month, I talked a little bit about this game requiring a lot of rewriting, and knowing the shape that it needs to be, but not knowing how best to approach it. Well, I started working on the big rewrite just to try to get my bearings with it – I think sometimes it’s hard to get a sense of the scope of something until you’re IN it.

I started by rewriting the basic moves of the game, shifting them away from PbtA and into something new, with a little Blades in the Dark thrown in for good measure, because I felt that if I knew what the new version of moves looked like, I could write the rest of the system on that foundation. I ended up sending a sample of it over to a friend (hi Colin!) to see what he thought, just as a sanity check, like “does this make sense? Am I overthinking things?” And I’m so glad that I did, because that conversation ended up not only confirming that I’m on the right track, but also illuminating something new for me as well.

(As a sidebar, I just want to say that that’s happened SO often for me lately! I think I’m still chewing on something, turning it over in my brain, trying to find a conclusion or a point, and then I go to talk about it with a friend, and I suddenly see the point I’d been trying to reach. Nothing like a good chat with a friend!)

One of my concerns about my new move structure was that they’re somewhat rigid, moreso than either PbtA moves or FitD actions. But these are the actions of a paladin, a rigid type of character! Holy warriors belonging to a strict hierarchical order are rarely known for their flexibility, no? So embracing that allows me to make the moves relating to the other forces in the world – more chaotic things, like arcane relics and witches and the forces of nature – to stand out more in contrast by designing those to be looser and more flexible.

The other concern I’d had with this whole rewrite was that I was “being different for the sake of being different”, which is a tendency that irritates me about myself. So it’s not a bad thing to find a real justification, mechanics enforcing theme, to diverge from either established system. So that was a really pleasant realization and helps me have a clearer direction as I keep chipping away at it.

Rather Die Than Doubt

This is a game that I’d had noted down as a concept and a very very loose outline for a couple of years, but had never really put at the front of the line, because sometimes ideas need some time to ferment before they’re ready. It is a 3-player romantic tragedy game where you play as Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, in your doomed relationship, about how your duties keep you from following your heart, and how your relationship IS uniquely emblematic and tied to your duties to Camelot.

Recently, I saw the new sexy tennis movie Challengers, which also follows a rather messy relationship between a woman and the two men who love her, and it unexpectedly re-lit the fires on this game for me. Specifically, I think the character of Tashi Duncan, portrayed SO beautifully by Zendaya, really helped me find the solution to what I’ve been lovingly referring to as “the problem of Guinevere”. (The problem of Guinevere is that much of the literature about Arthuriana, and sometimes the legends themselves, are not especially interested in the inner life of Guinevere, compared to their interest in the mental and emotional states of Arthur and Lancelot)

I mentioned this briefly online and everyone I talked to about it seemed very into the idea, and I am nothing if not a sucker for positive feedback, so I’m moving this up closer to the front of the line and beginning more active work on it. This is also a convenient way to say that all the books about Arthuriana I’ve been reading for the past year or so (I’ve been on a real kick, I’ll get into it in the closing notes) is “research” now and not just me slowly driving myself insane.

Further Thoughts

The Price of Coal in Schools, and Edutainment

Strictly speaking, I didn’t set out to make an “edutainment” game when I made The Price of Coal, but when I hear about teachers using it in the classroom or it otherwise being used as a teaching tool (shoutout to the TWO Eagle Scout troops I know who’ve used it!), it means the world to me. I was recently so lucky as to be in the same Discord server with a teacher who was using it with his students, and he was able to tell me about how they engaged with it and how useful it was to frame perspectives for them, and it just completely filled my heart, it made my day, week, month, etc.

I think “edutainment” is kind of a dirty word in some circles; for me at least, it calls to mind poorly gamified class lessons or bad TV shows that are poorly-disguised PSAs (did you know that teen drama Degrassi started as a sincere edutainment show? Honestly it’s one of the things I love about it, but that’s an aside). When I say I didn’t make the game to be “edutainment” I mean that I don’t care if players retain simple facts from it. I did not set out to make it a “fun” way to memorize dates or names. So it’s easy for me to say I didn’t see it as an “edutainment” product.

But I did have an instructive aim with it. While I didn’t prioritize factual instruction, it is all based on real facts, and I did do significant factual research to write it. What I prioritized instead was an empathetic, moral instruction. I wanted people to imagine themselves in these terrible circumstances, and how they might react to it, how they might stand up for their values in the face of disaster, how they might learn to come together with their community rather than try to stand alone. 

I’m going to sound a bit like my father here, but it feels like “moral education” – or, you know, ethics – has gone out of fashion. It wasn’t required (it wasn’t even offered!) in my high school. My friends who went to non-secular schools typically received it only through religion-specific classes (I’m sure many others had different experiences, but I can only speak to what I know of). But I don’t think “religion” (any one of them, or the very concept as a whole) has a monopoly on teaching ethical behavior. Nor do I think it falls entirely on parents; ethical instruction is something that is practiced as a society, not an individual. And for that matter, nor do I think ethical instruction can be complete before you reach adulthood; it has to continue for your whole life.

When I talk about it like this, I always feel like I get really preachy (and here again, the language defaults to the religious!), but THIS is the area where I feel like games, particularly roleplaying games, have a lot to offer in an educational sphere. I am not interested in using games to teach people the dates of a sequence of events; I am exceptionally interested in using games to cultivate curiosity about other people and places, and how we ought to behave towards one another. 

In the recently released game Xenolanguage, from Thorny Games (who I admire tremendously and will likely talk about more in future newsletters), they included a really lovely little note, which included the phrase “To play is to rehearse. To try on new lives and make mistakes.” and I believe in that wholeheartedly (I wrote it down on the front page of my notebook, where I keep all kinds of little inspirational tidbits for my games work)! In this way, a lot of games can be instructive.

So maybe the word “edutainment” has some un-fun connotations, but I am a real believer in learning through play, and I want to make games that bring people to that point naturally, in a way that doesn’t feel like a chore or an awkward class assignment. So when actual educators have confirmed to me that I have succeeded in that, it means so much to me.

The Passive/Watcher-Player Discussion

A couple weeks ago, people noticed a Reddit post by an RPG player (and strictly, it’s key to note, a D&D player) who expressed his strong preference for D&D specifically because it allows him to take a passive role until he is specifically called upon to make an attack, or what have you, a game where he can be truly a watcher, soaking up the ambiance of the game 99% of the time. This sparked a couple days of discussion in all my various RPG spheres, as almost anything tends to do (by god do we love to talk, I say in the middle of my 3500 word newsletter).

I have been familiar with this player archetype for a long time, and frankly, I don’t want to summarize the whole discourse because it’s mostly not very interesting, even to me. What I do want to get into is one specific question that I found myself asking pretty much anyone who would listen and take the time to answer me. 

In the GMing advice sections of game books, and forums, and chat servers, a lot of hay is made about “sharing the spotlight”, and in my experience 99% of this is dealing with spotlight hogs, people who (usually inadvertently) make the game all about them and don’t share the spotlight with their fellow players. Lots and lots of advice about politely asking these types of players to step back and be quiet for a moment to allow others to have their moments to shine. Seems legit! With 15 years of experience, I am pretty comfortable with that!

What I kept digging at, what kept bothering me, is trying to figure out why it’s more acceptable culturally to ask a too-active player to do less, than it is to ask a too-passive player to do more. In general, the advice that exists about “watcher players” is to just let them do it. Not to ask them to do more. And I feel the need to insert here – I have no problem with this at, for example, home tables where a group of friends is playing a game, and maybe one friend is less into it but is going along with it because they want to oblige their friends. Cool, I get you. But I absolutely see these players at game store events and conventions too, and those I do not understand at all. Just to get that out there.

If you’re reading this hoping that I’ve come up with some kind of all-encompassing answer to why we can ask one but not the other, I’m afraid I don’t have that, much less a solution to it. But in talking to a lot of people, I got a few answers that all contribute to the phenomenon and I want to share those, because this was interesting to think about. I will also address here the idea that an over-active player ruins the experience of others, while an under-active player doesn’t ruin anyone’s experience: I don’t think that’s true. I think putting all the work on everyone else and being a passive consumer at the game table is generally impolite. It’s all take and no give. It’s not the end of the world, but, as I said, not nice. So, with that noted:

Firstly, there was a general vibe that players who are asked to do more are more likely to just quit the game group or stop showing up than players who are asked to do less. I do not know if this is true or not (I don’t think I’ve ever had a player quit for either reason, but I suppose I can’t say that definitively), but it’s definitely something multiple people thought would be true. Secondly, a feeling that a player “not doing enough” is more evident as a pattern over an extended period of time, while a player “doing too much” is more evident immediately, in the moment, and it’s easier to correct an immediate problem than it is to address one that’s maybe been going on for weeks. Fair enough, I do get that.

Thirdly, there was a feeling that as gaming is a leisure activity we’re all undertaking between our jobs and other duties, it’s okay to ask people to do less in a group leisure activity, but it’s not okay to ask people to do more, as that makes it less leisurely for them and more like “work”. I hear that. I will just again point back to my note that I still think it’s rude to expect others at the table to entertain you with THEIR leisure time, while you just sit and watch with yours. Like what would happen if everyone turned into a watcher-player? The game would fall apart!

Fourthly, and this is of course the least addressable problem, is that in a general Western cultural context, we perceive it as being “worse” to be too active or say too much, and “better” to be too passive or say too little. Western(/American/European/Christian/whatever) cultural taboos indicate that being too loud is a worse “crime” than being too quiet. So if a player is worried about being seen as too active, they will often overcorrect into being too passive. I would say that that is probably true, not that there is anything you or I can do about it (or even should do anything about it – neutral cultural values, and all that).

At any rate, like I said, I don’t think I reached a meaningful conclusion here, or found a solution for my own problem. As a GM, I have no issue gently asking a player to hold up for a second to let someone else talk, but I have yet to find a graceful polite way to say “hey, you’re not giving me a lot to work with here, I need a little bit more from you in order to make this happen.” (And maybe what I’ve just written is fine and I just need to practice it more) But it was an interesting few days of discussion, if nothing else, and it was a break from some of our more routine discursive topics.

The Games I’m Into

BFF! 

BFF! – Best Friends Forever is a really lovely cute game from Heart of the Deernicorn, which I have only gotten to play once (and that was almost 5 years ago now), which I have been really itching to play again. It’s a game about a group of tween and teen girl characters having these playful adventures and seeing how their friendships blossom and change over time. It’s a very sweet and funny game and it’s one that rings true to my past experiences as a tween girl.

One of the things I just love about this game is the charm bracelet mechanic. The game comes with these (cardboard, naturally) charm bracelet templates for each player, with a bunch of empty slots to place charms. Then there’s a big box of different charms, all kinds of things, and players swap and trade and gift charms to represent each other’s friendships. I love this both because charm bracelets were huge when I was about 10-12 years old (I treasured mine) but also because it’s so cleverly open to interpretation in terms of the charms themselves. Maybe I gave you the pizza charm because of the time we played games together at the pizza parlor, or because I love your cheesy sense of humor, or because we stick together through thick (crust) and thin (crust). 

Pun absolutely intended, but I find it very charming. I think often in games we kind of set up an established friendship between the player characters and just let that ride, but I love exploring how those friendships can develop over time.

Rapscallion

The full version of Rapscallion was recently crowdfunded by Magpie Games, but I had the pleasure of both playing and running the ashcan version (a kind of incomplete-but-playable early release edition), and I am simply itching for the final version. Rapscallion is a magical fantasy pirates game, very much inspired by things like Pirates of the Caribbean and Pirates of Dark Water. Pirates of the Caribbean was a massively formative influence on me; I have often said that Curse of the Black Pearl was the movie that made me love movies, and I very possibly will never get enough magic pirates in my life.

Many years ago now (although it doesn’t feel like it!), I ran the Savage Worlds 50 Fathoms plot point campaign, and I think it was both my most successful and most fun long-term RPG campaign that I’ve ever run. 50 Fathoms is similarly a magic pirates campaign setting, and it’s a delight, but I also feel like once I’ve run a campaign book once, I don’t know that I want to run it again. Obviously it would be different, with different players making different characters and different choices, but I still don’t think I’d want to, at least not for a longer time.

But that hasn’t stopped me from wanting to run a magic pirates game again. So I’ve been looking over the Rapscallion quickstart (updated with the crowdfunding campaign) and thinking what I could do with that, although it’s entirely possible that by the time I’d be able to run a new campaign for either of my game groups, that the full version would be out anyway. At any rate, I am always thinking about magic pirates, and having been on both sides of the GM screen for Rapscallion, I can say that even in its early version, it’s so good at filling that niche and really satisfying what I want from that kind of story. 

Closing Notes 

Last time my closing notes included some recommendations; here I feel like it’s a combined recommendation and warning. When I said earlier that I’ve been on an Arthuriana kick, I do not mean reading the tales themselves; I mean cultural criticism about them, and about romances in general (insofar as all romances derive from the first). I have, to put it charitably, given myself a complex about this. Because I’ve always loved knights and princesses and quests and the whole shebang, right? But sometimes you start to interrogate what some of that means, culturally and politically, and it raises questions about yourself, and you go looking for answers, but that only raises further questions, and before long you’ve accidentally read a whole class curriculum on the topic and you’re only starting to be able to answer anything at all.

So here’s three books that I’ve read recently, as well as the next one on my list, so maybe I can drive other people nuts with this too (at least I have a game project to channel it all into now).

Hollywood Knights: Arthurian Cinema and the Politics of Nostalgia by Susan Aronstein – this is the first one I read on the topic, and it’s a really fascinating dive into portrayals of Camelot and Arthuriana on film over the last century, and what those differing adaptations say about the time they were produced in and what those fantasies often represent. This is the one I hold most to blame for driving me crazy because it made me start to ask “oh my god am I secretly harboring conservative urges masked in a love of knights (strongmen with weapons enforcing unjust laws upon powerless peasants)” (spoiler: the answer is no).

Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature by Janice Radway – really really fascinating look at the origins of the modern “romance novel” and what purpose it serves for its target audience today (with the caveat that the book was written in 1984 and so there’s about 40 years of development after that that aren’t covered). Of course, at the time of Thomas Malory or Chretien de Troyes, the Arthurian romances WERE the “popular literature” of their day and endured much the same criticisms we have about romance novels now.

The Danger of Romance: Truth, Fantasy, and Arthurian Fictions by Karen Sullivan – this one really tied the other two together for me, as this is a look at how Arthurian fiction was criticized when it was being written and when it was being popularized, and when it fell out of and came back into favor at different points in time. By far the most reassuring of the three to me, when I was able to at least reach the point that the fantasy, in the modern era, isn’t about literally wanting divinely appointed kings, but is about being able to recognize good leadership when it comes from unexpected places, etc. It’s not that I’m harboring a secret-even-to-myself desire for strong men with weapons to enforce the law upon the land; the fantasy is representative of a general, common desire across all eras for people with power to be trusted to use it in defense of those without it.

The Once and Future Queen: Guinevere in Arthurian Legend by Nicole Evelina – this is the one I haven’t read yet, but it is on my list. I am very interested in digging into this, because I am still chewing on “the problem of Guinevere” as mentioned above, and how to portray her less one-dimensionally than other works often do. 

So I think that’s more than enough for this month! Thank you for reading and we’ll do this again next month!