| [Do] Origin Sketches |
[16 Jul 2009|11:09am] |
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Liz Hooper sent me some initial sketches for the Origins and Departures archetypes. These are the Believer and the Noble.
What she considers early sketches I consider pretty polished illustrations. :P
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| [Do] Revised Character Creation Swimlane (Flickr Pro!) |
[16 Jul 2009|09:09am] |
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Got a Flickr Pro account so now I can post some larger JPEGs when necessary, such as with these layouts.
Here's the old swimlane, with all the additional fluff of an example of play. Lesson: When you try to sprinkle an example of play into an overview of play, you do neither very well.
And here's the revised version, with all the example-stuff stripped out to focus exclusively on an overview of play. Doing so allowed it to fit on one page, thankfully.
Also moved it up to the opening page spread, where it was more relevant than the "stuff you need to play" spread.
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| [Do] Archipela-Do: Resolution |
[15 Jul 2009|07:27am] |
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[This post is part of a series examining Archipelago 2 and what parts of that game might help solve some issues in Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. Previously: Ritual Phrases, Destiny Points, Ownership]
Resolution
Archipelago: The resolution cards randomly resolve situations in a variety of "Yes, but..." and "No, and..." interpretive statements, for example...
- Yes, but… The character succeeds, but something completely unrelated goes wrong, for the character or someone she cares about.
- Yes, but only if… The character can get what she wants – but only if she chooses to make a certain sacrifice.
- Yes, and… The character succeeds, and achieves more than she expected.
In addition, Fate cards add little wrinkles to the story that involve the element of the story that you own. For example...
- Somebody important to this character faces dire trouble because of the element you own – life-threatening illness, bankruptcy, doubt in their faith or similar.
- The element you own is interfering with this character's desires, wishes or needs.
- Something important is stolen from this character by someone connected to the element you own.
Do: Do focuses heavily on the "Yes" outcomes that are listed in Archipelago, to the exclusion of the few "No" outcomes. That's something I staked in the ground really early in the game and something I will stick to. This game is not about success or failure.
I haven't explicitly broken out these resolutions in Archipelago's terms before. I've just kinda said "You succeed, now describe that success." and "Now the troublemakers describe how it causes another trouble." or "No new troubles are created. In fact, you get to resolve an additional trouble!" but nothing really helpful to give tools or context. Right now, all narrative options are available all at once.
What the resolution cards and fate cards do well is define some creative constraints. Instead of cards, I think I can make the game board do these things. This is what the board says right now.
As you can see, the board pretty much only focuses on telling you when you do or do not cause more trouble, gradually making the latter more likely as you move along the board.
If I added some of these Archipelago resolutions and fates to the board's outcomes, then things get much more interesting. Then you get to choose between two flavors of resolution.
Something more like this
[Level 3]
Depending on the size of your Grace Set, do one of the following:
ø: ✔ Troublemakers tell a story: The pilgrim succeeds, but something completely unrelated goes wrong for the someone she cares about. That person faces dire trouble because of the element the player owns. This trouble incorporates the first symbol on the letter.
✔ The storyteller writes down this trouble on a new trouble card and adds !!.
○ or ●: ✔ The Storyteller tells a story: The pilgrim gets what she wants – but only by breaking a bond to the pilgrim belonging to the player on her left.
○○ or ●● : ✔ Troublemakers tell a story: The pilgrim succeeds,
and achieves more than she expected. Perhaps even a bit too much. This trouble incorporates the second symbol on the letter.
✔ The storyteller writes down this trouble on a new trouble card and adds !!!.
○○○ or ●●● : ✔ The Storyteller tells a story: The pilgrim gets what she wants – but only by changing a bond to the pilgrim belonging to the player on her right.
The "symbols" mentioned up there refer to the symbols stamped onto each letter that represent the kind of troubles you'll find on that world. Romance, politics, violence, natural, etc.
So let's say you're playing Do. Your group has made it to the third space of the board, as noted in the example above. If you were to draw ○○●, then your choice is to either succeed and in doing so change a Bond, or succeed and in doing so cause more trouble. By my count, that takes two whole steps out of the gameplay procedure and speeds up the game significantly. (Previously, you had to choose to break a Bond before resolving a trouble, an option that was tough to remember when you had so much other stuff going on.)
I'd just like to take a moment and thank Remi Treuer for pointing Archipelago to me. It's given me a lot to think about, even if I've misread a whole bunch of the game. :P
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| [Do] Archipela-Do: Ownership |
[14 Jul 2009|07:06am] |
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[This post is part of a series examining Archipelago 2 and what parts of that game might help solve some issues in Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. Previously: Ritual Phrases, Destiny Points]
Ownership
Archipelago: Ownership is pretty cool. Each player controls some aspect of the setting and has veto power over any player's narration when it involves that element. For example, if you control Geography, you can add descriptions of the physical space in a scene, interpret aspects of the geography when they come up in Fate Cards, etc.
Do: I'm uncomfortable with "Veto" rules in games. They've always felt too ephemeral and capricious to me. Maybe it's just my board game experience talking there, but it makes the enjoyment of the game way too dependent on the players. I'd rather write a setting clearly enough that everyone knows the kind of story that will be told. And I would rather design a system actively, concretely encourages that kind of story. It may not work, but at least I'll know I've tried instead of just being able to blame it on a bad group.
There are a couple options that I might be able to work in Ownership, though.
Option 1: I can tie that to the Worldly Name. If you were to say "My worldly name means 'The storms bursting on the shore.'" That means you can incorporate storms, shores, and bursting into the story.
The problem is that worldly names don't communicate ownership as clearly as the flowery metaphorical temple name. Also, it might be loading too much information into one stat.
Option 2: Each letter might have elements of that world that are up for ownership. At the beginning of the session, each player takes ownership of one element, incorporating it into resolutions and troubles.
For example, in "Swallowed Whole," Melanie the letter-writer conveniently lists a handful of elements of the setting.
Dear Monk(s)
Hi how are you! My name is Melanie. I come from a very small planet.
There is me, my house, my cat, and two trees (see drawing).
I am not so good, because my planet has been eaten by a whale.
It is a very small planet. I woke up and I was inside a whale. I don't want to get (more) eaten.
Please help!
your freind
Melanie (age 8)
P.S. Drawing is on the other side.
P.P.S. I will make you cookies.
I could list the following elements in a sidebar, just as I'd been planning on doing:
- The Whale
- The House
- Melanie
- The Cat
- The Trees
At the beginning of a session, each player picks which elements they want to own this session. If I make things very, very strict, I can even say "No secondary characters may be introduced except those owned by a player." That automatically conserves characters and focuses the cast tightly on the pilgrims and a handful of worldly folks who put them into troublesome situations.
When we playtested this letter at Dreamation, it got super-duper gonzo after someone introduced a pygmy village living inside the whale's blowhole. Was it silly and fun? Yeah, but it was also unfocused and didn't really allow for a natural conclusion to events.
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| [Do] First stab at a swim lane flow chart. |
[14 Jul 2009|06:56am] |
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PDF: www.danielsolis.com/Do-Overview.pdf
My first attempt at doing a swim lane flowchart. I wanted it to look a little more organized than the chart in the original post, but that's tough when the second half of the process involves so much cross-collaboration between players in different combinations. I thought using photos would help, but I wonder if it just makes things cluttered.
Folks in this thread are making me think a swim lane flow chart may not be necessary for character creation since so much of it becomes redundant in the first half. Also, that I should reserve the photos for the examples of play as I'd originally planned.
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| [Do] Swimlane Flowcharts |
[13 Jul 2009|10:55am] |
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Anybody have examples of swim lane flow charts that look better than this?
I'm using a Swimlane structure for an overview of Do's turn order, but I can't find many references that don't either look barebones or garish.
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| [Do] Archipela-Do: Destiny Points |
[13 Jul 2009|07:20am] |
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[This post is part of a series examining Archipelago 2 and what parts of that game might help solve some issues in Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. Previously: Ritual Phrases]
Destiny Points
Archipelago: Destiny points are an end in your character's story that you will reach by the end of the game.You actually know how your story will end right from the start, so the rest of the session is about how those events come to pass. From the text, it sounds kind of like an in media res or "Coming up next, on Archipelago..." technique
Do: I've got something kind of like this in the current draft of Do.
A while back, I was trying to think of a way to reflect a pilgrim's adventures changing her a little bit at a time; growing into the adult she will become.
If you recall, the first word of your temple name is called your Banner and it represents how you get into trouble. The second word is your Avatar and it represents how you help people. At the end of each session, your little choices will culminate into one big change for your character: The Banner or the Avatar will change.
In other words, your character's experiences on each world will change how she helps people or how she gets into trouble. What that new word might be depends on what happened in the story. For example, let's say the following events occurred in the story.
Trouble: Pilgrim Liz the Little Bird is unconscious, probably something in the mysterious elixir she accepted from the spooky merchant.
Resolution: Pilgrim Daniel the Fluffy Curl uses his voluminous hair to lift Liz's body in the path of a lightning storm. The mystical powers of the storm flood her body with a powerful energy, resurrecting her!
New Trouble: The lightning and the elixir had an unexpected combined side effect. Pilgrim Liz the Little Bird is now a zombie with a thirst for living flesh. Yes, thirst. She prefers smoothies.
So those are the events that happen in the story. If in the course of the gameplay the player had chosen to keep more black stones than white stones, her character's Banner would change at the end of the session.
Pilgrim Liz the Little Bird becomes Pilgrim Liz the Zombie Bird. Instead of getting into trouble by being small, she now gets into trouble by being one of the living dead.
In Archipelago's destiny points, you know what will happen. In Do, you know you're going to change, but you don't quite know how. Is this is a specialized, dichotomous Destiny Point or something totally different?
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| [Do] Archipela-Do: Ritual Phrases |
[12 Jul 2009|08:06am] |
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[This post is part 1 of 4 in a series examining Archipelago 2 and what parts of that game might help solve some issues in Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.]
Ritual Phrases
Archipelago: I like that there are ritual phrases that help create consistent scene-framing throughout the a session of Archipelago. I have a big list of tips and suggestions very similar to the "Important Techniques" section, but nothing really bringing them into play.
Do: If I apply ritual phrases to each of my tips, that might be that extra nudge needed to make sure players know that they're the referees for story style. For example, one of the tips is to conserve secondary characters. In other words, to not introduce a new secondary character when you could reasonably add more details to an existing character.
Let's say Luke Skywalker's father has not actually become present in the story. But we have this character named Darth Vader who we don't really know a whole lot about yet. You *could* keep the two as separate characters, but it makes a far more interesting story if you conserve characters and say that Darth Vader *is* Luke's father.
So what would the ritual phrase be to make that happen? I have no idea... It's a cool technique though. You can see the tips I've listed so far here under "Making Trouble" and "Telling Stories." Maybe you can think of some phrases?
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| [Do] Archipela-Do |
[12 Jul 2009|08:03am] |
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Remi pointed me to Archipelago 2 as a source of possible solutions to the creative exhaustion problem from the Dreamation playtests.
This is the sort of narrative, rules-light game that I was really into in college until I actually tried them out and realized just how much I needed structure in my play. I was skeptical about whether I'd find useful bits here, but only because I doubted whether I had the heart to potentially overhaul the whole game if the only solution was to make it more Norwegian.
Thankfully, I don't think that will be necessary. There are a lot of little gems to pluck from Archipelago without having to dye Do's hair blonde. ;)
There's a lot to talk about, so I will split these up into several blog posts to focus the comments on each subject:
Ritual Phrases
Destiny Points
Ownership
Resolution
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| [Do] What is actually coming with the game? |
[10 Jul 2009|10:38am] |
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The last post spurred some questions that I thought would be pertinent just to keep things clear.
The Standard Edition: The black and white book on its own.
The um... let's call it "Special" Edition: A short run of full-color, hardcover versions of the book on its own.
Evil Hat is handling the fulfillment/publication/businessy side of both the Standard and Special editions.
And then there is the Super-Duper Limited Edition: The color book plus props that include a pouch, stones, the game board, and some other trinkets.
Megan and I will be hand making and assembling four or five of these sets and selling them in-person or on Etsy. Evil Hat isn't handling that part except insofar as I need to get my hands on color versions of the books.
Of course, we'll also offer a PDF for the cost-conscious consumer.
All that make sense?
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| [Do] Mad Props |
[10 Jul 2009|06:04am] |
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Some items you'll need to play Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple:
A pouch, eight black stones, eight white stones, a cup or bowl for each player, and a small trinket for each player.
* Clarification: Only the limited edition of the game will come with a bag, stones, trinkets or cups. (Actually, the cups are kind of iffy, too.) Otherwise you'll have to provide your own props. The items pictured here are what we use for our playtests at home and are sort of an ideal set up.
And this is a quick pass at the character sheet. The main square area is what will be in the book. The top bit is something unique to the 8.5" x 11" PDF. Write your character's name there and fold the sheet so everyone else can see the name at a glance.
That's particularly important in play since people will be referencing your character's name a lot.
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| [Do] What's your visual reference for Do? |
[09 Jul 2009|06:43am] |
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Liz Hooper likes having lots of visual references, so she's seen and absorbed all these already.
     
Now that she is on the long home stretch towards finishing the illustrations, it's your turn to show her *your* sources of inspiration for Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.
Have you come across a photo of an ancient ruin and thought "THAT is the Flying Temple!" Seen a wuxia movie and thought, "THAT is how pilgrims fly!" Please, share it with us. Liz wants it all!
Help her to the finish line by posting your Do-tastic image or video in the comments!
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| [Do] Character Creation Chapter Deadline: July 26th |
[07 Jul 2009|06:35am] |
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A local gamer from the suburb up north contacted me about wanting to playtest Do. I'm using that as a deadline for getting at least the character creation chapter laid out. As I mentioned here, I consider the layout something that should be tested just as much as the rules.
Any tips on playtesting with strangers who aren't that familiar with your game?
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| [Do] Megan + PseudoCalligraphy = Megography? |
[06 Jul 2009|12:33pm] |
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This is the header that Megan made. She traced over Ministry Script with a sumi-e inkbrush and I adjusted some of the kerning in photoshop.
I had to make some compromises with this font-to-calligraphy method, mostly because some letter combos in Ministry Script were too bulbous or overwrought. "Introduction" is too swoopy, for example, so I changed it to "Flight Prep."
So what's the verdict?
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| [Do] Headers |
[06 Jul 2009|07:08am] |
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What was all that about posting less frequently this month? :P
Runic MT
Folks seemed to think this font for the headers was too rigid. I'm inclined to not use it either, mostly because it takes up so much precious vertical space. Also because it's the Final Fantasy logo font and I dunna want to push my legal luck.
Ministry Script
Okay, so this style of calligraphy for the headers is too swoopy and hard to read, but it has a nice organic character.
Individual Hand-Brushed Letterforms
I drew a bunch of letterforms with Megan's sumi-e inkbrush set, but putting them together made the headers too grungy and vampiric. Megan said the letters need to flow into each other naturally.
Burgues
And this was just too matrimonial.
Megan Script
 
So Megan's taking things into her own hands, literally. She's tracing Ministry Script in inkbrush so she can control the legibility and we'll get the subtle imperfections of a hand brushed script.
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| [Do] Example of Play Blueprint |
[05 Jul 2009|11:44am] |
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In February, I wrote about Examples of Examples of Play and hinted at what examples of play would look like in Do.
A pinch of scrapbook. A tablespoon of CRPG dialog. A dash of yearbook. A cup of chat log.
Here's an early blueprint for what I'm thinking about.
Click here to see a bunch of notes on this image.
Here are some doodles Megan and I were working on over coffee yesterday.
Click this one too if you want to see the notes.
And I've gone so far as to pick out photos for the example players. These are all CC-Att2.0 Licensed on Flickr. I wanted a variety of expressions that fit different play styles and an example age range for the players.
Allie is an aspiring science fiction writer. (I had Katara in mind.)
Bebe is a free-spirited young artist. (Aang here.)
Cass is a tough cookie with a soft spot for anime. (Totally Toph.)
Dev is a strategist who loves board games. (Sokka much?)
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| [Do] Think I got it. |
[03 Jul 2009|06:42pm] |
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Alternative to the super-flourished first font and the overly harsh inkbrush. My co-worker has used this font for wedding invitations n' stuff. It has all the versatility of Ministry without the bulbous swirls and awkward kerning. Megan suggested adding the distressed texture.
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| [Do] Second thoughts on the inkbrush letters |
[03 Jul 2009|05:56pm] |
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I'm having second thoughts about using sloppy inkbrush letters for the headlines. I thought it would bring the "anarchic" personality of Do that Remi mentioned, but I think it looks too Vampire.
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