I keep forgetting that I can actually POST on cohost and not just passively read my dashboard, so today when I was like "I kinda wanna write up a longer thing on what I'm working through on a couple of my games but idk where to put that" I was like waaaaait a minute (before for some reason, posting any kind of RPG design thoughts on twitter feels like walking through a minefield, even for things I would assume would be completely innocuous)
ANYWAY. do you want to hear about a couple of my in-progress games and some theme-to-mechanics pairing issues I'm having?
I currently feel like I'm in a bit of a skill-gap-phase with my game design, where I see what I want to achieve, I can describe the effect I'm trying to create, and I can look at tools in my mental toolbox and say "I know that won't work", but I don't quite have the tool that WILL work yet. the other day I likened it to looking at a bowl of soup and KNOWING that the fork in your hand isn't the best utensil to eat it with, but not knowing how to ask for a spoon, or even what a spoon is, maybe.
To continue that metaphor, one option, in the absence of the right utensil, is to turn the dish into something that I CAN use a fork for. Maybe I thicken that tomato soup with roux, dump some noodles in it, call it kind of a sloppy pasta dish, but one that is very much edible with a fork. And it'd do! It'd fill me up! But when I'm really craving a nice soup..... I don't particularly WANT to settle for something else, especially not something that started as a soup and turned into this new thing partway through.
Except in this case, the soup is how I want some of these narrative games to feel and how I want them to work and the experiences I want them to emulate, and instead of thickening them with roux, I am hammering them into a more conventional "trad" RPG shape, one with dice and gear lists and classes and stuff.
What's maybe tripping me up more than is strictly necessary is that I have three games at the moment where I'm trying to wrangle a particular - and similar but subtly different - thing, and because I need them all to do different things or capture different vibes, I can't do a one-size-fits-all here, so it feels like I'm sitting down and writing lists of ways to skin cats. They tell me there's more than one! So why am I struggling to find more?
The specific here is related to player characters and their relationships to certain personal items or belongings, or just to their material surroundings in general. As a whole, I'm finding that this is an area that is under-explored, at least in the games on my shelf (physical or digital). Gear is gear, you use it or trade it or sell it, it is purely functional. Or it's purely flavor, where it pads out a nice thematic section on your character sheet, but imparts no mechanical effect at all. And I think EVERYTHING I'm trying to work out right now is somewhere in the middle.... but at different points in the middle.
To walk through them:
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In Dollhouse D.R.A.M.A., which is a barbie and fashion doll themed game, your outfits and accessories, your gear, MAKE your character. The doll herself is a blank slate. Your character can be dropped into any "playset" or "dollhouse" with a simple change of clothes. To have a camera is to confer skill at and passion for photography. To have a guitar is to confer skill at and passion for music. To take those things away is to lose the skill and the passion. The clothes literally make the girl. Part of my conflict here is wanting to have like, really wild gear lists, like just the most detailed nitty-gritty pages upon pages of dresses and shoes and accessories, but then also: what does all that gear DO. What mechanically differentiates any of it from anything else? Because this ISN'T a tactical dice and minis game, like most games with page-long lists of guns. I can't just say "the summer-fun poolside swimsuit gives you a +1 bonus to skill A, but a -3 penalty to skill B, but if you wear it with the 4 inch espadrille heels, that'll counteract part of that penalty, leaving you with only -1 to skill B"
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In Before the Season Ends, which is a Regency romance game specifically focusing on debutantes making their social debut, in this brief window between leaving their fathers' homes and joining their husbands', I am trying to capture a very real historical feeling, one that I think resonates still, in which this is the one time in your life where your preferences are put at the forefront. This is also a brand new time of luxury, given how much society moved around "the marriage market" and how that was at the center of so many events. That this is the first time in their life wearing perfume or jewelry, receiving flowers from young men, sitting in the grown-up parlors with the good furniture. I don't know, I just think there's something so delicious there that I really want to engage with. Right now, I have a thing at the end of each session/social event where the players each choose something physical from the event to preserve in a scrapbook of this special season: an invitation card, a bit of lace from your new dress, some dried flowers. Something real and tangible that their characters would use to bring them back to this moment. And I WANT that to confer some kind of mechanical... THING down the line (the inspiration I was initially using was the trophies in AGON, where you take some kind of trophy from each victory and you can use that thing to give you a bonus to a roll in a later session), but again, what IS that bonus given that this is a diceless narrative game, and also, does that thematically fit even? Like the reason I want it to have a mechanical effect is because I want mechanics to reinforce theme and vice versa, but is this going to end up being chaff I cut later anyway?
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In Collegiate Gothic, which is a dark academia noir/crime/mystery game, I have the least tenuous grasp of what I want to DO with this kind of material belongings relationship, but also maybe the most certainty that I need to do SOMETHING with it? It's a PbtA game, which I'm certain is the right fit, but it's not quite emulating a GENRE or even a specific work, as much as it's emulating an AESTHETIC. Like, I keep introducing it as my "dark academia" game because the inspiration is like. Dark academia moodboards on tumblr and pinterest. And you know, I've winnowed that down as well to "noir stories (corruption, greed, lust) in an elite academic setting", which helps (because characters typically need to DO things like "solve mysteries" or "commit crimes"), but noir itself, as a genre touchstone, has a lot of very specific imagery and very specific material to define its own little world. Because a lot of this game revolves around old money and the material signifiers of it and characters trying to break into that world or look like they belong in it, I feel like that's a lot of communication that can be done through possessions, through attire, etc. Like I said, this is the one where I'm the least sure HOW to implement it, but given how much of the game's inspiration is like.... static images of objects and what they imply about a given lifestyle, it feels like there needs to be some kind of weight given to the objects your characters value, what they carry with them, what they wear, what they seek out.
ANYWAY. I'm not really looking for answers from others in posting this, just because I know that the way to resolve skill gap issues in any kind of creative practice is to, you know, keep improving. Broadening my pool of influences, doing research, trying new things to see what works and what doesn't. But I think part of it is also talking through the issue, because sometimes just identifying what exactly the problem IS can help; knowing what the questions are is important to be able to answer them. So if you read this all the way through: thank you for hearing out my ramblings! Please imagine we are discussing this at a diner and I am drawing on a napkin and gesturing fervently until I spill my coffee.