January Projects Summary (Patreon)

Hi All,

This is gonna be a new series of posts that is a monthly update on the games I'm currently designing and working on. The finished projects are available to my 3$ or more backers, and will be in a separate post. There will be a 200 Word RPG below, which has a Trigger Warning for explicit suicidal thoughts and feelings. I'll talk more about that later, though.

Life Updates

The past several months have been tough. I lost a lot of stability in my life, and a lot of depression and anxiety made it really hard to get work done. Both of my big summer projects didn't go the way I'd hoped. However, there's been a lot of good! I'm on the Wayfinder Story Board, which is giving me a lot more chances to talk about game design. I'm finally starting to get into the groove of writing again, and I'm in a space right now where there's a lot I can get done. Let's talk about games! 

This Will Kill That: In Dreams of Notre-Dame

So this is maybe the most exciting thing to come out of 2018 for me, scholastically. For those who don't know, I study Art History at school, and I've always struggled to reconcile that with game design. This was my big chance to prove it's possible. I haven't heard feedback from my teacher on the submitted version, but I'm deeply proud of the work I've done. I spent months doing extensive research on basically the entirety of Parisian history, and I managed to compile a lot of subtle and thoughtful decisions. While the game isn't fully complete (I still need to finish the schedule of what actually happens in game), much of the design work is finished. Fundamentally, the game deals with both the desire to recall history and our failure to actually understand or grapple with it. Also, if you're interested in me rambling about Walter Benjamin, please hit me up! I've come to care so much about how bad 19th century Paris was, y'all.

Brittlebones' Academy for the Veiled

This is January's Frontier, which is being run next Saturday (eep!) with myself and Muste. It's a cross between a Harry Potter -esque magic school and a Spirited Away ghost bathhouse. Players get to be the spirits of various abstract concepts going to school together and hanging out, while crazy shenanigans happen. The rival sports team shows up! Humans have infiltrated the school! The FTA (Frog-Toad Alliance) is plotting something! A professor just died, and we need to use a ouija board to talk to them! And the Headmaster, Ozymandius Brittlebones himself, will be here in 2 hours for Graduation! 

A Crown of Teeth

This is one of two (probably) Wayfinder games I'm submitting this year.  It's a story about Empress Zahhan, conqueror-queen of the city of Ur-Dhul, and her death. The game takes place a week after her passing, where her children compete for her crown of teeth. It results in one of the kids ending up the Big Bad for the second part of game. It's a game made for kids, but it's also got some really cool world design that I'm really excited about! 

Shacklebound

This is the other Wayfinder game I'm submitting. It's a collaboration between JJ Muste and myself, and is about the recently dead arriving to the underworld. It's a bizarre game of cycles of play, intrigue, violence, and capitalist excess. It also has some of my favorite characters I've ever invented. I'm not posting it currently because it's not quiteeee done, but when it is, I'll post it for everyone! 

The Last Days of Solomon A0.3

Abe and I are hard at work currently on the next edition of the Last Days of Solomon, and we're slimming it down so much. While it still feels huge sometimes, it's a lot more manageable, and there's a lot of really exciting pieces. Abe and our friend Kaiya are going to run a playtest this winter, and after further revisions I'll hopefully be running a 4th playtest in the spring (emotional state permitting). 

Current Favorite Character:

Kid Heartless (Champion 3)

Kid Heartless stands at a skinny 5 foot 5, with spiky hair and a face covered in tattoos. He wears plastic-like Weavers materials, transparent fabrics that hang loose around a sports bra and small shorts. He is missing an arm, which has been replaced with a complex series of runes and pieces of metal that resemble a gun. Built into the gun is a glowing mote of light, that shimmers as he talks. 

• Kid Heartless was born to a rich merchant family, and was quickly inducted into what was once the Wizards' Guild. With their magic, he became the youngest magi to be considered for the upper echelons of the Guild.  
• Unfortunately for the Guild, Kid Heartless grew spiteful towards the Council of Archmagi. Using ancient magic, he transformed his magic into a blade of pure energy, and sold his heart to become a killing machine. He destroyed the Guild and burned both their records and his birth name. 
• For many years, Kid Heartless wandered the streets, leading a group of criminals. The Watch apprehended him, and imprisoned him within the Glim, but not before he killed fifteen Watchdogs. 

Projects in the Brainstorm Stage

These are all projects I haven't started working on on paper, but I've been doing a lot of sketching of in notebooks, and chatting excitedly with friends.

• Trans Day of Remembrance (Ten Candles Hack). Ten Candles is my current favorite game, and this game is a wild (very far from Ten Candles actually) take on the narrative. The idea is that players all play as trans people, and they explore interconnected relationships. The conflict resolution is based on personal discomfort with the material in the game (such as when your character expresses a different viewpoint than what you feel) Eventually, each one will pass on, lightning a candle as they do so.
• Now You See Me TTRPG. This game would be a fun GMfull oneshot romp of a group of thieves who are also stage magicians performing a heist. It would be kinda like a hidden role game, as players have ulterior motives. The core of the game's mechanics are about the mechanical equivalent of sleight of hand, where players can move cards around such that no one is sure who actually possesses their goal. 

Games I'm Playing

I'm a player for the first time in a while! I'm playing the recently-released Where There's Smoke by Abe, which is an outstanding game about a group of travelers in a surrealist memory-universe. I'm playing a 5 foot tall beggar knight with no sword (you know how grandmaster chess players can play chess without a board? That's how Mendicant is with their sword), and I'm the most normal person in the party. One person is just playing a tank. She's awesome. 

The 200 Word RPG (CW: Suicide)

This is a game I wrote a little while ago, and have been thinking about and bouncing around for a bit in my head. It's rooted in ideations I've had in the past, and a particular desire I get when I'm on my college campus during December. 

Play This Instead of Killing Yrself

by Jay Dragon

CW: Suicide

You are someone who is:

(lost / overwhelmed / ashamed)

Within your mind you wield a:

(sword / bindle / staff / snake)

The wolves that hunt you:

(mock / bite / crush / gnaw / lie)

You feel like you:

(Have no options)

According to the eldest sages, death is a path away from home. When you ran away, they declared you dead. 

Materials:

-- Backpack with water, food, blanket, change of clothes.

-- 20 dollars.

-- Walkin' shoes.

-- An object to defend yourself from the wolves.

-- A coin, with something unusual about it.

Leave the place you are. Walk. Just walk. Whenever you reach a point of indecision, flip your coin, and then go with what you wished it would tell you.

Give something to the world as you walk by. Honor nature, and desecrate concrete. Daydream. Hide from cars. Make friends. Fight the wolves that hunt

Spend all the money you brought. This can be on a bus ticket.

Walk until you reach a point where you are left with indecision - do you leave your village behind and become someone new, or call a friend to pick you up? Flip a coin. Follow your heart. Know that the wolves will hunt regardless, but it will be okay.