My November Gaming

I hadn’t quite planned it this way but I ended up spending November playing journaling games. National Novel Writing Month made me decide to look at journaling games and find out that there were a lot more of them out there than I realized.

Some folks classify these games as RPGs. I don’t think it’s the best fit. (Does that mean writing any work of fiction in the first person is an RPG since you’re taking on the role of a different person or creature?) At the same time, journaling games do involve taking on a different role so the argument does have merit.

I ended up trying:

The Artefact

Dave Ex Machina

House Spirit

Princess With A Cursed Sword

A Light, Relfected

The Swamp You Die In

Bucket of Bolts

I’ve already blogged about almost all of these games and I will blog about Bucket of Bolts during December. And here’s the thing.I already love writing so having fun with the games was almost a foregone conclusion. I do wonder how someone with less experience writing would do with them.

I may end up using some on the classroom so I guess I’ll find out.

Having a busy November kept me away from the table so I actually played almost all of these games on my tablet. Which might not be the strongest way to play a journaling game (some games recommend actually keeping a physical journal) but it did make it possible for me to actually play the games.

The one game I learned that wasn’t a journaling game was Darkhouse, a roll and write game from the 2017 GenCan’t Roll and Write contest. When I looked at the game five years ago, it had confused me. (Wow, was that actual five years ago?) Rereadiing the rules, I realized you actually physically move the dice around the play sheet before you write down the numbers. It’s fascinating how obvious that is to me now.

I’m not actually sure if it’s a good game yet and I have a couple rules questions. (Do you need to use a third die to move dice around or does the die in the intersection cover that cost?) However, I did have fun figuring out how it actually works.

I’m not going to play journaling games this heavily in the near future. However, I’ll probably play them more often.