Letting friends find their inner goblin

 During a recent meeting of friends over Zoom, we played one of my game poems, Wainscot Goblin. This was actually the first time I played one of the game poems I’ve written, which was pretty interesting all by itself. It also wasn’t a group of gaming friends, which may have made them the ideal audience for a game poem.

I’ve written about an earlier draft of the game poem in this blog. The basic idea is to create a little goblin that lives within the walls of a house by answering a series of questions. I got the idea of using the word wainscot from the Encyclopedia of Fantasy which uses the word to refer to a hidden society. Incidentally, I used the word wrong as far as the encyclopedia is concerned. It uses the term to mean a hidden society that still interacts with the larger society, like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere or Vampire: the Masquerade. My goblins are entirely hidden.

Everyone had fun and there were plenty of whimsical ideas all around the virtual table and plenty of laughter besides. From the most fundamental stand point of ‘did the game poem work’ and ‘did everyone have fun’, the answer is yes. 

One of the things that I think helped was that basic concept was easy to understand, along with the format as well. 

One thing I realized afterwards was that one element of game play that I didn’t give the group was a way to interact with each other. If I have a chance to give them another game poem, I will give them that will let them interact with each other, not just respond to questions.

For instance, each goblin has four intrinsic qualities (magic, craft, wisdom and sacrifice) I could have had a player offer a problem to the next player and that player would explain how they would use one of their qualities to solve the problem.

Game poems are a quirky form but, more and more, I can’t help but wonder if they may be the most accessible form of RPGs. This was easy to introduce to folks who didn’t necessarily have a lot of RPG experience and for them to get into the game poem.

Did I just accidentally start making an RPG?

 Have you ever been trying to make a narrative exercise and realized that you came up with a character generator instead? Actually, I bet that happens a lot since creating a character is one of the basic concepts of playing with story telling.

Anyway, without meaning to, that’s what I ended up doing while trying to come up with something that could be easily played with video conferencing.

A couple design notes:

While I know that wainscot is a real word, the only way I have ever seen it used is in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy (http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=wainscots) and so I associated the word with secrets and the fantastic.

And I chose to go with tactile for the first question because I wanted the players to have some sense of description for their goblin but I also wanted to avoid visual. I thought going with touch would be more visceral and stretch the imagination more.

Incidentally, this is a first draft. I have already started to revise the game poem to set up possible conflict resolution mechanics in a larger game.

Wainscot Goblin - a game poem

You will need:

A pencil

The following list of questions

A hidden nature

A quiet truth

You are a wainscot goblin, one of those mysterious supernatural creatures that dwell just behind the walls. However, wainscot goblins are not just very peculiar, they are also very particular as well. The point of this little poem is kto figure out your exact nature.

Kindly answer the following questions:

1.  If a human were to ever touch your skin, which, of course, would never happen, what would they say it felt like?
2. Politely describe three details of the house that you dwell in?
3. Just as politely, describe three details of your own cozy nook inside the walls?
4. What craving or need makes you live so close to humans, to live inside their walls?
5. What would drive you from your nook, the house where you dwell, into the cold outside?
6. What is your grave vulnerability, the thing that any human kill you with, if they only knew?
7. What is your secret craft, the hidden art form that you are devoted to?
8. If you ever needed to, how would you kill?
9. What is the single truest thing you can say of yourself?

Now, stand up and say your wainscot goblin name.

Embrace how you always cheated at Choose Your Own Adventure

A few years ago, I stumbled across the Parsely RPG, a system designed to emulate old school interactive fiction. It’s a fun game, part party game and part RPG and part street theater. The biggest downside to it is that you can only play each scenario once per group. 

Enter Cheat Your Own Adventure. It’s a free RPG whose existence I discovered through Play By Forum. Instead of being based on old computer games like Zork, it’s inspired by the Choose Your Own Adventure game books, hence the name. But let’s be honest, it’s a pretty similar idea.

In Parsely, one player is the computer/game master. They have the map and the adventure and everyone else takes turns giving instructions. And frankly, a lot of the fun of the system is the GM imitating the artificial stupidity of those old games. And it is a lot of fun.

Cheat Your Own Adventure, on the other hand, has players turning playing the reader and everyone else gives choices. So, it’s kind of like you takes turns being the PC while everyone else is the GM.  

Mechanically, after the active player makes a decision, two dice are rolled, trying to beat or equal an increasingly high number that caps at twelve at the end of the game. 

Rolling under means game ending, over-the-top failure and death. But that doesn’t mean the end of the game. No, just like with a real Choose Your Adventure book, you can go back and make another choice, which will automatically work. (You did it too. Own up to it) Twelve rolls and you wrap things up. 

There’s actually a lot I like about this system. It has a lot of replay value and every player has a lot more agency in the story you end up telling. Every story-based game depends on the group but I think this would work with a lot of groups. It’s seriously on my list to try.

Cheat Your Own Adventure doesn’t fire Parsely for me. The GM is an artificially stupid computer is a really awesome mechanic when done well. However, I think it is a game that will be easier to play more often.

http://mcleanfamilyonline.co.uk/CYOA.pdf

Sometimes the point is to NOT nuke Atlantis

Well, I have to eat my words about Stoke-Birmingham 0-0. When I first read it, I couldn’t ever imagine playing it. The whole concept of game poems, which it coined the phrase, was one that I questioned.

Thanks to the power of forums, I have now played it. To be sure, playing via forum definitely takes away from immediacy that is clearly a key part of the game poem concept. On the other hand, gathering folks together to play a fifteen minute game is a tough sell and playing via forum definitely helps mitigate that.

And not only am I glad that I finally played Stoke-Birmingham, I would play it again.

https://boardgamegeek.com/article/29978833#29978833

Stoke-Birmingham 0-0 has you simulate being some Stoke supporters who are drinking after a really boring game. The game lasts fifteen minutes when you play it live and one of the most important rules is that you are not to say or do anything interesting. The point of the game is to embrace the banal.

At this point, I have played a variety of narrative games. There is a term that is actually in the rules of Microscope, one of my favorite narrative games, Nuking Atlantis. Microscope has a global scope so the term can be literal in a game. That’s doing something extreme, a story changer that permanently affects things.

And I love doing that or seeing it happen. Well, most of the time. I was in a Fiasco game set in the Wild West where a weaselly gambler at the very end decided that he was secretly a mystic kung fu guy, summoned up a giant golden dragon and flew through a magical portal to join in the battle of Helm’s Deep. (Yes, he had a ton of white dice)

There was something amazing in the audacity of that but that’s not what you play Fiasco for. We will never forget that game but that derailed the game so hard that the proverbial train not only left the tracks but flew straight into the sun. We all agreed we had witnessed some kind of spontaneous magic and we never wanted it to happen again in a game of Fiasco.

Nuking Atlantis can be an exhilarating choice but a key element of Stoke-Birmingham is that it is the non-Nuking Atlantis RPG. The rules explicitly state that you can’t do anything interesting. You are embodying dull people doing dull things. (I wonder what real life Stoke supporters would think of it)

And you know what? That’s a legitimate challenge and trying to no be interesting becomes interesting in its own way. It’s an unusual space to explore, bored sports fans drinking, but as you explore it, you find there is something to explore. Looking back at our game, I felt like we were embracing our inner Raymond Carver and inner Breece D’J Pancake.

Stokes-Birmingham 0-0 was the first game to use the term Game Poem, although I bet you can find earlier games that can retroactively fit the bill. For me, a game poem should ideally try to evoke one specific idea/emotion. It is such a short form that it can only be a snapshot, only has one bullet to fire.

Exploring the banal and the dull seems like an odd place for what became its own RPG form to start. However, by taking us there and showing us how it could be interesting and engaging, Stokes-Birmingham proves how much we can do with game poems.

https://boardgamegeek.com/rpgitem/82361/stoke-birmingham-0-0

Mix index cards and sorrow to make game

Sad Things on Index Cards is a tiny RPG/Storytelling Game/social activity by Ben Wray and Marshall Miller. The closest thing I can classify it as is a Game Poem but it has less context than I’m used to seeing in a Game Poem, which seem to have some kind of narrative involved.

The game consists of either writing down sad things on blank index cards or editing sad things written down on index cards to make them sadder. At the end of the game, you give cards to other players for them to read later.

I have to admit, when I first read Sad Things on Index Cards, my first reaction was ‘Man, why didn’t I write this?’

While my initial opinion of Game Poems was pretty meh, they have really grown on me. To my mind, the object of a Game Poem is evoke a specific emotional response. Which could be sorrow or wonder or humor or even boredom. 

Sad Things on Index Cards strips away any kind of story and goes straight to the emotion. In fact, it seems less like a Game Poem than the skeleton of a Game Poem, like a model that you can slap any set of clothes on. It’s like a protoplasm Game Poem :D

I can see a lot of fun and value in both using the game as a framework to create a narrative and to just play it as is. It is such a simple idea but I think has a lot of potential and replay value, as well as being an easy entry for folks who aren’t used to unconventional game designs. 

Sad Things on Index Cards is a super simple game that fits on one piece of paper and takes just a few pilfered office supplies to play. However, there’s brilliance in that simple little design.

On the Ridge - A Game Poem

I have to admit that this is a hack of Jason Morningstar's Game Poem The Last Stand. It started out with me trying to adjust it so that it could be played by email and I ultimately ended up with a different game.

On the Ridge - A Game Poem

Required: 

Two to six players

Four index cards

A pen or marker to write in the index cards

Four six-sided dice per player

You are the sole survivors of your squad. You stand alone together on the ridge with the enemy coming over. You can put up a good fight but you know that you will die in the end. How well will you stand your ground? How well will you live your last moments?

Take a moment to decide the setting of the ridge. It can be anywhere. A real life historical setting, contemporary, fantasy or science fiction. Go around the table. Everyone come up with the name of their character and one sentence to describe what they are like.

Write down "SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR", "SOMETHNG TO DIE FOR", "YOUR GREATEST FEAR", "WHY YOU HATE YOUR COUNTRY", one on each of the index cards. Then roll one die for each player for each card. So, if you have three players, there should be three dice on each card.

Choose someone to begin the battle. They will take a die from a card and describe a short scene about their character in the battle, using both the theme of the card and the dice roll. Then, the next player will do the same. When the last player has taken a die and described a scene, start again with the player to the left of the start player. Continue until everyone has taken four dice and had four scenes.

It is possible, actually extremely likely that a character will die before their fourth scene. The player of a dead character will still take a die and describe a scene. However, it will describe the absence of their character, still reflecting the theme of the card.

Die Roll Table:

1 - Somehow, through some miracle of fate, you have escaped getting hurt.

2 - You try to avoid the battle via a dirty act of cowardice but you are still wounded.

3&4 - You are wounded in battle

5 - You are wounded but you have made a real difference in the battle

6 - Blaze of glory. You die but you have made a real difference for your side in your death

If a player receives their second wound, they will die during that scene.

After everyone has had four scenes, if anyone has survived the battle, which means they have taken three or four ones, that player or players will narrate an epilogue scene.

Otherwise, everyone should just nod to each other. The battle is over. 

Writing my own game poems?

Game Poems are a short form RPG, designed to be done in about fifteen minutes. The first game that used the term was Stoke-Birmingham 0-0, which consisted of pretending to be bored and depressed sports fans for fifteen minutes. (Seriously, I wonder what Andy Warhol would think of think of Norwegian LARPs)

I've been looking into Game Poems to try and find one that could easily be adapted for play-by-post. My usual crew is busy during the summer but I've been jonesing to play with them so I wanted something that could be done in three to five posts apiece. 

And, honestly, I haven't found anything that seems really adaptable. Which makes sense. The form was clearly designed to be played in the moment, which doesn't really work with play-by-post.

So I've decided to actually try writing some myself, with the hope that I'd come up with something playable. 

I can't actually say it's harder than I expected since I pretty much expected it to be tricky. I will say a lot of my ideas, after I got them on paper, were clearly unsayable, although they were interesting thought exercise.

In general, Game Poems seem to have elements of improv exercises, narrative RPG and party games. It's a bit like a photograph as a role playing game. There's just enough room for one idea, one emotion. So you have to make sure they have some punch.

And they are addictive to write. The eternal question is if they're any good.

Some initial thoughts on the very strange medium of game poems

Off and on, over the last few months, I have been looking at game poems. It started out with the book 24 game poems by is. I also have a feeling that some of the games in the in the mix tapes would be considered game poems as well.

A game poem is a role-playing experience that is designed to last between 15 minutes and an hour and to evoke a specific emotion or experience as opposed to telling a story.

Somehow, I am not surprised that game poems apparently came out of the Norwegian school of gaming. I have never actually played a game from the Norwegian School but they have always struck me as being the complete opposite of escapism. They always seem to be trying to evoke the strongest emotional response possible.

Honestly, I don't know what to think about game poems. Frankly, if I only have 15 minutes to spend with my friends, I would rather pull out a boardgame like Love Letter or Cinq-0 or Pico 2. I do like short form role-playing games like Barron Munchaussen and I really want to try Murderous Ghosts.

However, game poems shave away so many of the things that actually interest me in role-playing games. In particular, the collective storytelling aspect. Part of me even wonders if I can even consider them to be role-playing games. However, they do ask you to take on a specific character and walk at least a few steps in their shoes.

Allegedly, the very first game poem was Stoke - Birmingham 0-0, which  was first published in a collection of 17 Norwegian school role-playing games appropriately called Norwegian Style.

In it, you spend 15 minutes playing the role of Stroke supporters who are going over to England to see an incredibly boring tied soccer match. You are encouraged to have a pint of beer while you do this and required to not say anything interesting. No confessions of infidelity or true love or being a vampire. Just sit there and dwell on a really meh soccer game.

I've pretty much made it a hobby to find quirky little role-playing games that offer something different. There's no denying that this qualifies. There's also no denying that I can't see myself ever playing it.

But having said that, I am glad that I took the time to look it up and read the one page that it consists of. I like the fact that we live in a world where this can even exist. I would even go so far as to say there is a crazy form of brilliance in making a game like this.

This isn't an example of true art is incomprehensible. Stokes - Birmingham 0-0 is incredibly comprehendible. It takes an experience that anyone can relate to, even if they're not going to soccer or sports, and asks you to experience it as a snapshot of life. The utter banality of it is why it is so universal.

Ever since I first discovered the idea of indie RPG's, which actually took place years after I actually played some indie RPG's, I have enjoyed exploring just what you can do with the medium of role-playing games. The whole Norwegian School and game poems in particular explore ground that I never knew existed.

Stoke et al isn't a game I can see myself ever playing. Game poems will probably never be my thing. But I can't look away.

https://norwegianstyle.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/stoke-birmingham-0-0/