The worlds Grant Howett builds with one page

I was vaguely aware of Grant Howett as a game designer but it took Bundle of Holding’s 2024 Birthday Bundle for me to view his work as a singular vision.

He’s been pretty active as a designer and one of the things he does is make one-page RPGs. I’d seen some of them before, looking for oddball indie games. The bundle collected sixteen of them, which isn’t even most of them as it turns out.

Isaac Asimov once described the vignette as the dart gun of fiction. You just get one shot and if it doesn’t hit, well, that’s it. One-page RPGs? Same deal.

In my arrogant opinion,a one-page RPG needs two things. Mechanics that actually work and a hook that makes people want to play. Quite frankly, the more ludicrous, the more likely the hook is to work.

One of the best one-page RPGs out there, again in my arrogant opinion, is Lasers and Feelings. It’s got simple but clever and flexible mechanics. And the hook is that it’s really Star Trek so  everyone knows what kind of story you’re telling.

Despite the simplicity that’s baked into just about every one-page RPG, I don’t think they are aimed at non-gamers. There are a lot of unwritten bits to them. How to actually run or play an RPG, that kind of stuff. Things that experienced gamers can fill in without even thinking about it but will confuse non-players.

Since one-page RPGs tend to be one-shots, they really feel like they were designed for convention play. As I read Everyone is Seagulls (which reads like an adult reimaging of Mo Willems’ Pigeon books), it felt like it was designed to annoy the next table over with all the shouting.

I have to admit that I found the bundle to be a mixed if fascinating bag. Some of the games simply have too many of those unwritten elements in them. And yes, that could be overcome, particularly by experienced gamers. However, when you can pick something that doesn’t require that, particularly if it’s for a one-shot, why wouldn’t you?

My favorite game in the collection was Crash Pandas both for the concept and the mechanics. The players are a group of raccoons working together to drive a car in illegal street races. The core mechanic is having everyone decide what they want the car to do and simultaneously revealing it. Look, you know what the game is about and how it can all go crazy.

It might sound like I’ve been harsh to Grant Howett. But damn, now I’m looking for more of his stuff. Because having something that is a good one session experience is really valuable. I can’t imagine being in a never ending campaign again. But occasionally a one shot? Yeah, that would really work. In fact, before I moved away from my old gaming groups, some of us were already moving towards that.

So, yeah, Grant Howett’s game are totally worth looking at.

Thoughts on a tiny story game

 While I looked at some non-solitaire games by momentoes, I also wanted to try one their shorter form games as a solitaire. Tiny Stories, which is a journaling game for one or more people, for that bill. Plus, November is my journaling game month.

There are actually three distinct versions of Tiny Stories, version 1 multiplayer, version 1 solo and version 2. They all provide prompts to let you create a story. Probably a tiny one. But there are some definite differences between them. Enough to make them distinct from each other.

Version 1, in either form, front loads the experience with a bunch of prompts to define the  protagonist and their situation. A lot of the overall structure is going be defined before you actually start to play. In multiplayer, players are randomly determined to narrate elements. In solo, you randomly roll to determine outcomes.

In Version 2, the prompts are more focused on the narrative beats. The second version has more of a focus on the structure of story. It also has a mechanic that isn’t in version one, the luck coin. There’s a good luck and a bad luck side and you flip it over every time stakes escalate or are resolved.

I am of two minds about the Tiny Stories system overall.

On the one hand, it is completely themeless. I personally think that having a theme, particularly in a pick up and play journaling game, goes along way towards helping you focus the story you create. People haven’t created a whole bunch nif hacks for Alone Among the Stars just because they like the mechanics but because it’s easy to apply a variety of themes to it.

On the other hand, I think that Tiny Stories does a really good job, creating a framework for stories. It creates a structure that goes above and beyond telling you to just write something.

For the record, I think the first version is better for solitary play, but I think the second version will lead to better multiplayer play.

Tiny Stories isn’t firing Alone Among the Stars for me but I think it’s a decent option for a quick journaling game.

Looking at a couple tiny RPGs

I have been looking at the Magus by momatoes as a journaling game for November and I decided to look at what else they had written. The first couple games I looked at were Mint & Minotaur and Rock Paper Scissors Duet.

Mint & Minotaur is a universal system. More than that, it’s really a FUDGE variant that uses a coin flip instead of dice. Which should mechanically work just fine but doesn’t inspire me. 

That’s the thing about universal systems. They tell you how to resolve a conflict but they don’t give you a world to play in, an inspiration to create a story with. No one fell in love with GIURPS because it was a universal system. They fall in love with it because of its vast library of setting books.

At the same time, Mint & Minotaur has some whimsical touches that make me go hmmmmm. One aspect of a character is their fondest memory. Too manu successs will have negative side effects. There’s a very narrative driven leveling system.

If you want an RPG you can fit in your pocket, I’m still going with the first edition of Name of God, which consists of four cards and no other components and is dropping with theme and narrative concept. But I can see Mint & Minotaur working as a dreamy, slice of life game.

Rock Paper Scissors Duet is a two-player game about a relationship. You define the relationship and then play Rock Paper Scissors until one person wins three times. Each round is a beat in the relationship with the winning symbol defining what the event is about.

I actually find this more interesting and, quite frankly, more brilliant than Mint & Minotaur. It’s simpler and also doesn’t have a setting  but it creates a very specific story structure and theme.

I can see Rick Paper Scissors Duet creating some interesting stories.

And, as I slowly play through a Magus Campaign, I can see how all three games were made by the same person.

Rock Opera ‘79 is a cool flavor of crazy

 In Rock Opera ‘79, you play a rebel rock band out to stop The Man and his soul crushing disco. Which sounds like a crazy idea but the actual game exceeded my expectations in its craziness.

A friend of mine recommended it many months ago and I finally picked up the free version. Which is _almost_ enough to play the game but lacks some character creation rules. But was enough to fill in the setting!

(Mechanically, the game is built around draw decks BUT has this fun little rule: the players can play rock anthems or the GM, excuse me, The Man, can play Get Mellow anthems. They give bonuses for their respective sides. BUT you have to play the actual song on a device and the bonuses only last as long as the song. Cue every player adding In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida to their play list)

I went in expecting a slightly Gonzo version of the 1970s in the United States. Instead, it’s a dystopia that is sliding right into a post-apocalypse. 

Man, where do I start? After a major nuclear war, western civilization was run by a computer named SIBIL who would be right at home in a game of Paranoia. SIBIL apparently broke down, the divide between the haves and the have-nots got even bigger and organized crime has become  the closest thing to government lef by The Man. 

However, an astronaut had discovered that going into space makes you one with the cosmos. And Rock and Roll can do the same thing. The ability to expand the mind and soul and give people a level of untouchable freedom and happiness is a threat to the powers that be. So they created the Discontent Suppression Field, Disco, which is addictive and suppresses will power.

So we have literal outlaw rockers trying to bring freedom and happiness to the oppressed masses while The Man is trying to suppress free will and creativity, while civilization is collapsing.

Oh and there is a literal iron curtain bisecting the world and the Martians really are out there.

In other words, this is well realized crazy with a lot of options for the game master/The Man to take things in different directions.

Because of the setting, I will actually remember Rock Opera ‘79 and would play it given the chance.

Someone has made a Gideon the Ninth RPG

 After reading Gideon the Ninth, I knew someone had to have made an RPG based on it and I was right. Mandy Szewczuk and Linda H. Coders have given the world The Emperor is Undead. I found it on itch.io 

And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a game structure like it.

The basic idea of the game is that you are playing out the situation of Gideon the Ninth, playing necromancers and cavaliers who are trying to achieve Lictorhood in Canaan House, which is like Gormanghast in size and architectural complexity.

Gameplay consists of players taking turns picking one of eleven mini-games and playing them out. There is one that will end the game but you can play the other games I’m any order and (for the most part) as many times as you as want.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like to play test the Emperor is Undead.

I have played enough games, indie and old school and whatever is in between, that I usually have a sense of how a game flows and works. I don’t have that for the Emperor is Undead because of its structure. That isn’t a good or bad thing. It’s just how it is.

The Emperor is Undead isn’t the strangest or most experimental RPG design I’ve ever seen but it is very experimental. On the one hand, it is very much an open improv game. On the other hand, it is also a card game you are playing to win. 

That said, creating a story is the most important part. You can still tell a great story while losing while focusing on card play to win would be boring.

Romance is the emotional heart of Gideon the Ninth and I have to note that the Emperor is Undead does give that an option but not a requirement. I feel that it’s a good choice for it to be included but Breaking the Ice is still the best romance RPG I’ve seen.

My biggest nit to pick with The Emperor is Undead is that the tone is very gothic horror but doesn’t touch the snarky tone that was important to the book. In the book, Gideon is a punk rock girl in a gothic horror world and that a big part of what makes the book fantastic.

We are going to have to wait until Tamsyn Muir finishes the Locked Tomb trilogy to have an RPG that really explores the setting. However, I feel it’s a testament to her work that the Emperor is Undead exists and it’s an interesting existence.

Bickering on the job as an RPG

It’s been a bit since I looked at a quirky little RPG. Dungeon Janitor’s Apprentice is definitely quirky and little but I don’t know if even my very lax definition of RPG can be stretched enough to cover it. Even calling it a story-telling game is a stretch. It’s a discussion game for two people.

The concept of the game is bigger than the game itself. One player is the Dungeon Janitor, a grumpy old bastard who knows exactly how the dungeon’s supposed to be. The other player is the Dungeon Janitor’s Apprentice, a slacker who wants to just get drunk and laid. The janitor wants to get the job done and retire. The apprentice wants to get fired.

Here’s all the game mechanics and all: the janitor tells the apprentice to go do something. The apprentice gives some kind of excuse. The janitor tries to come up with a solution for the excuse. The apprentice comes up with a new excuse. You keep going until someone chokes and the other person wins that argument. Whoever wins five arguments first wins the game.

It’s ‘There’s a hole in the bucket’ as an improv routine/RPG.

Was this game designed for long car rides? While the real appeal of the Dungeon Janitor’s Assistant is the theme and the humor potential you can get out of that theme , it is seriously minimalist in what you physically need to actually play it. The rules have you use tokens to track who wins the arguments but even that is superfluous.

What the Dungeon Janitor’s Apprentice really reminds me of is Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan, a story-telling game that was designed to be played via instant messaging. Both games very much built around call-and-response dialogue. In fact, I suspect the most likely way I will ever play The Dungeon Janitor’s Apprentice would be via forum or some form of instant messaging. I can even see having more than two players and just going around, alternating janitor and apprentice and not worrying who wins.

The Dungeon Janitor’s Apprentice is a silly, slight game. But it’s a fun idea and it’s ridiculously assessable. It has the potential to be a lot of fun.

How would you make a table top Animal Crossing?

Since I have discovered Animal Crossing (only eighteen years late to the party), I decided to see if anyone has made a tabletop RPG about Animal Crossing because of course I did.

The closest thing I’ve found is a one-page Lasers & Feeling hack. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/samekindofnerdyasme.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/animal-crossing-rpg/amp/

I swear that Lasers & Feelings is the most hacked system in existence. It doesn’t hurt that it is a one-page, super light system. The original game, inspired by a Doubleclick song, is themed around the original Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off and built around the dichotomy of logic and emotion. I think it’s work well because that’s a conflict that lends itself to Star Trek and, while there is no actual setting, you can just use Star Trek wholesale.

In the Animal Crossing hack, the two ends of the spectrum are Fashion (social) and Animal (physical) The biggest difference mechanical difference is that if you hit the target number exactly, you get a bennie. In the original Lasers & Feelings, the GM gives you more information and you can change your action.

I am glad that David White created this hack and it’s clearly a work of love. But, for me, it doesn’t feel like Animal Crossing. It’s designed around mission-based stories. Which works great for Star Trek but doesn’t jibe with my concept of Animal Crossing, which is infrastructure development. The Lasers & Feelings system is built around conflict and I feel like Animal Crossing would work better as collaborative.

The game that I think would really lend itself to an Animal Crossing hack is the Quiet Year. That’s a game where you collaborate to create the map of a community over the course of a year. No one has their own characters. You jointly own everything. Obviously, an Animal Crossing hack would be more upbeat than the story of a post-apocalyptic community in the year before things get really bad.

Animal Crossing tells a different kind of story than a lot of RPGs (but not board games) It’s interesting to consider how to translate it to the tabletop.

The tiniest things can make tiny games interesting

One of my hobbies is reading indie RPGs. I don’t know how strange that is but I do come across some strange things. Sometimes I find gems that I would like to really play. Other times, I find games that I’m pretty sure will be duds. And sometimes, I just find madness like A Flask Full of Gasoline that has actually drinking gasoline in the rules.

I just read two: Operation: Caveman and King of Slimes. I couldn’t find enough to write about either of them to make for an entertaining blog but I thought I might be fun to compare them just because I had very opposite reactions to them.

Operation: Caveman is about being prehistoric folks who are trying to get a leg up on other tribes. It uses a very simple mechanic of a single die roll with modifiers to resolve stuff. Which I do appreciate. A beer and pretzel RPG should be simple and intuitive.

However, my reaction to Operation: Caveman was ‘Why would I like play this rather than the Land of Og?’ Which is not a question I ever thought I’d ever find myself typing. Not because Og is bad. It’s a hoot. But it’s such a niche product that I thought it remain unique. Og is a touch more complex but much more richly developed. 

King of Slimes has you play a JRPG slime that’s trying to become the biggest slime while avoiding getting squished by newb adventurers who want quick xp. The whole game consists of grabbing colorful candy blindly out of a bowl to determine both an adventurer and the reward for beating the encounter. When the bowl is empty, whoever has the most candy wins and becomes King of Slimes.

Honestly, King of Slimes doesn’t cross my notoriously low threshold of being an RPG. It’s a party game (by its own admission) with a push-your-luck mechanic that looks like a combat mechanic if you squint really hard. (Okay. Every combat mechanic is a push-your-luck mechanic if you want to be honest) If you wanted to, you could add a narrative element but there’s nothing in the rules about that.

But I can see playing it, particularly with kids, and I can see easily house ruling some narrative in so it does have some legitimate RPG elements. King of Slimes isn’t going to change my life but I can see trying it at least once, which more than justifies adding it to my files.

Tiny, short form indie RPGs are odd beasts. I don’t look for my next D&D, just an interesting event. And sometimes it is the smallest details that can make the difference between interesting and not.

All it required was one email so I played it

During a bout of mild insomnia, I came across Animal Professionals of Place Place Number: A Solo Writing Game. When I woke up the next morning, I realized that it was a game that I could just go ahead and play it since all it took was me writing one letter.

Animal Professionals of Place Place Number is basically just writing a gag letter to a game designer about a game that they didn’t design and doesn’t actually exist. There’s a basic layout for the letter but all the details are up to you.

For my first time trying out the game, I chose Steve Townshend because we’ve been friends ever since we met at pre-college many, many years ago. So I knew he’d either enjoy the experience or eventually forgive me :D 

Dear Mister Steven Townshend, 

Thank you for sending me a copy of the prototype of Walrus Zamboni Drivers of Canada Municipal Field 55 to review. I don’t think I have ever seen an RPG like it.

It would have been hysterical to just have intelligent, time lost walruses become zamboni drivers but making them Vikings too was just brilliant. That really helped Rob sink his teeth into playing Tuskrrr. And it was really amazing how Greg used the optional mascot costume instead of a zamboni. Having only one good quality but no bad qualities ended up being a good balance.

I do have to ask if the aliens are supposed to be the ones opening up the time-space portals? Also, do you think it would be better to have a different player write in a new quality when a player has to cross one out?

Again, I have to thank for the chance to play Walrus Zamboni Drivers of Canada Municipal Field 55. You have always created games where the goals of the players drive the story and this was no exception.

Sincerely,

Lowell Kempf 

http://ginger-goat.blogspot.com/2016/02/animal-professionals-of-place-place.html?m=1

Ocean as a game and a discussion

I recently reread Ocean, partly to get myself back into reading RPGs for fun. I first read it when I was just starting to explore indie games on my own. And I found that it not only held up well, I appreciated it even more.

Ocean is a story-telling RPG that is built on a very simple premise. You are all amnesiacs who wake up in a deserted underwater that has monsters in the shadows. You have to figure out who you are, what the base is and what those darn monsters are.

The game is a GM-free system, something I have come to be fascinated by. It uses a dice-based economy where your dice pool is also your health points and you trade in dice to solve the mysteries. However, you can't directly trade dice in to solve mysteries. Other players have to take risks for you to get the bonus dice you need to solve mysteries.

While it is a rules light system, I have skipped over tons of details of how the game works. One of the important factors is that in order to solve the mysteries, you have to take risks and take damage. The economy is tight enough up that everyone should be hurting by the time it ends. And there is a high level of interaction because you can't earn dice on your own.

But what really made me appreciate ocean was the lengthy section about the philosophy of playing the game.

Narrative  games, by their virtue of being mechanically light, can sometimes be opaque in the way to play them. The players have to do a lot of the work themselves. 

Which is not only fine, it's kind of the point. Particularly in games that don't have game masters, the players have to take on a lot of creative control. And when done well, it is an amazingly rewarding experience.

However, I know that that's not the easiest thing for some players. Including players that have spent years playing mechanically heavy systems, where do you have a very defined framework to work with.

Having a chunk of the book made up of a discussion on how these games work and how you need to embrace the freedom that comes with the narrative game is really nice and really handy.

The framework of Ocean, both the mechanics and the theme, would be enough to interest me. However, the real treasure in the book is the discussion on play.