Half of April was spent on holiday the other side of the world, visiting family in Singapore And Bali, so I’ve got a little less to write this time. Back to normal next month!
Game Design
Escape the Apocalypse
Here is the actual play that three of us did for the “Rise of the Kaiju” scenario.
One of the things that occurred to me as I thought back on that session is that we never actually got around to describing what our monstrous kaiju looked like - that seems like a failing in my rules if it didn’t make that clear!
I decided that the problem was that in the series of questions I provide about ‘how the apocalypse started’, I just had one generic set of questions for all of the scenarios. It seemed to make more sense to have a different set of questions for each apocalypse, to help guide the players into describing some key elements of each disaster.
Here are the original generic questions
What was an early sign which everyone ignored at the time, but with hindsight was the harbinger of the apocalypse?
What were some of the news stories from around the world that first made you think that something was actually going wrong?
What came up in local news that brought home the fact that this problem was going to affect you personally?
What was the first evidence of the apocalypse that you saw with your own eyes?
What happened that made your group decide that you had to escape right now? What did you see, hear, and smell at this time?
Here are the revised questions for the Rise of the Kaiju
A few months ago there was an early sign in the natural world which everyone ignored at the time, but with hindsight was the harbinger of the rise of the kaiju. What was it?
A few weeks ago there was an inexplicable disaster killing many people. Where was it? What made the disaster difficult to explain?
A few days ago there were some blurry and confused phone videos from a place quite near you that suggest something gargantuan is on the move. Describe a couple of parts of the kaiju which are glimpsed.
Social media is blowing up, and government alarms are sounding on everyone’s phones telling you to get to a place of safety right now! What does the kaiju look like?
Xeno:Despair (working title)
I’ve been able to create a PCIO table which allows the game to be played online. Automations allow you to set the game up to be played by automatically shuffling all the cards, removing a certain number of cards from each Act and putting them into the discard pile, and ensuing that the final ‘Escape!’ Card is randomly placed somewhere in the second half of Act 3. I was very pleased with how that worked!
At the moment my placeholder art is completely ripped off from Alien, so my next step is to create some custom art myself and then I’ll release the game on itch.
Playtests
Before the Season Ends
I was in a session 0 playtest for Before the Season Ends, a game of Regency romance and coming of age by Jen Adcock of Owl Knight Games.
Each of the character playbooks is named after a flower and has a limited number of tokens which they can spend to achieve thematically appropriate results.
I played Julia Talbot (the Rose). Demure, blonde, blushing, dreamy-eyed.
Camilla played Margaret Wells (the Ivy). Lithe, talkative, thoughtful, a writer.
Colin played Emmeline Crane (the Violet). Steady, self-assured, observant, reserved.
My character was using the Rose playbook and she could spend her tokens to flirt within society’s constraints, use her beauty, and express her love.
We enjoy scenes about getting ready for Mrs Fitzroy’s garden party, where each of the girls displays their character.
We then attend the garden party, where we meet a whole raft of the great and the good in London, including some young gentlemen. Time is spent playing Pall Mall, walking in the hedge mage, visiting the greenhouse and others. Tokens are spent, relationships are built or strengthened.
We are playing our next session on the coming Sunday and I’m really looking forward to it. Each of the characters playbooks give them a distinctive feel within the broader regency romance setting, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the token economy enhances the play in a longer campaign rather than just a single one-shot adventure.
You can find the current playtest version of Before the Season Ends on itch here:
