This week's Mechanic Monday is uhhhhh a TTRPG Tuesday, totally on purpose and everything. Yeah! I planned this.
Honestly I really struggle with RPGs. Like so many others, I grew up playing DnD, mostly with other socially- and emotionally-stunted young men. It gave me an extremely narrow view of the hobby: first as a glimpse into a kind of sandboxy freedom that was still on the distant horizon for digital games; then later as a very bifurcated experience between juvenile wish fulfillment and a miniatures strategy wargame that occupied much more of my imagination. There were moments of unforgettable, beautiful, hilarious storytelling, sure; but they always felt emergent, rather than a function of the game or its mechanics. It was tremendous fun, but like I said, its scope was very limited even then, and that boxed-in understanding of what a TTRPG is and what it can do, has coloured my experience down the years. Working recently on the John Silence RPG, I struggled to square my DnD/boardgaming rules-matrix-based mind with my limited outside-looking-in glimpses of the new generation of indie RPGs and what they were/are trying to achieve. Not that I’m irredeemably a grognard - I think I came up with some fine portals into a modern ludonarrative, and adhered to the (extremely loose, inconsistent) experience guidelines and worldbuilding. But it didn't come easily, and I wouldn't be shocked to learn that none of my writing ultimately fit the project. C’est la vie.
All that being said, it’s both weird and unsurprising that I latched on as hard as I did to the Sad Mech Jam. This was in February, and saw people making small quick games that focused on the emotional component of stories set in the giant robot genre. My exact shit. I didn’t find out about the jam until too late to get anything out of it, but the inspiration has still resonated. Perhaps what gives the concept such a unique appeal to me (given my TTRPG background above) is that for me, gundam and other mecha macrostories are always clothed in the kind of Cool(™) fighty MIC zero-sum-jingoism that I was programmed to love, but also inherently steeped in the melodramatic and the tragic in a way that I also craved from my media in my adolescence. That juxtaposition between the trappings of cerebral combat strategy and the core of emotional connection and Philosophy Grand Statement - yeah. Yeah, that lands for me.
Haha this is an especially egregious ramble part of the blog post eh? Come on, enough with the introspection, just get to the recipe! I hate that philosophy, if food blogging bugs you that much go read a book or just scroll past the personal part for fuck’s sake. Suffice to say, I connected with the impetus for this jam. And yea, though it may be long over, I’m going to put something together for it. And its core component… is today’s Mechanic.
The Machine Demands Sacrifice
In WHAT MAKES IT MOVE, each player builds a unique one-shot character, with a complete backstory and relationships. This background will inform a Precious Core pool of cards for each character: On each card, the player will write or draw an attribute, a memory, a loved one, or anything else that makes that character who they are, or what that character fights for.
In the course of the campaign, the characters will be thrown into battles and situations that they cannot normally overcome. The GM will take a Precious Core card, and describe how that aspect of the character is in peril. The player will choose one of their other Precious Core cards and light it on fire, and has until the card is consumed to describe how sacrificing that aspect of their character grants them the special ability or circumstances to overcome. This may require longer than it takes for the card to burn, so the player may use one burning card to light another (from their own pool, or volunteered from another player’s pool) in order to keep the narrative going. If the GM deems the player to have successfully sacrificed enough to overcome the odds, they return the stolen Precious Core card to the player’s pool.
Haha look at the stand-in title for that mechanic. I’ve been playing too much Cultist Simulator (I HAVE BEEN PLAYING TOO MUCH CULTIST SIMULATOR), but anyway. Plenty of possible iterations here. I was thinking about limiting the number of times the lighter can be flicked, or having the timer be the GM burning the Precious Core card; perhaps instead of blank cards, you fill out the character sheet, then tear it into pieces and those pieces of paper are what you write your Precious Core on. I was also thinking about having the rules be a list of Maxims. War is Wasteful, And So is this Game; Every Victim Has A Life; Peace Insulates Us From War. Stuff like that.
Anyway I’m supposed to be training someone at work right now so time to quickly post this and get after it. Thanks for reading, see you next week!
Honestly I really struggle with RPGs. Like so many others, I grew up playing DnD, mostly with other socially- and emotionally-stunted young men. It gave me an extremely narrow view of the hobby: first as a glimpse into a kind of sandboxy freedom that was still on the distant horizon for digital games; then later as a very bifurcated experience between juvenile wish fulfillment and a miniatures strategy wargame that occupied much more of my imagination. There were moments of unforgettable, beautiful, hilarious storytelling, sure; but they always felt emergent, rather than a function of the game or its mechanics. It was tremendous fun, but like I said, its scope was very limited even then, and that boxed-in understanding of what a TTRPG is and what it can do, has coloured my experience down the years. Working recently on the John Silence RPG, I struggled to square my DnD/boardgaming rules-matrix-based mind with my limited outside-looking-in glimpses of the new generation of indie RPGs and what they were/are trying to achieve. Not that I’m irredeemably a grognard - I think I came up with some fine portals into a modern ludonarrative, and adhered to the (extremely loose, inconsistent) experience guidelines and worldbuilding. But it didn't come easily, and I wouldn't be shocked to learn that none of my writing ultimately fit the project. C’est la vie.
All that being said, it’s both weird and unsurprising that I latched on as hard as I did to the Sad Mech Jam. This was in February, and saw people making small quick games that focused on the emotional component of stories set in the giant robot genre. My exact shit. I didn’t find out about the jam until too late to get anything out of it, but the inspiration has still resonated. Perhaps what gives the concept such a unique appeal to me (given my TTRPG background above) is that for me, gundam and other mecha macrostories are always clothed in the kind of Cool(™) fighty MIC zero-sum-jingoism that I was programmed to love, but also inherently steeped in the melodramatic and the tragic in a way that I also craved from my media in my adolescence. That juxtaposition between the trappings of cerebral combat strategy and the core of emotional connection and Philosophy Grand Statement - yeah. Yeah, that lands for me.
Haha this is an especially egregious ramble part of the blog post eh? Come on, enough with the introspection, just get to the recipe! I hate that philosophy, if food blogging bugs you that much go read a book or just scroll past the personal part for fuck’s sake. Suffice to say, I connected with the impetus for this jam. And yea, though it may be long over, I’m going to put something together for it. And its core component… is today’s Mechanic.
The Machine Demands Sacrifice
In WHAT MAKES IT MOVE, each player builds a unique one-shot character, with a complete backstory and relationships. This background will inform a Precious Core pool of cards for each character: On each card, the player will write or draw an attribute, a memory, a loved one, or anything else that makes that character who they are, or what that character fights for.
In the course of the campaign, the characters will be thrown into battles and situations that they cannot normally overcome. The GM will take a Precious Core card, and describe how that aspect of the character is in peril. The player will choose one of their other Precious Core cards and light it on fire, and has until the card is consumed to describe how sacrificing that aspect of their character grants them the special ability or circumstances to overcome. This may require longer than it takes for the card to burn, so the player may use one burning card to light another (from their own pool, or volunteered from another player’s pool) in order to keep the narrative going. If the GM deems the player to have successfully sacrificed enough to overcome the odds, they return the stolen Precious Core card to the player’s pool.
Haha look at the stand-in title for that mechanic. I’ve been playing too much Cultist Simulator (I HAVE BEEN PLAYING TOO MUCH CULTIST SIMULATOR), but anyway. Plenty of possible iterations here. I was thinking about limiting the number of times the lighter can be flicked, or having the timer be the GM burning the Precious Core card; perhaps instead of blank cards, you fill out the character sheet, then tear it into pieces and those pieces of paper are what you write your Precious Core on. I was also thinking about having the rules be a list of Maxims. War is Wasteful, And So is this Game; Every Victim Has A Life; Peace Insulates Us From War. Stuff like that.
Anyway I’m supposed to be training someone at work right now so time to quickly post this and get after it. Thanks for reading, see you next week!
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