Skip to main content

Mechanic Monday: Is this a ?

Hahahaha I don’t actually have time to do this today and yet! It’s Mechanic Monday!
Today’s a conjecture on something that I don’t even know exists? It’s based on my understanding of what a program can do, and spins wildly off into hypothesis territory from there.  Anyway at my day job everyone has at least two screens.  It’s that kind of workplace.  Three is becoming the norm, I’ve seen people with five.  Which seems aggressively excessive.  And I see a weird number of people using programs that look like they’re for coding? Considering very few people here work in any capacity on anything that would involve code? But it means I’ve long flirted with the idea of playing a MUD right out in the open on my desktop.  Just fire up Darkmists or some other telnet-based text game, and who would know it wasn’t me tappity-tap-tap-tapping away on important company business (once the ASCII art intro finishes scrolling of course)? I already do some shorthand things - the main reason that I don’t play games at work is that I spend a lot of it doing writing, be it for games or my theatre.  Sometimes I hide hours of writing by doing it in Outlook so it looks as though I’m just composing a complex work email.  And lately I’ve been thinking about Excel.
Excel is, in a sense, programmable, right? I mean you can allow user inputs that automatically generate outputs, and you can link those outputs together to form chains.  Right? If that’s the case, here’s my idea:

Excel-lent Bandersnatch
In BINDERSNITCH, you open an Excel Workbook and are confronted with an introduction and page after page of hashed gibberish and nonsense.  However, by following the clues and changing or entering certain codewords into various cells of the spreadsheet, you can cause the gibberish to resolve into clear stories that lead you on to the next part of the puzzle.  Some puzzles will have you go back and tweak the programming of certain cells in previously solved puzzles to generate a different result.  Some puzzles will allow a branching of the narrative.  Depending on how you work through the story, different endings are possible.

Is that how Excel works? I think so, but I’m not sure! I thought of this because I’ve been working as a writer on an escape-room-esque experience - which I really need to do some work on, on top of the other things I have to do today! So avidi-avidi-avidi-a-that’s all folks! Catch you next week for a more coherent MECHANIC MONDAY.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Campaigning

  Hey it's TTRPG Tuesday, let's see if I get something written before sleep overtakes me. I'm still on that Channelers kick, but today I want to talk about a possible campaign path: The Magpie Offensive.  I see this as a military campaign where the PCs are conscripted, volunteers, or mercenaries for an army that is marching to quell Spirit threats and unite the region under a protectorate. There should be free RP sections as interludes between missions, and missions should be chosen by the party.  The army ensures loyalty with intangible rewards as well as artifact items. NOTE: This whole thing is being designed with the Rascal article on militarization in ttrpgs in mind. What is the thrust of the campaign? It's fundamentally one of conquest.  How do I encourage characters to question their presence and their complicity? How much interpersonal violence is an acceptable price to pay for environmental justice? How can party composition affect all this from jump? H...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: The Secret Calendar

Welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! Have I done any this year? Looks like no! On pace to be a pretty low-posting year I guess. Today I actually have a full-fledged one pager TTRPG to share.  I was listening to a Ludology with Camilla Zamboni as the guest and was inspired by her collection Roll for Learning.  The Secret Calendar came to me pretty much fully formed as I walked and listened to the episode, though I do want to acquire RfL to get layout inspo. Anyhow, the first draft can be found HERE .  I think this could be a fun activity for students (was also thinking of Wolfenoot) and maybe I’ll publish it or submit it at some point. Okay I’m out of practice so that's it buh bye!
Post a Comment
Read more