#3 - Design Principles and Itchfunding Plans

In which I will talk about the principles I am trying to follow in game design; why I would like to itchfund fantasypunk; and a brief comment on my recent adventures as a Professional GM in the making.

Game Design Principles

While working on my sisyphean project, fantasypunk, I’ve come across a game design manifesto called Against Coercion.

against coercion: a game design manifesto

JPLeBreton

• let players wonder about things and trust them to find answers;
• connect players with patterns they find intrinsically fulfilling;
• never treat a number going up as an inherently positive or meaningful event;
• teach respect for the autonomy and boundaries of all things;
• posit alternatives to fantasies of accumulation and extraction;
• do not think of emotional responses as something you extract from players;
• produce and distribute ethically;
• aspire to more than escape.

I can’t really explain why, but it just hit close to home. As a matter of fact, I have just updated my creator page today to include these principles there.

When working on the basic moves for fantasypunk, It’s inspired me to write these concepts:

Be Kind

When you are kind, ask the GM or another player what their character, a place or another entity needs. Ask yourself how you could fulfill that need, then roll Kind.

Decide how you are interacting with the fiction, with the game mechanics, or both, and discuss it with the GM and the rest of the Party.

On a solid hit, choose two keys. On a messy hit choose one.

Keys:

• heal, treat, aid;
• relate, empathize, inspire, support;
• sway, disarm, placate.

Describe how the keys you picked factor in the outcome;

On a miss, brace yourself.

Get in the way

When you get in the way of a party member, you can give them a choice. Ask them whether they fail because of you.

If they say yes, they choose one. If they say no, you choose one.

• Write an obligation to them;
• You add 1 Weight.

If you give them no choice, then you take both.

Yield

When the party yields before or during a conflict with otherwise reasonable foes, ask questions from Read the Room or Read a Person as if you had rolled a sound hit.

As a group, tell the GM what could happen to you all and agree upon a fun and satisfying outcome.

There is some work to do on them but I like them conceptually.

Be Kind (and its sibling moves) is especially on my crosshairs, though.

I figured that maybe the basic moves could be based on the characters’ intentions, choice of method, and a read of the overall result based on how those intentions translate to actions and how they aid or harm others. The goal would be to consider the distance between intention and action.

I have many questions and let’s see what conclusions I arrive at.

Bold Moves - Itchfunding fantasypunk

In short, working as a freelancer, parenting, trying to be kind with my bodily and mental health, and working on my passions is… a lot of plates to keep spinning all at once.

I figured that maybe itchfunding fantasypunk I could make it one of my goals raising a bit of money to do less or none of the usual work to focus on writing and getting the game finished, plus inviting cool peeps from the RPGLatAm community to collaborate on layout, editing, art, cover and more.

This is pretty much all I’d like to share on the matter right now, but I’ll be sharing more as I figure more things out.

GM for Hire

I’ve signed up at Start Playing Games a while ago and it’s been a very interesting experience - more so as I am probably the ONLY GM/Facilitator who does not run that specific dragon game at all.

On one hand, games like Masks and Thirsty Sword Lesbians are not that hard to book. On the other hand, I’ve had a chance to run Travel Not Advised, by 200-Proof Games, which demonstrates the potential indie games have to not only get players fo theme, but players who will pay to play games they have not heard of before.

I am really looking forward to the shenanigans I’ll witness while running these games!

If you wanna see what games I’ve got dates for and even join, here’s my profile link.

Also, I made a Twitter thread going over the games I am hoping to run this month.