I started the week off by thinking seriously about what exactly I want my focus to be on for my playtests of No One Emerges Triumphantly. There’s not really much point in bringing the whole game, considering its campaign framework does not allow for it to be played in a single session. Instead, I want to bring a horizontal slice.

The part that’s probably going to be the trickiest is the section involving the literary exquisite corpse. It’s also, in a lot of ways, the heart of the game, where the participants take a step back from playing their characters in order to create a creepypasta story at the table. If it doesn’t work, then I need to radically rethink the game’s entire structure, and so it’s the part that I most need to get in front of people.

There are other parts that I’d like to get responses to, but that’s mostly for my own validation and as seeds for potential future marketing. The storywriting part is much more challenging from a design perspective and from a play perspective. I am considering bringing in multiple models to look at how to accomplish that task, as much as I hate to do work that will be scrapped. Still, this is an invaluable opportunity to get feedback from peers and players, that I must not squander.

For the rest of the week, I spent free time brainstorming about possible models.

The tight deadline for the Golden Cobra caused me quite a bit of anxiety, and so I resolved to have a finished manuscript by Wednesday. As time restraints grew tighter and tighter, I broke and did something that I almost never do: I asked for help. Specifically, I asked for help from my girlfriend, who is the best editor I know. Over the course of about half an hour, she worked her magic and I made edits based on her suggestions in real time. She’s a very busy person, so this is not something I can rely on frequently, but the shortness and the tightness of the deadline made it worth the ask.

Fortunately, I was able to get everything done before the deadline. I went with a fairly simple and minimalist design for the game’s layout. I’m used to doing digest style formatting, but the strict page count made me go for standard letter size in portrait. In order to aid in readability, I went for a larger font size and columns, which helps break up the line of reading, which is essential for aiding in reading comprehension. I personally prefer a serifed body font, despite this not being standard practice, I think it helps with readability as well, especially when going for a larger font size. I put headers in their own text frames with borders around them, to further breakup text. Finally, I added a small piece of vector artwork to fill a large blank section at the very end, to help avoid there being too much white space.

I do generally prefer these kinds of minimalist layouts, because it brings the focus onto the text itself. While there’s no denying the power of a strong visual presentation, I can only design according to my own aesthetic sensibilities, for better or for worse. (Let’s be honest, it’s mostly for worse.) I do go for more grandiose designs for my larger projects, but something of this scope didn’t really need them. Judging from the varying degrees of layout complexity from past winners, I feel confident that the layout won’t be what causes me to not get any recognition.

That said, with the week’s design work done by Wednesday, I then had a lot of time to work on my next long form article. Working on that article wound up being more mentally tiring than I expected. Nevertheless, I finished my first draft, meaning that I will hopefully have the finished copy ready to go before the next newsletter.

In Harm’s Way - Not a game, just a mechanic that can be inserted into another game. In a lot of ways, it feels like how violence could be implemented from a rules elide perspective. It simplifies violence down to bare bones, keeping it dangerous while emphasizing escape rather than doing violence in return. Nifty bit of tech that I almost certainly will never use.

Dear You - A simple game about writing a letter to yourself. It does mostly fall into the “extemporize from a series of prompts” category, which I think is fine, albeit not particularly mechanically interesting. It does have a short bit about emotional safety at the beginning, which has got me thinking about the role of safety tools in solo games. We do have the ability to step away from harmful topics when it’s just us, don’t we? But yet, the act of playing a game (even if it’s by ourselves) can make it hard to back away. Formal rules have a kind of binding power to many, including myself, which is perhaps why so many on the avant-garde are developing games that push the players to break with the formal rules.

Contact me at [email protected] for any queries regarding writing, mechanical design, editing, or podcast appearances.

Find my games at https://goat-song-publishing.itch.io.

Find my long form writing at https://goatsongrpg.wordpress.com.

Follow my social media at https://bsky.app/profile/meinberg.bsky.social.

Thank you for joining me here in the Goat Song Workshop!

Until next week,