Fresh Releases

A Formalist Approach to The Rule Book - A new article on my wordpress. This particular piece addresses The Rule Book, one of the most interesting new books to come out about games in recent years. The book itself takes a broad approach to game rules, taking on a constructivist perspective. By applying a formalist lens to the text, reading in slight opposition to the intention of the writers, I managed to get some interesting insights. There’s at least one more long form post to come out of this, and I think a smaller post that I will include in next week’s newsletter.

The Workshop

Most of my work this week was spent on A Formalist Approach to The Rule Book. I had been spending a long time delving into The Rule Book, and so the article emerged fairly naturally once I got my fingers to the keyboard. Ultimately, that particular task is one that I frequently fail at. I spend days or weeks or even months just thinking about what I’m going to work on, but I struggle to actually do the work part.

The plus side to this approach is that when I do set to work, the words are often already arranged in my mind. A more efficient approach would be to knock out my writing for the day as early as possible and focus my thoughts specifically on the next day’s work, so that I can sleep on it, internalize that thinking, and attack the next day’s writing with a primed and ready mind.

This is, of course, easier said than done. I’m starting writing this newsletter at 3:00pm on Sunday after all, when I should have been writing it as I went through the week’s work. That said, since I already had a clear vision on what I was going to write, the draft for this newsletter took me less than an hour to put together.

Going back to the article, the hardest part ultimately was not writing the piece. The prep was probably the most work involved, but the hardest work was figuring out how to properly market it. I still don’t know the best way to do this, but fortunately discords like The Dice Exploder make for good grounds for discussing the sort of theory that I’m espousing in the text.

I did very little work on my games this week, beyond the thinking part.

I have decided that I am going to try to get a first draft done of When the Strings Are Cut, with an eye set on pitching the piece to publishers at Metatopia. I’d love to have a project where I don’t have to do the extra work that goes along with making a game, where I can focus on design and writing, the parts that I am most skilled at. Very few people are good at editing their own writing, and I am not one of them. I can do layout, but I have no idea if I’m good at it. And I struggle a lot with art design, in part because my zero dollar budget makes it a lot harder to pull off, with more skills that I need to develop.

Being able to trust in others to handle that part of the development would be an amazing boon, though now one I’m particularly expecting. Still, there is no harm in trying.

Other efforts have been made to get me ready for Metatopia. I’ve gotten a new set of business cards. I’ve submitted my games to the schedule. I’ve had an anxiety spike realizing that the only people I know who will be there are industry luminaries like the Bakers. I’ve also been putting some thought into No One Emerges Triumphantly.

I’m going to stick with my sentence-level construction. I feel asking the kind of people who would be the target audience for my game would find it easier to write eight disjointed sentences, rather than complete paragraphs. Plus, this assures a more equal distribution of labor, where most table sizes would result in an unequal distribution of paragraphs per player. I am, however, going to bring in multiple prompt sets (I’m thinking three), so that I can run multiple times in a given session in case it takes less time than I expected to run.

My plan for the moment is to get the playtest ready next week, that way I can make sure that everything is prepped for the convention.

Ludography

SPINE - I’ve not done a reading this week, but I do need to give a shout out to SPINE. SPINE is a solo game, existing in the tradition of Thousand Year Vampire, but with a greater emphasis on the text as text. Very few things are being generated ex nihilo, instead you have an actual body of work that you’re interacting with, and the relationship between the play and the text is extremely tight. The designer of the game has put out a series of articles talking about his conception of a “book game,” (link here) which I highly recommend reading.

I also highly recommend following the print instructions for SPINE, it plays a lot better as a physical object than a digital one.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar (link here) - The latest in the Harvest Moon lineage, Grand Bazaar is a remake of an earlier DS game. What it brings to the table is a surprising degree of mobility, enabled via a double jump, trampoline barrels, and a glider. Joining these unexpected elements to a farming rpg creates a dynamic experience, and one that rewards precise play. The titular Bazaar itself is also very distinctive, creating a more propulsive weekly schedule, where a week’s labour culminates in the weekly Bazaar. A special flavor of quest leads to new shops opening in the Bazaar, which both helps to rank up the Bazaar generally and also opens up new options to peruse when the Bazaar is open. The Bazaar in particular is something that could be relatively easily ported into a TTRPG, adding something of a legacy mechanic to a game.

You Will Die In This Place - I didn’t actually read this one this week, but I did back its full version on Gamefound. The beta is in line for my game of the year 2025, so I highly recommend backing this!

Works in Progress

No One Emerges Triumphantly (Creepypasta TTRPG) - Concept Done - Alpha Due November 6
The Minimal and Maximal Players (Theory Blogpost) - Brainstorming
When the Strings Are Cut (Experimental TTRPG) - First Draft Begun