Note: This is a copy of Update #33 from my Kickstarter campaign.
This may be the
most colorful photo we've ever posted of Emperor's New Clothes. Game
Salute said they're still waiting on the actual boxes—apparently those
have taken the longest—but they do have most everything else: the ROOS
bits and the TROO bits, cards, tuckboxes, dice, boards, tiles, sand
timers… Some of these components only come in the larger sets, so
depending on which version you backed you'll be getting some combination
of these. (And, of course, each copy of the game comes with the
invisible fleece, which is up at the top of the photo.)
And here's a closer look at the sticker sheet: all backers at
the $5 and up level get one of these, even if you didn't get the game
itself. The three logo stickers are for the front and sides of the box
(if you want your box to have a logo) or, you know, you could put it on
your bumper. The dice stickers are there in case you want to use real,
visible numbers for the dice-rolling, but I encourage you to try it out
without them at least once. There are also some wolf and sheep stickers
that can be used to play The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Oh, and that sticker in
the lower left is for you to write the age, number of players, and game
length to put on the box—if you're designing your own game you can
customize it to your liking!
A Story from XOXO Fest
While
I know a story is a poor substitute for having the actual game in your
hands, I hope it's at least an appropriate continuation of the campaign.
At the end of September, I had the chance to participate in XOXO Fest's
tabletop night. I took my prototype of Emperor's New Clothes, hoping I
could persuade a few people to try it out despite the presence of other
crowd-pleasers like Cards Against Humanity, Werewolf, Dungeon Roll,
Story War, Relic Expedition, and Machine of Death. But I grabbed a
table, set out my blank white components, and waited for somebody to
take the bait.
Since I had a limited amount of time, I gave a very brief
overview of the Kickstarter campaign to those who weren't familiar with
it, telling them about the ROOS but then skipping to the explanation so
we could sit down and play. Many people were quite open to the idea, and
even if they didn't quite get what was going on at first, eventually
they got the hang of it and were coming up with fun action cards on
their own. I explained that the rules I use provide a structure within
which you're free to improvise, but if you use my complete rules there
are limits on what you can make up. The dice have specific possible
faces; the role cards have pre-determined scoring rules; the resource
cubes represent three specific things. However, you only have to use as
much of my rule set as you need in order to improvise a game. If the
group agrees to use fewer of my rules in order to allow for more rules
of their own creation, that's part of the idea.
One of the people
who was really excited about the idea of a completely improvised game
was Sandy Weisz. He said he wanted to come back later and try that, and I
said he would be welcome. In the meantime, I played two rounds with
various festival attendees (including Henry Smith, the designer of
Spaceteam!). When the second game concluded, I left to go to the
bathroom, and came back to find this:
Sandy (standing) had gathered a group of eight players to try
the "pure improv" mode. The explanation he gave was that the only rule
of the game was that all the rules had to be consistent with each other.
They then proceeded to play an elaborate game that involved traveling
between locations using bizarre vehicles, all made up on the spot, and
the game lasted about an hour. Sandy said that he and Martin McClellan
(the guy in the hat) are actually considering developing their idea into
a game.
When that game wrapped up, a group of spectators
approached and asked what was going on. Sandy spoke up, giving them his
one rule: make up a game and keep all the rules consistent. Then they
sat down and played a completely different game.
This one was a party game of some sort—they played cards and
rolled dice, but every so often everyone had to touch their noses or the
table, or both. (By the way, that's Chris Darden in the background
playing Dungeon Roll.) And then when they were done, a third group came
over and made up yet another game.
I'd had the idea that a set of
blank components could inspire creative play, but this was really the
first time I saw it in action, with so many people collaborating on
impromptu game design. This is what I hope happens when you finally get
your own copy: that it leads to these unpredictable, delightful
experiences.
I love the idea of Daniel Solis' blog. Among other things, he often posts game ideas that he's come up with, whether he's designing a game based on it or not. It's also a different approach to what you do with game ideas: rather than trying to keep them secret, he just posts them on the internet where anyone can see them, and if you can use a mechanic, great.
I've found that I simply don't have room in my life at the moment to spend a lot of time prototyping and playtesting games. Any time I have for playing games is usually devoted to games I need to play for review, and with the massive growth of Kickstarter board game publishing, chances are that I've got some prototype or demo copy that somebody has sent me and I've only got a few weeks to try it and write it up.
I've got a notebook where I jot down some ideas, but I thought maybe a blog would work just as well, and possibly even get me some feedback. Or provide somebody else with ideas they can use.
So today's idea is about poor decision-making. I've actually got some ideas about a game based on being a dad, where the kids run around the house trying to accomplish their own goals while not setting off dad's rage meter. You know, edutainment. I won't get into those details here, but I was thinking about the fact that when people (and kids especially) are tired or hungry they start to lose their ability to make rational decisions. How could you model this in a game?
Well, my game included the ability to pick from a set of actions, things you could do while interacting with the other kids: ask politely, yell, grab, hit, trade, tattle. I thought maybe these could be arranged in a way such that if your hungry/tired meter is high, then you start losing cards. First to go is "ask politely," of course, but then I could either arrange the rest in some sort of order or else say that you just lose one at random. Pretty soon, if you still haven't eaten or taken a nap, your decisions are completely random.
I wonder if there are any games out there that model this sort of impaired reasoning capacity and, if so, how it's done.
