Under Development Archives

What We Played: Pottery Shards

Posted by Caroline

Playtesting continues for Marc’s latest project, the archaeology game currently titled Pottery Shards! Marc, Ben, Fred, and I had a great time testing out a new gameplay loop that really helped focus our world-building and felt organic and fun. Marc’s been patiently iterating on this design for just over a year, and it feels like we’re really getting close to the final rules!

The People of the Flood

We decided to study a brutal and ambitious civilization that resided beside a desert river. Our archeologist discovered one site with three artifacts that offered us a glimpse of the People of the Flood.

The Site

As first player I had the honors of describing the site. I made a tall cone made of hewn sandstone, with an underground tunnel entrance. Fred then got to describe what the site was used for. Since it floods each year, people swim through the tunnel opening to perform an annual soul purification ritual in the dark pool within the cone. Finally, Ben painted a picture of what this looked like – it’s all beige now when we look at it, but in the past the archeologist imagines it being painted brilliant colors against the desert tan.

The Artifacts

Marc introduced our first artifact, a large stone ball with three spikes protruding out of it, kinda like a spiky tripod. I got to describe its use. Our archeologist decided it was probably used as a sacrificial statue, symbolizing the evil you wanted to purify. Fred described the people hauling the statue as they would swim through the tunnel, a dangerous and difficult task. The statues get left at the bottom of the pool, making it more and more dangerous to enter.

We continued playing that loop format – one player introducing an artifact, the next player saying what it was for, and the last player sharing a little vision of what it looked like long ago. We created a series of carvings at the top of the cone, which were peoples’ ambitions for the year. Our archeologist imagined people climbing over one another to just barely reach the top and carve their hopes in the dark. And then we created a door that had bones in it, because of course people died during this ritual and so were buried within the walls. In fact, sometimes instead of bringing an evil spirit statue, you came with someone else to fight to the death. In the water. In the dark. Hey – we said they were a brutal people!

Onward

We only had time for that one full round. If we had kept playing, we would have gotten to move on to a new site, and discover new artifacts there. I’m excited to see how Marc keeps honing the rules and the text, and so happy that we are now in the ‘fine tuning’ stages of the design!

What We Played: Welcome to Sentai High! (Entanglement playtest)

Posted by Marc

The game starts with creating a setting. We’re supposed to pick a basic story concept, something everyone’s already familiar with. As Caroline read out the description, an idea flashed into my head. “Ok, hear me out,” I said. “Power Rangers.” We set up our little world of high school seniors at Sentai High in Neo-San-Kyoto, who face the challenge of fighting huge monsters in Japanese-warrior themed mechs while also finding time go on dates and study for the big test!

“We can’t lose someone else…”

Our cast of characters started with Riyuji Takanaka, a transfer student and newest member of the team, aka “the rookie” and Val Vaneo, a hot-headed hotshot member of the team. Next was my character Venetia Vaneo, younger sister of Val and decidedly not a mech pilot (and thus unaware of their existence!) Finally we had Tiger Lopez, Venetia’s boyfriend and (to complete the loop) Riyuji’s mentor. Tiger was the head of the ranger squad, but he was haunted by the loss of their former leader Jason, for which he blamed himself.

We finished character creation by writing feeling statements between our characters (Venetia loves Tiger, Val feels threatened by Riyuji), then passing the card to that player so they can write a reason why you should or shouldn’t feel that way (Venetia shouldn’t love Tiger because he’s hiding the truth from her, Val shouldn’t feel threatened because Riyuji aspires to be like him). We did this twice, then dove into the gameplay loop.

You got your sports anime in my mecha anime!

Our story was, from the get-go, a mess of emotions. Val and Riyuji were constantly at each others’ throats, both on the basketball court and during combat with giant monsters. Venetia, none the wiser about their secret identities as senpai superheroes, wanted to spend time with her cool older brother and go on a date to Boba Mountain with her boyfriend–but both activities were interrupted by the call of battle. Riyuji struggled to fit in, while also trying to fill the big shoes of the lost leader Jason.

In the end, Val overcame some of his impulsiveness, Venetia and Tiger broke up over a misunderstanding but got back together when she learned he wasn’t cheating on her (he was just out driving a huge robot!), and Riyuji finally found his place on the team after defeating the big bad and discovering the “actually just missing” Jason. Venetia got a mech of her own, and end credits rolled with the five of us silhouetted at sunset overlooking the city–along with a sixth character who was definitely there the whole time, what to do mean she never appeared in any scenes, she’s definitely part of the team and always as been!

Memorable Moments

“I’m heavily armed!” – Giant Octopus Monster, during battle.

“Now if you’ll excuse me… I have to go do a group project.” – Val, Tiger, and Riyuji’s consistent excuse for ditching Venetia over and over.

What I loved most about playing this game was the, well, entanglement of it all. We created a very deep and interconnected set of characters who just made sense together, and then attached them to each other with tons of thick strands of emotional yarn. This meant each of us had an interesting opportunity for interaction with every other character–and as any season groundtable gamer will tell you, often the best way to set up a scene is just pick someone you want your character to talk to, throw them into a situation, and let it fly.

Stay Tuned!

Entanglement is Caroline’s latest project that you’ll hopefully be able to play yourself in the not-too-distant future!

What I’m working on: Downfall 2nd Edition

Posted by Caroline

This is probably going to jinx it, but over the past few months I’ve been hammering away at a second edition of Downfall. *Cue thunder and lightning*

I’ve had ideas for a second edition now for several years, but have finally found the time and willpower to start actually playtesting them, in no small part due to Ben’s encouragement and the fun notes I’ve gotten about his Empire of Light Downfall game.

We just started our own game and are having a fantastic time so far. We’re an insular Hobbity society, just beginning to have our Loyalty turn against us. We set it up so that we are one society among a whole world of fantasy societies, and our plan is to jump between places as each one falls in its own way.

Things are still pretty fluid, but for the second edition here are some things I’m working on:

Rules for 2-5 players
Slightly different Elements set up to calibrate settings to be more or less weird
No more character non-monogamy and space for more subplots within the society

Revolutions

The most fundamental change is an option for long-term legacy style play – Revolutions – where we see the society changing over a longer period of time with different Heroes emerging and falling. Instead of playing until the society collapses, and that’s it, we get to keep going and explore what comes next.

There’s a few more changes that I’m still testing out, and it’s going to be a long development road. I like to take my time, so there’s really no telling when it’ll be ready. But at least for now things are looking bright for a Downfall 2 *eventually*!