This past summer, my wife and I were out on a walk with our son. The sky was blue, the air was toasty warm, and Yuletide shenanigans couldn’t have been further from my mind… until suddenly I got an idea. An awful idea. Marc got a wonderful, awful idea. I hurried up to Caroline and told her she was going to lose her mind at the wonderful awfulness of this idea for a Follow quest. “Tell me, tell me!” she said. I leaned in and whispered five words: “We’ve got to save Christmas.”
Introducing: the Save Christmas, a quest for Follow!
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Sleigh bells are ringing, chestnuts are roasting, and all is merry and bright… but what’s this? Santa needs our help? Christmas might be… canceled?! We’ve got to do something, and fast! We’re a group of ordinary people (friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors) who’ve been swept up in a wild, wacky, Christmas-saving adventure.”
This quest lets you play out a classic “very special holiday episode” Christmas story of a bunch of regular people rescuing Santa, helping out strangers with Christmas magic, and/or decorating the North Pole to bring back that ever-important Christmas cheer. It’s the holliest, jolliest time you’ll have playing Follow this winter!
I recently played a game of Follow that used the Heist quest, and unfortunately we did the one thing you should never do when doing a heist: we got caught. Cut to our “heroes” stuck in prison, trying to figure out how to escape. The remaining challenges of the Heist playset weren’t exactly conducive to our situation, and we kind of struggled to move forward from there. We’d set out to tell the story of a theft, but instead we were stuck in lockup.
But that got me thinkin’: what if there were a quest for just such a scenario?
Introducing: the Prison Break, a quest for Follow!
“We’re prisoners locked up together. Maybe we deserve it, maybe we don’t, but either way: we’re bustin’ out of this joint.”
Exactly what it says on the tin. You and your crew are in prison. You don’t wanna be in prison. What happens next? Play to find out!
I recently had the pleasure of attending Go Play Northwest, our beloved annual story and tabletop game convention in Seattle. Caroline and I have been regular attendees for over a decade now, making us seasoned veterans of the convention space. With that designation comes (in my mind) a solemn duty to run games and show others a good time. To that end, I pitched a game in all but one of the donuts we attended and ended up playing six different titles with seventeen unique players–not bad! I’d like to tell you about two of the games I ran and why they were, in a word, awesome.
World-building meets world-building
I came out swinging with my first pitch of the convention: we’ll play In This World, then we’ll take out our Microscope and explore one of the worlds we made. I wasn’t totally sure how it would all work out, but work out it did. Four intrepid players joined me for the grand experiment.
We started with a list of topics, narrowing down to “tattoos” (I promise I didn’t tip the scales, despite having gotten a new tattoo two days earlier). Following the rest of the game’s steps led to three amazing worlds: World of Resumé Tattoos, where tattoos are designed and mandated by the government; World of Tattoo.gif, where tattoos are made from bioluminescent algae and nanites that can shift and morph based on your body chemistry; and World of Emotional Tattoos, a fantasy setting where strong emotional experiences cause semi-prophetic tattoos to appear on your body. Which one did we decide to Microscope? Vote now on your phones!
After a break, we picked Tattoo.gif as our setting. All of us said we could’ve done any of the three, but this one drew us in because of its cyberpunk aesthetic and the fact that one of our world-building statements referred to history already (we stipulated that tattoos of the past were made from the algae alone, and the nanites came later). We put the world description to one side for reference and started the Microscope procedure.
Did it work? Oh yeah. Having the world built for us put a lot of flavor into the timeline before we even started and gave us some easy targets for periods, but as soon as we got to the palette, we expanded the world in ways none of us expected beforehand. Our world gained another sentient race, ocean-dwelling people who first shared knowledge of the algae with humanity but later cut ties when we started developing nanotech. The key was letting the original world-build serve as a starting point, rather than a prophecy (don’t want to Farnsworth it, after all); we stayed flexible as we created periods and events rather than feeling locked to precisely what we’d said during In This World. We played a few rounds and had a blast. I declare the experiment a resounding success!
I choose you!
We sat down to play Grasping Nettles and started discussing the setting we wanted to create. The table was silent for a beat–everyone runs a little slow on Sunday morning. Then Caroline spoke up: “When in doubt, play Pokémon.” With these wise words, she kicked off a delightful session of the unique world-building experience Grasping Nettles brings, if you’ll pardon the pun, to the table.
We set our Pokémon-esque story on an archipelago of islands with inexplicably diverse climates (“You’re looking for the beach island? It’s right over there, between the arctic island and the red rock badlands island!”). After picking a setting, the game asks you to create three factions, so we invented: Team Riptide, a group of washouts and thugs who couldn’t hack it in the official Pokémon tournaments; Island University and Hospital, a joint research and treatment operation where professors and doctors work together; and the Puddle League, an organization of scrappy kids headed out on their first Pokémon adventures and their counselors, who are students at the University.
The unique world-building mechanic of Grasping Nettles is the wheel. Each faction has a pawn on the wheel, and on your turn you pick a faction, roll 1d6, and move clockwise around the wheel to determine which action you take. Only one of the actions is a Scene; everything else is world-building, from making a single character, to introducing an issue, to starting a project. It’s perfect for convention play because it allows you to essentially choose your level of engagement (making a location is much less involved than creating a new faction, for example), and every little move adds up so your contributions are constantly important to the fun.
Tabula rasa
I’ve highlighted these two games because they share a commonality: both required or were focused on world-building. There’s something uniquely magical about starting with a blank slate and creating an entire world from scratch. I’m drawn toward games that utilize a collaborative creative process to help players create something complex, individualized, and far more unique than what they’d come up with on their own or have come up with before. The moment when players’ minds click and start humming in harmony is what I’m always seeking–and much to my delight, I found those moments again and again at Go Play this year.
My character (Hosanna) had roadrunner as her favorite animal, and the other players chose armadillo (Seline) and snake (Sam). There was just one snake, but many armadillos and roadrunners. Each of us focused on something different during our game: for Hosanna, it was all about building paths throughout Eden. Sam wanted to understand why snake said spiders were evil, but other animals and humans didn’t feel the same way. Seline, after an encounter with a bald eagle in which the eagle said she was only good for food, wanted to figure out her purpose, and how to prove to the eagle that she wasn’t just prey. All of this resulted in Seline beating up Hosanna for trying to build a path through Seline’s oasis, and Hosanna leaving Eden without ever seeing the bridge Seline built as an apology for her violence. Very tragic.
What I found so great about this game were a few things: for one, we played fast scenes, which really moved the story along. Updating the map each round made it feel like Eden was changing with us, so that was great too. We also interacted with one another frequently, in both cooperative and combative ways. But my favorite element of the game was something of a revelation for me: I love seeing characters come to the realization that they are not their favorite animal. It’s kind of the whole point of the game, really! Your character either becomes more human, or becomes more like their favorite animal. This played out beautifully with Sam, who, in a last-ditch effort to gain insight, brought snake and a spider-loving human together and demanded they explain themselves. Both continued to exhibit all their worst traits, and finally, in a moment of insight, Sam dropped one of my favorite lines from any game of Eden so far.
“A snake is a snake. A spider is a spider. But I am not a snake or a spider. I… am Sam.”
Eden is a storytelling game about talking to animals and learning of good and evil. During the game, players collaboratively draw a map of the Garden of Eden, create human characters who live there, and role-play scenes as those characters, in which they interact with the animals and other humans. There is no GM, and players all share control of how the story turns out. The game is made for three to five players, and is meant to be played in a single session of two to three hours. The game is played in essentially three phases: Map the Garden, Create Characters, and Explore Eden. A typical tabletop during the game will look something like this:
Materials from a game of Eden
That’s just about the most basic summary I can offer. Now let’s dive into a couple of the game’s core mechanics for a closer look at how everything works.
The Map of Eden
The heart of the world you’ll explore during the game is the map. You create the map together, taking turns describing and drawing the various lands of Eden on it. Eden is a supernatural paradise, which means you can have a frosty glacier nestled cozily beside a tropical beach if you like. Animals abound in The Garden, but you’ll only select a few to focus on; in fact, your first choice of the whole game is which animal will be your character’s favorite. This choice is critically important, and I’ll be doing a post in the future about how this choice affects gameplay.
Here’s an example of a map from a game of Eden:
A map from a game of Eden
As you can see, this map has a lot going on! We’ve got a beach and ocean area, some rolling dunes, a rocky cliff, a savannah, a flowering garden, and a forest with a lake. There are bunnies, elephants, a shark, hummingbirds, and other animals visible. You may be wondering about the line of circles all the way around: that’s The Wall, which surrounds and constrains the Garden of Eden. The only way out is through The Gate, which you can see in the upper right corner. All three players in this game contributed to this map, which makes it a truly collaborative effort.
Character Creation
Making characters is Eden is very straightforward. Your character will be a young adult, innocent and naive, barely cognizant of good and evil. They have a favorite animal, a skill they learned from that animal, and a moral lesson they’ve acquired through observing or talking to their favorite animal. You’ll also have a relationship with the characters on either side of you, based on helping and harming each other. The way you create these skills, lessons, and help/harm connections is narrative; everything you say about your character is supported by fiction, so the whole process is interactive and full of unexpected surprises.
Playing Scenes
After mapping Eden and making human characters, the rest of the game is devoted to playing scenes. Each character gets one scene per round, and then everyone updates lessons. That’s it! The scenes themselves follow certain guidelines: for example, your scene must shine the spotlight on your character. A great part of the game is playing as animals in other people’s scenes–being a talking animal is just fun, and I often surprise myself with what I end up saying or doing in that role. Scenes generally alternate between asking your favorite animal for help, and trying to apply your lessons to your interactions with other humans, often with mixed results.
So where can I get the game?
Look for Eden on Kickstarter this Fall!
Oh, and as an addendum to the game in the photos… sharks are super wise.
Our game began with the creation of a map of Eden. Tim chose chameleon as his animal, and placed them in a jungle. Evan selected termites and drew a devoured forest with termite mounts. Alex picked dragon as his favorite animal, and created a deadly swamp where the beast lived. I chose meerkat as my animal, and drew a dusty savannah for the meerkats to inhabit. We then added a few more creatures and details to our map: a river and lake with salmon, some elephants in the savannah, some leeches in the swamp, and a phoenix on some mountains near the forest. Next we added the wall, which was made of massive (like 50 ft diameter) steel beams. The Nod Gate was a corrugated steel door with a handprint scanner (not that our innocent characters knew what that was, but we did).
Next we made our characters. I played Iah, a young woman who knew how to watch for danger and believed that we should educate others for their own benefit. Tim was Sisera, a woman who knew how to hide in plain sight and thought that we shouldn’t let others see our weakness. Evan was Orpha, a man who knew how to build with wood and thought that we should rely on our friends, and Alex played Othniel, a young man who knew how to traverse the swamp and believed we should trust others to be strong for themselves.
The story got underway with Iah asking meerkat for help. Iah was upset because Sisera had kicked her out of a hiding place when they were being attacked by the dragon. The meerkats suggested that because Sisera had caused harm to a member of her “tribe”, she was no longer fit to be a member of the tribe, and had to be dealt with. This one conversation led to big changes in Eden. While Orpha, Othniel, and Sisera each tried to make amends for things they’d done wrong to one another, Iah began a recruitment campaign for “the tribe”, starting with Seth, Namah, and Kish (secondary characters). She managed to get most of the humans, the dragon, some meerkats, and the phoenix to join, which resulted in the dragon killing the non-tribe human, Namah. This outraged Orpha, who was her friend, and he attacked Iah, leading her to retaliate. Orpha – “We have to kill the dragon, because he killed my friend!” Iah – “She wasn’t in the tribe, so she wasn’t your friend!”
After all was said and done, Orpha had been thrown out of Eden, Othniel and the dragon spent more time together, Sisera had gone into hiding with the chameleons, and Iah ruled the tribe, with the heads of anyone who wasn’t a member on spikes around the fire pit.
A really solid session. I’d made a change to the rules that has players quickly jot down some secondary character names at the game’s outset for use later, and having those available was really handy. It allowed us to easily introduce (and remember to create) other humans besides our player characters, which is what I wanted it to do. A fantastic game all around.
