Writing is still a bit more a struggle for me, which is something I have been trying to remedy and get back into the flow of doing – even if the world is trying its darndest to stop me! I took part in National Novel Writing Month and succeeded, so hopefully the creative writing I did there will transition over here somewhat!
Anyways, I had a few thoughts about plots and how I as a GM go about making them and engaging with them, both to see how my players react and to become a better RP’er myself. So I thought I’d talk about it.
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Or search Dice and Suffering on any Podcasting platform 🙂
One of the main problems with tabletop roleplaying games, is that you need a group of friends to play them with. Not only that, but you need all your schedules to line up – which is a herculean task of its own. The more players you have, the more complicated organising a session becomes. Sometimes, you just want to flex your creative muscles without having to go through the hassle of setting up a session with your friends. Single player TTRPGs are where we can get that tabletop fix, which has become more powerful now that we’re all playing remotely.
Would You Search Through The Lonely Earth For Me is a single player, single page TTRPG, that can be played in one sitting or over a long period of time. For example, I completed my first playthrough over the bank holiday weekend in between the various chores that I needed to get done. Finally, a way to make laundry and video rendering interesting! Created by Michael Whelan, video team member at Dicebreaker and Zoe Delahunty-Light, video team member at Eurogamer, all you need to play WYSTTLEFM (not the smoothest of acronyms, I must admit) is something to write on, the rules and a ten sided dice. Easy to set up, easy to play, easy to enjoy.
We all feel lost sometimes. So this final entry feels poignant.
Playing the game, requires four rolls of the d10. These rolls correspond to four key details that form the framework of each stage of your story:
Where – This column tells you where your journey is taking you e.g. whether you end up on a battlefield or in a museum. Whether you are on the way there or have already reached your destination, is entirely up to you.
Who – Who carried you to this place? Who found you and decided to bring you along for the ride? Did they treat you like a treasure or were you stuffed to the bottom of a bag, to be forgotten?
How Long – For what length of time will you remain in this place? Are you merely stopping by briefly, are you left behind to rust in the darkness until you are unearthed again?
Tone – This defines what you are feeling in this place. Are you hopeful? Are you proud of how far you’ve come?
Let me explain the concept of this TTRPG. You take the role of a precious treasure, that is passed from person to person, location to location, over the course of millennia. The treasure in question is up to you, the only real restrictions being that you cannot affect the world around you – only observe and experience. Regardless of how those who come across you act; you are powerless to do anything about it. It makes for a rather unique experience, as instead of having to think in character about what you *can* do in a situation, you are forced into the role of an observer. Each journal entry tells a tale of its own, as short, or as lengthy as you choose it to be.
This game is something that I recommend you play through on your own, as it is unique for everyone. However, to give you an idea of where your journey can go – I’ll walk you through my very first session. I decided that my treasure would be a golden amulet, like those you see in fantasy stories around the necks of the “totally not related to all-powerful beings” protagonists.
I’ll let you see one of my entries 🙂
I began in a place of history, brought there by the prophet, abandoned there for an unknowable amount of time, with a crestfallen tone. As vague as the prompts are deliberately phrased, I had a clear vision in my mind of where my story would begin. My amulet lay in the depths of a cavern, near an underground river that flowed to the sea. I’d be thrown out of a bag, onto the dusty stone floor, an offering to a god that never answered prayers.
From there, a scholar uncovered my amulet under the rocks and debris that had built up over the years. Overjoyed at the care and effort that this professor put into rejuvenating the golden surface, my amulet settled into its new home in a museum with great content. Millenia passed and the amulet witnessed the development of the world around it, eventually lying in the possession of a young blacksmith called Corinth, who was forced to work for the war lords that controlled his home.
Travelling from the iron forges to the cusp of a war, my amulet witnessed the downfall of empires and the massacres of the battlefield, terrified that it’d be lost to the bloodshed that surrounded it. The chaos of the battlefield was a stark contrast to the collector’s basement that it spent the next few years in, forever cursed to watch every other precious object be prized and adored by him, but not the amulet. Eventually, the amulet was left as an offering to a local miracle worker, by a craftsman who desperately needed a miracle to save her son.
My story came to an end when the wanderer that carried me on her chest, was crushed in a cave in. The rubble tumbled from above and buried us both in an endless pile of boulders and rocks that weighed down on us. Helpless and alone in the darkness, my amulet’s main wish in the end was that the wanderer would be found one day, to give her family closure. It hoped that if found, it would be buried with her, finally at peace and no longer alone.
Considering how much time I spend playing multiplayer TTRPGs such as D&D, CoC etc, its nice to play alone for once.
Despite my journal entries only covering seven pages of A5 paper, I felt that my tale had come to a satisfactory end. I had weaved a tale of a world that grew and changed, with its triumphs and failures. I got to flex that creative muscle that I haven’t gotten to use in a long time. I used to do a lot of creative writing when I was younger, including the summer where I actually took part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which involved writing a 50,000 word novel in the span of a month. An intense but enjoyable experience.
A lot of my life has been spent weaving stories in my mind, some of which were put down on paper or turned into the worlds that my players now explore in our campaigns. The chance to create my own worlds again, to step back and make something entirely new, has been a real treat. There’s something remarkable about making a game that can create so much from so little and has such massive replayability value, so I tip my hat to Wheels and Zoe, this is a game that I think a lot of people will come back to.
Anyways, I hope everyone is having a good day and I recommend you keep an eye on MindGames’s Twitter this week, especially on the 3rd as I have a pretty cool announcement to make! Keep an eye out for that and be sure to let me know what you want me to talk about next.
As my final term at university passes by, I often sit back
and reflect on how far I’ve come. From admitting I had mental health issues, to
starting medication, to starting Mind Games and preparing to go out into the
world as a fully-fledged adult – it’s been a hell of a journey. A big part of that
process has been the time I have spent with my friends. Since I don’t really
drink and the university clubbing scene is the definition of a panic attack for
me, I tend to stick to sober events. Watching films, playing video games,
chatting with friends and sucking at minigolf, I’ve done it all. My favourite
thing to do though, is play board games with those friends. Especially ones that
stay with you.
I’ve spoken before about Dungeons and Dragons on the site and anyone who follows my Twitter will know that I’m currently running a campaign for some friends. However, the world of tabletop gaming is not just D&D, much to the shock of many. Thanks in part to the afternoons I’ve spent in board game cafes with my friends from school, and to communities like Dicebreaker – I’ve gotten to explore the genre that I love, a bit more deeply. From Dead of Winter and Betrayal at The House on The Hill, to Call of Cthulhu and Band of Blades, there’s a massive range of games out there for you and more are being developed every single day.
If you read my Betrayal article, you’ll know what these are for.
One tabletop game that has really hit close to home for me
recently is the horror RPG, Ten Candles. There aren’t many games that can stun
my friends into silence for more than a few seconds, yet Ten Candles manages
it. Every decision that my players made were given an extensive level of
thought, detail and care, before committing to it. Considering these are the
same players that tend to throw fireballs first and ask questions later, it’s
an astounding difference to witness. So, what is Ten Candles? Why am I
committing an entire article to it? Why should you play it? Let me tell you.
Humans have always feared the dark. Though when you delve further into it, it’s more a fear of the unknown. We can cope with what we can see, what we know is there. It’s a quantifiable problem that we can take steps to combat. In the pitch black, you don’t know what’s there, what it’s doing or whether that prickling on the back of your neck is it creeping ever closer. Ten Candles is played mostly in the dark. Once you finish creating the characters you will tell the story with, you turn off any lights in the room. Your only illumination is by the ten candles sat in the centre of the table.
And we are alive.
The sky has gone dark. No sun, no satellites, no phones or GPS. Power grids have failed across the continents and the world you know has been plunged into darkness. Creatures known only as “They”, stalk the shadows, cutting down the last remnants of humanity as you struggle to survive in this post-apocalyptic world. “They” will claim your life in the end. That much is certain. Ten Candles isn’t about survival or “winning”. It’s a game about loss and hope, about finding light in the darkness and making your last moments of living worthwhile.
This is how to grab an audience’s attention.
There aren’t any overly complex rules or time-consuming preparations to make in order to enjoy Ten Candles. All you really need are candles, paper, pens, some regular dice (6-sided) and something to dispose of/burn the paper slips in. Time is marked by the extinguishing of candles. For each failed conflict (dictated by dice rolls), a candle is darkened. If you don’t fail any conflicts, a candle will go out eventually. The end comes for us all, eventually. When you have one final candle left, the Last Stand begins. This is the final scene of the game in which every character will die. It’s inevitable.
Once every character has perished, the final candle is blown
out. You sit, in complete darkness and listen to a recording your players recorded
as their characters at the start of the game. Their voices, speaking words of
hope and sorrow, are haunting, especially with their death scene ringing in
their ears. When the recording ends, you all sit there in the darkness – lost in
your own thoughts and reflecting on the dark journey they will have taken over
the past few hours.
Before the lights go out and the game begins, you must create your characters. Characters are made up of five characteristics – Virtues (positive trait), Vices (negative trait), Concepts (who are you), Moments and Brinks. Your Virtue, Vices and Brinks are made by the players either side of you – allowing totally unique characters to be made in every session. Your Concept and your Moment are entirely your choice. A Moment is a scenario in which your character can find hope. Be that reuniting with a lost family member, taking down one of “Them” or finding somewhere safe to stay the night, these Moments provide you with another dice in the Last Stand – increasing your chances of achieving something significant in your final moments.
As much as I didn’t discuss the Establishing Truths phase, these three lines are what stays with you.
Brinks are a bit different. A brink is what your character
is like when pushed to the edge. What do they do when faced with loss or grief?
Do they fly into a rage? Were they a murderer before this all began? The
possibilities are endless. As the players decide the Brink for the person on
their left, this means that the GM is also involved. The GM plays as “Them”,
and they have seen one of the players at their breaking point. This means the
players Brink is kept secret. Meanwhile the player to the right of the GM gets
to decide what form “They” take in the session. Do they worship the moon? Do
they shapeshift? Do they mimic voices? What powers do they have?
This story is not a happy one. It is a joint tale of hope, desperation, fear and co-operation in the darkness. Although the GM is there to lead the story, they are not in control of everything that happens. Sometimes, it is up to the players to narrate what happens. Everyone at the table works together to weave a story they deem worthy of telling. Their interactions, their moments of hope and loss, their eventual deaths – they all must have meaning and weight behind them. At the end of the world, you are what will be the difference between the light and the darkness.
We may be destined to die but it is up to you how it happens.
If you can, I’d suggest playing this yourself. You can get a
PDF of the rulebook or a paper-copy from cavalrygames.com to support the
creator Stephen Dewey – a very talented developer. It is an experience that I
feel will stay with you for a long time and bring your friends closer together.
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