book report: Dear Diary

[yhlee]

Dear Diary by Avery Alder is a zine about the process of writing Monsterhearts 2, a revised version of their game Monsterhearts. I'd been holding on to this zine for a while waiting for the right time to read it (this is why my house is so full of books, LOL).

This part particularly struck me:

Over the years, I've gotten feedback from lots of people on the asexual spectrum that they felt like Monsterhearts erased their experiences, and that they had trouble connecting with the game as a result of its baseline assumption that everyone was a sexual person. In addition to launching the big survey, I showcased a few iterations of the asexuality mechanic-in-development, and launched a feedback survey for asexuals. My experience here revealed an obvious lesson: wanting to create space for another isn't enough, you need to actually listen and be willing to scrap your own ideas when they fail to serve the process.

I originally encountered the first Monsterhearts before I was much aware of ace/aro people, so this had not occurred to me as a criticism of the game beforehand. I do remember that as someone who almost never wants to do tabletop RP about sex, Monsterhearts (the original) looked like a fantastic game that I would never, ever play because I cannot think of ANYONE on this planet I would feel safe doing "RP as a horny, angsty, monster [1] teenager" with except maybe Joe, and at that point why wouldn't I just go straight to sex. :p

[1] That is, the character "classes" ("skins" in the game's parlance) are (almost all) things like vampires, witches, werewolves, etc., as a very clear metaphor for engaging with growing up queer. Alder is queer and trans, and talks about this aspect in the zine.

Anyway, I generally don't do sexual/romantic relationships as mechanics in this way, although I've seen things like John Wick's add-on rules set Sexcraft, which I thought was well-handled for people who want to add that to their games. (I am not one of those people.) But from a design standpoint, it's something to think about?

Board Game Design Advice, 2nd ed.

[yhlee]

Gabe Barrett. Board Game Design Advice, 2nd ed. Barrett emailed twelve questions to board game designers he had met through his podcast on same, and then systematically emailed every single designer of the top 100 rated games on Board Game Geek, asking them to answer three or four questions from the list. The majority responded, and some answered more than the three or four; this is the resulting book. Here are the twelve questions: ( Read more... )

I have no intention of going into the industry. I have only dabbled with game design, and mostly not in the board game space; my only credit that I got paid for is Winterstrike, which is no longer online [1], and as far as I can tell, trying to make a career of board game design is even worse than trying to make a living as a novelist. I only need one way to starve to death artistically at a time!

[1] Failbetter Games warned us a while back that they were taking down all the Storynexus games. I do still have the data dump (admittedly in an annoying format, an Excel spreadsheet) and I wouldn't mind rejuvenating the world/story in a more lasting format. It actually might make an interesting Twine conversion, although of course the mechanics and structure would have to be rethought from the ground up to a more conventional CYOA format, and honestly there would be no money in it (I have already gotten all the money from that project that I ever was going to). But I'm interested in game design in general.

Some interesting excerpts: ( Read more... )

Oh, and for the curious, the list of games that the designers recommended: ( Read more... )

Anyway, since not all the designers answered all the questions, or the same questions, there's even a handy index in the back for which designers (and pages numbers) answered which questions, which is very well thought-out.

Examples of designers who responded in this book: Rob Daviau (Pandemic Legacy), Matt Leacock (Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy), Richard Launius (Arkham Horror), Tom Lehmann (Race for the Galaxy), James Earnest (Kill Doctor Lucky), Andrew Looney (Fluxx), Donald X. Vaccarino (Dominion), Mike Selinker (Pathfinder Adventure Card Game), Isaac Childres (Gloomhaven), Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering), Philippe Keyaerts (Small World), Alan R. Moon (Ticket to Ride), Reiner Knizia (Tigris & Euprhates), Corey Konieczka (Twilight Imperium), Tim Fowers (Paperback), Adam Sadler (Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game), Elizabeth Hargrave (Wingspan), Wei-Hwa Huang (Roll for the Galaxy), Darwin Kastle (Star Realms), Rob Dougherty (Star Realms, AScension), Vlaada Chvatil (Mage Knight), Antoine Bauza (Takenoko). (I tended to pull out the ones who'd designed games I've played or heard of, which is obviously a big bias.)

Note that the overwhelming majority of designers in this book are men, although there are a few women.

I expect to write notes in this book and mark it up. I love reading game design books!!