Watch Well Games: Issue # 15
New games coming April 1st!
In This Issue:
Design Essay: Conscience of a Con
Pocket Quest 2024: Game Trailers
Design Essay: Hangry
Welcome to Issue #15. I'm K.J*. We start our month-long focus on Pocket Quest 2024 games. There are professionals (with legit portfolios) in this space - as well as newcomers. Between all of them, there's so much talent.
I owe it to you to highlight my fellow game creators. And if you fancy checking out my games too, I won't be offended.
First, I'll share a short write-up about how my Pocket Quest game “Conscience of a Con” came to be.
I'll then share Luke Saunders' design essay on his Pocket Quest game “Hangry.” Since I've been under the weather, I've not played it. I will follow up with a report on how running a game for my players goes.
*I'm K.J. - hobbyist writer, creator, long-time GM, and player who loves supporting and encouraging others in the RPG community. I also playtest and proofread scenarios. I enjoy playing bass guitar and eating dark chocolate but not at the same time.
I started Watch Well Games at the end of 2023 to share stories and create community. I have a lot planned and hope you'll join me.
Conscience of a Con: Design Essay
DriveThruRPG's third annual game jam known as Pocket Quest is over. If you've been keeping up with my progress in previous newsletters, you'll know that I initially wasn't sure about submitting a game. In fact, I did layouts and a couple of other tasks for a few other participants. I actually had two ideas, but due to a little something called life, I decided to complete only one by the time it was all said and done.
How did I come up with a game when I didn't even really want to do a heist-themed game? (I mean, come on, there are so many great ones already out there - how could I possibly differentiate myself from all of those?)
Content to just supporting others, an idea struck me as I was playing bass guitar one evening. I was playing the Johnny Cash version of "Hurt" - you know - the one from the Logan movie with Hugh Jackman? As I was singing along, just enjoying some creative time, it was as if the lyrics...spoke to me, giving me a game idea. If you know Johnny Cash's biography, you know he was a man who walked the line. He struggled. The bottom line: I related to the message that very moment in a way I hadn't really before. We've all done things we regret. Since the theme for Pocket Quest 2024 is "heist," what if I assumed the role of a con, a robber, a thief? How does this person perhaps feel at different points in their journey? The highs, the lows, and the losses? When - if ever - would they walk away? When - if ever - would there be a chance to try to make things right?
There are four phrases I use from the song as locations on The Labyrinth (Oooo, what's The Labyrinth, you ask? Stay with me.): Empire of Dirt, Stains of Time, Liar's Chair, and Point of Pain are the four quadrants that a player's character will travel through as they journey through The Labyrinth as they attempt to remove as much red from the Ledger. They can earn Redemption, reclaiming and restoring money from the heists they committed. They even meet various folks along their way to the exit before settling up with The Clerk to determine if they become a Free Soul and can enter The Grey Mist.
Hangry: a Pocket Quest 2024 game by Murkdice (Luke Saunders)
The idea for Hangry came to me whilst waiting in a fast-food restaurant for my order. In the long (and hangry) wait, I thought of making a game about getting your food from a restaurant where you’d been waiting too long. It felt like a premise people could easily access, and would make for an engaging one shot form of play with loose rules. It might feature social deception, Tarantino level violence, or espionage antics, however the players want to approach getting their grub.
It began with some naming, like GM = Grub Master, and skills being nutritional terms to lock in the food centric vibe. The initial design was a d10 roll high system with partial successes, plus critical success on a 10 and critical failures on a 1. A character having a ‘skill’, meant rolling 2d10 and taking the highest result. There were also three kinds of damage tracks that accumulated on failures and partial successes. I won’t go into the specifics, since they were way too complex for the scope of the game. I cut them for good reason!
We tried it in play testing, but it didn’t feel wacky enough for me. I wanted there to be more chaos occurring in a session. That’s where the new results system and a roll high inverse step dice mechanism came in.
I call it ‘inverse step dice’, though I’m sure there’s a more elegant way to describe it. In short: a smaller die represents a higher skill (rolling d4 means you’re very competent). Then I simplified it to three outcomes: success by rolling the maximum result on the die, a bad result on a 1, and partial success on anything else. It’s still a ‘roll-high’ paradigm.
People loved the ‘Hangry’ condition that featured in the first draft of the game. It triggered a requirement to eat in the game world or for a teammate to make you food in the real world. This got loads of engagement from players, so it made sense that this should be the bad result. I kept this simple: if you roll a 1, you become Hangry. Partial success became part of a timer mechanism. It meant adding to the ‘tap water glass of chaos’, a kind of meter that fills up, which, on completion, empowers the GM to throw a curveball. The addition of a prop went down well, plus the optional dunking rule made players seek to avoid getting partial results even more, which fill up the glass. Players feel the pressure as the glass fills up, like a clock from Blades in the Dark or similar games, but it provides a singular focus. It adds a pleasant tension and gives the GM an obvious cue to escalate the situation without it being too detailed.
This leads to, I think, the most critical component of Hangry’s design. When you roll a skill you are more likely to get a pure success in (one with a small die) you are also more likely to become Hangry. It’s a player incentive to risk becoming Hangry. They don’t want to add to the glass, so they try to roll d4’s and d6’s. Likewise, when you roll big dice, you are almost certainly adding to the glass of chaos, giving the GM the fuel to make things crazier!
I found this fulfilled what I was looking for in testing. It was less predictable, more chaotic, but that was the intention. I felt I had a toolbox that powers a funny, and sometimes comically violent, one-shot style of play.
This is also the first time I’ve engineered around props and thinking about the physical interaction in a game more intently. The use of the glass as a ‘chaos meter’, but also giving the players a real world mechanism (making food) to interact with the game, were new territories for me to explore. It’s also the first game I’ve made that uses a collection of polyhedral dice, which for me adds another element of fun! People love to use a variety of dice, and it adds to the overall physical aspect of the game with players putting different dice in their skills.
Hangry was an opportunity for me to stretch some different design muscles. I tend to make games with quite clean designs, with a focus on more serious or moderate tones/themes. This is quite the opposite. It embraces chaos, wants the GM and players to run rampant and throw fictional buckets of paint around in a mad one shot. It was fun to make and I hope people have fun playing it themselves!
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