Design Journal: Conflicts and Pitches

I don't remember the Burning Wheel campaign Suihkulahde terribly fondly. On the one hand, it has some of the best world building I've ever done for The Wanderers' Psalms. On the other hand, the kind of  worldbuilding I did was completely outside the scope of Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel is entirely about the players' Beliefs. That's the GM's job. And when I want to play in that style, Burning Wheel is absolutely the best at it. But Gene Wolfe had added a new element: the world was its own thing. When the characters weren't looking, the world was having its own adventures. Reading a Gene Wolfe book was like walking on top of an iceberg. It was vital you kept your feet and it was cold and those things mattered... but you were still on an iceberg. 90% of the darn thing was unknown to you. Pretending that the unknown parts of the structure (i.e., currents and whatever behemoths swimming around the iceberg) were unimportant was an absurdity.

I could honestly write forever on the philosophical and ideological differences between Crescendo and Burning Wheel. But that would be criticizing the giant whose shoulders I stand on. I am where I am because of Luke Crane, after all.

And besides, I want to tell the story of how I came up with my solution, which is now in Crescendo.

The Tarot Map

I started by considering system-neutral house rules. I decided to lay out the Major Arcana of the Tarot in a randomized order. The players were always in the middle of this map, with that Arcana being "the current problem". The cards in the ring closes to the center, four in all, were situations that benefited from "the current problem". If things got hot enough "the current problem" would be cycled out to the edge, and one in the immediate ring would move in closer.

I hated this. It was too cumbersome. I didn't like having to come up with twenty some odd conflicts, only about five of them really mattering. And, frankly, I could barely keep track of more than three. So, obviously, this was not the answer.  I wanted to be able to walk, play, and then walk back out. I wanted a game, not another job on top of my job on top of my wife and kids.

Maybe, at some point, a few years after the fact, I'll revisit this idea. But it sure isn't now.

The Chronicle and the Drunk Rule

I decided to only have three Conflicts going on. It was the most I could keep track of at the table. I decided I would focus on "just" these three things, and  then journal between sessions about what was going on in the background. Simpler, for sure, and I like working on some stuff between sessions and all that.

It was during this time Kyle and I came up with the Drunk/Tired Rule: if you cannot play a game while drunk or tired and feel better for it afterwards, it is a bad game. Games are supposed to rejuvenating. Not just distracting, rejuvenating! This proved to be a turning point in my design, and what would eventually lead to Crescendo itself.

And this chronicling nonsense wasn't it.

Maybe if I was single, or without children, I'd have time to really write it all down between sessions. Focus, you know? But by this point I didn't want to do that. If I wanted to write fiction I'd write fiction! And I didn't want to do that, I wanted to play a game that had a story that came out of it! It was too much work for what I wanted to do.

Hitting the Books

At this point I figured that writing something down was the way to go. I needed a mechanic that would help generate unexpected results, results that could indicate that 90% the players weren't interacting with while they were on the iceberg. That's when I remembered the process of searching random passages in Virgil. For thos that don't know, if you want an answer to something, it was said that you could find your answers by opening a book of Virgil's, closing your eyes, and putting your finger down. Whatever your finger lands upon is the answer.

So why not do this with a book while playing? And make a journal, where you can control what goes into it, and thus make it a genuine mechanic?

So everyone opens their journals to where they know there's writing, closes their eyes, puts their finger down, and then reads whatever their finger landed upon. The GM then free associates all these prompts into whatever information they require.

The OSR does this with tables all the time, why not do it with journals or books? Not only does this make players write things down, but it provides an avenue of gameplay that is qualitative, which is what TTRPGs are all about! And this allows an incredible kind of player agency, one which subtle, but powerful: the ability to tweak the GM's subconscious. You get to program your GM! How is this not

Testing has not been completely free of problems. It was necessary to codify the rules for Hitting the Books a bit. But the tone, the feel, is exactly what I was going for. There's an odd coherency that increases as time goes on. The story has a rhythm and tone that are unexpected, but not overly so. And frankly, writing the story out is fun!

Conflicts and Pitch

Hitting the Books, however, was not the end of it. Hitting the Books is a mechanic, a means, not the goal itself. Fortunately, KISS is king. There's three Conflicts, which are future tense statements:

Mother is learning how to exist.

The wolves will invade Serpent.

The Guild will change how the city Serpent exists.

Notice that what these statements mean is up for debate. It's flexible. Open. 

But when do the Conflicts shift? That's what Pitch is for. Pitch is a counter attached to each Conflict. Pitch increases whenever it's addressed in a scene, (by 1-3) and all Conflict Pitches increase by 1 at the end of every session.

Whenever a scene ends, the Conflict that the GM used is rolled against with a D20. If the GM rolls equal to or lower than the Pitch, an Opportunity comes up to end the Conflict. Whether they do or not, given the Opportunity, is up to the table. After the Opportunity is addressed, the GM either modifies the Conflict or writes a new one, and resets its Pitch to zero.

Conflicts and Pitch, combined with Hitting the Books, eliminates prep while creating a mysterious narrative. You write your three Conflicts. The Pitch tells you the chances of that Conflict blowing up at any time, and it constantly builds. You just engage the players where they're at, and overarching setting stuff gets injected randomly via Hitting the Books, forcing everyone to make meaning for themselves.

People like doing this.

It's good for them.

And isn't that kinda the point?

 Crescendo is a truly amazing experience. I can't wait to share it with y'all.

Design Journal: Crescendo's Beliefs

There is no mechanic I love more than Beliefs. Pioneered by Luke Crane's Burning Wheel, Beliefs are a subjective statement made entirely by the players. They're used to determine scenarios in the game, making the story tailor-made to what the players want it to be about. The sheer utility of this mechanic can't be understated. Players get to write what they want. The GM gets a statement they get to interpret. Inherently creative, Beliefs give back far more than what are put into them.

There is no mechanic that is even close to a Belief. 

Period.

This is a blog post about how I almost gave up on Beliefs for my game, Crescendo.

Two (Necessary?) Asides

As a quick aside, there's a saying in the art world: don't make portraits of those you love. I love the works of Gene Wolfe. I am trying to capture the feeling I get when I read his books. This is objectively not a good idea at any point. It's a harder project for my emotional attachment. Things that should be obvious can't be. More time is spent is because I can't have an objective view of this design.

As an additional aside, there's a large elephant in the room: Burning Wheel. Anyone who reads more than a few posts of this blog is going to discover that Burning Wheel is my favorite game. Beliefs are my favorite mechanic in gaming. A lot of my thoughts on designing Crescendo are, inevitably, going to be about taking Beliefs and adapting it to my vision. Which means that Burning Wheel is going to come up a lot.  Crescendo isn't a hack of Burning Wheel, but it would be stupid to pretend that Crescendo doesn't owe a lot to it. A great deal of time has been spent repurposing Beliefs from the ground up, (usually) to the confusion and (sometimes) delight of my playtesters.

What is Crescendo?

Crescendo's central conceit isn’t a simple one: as character changes so should setting and vice versa. The game is principally based on the works of Gene Wolfe, which are intensely subjective, mythological, and cosmic. If you're going to do a Gene Wolfe game you have to have an intense subjectivity and soaring scale, which form each other. This is Crescnedo's by-line, its mission statement, is:

Belief Has Consequences

Okay, that's nice, but what does it feel like to play Crescendo? That's all very pie in the sky, but what am I going for?

Excellent question! Crescendo feels like this:

One movement causes a series of ripples in a pattern that nobody understands... until they pull back and see the full implications. Players each create a Hero whose Beliefs create consequences and the Lore Weaver (LW) creates a Setting for the Heroes' consequences to play out upon. These consequences are unknown even to the LW beforehand. Nobody knows where the ship is going. All you can do is ask "Well, what do you believe? And should that change?"

Heroes have Beliefs, Traits, and Scruples. Beliefs are what drive the Hero, Traits are how the Hero acts, and Scruples are hidden doubts/obligations that mess them up. The Setting has NPCs with simpler Beliefs, Locales and Histories that chronicle recent events, and Conflicts which rage across the Setting. 

The Journal

All participants have a journal, where they log their history and events of the session. The journals are used in a mechanic called Hitting the Books: everyone opens to a random line in their journals, closes their eyes, puts their finger down, and reads aloud their selection. The LW interprets these randomly picked prompts into whatever piece of information that's needed, primarily plot twists. And then everyone writes their interpretation of whatever the LW just said into their journals.

I cannot understate how much Hitting the Books impacts play. No one is driving. The Lore Weaver isn't called a Game Master because he's not in control of where things are going. He's given prompts and says "Well, this seems like a good idea right now". Nobody is driving. If there is a single way that Crescendo has genuinely changed the face of roleplaying games, Hitting the Books is it. 

There's various triggers throughout the game to record more lines in your journal. Once you record enough lines you can advance, gaining/ improving a skill or a relationship with an NPC.

The only thing even comparable are FFG's narrative dice, except Hitting the Books is cheaper and more creative. The dice are only marginally faster. Hitting the Books is also qualitative: success and failure aren't really a part of it, but bring in completely unexpected elements from past recordings. The more you play, the more eerily coherent the experience becomes, as past events factor into the present, creating more lines to choose from in the future. Hitting the Books sets up play loops that can last for tens of sessions before closing with a snap... creating a new loop.

Or, as one of the playtesters commented: "Reintegration is one hell of a drug".

Beliefs

The first thing I tried to do was to provide incentives for interacting with Beliefs, Burning Wheel style. And that would be reasonable for me to try! I'm a Burning Wheel vet! People will do what they're rewarded for. Right? Well, hold up. Burning Wheel's by-line and mission statement is

Fight For What You Believe

So, if you cause trouble for what you believe, you will be rewarded. This change at the core has been the hardest thing for me to navigate. Crescendo, if it's to stand on its own two legs, has to be its own thing from the ground up. Beliefs in Crescendo have to be fundamentally different from what they are in Burning Wheel.

Two and a half years have been spent trying a lot of different things with Beliefs, to the point where I was advised by some to just torch the Beliefs, outright!

Well, I did that, Robby, and that game's called Brick!, which I'll release as well. Probably first. We'll see. 

The problem, of course, is that Crescendo is about Belief and Setting in the style of Gene Wolfe. And I am going to see that through.  NPC Beliefs are based off the players'. 

But is that really enough? Heck no.

Belief is Perception

But that wasn't enough for me. It didn't feel Wolfe enough. And I really was about to just pitch them. Robby could be right. It hurt my pride, but I had to admit he might be right. Humility's good! It's fine! Fine...

Ironically enough Herbert came to my rescue.

In Children of Dune Herbert writes that information comes in two parts: Trivia and Message. Trivia was the base information that was in the world. The Message was what the recipient interpretated the Trivia into.

The lightning flash that lit up the interior darkness can't be understated.

What Herbert stated, Wolfe does. Most of his works feature this translation of Trivia into Message, using their preconceptions. Anyone who has read even a page of Wolfe knows this to be true. But Wolfe doesn't stop there. Wolfe doesn't just transmit Trivia to Message. Wolfe Shades. When the Message is assembled, the assembler discovers additional Trivia that doesn't fit what they believe.  It sticks there, an unknown that can't be quantified. Sometimes that Shade is an aspect of the Problem they hadn't anticipated.

And sometimes it's the Lord God Himself, wanting to have a word.

Suddenly, I knew how it had to go. Two and a half years, going on three, and suddenly it clicked: Beliefs were a Player tool for helping create Problems with the LW. The LW could present Trivia, pieces of information that might imply a context, but that's it. The Players then use their Beliefs to turn the Trivia into Messages. And then the LW adds a Shade to each Message. The Player then gets to write this modified Message down as a Bullet Point in their Journal. The Players must make at least one Message, and may make up to three, one for each of their Beliefs.

Putting it Together

All that's well and good, but what does it look like?

Hey everyone, meet Sir Mal, one of the example characters in Crescendo! He's the bastard street rat of a noble, found and restored to his place as a knight. Here's what you need to know about Sir Mal to understand what I'm writing:

Sir Mal

Beliefs

Beliefs are what Sir Mal uses to help construct Problems and are so used by the LW  to further complicate Sir Mal's life. Beliefs are what Sir Mal is willing to burn the whole world down for.

 

1. My father knighted me as he lay injured on the battlefield. I didn’t need his recognition to known honor and bravery are their own reward.

2. Once I came into manhood, I realized that no woman, even the queen, could resist me long. If she lifts her skirts, she’s fair game.

3. One day a knight, Sir Alain, came into the slums where I picked pockets, and told me that he was my father. To this day I’ve never met a kinder man.

 

Scruple

A Scruple is a hidden reservation or taboo a character has which holds them back. They're used to add Shades to Problems and to trip up Heroes during play.

You cannot trust the other nobles to do the right thing.

Traits

Traits are aspects of a Hero that either make you more powerful for acting on them or which make you weaker for ignoring them.

Charming, Nihilistic, Impulsive

Climbing a Tower to Get Royally Laid

Sir Mal has decided to deflower Princess Genevieve, for a multitude of reasons. He's climbed the tower where she lives and finally gotten in through the open window.

Paul the LW tells Alex, Sir Mal's player, that the Trivia for the current Problem are the soft candlelight in Princess Genevieve's room, Princess Genevieve just pulling a shift over her head, offering the briefest glimpse of perfection etched in flesh, and the open window Sir Mal just crawled through.

Alex's first Message is that Princess Genevieve has seen him before, as she was there for his formal knighting, from his first Belief! She's a bit shocked to find that he's climbed into her window, but she's not scared. Paul adds that Princess Genevieve isn't just not scared, she's calm, her pulse doesn't look like it's budged even a little bit. Alex writes "Princess Genevieve isn't even shocked to see me. This will be a fun night!" as a Bullet Point in his journal.

Alex's second Message is that his charming smile has never not made a woman weak in the knees, and that's definitely what's happening right now. Paul adds that Princess Genevieve lightly brushes a pendant of Elpida, The Most Holy Flame (wait did it glow slightly? Gotta be a trick of the light), but she doesn't break eye contact with Sir Mal. But yes, she looks very happy to see him. Alex writes "Princess Genevieve has one of those purity necklaces. But I can tell from just a glance she's mine."

Alex's third Message is that he leaves the window open, and in fact he doesn't really get off the windowsill, causing Princess Genevieve to relax even further. Paul adds that there's the sound of King Julian ranting and raving just outside Princess Genevieve's door... which she locks, factoring in Sir Mal's Scruple. Alex writes "King Julian really has lost his mind, and Princess Genevieve seems to think it's more sane to be locked in with me than out there with him. Excellent."

Remember...

All those Bullet Points can now come up again. There's always going to be fallout from constructing this Problem, regardless of how it's resolved. It might be next session, it might be forty sessions from now, but these Bullet Points always have a chance on forming the current situation.

Here's the Rope

Someone is going to point out that, even if Crescendo is just for one to three Players, things can get overcomplicated quickly! If three Players do this once per Belief  that's nine Bullet Points that everyone has to record. Not only could that take forever but that would be a very thorny, if not outright unwieldable, Problem.

And you're right.

So what?

If Players want to go overboard, whose fault is that? The designer? Or the player? I can't stop people from doing stupid stuff. I've found that people stop when they want to stop. If you approach the game in the way intended it's not a problem. Pretending that I can make someone approach the game in a healthy way is.. well.. laughable.  It would take so much work to construct a Problem in an unhealthy manner that I don't particularly feel that I need to safeguard it much. Journaling takes a bit of work. If you're playing the game, it's because you want to. So you'll automatically know when to stop.

In Conclusion

It's been a journey, but I finally got the Beliefs done! You use Beliefs to construct Problems with the Lore Weaver. The LW uses them to further challenge the Players by putting them in ethical trolley problems. And when the Players change their Beliefs, it sends ripples across The Setting, causing truly unexpected changes to the story. There's this amazing interplay between the subjective nature of the Beliefs and the incredibly bonkers changes in the world and the plot. You say what you are willing to burn the world down for and the world just convulses in response, mashing the incredibly person and epic together.

If any of this sounds amazing to you, come and join us the Die Young Games Discord Server! Crescendo is in its last stages of editing. There's sessions of it running. The people are great. So come on over!

Pokemon Masters (TCG Hack)

I Want to Like the Official Rules

I grew up with the Pokemon TCG, when it was this enormous juggernaut. I played with my friends constantly, and enjoyed every second of it. There was something so great about buying booster packs, opening them up, and using the weird things you found to make quirky decks.

Wait, there's a Pokemon League? COOOOOOOOOL LET'S GO!!!

Wait, why is my really enjoyable deck getting creamed? Oh, there's a meta that ignores all these great cards and just focuses on the least interesting but numerically most potent cards? You're telling me that I need to rethink from wonder and interesting play to ruthlessly monotonous grind-fests?

Sure!

I junked my interesting decks and went full-on Beatdown, which was the most cookie-cutter and boring deck of the time. It was relentlessly efficient. I gloried in the dopamine of Numbers Go Up Fast, I Get My Cards Out Quickly, and Things Seem to Happen. I did that for years. And years.

And then one day the dopamine stopped. And I realized just how much of an idiot I had been. Did I realize that there were systemic problems, and that nobody could stop me from just.. making up something different and doing that instead? Nope. Not at all. I just put my cards in a box, bitterly, and moved on to Magic. And had fun! That is, until I met players who valued efficiency over fun... and saw a type of degeneracy that made the Pokemon League look principled in comparison. This time I thought it was the people who were the problem. I wanted nothing to do with such degeneracy. So I just stopped playing at all.

Enter my brother-in-law, Kyle. Kyle has an allergy to bullshit that is almost absolute, without being too much of a misanthrope. I say this, because he somehow maintained the wisdom to know the difference between the masses being wrong and whether or not the thing they're wrong about is redeemable. I have no idea how he maintained this wisdom, but it has saved me many a time.

And Kyle had refused to give up on the Pokemon TCG.

I smiled, politely accepted gifts of cards, and tried it again with my kids. Nope, it still did what it did. I would play with my kids out of some sense of duty. The cards were bright and colorful, with interesting tricks... that couldn't stand up to my Charizard EX. I, of course, hadn't really thought it through. And it wrecked deckbuilding for me and my kids. They became obsessed with just trying to beat this one card. I wasn't able to get myself to give up the only good Charizard card I knew of. It was an impasse.

This was something I was pretty vocal about with Kyle. I knew my own degeneracy, my own addiction to the dopamine, and knew I had passed it on to my kids. I wanted a way out. I knew there was another way, and couldn't think it through, and said as much.

Kyle, being Kyle, listened to my rants and ravings. He did nothing more than chuckle and agreed that the Pokemon TCG had foundational problems.

About a year later, Kyle would come over for a visit. Standard stuff and all that. Nothing special... until he mentioned, casually, that he had come up with a new casual format for the Pokemon TCG. He hadn't playtested it yet, and he wanted me to try it out with him. Kyle has an eye for systemic patterns that is unparalled. I immediately said yes.

Kyle, my kids, and I played easily two dozen games in 72 hours. We tweaked a few things. Played some more. Had even more of a blast. Tweaked some more. It just got better and better and better.

General Rules of Pokemon Masters

This is intended for casual play. Kyle won't be running tournaments, and no one affiliated with us and Die Young Games will ever run tournaments. Anyone claiming to represent us to run a tournament doesn't. This will never be for sale, and is not intended to compete with the official structure.

This has been playtested, but it is assumed we missed things. If you find loopholes or feel that something is incoherent to the experience, comment on this blog post or come onto the Die Young Games Discord server and put your concerns up there!

The rules below are meant to replace specific parts of the Official Rules. If something isn't mentioned here, refer to the Official Rules!

Deck Construction

Your Deck is 40 Cards.

Only one copy of any non-Basic Energy Card is allowed.

Select six Basic Pokemon Cards. They must be different colors. 

• If your Basic Pokemon have Evolution forms, you must include one copy of each evolution, to the best of your ability.
• If there are multiple Evolutions of a Pokemon (like Evee evolutions) or multiple versions of an evolved Pokemon (Charizard, Charizard EX/GX), you only need to include one variant.
• If you do not own all the Evolutions on the chain (say, you want to play Charmander, but you only one a Charmeleon, no Charizards) you may include the Pokemon you do have (so you'd include Charmander and Charmeleon).
• You get three Basic Energy per Basic Pokemon. They must be of the same color.
• If one of your Basic Pokemon is Colorless, you must select three Basic Energy of another color from the other five.
• You may include as many additional Energy as you like, in addition to the Energy above.

You may only have one Trainer Supporter Card. This Card must be announced before the game starts.

No non-Supporter Trainer Cards or Energy Cards that search any Deck are allowed.

Only one Rule Box Pokemon Card is allowed. If your Rule Box Pokemon is Knocked Out, you lose the game. 

• If you wish to use a V MAX, V STAR, or any Rule Box Pokemon Card that evolves from a Basic Rule Box Pokemon, it uses your Supporter slot, and must be declared as if it was a Supporter Card.

Playing One on One

Set Up

Basic Pokemon

All Basic Pokemon are placed in Play: one in the Active Area and the other five on the Bench.

• You may not start with a Basic Colorless Pokemon in the Active Area.
• You may not start with a Basic Rule Box Pokemon in the Active Area.

Benched Basic Pokemon are played face down, and do not flip face up unless Evolved or moved into the Active Area.

Opening Hand

Draw four Cards. Do not show them to your Opponent.

Prize Cards

Draw one Card, and place it face up to the left of the Play Area. Take four Cards, and place them, face up, on top of the bottom Prize Card, as shown in the picture. 

Whenever your Opponent knocks out one of your Pokemon, you draw one of your Prize Cards. You must take all the top Prize Cards before you grab the fifth Prize, on the bottom.

If you can't take a Prize Card, you lose the match. Whenever a Card refers to your Prize Cards, check the number of your Opponent's Prize Cards instead.

Playing

The First Turn

The player who goes first may Attack and/or play a Supporter Card, but not Draw.

Drawing

At the start of every turn after the first, Draw one Card. 

• If it's an Energy, continue your turn.
• If it's not an Energy, you may show it to your Opponent(s). If you do, draw another Card. Do not show this Card to your Opponent.

Energy

Once during your Turn, you may either Attach an Energy from your hand, or Move an Energy from one of your Pokemon to another.

Gameplay for Three Players

As One on One play, with the following modifications.

Two Fronts

Each Player has two Active Areas,  one for the Player on their right and on their left. You still can only Attach or Move one Energy a turn.

The Law of Aggression

A Player must Attach or Move an Energy, if able. A Player must Attack all eligible targets, if able.

What Do These Rules Do?

Pokemon Masters feels like an Elite Four battle in card game form. Every game has been a tactical head-to-head. I've had to think more in one match of Pokemon Masters than I've ever had to think in any TCG I've personally played. I've also had to consider what my opponent is up to in a way that I didn't know most TCGs could do. And I think that's worth sharing with people.

You have to weigh the health of your Pokemon against the unknown nature of your deck. Do you sacrifice one of your Basics so you can get your big guy charged? Once your big guy is out, how are you developing your backup? All your Pokemon are going to fight, almost certainly. What order are you going to try to send them out? How flexible are they in the inevitability of the deck not cooperating? These are the kinds of decisions you're making in a Pokemon match. You are playing with time and chance. And it is a blast.

The Pokemon TCG has always had interesting cards, especially their Pokemon cards... and usually you don't look at them twice. Why would you? The Rule Box Pokemon hit your lizard brain in the worst way possible. You don't particularly want to look at them twice. The numbers hit your lizard brain. Those are the things that matter in the standard format. Once you make Rules Box Pokemon rare, you have to figure out these weirdo abilities on the normal Pokemon, of which you have to have an epic spread. Given that you can't control the deck all that much, this means you have these wild abilities with a deck that can't be controlled without using Pokemon attacks. So gameplay automatically becomes more varied, as a lot of the heavy lifting has to go through Pokemon attacks.

Adding the "you lose if your Rule Box Pokemon dies" rule does... things. Very very worrisome things. I can come out with my lovely Charizard EX, swinging with tons of damage... and then all of a sudden have to protect my flying lizard boi, because as it turns out normal Pokemon can do quite a bit of damage, if you're under the right kinds of pressure. So, after a kill or two, my lovely flying lizard boi has to go back to the bench, because he has about 60 HP. And now I have to worry about whether or not someone is going to pull out a Boss's Orders, or a Pokemon Catcher that flips heads, or someone has a Pokemon that will drag him back out. Using a Rule Box Pokemon is now a choice. You have to do it on purpose, and find ways to keep your Pokemon from dying. It's a type of tension that is your choice.

What These Rules Won't Do

Pokemon TCG is a broken game. Not all the cards are going to be useful in this format. I miss some of those cards. Some cards that "should" be usable (like those that reward having multiple copies of a card) aren't.  It's not particularly fair.  But this format isn't about making everything usable. It's about taking what's really a large mess and doing something fun with it. And I think it succeeds admirably well. You go from not even glancing at 90% of the cards to having about 75% of them being a viable option.

And that's pretty dang awesome.

This Isn't the End

I do not labor under the delusion that this is the last word on this format. If we can get people to try it, there will be a lot of questions and possible issues that we do not foresee. I welcome this. This is a genuinely exciting format, providing some of the most varied gameplay I've ever seen in a TCG.

Please try it. Go over to the Die Young Games Discord or comment here. Let's make this a thing. 

Reflections on The Menu

 

“When you painted on earth—at least in your earlier days—it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came..."

-C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce 

All art, all true art, is always prophecy. Always. And prophecy helps you see the world as it truly is... which may include some element of being able to see the future. The function of prophecy is that the future may help you see the whole picture.

Art of any kind is soul-crushingly difficult. Through some remarkably fallible sense perception you stumble across something. Something good, pure, beautiful, untouchable, incorruptible. It is hard to communicate the experience if you haven't had it. Something explodes in your heart, quietly devasting. Light gently breaks in, and you realize you've been in the dark your whole life and in fact you never saw anything before this moment. And, so long as you keep doing your art, really do it, you can bathe in that light.

But there's a trick. The material you have to work with is fallen. The people who interact with your art are even more fallen than the materials you work with. Some level of mastery of people and your materials is required. The media is a pain, but the people. The people are the worst part. People aren't just fallen passively, but have actively lied to themselves all their lives, to the point of actual blindness of soul. So when they look at your work are they going to see what you tried to put there?

By default the answer is no. At best you'll typically get indifference or a mild reaction. It didn't touch them because they weren't looking. That's to be expected. Humans don't look at the world around them, and those that claim they do are very good at self-deception.

You want to know how I know?

Because to perceive, to truly perceive, is to be changed. 

So if someone goes "Oh cool! That's neat." By default they couldn't have actually looked. And yes, that's demoralizing.

The second worst is a sycophant. "Oh I love your work!" Instead, they made the mistake of seeing you as a necessary part of The Vision. The vision is what matters. Can you develop a predilection of engaging with a specific artist's way of channeling The Vision? Absolutely! We do this all the time! I love Ivanka Demchuk's iconography. I see this icon of Christ being betrayed to Pontius Pilate and I can feel The Vision of it. She saw something about this scene with the eyes of her heart, and was faithful to that vision. I love her craft so much I am going to learn how to do it for myself. Ivanka's work has inspired me to do something for myself. I want to learn for myself.

So, I am not talking about a fondness. I am talking about obsession with the artist. You are not on this planet to turn off your own spiritual vision and worship someone, but to find your way Home. That's hard enough without degenerating into fandom. And it is degeneration. There's a reason why the "fan" hangs himself in this movie. He has made nothing of himself and has become such a bootlicker that death really may be the most merciful option. Certainly not the soul-crushing that happens in the film.

That's not the worst reaction to your work, however.

The worst reaction is one of the fully neutered expert. Remember how I said that the materials of this world, whether they be paint or a damnably thick tome on theology, are inherently rotten, if not actively rotting? What could be grosser than someone who wants to get into that mess? To get covered in the rotting feces that is this world and go "I am very familiar with the smell and viscosity of feces, and so therefore I know you didn't use it right"?

All of this world, at best, is straw.

This isn't to say that technical mastery can't help you point people back to The Vision more reliably. But there is a difference between saying "This is what I think got in the way of helping me escape the fallen world for a minute" and "You failed the fallen materials you were working with", when in reality the materials failed you.

The sycophant and the neutered expert can kill an artist's soul so quickly. Listening to the sycophants will get you pride. Listening to the neutered expert will kill your ability to see The Vision at all. And once those two things happen, you're stuck. You either burn out and collapse in on yourself or take it out on everyone else.

And if you're especially dramatic you'll take all those idiots and kill them all in especially earnestly vulnerable, if not sometimes predictable, movie. And yeah, the movie isn't perfect. I saw the twist coming a mile away. But you know what? So what? it showed me something I needed to see, helped me reflect, and helped me process something that I've been unable to work out for myself for years. The movie did its job. It got me to see something I needed to. I changed, watching it. I saw it.

And isn't that the point of art?

The True Narrative

“There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.” 

GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

It's been a really rough year. Some really nasty stuff went down with my old landlord. It kept going on and on and on into what felt like an infinity of a stupidity so incredibly overwrought that its difference from malice was impossible to determine. Laws were broken and there was very little I could do about it at the time. It. Didn't. Stop. And then other stuff came up, some of it really good, some of it really bad, but it was all intense. I do not hold up under that kind of stress well. I can do one incident. Maybe five. But if it's just thing after thing a ding a ling ring ring, I get more than pessimistic. Nihilistic.

There's an interesting piece of advice that I've read across the Church Fathers. I can't really pinpoint which one said it right now. But I've seen it across the centuries and places compressed into pages between multiple softcovers. Enough for it to stick in my head. To burrow in. To marinate.

"Learn your own story of salvation, of how God is saving you."

And they all give the same broad explanation. God is acting in your life. He reaches across the eons and pushes Old Father Time out of the way. It doesn't look like it does for others, because He knows you. It is the only truly unique experience you'll ever have. And yet, if you share it with others, you'll notice the least important parts match up. 

The Quiet. 

The Peace. 

Sometimes The Terror. 

Everyone has these little moments, even if they only last a millisecond. The advice from between the softcovers is to let these moments and the moments between them form a narrative-- The True Narrative -- of your life.  Once The True Narrative is constructed, it's yours. You are meant to hold it in your heart. Think on it. Come back to it. Prioritize it over the massive absurdity that is your life. You're supposed to say "I know the rest of this doesn't make sense but this is what God has done for me so far."  The True Narrative isn't going to answer the absurdities. The questions. The pain. Faith is not the pillow placed on your face so you don't feel pain anymore. Your doubts are a part of you, and any attempt to shut those things down is a quiet suicide.

The thing is that, when under stress, it's easy to forget that the light that's inside of you is of paramount importance. This light gives you an ability to find ways and paths that would be otherwise impossible. Without this light there is no hope in the human soul.  And without hope all is lost. This light is arational. It can use rationality, but it is not rational itself. Its job isn't to argue, but to shine. Humans are supposed to navigate by the light that shines from within them.

The human, under stress, tries to figure out why they aren't comfortable. This is a rational process. Stress pushes you to find a solution quickly. And if you can't find a solution to a problem quickly? You just stay under stress! And you keep trying to figure out why. And this is good. You should try to figure out why you're in pain, or under stress, or whatever else is going on. Humans don't just have pure light, but an ability and duty to relate to the world in a coherent manner. 

But what if you can't right now? What if you can't figure it out... for a long time? The stress doesn't stop. It piles up on top of other stresses atop more stresses and before you know it... when was the last time you were relaxed? You're just exhausted now. How do you come back to normal? Is there a normal? 

And then the thought comes. That light was what put you here. Maybe you're better off without it. 

There's the endgame.

That thought is the deadly one. This one thought will kill everything within you. And it is so quiet, you may not even hear it on a conscious level.

The problem is, of course, by now you're tired. And you really need to focus on something else. Which takes energy, right? You have to construct an argument, right then and there. I hope you can argue well, because the type of wretchedness I'm talking about is so thoroughly exhausting, so overwhelming, that it would take a miracle to come up with something convincing to yourself.

This is where The True Narrative is meant to intervene. You pull up this history of mercy, of grace, and try to sit in these memories as strongly as you can. It is literally only yours. No one else has it. Go back to those moments, drink in their particularity.

Bask.

If you're still being asked to betray yourself, just go back. And wait. Throwing out that spot of life within yourself is never the answer. I'm not saying there's any good answers. I'm not claiming to solve the problem that put you there in the first place. I am claiming that a better solution will present itself if you bide your time and hold onto hope.

But that ambiguity is pure Hell, isn't it? It's not something humans do very well. We want to be able to relate to everything. Ambiguity doesn't relate to us in a way that we like. We want to be able to control it. To put our power over it. Ambiguity refuses that kind of relationship. It gives pain and darkness, and humanity's form of relationship to it is to endure it until it leaves. But your mind doesn't like doing that. 

So give it something to chew on in the interim.

The mark of a mature person is the ability to endure ambiguity by embracing what one knows. Give it something to chew on while enduring. Give it a True Narrative.