March Review

March has been a good month for getting back to in-person games. I heard about Breakout Con and decided to go. I planned nothing, brought little, and hoped for con magic to carry me through. And amazingly, it did!

The con provided me with many lessons, concrete and philosophical. The biggest one was realizing how MUCH I was out of the loop. I've made things, kept my head down, focused on my art, but I really wasn't wired into what was happening in the games space the way I was a decade ago. There were new games, new initiatives.

For example, I heard about Triangle Agency as casual conversation and that the creators were present for the convention, so I went to the dealer room and picked up a copy. The book is gorgeous, the layout is creative, and the game is a cool mix of SCP and Control as a role-playing game. The whole thing breathes theme, and the production values are high.

In that regard, it feels like creative efforts have grown so much from when I first started getting into games. Books are luxurious, art is plentiful, custom components are normal, few blink at mixed media games—your game is a set of cards in a box? Sure! Your game uses custom dice? Neat! People are so enthusiastic and excited to play.

I got to talking with my friends Gene and Lauren and we joked about how the hotel bar name—Dual Citizen—really amused us. It was like an old instinct to think about the RPG that could be created out of that. We bantered for a few hours, and then landed on a concept that I think I can produce into a postcard style RPG, similar to Fuck! It's Dracula. I reached out to an artist, got a quote, did a quick layout. Now we just need to playtest until perfect.

So yeah, I've been thinking a lot about form-factor and play experiences and the shape of games. I think the most profound realization from the convention for me was that games facilitate play, but they don't create it. And that's like, a huge well of learning for me. I have spent a lot of effort trying to create experiences through systems in games. But I haven't spent nearly as much effort understanding the different kinds of activities people use to play.

That is, play can be a lot of different things. It can be pretending to be another person. It can be testing the extremes of a system. It can be allowing random chance to determine an outcome. There's all these activities, the ways in which we play, that are separate from the rules that govern when we play in different ways. A game, then, is a set of rules for facilitating play.

Anyway, it's had me thinking quite a bit about design philosophy and the nature of joy and other concepts too big to fit in my brain. I'm happy to be back in my creative mode. Other than the Dual Citizen RPG, I've been thinking about making a hack of Desperation to tell a sort of Neon Genesis Evangellion story, but I have a lot of thinking to do before I crack that one.

My con experience included a lot more than thoughts about games! Lauren introduced me to an amazing group of humans that work out of Toronto called Changeling Gaming. If you're in the area and you're looking for a cool play experience, do look them up. They provided my first experience with paid hosted RPGs, and honestly I was blown away.

I've heard of hosted experiences before and I was skeptical but open minded. Our GM Nick was amazing, the table was fire, and the locale was a brewpub that was set up to bring food and drinks to our table. It might have been the best part of the con, and it wasn't even part of the con.

But what struck me most about the group wasn't their taste in games (which was delightful). It was their inclusivity and the way they so clearly wanted to grow the community. It reminded me that I have been neglecting my local gaming scene. My thoughts were roughly "I wish there were a group like this near me" and then "If there WERE a group like this near me, would I even know?" And unfortunately, I am realizing the answer is no, I wouldn't!

Anyhow, with the growth of new projects, new ideas, and new friends, I guess I can say Spring is officially here, and I'm actually really jazzed about it for once. I clearly need to go to more conventions; this one has lit an entire fire inside me.