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We looked inside some of the posts by kirstenmcdowellfutureworks-blog and here's what we found interesting.
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Tabletop Feedback
@jakbishopfutureworksdegree gave me some incredibly useful advice regarding the future of Geisha; as someone who doesn’t play a lot of TTRPG games, the feedback has been endlessly constructive.
Secrecy is hard to maintain in a tabletop, so it's a good idea to consider ways to keep player actions secret when conveying to the GM (Eg Messenger or have the players looking away from one another). Because real life knowledge (even if only very minor) can affect how they will act in game.
A list of how the stats and figures can both help and hinder the players in game (eg Histrionic makes you pass certain rolls etc)
Having a game about secrecy and having the GM as a player at the same time seems a little confusing. It seems the game would work better with a GM overseer being the one that controls all preceedings in game and have the Okami as just another player.
An explanation of how to construct a story for the players to follow would be useful. Stuff like why would the Geisha murderess want to kill people? (Grief, sadism, etc) or why would the players have these scandalous secrets?
Not noted here was the fact a lot of the dialogue and terminology was in Japanese, which could be confusing.
As a result of the feedback, I have changed the game so players must go through the GM - previously the Okami - to pass notes. Moreso, the GM now has a crucial role in the game, as opposed to simply being another player. This was something that was brought up at my playtesting session, however I wanted more feedback before I changed such a fundamental part of gameplay.
I also tweaked the personality stats so they had a stronger impact on gameplay. This took them from being simple personalities to a flagship USP. Now, characters automatically pass rolls if their most dominant personality trait/stat is related to the roll. For example, if a player with paranoia is trying to sneak to her girlfriend’s room, and rolls a 3, +2 is added to her roll, therefore a 5, and passes the roll.
Paranoia: Passing a note, being sneaky.
Histronic: Trying to seduce someone, trying to convince someone, trying to make a friend or gain reputation.
Sadistic: Killing someone, when lying, when betraying or when stealing.
OCD: When cleaning a mess, noticing evidence/means for suspicion (ie, if a piece of furniture has been moved, or if something is dirty).
Narcissism: Accusing players, giving orders, giving directions.
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Playtesting Geisha
A handful of my friends and I playtested a prototype version of Geisha - basically assigning characters to each player, whilst we all openly discussed the story.
This highlighted a lot of issues I previously hadn’t thought about; my previous gameplay document proved too convoluted, so we skimped out on a lot of factors - for example, I simply played as a kind of GM, instead of a dedicated character taking such a role. Moreso, some clarification on the rulebook would seriously help with the game’s structure.
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Some of the designs I played with for my tabletop RPG; ultimately, I went with the top image, as I felt the black and white was more in-keeping with Showa period art. I really like the background in particular, on which I used filters to create a retro, pixelated effect, reminiscent of vintage anime and sprite art, a traditionally Japanese genre.
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TTRPG: Geisha
I chose to create a Geisha RPG after some experimentation with different ideas; I enjoy the aesthetics and secrecy of the culture, and saw this as a pretty compelling setting for a Tabletop RPG. Moreso, I chose the Showa period as the setting for this TTRPG as this covers the bulk of the Cold War, and the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings - a particularly tense time geopolitical, and especially for Japan. As such, I want to keep the specific year open to the players’ interpretation/preference.
I was particularly inspired by the novel Memoirs of a Geisha, which albeit a sensationalised biography, demonstrated a dramatic, and yet intensely romantic narrative in the same period; the way secrets and rumours were shown to cripple an unfortunate Geisha’s career is something I want to include in my RPG through a ‘secrets’ mechanic.
Secrets
Players would be assigned one of the following Secret cards:
A spy, sourcing secrets for intelligence for another country,
A journalist or detective, investigating a scandal at the Okiya or Tea House.
A criminal, fleeing their crime: this could be; Theft Fraud Murder Abduction
A debtor, who must either work or steal to pay off their loan.
A romantic relationship, forbidden in Geisha culture - when this card is dealt, the receiver may begin a romantic relationship in-game with character of their choosing.
Murder
At the opening of the game, the players will be dealt from a set of cards. In this, 2 of the cards will be a murderer card. The team will then play a quick round of wink murder. I want to play heavily on the intense secrecy described in Memoirs of a Geisha, and as such the importance of alliances and trust - and the betrayal of such.
From here, the duo must work around the other players to isolate their target and murder them - however, this is not as simple as it may sound. The murderers must be:
Alone in a room with their chosen.
Have a murder weapon.
Must not be detected/suspected.
Must be together at the time of the murder.
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BETHAN: Creative Writing
My initial idea when we were set a creative writing assignment was to create a science-fiction psychological thriller, an area of media I have always been interested in. My premise was pretty simple: a woman in a wartorn world builds a robot to keep her company.
I wanted to tie in themes of depression and loss throughout the plot, with the entire story set over the course of the robot’s creator updating and altering the android to make the creation perfect, until by the end of the story, the robot is either a humanoid companion, or rather a devoid, lifeless compliation of mere materials, demonstrating the inventor’s delusion. I had a few ideas for the backstory of the world; how the war started, how the woman is a qualified engineer/scientist, however as I began writing I had to massively condense this. I feel like, despite the short word could, this has proved pretty beneficial; my story
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L3: Emoji Game/Social Game Design Challenge
We came up with the idea of the emoji game following inspiration from 'classic' social games such as Trivial Pursuit, Charades and Pictionary, however wanted to reinvent it with a typically offensive, tongue in cheek Millennial twist. As such, the emoji game was born.
The backbone of the Emoji Game is to choose up to five emojis to imply a film, artist or song - generally a pop culture figure head. From the beginning, we decided that the less emojis used, the more points a player could get for either guessing correctly or for the smartest use thereof, however this was dependent on whether we used a card tsar or not, an option we ruled out in the early stages of prototyping.
Initially, we played the games in group chats on Facebook, which although worked successfully, we wanted a physical version. We wanted to keep all the humourous qualities of the game, as well as the fast paced gameplay. As we wanted a physical version to convey all this, we stayed away from dice and physical actions or words to protect the simplicity of the game.
From here, the emoji cards were birthed, which we designed by picking out the most homonymous and versatile emojis. These were chosen after vigorous play testing and experimenting in group chats, which we then used the logs to analyse and thence rule out the emojis that were rarely or never used. An issue we faced in play testing was time - players sometimes took up to 5 minutes to pick the appropriate emojis, which could be frustrating to wait in such a fat paced game. To tackle this, we introduced a timer, wherein the player would have 30 seconds to pick and show his cars. Similarly, If the player's subject could not be guessed within 30 seconds, they would lose the point..
We faced several challenges when converting the game into a physical form in terms of playstyle: the game now needed to be far smaller as to protect how quickly cards could be played. As a team, we played with the idea of using a ring bound booklet, however this would inevitably slow down what was meant to be a very fast paced game, as well as limiting the amount of cards that we able to be played at once. By narrowing down the cards, we managed to refine the physical copy.
Finally, the emoji card game began to form; we decided to colour card cards which would make stacking and choosing cards far easier. In addition, we decided the point system would be based on teams for larger groups of 6 or more and for individuals otherwise. Players would gain points if they successfully guessed another players emoji, whereas it was down to a player's team to guess a team members emoji before the timer ran out.
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L3: Social Game/Emoji Game Rules
The social game where everyone can connect through their love of pop culture and emoji’s.
Setup
Make sure the deck is fully shuffled.
Hand out each player 5 cards.
You can play in teams, or solo, or duo, it is completely up to you!
Give players a few moments to look at their cards to be ready to start the game.
Rules
You must have 5 cards at all time.
You can only play up to 3 maximum cards.
Don’t have a good deck? You can put however many into the centre of the non-used deck and pick up new cards.
On your turn, you show your cards to create a pop culture reference, others have to guess within the time limit for you to receive a point.
Categories
Within the deck are many different categories.
Each category has its own colour on the card so you can easily distinguish them from each other.
4 categories include, faces and people, nature and food, animals, and other.
How to Win
Player’s/Team’s decide on how many points are deserved to the player based on how creative or difficult that player’s choice of cards was. Award more for the creative and people who don’t use easy pop culture references!
You get a point if someone guesses within the time-limit.
The player/team that has the most points by the time all cards are gone wins!
Tips
You can be creative with the cards and make up your own rules too!
Separate categories, have fun with the cards we have created.
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L3: Emoji Game/Social Game Material List
Material List - The Emoji Game
30 second timer
154 Total Cards (Including rule and tips cards)
Rule Card
Tips Card
23 People and Faces cards (green cards)
31 Animal cards (yellow cards)
36 Nature and Food cards (orange cards)
62 Other cards (blue cards)
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L3: Emoji Game Summary
Richard Bartle’s Social Players: The Emoji Game The EMOJI GAME is an innovative game created for social players.
The game is simple: each player is dealt 5 cards, and the remaining cards are left in a separate pile. Throughout the game, all players must always have 5 cards in their hand. When cards are played, they are placed into a used pile. The game ends when the cards run out, and the points are totalled up.
Emoji cards are used to describe a pop culture item, be it a film, book, song, artist or actor. A player is awarded further points based on how accurately they have played their cards.
Points are awarded based on how many cards are used, as an indication of difficulty. If one card is used and guessed correctly, 3 points are awarded. Two cards means two points are awarded, and three or more are worth one point. For example, a player uses just fish emoji card, which is successfully guessed as Finding Nemo. If a player uses a sea emoji, a fish emoji and a boat emoji and is also correctly guessed as Finding Nemo, they are awarded one point.
The included timer is to ensure the game is fast paced, which makes the competitivity all the more enjoyable, albeit somewhat intense.
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Creative Writing
I’ve been recalling on my favourite books to try and recall any memorable plots, devices or characters to fuel my creative writing assignment. I didn’t really get much success with this, so I looked a bit further and tried to get inspired by television series, movies, songs, poetry, comics.. basically any form of media to give me some direction to go in. I came to fall on a handful of media about humanity.
The plot I’ve devised (so far) is a war-torn world, left devoid of creativity further than soldiers or scientists. A lonely but talented inventor, whose family have perished in the preceding wars, devises to build a robot in the image of her daughter in law to help her cope. However, making a companion requires much more than the physical necessities. For the protagonist, materials and skill aren’t the issue: it’s creating a miracle. The plot follows the struggle to recreate human life.
I really want to hone in on a specific motif or element that signifies whether the robot has achieved humanity or not. To take advantage of the opportunity for branching story lines, I would like to imply different reasons the inventor has created the robot in the image of her daughter-in-law; either because she considered her such a vital part of her family, and as such represents the little morality humans still held in marriage and traditional values before the wars broke out, or because she felt guilty about how she treated her, and as such tries to convince herself that she was kind to her in life, making something of a homage to her by reviving her in robot form. It would be down to the reader to decide whether the robot’s creation is a success or not.
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L3: The Emoji Game
As a group, we succumbed to the capitalist fantasy that is the Emoji ‘industry’ and caved to create a cardgame pivotal on the yellow, beady-eyed humanoids.
We wanted to project a game to the social kinds of players Richard Bartle described as interactive, functional and recreative.
The Emoji Game was heavily influenced by other social games like Pictionary and Charades, and as such carries several element of each.
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Responding to feedback
I updated my audio accordingly to my feedback; the original audio on the tire mentioned sounded very ‘rocky’, which I replaced with some banging noises from the gallon tank. This gives the tire a hollow, rubbery sound, which works far better.
Another area for improvement was the lack of noises in the environment, the most obvious instance being the aforementioned spinning saws. This addition was very last minute, as I had conincendentially forgotten to get sound for it. To resolve this, I recorded myself making a similar noise, then changed the speed and pitch in Audacity. This addition can be heard in the final piece - thankfully, it sounds perfectly mechanical.
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Using the Foley Room
Futureworks’ Foley Room was a great resource when creating material for the trailer; thanks to this, only one track used is outsourced.
The first thing we recorded was the footsteps and heartbeats for our trailers - generally the crucial elements of the sounds. From here, it was fun to simply throw things around, stamp about and make use of the countless objects available, which gave us endless material to work with and edit.
I used a water gallon tank for a large chunk of the most useful sounds; all the bangs, rolls and thuds were largely created using this. These also turned out to be very versatile, as there was little editing needed due to how typically loud it was. I almost felt bad because I threw it so hard at one point - however was helpfully reminded that the Foley is entirely soundproof, which was a lovely relief. Rolling the tank around was also highly beneficial - a lot of the approaching sounds were creating by simply doing this.
Another useful part of the room was the amount of textures available. Aside from the tape in the floor, things like bricks could be used to scrape on to create a grinding, scraping noise, which i found useful for the sliding effects. We also utilised a tray of gravel, which we hammered with a shoe to create heavy, crunching footsteps, an especially vital element for the environment the trailer is set. I personally used this for the spider’s footsteps.
Paper and cloth were used for the pages of a book flicking and a heartbeat, respectively; by tugging the fabric in quick succession, an impression of a thudding pulse could be made. Similarly, tearing the paper sounded like a quickly approaching, impending object, which was easily layered; this particular material can be heard when the tyre approaches the boy at 00:47.
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Making Joshua’s voice heard
My friend and classmate Joshua is pretty renowned for his impersonations. When I decided to use a monologue in my trailer, I knew exactly what I wanted. Although I had tried to use the voices of young children, my cousins, or my Grandfather for the dialogue, there was an abject lack of Michael Caine. When we recorded the lines, Joshua was the perfect fit.
A problem I ran into made Joshua’s voice very quiet compared to the rest of the effects, largely due to the fact I added the monologue in last. However, as I wanted impact, loud qualities in each crash, bang and break, I opted to make Joshua louder instead. Using the amplify tool in Audacity, I made sure Joshua, and his excellent cockney impression, could be heard above the boisterous audio.
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Outsourcing
Yann Tiersen’s Comptine d'un Autre ete l'Apres Midi was one of the few tracks I outsourced for my trailer.
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I really like the piece’s tempo and pace, as I felt it would distract, almost sadistically, from the tragic on-goings of the actual trailer. The sweet, almost happy tune contributes to the horrific ongoings of Limbo, playing on how in the original clip, the player had very little impact on the environment, with the sound largely ignoring his actions unless he was about to be killed. Although I wanted to take this in the opposite direction and compose a very dramatic, cinematic trailer, I felt it was still important to contribute the original themes.
Paired with the heartbeat, Comptine d’un Autre sounds far more sinister, and with the constant beating becomes slightly more tense. Played throughout the entire clip until the penultimate title card, the piece is one of my favourite aspects.
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