#shittingoutsologames

[polyhedralmice]

My first experience with a ttrpg group was playing Pathfinder 1st Edition, which is pretty crunchy for newbies and combat turns tended take a while. To kill time we got mildly obsessed with making dice stacks, it involved a lot of shouting at our dice and constantly retrieving errant die from under furniture- a great time was had by all.

When I am making ttrpgs with a journaling component I like to include an end point. I know that I’m the kind of person who has trouble starting something without an end (I end up getting analysis paralysis) and in High-Rise Tales I figured a game themed about tall buildings having an end point that revolved around gravity was fitting.

The mechanic works as such- you’re rolling a d6 dice pool to generate prompts about the people, events, and organizations in the high-rise. Any time you roll a 1, it’s removed from the pool and added to the physical dice stack in front of you- the game session ends when your pool is depleted or your dice stack falls!

This was game 2 of 10 for the Shit of Get Off the Pot game jam

[polyhedralmice]

Game jams rock and I’m never going to shut up about it I’ve finally recovered enough from the last one (10 1-page solo ttrpgs in 30 days!!) to read all of the awesomely creative games that the other participants made! I wanted to make sure to shout out a few of my favorites.

Descend into Disaster by Sock Monster Games- it uses The Wikipedia Game (which early 2010s me was obsessed with) as the RNG as your journal yourself deeper and deeper into disaster

Baby You’re a Haunted House by Toribee lets you play as a haunted house trying to get your ghosts to move on so the people living there will stay. It has Closure Tables, Rest Tables, and Revenge Tables to help facilitate closure for the spirits

Painting Fantascapes by Fractured Pawns helps with the hardest part of sitting down to do art- decision making. This games uses cards and dice to generate prompts- it would be great for quick warm ups

Don’t Play Poker With a Fox by Paper Fox Studio is one of several games in this jam featuring the titular fox, and in this one, he invites you to play a card game with him. He says it’s poker but you have your doubts. The game is similar to War, but you’re playing with a fox instead of your younger sibling (who definitely used to cheat)

This Ending Sucks So I Am Going to Write a Fanfic by wym_lawson gamifies a feeling that everyone has had- your favorite piece of media ends it’s…not great. What if you could take things into your own hands? You first get to write the shitty ending, and then you get to fix it! This one also offers rules to play with a group!

[polyhedralmice]

You are walking down the road when suddenly in front of you appears a mysterious stranger. The cloaked figure offers you a gift- a handful of magic beans. The moment the beans are in your possession, POOF! Where before there was only road, there is now a fair. Play carnival games, explore the fairgrounds, spend your beans on some nifty prizes!

The single greatest contributor to me getting a new exciting creative idea is when I’m feeling wholly unsatisfied with the 8 other creative projects that I’m currently working on. I have 3 entries for the SOGOTP game jam to go but the layout for all of them has been so frustratingly unsatisfying that my brain started spawning new ideas.

Magic Beans was a compromise. It isn’t the game that the adhd squirrels in my head are excited about, but it uses a simplified version of the choose-your-own-adventure structure that I can’t stop thinking about. Let’s call it hyper-fixation adjacent.

Game 7 of 10 for the Shit of Get Off the Pot game jam

[polyhedralmice]

Sometimes you just need to make something cute. This solo ttrpg requires you to find out exactly 2 things- what kind of rock did you find, and how cool is it? Yes you can make an entry into your field journal, but no one’s going to make you do that if you don’t want to. Let’s be real here, this is all about the coolness of the rocks.

This was game 4 of 10 for the Shit of Get Off the Pot game jam.

[polyhedralmice]

When I started this game jam my biggest anxiety about crapping out 10 1-page solo games in a month was creativity. I was worried that my world building ideas would dry up completely (now granted, if anyone saw my game about finding cool rocks they might say that I’m already totally out of ideas). My bigger problem I’ve found was not with themes but with mechanics. There are only so many dice and so many ways to roll them- same with decks of cards. I’m not at the point where digging out my copy of Jenga and hacking Dread is necessary, but I really got the urge to use an RNG that felt different to me.

So here we go- game 5 of 10 is a solo-journaling ttrpg that uses a playlist to generate prompts. You play as a radio host who has to fill in for a colleague’s call-in advice show last minute. My spouse (aka the best editor ever) isn’t much of a journaling game person, but pointed out that this game is easy to play in the car when she’s stuck in traffic!

[polyhedralmice]

Horror isn’t a genre that I engage with a lot, but I knew I wanted to make one of my solo 1-pagers sci-fi themed, and decided that Alien(s) was a perfect inspiration. I was going for tension in decision making, and chose 2 mechanics that I hoped the player would really start feeling the pressure. Push your luck seemed perfect for this- the PC can re-roll their dice pool as often as they want, but every re-roll adds a Danger die that carry dire consequences. I also included a turndown die that counts the character’s dwindling water supply.

Stasis Failure is a solo ttrpg where you play the captain of a single-person deep space ship. You awake from cryo-sleep too early and must either fix your stasis pod or die (by running out of water or from whatever’s making the noises you can hear in the cargo pod).

This is game 3 of 10 for the Shit or Get Off the Pot game jam.

[polyhedralmice]

Something that’s been interesting about attempting to crank out an unreasonable number 1-page solo games is trying to make the most of a mechanic. I feel like there’s only so many ways to use a randomizer (dice, cards, drawing tokens from a bag, etc) before it starts running together. The solo aspect adds another challenge, because I while I really enjoy journaling games, I definitely didn’t want to make 10 of them- at least not without adding other elements.

Game #1 has accomplished this by being half journaling game, half mini dungeon crawler. The Wizard and The Wanderer is set in a maze- you start in the center as a mage hiding their greatest treasure, spiraling their way out and documenting the monster, traps, and resources that they left behind (because who knows how long it will be until they come back to retrieve their stuff?). Once you’re back out in the wilderness, many years go by and you switch to playing a knight-errant who sees the maze and the untold riches it must hold as a path to virtue and glory. As the knight you battle through the dungeon that past-you so carefully crafted.

This is game 1 of 10 for the Shit or Get Off the Pot game jam!

[polyhedralmice]

Sometimes art imitates life, and here in the Midwest my garden is in full swing, so of course plants ended up as a theme. 5 years ago I knew was ‘bees good’- now I’m planting Milkweed to coincide with the migration of monarch butterflies through my area.

This game is played with a Yahtzee-style mechanic and a deck of cards, using the face cards as a game board. When I started this project I got very ambitious and decided I’d make some printable face cards with native plants on it but my artistic ability quickly shot that idea down. Maybe one day?

This was game 6 of 10 for the Shit of Get Off the Pot game jam.

(I also can’t talk about my garden without showing off pictures, this years harvest has already produced lettuce, radishes and strawberries!)

[polyhedralmice]

10. Games. In. 30. Days. My brain is in the process of shutting down completely but I know that future me will appreciate a few last notes.

- I really enjoyed writing up a little devlog when I put games up on tumblr— I’d like to figure out how to make that work with longer projects

- This is the first time that I’ve hit a layout/graphic design wall this hard. I think my lack of skill is catching up to me and I need to think about how to deal with that

- Some of these games felt more like a weird art process than game design and I don’t think that’s a bad thing

- True to form I get my most interesting ideas when I’m frustrated and avoiding my real responsibilities

- I’m not sure that I’m ever going to be comfortable with shouting about myself into the internet void

- My 2 favorite things about jams are having a goal/direction/inspiration and seeing other people take the same prompt that I got and make cool art that never would have occurred to me.

[polyhedralmice]

Is trying to make 10 1-page solo ttrpg games in the month of May an impossible goal? Possibly. Are my ideas going to go more and more off track as the month goes on? Definitely. Is having a plan at all even worth it? Who knows! But here it is:

The Wizard and the Wanderer

At the center of the maze, an enchanter hides his greatest treasure- his soul. He winds his way out of the maze leaving traps and monsters to protect it. Many years later, an adventurer comes across the maze and tries to make their way to what they assume must be priceless treasure.

Spellweaver Sidehustle

You play a recent graduate of magic school trying to pay off your student loans by taking freelance orders for custom spells.

High-Rise Tales

Use a d6 dice pool to create a tower floor by floor while narrating the goings on as it rises. Rolling a 1 removes the die from the pool and adds it to your physical dice stack- when it falls, the story is finished!

Dear Listener,

Your job as a radio DJ is to host a music show, but when a colleague has a 911 you have to fill in on their call-in advice show. Use your favorite playlist to generate callers and help them solve their problems.

Propagate!

Save the Bees! (and the bats, birds, butterflies, and other beneficial insects). Use a deck of cards and 5d6 to populate your garden with native plants to make your yard pollinator friendly. 6s explode as you propagate your garden!

A Finder of Lost Packages

Every unclaimed mail warehouse needs an employee who is just slightly psychic. Move across a grid of prompts to figure out how a package ended up here and if it's possible to get it where it’s supposed to be.

Lookout Station 8

The posting of new recruits as Lookouts is unheard of, but these are dire times. In this weird west game you do your best to send descriptions of incoming creatures back to base- but your inexperience and the unreliable radios means that the information doesn’t always get through. Best of luck, rookie.

How Cool is This Rock?

Go rockhounding and fill out your field journal with the cool rocks you find! Grain size, hardness, foliation, and color will help you figure out exactly what rock you have and how cool it is!

Stasis Failure

AWAKE. It’s too early. Must re-enter suspended animation. A push your luck game that pits a solo deep-space traveler against time- either repair the ship’s stasis pod or succumb to the dangers aboard.

The Mustelid Downs Races

As an employee at a crooked stoat-racing track you are under a lot of pressure to help fix the races. Keep an encrypted log of everything you do as insurance for the inevitable law enforcement raid.

[polyhedralmice]

The last 3 games are done! I must have been feeling a way about the color purple (which is somewhat ironic given that I’m blue/yellow colorblind and have trouble seeing purples sometimes).

Tiny devlogs

Spellweaver Side-hustle was the first game I had an idea for but one of the last one that I wrote out. The prompt tables for this one expand as you gain experience!

Unclaimed Package Specialist was easy to write up and a pain in my ass to lay out. I truly hit the limit of my skills and trashed this thing multiple times. (On a brighter note I was so pleased that the first letters of the name of my game about packages spells out UPS)

After This Job came out of nowhere even though had several drafts of other 1-pagers that I was planning on using. I think the appeal was that this is less of a journaling game and more of a talking-to-myself-out-loud sort of game.