Vulpes Valentine's Video Game Valley

Tag: ttrpg

  • Update – For the Flock is in early playtesting!

    Update – For the Flock is in early playtesting!

    Happy Tuesday, folks!

    This week I figured I’d talk a little bit more about my upcoming game, currently titled “For the Flock”, a solo or group journaling/survival game about a nomadic people traveling a dangerous wasteland. I’ve been hard at work on the project after a few weeks of inactivity, and have even gotten the chance to playtest a few hours of the game with a friend of mine. We’re both having a really great time, which I take to mean that the game is at least fun at this stage, and I consider that a pretty big win.

    It’s my impression that this can be one of the more difficult parts of game design to get through: the seemingly endless slog of testing, tweaking, testing, tweaking, over and over until you start to forget how the game looked when it was unrestrained by logic, accessibility, readability, etc. That said, I’ve found that I actually quite enjoy this part of the process, especially when you have cool people to engage in it alongside you, providing real-time feedback and impressions.

    My hope is to have the game ready for testing on a wider scale by next week, so keep an eye out for that!

    To give you some idea of how the game plays, you draw cards from a standard deck which give you a prompt to help you imagine what kind of struggles or encounters your Flock is having while on their yearly pilgrimage to the safety and tranquility of a place known to them as the Summer Lands. After describing the situation, the player chooses one of six available Paths which represent the style of resolution (ie, the Path of Violence means the Flock will be fighting or mistreating someone or some place, but the Path of Trade could mean they’re bargaining or maintaining a balance with the environment around them). The other players (or if you’re playing by yourself, you) roll a number of dice equal to the current Flock score, and the result determines which Path gets chosen. As the player who’s turn it is, you have some options to sway the outcome of the roll, and all of these systems are meant to parallel the real workings of a democratic system filled with diverse peoples with unique perspectives. It’s not always easy.

    There’s obviously more to the game then just that, but I’ll save that for when it’s closer to being ready. I’m also going to try and actually get some art in this game, give you something to look at that can get the gears of imagination turning in your head as all good tabletop game art does. My first game, “our hope is You” was released in its current edition without art, as I wanted something pared down to start with. I’m also reworking some things in that game and will likely release a widely modified and updated edition.

    I have no idea how to create nice looking layouts, and I have no skill for the visual arts in general, so if you happen to be an artist reading this or know someone who might be able to help out, get in touch on Bluesky @vulpesvalentine! I DO NOT ALLOW ARTISTS TO WORK FOR FREE, YOU WILL BE COMPENSATED.

    And I think that’ll wrap it up for now. Next week’s post will be another edition of Recency Bias, but look out for an additional post on a new release I hope to have dug into in the next few days.

    Ciao!

  • Update: I make games too!

    Update: I make games too!

    Some of you reading this may be aware already but in addition to writing for this blog I write and design tabletop games! I’ve been doing this for a few years now, off and on in my spare time, not as any real career path or focus, but it’s work I (mostly) love doing and sharing with the world.

    After my first committed group of Dungeons and Dragons players dissolved, I settled in with another couple of groups in a role that was new to me: that of the GM. As many of you may know, being a GM is like being a large beetle that has gotten rolled on to its back: people are interested, they want to watch you struggle a bit, they might even feel bad for you, but they’re not going to flip you back over and help you out of this predicament, because then the fun would be over. So I spent many years s designated GM for the various groups I became a part of, and – to be honest – this suited me well.

    But the one thing I always craved and had trouble finding was the GM-less experience, being able to play the game as a participant alongside my friends without the need for a moderator, just us and the game interfacing at the same level. And there are tons of great games that offer this! But I wanted more, wanted them so bad that I decided to start making them myself. My core design principles were that the games would be simple enough for players new to tabletop gaming to understand with relative ease, to make games that were thoughtful about the way they depicted the world and its inhabitants, and that these games reflect my own minimalist tastes. Oh, and they’re always free.

    My first truly completed game was actually released recently. our hope is You is a game greatly inspired by Avery Alder’s incredible The Quiet Year, and is a science-fiction, apocalyptic storytelling game wherein players explore the path of a starship escaping a doomed planet from the perspective of those left behind. Looking back, I have my criticisms with my own design, but feedback from people I know personally who played it was positive and that’s good enough for me. If you’re curious, you can find that game here: our hope is You by Vulpes Valentine

    The main reason I decided to make this post was actually to announce my current project, another GM-less storytelling game for 1-5 players which I have tentatively titled, For the Good of the Flock. It combines my love of tragedy-laden stories of doomed peoples with the chaotic elements of group decision-making, and my strange, obsessive love for the word “flock”.

    In this game, you and your fellow players tell the story of a now lost culture of nomadic people, telling their history and charting their rises, their falls, and their steady decline into entropy. There are survival game-esque mechanics as well as a sort of Mad Libs approach to narration, both of which I think add additional layers to the game that my previous works have lacked. Essentially, you draw a random event each turn and have to decide how to approach the situation at hand in the manner that will yield the best results for your people.

    However, you are not the sole voice in this decision, and the rest of your companions have a nearly equal degree of sway in the matter, making each decision a constant struggle to maintain order and harmony among your people to avoid rash actions that will leave them hurting for supplies, or even get people killed.

    It’s chaotic and yet oddly meditative, with a rhythmic flow to the gameplay that I think folks will enjoy. I’m having a ton of fun designing it.

    I will hopefully have more to share on this soon, so stay tuned for updates!