Fae King

Got challenged to partake in a game jam, so I decided to give it a go. There's just one problem: the theme for this game jam was to make a hack of a game that was released before the year 2000. I don't really care for the games released before the year 2000. I am very unfamiliar with them. The only ones that I know (and even then, I only know about them) are games that do something weird, like Amber Diceless. After I remembered that Puppetland was released in 1993, I made up my mind. I was going to work on the system I wanted to publish in April 2023 as a 200-word RPG. Back then, I got stuck on a problem or two and later got a better idea for a different 200-word game. The time has come to pull this one out of the thought cabinet and make it happen.

Taking Names

One of the aspects I didn't recall or appreciate about Puppetland before is its system for "attributes", or rather "what your character can and can't do". It's kind of easy to miss with the rules for how the game could be played and all being so much more prominent. If you are to play a game in which anything you say is spoken by your character, you can't rely on numbers to say how good you are at this or that. But I wanted to develop it a bit beyond to keep it thematically related.

Instead of doodling your own character and crossing out parts of it, I chose to represent a character just with their titles, split up into syllables. Well, okay, technically "-er" isn't a syllable, but I don't mind. What I really like about this is just how fluently it can be used in the game where anything spoken is crucial.

"What a wonderful game of tag, Miss Everyoung! I see now that you are Quicker than I am, so it's rather difficult to compete with you."

A character's proper name is there as a buffer that the players can cross out at any point in time without losing their character's efficiency. Though it should reflect what others call them in the game.

Fae Cant

Back when I wanted to write this game nearly two years ago, I had two possible names for it: Fae Cant, or To Kill a Fae. I liked the sound of both of them but for this one... I figured the best name is Fae King due to the pun involved. Fae Cant is just as good though, truth to be told.

The original game's premise was killing the fae using the Traditions, which to them would be seen as laws of the society. The biggest problem was that I couldn't identify a reason for this. Why would the players want to enter this realm and just kill the fae?

Nearly two years later, I gave it some more thought, and I figured it could be about killing one specific fae. Taking a hint of inspiration from the Heart, I decided that the players would try to kill the Fae King to get their wish fulfilled. From that point on, things were a lot simpler.

• Why does the game last one hour? Because that's how long they're visiting the Elfame (land of fae according to some myth in our world) last.
• Why would the fae not do something about it? Because fae have a hard time distinguishing between the mortals and themselves. Why is that? Because mortals don't visit this realm.
• Why can the players just kill any fae? Because they will reincarnate in a bit, death is merely an inconvenience to them.
• Why would the fae want to kill the players too? Because a fae can get their wish fulfilled by absorbing a mortal's soul.

A House of Cards

The pure game of Puppetland doesn't include randomness, or any gamism really. It's a narrativistic experience. I wanted a little more meat on those bones, so I added a deck of cards into the game. To be allowed within the Fae King's vicinity, players must gain the trust of enough fae by helping them out. They must build up a four-story house of cards, which requires 26 cards. Since each assistance grants the players a pair of cards, they can build this up by helping the fae 13 times. Perhaps by playing this game quickly enough, this could be done in a single sitting, perhaps it could be done faster. I don't know.

After the players kill the Fae King, or the house of cards falls, the Hunting phase begins. The fae know who the mortals are, and they will seek them mercilessly. I will admit, I'm not sure if this is such a good way to play the game or not. It's just the best I could come up with in the couple of days that I had to make this game. I'm calling it good enough.

That's everything I consider noteworthy about the game. I don't feel like publishing this on my itch.io page, at least not yet. Yes, I'm counting this towards my New Year's resolution, that's another Thing finished. Believe it or not, I'm at eight out of 12 to 25 Things as of writing this article. At this rate, maybe I could finish even 52 Things this year, just as I briefly considered in my Review of 2024 article.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

P.S.: If you haven't, please check out my latest youtube video, it's about time loops!

Design of There Is No Tomorrow

My day was busy, and just today I realized that my 08:47 PM reference will vanish from Youtube and Itch.io after publishing the game, so I'll need to be fast about this one.

Yesterday Is History

The first D&D campaign I've ever DMed featured a time loop and the last one I ever did. To be fair, the latter was just a three-session adventure. I like time loops, because it's a sandbox for the players to roam around in. They get to try things they'd normally be too afraid to try with little consequence, enjoy freedom, and see the world's reactions to their actions. Having done this before, I have enough experience to talk about the preparations for running a time loop. Instead of talking in detail about the pointless details of the system's development, I'll take this opportunity to talk about some things that I didn't fit into either the video or the written system.

I'd prepare several phrases to repeat word-for-word in every loop whenever relevant, especially at its start. Most commonly, this should be used with the NPCs unaware of the loop. I suggest limiting this to descriptions of the world since that could get stale quickly.

I'd also prepare some cool environmental aspects that the players could use to their advantage and something that can be done only at a certain time of the day (e.g. a door that's unlocked only between 11 AM and 1 PM).

Consider if you want to give them a vehicle or not. Consider what that means for the time units. Think about whether the NPCs use vehicles. A vehicle, in this context, could also be a mount, such as a horse. Just anything that makes you go faster. I'm not even gonna talk about the teleportation.

Tomorrow Is Mystery

At the end of the video, I mention my system's biggest flaw: you can't do this easily for minigames, like combat. I did not want the rules to be too long, so I did not address it there. I asked for suggestions in the video linked above, so maybe the comments will offer something more helpful. Until then, here are some suggestions from me off-the-cuff:

• Difficult: ask every player how much they expended in each of these minigames, record it all, and then whenever they repeat the minigame in the future they expend a little less stuff. It worked well enough for my last D&D campaign as a makeshift solution, even if it's a bit unreliable.
• Simple: count how many of these minigames are there in your schedule. Ask the players to remove a fraction of their resources equal to one divided by the count. For example: if you expect three minigames, ask them to remove a third of their resources. Make it a bit less with every iteration beyond the first one.
• Fun(?): play out every minigame each time. Trust the system, the improvements could make it easier and thus a bit more interesting each time.

How would I go around designing the time loop itself is something I don't go into detail in my video, and I'm afraid I don't have time to detail it right now either. Let's just address it briefly, in no particular order.

• Make a grid out of the locations and time units.
• Come up with the characters in your adventure will feature prominently. Maybe develop simple relationships between the characters.
• Work out where they are at what time, and what are they up to.
• Work out some alternatives, for example, if this thief gets caught or escapes the law, if the players do or don't hire this vehicle for the day, etc.
• Work out some cool things that the players could learn throughout the loop. For example, the thief is in love with the local waitress. The policeman's wife is sick. The fireman's dog is lost.

Today Is a Gift

I had planned this for nearly a month. Some references, just in case you're not too familiar with everything I am familiar with:

• The video, blog post, and There Is No Tomorrow system were released on February 2nd (Groundhog's Day).
• Everything listed above is also released at 08:47 PM CET (Rue Valley).
• While I didn't manage to make my video 22 minutes long, at least it starts and ends the way Outer Wilds' loop does (Outer Wilds).
• Two transitions between the chapters in the video are from Forgotten City and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, both of which feature time loops prominently.

I've put a lot of effort into this. The system is minimal, but that's because Mosaic Strict games have to be. The adventure is also rather minimal, but it's okay enough as an example at the very least.

Thank you for reading this, have a wonderful Groundhog's Day, hopefully with no repetitions!