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Just had a wonderful playtest of #Wanderhome today, as we complete a season and choose advancements, and it got me really thinking about why I never say you're telling a story once, in all of Wanderhome. So here's a thread about it!
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To start, you can check out the free playkit on Itch at the link below, and follow that link to subscribe to the Kickstarter!
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2/? http://jdragsky.itch.io/wanderhome
So, as I start this thread, I was to talk about "story" in a VERY specific definition of the term (I've learned my lesson!) Story here means specifically the kind of narrative plot arcs traditional story games (like PBTA) and story game players find themselves doing.
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Some examples of this are:
- PCs are more important than everyone else
- Figuring out preemptively where you want the scene or your character to go (playing to lose, etc.)
- Centering failure and victory
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- PCs are more important than everyone else
- Figuring out preemptively where you want the scene or your character to go (playing to lose, etc.)
- Centering failure and victory
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Wanderhome actively rejects all of that. One of my biggest design goals is to create a game that decenters the player characters from the universe. They're not the most important - in fact, they're rarely equipped to solve big problems in the world.
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Additionally, Wanderhome doesn't believe failure is a useful way to talk about things. Failure doesn't exist in real life, and talking about success or failure is often a really unhealthy mindset. So how else can we talk about the things we do?
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Additionally, there's a lot of story games about traveling to places & fixing their problems. Some even in the same loose genre as Wanderhome! But random guests rarely know how to solve systemic problems in places they're only in for a brief moment.
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There's an adage I catch myself saying in playtests a lot (and I gotta work into the rules) which is that "If you know where you're going already, the game is less good" - because if you're playing a scene and know how it ends, then that's not a journey - that's an errand.
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There's some other bits and bobs in the way this philosophy infuses Wanderhome, but I wanted to highlight those spots. Wanderhome is a weird game! It's really me trying to articulate some things in ways a lot of people haven't quite done so.
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Wanderhome can be a bit of a paradigm shift to play. It's taken me a little bit to get used to it! That's not to say it's not fun before then, just that once your brain clicks it's like learning how to see a brand-new color.
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My favorite game of Wanderhome was with @ForkTwenty for his podcast, where we went for a walk, pet a bug, sat by a fire, and got some sleep. Like, in a lot of games that might feel unsatisfying, but in Wanderhome it feels freeing.
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This is kinda a weird thread to make, because I know there might be some people who read this and go "Oh, eww, I don't want this game anymore" but like, I hope it can also get y'all to understand why folks are saying this game is revolutionary.
12/FIN http://tinyurl.com/wanderhomerpg
12/FIN http://tinyurl.com/wanderhomerpg
