Artifacts that last beyond the game
Eleventh Beast zine, token pools, game artifacts, and Viscounts
TL;DR Summary
💀 Eleventh Beast zine edition
🌸 Aura, Shadow, and Flare
🏺 Artifacts that last beyond the game
🎲 Recently played: Viscounts of the West Kingdom
💀 Eleventh Beast… zine edition!
Eleventh Beast is a solo monster hunting game made for the 2023 One-Page RPG Jam. The original version fits on a single A4 trifold pamphlet, and people are really enjoying it! Thank you to everyone who has left kind words in the reviews!
Coming this fall… The deluxe zine edition of Eleventh Beast!
With more room in this 20-page A5 zine, there are expanded rules explanation, easier to read text, and some really cool public domain art. You’ll also get a map printed on heavy stock, a dotted Inquisitor Notebook, bookmark, and… POGS!
How do you get it? For now, it will only be available at the Exeunt Press booth at Save Against Fear, November 9-12, 2023 in York, PA. If you can attend, please stop by and say hello!
I’m extremely happy with how these turned out, and can’t wait to share them!
Tickets and badges: Save Against Fear
🌸 Aura, Shadow, and Flare
Sakura Arms (BakaFire, 2022) a fast moving head-to-head, deck construction, card battle game. Each player chooses two goddesses and combines their unique decks to form a single, 10-card deck. It’s also one of my all-time favorite board games!
Two weeks ago Skeleton Code Machine looked at how the sakura tokens are used in the game. It’s an interesting look at what I’m calling “pool cycling” and open vs. closed token systems.
Read The cycle of aura, shadow, and flare at Skeleton Code Machine.
🏺 Artifacts the last beyond the game
This week I watched Developing Artifacts of Play For Your Tabletop Games presented by Kathryn Hymes of Thorny Games. It was presented at GDC 2020.
Some thoughts based on my notes:
Artifacts of play: Things created during play that last beyond the end of the session. They might also have their creation directed by the rules of the game. Recordings, photos, character sheets, journals, and maps are all examples.
Documentation of play: Playing games is meaningful. It’s good to have a keepsake; something to share with others after it’s over.
Playful artifacts: Drawings such as those made in A Fake Artist Goes to New York are better than photos. They can tell the story of the session in how they are drawn.
Immersive artifacts: Bridge the gap between reality and the game. Journals such as Thousand Year Old Vampire. Making the journal itself an immersive part of the game can help. Consider the magic circle.
Personalization: Changing and personalizing parts of the game, such as naming areas of the map in Risk: Legacy. It is common for players to frame their final maps!
Direct who has control: As in The Quiet Year, the artifacts can direct who has the spotlight for a given space or time during the game.
Marketing tool: Tee K.O. allows you to purchase the silly t-shirts you designed during the game. This creates artifacts that drive awareness of the game and act as marketing tools.
Deepen player connections: Not all artifacts are physical! Dialect allows players to develop a common language, building connections, and creating an artifact that is purely verbal.
Put it where the fun is: What’s the best part of your game? What is the part that is fun, and which parts are just “scaffolding” to support that fun part? Need to be able to answer these questions. The answers should direct where to add artifact creation.
Giving up control: Having the players modify components, make journals, and create artifacts gives them control of the game. They become partial authors of the game.
This talk was packed with information and examples and lasted less than 30 minutes. Highly recommend watching the whole thing. It’s really making me think about how Eleventh Beast and Exclusion Zone Botanist create artifacts in different ways.
Want some more thoughts on GDC talks? Check out:
Watch: Developing Artifacts of Play For Your Tabletop Games
🎲 Recently played: Viscounts of the West Kingdom
Recently I mentioned playing Paladins of the West Kingdom (Phillips & Macdonald, 2019). This week I played the next one in the series: Viscounts of the West Kingdom (Phillips & Macdonald, 2020).
Viscounts has some of my favorite mechanisms, namely deck-building and a rondel. It also has a cool plastic castle at the center of the modular board! It’s a solid game, and one I’m happy to keep in my collection. If I had to rank them, however, I think Paladins might get the edge for my favorite of the three West Kingdom games.
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- E.P. 💀
Great update, EP! I really like the idea of game artifacts. It reminds me of the Tiny Keepsake Jam (https://itch.io/jam/tiny-keepsake-jam) on Itch where people made games specifically to that effect. Lots of cool stuff there!