Last week, I published a little game on Itch, called Penny Spent and entered it into the Minimalist TTRPG Game Jam 2. It’s untested and arguably unfinished, but it’s free (CC BY-NC-SA). Regarding the large sections left as an exercise to the GM, I hope to sketch and share a playset, and eventually to test it. But I wanted to get it out first.
In the process of writing it I had some more conversational and reflective notes that I cut from the final draft for brevity. These are them.
Math
Obviously the first test of a skill will always fail without any bonuses. The expected number of tests before the first success is, I think, about 4. The expected number of tests before a skill is “maxed out” is a lot. If these numbers seem vague it’s because the math was distracting. Expect another post about it later.
Escape Run
The bulk of this system comes from an earlier game I was working on called Escape Run. The goal was to do something useful with my series of blog posts about RuneScape. The “conclusion” of that series (unpublished at time of writing) explores some of the advantages and difficulties of such an adaptation.
Escape Run was always going to be a challenge for me: something crunchy and maximalist. With Penny Spent I cut out the core of that game to study it in isolation. Eventually though, I’d like to return to it, in all its messy glory.
Other Games & Inspiration
There are a couple other threads woven through Penny Spent that deserve particular mention.
David Schirduan’s Kintsugi is such an elegant little game that every time I try to write something original, it’s either the same as or more complex than Kintsugi did it. With Penny Spent, I’ve decided to just own that.
I’ve never played Trophy: Gold, but it’s in the air. The glowing write-up on Bones of Contention and Marcia’s theory-heavy examination on Traverse Fantasy both had me thinking about metagame currencies and distributed approaches to game prep.
Trey Causey recently outlined a possible plan of action for the “epic campaign” that every GM has dreamt of. I had to try working that in.
I’ve taken up the Dice Exploder podcast, which recently had an episode about Blaseball. One of the things that stood out to me is how much “open-ended” complexity was a feature of the game. For example, when every player was found to have 29 hidden attributes! These attributes provide what I think of as “texture” for future developments to find purchase in. This (and other elements) put me in mind of Nomic, which I think teaches similar lessons and also brought me back to the idea of metagame currency from Trophy.
Finally, the Minimalist TTRPG Jam 2 seemed like an ideal opportunity to force myself to distill these ideas. For example, I think a lot about how the existence of a skill makes a statement about the expectations of a game. But the jam suggests “Nightmare Mode: No ordered or unordered lists.” Can I then leave the selection of skills to the guide? In delegating decisions like this, I was forced to describe them in more detail than I would have if I allowed myself to give examples. (Even if that makes the final implementation more difficult to use directly.)
Naturally, some acknowledgments are inherited from Escape Run. “Roll under skill but over difficulty” as a general resolution mechanic is from Errant. “Fatigue is an item that takes an inventory slot” is from Cairn or possibly Mausritter. (I’m not sure who did it first, maybe even Knave?)
Jams
You can still join in!
Minimalist TTRPG Jam 2 runs until December 1st, and was fun. By having such vocal priorities and opinionated criteria, it made it easier for me to get something done.
It’s no secret that I love the 200-word RPG challenge, and I’ve been disappointed that it hasn’t happened in the last few years.1 Well, prolific Tumblr guy, David J Prokopetz, has informally revived it, also thru the month of November, on that website. However, my presence there is negligible, and I only discovered it thanks to Whisperling’s entry on the Glass Ziggurat blog.
November is also “National Game Design Month,” or NaGaDeMon (after NaNoWriMo, I assume). I have always found the sentiment fine, but personally unmotivating. I need something silly and specific to wrap my mind around.
So at the silly and specific end of things, I know some people who are absolutely cooking with Button Shy’s 18-Card Challenge this year. It runs a little longer than the others, until December 15th, and it’s much more constrained.
I couldn’t find a clever phrase to hang this link on: my own past entry, of course, being PALACE RUN.↩︎