Untitled Kayla Dice Sci-Fi Noir Project

Plus TDL2 updates, reworking of the newsletter structure and delivery date and other links

Happy New Year Surfers!

Gonna start this months newsletter with housekeeping. I'm moving the release date of the newsletter to the second Monday of the month from now on, rather than the static date that slides around weekends.

Some links you might want to check out include the latest update for Transgender Deathmatch Legend II (long and short; we're in layout baby) and some threads of favourites and reflections over on BlueSky. Also Game Soup came back from the holidays with a fun episode that includes some January naval gazing.

I talked about slowing down in last months newsletter, giving things more room to breathe. That's the plan at least, it just does bring me the question of what the newsletter actually is when it's not just a recap of an overly busy month. It also ties in to me wondering about how much recapping post campaign updates is a good use of space (I presume most subscribers to the mailing list either backed the campaign, in which case they're already getting the updates, or they were aware enough of the campaign to decide it wasn't for them and the updates are pointless).

I'm tempted by the idea of starting each month with a collection of links to things I've done or said, but just the links and an explanation, not a whole recap. Then the rest of the newsletter would be a more focused pseudo blog; shifting to more of a "what am I thinking about" rather than just "what am I working on" or "what have I done". That's loosely what I've attempted with this months newsletter, though the main bulk is more announcement focused than I'm thinking about it the future (basically I'm planning to push the boat out and think about the newsletter a bit sooner than on the day).

Untitled Kayla Dice Sci-fi Noir Project

The game does actually currently have a working title. I've been avoiding saying it for a while, I suppose out of superstition of making everything more solid. In discords and social media post I often call it "my space noir game". I liked They Live in Space as a draft but I think it's more opaque than I needed. It conveyed space but not noir. I should give you the short pitch now.

The game is a sci-fi noir set aboard a retro-future space station. You play flawed characters with opposing agendas who will get entangled in webs of crime and corruption. The space station is divided between three megacorps at each other's throats with desperate people caught between them.

Why make a noir game? Well the starting point is that two years ago I made an Orbital Blues adventure that took some noir inspiration. I enjoyed the idea and had fun with executing it. Late last year I had the idea of revisiting the story but in a book more suited to investigation. It'll be revised in a big way. The setting of The Man We Knew needed to be noir coded while still being plausible within the western styled lo fi future of Orbital Blues. Taking the setting into it's own game let's me be a bit cleaner with it; noir in space, the world of tomorrow gone rotten.

I studied some film noir in sixth form and then developed a hyper fixation on it. It's a stylish genre, inspite of most noirs being scrappy B movies. I like the tension, the thrills. I think the sense of alienation that's a big theme in much of my work often draws from noir, either the classic or neo-noir and noir inspired things like Taxi Driver. This isn't a game for every kind of noir, it draws from the criminal thrillers rather than any melodramas, primarily in interest of being focused from a design perspective.

That was half the starting point. The other half was the work I've done on a game I've alternatively called the Test of Time or Tim Flies. Development on that game stalled last year as it was thought of as a campaign game and my own play habit drifted away from that style which made it harder to plan. I had most of a mechanical skeleton though, derived from Invincible Sword Princess and Patchwork World 6E, which had a focused section of core moves. The skeleton has been reworked since coming into this game. Two inspecting moves were combined into one, and a move to arouse someone was added.

I've been thinking a lot with this game about what moves make possible and encourage, in contrast to what things are made unattainable with just a straight mechanical interaction. In this game your only social moves focus on lying and turning someone on, it pushes you to those areas because they feel like dangerous and exciting places for this game. There's no move for convincing someone to do things for you, or for figuring things out. A player either has to have their character make a genuine connection or find some leverage to get people to act how they want, and in turns of solving things they'll usually be working with more information than their characters.

Note: This isn't saying anything about how I think moves or rules work in general, I'm not convinced there are any true statements you could make about rules or moves "in general", merely how they're intended to be working in this game.

An important thing for the noir genre is a sense of social alienation and isolation, that alienation is part of what can drive characters to act selfishly. Mimicking that effect in a game can difficult because if the player characters are a team it's difficult for them to feel isolated from each other. I have written other books where player characters are alienated from each other but those usually draw on their shared past to drive an emotional wedge between them, that wouldn't work here for a mix of reasons. Instead I'm having your characters be basically unknown to each other and giving them all different goals when interacting with a case. That means playing scenes where characters are separate and learning things that they won't share. It means players know more then their characters, but in a game fashioned after noir I think that's fine, that's dramatic irony.

I want a bit of a disconnect between player and character, partly so working against each other doesn't feel too competitive, partly to encourage playing to push their characters worst sides as much as possible and for other considerations that are probably better expanded on in their own newsletter. I'll share the title, also because what I'm explaining ties in to what I've just been saying a little.

Strangers in the Vast Dark. Vast Dark felt like a hard-boiled way of talking about space, clear enough but also a little novel. Strangers ties into the many noirs that reference a stranger in the title. It also links to the way player characters are strangers to each other, not to be trusted.

Looking forward

The actual shape of the wider project is still coming together. I want to get out a public playtest version and build the book/game in public more than previously. That's likely what I'll launch a Patreon with. It's what I've brought up as a focus for me year when I applied for Arts Council funding, so if I get a grant that could really change the shape of everything. You can expect future blogs (and parts of the newsletter, I'm gonna get back into cross posting I think) talking about different aspects of the text; experiments in minimizing second person address, what noir is going into the mix, how I'm figuring out setting detail, big thoughts about women in noir, bringing in exercises to a game text, a film-informed approach to design and why I hate how the term cinematic is used in tabletop.

I'm not sure which I'll tackle next month, any requests? Either way, until then

Kayla Dice