You, Me and the Rest of Them (Address in TTRPGs)
News Roundup: Transgender Deathmatch Legend II fulfilment, Game Soup
Hello and welcome back to the Rat Wave Newsletter. I’ve had a very trying month in a lot of ways, most of which have been unrelated to games work but not all. A big thing that’s worn me out is finishing up physical fulfilment for Transgender Deathmatch Legend II. Now that that’s finished up the book is available to order from my webstore is you missed the campaign.
Another month of Game Soup episodes are up. We riffed on James Bond news, had our loosest episode yet and also pitched some ideas for a game about jousting that I’ve then begun work on in earnest.
I also made an appearance on Why We Roll to talk about Transgender Deathmatch Legend II, as well as demoing a bit of the game. I think it’s a really interesting discussion. It talks about some of the action movie influences of the game, the elegance of the system, what it means that the game insists on a trans main character and also just the fun of it all. The podcast isn’t up yet but follow their podcast feed to see when it does.
With all the little news out of the way lets move on to this months blog. It’s a post about different kinds of address in TTRPGs, mainly through a self analysis. It’s a thing I’ve been interested in because of stuff I’m thinking about when writing Strangers in the Vast Dark, but this blog ended up being a wider look at my work in general.
You, Me and the Rest of Them (Address in TTRPGs)
I started going to a local book club recently and at the first session I got clocked as an English literature graduate for answering what person pronoun “you” is (second) a bit too quickly. That's mainly an anecdote I think is amusing but it relates to how I've been thinking about address and tone in game texts lately. Perhaps it's because having read that book written in the second person, or maybe it's something else. It got me thinking about the voice of the two main games I'm currently working on. I'll get back to that in a sec but I think first I'll talk about address in games I've already finished.
I think virtually all my games are written in either the second person or a first person plural (i.e. in this game "we" do this, safety tools help with "our" comfort) mixed in with third person pronouns for clarity. I'm not sure where I picked up first person plural, I suspect I was probably imitating some Belonging outside Belonging games early in my career and then that became a tool in my pencil case. Interestingly it's often how I wrote instructions for lessons when I was a teacher. It was a lot of "here's what we're learning today" and "we've got this long to complete this task". There the intent was I guess to be less "do this, do that" and sort of trying to give the impression of a pupils responsibility for their own learning. So maybe that's part of the effect in games too. I think the games where I deploy first person plural are definitely less "bossy" in tone and more often than not GMless.
Not all second person address is the same though. Like when you're addressing a "you" that isn't always the same you throughout. If it's advice often in my own work there's an assumption it's for any player but there's an underlying assumption it's more likely to be directed towards whoever is facilitating the game. The second person use in playbooks or character creation sections is more directed towards a character, the reader is adopting their perspective when they read that "you", like prose or poetry that uses the second person. If a game has more defined roles it will likely lean more on third person pronouns for rules and other explanatory text with the second person mostly restricted to character creation and narrative text.
“You have to take a vocational course to become a proper Wizard. Everyday folk might have picked up some things in secondary school, an amateur can still know their way around a staff or a wand but to get a license you need to have completed the course and passed the tests. Then you're a big fancy Wizard! But that's a lot of cost to have sunk into the thing and it does raise the question: are you sure you made the right call?”
PSYCHODUNGEON (Wizard Playbook)
PSYCHODUNGEON and To Embrace a Swamp Creature have a lot of similar explanatory text. This is because they're both no dice, no masters games and it made sense to consciously reuse that text. Beyond the examples being reworked for PSYCHODUNGEON the bigger change was pronouns were shifted from first person plural to a mix of second and third. This is partly about clarity, Swamp Creature is GMless in the sense that all players share equal responsibility, whereas PSYCHODUNGEON is GMless in that it has multiple roles where responsibilities have been portioned out. PSYCHODUNGEON needs to rely on the third person to be clear which roles are being referred to. But the reason other explanatory text was moved (i.e. "our table" becoming "your table") was because it better suited the voice of PSYCHODUNGEON. Swamp Creature's emotive voice is aligned with the main characters so there's an element of being in things together than the first plural supports. PSYCHODUNGEON's emotive voice belongs more to a world weary narrator, familiar with the struggles of the games likely protagonists, but not there with them.
“Our characters aren’t alone in the Swamp. We can think of the others you’ll meet as supporting characters, some are small, bit players essentially, while others are more major, and impact our stories in painful and tender ways. The first supporting characters are built alongside you, as you pick out some key relationships from your playbooks.”
Supporting Characters Explanation from To Embrace a Swamp Creature
“Your characters aren't alone in their lives. You can think of the others you’ll meet as supporting characters; some are bit players while others are more major, and impact our stories in painful and tender ways. The first supporting characters are built alongside you as you pick out some key relationships from your playbooks.”
Similar sections from PSYCHODUNGEON
I'm curious about minimizing the second person. Partly just to see what happens. I think I say minimize rather than remove on purpose. I think player facing advice is best served by a second person address whereas I feel advice on the third person could easily slip into being a tortured hypothetical.
Strangers in the Vast Dark is a game where you're placed at a slight remove from the characters you play. You know more than them, you know about things that are coming that they don't see and you see scenes they're not part of. They're also likely morally compromised in a way you don't believe reflects your actual self. The game wants to play with dramatic irony in the way the film noirs it's influenced by do in cinema. I'm seeing how far I can push explanatory, narrative text and character creation into the third person. The games doesn't want you to not empathise with your character at all however, it still wants the character to be a role you play rather than someone you're telling a story about. Actions are resolved in the game by rolling with questions (ala Patchwork World 6E). Originally I wrote the questions in the second person. I'm experimenting with flipping them to first person singular. The intended effect, we'll see if it matters, is that resolving actions feels like zooming into the characters psyche.
“The Questions (+1D6 for every yes)
Do I know what they like?
Is this dangerous for them?
Am I keeping my own feelings in check?”
Questions for the move Arouse Someone from Strangers in the Vast Dark (work in progress)
(I'm aware this blog post is fairly self indulgent and pretentious but I got the impression that was a prerequisite for blogging.)
The other game I'm currently on is tentatively called The Gallant and the Virtuous, it's a storytelling game about jousting that will end in tragedy. The game focuses on competitors meeting at various tourneys, jumping forward in time on each occasion. The game will end when one competitor dies in a joust, and the contest subsequently falls out of fashion. It involves heavy collaborative worldbuilding elements.
The game will involve some second person address throughout. It's a GMless game where all players share responsibilities so a "you" can be fairly clearly directed to any and all players. But I'm also thinking of using some first person singular when approaching explanatory text. My logic is I think the game will benefit from explaining the inspiration and liberties it takes with historical jousting and I think this explanation coming from me directly gives it a bit of pulling back the curtain element.
There's some first person singular address in Transgender Deathmatch Legend II's essays and it's essentially the same tone of voice that comes through in the games explanatory text even though that is mostly addressed to the second person. This makes sense because I adopted a lot of the essays from stand-up material where obviously I was speaking in the first person, that's how people usually speak. It gives it a conversational tone. I guess I enjoyed the tone enough that I want to see how it carries through to a game that is far less personal.
I guess the idea for parts of The Gallant and the Virtuous is "what if I specifically approach a text as a one-sided conversation between me, Kayla, and the players?" I'd guess the tone will be a bit like the tone of my blogs. Or a bit like the tone of my stand up. It might be insufferable. But hey if it is I can just edit it to something more conventional.
“My research found a translation of 14th century rules for jousting that was focused around the number of broken lances (and the placement of breaks for tie break decisions). I also found references to tourney where three courses of jousting were followed by three strikes each with a weapon. In truth codified rules of competitions are a more modern invention (the rules for football and chess, for example, only got fully standardized by the 19th century) and the rules around jousting contests varied a lot. The game offers a version of jousting that feels believable even though it's not exact to any historical record. The scoring referenced in the game was chosen to be straightforward. I'm not interested in competitors quibbling with judges, I'm interested in tests of nerve, in trying to guess at another players intentions while keeping your own hidden. Unseating is chosen as a clean win state because it feels dramatic, it occurs only with three straight wins because it should feel earned.”
An explanation of the intent behind the jousting mechanics in The Gallant the Virtuous (work in progress)
Actually conventional is perhaps the wrong choice of word. This blog is really about modes of address in my work specifically. It's not an analysis of trends or even an analysis of effects on me as a reader of other TTRPG books. It's a self-analysis, and free associated musings. So instead of conventional I suppose a better turn of phrase would be "more in my wheelhouse". I'm not sure I have a rigid wheelhouse to be completely honest. I think I approach the voice of each game anew. Not always as analytically as this. Often it's just writing a game and feeling out how I'm talking. Or more specifically how the book is talking, rather than me on a personal level. Transgender Deathmatch Legend is a friend hyping you up. Out of the Fold is giving you a mission brief. The Infinite Dancefloor is an explanation from someone exhausted and resentful but only because they're right in shit with you. Those are all intricacies that go deeper than pronoun use, but hey I'm writing the bulk of this on my phone in a coffee shop because it's a blog not an essay.
Anyway, I have been Kayla Dice, and you have been the second person. Come back next month.