The Glamour

 

"There's a texture that links a lot of those ostensibly disparate games [in reference to 90s games like Cyberpunk and Vampire the Masquerade]...

I worry the texture of current game design is 'overproduced'."

Yesterday Paul "The Indie Game Reading Club" Beakley made an excellent post titled "The New Novelty" - Like all great blog posts it's gotten a few of us blog-heads stirring, myself included. The article is short enough, but gets at a vaster ennui many fans of the fabled "tabletop rpg" are having - The sense that not only is the field saturated with too many games to reasonably enjoy in a lifetime (never mind read the rules of) but also those self-same games drowning the market aren't really doing... anything?

We have a abundance of decadently realized vibes games, with an incredible number of small-scale experimental outfits leaking through itch.io - To me there's still plenty of games innovating and sparking my imagination (from the razor sharp simplicity of Mythic Bastionland, to the in-your-face avant garde excellence of Hawkmoth King) - And yet what fills my feed and drains my wallet is something quite different. Something I have a love hate relationship with.

The Kingdom Death Dilemma 

In January of 2009 Adam Poots raised a respectable $1,700 to pay for sculpts for his as-of-yet unnamed board game project Kingdom Death. The kickstarter was in essence an act of charity to see the dream of Boutique Nightmare Horror come to life.

Kingdom Death: Monster (what was meant to be the board game half of an IP which would include a TTRPG) would go on to shatter records raising 2+ million in 2013 and a seismic 12+ million in 2017 for its 1.5 expansion/revision.

The game offered gorgeous art, grotesque monster miniatures, and tantalizing pinups. Poots promised bloat, cards, dice, more plastic than you could assemble in a month. An outrageous explosion of creativity, novelty and product all packaged at a juicy early adopter price. It was resounding success, one that'd shatter records. It was also the crossing of the Rubicon, the casting of the dye. Every designer heard loud and clear what sold: Big, beautiful, extravagant. Glamorous.

The way to wallets was a gilded path set in FOMO, one where owning a Big Box full of Cool Stuff was a higher priority than using the cool stuff - A formula perfectly catered to an audience that was slowly learning the easiest way to devalue something you love was to play with it.

Projects like Zombicide, Conan, Super Dungeon Explore and Shadows Over Brimstone were just the start - The genre spawned from HeroQuest so many decades ago was having a sick consumerist driven renaissance that'd soon leak out far beyond. Gloomhaven began further leaking this decadent model into RPGs while later projects like Rising Sun and Tainted Grail proved that any old board game could pack itself to the brim with premium components. (This is ignoring the torrent of IP driven kickstarters form Steamforged Games and others that'd follow this same pattern)

I own and have played a LOT of these games. Many of them are even good in their own way - But I'd be lying if I told you the joy of Super Dungeon Explore wasn't in part to have a massive collection of adorable Chibi Minis that I can just look at. Or that my continued infatuation with Kingdom Death isn't almost solely derived from the depraved glamour of it all, from the black tissue paper that delicately wraps exclusive minis or the lovingly crafted newsletters packed with gorgeous seasonal art.

The New Novelty had taken its hold on board games and RPGs were next.

Give Me More

5e had already primed its consumer base to appreciate games not for their impact but rather for their Content(TM) - What new monsters were coming in each release? New classes? New ways to simulate the Cool Move feeling? New Lays flavors to spark novelty without truly nourishing the imagination?

As board games continued to put Kickstarter on the map the genie slipped from the WotC bottle, and all of a sudden 5e campaigns were all the rage. Ever wanted to hunt giant monsters? Prowl the streets of a haunted city? Climb mountains tormented by yokai? Well you sure better have custom character classes, new monsters and new mechanics (really it's embarrassing and telling that these aren't just their own games) - All wrapped in a beautiful boxed set with custom dice and DM screens!

And I'm not trying to knock these projects!! I've backed two of them and I don't even play 5e! I like the idea of some day reading them, and that their glamorous aura adds to my bookshelf. But also we can see clearly the race to add and add and sell and sell spilling out of corporate hands and into the hands of passionate indies.

As an aside I think this is why you see Hasbro/WotC crutching on IPs - When anyone can create a lavish overwrought product, what good is being the big corporation? Even the "indies" are pulling from Avatar and Blade Runner, surely WotC must answer this with a Spongebob Secret Lair... ((We do so love the Fortnite-ification of video games))

Where This Leaves Us

I've been thinking a LOT about Mythic Bastionland recently. It's rules are clean even if its scenarios are sparse for my taste. But what I do love is that it's just one book. It's Kickstarter was for just one book. No dice, no screen, no glamour - Just one (admittedly gorgeously produced) book.

Games that have stuck with me these past few years follow this trend. Break!! gingerly split its tiers out for an alt-cover and digital only. Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast packs all its most important material wiles into a single decadent boxed set (and for a premium you can wrap yourself in its hoodies and have its plushies haunt your shelf).

Meanwhile I love Fabula Ultima but the Kickstarter is giving me Akira flashes because I'd like to support the game without having to micro-manage what the optimal pledge is to maximize the actual gaming part like I'm managing a build in Battletech. (Though trust me, I'll still make time to do so).

The Middle Ground for Those Who Love Glamour 

A recurring theme in the games I try to make is "big box feel, with print and play sensibilities" - A return to the era where more stuff and cool overproduction didn't mean having an art book with rules stapled onto it.

I love my minimalism, but ultimately I'm a glamorous maximalist bitch who enjoys when more is more, New Novelty be damned. I think the key however is to add with intention.

Mothership does this excellently - Its boxed set is literally plated with gold, its intrigue hinges on adding outside rules and modules, it's built to be built on and curates its exhibit of sci-fi horror immaculately.

The Mothership Kickstarter is undoubtedly overproduced, and did take me a whole 30 minutes to figure out exactly what I wanted out of it, and Tuesday Knight Games earned that shit. It's a product line that understands what makes a product line more than a line of products. Each zine hits with its own digestible concision. Each note harmonizes with the whole from the boxed set to the t-shirt. Each new offering on the altar of glamour carefully considered.

If every Mothership zine ever released was on offer for the 1e Kickstarter it'd have been bigger and yet also emptier. The broader topic of Mothership Month (and by extension Zine Month) is much more nuanced but it does at times strike me as so much noise. Instead this Kickstarter offering is concise, precise.

Opening $150 of Mothership gave me all the giddiness and glamorous glee of pouring over my big-box board games when they'd finally ship, but also gave me inspiration, elation and a confidence to actually bring so much stuff to the table. Because the magic of Mothership is the same as the magic of Bastionland; Concision - Mothership just knows how to fillet it's best to make a glamorous sushi boat that can hold its own both as product and play ~

On The New Novelty

I love glamour. I love big and beautiful and decadent and I don't think those things have to be at odds with excellent design. We're living in an era of overproduction, where beautiful layout and pretty art will get you further than exacting language and bold design - The works that'll stand as this era's greats will likely have both.

The biggest question is how will you use this glamour? Is it just set dressing or are you getting juice from your squeeze?

Are you adding a sticker sheet to get 5 more dollars? Or have you implemented an innovative system for the game to constantly morph the more you play it?

Do you have 6 zines to pad bookshelves? (Which you'll then sell as a more put together hardcover compilation much to my chagrin) Or do they make things easier to digest for the GM?

Does art fill your margins merely to catch the eye? Or does it tell a story and reinforce design in a way words simply fail?

The biggest question I'll ask is one I am constantly trying to work through - Can all this glamour, all this excess be delivered on a cheap thumb drive while still evoking the same awe and joy when it comes out of a home printer?