Designing Ledger Cell

If you didn't make here from the game post : Here it is!

Initial Concept:

The earliest timestamp I could find was 8/28/2018 on an old doc. The initial idea was playing as the five senses of a single being, with the senses changing.  The best way I could think of handling that was a question and answer format, in emulation of the sense communicating the object to the brain. I think I played the first play test at a halloween party that year. I have an internal goal of making a game of every genre, and in the beginning I wanted this one to be from a monster's perspective in a survival horror game, but not necessarily just flipping the script and having them be the ones surviving. I didn't exactly succeed in that direction, but I'm able to cross 'communication game' off my list!

Story (Briefly):

*SPOILERS- Not too revealing,  but skip the paragraph below if you won't want any story information*

' So this game... is about cannibalism?'

               -Someone at my last playtest

I had never really considered the cannibalism aspect, but in the game, the host consumes corpses to fuel transformations, and eventually controls the power.  Other larger pieces fell together while worldbuilding. The animal influence was from forms of past lives leaking through. The changing senses were due to  animal influence. So, is it a man, or an animal? (If both, is it only half-cannibalism?) The first edition of the story was pretty vague, but my first major rewrite introduced the Ledger Cell as the pseudoscience element that drives the story. Enough time has passed while making this that I've got some ideas for sequels or other games in the universe. I think a whole post could be devoted to back story/story interpretation/explanation, so I'll leave that out for now. 

*END SPOILERS*

Format: The original format was paperless. A digital document, with a linear story moving through the rooms, with the rewards being tied to each room, and all cards were instead decided by dice roll and reference charts. This really limited player choice. Creating the opportunity to pick potential adaptations not only gave choice, made the story able to unfold differently for different groups.

Stability:  Originally, 'Life'.  It came across that the host wandering room to room,  bumping in to chairs or eating the wrong things and hurting itself. Tying mental state and physicality together into stability really helped bind the story and mechanics. It helped shape a more serious tone, as opposed to getting physically ill after smelling said chair.

Sensing Questions: Some of the early questions were different, such as the last-read questions for sight and sound were " make a hand sign or gesture to communicate what it is" or " attempt to make this sound" respectively. I removed them to get rid the charades feeling from the game, which didn't really fit the mood of the story. It also put some players in an unexpected or unenjoyed spotlight at times, where it started as simply answering questions, it was now a performance. I felt better off removing that aspect from the game.

Environment: Some of the original environment cards were removed.  Ones that I felt myself trying to bend the story around, like "Lava", is a good example. In the story, I had set up a whole couple of rooms about earthquakes, cracks in the complex's structure, and an underground power plant that used molten metal as a heatsink for the amount of power that was being used in the transposition. In paring down the size of the game, this was unimportant to the story, and Lava was to be smelled and touched no more.

 Another couple of examples were items that were more like concepts, like light, shadow, and laser (easy for sight but not others), super generic terms (like 'poison'), and the obscure, like automobile, or forklift (The group that tasted the forklift was a little mad).

Corpses: The forklift incident was before being able to accept synonyms with corpse cards. Before, it could be used to gain stability, and maybe guess another time. I turned the corpse card in to a type of wild card. Mostly, I like the ability to accept a very close answer, so instead of being like 'uhhhhh...you're so close. Hey guys, is this close enough? *Shows card to the rest of the group*'. you can take a hit from the corpse pile to just accept it. Introducing the ability for other players to guess on the third guess keeps people involved, as they have stake in the game even when it isn't their turn.

Sense question cards, corpse counter reference cards, and deck labels were all quality of life things added later. In a previous version, all cards were set in stacks on the rooms, and you had to sort out your reward from there, but there were no piles to draw from. An ok idea when you want to try to streamline things, but it makes for a longer set up, and figuring out what to keep was a little clunky for all players. Corpses were cards that weren't shared, and were earned individually.

Adaptations and Maladaptations were more tame, and thus less game-changing or less rewarding. Maladaptations happened on a real world timer (like every 15-20 minutes) to create a sense of urgency (it seems I like doing that, a couple other games have a similar mechanic).

Really the only things that stayed the same were the phenotype's sense score system, and the basic layout of the complex.

I feel like the game is in a good place, especially for the first game I'm sharing with others. It won't please everyone, but when will a long-format, artless, story-based communication (maybe-cannibalism) game please everyone? Well, here's to hoping a group of friends will have fun with it. I'd like to hear about how it goes =)

I might change small things going forward, but the game is pretty stable. I've worked on it off and on over the course of a few years, and stopped short of art and the more serious prototype steps, just to finally get a project out in the open.

Thanks all, see you in the next game!

-Kyle