"Create a one page role playing game focused on storytelling and the embodiment of the player as a character. Designers should focus on the means of collective narrative building and the meaning of player agency."

Theme: 

"Lo-Fi"

Optional Special Challenges:

"Mixing Media" - Your game involves players drawing, sketching, singing, beatboxing or creating any form of media art as part of their collective storytelling or conflict resolution.

"And Also With You" - Your game involves no reference to, or engagement with, combat or violence of any kind.

"Meal Ready to Eat" -  The characters the player will embody are ready to go out of the box, and your game includes a short story scenario to play through in one sitting in addition to the rules. Yes, this means you can use more than one page for the whole package, but your core rules of the game must still fit on a single page, front and back.

We've made some component heavy (and prototype intensive) projects up until now. This time around is about silliness, simplicity, and storytelling....all in a single page of text. Given the proclivity for folks in this class to go ham on their narrative writing to beef out their projects, this should be a delightful venture into making wee-lil player stories and adventures before spring break. Role playing games are immensely popular, and have been for decades at this point...but are also gigantic beasts of a game when treated as huge systems of simulation and combat. We're going to focus on letting players create an identity unique to the gameplay space, and develop a story cooperatively. Your game should help resolve the conflicts that arise when making a story on the fly, and give the players some level of control over an undefined outcome.

Thankfully, there are plenty of free and ready games that deal with the RPG form in just a single page (or less): Skull Wizards of the Crystal Caverns, Honey Heist, All Outta Bubblegum, Mundane Magic,  Tales from The Corner Coven, Super Overtime,  Shadows and others we will discuss.

While I know many of you have played some form of tabletop RPG, videogame RPG, or game that incorporates some of the features of the genre, I want you to think smaller and more unique than the sprawling Tolkien-esque fantasy-scape that is so well trodden. What experience or fundamental story do YOU wish to tell and have players live within? What kind of characters might players find interest in knowing and becoming? Is the simulation of battle or combat necessary for an experience of collective storytelling?

In addition to the space for a narrative to unfold, you must also support each player not merely as "player" but as a unique "role" within the theatrical space of the game (Links to an external site.). While playing checkers you might only have the role of the mover-of-pieces, and maybe while playing chess you envision yourself as some fashion of lordly general, but in an RPG a player must fully step into the role of a character that has desires, skills, and options for play unique to them and the game. They can grow and change while playing. How do you as the designer offer freedom of defining their own character to be played, while balancing the characters that are necessary to tell the story at hand? Do you offer them existing roles to live-within, like a play script, or archetypes they can expand upon? Perhaps you even treat your game as a sort of improv space with an existing scenario that players must go into as themselves or a new version of themselves for just the time of the game. The options are at your feet as a designer and story maker.

The challenge of this project is to make a game this is both small enough to be experienced as a one-off event, but robust enough to enable or support the wild decisions players may wish to press the story towards. Do you provide a short narrative to guide the introduction? Do you provide a few sparse encounters to make the adventure easy? While other game design forms may press you in your step-by-step turn making ability or the creation of physical components to play the game as-designed, now you must be willing to step back and provide a solid scaffold for players to make their own enjoyment.

Also note that you are typically asked by the mechanical necessity and convention of RPGs to make a small system of possibility that gives the player agency, choice, and power to alter the world of the game. This is where your sense of "mechanics" in the general sense will guide you well, but I'll leave you to research the options in the example games, or your own history of play, to discover and create some NEW options here.

CLARITY OF ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENTS:

1. Primary mechanic and interaction method of gameplay must be based around the telling or creation of a story by the players using the game document as their guide. You may utilize dice or any other components you may see fit.
2. The mechanical operations of your game must be open to the possibility of narrative conflict, and enable the fair resolution of such conflict.
3. Players should be able to embody a clear role for themselves while playing your game, and be rewarded or empowered for making decisions during the game with that role as guidance.
4. The entirety of the game's rules, explanations, and guidance must fit on a single US Letter 8.5x11 sheet, FRONT AND BACK ALLOWED. Additional visual arts that set the narrative space, such as a cover image or character drawings are allowed and 100% encouraged.
5. If you create a sample story scenario as part of playtesting, for players to undertake to learn your game, or to be a standalone playable module that can/should be a separate document entirely from your core ruleset, and attached as a standalone .pdf....plus you'll receive a full bonus point to the project for doing so.

Day 1 you'll receive the conceptual theme on itch.io, along with three optional special challenges you can undertake. We'll engage in collective brainstorming and start to build our games.

Day 2 will be discussion focused, using your games as the starting points. After our discussion you'll be given open development time.

On Day 3 we will head to the Criss Library for a workshop about using Adobe Photoshop for the preparation of raster-based visuals connected to your game, and preparing those visuals as documents intended for large format printing. This will be a key skill for all remaining projects, especially the final.

Day 4 will focus on play testing and finalization of all game elements in preparation for upload to itch.io and the submission of Necessary Game Documents to canvas.

Final documents necessary for each game:

1. 1x Game Breakdown v3.x 
2. 4x Playtesting Forms 
3. 1x Agency and Storytelling Breakdown
4. 1x Ruleset and Components Document