Post by Celia in ALIENS DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH comments

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You’ll be interested or perhaps frustrated to hear the seed of the idea for Trevosa was an alien family tree where you’d be mapping out very different family structures, relationships, and cultural practices than humans’. (The focus was always going to be on understanding the culture, not on any complex linguistic puzzles.) I love scifi like Ann Leckie’s and Arkady Martine’s where you’re asked to figure out the culture from context clues and how it informs the characters and story. When it came time to put that idea to the test in the 72 hours of the jam, though, we had to scope it to lean on more familiar fantasy tropes and structures, for both our own ability to come up with the story and to make it more approachable for players. (I haven’t given up on the alien idea for the future, though!)

It’s been clear to me that we missed some opportunities to have more interesting and less English-related terms, but only recently in revisiting the story have I come to see what you’re saying: following the bloodlines and understanding the strict rules about succession is a good deduction puzzle for a family tree game, but if identifying that “rightful heir” is the happy ending for the game, that does indicate that that’s a good way to value relationships (and that monarchy is a good way to govern, which I obviously don’t agree with either.)

With making an expanded/reworked version of Trevosa, we have a new (at least new to me, an inveterate game jammer) opportunity to actually take the time to put thought into the overarching themes and values of the story. We’ve already mapped out other groups the player will be meeting who have their own values for what family means and how people relate to each other. But your points made me feel extra convinced that we need to think more about the player’s role and what we’re presenting as the happy ending to the tree investigation.

I always feel really energized when I hear thoughtful critiques of our games, because it’s bracing but makes me excited to do better! It makes me wonder who else has thoughts that they (out of motives of kindness, which I appreciate) don’t want to tell us directly in a comment or on discord. But I’m glad I found this one and thank you for being so thoughtful about it!

I hope to see your work in narrative deduction sometime! For something like Dungeon Descent, truly my ideal outcome for making something like that would be it giving others ideas for how to make something better than what I can make in the time I have, so hearing you’re drawing inspiration from our games is awesome, thank you.

GC2 days ago

Hello! Thank you again for the response.

I always find game design discussion interesting and energizing, never frustrating. The presence of a game does not equal the absence of another; I want more games about all sorts of things!

Thank you so much for sharing! I love the idea of an alien family tree, as I do like SF a lot, and I would love to see more 'Roottree'-likes that map relationships beyond genetics. I also love the SF you mention; I adore truly non-human aliens and non-human fantasy cultures too. I think, too, (nor do I think you were implying this) that we do not need to reach for nonhuman people to have different takes on family. The stories of Le Guin always stood out to me, such as in her 'A Fisherman of the Inland Sea', in terms of thinking about different possibilities for human relationships.

I certainly understand the need to scope with familiarity for any context including a jam. My own prototypes for my conlang game-in-development have had issues of onboarding, where I want to avoid infodumping, but also have to convey context. One needs to convey less context if one assumes shared familiarity with the player, but I want to write stories with less familiarity... I think that I will take a leaf from your book and scope smaller at first just so I can publish something (I have mainly shared amongst friends so far), then build up from there.

I loved the bloodline aspect for gameplay! I especially loved that we had the rules for succession at the very start and then had to implement them at the end. I did enjoy that the rules for succession didn't follow typical Western European ones, and I appreciated the cultural aspects such as epithets. If it means anything, I did understand that you (as the creator) presumably did not think well of monarchy as governance or of only genetic relationships having value. I read it as "unfortunate implications".

(I would also love to see the everyday lives of people in this world. The "twist" of their nature in relation to "us" delighted me!)

It makes me utterly heartened to hear that we will be meeting more groups with different perspectives. The player's role in this story certainly forms a tricky part to consider. For example, if I were developing this game, I might consider adding a means by which to reduce the influence of bloodline or even of monarchy... *but* such a thing would also carry the unfortunate implication of the "foreigner from a dominant position" dictating the future of a sovereign people. If we were playing a Trevosan, this would have a different implication, although then the whole story with its twist and language would not work. Meditating on this makes me more affirmed about my desire to establish premises not about gods, kings, or empires in the first place. (I don't mean to imply anything about Archives with that statement, just that I don't envy the position of having to consider it more carefully). Thank you for looking more closely at your work and pondering how to address it, whatever comes next.

I hope that my comment hasn't made you concerned that others think less positively of your games than they seem to do. Many players do not mind as much in fiction. Furthermore, my love for your games and their mechanics remains just as strong and true as my critique. My critiques do not take away from my love or enjoyment, nor vice versa. Both remain true at once.

Thank you so much for inspiring me and making me see the possibilities. I hope to someday demonstrate it, and hopefully get hit with critique and feedback, too, so that I can improve. I know my writing and mechanics will overflow with unfortunate implications that I haven't even realised yet. But, it heartens me that, collectively, enough people care about one another and about doing right that we can teach and learn from each other about how to create more thoughtful works.

Celia2 days ago

such a thing would also carry the unfortunate implication of the “foreigner from a dominant position” dictating the future of a sovereign people.

Right! Before I say a bunch more, we need to just write it and see how it shakes out, but I don’t think I would want the player imposing a dissolution of the traditions, I would want that to be something that emerges from the characters themselves - more of a note of change at the end than a full plot.

I hope that my comment hasn’t made you concerned that others think less positively of your games than they seem to do.

Oh, not at all, like I said it was really refreshing! It always feels wonderful to hear what people like (and thank you for your nice comments as well), but I’m well aware there’s potential to improve, so hearing where we’re not hitting the mark is really useful. If you hadn’t enjoyed the game you wouldn’t have played all the way through and given it enough thought to look at these questions, so don’t worry, I completely appreciate it and I’m not concerned at all.

At the risk of sounding pushy, feel free to join our Jamwitch discord - we have some dedicated channels for gamedev and there’s a lot of other folks there working on projects in both the narrative deduction and language game area, who are sharing their progress and getting playtests and so on. Would love to have you, but no pressure. Thanks again for your thoughtfulness!

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