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I really like the way you’re framing this! At the risk of nitpicking vocabulary instead of seeing a broader point, I think the question of “does X support Y” is often more interesting when we ask if X “encourages” or “incentivizes” Y, because those are more legible as questions about game design. The answers are still very subjective, of course, but they feel more concrete to me when talking about what games do rather than what they contain.

And the broader point you’re making, if I understand correctly, is that the question of “supports” is perhaps encompassing a lot more than it seemingly intends to. I think the ways that mechanics encourage, incentivize, or even insinuate value judgments about certain courses of action is only one small piece of whether or not a type of plot or tone or theme comes into focus (for a given play group). But it is a thing we can be more specific about in pursuit of accomplishing our design goals, or interpreting the design goals of the games we play.

This is really beautiful! I appreciate the dash of levity that comes form framing this through medieval fantasy examples, it adds so much warmth.

Also, pouring from a communal bottle is perfect ritual element. It really cements the tone of this idealized, cathartic grieving ritual that we see all the time in fiction, but don’t often actually do in real life.

Very cool idea, I love the execution (wait… no pun intended >_>). The tension really builds as you read on, and there’s this really interesting ambiguity at the end where there’s not technically any further procedure after the 5th question (no 6th exchange, so no opportunity to accuse/confirm for the 5th), but the outcome is obviously already foreclosed.

Thanks for sharing the commentary, it’s always lovely to see how people think through their own work.

These ideas are really resonant with me since I’ve been putting more time into game design. Something that occurred to me recently that’s been a salve is that if I make something and the only people who ever see it are the handful of friends I play it with, then like… that’s pretty good still? After all, people put hours into high-effort prep all the time, for audiences no bigger than 4 or 5 other folks.

There’s a tendency to only “count” strangers acknowledging your stuff as meaningful, even though there’s often someone we know who deserves our gratitude. Anyway, good stuff!

You’re doing so much with diegetic (and semi-diegetic???) authors and I had a lot of fun reading it! All of that wrapped around an outer-wilds-ass physics anomaly, no less. Extremely cool!

“Moon that appears nearby when there’s unrest” is so wonderfully menacing. It’s so easy to imagine someone looking up at Indry in the night sky and steeling themselves for what comes next, I love that it can intersect with a story told on another moon in that way.

I really like the imagery on this, and the notion of the moon seemingly changing its inhabitants to become more like itself is so so cool.

I love your writing! It does a great job capturing the tone of the Realis ashcan while still being your own. Also love the inclusion of the notes at the end, I’m a sucker for developer commentary type stuff.

A chain of moons with overlapping atmosphere is a really cool way to evoke the idea of a collection of islands.

This is both really cool and possibly slightly outside my grasp, but I would love to try playing it some time :D That said, the play example helps immensely with understanding how it works.

I some incompletely-formed thoughts about the extremely different complexities of digital representations that might be fun to hack into this. Maybe I’d better do some more research and write a Unicode supplement lol

I played in a playtest (the first, I think?) and really enjoyed the interplay between the three factions in this setting, the subtle distinctions between the Marauders and Renegades gave us a ton of fun nuance to work with and we hit a lot of dramatic plot points pretty naturally.

The minigames are all solid and offer a wide spread of directions in which to take the story, and the finale minigame has some really cool texture to it with how it lets players resolve the fate of their character.

Definitely want to play this again!

This is brilliant… it reminds me so much of the best kinds of video game world-building notes and audio logs. The time perception bit is such a perfect pairing with all the weird in-between waiting spaces that we find ourselves in (that we normally just drown in social media slurry).

I’d be so thrilled to play/read/watch/etc. something written in the wider setting that this suggests.

Thank you so much for these!

It’s cool to think about rule systems that even can be boiled down to so few words. I kind of love how load-bearing the final noun is, it suggests that even this pared down version is still plenty hackable within the same constraints

I hadn’t considered that it could function that way, that’s really enlightening! Ty for reading and playing, I’m glad it does something for you