Observations of the Fox

  Just finished the Narrator's Guide to  "Bustle in your Hedgerow". I'll sleep on it, and take another look over it tomorrow before making a final round of edits (unless I'm happy enough that I release it as is)... I still want to write up a setting booklet as an example of the kind of location where scarecrow stories might take place. However, we'll see how that goes. 

1 - Front Cover 2 - Table of Contents, Credits, and Legal Stuff 3-4 - Further context to the intended game setting with explanations for who the characters are, why they've been awakened, and what they need to do in the world.  5-7 - The process of following the four act structure of Scarecrow stories, what should generally happen at what times, how things ramp up, how things can go awry, and how to get things back on track.    8-9 - This is the "centre-spread" of the zine. This will basically be the narrator's play-mat indicating where to put tokens, and how the tracking of these tokens reflects the events of the night and the flow of the narrative. 10-13 - Creating spirits, hunters, and variant antagonists for the scarecrows. 14-15 - Rituals and variant powers that might be used by scarecrows or ther antagonsists to help drive the story. 16 - Back Cover 

Part B of Bustle in Your Hedgerow can be found uploaded to the Vulpinoid Studios google drive. It is here . As I write this, almost a day has passed... over 60 people have looked at the "Part A" post, but no one has commented yet. Maybe it's taking people a bit of time to read what they've downloaded...maybe it's the usual thing where someone might get back to me in 10 years and ask me "Whatever happened to that scarecrow game?"

Yeah, it didn't take me long, here's the night mode version of the sheet. This is the bit of game design that I really like, the bit where yu make things look atmospheric and appropriate to the themes you're trying to convey to your players (and maybe a bit pretty as well).  I've also generated up the trait cards, some of which will be prewritten and ready to go, wile others will be left like this so they can be filled in with concepts appropriate to the story as it unfolds. The bottom of the trait card has space for a player to place a paperclip. This can be slid along the edge to indicate how long the trait will remain in play. I've also included a circle in the lower right corner of the trait card, where I'm thinking of adding some symbols that might add some extra complexity to the game system for those who prefer a bit more crunch to their games. I'm still thinking about the best way to do this, but I've got a few ideas in mind. Some of the gifts in...

What do we need on it? This game doesn't have attributes, it doesn't need them. It kind of has skills, in the form of core traits. Let's go throgh what we do have in the game, and start to sort out the varyingdegrees of importance and how those game elements are used. Name Every character needs a name, ths is typically one of their key factors. A name says a lot about a person, often explaining something about the person who chose the name (within the context of the story setting) and what they may have intended from the character. This could be just as true for parents choosing the name for their child, farmers givig a name to the scarecrow they've just built, or a person who as chosen their own name as a part of a change in their life direction. A name should be in a prominent location on the sheet, maybe the first thing your eye is drawn to at the centre or in the top-left.  Stuffing We do't have a lot of visually defining features for our scarecrows, and this is...

Logical thread 1. Point 1. I've decided to use cards for this game due to the potential for linking the four suits to the four seasons. Point 2. I'm linking the supernatural powers of the scarecrows to the four sesons. Corollary. I should link the powers of the scarecrows to the suits somehow. (Adjunct: There were 4 members of Led Zeppelin, and the lyrics of Led Zeppelin songs were one of the driving inspirations for the game... but sometimes tying to many thngs in just looks forced and trite, so I'm not going to try and push too far in that direction...yet) Logical thread 2. Point 1. For magical powers to feel magical, they need to create effects that are either more powerful than mundane actions, or capable of things that regular people just can't do. Point 2. If the world looks like our world, then there must be something making sure that people with access to magical pwers   Corollary. Magical powers must have a cost associated with them, or have unexpected and rand...

We don't want too many moving parts. There are two rules of thumb in design and general neurology that support this notion.  There are a specific range of neurological tests that have been regularly repeated and tend to produce predictable results. These tests determine how many discreet elements a person's brain can hold at one time in their working memory. This may be done by asking people to memorise a number of words, or objects on a table. It works slightly different to pattern recognition when remembering a sequence on a light-up toy, or memorising digits of pi because patterns can hold several element in place at once. The data suggests that a human mind can handle an average of 7 items in short term working memory. Some folks can only handle five or six, others eight or nine. There are pther factors that vary this, typically reducing the number. If someone is traumatised or anxious, the reason for that emotional state will take the place of a working item in the short t...