But now the BoRt has returned over at Critical Distance where it’ll be managed by Ben Abraham and his gang of editors. I provided the re-launch topic for them and look forward to contributing over the the months (hopefully years) to come.

So write up a post on Being Other…

Being Other:

Games, like most media, have the ability to let us explore what it’s like to be someone other than ourselves. While this experience may only encompass a character’s external circumstances–exploring alien worlds, serving with a military elite, casting spells and swinging broadswords–it’s most powerful when it allow us to identify with a character who is fundamentally different than ourselves–a different gender, sexuality, race, class, or religion. This official re-launch of the Blogs of the Round Table asks you to talk about a game experience that allowed you to experience being other than you are and how that impacted you–for better or for worse. Conversely, discuss why games haven’t provided this experience for you and why.

…and submit it to Critical Distance!

Established five years ago (five!) as a means of avoiding the brain-hollowing rush of the western world’s commercialized destruction of meaning, Zombie Yule has turned our anxiety-filled holiday-hate into what the season is supposed to really be about–celebrating the passing of another year without the destruction of all we hold dear (by the zombies, of course)!

This is a particularly special holiday for the Zakelro! trio–that being myself, Rachel, and (T.S.) Eliot, Poodle– because 2011 is ending on a high note and 2012 is a year of great promise. We’ll be wrapping up the Bhaloidam handbook in late January and sending it off to Panda GM for manufacturing. Then we immediately start production on another project that’s long been on the back burner, get ready to start our promotional tour for Bhaloidam, start house hunting in earnest, figure out what’s next for Bhaloidam, and deal with whatever unforeseen curves the year has in store!

So gather your uninfected friends together, board up the windows and doors, stream a little Romero, drink good beers, and feast on low-pressure, easily-prepared foods while playing games and enjoying being alive. We’ll see you safe and sound in the New Year and see where the adventure takes us!

Oh, and if you’re planning on giving someone a copy of Bhaloidam in the upcoming year and you’d like a card to give them this weekend (or if you’re a gift-backer who hasn’t got the card we sent you yet), here are two PDF cards you can print out: one features Zombi Klaus and the other, the Bhaloidam-Handbook Skein.

Friday, as I played out its final scenes, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations almost became the first AAA title to actually make me cry. But it ruined the moment before any tears were actually spilt, reserving that privilege for some future game.

But first, a bit of history.

I have loved the Assassin’s Creed franchise more than any other I’ve played. There are a lot of aesthetic reasons for this–from the incredible climbing animation and majestic soundtracks to the temporally-layered narrative and new twists on familiar Templar conspiracy theories. I also appreciate that the games offer social commentary–some subtle, some not–even if it doesn’t always hit the mark.

Speaking of not always hitting the mark, I really appreciate that team(s) behind each game took risks with the design. And as a result the shipped games often seem to hold more promises of greatness rather than actual greatness. Each game has built upon and improved what worked in the previous game, but adds new gameplay elements as well–many of which are rough and imperfectly implemented. Those that hint at greatness appear transformed and improved in subsequent games. Those that fail utterly disappear. This, to me, is far more interesting to play than a game so polished it’s utterly safe and bland.

But the number one thing I find most compelling about Assassin’s Creed is that it is through the gameplay itself that we best come to understand our protagonists–Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, and Desmond Miles. In fact, if we base our understanding of the characters on the interstitial scenes alone they are not only two dimensional, but entirely devoid of interest.

“He’d better stop acting like a child.” That bark* is one of my favorite reactions to Altair scaling a building in the first game. It encapsulates so much of what’s important about both Altair and the failures of the game’s mission design (which in turn reinforce Altair’s character). Altair does act like a child throughout the entirety of the first game. Having clearly been raised within the strict ideological confines of his order, he struggles to understand the political battle he’s swept up in. And because of his innocence–as improbable as an innocent assassin sounds, it’s quite true in this case–he is incapable of interacting with the world as an adult does. He can neither address nor be impacted by the social inequities that surround him, so he clings to the one thing he’s been trained to understand–violence. And although he is skilled in the hidden blade, he uses violence like a hammer–forcing the nail of every situation he encounters into a recognizable and comfortable uniformity. This response to obstacles is typical of an immature mind. The other assassins of his order even treat Altair like a child–setting him on childish quests in exchange for information that he then uses as proof of his fitness for the task ahead, but does not display the maturity of actually applying the information he gathers to the problem at hand.

“Just another capering crusader!” This bark sums up Ezio nicely. He is wise in the ways of being a sexually and financially irresponsible Renaissance young man of privilege, but unaware of his familial involvement with the order of the assassins. Unware, that is, until a sudden tragedy forces him to grow up–just a little bit. Ezio’s introduction into ‘the mysteries’ is filled with the acquisition of better and better toys and he brings a gleeful and light step to the core navigational and murderous gameplay of the series. But he also must learn to be financially prudent and even takes on the role of caretaker of Monteriggioni, improving the property and extending his privilege. He is even able to address the woes of the poor without violence, scattering coins for them to gather. Of course this is a ploy that benefits himself, so don’t misconstrue his actions as benevolence. The tasks set before him are restrictive and chafe compared to the freewheeling life of bounding across rooftops pouncing on unsuspecting blue-collar guards and then pawing their bodies for a few paltry coins. But the tasks mostly leave him to solve them in his own way, so they do not intrude dramatically upon his youthful outlook until late in his first game.

As subsequent games follow Ezio’s life he takes on more and more responsibility. While he can still scatter coins for the poor, he also applies his estate management skills on a larger scale–addressing his community’s poverty with neighborhood revitalization projects. He recruits and trains young people to become more effective in their lives and mentors them, providing career guidance. By the final game he must not only revitalize neighborhoods, but take an active interest in them, working to keep the citizens free and productive. And he does this while staying out of the spotlight, deemphasizing his own importance in the process. He also takes a more direct role in the careers of his proteges, learning them by name, promoting them to positions of higher responsibility, and actively supporting their professional efforts.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Desmond–the “present day” protagonist behind both Altair and Ezio. His arc is slightly more complicated, going from being a powerless cat’s paw to an empowered individual in his own right, capable of holding his own, but then loses himself to the power of his animus experience, embracing his role in creating this shared digital fiction while he ruminates on the path that brought him here.

To some–particularly if you haven’t played the games–it may sound as if I’m basing these character analysis on cut scenes and dialog, but I’m not. If you have played them, you’ll hopefully recognize the actual moments of gameplay that support my analysis.

And now for the near-tears. This is where I become particularly spoilery.

Throughout Revelations, Ezio experiences key memories of Altair–adding another layer of temporal cross-over. These memories include scenes from Altair’s dotage and I thoroughly enjoying tottering around Masyaf. Ezio experiences the final memory after finding Altair’s skeleton, reclined in a chair in a hidden room under the Masyaf fortress. The memory records his final moments and the last mission text you receive is, “Sit down and rest a moment.” Tears welled up in my eyes as I slowly moved towards the chair that I knew to be his final resting point. The thought of sitting Altair down for a final time (complete with a shakier version of his “hide on a bench” animation) was overwhelmingly touching.

And then they took away control to show me Altair sitting down.

I think that may be, hands-down, the single most selfish (or ignorant) design decision I’ve ever witnessed in a AAA title. Throughout Revelations the designers have you perform actions that seem primarily focused on building empathy between the player and the characters of Altair, Desmond, and Ezio. They train you to understand that not all gameplay has to involve free running and air assassinations. They train you that gameplay can exist in service to character development–even when the character being developed isn’t your character. But then, just when all that training is about to pay off and they seem to be on the brink of letting you actively share in a really important character moment they undo all of that work and take over for you.

Frustrating.

When designing Bhaloidam, it was important to me that A) Spinners always have complete agency over all of their performances and B) failure never be used a punishment or otherwise-mandated outcome. However, I also didn’t want every action to result in a complete triumph either. The goal then became to create a process by which Spinners could interpret–or spin, if you will–failures so that they could lead to future successes.

As we’ve seen in past posts, I achieved this design goal and Bhaloidam allows Spinners to interpret every roll of dice–in negotiations, combat, social situations, and every interaction they care to engage in. And while we could still say that a roll of 1 on the Outcomes d6 is a complete failure (and I did say that for a time), I’ve learned that the word failure has so many negative connotations in our culture that it was difficult for Spinners to get past it and they often ended up punishing themselves (or rather, their characters) unnecessarily.

In other words, failure has become such an emotional trigger that expressing it served to reduce creative expression.

So I’ve done away with the concept of failure altogether and the word itself won’t appear anywhere in the Gameplay Handbook. Instead, each Performance is described as having Favorable and/or Unfavorable outcomes. In practice, I’ve seen this small linguistic alteration do amazing things for Performances.

Because it removes the psychological restriction that encouraged you to interpret a low roll as some mishap your character made, it does a better job of encouraging Spinners to incorporate other characters. When the outcomes of a die roll are unfavorable, it means your character might do exactly what you intended but that their opponent was smarter/stronger/more eloquent/etc. This leads to developing more trust with your Skein, which leads to more meaningful Performances, which actually leads to more creative Performances in which Spinners do let their characters err, expose weakness, and even fail.

Bhaloidam is a time, a person, a feeling. Bhaloidam is a language, an idea, a place, and a memory. Bhaloidam is a modern expression of three timeless cultural forces: bha to tell, loid to play, and dam the tribe. In other words, Bhaloidam is where Story, Play, and Community come together.

As of 12:04pm today, nearly 600 people have helped us turn the idea of Bhaloidam into a reality. The support and enthusiasm of this fledgling Bhaloidam community–which is considerably larger than it was 45 days ago–has been overwhelming. We have not only met our goal, we exceeded it by 11%!

Words cannot express how in awe we are of the support we’ve received. We are so honored by the enthusiasm with which you greeted Bhaloidam. Thank you all–backers and non alike–for being a part of the most exciting 6 1/2 weeks in the life of Zakelro!

The next two months will be a flurry of work behind the scenes as we hustle to get the handbook out the door to our manufacturer before year’s end. But we’re not going to disappear! We’ll continue to update the site with variant rules, new guest appearance hexaMinis, share information about the Kickstarter experience, and answer any questions you might have. We’re also going to continue running demos via Google Plus hangouts and at local Portland, OR game shops. We’re even going to try to make it up to Seattle at some point to run a local demo there.

If you’d like to schedule a private online demo, arrange an interview, or have other inquiries, please let us know.

Moving forward I’ll be tackling some of the thornier things that came up during the Kickstarter project–such as the Bhaloidam community’s perceived lack of indie cred, a more in-depth look at Bhaloidam’s funding goal, the notion that indie RPG and board game designers shouldn’t expect to make a living off their labor, and a breakdown of what we did right and wrong during this Kickstarter project.

And, of course, I’ll continue to talk about high-level game design issues (i.e. not tied to any specific game), the role of story and play in our communities, links to more Kickstarter projects I’ve found, and the myriad of other topics that I tend to cover here.

I’m moving into a very hectic and energizing two month period as we get the handbook finalized and out the door to Panda GM for manufacturing. But along the way I’ll be running more Bhaloidam demos via Google Plus hangouts and quite possibly a full campaign or two via Google Plus PBP as well!

I’ll save the sappy “overwhelmed by the outpouring of support” speech for Monday afternoon when our Kickstarter deadline has passed. I’ll likely write it on the train today as I head for the New Game Conference in San Francisco, which will provide an excellent outlet for the energy I’m feeling right now. It truly is an honor and a privilege to count so many amazing people among my community. The list is a little long to list here, but it starts with the list of nearly 500 people who range from lifelong friends to brand new ones. But it doesn’t stop there–it’s continued across the hundreds of people I’ve circled on Google Plus, followed on Twitter, and friended on Facebook. Ah, but I promised to save the sappy,so I’ll leave it at that for now.

So, I’m off to spend the morning with my wife and poodle before I leave town for five day. We’ll no doubt rush over and check on things every time my phone informs me I’ve received an email. I have no doubt that we’ll have cause to hug each other excitedly and dance about the Zakelro! Manse in anticipation of finally handing Bhaloidam over to you, our community.

This morning’s post opened with the line, “We have 5 days on the clock and $10,050 on the board.”

As it stands right now, we have whittled that amount we need to reach our goal down to a mere $7,502. That’s a 10% increase in funding in under 24 hours. Three words describe how I feel right now–fla, ber, gasted! Also–amazed, thankful, and giddy.

The update I shared was directed primarily at our backers, encouraging them to help us spread the word, find new backers, the usual sort of 11th hour plea a Kickstarter project sends out when they’re getting close to their deadline. But the important bit, the bit I want to re-share here, came at the end:

If we make our goal, every single backer who pledges $27 or more (excluding our charity options) will receive a bonus comic-book containing Weaverless Variant Rules. This variant will give you the tools your Skein needs to build storyworlds without a Weaver right out of the box. These hand-signed and personally-dedicated Weaverless Variant comic books are a backer-exclusive and will never be available in print form again.

I know at least one of our backers–who’s been after me to include a moustache token or Corvus action figure as an incentive–might have been a little disappointed to learn that all we’re offering is exclusive signed content containing a simple set of rules that will have you up and running without a Weaver long before anyone else gets their hands on the Spinner’s handbook. But we hope the rest of you might be pretty intrigued by this prospect.

And for those of you who might now be thinking to yourselves, “Hm. This mysterious folically-fixated backer might just be on to something,” we’ve also hinted that another incentives might be on the way…

And if you help us hit our goal by Friday evening, we’ll announce an additional incentive (quite possibly related to Corvus’s moustache) to help us push our funding just a little bit further over the weekend!

So don’t delay. If you’ve been waiting until the witching hour to commit, pledge now! Because we don’t get any money until both the goal and the deadline have been reached, your account won’t be drawn from until next week regardless of when you pledge. So let’s see if we can hit our goal early and find out what Zakelro! has been cooking up behind the scenes.

The Levitt Variant* is inspired by cartoons from the 80s–He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, She-Ra, Jem and the Holograms, and of course, G.I. Joe. Spinners play both heroes and villains, starting each episode as their villain, plotting a cunning scheme along with their villainous cohorts–their Association of Ne’erdowells, Gangsters & Ruffians if you will. Once the plot is hatched and set in motion, they finish off each episode as the heroes–maybe the League of Urban Vigilantees–defeating the plot just in time for the closing credits.

This is a great variant to run without a Weaver, allowing each Spinner an equal measure of control over the storyworld. The exact setting and characters the Spinners will play should be determined beforehand, based loosely on the source material, or copied directly from a favorite show. The distribution of Source and potency tokens for each characters’ Lifewheel (both the heroes and the villains) should all be decided on beforehand as well. Save most of the character background and relationships for exposition and development during play.

The plot receives its own Lifewheel. It begins the episode completely empty and in the center of the table. The villains, as they scheme, invest their ego in the plot, moving Ego tokens onto the plot’s Lifewheel as they suggest how they’ll achieve their nefarious goals. As the villains form temporary alliances and vie for control, they will push each others Ego back onto the villain Lifewheels. The may even opt to spill Ego tokens, pushing them out of the Source so that their rival must exert the Will to move the token from Spilt to Source before moving it back into the plot. Once a predetermined number of Ego tokens has been placed on the Lifewheel (starting small for the the first episode and growing ever larger as the season wears on), the plot is considered hatched and the villains set the plot in motion.

Moving your own Ego onto the plot’s Lifewheel is considered a performance impacting the world. Moving any other Spinner’s Ego onto or off the Lifewheel should be considered a performance impacting characters (and thus have a higher minimum Will cost).

Setting the plot in motion involves two steps: the villains discuss the exact order in which the plot will unfold. Then Each villain converts their own invested Ego into potency tokens, deciding which element should receive the token. 3 Ego tokens can be converted into 1 potency token that can be placed on any element. Once the potency tokens are in place and all Ego has all been returned to the villains’ Lifewheels, the plot is nearly ready to go. Now the Skein places 3 Ego tokens on the plot for every potency token that’s on Life, Earth, and Water, and 3 Will tokens for every potency token that’s on Energy, Air, and Fire.

And then the Spinners all convert their villain Lifewheels to hero Lifewheels.

The plot always has first opportunity to perform! The Spinners will either take turns performing for the plot, fully collaborate on every performance, roll to see who gets to perform each time the plot has an opportunity to act, or decide together that one Spinner should perform the plot for this episode. The plots first performance should introduce the first plot point from the perspective of the heroes. Play continues as normal, with the plot’s performances moving the plot along and heroes performances resolving the current situation before them. It will be the plot they heroes combat, not individual characters. This allows ridiculously over-the-top action as Spinners shoot down jets, take out entire squads of soldiers, pick up buildings and move them, etc. The villains will likely make a direct appearance at various points, but they too are considered agents of the plot. And remember one thing! No one ever died in 1980s cartoons. Even the lowliest of pilots would parachute safely away when their aircraft exploded so violently it disintegrated around them. Because of this extreme impact a performance can have, it actually takes 3 Will to move 1 of the plot’s Ego tokens or push the plot’s Opportunity Pawn 1 hex. The inverse is not true and the plot retains the 1 to 1 ratio of Will expense to Ego and Pawn movement on the hero’s Lifewheels.

Sunday’s test of this variant was a lot of fun. I allowed each Spinner to create their own hero/villain pair without consulting one another and had a mysterious force bring them all together to compete together over an alien city (which looked a lot like 20th century New York City). Our villains were a technocrat who built giant robots to crush her subjects, an alien mastermind that manipulated cultures in order to dominate them, a hive-mind biologist comprised of hundreds of small multi-legged eyeballs who which specialized in producing mind control toxins, and a Republican politician in the trademark conservative blue suit with red power tie.

The Hive Mind spent most of the negotiation trying to take over the other ANG&R villains via mind control. The mastermind and republican were pretty much on the same page, wanting to give the people a common enemy (robot doppelgangers of their arch nemeses), rise to political power by capitalizing on fear mongering, implementing death squads to control the people, use the fear and newly militaristic police to combat the real heroes, and eventually widening the economic gulf between the haves and have-nots until only ANG&R held any real power and the city groveled at their feet. Oh yes, and the technocrat insisted that a giant robot be on hand to crush things, just in case (a most effective ploy, she claimed).

The heroes–an electro-magnetic waif, an incredibly lucky and dashing teen-aged rebel, an overly-zealous priest of science, and a guerrilla soldier set on overthrowing the state–were teleported into an alley where they were almost immediately discovered by a death squad. The teen rebel was momentarily captured, but the soldier managed to take out the death squad with some well placed grenades and rescued him. The priest found a radio broadcast depicting the rebel’s doppelganger fighting death squads in Central Park, while the waif scouted the rooftops and warned the heroes that a giant robot hand was coming for them. The priest tapped into a weather satellite accidentally flooded the alley with thick fog, limiting their vision, but not impeding the hand. The soldier managed to burn off the fog with a rocket launched from his quick-assembly launcher and a second rocket sent the hand careening into the remaining death squad troops.

They discovered that the Hive Mind was providing the communication channels that allowed the technocrat to control the doppelgangers, found a control box and forced the doppelgangers to reveal that they were allied with the new government’s giant robot, and forced a confrontation with the giant robot–piloted by the Republican–on Wall Street, where after several explosions (including a small tactical nuke going off near the robot’s head), the robot collapsed, taking out several financial institutions on it’s way down, and the heroes were welcomed to the city by the collected masses who eagerly pocketed money that the explosions had scattered throughout the streets.

The only thing missing from this episode were large bowls of breakfast cereal that turned the milk into a muddy pinkish pool of sugar!**

*You’ll notice that variants are credited to the person, or people, who inspire and help create them. That’s because I believe in crediting the Source. In a lot of ways I’ve served as the Lifewheel in this process, spinning Ryon’s (and Deirdra and Travis’s before him) inspiration into an experience that can be shared. I’m grateful for the opportunity to show how Bhaloidam can be so easily adapted to a storyworld once you understand the platform.

**And we weren’t wearing pajamas.

When I started the Kickstarter I told myself that I needed to let go of the outcome and accept that there was a very good chance I wouldn’t be able to raise the $27,900 needed to produce and ship a quality game. Because while I see card games exceed their goals by raising as much as $40k–nearly 2000% of their funding goal–I felt that starting out with a such a high goal would produce a certain amount of psychological resistance among prospective backers. I wasn’t entirely wrong there–I have seen comments across my networks from people–people I don’t know–who feel I’m “over-reaching” or “getting ahead of myself.”

It’s important to me not to produce disposal goods. Using a quality manufacturer like Panda GM is our only real option if we want to ensure the quality of Bhaloidam’s physical materials equals the passion and focus that went into its design.

I also realize that a card game is a known quantity for most people. Most people know they can likely sit down and learn a card game in 20 minutes or less. And with a lower point of sale the risk of a card game not being fun once you get it is pretty minimal. I, myself, have backed several card games knowing that even if the gameplay isn’t great, I’m at least getting another deck of cards with distinctive art.

Bhaloidam, on the other hand, can be difficult to understand, even if you’ve played other RPGs. Our video does a great job of enticing a certain type of person–the person for whom Bhaloidam will always be the most accessible–but if you aren’t inclined to grasp it easily, the video doesn’t convince you to dig much deeper. I thought this might be the case when I created it, but at that point I didn’t exactly have a vocabulary to explain it to a broader audience.

And we’ve learned that these special few–those who intuitively grasp the power of Bhalodiam when they see the Lifewheel–cover a broader spectrum of people than we anticipated. In addition to highly creative gamers, we have heard from educators, counselors, transmedia writers, and even corporate trainers that Bhaloidam has a lot of potential for the classroom, for helping kids develop stronger social skills, and for creating collaborative structures to help teams approach solutions creatively.

And thanks to the conversations I’ve had with these people, I have developed a much clearer language for talking about Bhaloidam. I have learned what is unclear, which details I don’t need to share right up front, and which I absolutely should share. Even the terminology I use to describe the role of certain gameplay elements has slightly changed to better communicate the intent of the design. By watching which posts on Bhaloidam.com generate the most excitement and traffic, by watching which tweets get the most comments and re-tweets, by seeing which G+ threads result in the longest conversations, I have developed a clearer understanding of my own design, how much of my philosophy is really, truly, embedded in every single aspect of Bhaloidam’s design.

It is an amazing and powerful thing to see your creation through another’s eyes.

Particularly when what you see matches what you hoped to show. And that has been the most powerful and personally transformative benefit of the Kickstarter project thus far. I believe in Bhaloidam even more now than I did when we launched and I am even more firmly committed to releasing it in the new year, regardless of the outcome of this Kickstarter project. I’m also excited that the design itself has stood absolutely firm throughout the process. There are no little, “maybe this needs tweaking,” voices in my head anymore. The platform is complete and it’s now up to me to help the right people find it, to grow the Bhaloidam community.

One week ago, at 51% funded, I decided I need to resign myself to not making our Kickstarter goal. I didn’t want to ride the emotional roller coaster anymore and knew that this was the surest way to spend the final two weeks in a relatively healthy mental state. I was still going to promote, still share information, still engage, but I would be doing so because it was important to me, not because I believed it would get us to $27900. I remained engaged because I owe it to Bhaloidam, to myself, and to those special people who believe in the power of Bhaloidam.

And every day those special people made it difficult to completely let go. From Ryon Levitt, a backer who inspired a new variant to a class of high school students at PYB and a group of local gamers at RSGpdx who helped me test that variant, from the people who scheduled online demos and immediately pre-ordered Skein Packs afterwards to a local gamer at a demo who interpreted a completely unfavorable roll of the dice in a highly amusing fashion that no one in the scenario had thought of before, from Ron Gilbert backing us to Kotaku featuring our Kickstarter project.

So here we are today–60% funded and 7 days on the clock. It’s clear to me that we’re not out of the short term game by a long shot. Most projects show huge gains in the final days. But regardless of how things turn out a short 171 hours from now, I’ve learned a lot about myself, about Bhaloidam, and about you. I’ve made new friends and seen old friends in a new light. And best of all, I am not shaken in my belief that Bhaloidam is everything I hoped and in my commitment that it will be released–in one form or another–in 2012.

So to all those special people that have backed Bhaloidam already, and to all the special people that will join their ranks in the next week, I want to say Thank You. You have made this Kickstarter a huge success and I am more appreciative of your support than I can possibly express in writing.

Since I started running online demos, more people have had the opportunity to see Bhaloidam in action and have shared their thoughts publicly on Google Plus and Facebook. Since you’re probably not in the habit of searching your social networks for ‘Bhaloidam’ about 54 times a day, I thought I’d share some of the highlights with you. More than one of these people became backers within minutes of finishing an online demo with me. So if you or your friends are on the fence about becoming a backer, I encourage you to schedule a demo over the upcoming week and give it a try for yourself.

I definitely suggest signing up for a demo slot and giving it a whirl. It plays out very differently than a lot of the systems we’re all used to, but at the same time, everything just makes sense.
Ryon Levitt

Bhaloidam is an interesting take on story focused game design. It’s a blend of RPG, theatrical, story, and board gaming concepts, and it offers a lot of possibilities both as a core game system for a game, or as a subsystem added to model a different part of gameplay for an existing campaign or game.
Dave Weinstein

This game may just be genius in a box. Never seen this kind of gaming/thinking before.
Rob LeFebvre

As someone who hasn’t had too much experience with table top games I had fun trying it out. I like the concept of almost having “narrative battles” with people and the replay-ability of it. In a way from what I saw, it reminds me a little of one of my favorite Looney Tunes cartoons: Duck Amuck where the narrative is being controlled and expanded on, by multiple separate entities but on a grander scale.
Josh Bycer

I’ve been gaming with Corvus for years now and he’s developed a gaming system that I really like. In this gaming system the players (co-storytellers [spinners]) have a lot of control in how their characters perform in a challenge once the dice have been thrown.

Instead of the Game Master (DM [weaver]) arbitrarily telling you the result of your throw, the player (spinner) describes the outcome of the die roll, be it successful, failure, triumph, or disaster. In this way you can use your imagination to make even the worst roll of the dice be entertaining, rather than just being told what happens.
Ken Larson

For the tl;dr set: color me impressed; I want to see it succeed.

The components are pretty, information-dense in the way that a good CCG is – full of meaning that starts out looking like pretty iconographic borders, but ends up resolving itself into a clever set of mnemonics for just about everything in the system.

I get the impression it would actually be hard to ignore a player in Bhaloidam; the mechanics want to hand narrative control over to everyone at intervals.
Jason Wodicka

I really like the collaborative nature of the game, not just between the players but with the game “weaver” as well. I liked the board play in it, where players earn their story telling, as well as how much they can do. And the board represents your character, which is changing. I also enjoyed that I can describe not only what I do but what others do or what goes on in the world, including what happens when I fail to do something.

This is also seems to be a game that you can pick and play quickly because the “weaver” doesn’t have to create everything and everyone ahead of time. Players can contribute to the world making as well.
Gary Beason

The Social Contract always trumps Game Rules.

“But Corvus,” the simulationists exclaim, “that’s not true! In my gaming group the Game Rules always trump the Social Contract!”

“Oh really,” I reply, “and why is that?”

“Because when we started the group, we all agreed that… why are you laughing? Oh, I see what you did there.”

To repeat, the Social Contract always trumps Game Rules.

The vast majority of RPG handbooks I’ve read pretend otherwise to one degree or another. They either create elaborate rule structures (usually governing combat) in an attempt to counter behavior considered harmful within RPG communities, or they use global constants such as “The GM has final say over any disputes” or even “the story always trumps the rules.”

The problem inherent in this should be quite clear–you only obey the rules if doing so is in your Social Contract. Add the fact that most Skeins treat the Social Contract as an implied, non-explicit, agreement and you’re asking for exactly the sort of hurt feelings and bruised egos that I’ve seen in gaming groups dating back to the sixth grade.

Because when you feel wronged and there’s no overtly discussed and agreed-upon Social Contract, a reply of “well, them’s the rules and there’s nothing we can do about it,” is not only unfair–it’s a bald-faced lie. And yet, time and again, this is the answer whenever someone disputes the Social Contract.

Bhaloidam approaches the Social Contract very differently. First, by not trying to enforce one through the rules. One of the most frequent questions I get about Bhaloidam sounds something like, “But how do you keep Spinners from [doing this thing I don't like]?” My answer invariably is, “We don’t.”

What you don’t like in your Skein should be part of your Social Contract. It won’t look like mine and it might not even look the same if your Skein explores a different type of storyworld. It is impossible to account for the Social Contract needs of every story, every Skein, and every Spinner. So with Bhaloidam, we don’t even try.

But that doesn’t mean we ignore the Social Contract altogether–quite the opposite, in fact. Although the gameplay rules of Bhaloidam are metaphors for character relationships within your storyworlds, they were intentionally designed to facilitate Spinner relationships around the table.* This means that any time you discuss or interpret the Game Rules, you’re actually establishing your Social Contract. If one Spinner’s understanding of the Social Contract is not in alignment with the Skein, it becomes immediately apparent through their play. The resulting discussion of this difference in understanding is potentially more emotionally validating as it will focus on the rules, rather than the subjective interpretation of them.

I have seen this lead to amazing levels of cooperation and creative expression around the gaming table, both with Skeins that have gamed together for years and ad-hoc Skeins that gather around the Bhaloidam demos online and at cons. I have seen game designers, die-hard d20 gamers, and people who’ve never played an RPG in their lives settle on a social contract and share a storyworld equally effectively within half an hour while playing Bhaloidam. Admittedly, this has been with me serving as Weaver, which expedites the process, but the platform has proven to successfully reflect my philosophy and no two Skeins have created quite the same social Contract, even when exploring the same, very limited, storyworld.

A good metaphor for how this works is to imagine giving a group of 6 people 18 LEGO bricks, 1 LEGO baseplate, and telling them to work together to build something specific and familiar. If you gave them 50 or 100 bricks, they’ll most likely split up and individually work on separate parts of the whole, but with only a few bricks per person, they’ll most often end up each placing a roughly equal number of bricks into the whole, each working from their own perspective directly on the baseplate. This is the same essential structure of playing out stories in Bhaloidam and it supports the rapid establishment of a cooperative Social Contract without the additional hurdle of navigating a complicated set of math-based rules that are inherently ill-suited to managing social contracts in the first place.

* Notice I didn’t say “control the Spinner relationships.”

So of course, Bhaloidam wouldn’t be complete if we hadn’t used it to simulate a little zombie apocalypse of our own!

This is a pretty simple variant, so here are themes we’re interested in and the game rules we use to emulate them.

• Zombies have no individual identities*, so a single Lifewheel is used for the entire Zombie Horde.
• Zombies–in addition to being undead–have no emotional investment in a specific outcome, so their Lifewheel contains no Ego tokens.
• Individually, zombies are not very threatening or dangerous, so each zombie will be represented by a single Will token on their Lifewheel.
• Zombies become considerably more dangerous in groups, so as you add zombies to the scene (and Will tokens to their Lifewheel), add elemental potency tokens to their Lifewheel (1 potency token per 3 Will tokens).
• Zombies often seem to have some memory of how they behaved while alive, so you can add potency tokens to all 6 elements despite the Lifewheel containing only Will.
• Zombies have poor motor control and shamble, so if using a hex map, no zombie may move more than a single hex during a performance. If using purely spoken scene descriptions, a Will token spent on description of zombie movement cannot be used to buy the spilling of a Spinner’s Ego.
• Immobilizing zombies allows you to move a Will icon to spilt. These zombies are still contributing to the elemental potency of the horde, but can no longer move or pose a real threat to the surviving characters. It takes 1 favorable outcome to spill a zombie token.
• Because zombies are difficult to (re)kill, you must be able to buy 3 favorable outcomes during a performance to permanently put down an active zombie (only 2 for previously immobilized zombies) and remove a Will token from their Lifewheel.
• Alternately, in addition to the above, you could also allow any critical with favorable outcomes result in the death of a zombie.
• Because zombies become less threatening when you reduce their numbers, you must remove elemental potency token, retaining the 1:3 ratio
• Because every conflict with a zombie runs the risk of getting the attention of more zombies, the Spinner must roll the Outcomes d6 even if she guarantees the outcomes of her performance. This die will be used to determine whether more zombies are added to the scene. The Skein can scale this difficulty so that it best suits their storytelling style:
  • We’re all Gonna Die: On a roll of 1-3, re-roll and add that number of zombies to the scene.
  • There’s No Not Much Need to Panic: On a roll of 1 – add 3 zombies, 2 – add 2 zombies, 3 – add 1 zombie.
  • It’s Not the Zombies I’m Worried About, It’s Us: On a roll of 1, re-roll and for an odd number add 1 zombie to the scene, on an even number add 2.

So there you have it–basic training for surviving the zombie apocalypse in Bhaloidam. and here are a few extra helpful tips: Board the windows, turn out all the lights and, whatever you do, don’t crack under the pressure and play that 80s dance-mix CD at top volume. That’s how Footloose gets turned into Footless.

*Yes, there are exceptions! In Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead, we see zombies that have distinct personalities. These should be consider primary characters and while they should operate under the same movement penalties and death conditions, it makes sense to give them a separate Lifewheel if you want..

Semiotics is the study of symbols and it relates to how we communicate and how we process our understanding of the world. As my self-appointed descriptor, semionaut, hopefully implies, I’m personally less interested in approaching semiotics as Science and tend to treat it rather like Art–exploring possibilities of expression via what we believe we know about “how it all works.”

And when I say that game mechanics communicate meaning and are therefore the primary storytelling vehicle for games *whew!*, I’m saying that game mechanics are symbols that we consume and attach meaning to–just like when we see a corporate logo, an iconic political poster, the face of a beloved grandparent, or the bright yellow pie-chart silhouette of a classic videogame character. It’s pretty likely that when you read each of those items in the preceding sentence you had momentary mental image of something that the text on your screen represents. Text is an abstract symbol, which often refers to a more iconic symbol, which in itself is just another representation for a complex, and highly personal, emotional attachment to an idea that you’d have great difficulty understanding and telling anyone about if it weren’t for symbols.

And Bhaloidam is both a reflection of this belief and a direct exploration of how that belief can be directly applied to game design.

I used the image to the right of a rainbow bridge supported by a trio of hexes on either side to represent how game mechanics directly support your storytelling performances in Bhaloidam. Those hexes also represent the symbols the platform uses to exchange meaning with the agent. And yes, I do mean exchange. The platform provides the agent with a set of symbols to interpret. The agent consumes the symbols, interprets the meaning within the context of the story being told, expresses the meaning she’s discovered to her Skein, and then translates that meaning into a new set of symbols that she communicates back to the platform. This is something I believe happens with all games, but Bhaloidam both actively encourages it and–rather than trying to enforce the director’s understanding of the symbols–stands back to let the agent control the process of interpreting the meaning. It really does what I’ve been writing about for so long on my blog–it treats the act of storytelling through gameplay as a purely cooperative experience–between the director and the agents, between the agents themselves, and between an individual agent and her own understanding of the world.

Some of these symbols are obviously the iconic images that surround the center of the Lifewheel. The smaller hexes with their elemental symbols, the larger hexes with the silhouettes exhibiting their Influence. But just as I contend it’s relationships that make a story, and not characters, it’s not the individual symbols alone that communicate meaning, but their relationships to each other. The Influence hexes position and color reveal a relationship to the smaller elemental hexes. The placement of tokens upon the Lifewheel, how high they are stacked, where the stacks are placed, these are all important symbols as well. And while the relationships between the symbols have an internal meaning within the platform, the manner in which they’re interpreted is going to be unique to each agent to uses a Lifewheel to spin her stories.

We’re scheduling multiple appointments as early as tomorrow, Tuesday the 18th, for Spinners–up to three at a time–to join Corvus in Google Plus Hangouts to play a short demo of Bhaloidam. You’ll need a microphone to participate. It would be great if you also had a webcam, but it’s not completely necessary.

All sessions will be open to observers, so feel free to stop by if you find yourself with some free time while a demo is going on.

So visit our appointment calendar and grab a spot today.* Bhaloidam awaits!

*Be sure to make your appointment with the same Google account you use on Google Plus so that we can invite you personally to the hangout when the demo is about to start. If you haven’t circled Corvus yet, you may wish to go ahead and do so now!

When Rachel–the other half of Zakelro!–and I were discussing my difficulties with the writing process, she suggested I draw upon my film and animation experience to storyboard the handbook. Not two weeks later, I had the first draft of the comic format Bhaloidam handbook well under way. It’s undergone some changes since then, but the introduction of this new approach charged us with a nearly palpable energy that has run through the Zakelro! Manse ever since. So the question is–why? What about writing a comic book was so right for Bhaloidam?

Like comic books, Bhaloidam requires you to use your imagination. Without your engagement and participation, it simply fails. It’s not an engine–or a system–capable of churning ever forward, heedless of your interest or involvement. Bhaloidam is a platform, a stage. And when you’re not actively performing on it, it’s just a dusty wooden floor with bits of faded tape marking where the set pieces once sat. Fortunately, it’s designed specifically to support those performances–allowing Spinners to describe snapshot moments within a shared story and requiring them to flex their imagination muscles to mentally recreate the of action that stitches those snapshots together.

In other words–metaphorically speaking–Bhaloidam allows you to not only paint each panel of the comic, but to fill in those narrow gutters of blank paper between the panels with plenty of action, complex character reactions, and bucketfuls of narrative grit.*

Matt Fraction has said that comic books are the only narrative medium that has to actively depend on the audience’s imagination to be successful. (note: I’m paraphrasing). When I heard this I smiled to myself and thought, “The only narrative medium, except for games that is!”

So Bhaloidam–like comics—requires your participation, your imagination. But the serendipitous relationship between Bhaloidam and comic books doesn’t end there.

You may have noticed that I can do a lot of philosophical meandering. This is great–when you’re not trying to explain a pretty simple set of gameplay actions. Sometimes it’s enough to just explain the rules and move on. But I had no voice for that. I had no idea how to separate my own expectations and understanding of Bhaloidam from the practical, “Here’s how it’s done,” explanation. Creating a Skein of 3 characters, each with a personality and voice of their own, made it so much simpler to remove myself from the handbook and write in a much more accessible way.

And the final reason a comic book format was the best fit for Bhaloidam is that I, myself, am a highly-visual person. Although I love the spoken and written word, I have a much easier time when I think–and communicate–with visuals.

Visual communication taps into a portion of our brain that is intuitive and deeply emotional. Communicating this way has a measure of risk because when we respond poorly to visuals our response is stronger than when we respond to text. But it also has a higher reward for those who do respond well. My tendency towards visual communication is clearly reflected in the design of Bhaloidam, where your character and all of the core gameplay rules are represented on an 8.5″ square game board that contains no text at all.

So in the final analysis, “Why a comic book?” isn’t the right question. The right question is, “Why did you ever think you could do it not as a comic book?

*The history of comic books is a fascinating one. If you haven’t read Understanding Comics, you should. Scott McCloud says everything I would say about the narrative power of comic books, only more eloquently and with better research to back him up.

The examples you have put forth have both been ‘variations’ where you describe some extra mechanics. Is that typical of a Bhaloidam framework – tweaking the rules to fit the genre? Can games be played with untweaked rules?

The short answer to both questions is, “Yes, absolutely.”

Most of the demos I run use untweaked rules. The gameplay sample I discussed in Bhaloidam as Stage and Rolling the Bones in Bhaloidam are untweaked. The core rules of Bhaloidam provide a stable platform upon which to build your storyworlds.

However, there is no way that I can predict your every story need. In fact, there’s no way you can predict the either. The needs of your Skein may change as new Spinners are added, or old Spinners leave. The needs of your story may change–focusing on action one session and political intrigue the next. And as these changes occur, your storytelling style will change slightly. And Bhaloidam is specifically designed to allow for easy, on the fly, re-interpretation of the core rules.

I call these changes, somewhat formally–Variants. I’ve discussed two “official” variants so far–the Kiai Megill variant and the Cthulhu variant–each of which fall into two very different category of variant.

The first, most common, variant is what I call a Performance Variant. This variant does not add to the core gameplay rules in any way. The movement of tokens across the Lifewheel is unchanged. What has changed is how those core rules attach to your Performance. The Kiai Megill variant, for example, alters how you share a performance, requiring you to pass control of one of your descriptive sentences to another Spinner rather than perform their actions for them. This was necessary because each Spinner has confidential information about their character that only they can perform with any degree of accuracy.

Other variants of this nature include a variant I introduced in the Hopefuls (a campaign inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 comic book*). Because the Spinners are playing highly trained supernatural beings, I’ve allowing them to use the declared Influence’s capacity against the world even during performances against characters. In other words, they get free movement of their own character (but not extra descriptive sentences) along with every performance.

A super hero campaign might grant each character a Performance Enhancement for the Will cost of a standard performance (in fact, I actually use this variant in the Hopefuls campaign as well).

So, again, none of the Performance Variant alter the movement of tokens on the Lifewheels, they simply allow the Skein to better evoke the themes of the storyworld by interpreting the movement a little differently.

The second type of variant is a Platform Variant. These, like the Cthulhu variant, do actually alter the movement of tokens on the Lifewheel. They do not typically alter the core gameplay rules, but extend them in some fashion. The Cthulhu variant, for example, changes the flow of Will tokens across the board to represent the loss of sanity. It also changes the relationship between Spilt Ego tokens and “lost” Will tokens, providing new dynamics within the core rules.

Most of the horror themed variants I’ll be discussing fall into this category. Some, like the Zombie and Vampire variants primarily change how Will and Ego are used for specific types of characters. Others, like the Frankenstein variant, will fundamentally alter how a Spinner interprets their Lifewheel.

These variants typically need to be well thought out and tested before introducing them into play. However, as long as the core relationship between Source (Ego and Will) and the Elements remains intact, Bhaloidam should be a stable enough platform to support considerable tweaking and extending to suit your particular storytelling needs.

* Which happens to be the setting of the combat gameplay sample I’m recording today!

As designed objects, computer games create practices that could be considered unethical. Yet these practices are voluntarily undertaken by a moral agent who not only has the capacity, but also the duty to develop herself as an ethical being by means of practicing her own player-centric ethical thinking while preserving the pleasures and balances of the game experience. The player is a moral user capable of reflecting ethically about her presence in the game, and aware of how that experience configures her values both inside the game world and in relation to the world outside the game.
Miguel Sicart, The Ethics of Computer Games (MIT Press: 2009)

Do you think one’s philosophy leads to game design preferences? And if so, what effect has your philosophy had on Bhaloidam?

Regular readers of this blog likely know my answer to the first question, which is a resounding, “Yes.” Of course our personal philosophies lead to game design preferences, how could they not? What I would like to see even more of is game designers intentionally expressing their philosophies–or intentionally exploring their philosophies–through their game design. For all my bellyaching about Jonathan Blow’s Braid, it clearly ties to his world view in very direct and personal ways and I probably haven’t expressed my appreciation for that fact clearly enough. Far Cry 2, Bioshock, Shadow of the Colossus , Metal Gear Solid, and the vast majority of Nintendo’s titles can be directly tied to the personal philosophical exploration and beliefs of their creators–even if we’re only talking about their philosophies in regards to the importance of play. Of course these are all videogame designers, but I’m only just now starting to get to know the personalities behind the boardgames and tabletop RPGs, so I’m hesitant to comment on them as yet.

As far as the latter questions goes…

My belief in the importance of Story, Play, & Community is not some abstract professional goal–it’s a personal synthesis of my spiritual and intellectual journey that I have come to realize needs to be reflected in my professional path going forwards, regardless of where it leads. I believe that by learning to tell our stories more effectively, and by approaching life with a playful attitude, we are able to overcome any challenge placed before us–even if the challenge is one as daunting as living a fulfilling and rewarding life. A playfully storied approach to life allows us, I contend, to accept ourselves as we are while still challenging ourselves to grow. Only once we’re capable of embracing this dialectic of acceptance-of-self and drive-towards-betterment are we able to interact meaningfully with those around us, contributing to our community in direct and positive ways, and to truly believe in our capacity for adding value to the world. In practice, this is not just about telling your own stories, but doing so in a way that gets other people telling their stories–and then fully engaging with them and listening, drawing them out with questions and empowering them to see the potential for growth and power in fully realizing their own narrative.

It may be a bit grandiose to suggest that Bhaloidam can can help you achieve this state of Fully Engaged and Playful Storyteller. After all, I’m not even able to maintain this state at all times myself and I’ve been walking the paths of Bhaloidam for years. But it’s certainly based on the lessons I’ve learned and the wise people I’ve learned them from. The rules of Bhaloidam facilitate a supportive, cooperative blend of Story, Play, & Community that leads to telling highly personal and empowering stories that reflect your own life path–whatever that may be.

Traditional RPG approaches where a single person dominates the flow of story and dictates the outcomes of play to fit their own view of the world, simply don’t work well in Bhaloidam. Creating situations to trap or otherwise negatively impact your Spinners’ experience will lead to failure. Stacking the deck against them, denying their agency, and engaging in vindictive behavior will lead to dissatisfaction. I believe this is true on a personal level about all tabletop storytelling games and from the feedback I’ve received, Bhaloidam leads directly to this result at the play level.

This doesn’t mean there can’t be surprises, mysteries, puzzles, clever traps, or seemingly overwhelming odds. All of these elements can lead to effective storytelling. It simply means that when they’re included in the storyworld–it should be expressly for the purpose of engaging, supporting, and delighting your Skein, not showing them who’s in charge or pitting your own abilities as a storyteller against theirs.

Do you have trouble finding the perfect gift for that boundlessly creative person in your life? Tired of wandering through endless shopping malls only to come home with something they’ll have forgotten about within a year? This year, why not give the gift of Bhaloidam?

Skip the malls, skip the hassle, and be done with your holiday shopping today! Simply select one of our two new Gift Option backer rewards with your $27 or $45 and we’ll send you an attractive “Bhaloidam In The New Year” holiday card you can give to your friend or loved one on the holiday of your choice. Then, a few months later, they’ll receive their very own Spinner Bundle or Skein Pack in the mail. Don’t delay, get your holiday shopping done today!

Turned off by the crass commercial nature of the holidays? Want to do something more meaningful with your money? Then let’s turn off the advert-speak and talk about a backer reward for you.

Our third option is offered in partnership with Child’s Play, a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in a network of over 60 hospitals worldwide (http://www.childsplaycharity.org). In the past five years the gaming community has donated millions of dollars in toys and games to this worthy cause. And now you can give the gift of Bhaloidam to Child’s Play too. Any pledge, no matter how large, that accompanies our new $27 Child’s Play backer reward will go to providing hospitalized kids with the our intuitive and accessible storytelling platform.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE RELEASE OF BHALOIDAM BY PLEDGING $27 OR MORE TO OUR KICKSTARTER PROJECT & SELECTING ONE OF OUR NEW GIFT OPTION REWARDS!

I’ve run a number of lurking horror themed campaigns featuring any number of maddening plot points–from giant conspiratorial bugs wearing human skins, to country preachers controlled by mysterious books, to sentient centipede larva implanted along the spinal columns of teen-aged suburbanites. I have found that Spinners are more than willing to play along with the rising madness as their characters begin to lose their grip on reality, often contributing far more personal and terrifying hallucinations and in-character psychosis than I could possibly hope to provide for them.

And since I designed Bhaloidam to reflect my own open and trusting method of sharing stories, it takes that experience into account and lets us build on it as needed. Bhaloidam’s entire gameplay is based on the underlying nature of your characters’ relationship to the storyworld, so it’s a simple matter to introduce a variant to the core rules that will allow your Skein to slowly drive themselves mad at the indescribable horror of it all. Furthermore, due to the holistic design of Bhaloidam, the loss of sanity will suffuse every action your Spinners choose to perform.

The Cthulhu Bhaloidam Variant

Dying is the least interesting outcome in a Lovecraftian setting, and so we’ll treat death as narrative flavor rather than a core mechanic. If and when characters die it’ll be because it was time in the story for that character to die. This approach frees Ego, which often represents Life, to instead represent Humanity. Will, which will still be exerted to perform actions, represents your Sanity.

When the story first begins, gameplay is seemingly exactly as normal. You exert your Sanity by placing tokens on the Influence you’ve declared, spend it on descriptive sentences, then use it to buy effect and opportunity adjustments, moving it to Spent after your Performance, and regaining a measure of it immediately before performing again.

See? Just as normal… until you encounter your first Eldritch horror. From that point on, after you perform a scene that includes an otherworldly artifact or being, and after you have cleared your Sanity to the Spent icon, you must roll the Outcomes die (this is your “how successful was I?” die) to determine how much of your Sanity is lost.

If the number of Sanity tokens on the Spent icon is greater than the Outcomes roll, the excess Will is moved to the trio of small hexes at the bottom of the Lifewheel.

You may continue to use this lost Sanity to perform actions! But any time you exert lost Sanity, you cannot guarantee your performance and must treat every result of the Outcomes die as a split outcome.

Outcome Results of 1 - 3 = Split in Favor of an Unfavorable Outcome.
Outcome Results of 4 - 6 = Split in Favor of an Favorable Outcome.

The undesirable outcomes should almost all be described as the result of hallucinations, an inability to communicate clearly, and rampant paranoia. And, of course, when lost Sanity is “regained” from Spent, it must return to the pool of lost Sanity–not your source.

So what happens when you start to spill your Humanity? Simple–you begin to perform actions that are unfavorable to your continued safety and well being, of course!

If the number of Humanity tokens on the Spilt icon is greater than the number of Lost Sanity tokens, you must perform actions for the greater good of your dread lord Cthulhu, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Rl'yeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"

Skeins interested in longer Lovecraftian campaigns will likely want to include provisions for regaining both Sanity and Humanity. This can include trips mental hospitals, blessings from priests, anti-psychotic medication, etc. It might be interesting to allow each character a memento that reminded them of a lost loved one. Focusing on this memento in the midst of a performance might increase Humanity (returning a token to Source), but at the cost of Sanity (moving a token from Source to the lost Sanity pool).

And with those few simple adjustments, we have a variant of Bhaloidam that adds all the tension and thrills of a true Lovecraftian tale, while still retaining the intuitive and consistent core rules that make Bhaloidam an accessible and empowering storytelling platform.

Stay tuned next week for more horror-themed variants!

*Which, as always, can be downloaded for free here.

The Scenario
Three estranged adult siblings find themselves face to face for the first time in a year. Their father–having been in a coma since the car accident that killed their mother–has passed away. The funeral now over, they gather in the kitchen of their parent’s house and begin to talk. Each has a shame they want to keep secret and each harbors a suspicion about one of their siblings.

Game Setup
Each Spinner is given a placard to set in front of their Lifewheel. The front of the cards read, Eldest Sibling, Middle Sibling, Youngest Sibling. The back of the cards lists that sibling’s shame and suspicion. The eldest sibling has three bullet points to her shame, the middle sibling two, and the youngest, one point.

Because each Spinner does not know the actual shame of the others, they are unable to perform their actions with any degree of success. Furthermore, in interpreting their suspicion, they may make accusations that are completely off the mark and not worthy of spilling Ego. Because of this, the core rules are interpreted a little differently.

The stated goal of the scene is to uncover the shame behind your suspicion while keeping your own shame secret.

Kiai-Megill Variant Rules
Three Ego tokens represent each shame bullet point on the Lifewheel (so, the Eldest has 9 Ego, the Middle 6, the Youngest 3). When an Ego token is spilled, the Spinner must hint at their shame. When three tokens have been spilled, one of the shame points must be completely revealed.

Instead of directly controlling other characters during her Performance, a Spinner gives one of her purchased sentences to another Spinner when she would like them to response to a comment. (Remember that the amount of Will you exert for a Performance is spent on descriptive sentences and dialog (display as italic text in the gameplay sample below). 1 Will Token = 1 sentence.)

When contributing to another Spinner’s Performance, a Spinner must decide if her reply should result in the Spilling of an Ego token and respond appropriately, revealing some portion of her Shame and choosing to spill her own Ego token. Vague allegations can be redirected or deflected and not result in the Spilling of Ego. Wild accusations can be flatly denied (and not result in the Spilling of Ego). Direct, close to the mark, accusations need to be addressed and should result in the Spilling of Ego. Note that a carefully worded denial, coupled with the spilling of an Ego token, is considered addressing the accusation.

If she has not yet spilled three Ego and revealed a shame, a Spinner may “shore up” her own Ego during her performance.

Suspicion & Shame
I’m going to put this behind spoiler tags. If you’re doing to be doing a demo with me later this month, you might consider not reading this and skipping to the gameplay sample (where I’ll try not to be too obvious).
[SPOILER] (highlight to read)
The Eldest Sibling

• Suspects Middle Sibling of stealing parent’s prized possessions.
• Shame(s):
  • You’ve been disbarred from practicing law.
  • You’re being tried for unethical behavior and are likely to face jail time.
  • You’re guilty of the charges against you.

The Middle Sibling

• Suspects Youngest Sibling caused the accident that killed your parents.
• Shame(s):
  • Mother gave you heirlooms to pawn so you could pay for your romantic partner’s rehab.
  • You’re also an addict.

The Youngest Sibling

• Suspects Eldest Sibling is a Mob Lawyer.
• Shame(s):
  • Your parents asked for your help taking care of the car and you’d been pocketing the cash instead of having the regular maintenance and repairs done.

[/SPOILER]

Gameplay Sample

Note: Paragraphs in mono-width font are Spinners’ gameplay actions. Italic text are Performances. I’d suggest opening up (and maybe even printing out) a copy of the Lifewheel and trying to follow along with the movement of tokens and pawns. If you don’t know which Influence is which (Mastery, Poise, etc), don’t worry about it–just pick one of the six large central Influence icons that looks the most like the name to you.

Weaver: “Okay, the Eldest is closest to the top of the Opportunity track, so tick 3.”

All Spinners move their pawns up 3 hexes on their Opportunity tracks.

Eldest: “Ready! I’m going to use Mastery, want to affect for other characters, and I’ll guarantee it.”

Moves 3 Will tokens to Mastery. Rolls the Effect & Opportunity dice, gets a 3 and 4 respectively.

“I’m thirsty and I’m tired. Which one of you knows where dad was hiding the booze from mom?” I look pointedly at Middle Sibling, arching an eyebrow quizzically*.

“Middle, push your Opportunity pawn 4 hexes up the Opportunity track.”

Resets pawn to 3 (her capacity for Mastery) on the Opportunity track.

Middle: “That puts me on the perform icon at top of the track and I guess I’m Ready. I’ll use Design–for knowing where the liquor is–against the World. I’ll guarantee it with 1 Will.”

Rolls a 2 Effect and 1 Opportunity.

“Since this is against the world, I can add Design’s capacity of 1 to my Will, giving me 2 sentences.”

I leave the kitchen and head to the basement, returning shortly with an armful of assorted, half-consumed, bottles of alcohol. I open the bottle of whiskey and pour myself a double, hand shaking slightly.

Resets pawn to 1 and slides it back to the critical hex.

“I’m going to crit myself on the Opportunity track, meaning I can’t advance until everyone else has either performed or crit’d as well. Because I’m reluctant to speak first, I figure that’s actually good for my character here.”

Weaver: “Nice. Okay, Youngest is 1 hex away, so tick 1.”

Youngest and eldest move 1 hex up their Opportunity tracks.

Youngest: “I’m Ready. I’ll use Charm to affect a character. I’m exerting 3 Will, but I’m not going to guarantee it.”

Rolls a 1 on the Outcome die, a 2 on the Effect die, and a 2 on the Opportunity die.

“Wow. So the outcome is completely the opposite of what I wanted and because I rolled doubles on Effect and Opportunity, it’s a critical and I have to use the full effect and opportunity adjustments allowed by the dice even though I only exerted 3 Will. And it’s all got to be bad for me. Okay, fine. Let’s see how non-poised I can be!”

I pour myself a drink too, glare at the Eldest, and blurt out, “Must be weird spending so much time with your family after spending a year with just la Familia, eh Eldest?”

Points to a Will token and nods to the Eldest to take a line.

Eldest: I don’t… I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Youngest: Sure, like I’m the one who does stupid things and gets people hurt.

Moves 1 Ego token to Spilt.

I wouldn’t know anything about that kind of guilt!”

Moves 1 more Ego token to Spilt. Resets pawn to 3 and slides it back 2 hexes to 1.

Weaver: “Excellent, you took 2 hits to your Ego because of the Effect die and 2 penalties to your pawn because of the Opportunity die. Nice work on being a off balance because of your failure, too! I had no idea how you were going to justify taking the 2 Ego hits there. Okay, looks like Eldest will be up next. Tick 3″

Middle is still on critical until Eldest performs, so only Eldest and Youngest move up the Opportunity track.

Eldest “Okay, Persistence this time, affecting a character, 2 Will.”

Rolls a 4 on the Outcome die, a 3 on the Effect die, and a 1 on the Opportunity die.

Having poured myself a drink, I look our Middle sibling in the eye, raise my glass, and say, “Here’s to knowing where all of mom and dad’s good stuff is!”

Holds up 2nd will token and nods at Middle.

Middle: I raise my glass to take a drink and mutter into it, “If you think dad’s old cheap alcohol is the good stuff, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Moves 1 Ego token to Spilt

Eldest: Resets her Opportunity Pawn to 2.

That should be enough to give you an idea of how a scene can play out. I know that’s a lot of text to parse and make sense of (although following along on a Lifewheel will probably help quite a bit), so stay tuned for more visual gameplay samples over the next week. Feel free to ask any questions this has prompted and I’ll do my best to make things more clear for you!

PLEASE SUPPORT THE RELEASE OF BHALOIDAM BY PLEDGING $9 OR MORE TO OUR KICKSTARTER PROJECT

*It’s interesting to note that Sunday’s Skein did not name their characters, but referred to each other by their birth order. It didn’t seem to lesson the immersion at all.

Now, nearly two years later, Brian runs this program for 5 schools and a summer program. More than 250 students are involved. And to help with this growth, Brian has started a fundraising project of his own.

When we heard about KNtG, we knew we wanted to contribute in a big way. And because the design of Bhaloidam is in complete accord with Brian’s belief in the power of games to teach, we wanted to do more than just give him money towards his humble goal of $2000 (which we’re also going to do, by the way). We contacted Brian and made a proposal, which he eagerly accepted.

So we’ve launched a new backer reward today at the $27 pledge level. 100% of every pledge we receive that accompanies this new backer reward will go to providing Kids Need to Game with copies of Bhaloidam for their library. At minimum, we’d like to send them 10 Skein Packs and 10 Spinner bundles, but we’ll let you set the maximum!

So head over to our Kickstarter Project and make your pledge today!

And while I enjoyed those activities, or the idea of those activities, they never felt like the right things to build a career on.

The same pretty much goes for the creative careers I did explore–web design, computer animation, and game writing.

As I rode my bike to my LGS (local game shop) to demo Bhaloidam yesterday I thought leapt to mind that resonated so loudly I almost thought it was a bell ringing nearby. “This is it. Bhaloidam is my career. I am Bhaloidam.”

Bhaloidam is the culmination of all my creative, philosophical, spiritual, and intellectual, personal, and professional pursuits. It allows me to be an actor, a cartoonist, a computer animator, a writer, a director, a web designer, a storyteller, and while it doesn’t allow me to be an architect, the application of mathematics to creative expression scratches what I imagine is much the same itch.

Bhaloidam, the synthesis of story, play, and community, is what I want to do. And more than that, it’s who I am. I want to work with teachers and counselors to use Bhaloidam in their professional lives to help students and clients. I want to use Bhaloidam to help people realize they have power in their lives, a power directly related to their ability to tell their own story and approach situations with a playful attitude. I want to use Bhaloidam to help people gain confidence in themselves, overcome their anxieties, to explore their potential and learn how to achieve it.

And, of course, I want everyone to use Bhaloidam simply to have fun telling stories together. It’s something I love doing, something I find relaxing, rewarding, and really enjoyable.

So, Bhaloidam (both as a storytelling platform and a philosophy) is it for me. I am Bhaloidam. Along the way I’m sure to design more games (In fact, I’ve three in the works), but it’s Bhaloidam that lies at the heart of my career. It’s Bhaloidam that reflects not only who I am, but who I have been and who I want to be.

If you haven’t already pledged, please visit the Bhaloidam Kickstarter and help me launch my true career today.

The randomizing mechanic of Bhaloidam is built upon one of the many simple philosophies that I live by, “Do your best every day and recognize that your best will be different every day.”

Sometime you work up a tremendous amount of willpower to accomplish a task and still struggle to overcome an obstacle. Sometimes the obstacle fights back, sometimes you just don’t have what it takes to get it done. Sometimes you wildly flail about, expending energy needlessly and fruitlessly, sometimes you just screw it up. After all, as the Bard once said, “Tis many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.”

And sometimes, no matter how prepared you thought you were, the obstacle was simply more than you could handle at that moment.

Other times, you realize there’s a simpler solution and triumph with only a minor exertion when you had prepared for a much tougher challenge. And still other times, you find yourself buoyed up and overcoming obstacles that seemed insurmountable only moments before.

All of these interpretations can be applied to the dice rolls of Bhaloidam. To see how it’s done, we’re going to use the same short sample from the last two posts.*

There are three six-sided dice (3D6) in Bhaloidam. The first is a Success die. The Success die offers a 1 in 6 chance of a completely undesirable outcome, a 2 in 6 chance of a mixed outcome, and a 3 in 6 chance of a desired outcome. That, for those of you counting, gives your opponent or obstacle a 3 in 6 chance of thwarting your efforts to one degree or another. And, as Sara does here, you can avoid using this die by exerting enough Will and guaranteeing your success.

But there are two dice you’ll always roll — the Effect die and the Opportunity die (unless you’re playing dice-free altogether, which I’ll describe in an upcoming storyplay sample). Let’s take a look at how these two dice help you shape your performance by breaking down Sara’s performance.

Sara declares that she is going to use Poise and hopes to effect another character. She exerts 3 Will tokens, placing them on the Poise icon, which is enough to guarantee success.

By exerting 3 Will tokens, Sara has limited herself to spending her Will on a maximum of 3 sentences, regardless of the roll of the dice (sort of–as I’ll explain later, criticals up-end that rule).

She rolls the Effect and Opportunity dice to see how much of her 3 exerted Will she can spend during her Performance. She rolls a 2 on the Effect die and a 4 on the Opportunity die. She’s now ready to perform.

This result means Sara can actually spend all 3 of her exerted Will on the performance (because 2 + 4 = 6). In fact, if she’d exerted 6 Will, she’d have been able to spend them all as well. However, had she rolled a 1 on both dice, she’d only be able to spend 2 (1+1=2) of the exerted Will on her performance.

But she didn’t roll snake eyes, so let’s look at what the die rolls actually mean for this performance.

Rolling a 2 on the Effect die means that Sara can use a maximum of 2 of her spent will tokens to buy the movement of up to 2 Ego tokens between Source and Spilt, or if the story used minis and a hex map (which this ones does not) on moving character minis up to 2 cumulative hexes.

Rolling a 4 on the Opportunity die means that Sara can use up to all of her 3 exerted Will tokens to move Opportunity Pawns up to 3 hexes on the Opportunity Track. The opportunity track is an 8 hex track that determines who gets an opportunity to perform when. all pawns move up the track at the same rate and at the same time, so pawns higher up the track get an opportunity to perform first.

And because she’s guaranteed her performance, all of this works favorably toward her desired outcome. Here’s Sara’s performance based on the roll:

I look Hoggarty in the eye, smile without letting it touch my eyes, and say, “But surely, Chancellor, you’re aware that just last night the crown has declared such behavior not only immoral, but illegal as well.” Hoggarty takes a step backwards, nervously tugging at his tunic, his mouth gaping open and shut like a fish. I take a step towards him, narrow my eyes and say, “Or did you think your little plan had actually succeeded?”

And here’s what she buys with her spent Will tokens.

Sara then moves two Ego tokens from Source to Spilt on Duane’s Lifewheel (Duance is Hoggarty’s Spinner) and pushes his Opportunity Pawn down 1 hex on the Opportunity Track.

As you can see, she decides to buy the maximum movement of Ego tokens allowed by the Effect die, and uses the remaining spent Will token to by an Opportunity adjustment.

But what if Sara was Duane’s accomplice and thought he might be about to give away their treachery under the pressure exerted by another Spinner? Perhaps she’d want to step in and resolve a conflict before he spilled the beans? If she exerted the same will and rolled the same dice results, what might that Performance look like?

I give Hoggarty a steely glance, step forward and smile sweetly at the Countess, “Do you honestly think Hogarty mentally capable of such convoluted machinations?” Behind my back, where Hoggarty can see it, I make a fist, with the tip my thumb tucked just under my forefingers–our order’s sign for strength in solidarity. “No,” I continue, “Hoggarty is far too stalwart a comrade to ever fall prey to schemes such as that.”

Figuring she’s clearly communicated to Hoggarty that she’s got this handled, Sara pushes Duane’s Opportunity Pawn back 2 hexes on his Opportunity track, and knowing that her hand signal and careful choice of words will embolden him somewhat, moves 1 of his Spilt Ego tokens back to his Source (poor Duane’s just been getting the political snot beat out of him in this story).

Again, she’s used all three spent tokens to buy Effect and Opportunity Adjustments without exceeding the maximums set by her dice roll.

And, very quickly because I’ve gone on much longer than I anticipated already, a note on the aforementioned Criticals. If you roll doubles on the Effect and Opportunity dice, you get the maximum Effect and Opportunity Adjustments available on the dice, regardless of how much Will you exerted–even for mixed and undesirable outcomes.

That’s all for this week. Join us on Twitter and Facebook for quick updates over the weekend. Next week we’ll share more gameplay samples–some via video, some in pure text, and (hopefully) some in comic book format. We’re also going to talk about how you can use Bhaloidam as a platform for building a Lovecraftian horror storyworld!

PLEASE SUPPORT THE RELEASE OF BHALOIDAM BY PLEDGING $9 OR MORE TO OUR KICKSTARTER PROJECT

* Extended samples are on the way, but I figured closing out the week with a bit of consistency wouldn’t hurt.

Instead, this is a post about the reactions across our social networks to yesterday’s short gameplay sample. Here’s a reminder:

Sara declares that she is going to use Poise and hopes to effect another character. She exerts 3 Will tokens, placing them on the Poise icon, which is enough to guarantee success. She rolls the Effect and Opportunity dice to see how much of her 3 exerted Will she can spend during her Performance. She rolls a 2 on the Effect die and a 4 on the Opportunity die. She’s now ready to perform.

I look Hoggarty in the eye, smile without letting it touch my eyes, and say, “But surely, Chancellor, you’re aware that just last night the crown has declared such behavior not only immoral, but illegal as well.” Hoggarty takes a step backwards, nervously tugging at his tunic, his mouth gaping open and shut like a fish. I take a step towards him, narrow my eyes and say, “Or did you think your little plan had actually succeeded?”

Sara then moves two Ego tokens from Source to Spilt on Duane’s Lifewheel (Duance is Hoggarty’s Spinner) and pushes his Opportunity Pawn down 1 hex on the Opportunity Track.

On a G+ thread, Ryan Kinal got right the heart of what we’ve done with Bhaloidam, and why we’ve done it:

This example of Bhaloidam seems (to me) to imply that there’s a pool of characters, and while I may “own” my character, it can be used as a tool for building narrative by anybody who wishes it. And this heavily demonstrates the dam (“tribe”, correct?) in Bhaloidam.

While in the same thread, Neil Smith nicely summed up the questions a lot of people had about the idea of sharing characters:

How does character ‘ownership’ work in Bhaloidam? Is it shared narration without any definite ownership? Is it a pool of things that just happen to be in play, and anyone can influence any of them at any time? To people temporarily take control of characters for a scene?

My answer to this, like my answer is going to be for so many questions, is that Bhaloidam is a platform that supports how you want to handle character ownership. That being said, no matter how much ownership your Skein decides Spinners should have over their own characters, you will have to cooperate if you wish to be successful. And through cooperation you will build trust. And through building trust, you will relax the protective barriers that result in a need for strict management of who is in charge of which character. And if you drop those protective barriers, you’ll soon become a tribe that actually tells stories together, not one that merely tells stories while adjacent to one another around a table.

But there is also great value in closely identifying with a particular character in a story. And when you are responsible for that character’s decisions and actions, there is even greater value. So there’s no need to aim for every game being a detached set of characters that everyone controls equally. Only certain stories will require that level of sharing, and quite possibly only in certain situations.

Regardless of the degree of shared control, when you Perform the scene, you are Performing the entire scene, including the actions and reactions of other characters. Because of this, all Weaver-created secondary and tertiary characters (commonly called NPCs in RPGs) should be fair game for Spinner control. The Weaver may provide guidance as to these characters’ likely responses or approaches to the scene, but ideally that should have been established when the Weaver first introduced the character. If another Spinner’s primary character is going to be moved or otherwise affected during your scene, you should actively invite her input into how her character would act. And if the scene requires dialog, or a highly personal emotional reaction from another character, consider allowing that character’s Spinner to share the scene with you, performing one or more of your sentences if they pertain to her character.

I am specifically setting up the next two Bhaloidam demos to show off various levels of scene sharing. Those of you who remember the Kiai-Megill Variant (from 2009′s HCE demo at PAX) will recognize improvements on that design in this expression of the core rules. To celebrate that, I’m going to try running an updated script of the Funeral Scene for at least part of Sunday’s demo. If you’re local to Portland and would like to join us, visit our Facebook page and RSVP to the demo.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE RELEASE OF BHALOIDAM BY PLEDGING $9 OR MORE TO OUR KICKSTARTER PROJECT

I’ve been thinking about stories I’ve wanted a platform for in light of Bhaloidam, and I’ve started puzzling over some of the squishy, hard-to-handle story elements that have always been a challenge for setting-agnostic systems I’ve tried and wondering how Bhaloidam works there.

I’m wondering how potency of effect (however that is represented in Bhaloidam’s mechanical terms) is translated into fictional terms by the players.

Okay, I’m going to interrupt to talk terminology for a quick moment. Will tokens are exerted by placing the white will tokens on an Influence. Dice are rolled to determine the maximum amount of exerted Will that may be Spent on Effect and Opportunity Adjustments during the Performance. Now, back to the question and we’ll get to what that means in practical terms.

For example, in many systems where all we know about a character’s magical abilities is the tag “Young Wizard”, there is a peculiar challenge for the players to handle magic effects in a mechanically meaningful way: often the system, not knowing anything about how magic works in your world, offers no framework for deciding how well an attempted spell worked, nor even how potent a spell the character could try for in the first place.

Another interruption for a quick bit of relevant history! In 1999 I took a 12 month break from gaming and created a new system. The character sheet for the system has an unusual box on it that contains nine squares with nothing but icons in them (see image on right). That was my magic system. It was designed to provide each Spinner (playing a magic user) with a common visual vocabulary. The only firm rules about magic is that is was elemental (with six schools: earth, water, air, fire, life, and spirit) and gestural. The rest was mostly up to the Spinner.

If you’re familiar with the current Lifewheel*, a lot of that is going to sound very familiar because it’s exactly how the Influences work in Bhaloidam, not just for magic users, but for every type of character, for all actions, across all genres. And over the last 11 years, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about providing clearer guidance and support (both through the design itself and in my role as Weaver) to Spinners who might be hesitant about wielding their improv skills.

A Weaver’s job to is help the Skein tell stories together as successfully as they can. Part of this task is helping Spinner’s create the flavor of the storyworld. In other words, how to verbally describe the casting of a spell, swinging of a sword, or delivery of a moving manifesto.

Now on to the last part of the question and I’ll get to how Bhaloidam helps you measure this in terms of game mechanics.

So how does Bhaloidam, as a story-agnostic platform, mechanically give guidance for how much fictional effect a performance generates? I’ve read about “spending” points of effect, but the difference between one point of effect and two isn’t obvious, and how that both empowers and limits a spinner’s narration is unclear. How does the mechanical currency exchange for fictional meaning?

Ready? This is a big reveal–the first time I’ve shared this publicly in great detail and it will likely be a make-or-break aspect of the platform for a lot of people.

The important thing to keep in mind about Bhaloidam is that while the Lifewheels ostensibly define a Spinner’s primary character, the Will and Ego tokens–and their movement about the Lifewheel–also define the Spinner’s invested Ego in the story and her ability to exert her Will upon the story. So, without further preamble, here is the core mechanic of a Bhaloidam Performance:

• 1 Exerted* Will token == 1 simple sentence the Spinner can use to describe her Performance.

And once a Will token has been spent on a sentence, that spent token can be used buy one of three things:

• 1 spent token == the movement of 1 Ego token between Source and Spilt
• or
• 1 spent token == a 1 hex adjustment of an Opportunity Pawn.
• or (if you’re using minis and a hex map)
• 1 spent token == 1 unit of character movement

These uses are not limited to the Spinner’s own character. By exerting more Will, she is able to extend her Influence to the other characters in the scene, even those she is not primarily responsible for. Want a (very) quick example of how this looks? Your wish is my command! Here’s a single Performance from a courtly intrigue set in a Renaissance storyworld. Since this is a story about politics, there are no minis or hex maps being used to track movement.

EXAMPLE PERFORMANCE
Sara declares that she is going to use Poise and hopes to effect another character. She exerts 3 Will tokens, placing them on the Poise icon, which is enough to guarantee success. She rolls the Effect and Opportunity dice to see how much of her 3 exerted Will she can spend during her Performance. She rolls a 2 on the Effect die and a 4 on the Opportunity die. She’s now ready to perform.

I look Hoggarty in the eye, smile without letting it touch my eyes, and say, “But surely, Chancellor, you’re aware that just last night the crown has declared such behavior not only immoral, but illegal as well.” Hoggarty takes a step backwards, nervously tugging at his tunic, his mouth gaping open and shut like a fish. I take a step towards him, narrow my eyes and say, “Or did you think your little plan had actually succeeded?”

Sara then moves two Ego tokens from Source to Spilt on Duane’s Lifewheel (Duance is Hoggarty’s Spinner) and pushes his Opportunity Pawn down 1 hex on the Opportunity Track.

So you’ll see that Sara spent all of her exerted will on sentences as she Performed the scene. Also note that she was free to perform the actions of her opponent as well as her own character. She then used two of the spent tokens to buy a reduction of Duane’s Ego (since this is a political drama, Ego doesn’t represent health in this storyworld, but political favor or even, well… Ego), which was the maximum allowed by the Effect die. The remaining spent Will token she used to push Duane 1 hex further away from his next Performance Opportunity. And because Sara is an accomplished Spinner, all these mechanics were well represented within her Performance–Hoggarty’s nervousness, his gaping mouth indicating he was unprepared to reply, etc.

Because I’m a visual thinker, I like to imagine Performances like this:

Here we see that the platform supports the Performance, but it’s up to the Performance itself to a) connect the preparation and result mechanics in a meaningful way and b) look good while doing so.

Two quick notes:

Bhaloidam is meant to be a platform that supports your needs. If your storyworld and style suggest that 1 spent Will token should buy 3 hexes of movement on a map–awesome. Or perhaps it takes 3 Spent Will to buy the movement of 1 Ego. I make and break rules all the time to support the storyworld I’m currently exploring with a Skein. My only caution is that you retain the ratios of 3 to 1 and keep your numbers low.

Additionally, if you want to use your spent Will token in any other manner than the three (there are 7 examples represented on the Lifewheel and explained in the handbook), you’re free to do so by exerting more Will for Performance enhancements. For example, this might allow you to modify the capacity of an Influence, pool Will to have a large Effect in a later scene, improve your chances of success, etc.

Hopefully that makes things a lot clearer. My good netbook is in for repairs, so work on the 3 page comic gameplay sample isn’t moving as quickly as I’d hoped. We are planning on getting it out to you, as well as some video examples of new Spinners learning how to tell stories with Bhaloidam!***

IF THIS IS EVEN REMOTELY INTERESTING TO YOU, PLEASE PLEDGE $9 OR MORE TO THE BHALOIDAM KICKSTARTER PROJECT & PREORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

*Here is a freely downloadable printable PDF of the Bhaloidam Lifewheel: http://tiny.zakelro.com/Lifewheel. It’s hosted on Google Docs, so if you add it to your own docs you’ll automatically receive any minor updates I make at the last minute. ;-})

**Keeping in mind that dice rolls can reduce (and sometimes even increase) the number of available exerted tokens.

***In the excitement of watching new Spinners play Bhaloidam at last night’s demo, I completely forgot to pull out the video camera. I’ll have help at the next demo on Sunday, so we should get some footage then!