Benjamin Franklin and a Talking Raccoon Taught Me about BROKEN: a Tragic Romance Game
We're officially three weeks away from launching the crowdfunding campaign for Broken: a Tragic Romance Game to fund completing the game and releasing the full e-book. I want to write a little bit about flexibility of design, and the space a deeply emotional game like Broken leaves for a variety of play styles.
But before I write about the game and design, I want to acknowledge that this is a strange time to be promoting a game. I've started writing a few twitter threads to promote Broken or try to gather more emails on our launch day list, and stopped short as it felt inappropriate in the moment. I've found myself instead going deeper in learning about the way the recent Supreme Court decision effects specific reproductive healthcare. I know that there is a tremendous amount of pain, hurt, and anger out there right now. However, I keep coming back to the fact that games are powerful. Games are powerful, play is powerful, and play has the ability to be subversive. A game like Broken is designed to explore themes of identity, self-discovery, and loss. Broken may even help to foster empathy building. At a time like this, we need games that take the human experience seriously, and I think that Broken does that, while at the same time supporting a diverse team of queer creators. So, I am going to continue to write about my design thoughts and the game as we move toward our launch day. I thank you for following along even during these tragic times.
From the outset, I knew I wanted Broken to have flexibility of play style. There are two words in the subtitle that appear tone limiting: "tragic" and "romance." Those two words being in the subtitle of the game are intentional, as they let someone know immediately some detail about what kind of game this is and the stories it will foster. But I wanted these to not actually be limiting in the design. Let's take the word "romance" for example. The game is only limited to "romance" insofar as you choose to play a romantic relationship. In actuality, the design of the game is intentionally flexible to be able to cover any kind of relationship that might break up. One of our play test groups actually played their game of Broken with preexisting Dungeons and Dragons that used to campaign together, but no longer do. The players used Broken to look back at their adventuring relationship that slowly broke up.
Over the weekend I did a demo of Broken for a group of people that stretched the game in a different way. They decided their scenario for the game would be Benjamin Franklin, the historic figure, and his childhood best friend......a talking raccoon. Rather than pushing them toward a more straightforward scenario, I let them play it out that way to see what would happen. The tone of their game was absurd and humorous. They got into many, many fights, and really leaned into arguing, but in a humorous way. Their was a subplot in their game about assassinating George Washington. They included items to break such as the Liberty Bell, Thomas Jefferson (yes, the person), and the Declaration of Independence. This was easily the most extreme game of Broken I've seen played yet. The people playing had an absolute blast. This experience showed me that my hope the design of the game would leave space for a wide breadth of play styles was vindicated.
The intention of my design was to build the mechanics and rituals of the game to foster certain kinds of stories and a trajectory toward tragedy. In particular, the way the traits function in the game encourages sad experiences because the things that are beautiful in the relationship, loved about the other person, or strong about your connection each become disillusioned one by one. But just like the romance genre of other media, these guides leave room for a variety of sub-genres, or a variety of styles, tones, and feelings for your game.
In the end, I do think that most games of Broken will be played with a serious tone and in a more traditional romance scenario. I'm extremely interested in the ways people stretch the game and the ideas they have to play different kinds of relationships. I'd love for people to explore the ends of friendships with the game.
How do you want to try Broken?
Do not forget that you can now sign up to receive an email the day our campaign goes live. The most helpful thing you can possibly do is share the link so that others can sign up as well. Our list is not the long yet, so I know we can collect a lot more emails.
Thanks as always for reading. I hope you find some hope and strength during these hard days, and some joy in playing with others.
