The Hard Lessons Itchfunding (Successfully!) and More!
In this email I wanted to share with you all a story I thought was really compelling about the inspiration for The Hard Lessons, then share some of what I'll be working on for it, and then at the end talk a little bit about my plans for Broken: a Tragic Romance Game. First things first, I'm excited to share:
At APON Games, we launched our first crowdfund campaign for The Hard Lessons, a storytelling and worldbuilding game about a great Master who has died and their students who've gathered one last night to share stories, toast the Master, and decide the fate of the Master's school. It's an extremely fun and memorable game - also really easy to pick up and play - and I want to tell you about some of the work I'll be doing on it. Before I go any further, here's the link to the campaign.
This morning Josh, writer of The Hard Lessons, reminded me some of the inspiration for The Hard Lessons. Josh and I both had the same professor in undergrad, though several years apart. We had wildly different experiences of this professor. For Josh, this person was extremely formative in his life and academic trajectory: he was encouraging, motivating, inspiring, they worked closely together, etc. However, the same professor and I had just completely different experiences of each other than Josh had. I'm pretty sure the professor thought of me as a terrible student (I was), that I didn't put the effort due into his class, and gave me a nearly failing grade. I experienced him as cold, not supportive, and unfair. (I'm sure I was in the wrong about all of this but that is besides the point.) Years later, Josh and I met. We realized we graduated from the same college, and had the same professor. But when we shared stories of that professor, it was like we were talking about two different people. This in large part inspired The Hard Lessons. In The Hard Lessons, former students gather to share stories of the Master. These students may never have met each other, and more to the point, may have had wildly different experiences of The Master. That is one of the coolest parts about the design of this game! It not only invites, but encourages different views of The Master. Everyone's memory is honored. People are complex, and we experience influential people in our lives in very different ways. Sometimes I think in our contemporary culture we like to boil people down to stereotypes or paint them in broad strokes, black and white. People are complicated, and someone can do absolutely terrible things and yet be a loving parent, or they can do incredibly important, inspiring things, but also mess up and do awful things to others. The Hard Lessons tells those kinds of stories, and that's just one thing that I think makes it a good game.
I'm extremely excited that we funded our full Digital Zine Edition in under 12 hours. This will be a polished version of the game rules in digital release, but quality enough if you want to print it. Our next goal is $500 to fund Character Record Sheets. My puzzle will be to design a layout for Character Record Sheets that is helpful for play. There's not a ton of information to record for The Hard Lessons like some other big-name ttrpgs. Capturing what is actually useful and doing it in a creative and attractive way will be my challenge. I also want to create a digital record sheet for the game, not unlike some of the beautiful digital record keepers from the Gauntlet, or like we used for the game Ma Nishtana: Why Is This Night Different. (shoutout to their kickstarter!)
What I'm really excited to fund are the Play Sets. The Play Sets for The Hard Lessons will customize the game so that instead of being setting neutral, you have a tailored experience for a specific genre, tone, and setting. The Play Sets we have coming up are Pirates, Superheroes, Sports Team, Noir, and Cold War Super Spies. Each one of these is exciting to me, and I'll explain how it works.
In The Hard Lessons, you draw from a deck of cards to first make your character. Then the game goes through rounds. In each round, every player will tell the story of an Encounter with The Master, for example, "My First Great Lesson." The player draws a card from their deck and consults a chart of prompts that will give an element to include in the story. In the base game, all of this is generic enough to fit any setting or genre. In the Play Sets, they will be totally customized to fit the setting. We may even customize specific rules to to also fit the genre! I'm excited to see what ideas we come up with for these Play Sets.
I'm especially excited to be writing the Sports Team play set. I suggested this one, and Josh allowed it, as long as I write it. The idea of playing a ttrpg about a great sports coach or mentor and the students/athletes that they shaped is very compelling to me. In general, I like outside-of-the-box ttrpgs, non-violent ttrpgs, slice of life ttrpgs, etc. I also happen to love sports and sports movies. I can't wait to bring that energy to a ttrpg setting for The Hard Lessons.
Lastly in this email, I promised some updates about Broken: a Tragic Romance Game. It was always our intention that The Hard Lessons would be a jumping off point for our future ttrpg releases and crowdfunding campaigns. It was my hope that we'd not only connect people to a good game and build support for it, but also gain followers on our itch store and a base of email contacts interested in what we are doing to help grow the campaign for Broken. Now that The Hard Lessons is funding well, we have begun our discussion of timing game releases over the next year. We have so many things we want to work on, but Broken is my baby, it is the closest thing to my heart and I can't wait to share it with the world. Right now, we are talking about crowdfunding Broken mid-summer, approximately mid-July. That will give me the next month to compile things I need to prepare the crowdfunding, June to put it together, and the first two weeks in July for a nice long vacation before we launch. Plus, I'm moving in there also! So while it is a lot, most of the elements of the game are ready for the campaign and I think the timing is perfect.
Do you have thoughts about the timing? I would love to hear them.
OK one last thing. I floated a twitter poll about teasing the cover art for Broken. Take a minute to answer the poll if you haven't, and if you have specific feedback on this I'd love to hear it. https://twitter.com/benjaminwallis/status/1522415387253608448?s=20&t=i2qnuT40--u5-Z7rqPSKdw
Thank you, everyone, and have a great weekend!