Designer Diary: Space Askew

I’ve long had an interest in designing a Dream Askew hack, thanks to very positive experiences playing the game tempered by some issues that I wanted to address. I’ve been tinkering around with this concept for quite a while, and finally managed to get a working prototype to a playtest this weekend.

The game is currently a fairly thinly reskinned version of the original, since I want to concentrate on streamlining and reworking the design framework. But I didn’t want to just copy Avery’s game, so I’ve changed the setting. Space Askew is set in the belly of a space station, where outcasts and misfits live in the shadows below a more prosperous settlement.

What’s changed?

  • I felt that DA would benefit from some more in the way of relationship-building in setup. I’ve added a set of Hx-style relationship seeds to choose from, and some Hillfolk-style unrequited desires. In both cases the process involves choosing something yourself, then asking another player a question, the answer to which provides a completed background element.
  • I wanted a clearer and more intuitive set of MCing guidelines for running the Situations. I’ve brought the MCing system a bit more back towards the way Apocalypse World works, supplementing each Situation’s Principles and Moves with a set of general Principles and Moves, and giving clear guidance for when an MC makes Moves. The Principles are a bit different from AW’s, focused more on small-scale interpersonal drama than constantly shifting external threats.
  • I’ve placed question-asking at the heart of the system. When you want to create a bit of content for the world (a character, a location, a piece of technology, a rumour…) you don’t create it yourself; you ask someone else about it. This is true in setup and during play.
  • I’ve created a more developed process for deciding what scenes should focus on, and for deciding who is MCing at any given time.
  • I added a very simple harm system. Whenever someone tries to inflict harm on another character, they say what they’re doing in the fiction, then ask someone else what the outcome is. I want harm to be kept simple and fiction-based, and I want the decision to inflict harm to recognise that, once the bullets start to fly, you can’t entirely control the resulting pain and injury.
  • I’ve switched the psychic maelstrom to a Battlestar Galactica-esque set of gods who you make sacrifices to and petition for aid.
  • I’ve added a new skin called The Foundling, who was once part of a networked hive mind connected to a parent AI and has somehow become separated from the parent. They’re a bit like the Hollow in Monsterhearts, lacking a clear identity and anxious to understand humanity.

How did the playtest go?

  • Character gen was fantastic. Beyond my wildest dreams, really. It took 45 minutes and yielded well-realised characters with charged relationships but plenty of undefined space to explore in play.
  • The play itself went well, but I think that was more a testament to the quality of my players than the system I wrote. I suspect people were relying on their own habits of running fairly systemless games rather than my rules. (The excellent setup will have helped, of course.)
  • This was partly the result of my failure to effectively teach the rules, and I’m clear that the game needs a Lovecraftesque-style teaching guide that guides you through the rules systematically.
  • It was also partly the result of information overload. I should have realised this would be a problem, because I think DA was already pretty hard work and Space Askew added a bunch of extra stuff.
  • I hadn’t fully appreciated how Play to find out and Ask questions aren’t particularly obvious or intuitive ways to play. As the only person who had read the rules outside the playsheets, I needed to do more to explain this (and the teacing guide would need to include this).

So what am I doing next?

  • I’ve already begun work to streamline the amount of information in the game, reducing the number of Principles and Moves to a manageable level, and focusing on what is really core to the game.
  • I’m going to write a teaching guide which ensures certain rules that aren’t on the playsheets gets mentioned, that key principles are explained in more detail, and that character gen is more structured.
  • I’m going to turn the Situation sheets into something a bit more resembling a character sheet, complete with setup questions.

Watch this space!

Josh Fox

Rabalias grew up wanting to be a pirate. But a band of evil bureaucrats kidnapped him and forced him to work for The Man. Even so, Rabalias was patient and cunning. He escaped by gnawing his way through the walls of his prison and concealing the hole behind a picture of cthulhu. He fled to the coast, and stowed away on the Black Armada, where he worked his way up to the rank of Admiral.

4 thoughts to “Designer Diary: Space Askew”

  1. Hi Rabalias !

    I really dig your idea about tweaking some details in DA and create a sort of space hack.
    Actually, I play DA twice a week with many different player in order to create / adjust some routine.

    A french translation of DA has been created and we are working on it for tweaking the scene creation process and adding some question for the situations.

    Would you like to share your version ?

    You can find our version here : https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9XZUEbmrokfUS0wcXpBOF9temc/view ( in french .. sorry !)

    1. Bonjour Matthieu

      Without having clicked the link yet, my french is almost certainly not good enough to read your document. But thanks for sharing anyway!

      My Space Askew project continues to evolve and is currently in a state of flux. Still, you might find the last stable version of the game interesting – it certainly has a bunch of useful stuff about scene framing and suchlike. Do you have an email address I could contact you on?

      Josh

      1. Thanks Josh for your message.

        I ‘ll try to translate the few sentences that we had.

        You can send it to matthieu[at]mateline[dot]fr

        I can’t wait to read your project.
        DA is so good for so many reason. I really dig how the game involve the players in a mutual consensus about how to share narration and responsabilities.

        It’s a real game design playground ! So much things can be imagined in order to make players confident, help them to listen to each other, etc..

        Actually, I am testing four little addings :
        + Give 10 min for a personnal brainstorming about their character ans situation ( not World building nor question yet)
        + Add question about their situations before question between character
        + Make them create a place
        + Run a flashback/test first scene

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