Fraser Simons Are there any interviews or articles around w/ insight into why you chose to go with Emotional States as the core mechanic for the Veil? What core gameplay texture was being aimed for, and what type of play to emerge vs. what you’d expect to see with stat-based play?
Or you could talk about it here, if you like 🙂
I think the podcast on creative play and podcast network last year when the kickstarter was going on has me talking about it and the interview series “Five or so questions” Brie Sheldon does has that. Both are in this community, I think under play aides?
Basically though, since it’s a movie we are making I thought states were more helpful to colour the fiction and it’s just more interesting to me. Once you remember all the states I think it takes you less out of the fiction as you’re always grounded in the character and what they’re feeling even when you’re looking for your modifier. Players can hit on scene descriptions around that as hard or as softly as they like but just a little bit we are constantly learning more about their characters and for me, I just get what’s going on in the fiction way more easily with that information being given to me.
I wanted people to learn new things about their characters constantly and when you go to pull the trigger on your mag gun to kill someone tell me and think about what that would look like and feel like so it wasn’t something that you could disengage from as much. If you’re a cold hearted killer, cool. But you’ll have to consider how pulling that trigger makes you feel each and every time first. Plus as the MC ultimately hits on the emotions you’re not good at when framing scenes there’s almost always some emergent details as players realize that on paper the system is really gameable, but in the fiction in order for it to make sense and perhaps even give a dynamic performance and range of emotions, they keep hitting on X emotion and should probably hit on Y because it’s strange they have never rolled with that emotion before. So if you’re super into emotional play you have some gauges right on your sheet for that but if it’s not your bag you can just say I’m mad or scared or whatever and it still gives me a clearer picture of the character and the scene that’s unfolding. That’s the texture I always want present when I’m picturing the movie that is our game.
I wanted the stats in the game to be helpful, especially for people new to roleplaying as well as for me and how I like to ultimately play.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!
When you say we get to constantly learn more about the characters, do you feel like this incentivizes players to communicate their characters better to the table, or even to articulate the characters better to themselves? I find that cyberpunk-y action scenes are precisely the sort where I can get tactical rather than in-the-character, and this seems like it’s strongly designed to stop that sort of behavior, and bring us back to the center of “who is the person pulling the trigger?”
I feel like the common comparison for The Veil is The Sprawl, but I feel like the subjective experience of focusing on the protagonist’s emotional state brings it closer to Headspace. Was that a touchpoint for you when designing the Veil? Did it highlight anything about attention to emotion that you wanted to bring out more, or less, strongly in the Veil?
Sorry if this feels “interviewy,” I’m just very interested in the design decisions behind this. It feels (a) counter-intuitive to me as a player, and yet (b) like this could be the “technology” for a very interesting route forward in PbtA games.
(Aside: I couldn’t find any links to stuff under Play Aides or elsewhere, unless it’s in the Veil 2.0 dropbox link, which – for me, at least, is broken. Some googling did turn up the interview with Brie Sheldon though! http://www.briecs.com/2016/05/today-i-have-interview-with-fraser-simon-the-veil.html)
briecs.com – Five or So Questions with Fraser Simons on The Veil
I don’t mind tactical stuff as well, but I think emotional play still works because it just colours the character more in the fiction. If you’re angry as you pull the trigger the scene looks a lot different in the movie than if they’re joyful or peaceful. The scene will look more “cool” even if it’s not introspective when you’re describing the emotion and state. Alternatively it could be really introspective if that’s the kind of fiction the player wants for that scene too, focusing on that emotion in a reflective way instead.
I actually didn’t know about Headspace at all until the Kickstarter and people asked the same question. Which is surprising because I am generally pretty active on kickstarter and cyberpunk stuff so it sucked I completely missed it. I got a copy now though and played it with Mark Richardson at BreakoutCon and liked it a lot. It focuses on emotions but differently than The Veil. It’s really cool there’s such different play coming from all three cyberpunk games even with the two focused on emotions.
I designed all of the game in a vacuum and tweaked it afterwords. There’s some mechanicy stuff in there that’s similar to The Sprawl that I’m sure was influenced by it as I was aware of that when the 0.2 beta was out even though I also missed the KS for that as well. Tags for weapons and tech and what not, probably the Links move tweaked but inspired by the same in that game. I don’t really remember exactly but otherwise I think the coincidence would be too great. I’m sure Hamish Cameron saw some Sprawl in The Veil when checking it out.
For me it’s really intuitive, just because the kind of clarification I want from players in the fiction is done through states. Lots of players who have played initially feel like they’d game the states or it’d be counter intuitive but have ended up delivering the most dynamic performance because there’s a certain satisfaction in using states to clear and add emotion spikes in a dynamic way instead of trying to spike out by only hitting on one state.
Here’s the link to that interview
podbean.com – WRITER INTERVIEW THE VEIL RPG WITH FRASER SIMONS
I haven’t read The Veil yet. I usually wait until I have the final physical copy in hand, and even then, such a backlog! When my copy arrives it will probably be one of the first games I check out over the summer though.
I liked what I saw when we played at BreakoutCon. I really like the ticking clock on emotional states (a totally different mechanic to Headspace, which could be described the same way), and the art is amazing, of course. I feel like it’s a game I need to read in full to properly appreciate.
So far I don’t recall seeing anything that made me thing of a particular relationship between The Veil and The Sprawl though. We’re drawing from much the same source material, and have much the same cinematic approach, so similarities are inevitable.
I think your Giri moves draw from the same common DNA of PbtA rather from my Links move.
All three cyberpunk PbtA games were developed so close to each other, I don’t think there was much chance for borrowing, tbh.
That’s true the releases are all fairly close aren’t they. Especially considering typical development cycles.
Edit, because I Googled.
Yup, they were all within a year. Feb 2016 for my PDF, June 2016 for Headspace, Nov 2016 for yours.
Books were July 2016, Aug-Oct 2016, Feb 2017 respectively.
PDF was actually December I think!
TBH, the veil feels distinct in the sense that it doesn’t feel “cyberpunk” so much as “transhumanist” (yes, a very fine line to draw) to me. Which is funny, because if tasked with intentionally creating a game along that line of difference, I wouldn’t have imagined it possible.
I would say transhumanist themes and core concepts are definitely the most compelling to me so makes sense. A few people have said that before too