by The rwinder
Thank you for joining me for day three of my journey through trying to design a satisfying haiku-writing adventure game. Last time I remembered happily and frustratedly my bigger games of Haiku Island and Haiku Journey.:star: Haiku Island 36 – a Lean Table-Generated Card Game
My next reaction was to remove all the books and paragraphs and try to put everything on cards. Not only that, the game would be on only 36 cards (6 numbers and 6 suits paired up). That’s right, it would be a fixed size Make-as-You-Play game where you would make haiku but only a limited number that would go into a deck that also consisted of location cards that had encounters populated by tables tied to different urban and wilderness themes, places you’d go on the way to a special place at the end that would let you add haiku.
There was no map, it was all abstract and you could travel to any location to make progress to the goal, but some locations were much more dangerous than others and you never could be quite sure what bad effects might befall you given what was on the cards.
Rather than “testing” against suits as in the previous game there were a suite of mini-games encounters would impose based around micro-activities like:
- Dueling (you could get insta-killed in this game; it was great)
- Journeying (basically taking a side trip)
- Outwitting (craftier opponents would try to swindle you)
- Matcha (a tea ceremony that would give you ideas for haiku, purportedly)
Sadly, the only one I really remember how it played out (I’m still hunting down my notes on the rules) is dueling, which involved a variant of Uno against cards discarded from the deck, where if you passed you lived and if you couldn’t match…well, you were killed.
The game also tracked your MIND, BODY, and IDEAs through using counts of cards instead of tracks, which worked despite being a big case of remember what cards mean what depending on where they are. I’m also still looking for the cards I made for this, which I might upload in the comments with some more description to flesh out how it all worked.
The big problem here was that while this was functional, it wasn’t quite fun enough and most importantly, it did not feel like it was really about writing haiku. It did have wondrous spots to visit, but they were not so varied, especially in a limited size deck. Then again, you could start from scratch and get a very different deck by the end, which was interesting.
The haiku felt very incidental in a “wander mythic Japan rogue-like” which I think could be done better in both respects. In fact, that led to my next design where I decided maybe a map was needed after all…
:star: Haiku Trail – a One Sheet Board Game
If I couldn’t stay within the confines of 36 cards in a way that really satisfied me, then maybe I could instead say within the confines of a game board that had almost all the info you needed turn-to-turn to play. Basically, it gave random encounters that were a little generic but pretty evocative of what they meant to be for different terrain and the cards represented the “secret spots” you went to find to write haiku and of course your haiku were on cards too.
Here's a snapshot of the most recent game board for this version of the game called Haiku Trail
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Yeah… without the rules, I am sure it’s a bit of a splatter, but it’s actually quite concise and clear-cut and works well, even if I am not totally sure of its difficulty balance. Just a few of the things that made this special:
:nostar: The map provides a longer path outward to walk (although you can go in either direction as start or finish) and I suppose it looks a little like games in the 1572 series, although the gameplay is quite different.
:nostar: Your poets have identity cards with 6 stats (those six suits I love to use) that are associated with sort of standard RPG stats (HAND is strength, SKULL is intelligence, etc.) and these stats can go up or down over the game (along with the character collecting experience, age, and wounds).
:nostar: Traveling is not a case of suit matches terrain (as in the earliest games) but instead cost to move into a terrain is a number based on its difficulty; not super imaginative, but it meant that high-valued cards were useful but because “skill tests” require you to roll low, meaning low numbers are good too.
:nostar: Terrain is generated using a table based on what is nearby, which can lead to more “realistic” layouts and importantly prevents specific terrain (villages) from appearing next to each other.
:nostar: The secret spot cards were the only “creative writing” element besides writing the haiku. Basically, you would generate a crazy random name for a place, a random skill test, a random pass effect, and a random fail effect and then you would write a story to fit it and then write a haiku.
Does that last one sound fun? It was for me, but I realized that it might be a big drag for people who don’t want to “world build” while exploring in a single-player game but rather find things and then write their reactions in haiku. That’s very understandable, and it meant the game really hadn’t escaped the problems of the original RPG.
However, I think with the games of Last Haiku under my belt, going back and making the generation of sites more like that game eliminates this hang-up and smooths out the gameplay to being a series of wilderness challenges on the way to the amazing places where you could find haiku, which in turn can be discovered by future poets and used to help them pass tests. I’m already starting to experiment with this variant of Haiku Trail. I think it holds promise. It's brisk but feels like an adventure with enough of a “rogue-like” edge to make the world dangerous but not requiring so deep an investment in any one character that you can’t whip up another and make another go at the wilds and writing haiku, trying to survive so you can finish that last haiku…
And speaking of Last Haiku…
:star: Last Haiku – a Pure Card Game
And finally, we arrive at the game I think distills what I want in a “haiku” game to its purest essence. It literally is only the sentence I offered up in the earlier post:
“…you play a lone poet who travels into remote places and sees inspiring sights that lead to writing lines of haiku.”
The game elements provide enough fun decisions and mild risks, there’s a good feeling when you can find an especially distant site and the scores offer a pleasant in-game reinforcement for going further. The prompts are not too specific (and repetitive) but neither are they too vague, they do not require huge creative writing tasks from the player and they let imaginative focus squarely lie on “the next line of haiku.”
Unlike Haiku Island or Haiku Journey or Haiku Trail you will finish your haiku. It’s only a question of how far you go to do it.
:star: Who Would Like This? Any of This?
This is a difficult question to answer. I know people like writing haiku… just look at the number of “haiku reviews” of games on this site! The problem is, I don’t know if people are interested in composing haiku in the framework I’ve specified. I think it would be ok provided there’s a sense of progress and/or adventure and/or story to inspire ideas. I believe the most exciting versions also levy the greatest expectations of creativity or dedication to playing, but I think it’s safer to start with something smaller that works and see if that has enough of a “following” to go bigger and bigger. So, while my development has led down a path of simplifying and smoothing the game, the release path might gradually go in the other direction.
But returning to the point, who would like it? Probably people who want…
:nostar: a creative outlet in their game, especially for short creative bursts that haiku allow
:nostar: a game about travel and progress
:nostar: a game that can grow and let you revisit content… which is kind of a mainstay for the Make-as-You-Play genre
It’s not easy to find games that others like or find compelling that would also attract them to this. Perhaps journaling role-playing games like Thousand Year Old Vampire, Artefact, or Journey that might be the most similar. Or games that emphasize travel like Ryuutama or Wanderhome In terms of board games and card games, where this game seems to fit even if uncomfortably, the ones that I like (or am excited to play) that come to mind are Tokaido or Earthborne Rangers. I’m curious if anyone has ideas for other games that I’m overlooking. Please tell me in the comments if you think of one!
:star: Playtesting
I’d be eager for any of the haiku games above to see the light of day, but many of them pose a great challenge to produce and, more importantly, to play. It’s unclear I think Haiku Trail is the closest to being ready to go besides Last Haiku, so I will give that some attention, especially with the lessons learned from what I like in Last Haiku.
That said, I’ll remind you the rules for Last Haiku are ready to be tested. If you are interested in playtesting the game, direct message me and I’ll figure out how to get you your own PDF copy to try it out. If I can get it in good enough shape, I’ll release it as I did with Star Charter.
I’ll also be doing my own play-testing of Haiku Trail to see if my fresh ideas overcome its problems. Right now, my initial games have been the most fun I have had with it, so that seems promising. If it gets to a state where it can be playtested, I’ll let you know.
:star: The Make-as-You-Play Genre
This is a stub for anyone encountering this blog for the first time. If you are unfamiliar with the whole "Make-as-You-Play" game concept, I'd recommend the following links:
:nostar: Welcome to the Make-As-You-Play Games Guild!– an overview of the genre at the Make-as-You-Play Games Guild
:nostar: Making Games as You Play– the inaugural blog entry on the topic
:nostar: Deep Future– a representative game in the genre about interstellar conquest
:nostar: Big Picture– a representative game in the genre about making hit movies and flops
:nostar: Star Charter– a representative game in the genre about discovering bizarre worlds