Hello y’all, here the latest from Playful Futures.
In the last two weeks we switched hats and started the design process, everyone of us came up with different prototypes and ideas 5 at the beginning now 6, you can read them here (link).
We discussed the theme and game mechanic of each one and the play tested the one that seemed more promising, it’s called Latest Edition (link)
It’s a 3 act online LARP in which the players are up and coming reporter from different Distrikt of Witness, they just landed a job at a Tabloid newspaper (not exactly their dream job) but they are out to make the most of it.
The first scene is a round of introduction, in which they have to show off some of their latest reporting, in order to facilitate this part every player can look at real tabloid website but they have to make it relevant and coherent with the District that they come from.
The second scene is at the bar right outside the newspaper building, and in this one reporters tease each other with a sequence of question and response about their respective Distrikt, for example, one of the reported was from Avantgrid, so one question was, “I heard that in Avantgrid you have a real problem with waste management, maybe is just a rumor, but entire islands made of trash? Is that true?!” The scene proceed with everyone sharing their doubts or rumors to others.
Scene 3 is actually in the reporting room, the director has decided that they want to make a special sunday issue only about sea level rising and no matter if this is a Tabloid, they want a great cover story. Every reporter has to come up with a story about their Distrikt, pitch it and explain why is relevant and great for Witness in general. After the pitching phase everyone votes and the story got selected.
The epilogue is played as a montage of quick scenes, the player that has their story as a cover story has just landed a more important job and it’s free to move to another Distrikt or stay, the other players have to roll a die and describe a scene accordingly, if they are free to move they can pick one of the Distrikt of the other players.
Timewise the game was 55 minutes long, but it was just 3 players, this raised a question about the final design: we are not sure if the game should be 90 minutes for 10 players or two session of 45 minutes with 5 players each, at the moment we are leaning more toward the second option.
Scene 2 felt a little disconnected from the rest, although it was very funny and interesting and definitively very good to harvest content about Witness’s Distrikts.
The voting moment (best cover story-scene 3) and the epilogue where great also to have some hard data on what Distrikt people like the most and where they feel it will be better to be in a sea level rising scenario.
note: at the beginning we picked the Distrikt that we knew better, in the final game probably players will be prompted with short description of the Distrikts and be free to choose the one that they prefer.
After this playtest we worked a little more and tomorrow we will playtest a new design, more map oriented called A town by the Sea (link), that explore more ecological grief concepts and is more tight to sea level rising.
We think that in one or two weeks we will be able to host some open playtest session, so if you’re interested please reach out!
