Retrospective: Pixels & Platforms

I enjoyed writing the Mythic Beings Retrospective, a re-examination of my very first post, so I decided to do another retrospective. I recently published my second game, Maximum Recursion Depth, for the Eclectic Bastionjam, so I thought I might do a retrospective on my first game, Pixels & Platforms for the SWORDDREAM DREAMJAM (I also wrote an article about P&P for the high level games blog).

Overview

P&P is intended to simulate the experience of old-school 2D platformer videogames in a tabletop RPG, using a resolution mechanic building off of Lasers & Feelings. It is loosely framed within my setting The Quantumverse, although the way I present it in P&P is more so like an off-brand NES crossover (although I do have bigger ideas for that setting which I haven't written about).

There are three attributes; JUMP, SPECIAL, and FIGHT, and each attribute has a Light and Heavy input. For each attribute, you choose a NICE! number between 2-5. For Light actions, you want to roll over the NICE! number (lower is better), and the reverse for Heavy. The particulars of what these attributes are used for, and the differences between Light and Heavy Inputs for each attribute, are described in further detail in the Select Screen and Control sections of the game, but this is the core of the game mechanics.

The CPU (the term for the GM in this system), designs a Platform Crawl, a series of Screens (or Stages, or Worlds, depending on the scope of the game), consisting of traversable platforms and various enemies and obstacles. Unlike a real 2D Platformer videogame, there is obviously no real-time input for platforming, and very early on I decided that the challenge should not come from success or failure on JUMP rolls per se; that would basically just be chance and not very much fun. Instead, the platform crawls should be designed such that there are many ways to go about getting from one end of a stage to another, and it's a matter of the party figuring out how to leverage their attributes and special abilities to collectively get across. In some ways, it's almost more like a boardgame than a TTRPG per se, for better or worse. I have some additional thoughts on this which I discuss in the conclusion.

There were a lot of ideas for this game that I think worked, and some that didn't. It's biggest flaws, I think, are that it lacks polish and that it needed more supplementary content. In particular, it very clearly needed to have a platform crawl module included. Despite being a small game, I think it was actually fairly ambitious in what it tried to do, but as a result, I needed to do more within the text to demonstrate to readers how it should work. I also think I needed to have a deeper understanding of it myself. In retrospect, I wish I had designed the resolution mechanics and the platform crawl concept independently and tested them at least to some extent independently, to better understand how to polish the mechanics and articulate them. In general, I needed more playtesting.

That being said, I still think it is an interesting game, with ideas worth consideration and worth exploring further, and I hope this retrospective maybe convinces people to give it a look, or think about these ideas, and maybe I will be able to one day come back to this game and turn it into what it really should be.

Things that worked

The layout could use some work, it's definitely pretty dense, but otherwise, I think looks pretty good. HarveydentMD's cover art is great, and the itch page looks good, and I'm happy with the font I used for the game text itself. It's like a poor man's Super Blood Harvest. In retrospect, if he were even open to doing it, I wish I had commissioned HarveydentMD to do the layout as well and make the whole game look like the cover art and itch page, then it would compare more closely with SBH.

I have mixed feelings about some of the terminology, but overall, I really wanted the game mechanics, down to even the terminology, to be evocative of old-school videogames, and I think I succeeded in that regard. Whether that ultimately makes for a better TTRPG experience is a separate question which I'll discuss later.

The setting. Despite the fact that I include very little explicitly about The Quantumverse within P&P itself, and most of what is included is like an off-brand Nintendo crossover, I still like the way the character classes, enemies, items, etc., generally present. I had some more ambitious ideas for the setting which I never ended up writing about, unfortunately, but I assure you there was more to this setting, in a classic Weird & Wonderful way, if you've been following this blog long enough to have any sense of what that means. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that I'll ever come back to this setting unless out of nowhere there is suddenly an outcry for more on this game or setting, which is a shame, but my main focus right now is MRD.

The classes. With the caveat that they needed more playtesting and balancing, and I don't necessarily think it makes sense for only two classes to have a variety of options given the Spellbook. In retrospect, there should have been some caveat, like maybe the spell they can cast at any one time is selected randomly, so at least there's a tradeoff to their versatility, or something like that. In any case, I tried to give the different classes special abilities which actually made them interesting and change how a player could interact with the world, and I think within the context of the platform crawl design, it makes sense. It's more prescriptive than I generally prefer in TTRPGs, but within the context of what P&P is supposed to be, I think it makes sense.

The core resolution mechanic. The idea of treating an attribute as two-dimensional; as an axis, where the number on that axis doesn't necessarily mean good or bad, but good at one category of thing and proportionally worse at an opposing category of thing, is really clever and in my opinion underutilized in TTRPGs. I don't understand why this mechanic exists only in L&F or L&F hacks. P&P is to the best of my knowledge the first and only game to actively try to build on this mechanic, as opposed to being just a straightforward hack, and also to leverage it in a totally different way, that way being as a "simulationist"-style mechanic.

Along those lines, putting aside the toxic and, I'll say frankly, stupid debates people used to have on "GNS", since as far as I'm concerned it's a decent heuristic regardless of whether it is a fundamental truth of the universe, it is the only game I can think of that is "simulationist", while also being rules light. "Simulationist" games are generally very crunchy, whereas I tried to use the simplicity of the two-dimensional attributes along with the terminology and platform crawl design pattern to simulate the experience of an old-school 2D platformer videogame in the absence of "high-fidelity" crunch. Regardless of whether or to what extent it succeeded, I still think this is conceptually really cool and with some polish could potentially work quite well.

Things that did not work

Due to time constraints, I only had one playtest, and that one playtest went poorly, which was part of why I did not follow up with as much additional content for the game as I had originally intended. I do genuinely think the poor playtest was in part due to extenuating circumstances and a couple real rooky mistakes in how I ran it, but it was still discouraging. I made a lot of changes after that playtest which I do think were for the best, but those changes were not playtested, so I am not as confident as I would like to be that those changes succeeded. There are also some things when I look back at the game, even without further playtesting, that I know are rough around the edges and need more work.

I said this in the overview, but this game absolutely needed a platform crawl module included. At the core of P&P is a very goal-oriented, puzzle-like design pattern that I think could really appeal both to OSR gamers and the kinds of people who like the tactical combat of D&D 3.+, but without a demonstration, I think it was hard to explain this concept to anyone. Also, frankly, I am not a very visuospatially capable person in the first place, so in retrospect, I wish I had collaborated with someone with those kinds of sensibilities, or even attempted some kind of random auto-generation approach. While this game is not crunchy, it does require a playmat or some other visual or tactile representation, and my reticence to acknowledge that hurt my playtest and the lack of that kind of support really hurt the game as a whole. I do not own Mario Maker, but my players had rightfully suggested that something like Mario Maker could have been a useful tool for roughly designing platform crawls. I still think that, or just taking asset rips of the stages from old-school 2D platformer videogames, could work really well for P&P, at least as proofs of concept.

My hope was that the terminology would be flavorful, and also intuitive. However, at least in the playtest, everyone had a very difficult time keeping track of the terminology, myself included, mainly from being flustered because I definitely understood it all beforehand, but if I failed to keep track of it while running the game, that means it failed. After the fact, I completely reworked the terminology. Rather than having separate terms for each end of the axis for the three attributes, and using the terms Left and Right "Inputs" for the axes of the attributes which obviously got conflated with left and right movement across the Stages, I replaced Left and Right with Light and Heavy, and just referred to them as e.g. Light Jump and Heavy Jump rather than unique terms for each. I also think maybe some kind of visual aid even within the game text itself, like a graphic showing what a rollover vs. a roll-under success would look like next to the description of Light and Heavy Inputs, could have been very helpful. Given how the first playtest went, I am somewhat skeptical whether these new terms work and would ideally like to playtest them as well, although I do hope they're at least an improvement.

Conclusion

Talking about this game really makes me want to playtest it again, and design a proper platform crawl module to go along with it. This concept I genuinely think has so much potential, but it's very experimental and just needed more time and playtesting. I almost would want to make it a sub-game, like run a campaign in The Quantumverse using something more like an Into the Odd / Super Blood Harvest hack, and then make platform crawls an occasional thing like one might do with hex crawls, dungeon crawls, point crawls, etc. That would also put a lot of burden off of this system to accommodate more heavy lifting in RP or non-platform crawl activities, which is decidedly not the case.

If this at all seems appealing to you, please let me know. My main focus right now is on developing and expanding Maximum Recursion Depth, so it would be hard to justify putting more work into this unless there was any interest whatsoever in it, but clearly I'm trying to talk myself into it...

Pixels & Platforms: The Platform Crawl RPG

Pixels & Platforms is live! It's my tabletop RPG that I submitted for DREAMJAM, and I think it's really cool. It's PWYW and all eyeballs appreciated.

From the game description:

A micro-Tabletop RPG primarily for one-shot adventures inspired by retro 2D platformer video games.

The rules of Pixels & Platforms are inspired by the tabletop RPG Lasers & Feelings by John Harper, but build upon that framework for a somewhat more complex game. 

Pixels & Platforms uses three attributes, and is designed to emulate the feel of retro 2D platformer videogames in tabletop form. This is a game of Platform Crawling; where a Stage is like a dungeon and each Screen is a puzzle platforming challenge!

Pixels & Platforms uses the Quantumverse as its default setting, but the rules are light enough to support other settings, such as adapting your favorite retro 2D platformer videogame!

Micro-Settings

I've been trying to move away from writing tables, because I've gotten so comfortable with doing them, but also because I feel so comfortable doing them, I want to keep doing them! At the same time, I've been trying to write micro-settings, and I just keep finding mental blocks, or being unsatisfied with what I've written and how it's conveying the setting. So I decided, why not just make a table of settings! Some of these settings are intended as full-blown settings, others could be fit into larger settings (and in fact some of these are intended to fit into each other). It's the most micro way to do micro-settings, but it'll include settings I've already talked about in depth such as Phantasmos. Having to train myself to reduce a setting to a few sentences or less should be a good exercise if nothing else.

Also, depending on the feedback I get for these settings, that may influence which ones I decide to focus on next for my full post write-ups!

Image Source: https://mertun.artstation.com/

Setting	Description
Antikythera Nova	A non-Anglocentric scifi future. A gritty space opera. Eldritch trans-humans. Psionic signal processing aliens manipulating quantum uncertainty. A dash of speculative science.
Aquarian Dawn	A low fantasy feudal world, several hundreds or thousands of years after a high fantasy / science fantasy post-apocalypse. The typical fantasy races have mostly receded or taken on niche roles in this world, while humanity desperately clings to the Middle Realm. However, with the arrival from the seas of the peaceful, socialist, androgynous aqua-colored humanoids known as the Aquarians, humanity must face the fact that their age is coming to an end. Some wish to take this transition with grace, as many of the other races have, while others wish to fight and struggle against the (literally and figuratively) rising tide to the last.
Carnopolis	An ever-expanding city, like a slimy, protoplasmic meat or fungus. A living shoggoth city. The shoggoth matter are like nanomachines, able to rearrange the structure of the city or encode information, creating a hybrid virtual/augmented reality where there is no meaningful distinction between the physical and virtual. Generations of survivors living in a world of never-ending hostility. A city that can be anything. A city designed to kill.
Cold War Under a Rising Sun	An alternate history where the atomic bomb was never dropped on Japan. In a prolonged second world war, the victorious allies carve Japan, the Soviet Union creating North Japan, and the western allies creating South Japan. Both Japans become cultural, technological, and economic powerhouses. Given the prosperity of the Russo-Ainu North Japan, this is a 1960's Cold War-era where the people in the communist world actually thrive. It's a world as much pulp as noir, with gadget-toting superspies, secret nazi revival sects, and world-threatening super-terrorists.
Dark and Misty Remains	A world of The Darkness Lagash and The Nameless Mist, the space in between the shell and spine of a world-sized dragon turtle. Albino underdeinos and platypus people who sense the electrical activity of muscle contractions and weird creatures made of dark matter and harnessing dark energy. A subway train system made of bone and the electrical activity of massive nerve tissue and muscle fibers. Houses the remains of Thalarion, the city of a thousand wonders, the undead shamanic Skadamutc and their necrotic god Lathi.
Frost and the Final Frontier	A near future semi-hard scifi setting where Antarctica has been colonized, and is in the early stages of urbanization. A modern-day New World / Wild West. Heavily reliant on technology, but with early-20th century-esque access to resources. As much if not more so Chinese and Russian as American or Western European. A sprawling Denver-like city. A utopian military-science industrial complex, like a precursor to the Federation in Star Trek or Heinlein if he were less crazy.
I-Cons	A near future cyberpunk world where electromagnetism has somehow fundamentally changed. While limited radio and television transmission is still possible, the internet is gone and nearly all electronic or electroconductive devices are connected to the Noö-Net. Humans can observe this realm, but can only interact with it through their Individual Constructs (I-Con), a Noö-Net artificial lifeform, trained like a neural network from the consciousness of their operator.
Kwik & Kantankerous	A near future cyberpunk world with a 90's-00's LA street racing aesthetic. A world populated by fungal, plant, and animal humanoids across socioeconomic strata race weaponized kwik karts in the streets. A world of gangwars, heists, social justice, and family.
Monsters and Madmen	The big war; the cities bombed and nations EM-pulsed; civilization as we know it is on the way out, but adults still cling to the old world from only a few years ago. On the other hand, the children wish only to leave their homes, to travel the empty, broken roads, and to collect and battle the monsters that have surfaced (or, perhaps, resurfaced) in the wake of humanity's decline. The world is in anarchy. Some of the magical creatures the children geas are intelligent, some infinitely more so than humans. They bide their time as anarchy ensues and humanity dissolves under its own weight.
Overlight	Deep-dream qualia elves, golden carp-dragons, rainbow thunderbirds, baku devas. A realm of soft thunderous clouds like the action potentials of neurons. The air is vaporized alcohol, the clouds are novocain, the lakes and rivers are liquid mercury rising into semi-solid structures, the mountains are lithium salts, and there's a rainbow space elevator to the moon.
Phantasmos	Heavy Metal gonzo weird Lovecraftian BDSM post-post-apocalyptic science fantasy. Lovecraft, Gygax, Dick, Morrison, and Asimov filtered through my own personal lens.
Quantumverse	An emergent microverse that exists "between particles"; a compressed computational world formed from the distribution of sub-atomic particles in physical space. A world of varying densities of compressed and encrypted pixels, voxels, and polygons. A fantasy world on a circuit board; a kingdom of baking-yeast people and the nefarious Rat King; A silk road Arabian Disco.
Second Exodus	In a near future, several decades after narrowly surviving the eldritch kaiju Nephilim, a new breed of monster, the Qlippoth, have forced humanity off the planet and onto orbiting space colonies. The Ein Sof have developed psychokinetic mecha, which must be piloted by children, to take back the planet.
Silicon Survivors	A world of trans-human cyborg hunter-gatherers in a naturalistic world of silicon, plastic, and the most advanced technologies conceived in 1980's science fiction. They ride their white, plastic-skinned, CRT monitor-headed beasts across fields of flayed cables, hunting blocky robots for their nutritious floppy disk innards. They are led by an ancient and wise computer like a knockoff Max Headroom, although some suspect the computer may have ulterior motives.
Starcrossed Sentai	In a small rural town in an anachronistic, mid to late-20th century "golden age" Japan analogue, a group of preteen children are granted superpowers and must save the world from alien invaders, while still passing their exams! Their costumes may look like they were made in a middle school home-ec class (because they were), but when their powers activate, they become the greatest superteam the world has ever known! If the videogame Earthbound is a weird Japanese person's take on Golden Age Americana, this is a weird American's take on Golden Age Japan.
Starflower Voyagers	A utopian post-singularity scifi setting. A trans-human entity, the starflower, a pure and child-like, god-like being, leads bands of loosely affiliated, 1960's-70's mod/hippie anarchic troupes known collectively as the Flower Power, to search the stars for intelligent lifeforms on the verge of their own singularity and assist them in the transition. They generally try to do good elsewhere in the cosmos along the way, not so much like police or judges, but like neighbors or good Samaritans. They are, of course, concerned with the greater philosophical implications of their actions, but generally hold a light heart and take a light touch wherever they go.
Stonepunk Journey	When the first Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait, they were not alone. They encountered monsters and spirits which went on to inspire the mythologies of the First Peoples, but also other intelligent species from sword and sorcery and medieval fantasy such as serpent-men and elves. This is a stonepunk world of chaotic primal magics, of anachronistic stone technologies, and perhaps other hidden, weird secrets.
Vortekka	A world surrounded by a shimmering vortex. 17th century-esque pirates and privateers with a dash of steampunk mechs and flying machines. Competing centripedal and centrifugal forces where humans reside on floating plates and other species reside on the islands and oceans along the inner surface of the shimmering, iridescent vortex.
Weird Wars	A science fantasy trench war... in SPACE. Warp-speed weaponry tear the fabric of reality into pocket dimensions, across which inter-dimensional trench warfare is fought. The heavy, deadly gases allow humans to take flight, but only the mutated Weirders, with their weird-metal bayonets and warp-blades, can maneuver gracefully in the harsh environments of the tears.
World of Wonders	A significantly alternate-history superhero setting where orgodynamics and entropy are opposite but equal physical forces of nature. Many ancient civilizations never fell and social constructs around things like religion, race, and ethnicity operate totally differently than they do in the world as we know it.