Hey there,

Friday night at Gen Con was the peak of the con for me. I got to play the amazing Stalingrad love tragedy of Shooting the Moon with Scott and Jye. And just before that, I playtested my alien first encounter game, Sign in Stranger, with Vincent, Tom, Clinton, Danielle and Caulder.  I hope that Tom and Clinton will someday forgive me for taking them and their characters through such an amazingly funny and crazily traumatic first day on their new alien home.  But we laughed and laughed, and that is about the best thing I could have asked for in an initial playtest for a game. I'd love to hear what impressions you all--and Phil and Jake who listened and contributed too--took away.

Strange journeys
So, Sign in Stranger has been lurking about in the back of my head since the 2003 Iron Game Chef - Simulationist (remember back when they were themed by GNS?).  The name comes from a Steely Dan song. That contest is what made me believe I could write a game, so it's a pleasure to be returning to the project with more skills and tools for the task.  You play humans venturing forth from a disease quarantined earth to go establish a colony on an alien inhabited planet.  The game is all about the culture shock of being among the unknown, relying on those you have around you, and the entanglements and empowerments that the human colonists will establish on their new home over time. Humans who leave earth can't go back, due to receiving a Cure that lets them live among different forms of life, but that can change them over time.

Our cast
You start out by making up an alien species and a world to go to, and some verbs and nouns that will be used later on as a springboard for what the alien environs are like.  Then--before we shared what the aliens and planets were like--we made up our human colonists.  They were from all over the world, Clinton's character Bikram was a jeweler from India. Caulder's Fu Su Lu was a strapping third-son peasant from China.  My character was a lighting techie from Brazil, and the other three were from the US: Tom's Brian, the puppeteer from LA; Vincent's John, the audiologist from New Jersey and Danielle's character (Rebecca?) from NYC. 

It didn't come much into play, but we gave John and Rebecca a relationship: they had bonded during the training period since they were from the same general area, so were friends.  Relationship, positive or negative, will help the colonists figure out the wierd inscrutable things they encounter in their new home, and also deal with the emotional upheaval and trauma that this kind of translocation can cause.  Clinton pointed out that the situation the characters are in is just like being in the peace corps:  you are sent far away to work and help a people with customs and environments far different from your own, which can be utterly overwhelming at times.  The players choose a stress response for their character, how they will respond if they become overwhelmed. They chose things like "head down, work harder", "withdraw", "freeze up" and "sleep".  We got to see this in action for two of the characters later in the game. 

Do what, for who?
So, once we had our characters we played out the first scene of the game. Choosing which alien planet to go to, in character.  We got to look at what everyone had written for the first time.  We had planets like Bai Iat with aliens who breathed through disgusting mucus filters but had clear colorful eyes where we would work as their analog of police detectives. How could we possibly be police detectives? And would we grow mucus filters too?  We had Omnicron-Beta V with the Flansha who had an aura of calm, but were cannibals. Would we be safe there? Was that okay, if they were cannibals did that mean they wouldn't eat humans? The job we'd be assigned there was to be middle manager/morticians, so that pretty much sounded hellish, so we kept on looking. On P'Atha we would do underwater welding for the Scona who had beautiful iridescent skin. But they had repulsive eating habits.  Again, what did this mean? Would they be dangerous eating habits or just gross? What else is in the pile...being locksmiths for the Hinn, quadrupeds with tentacles and many mouths and beautiful vocal qualities, grinding corn on Silve for the turquoise Farrar with their repulsive, garbage-like smell, or processing plankton in subterranean seas for the Pineel on Onjongri, who were eerily eyeless and so unwasteful that they excreted fuel--and this was what made them attractive! 

What a choice, what to choose? We went round about for a while and decided to settle on S'Rann and be locksmiths for the Hinn.  Their world was a satellite and the environment we'd be living in was space--what would the three of us naturalists do? Would there be plants and animals to study?  My zoologist character was re-assured that we could always establish a zoo and terrarium, and that we'd probably find geology in the planet the satellite orbited, so S'Rann it was.

Brave new world
Enter the world development system:  It's simple. At the start of each session, everyone writes a couple words on small sheets of paper. Two nouns and two verbs, that have no connection with anything else we've created. Just whatever comes to mind. Then, whenever you are first interacting with some aspect of the world you choose a word. Nouns for objects, aliens and places etc, verbs to see what somebeing is doing. The first word that we chose was "temple", I think it was one Danielle had written.  From this Tom suggested the place was a large created colony that was ziggurat-like in shape, with different biomes in the "steps" of the pyramid.  Fricking cool.  Once you generate a description, you write it down on an index card that you put on the table between everyone.  They will eventually be transferred to the world description sheet, or notebooks kept by each of the colonists on their area of expertise.  Until they are transferred, their presence on the index card means that they are really still very much a mystery to the humans.  They are interpreting what they see in terms of what they know from earth, but the reality of the thing can be very different.  So interacting with something on an index card means that it's real meaning has not been nailed down, and thus can cause some major mishaps.

Inner space
Enter the mishaps:  once we had settled our characters in their new domicile (strange buildings on stilts above a wetland-like area with large crane-like bird things), Tom had his character Brian try to do something simple: figure out how to go to the bathroom.  He chose a word from the pile of nouns and got "ball".  Okay, we described him finding a large ball type thing inset into the floor in the middle of one of the rooms.  Then he made a roll to see how this "exploration" went. 

Your roll three ten sided dice: one for physical outcomes, one for social, and one for mental/emotional outcomes.  Watch that last one, it's a doozy.  Poor Brian got a triple loss, with moderate failures, just outcomes that would be an inconvenience, nothing that serious. For the physical, we figured he peed on the ball and it dribbled out making the place stinky.  For the social, the other colonists got pissed off at him (so to speak).  But then for the mental/emotional:  his failure was minor, so he didn't go into his stress response. He didn't panic basically, but Tom got to play out a Resonance scene.  A flashback to an incident in this character's past on earth that reminded him in some way of this situation. 

So we asked Tom to frame a scene that might fit the bill.  He suggested a moment when his character was in kindergarten, it was his turn to feed the class hamster and he had to go pee.  Then we cast the rest of us as other people in that situation.  Tom asked me to play the girl that Brian had a crush on in class. Vincent was the bully who picked on him. Clinton was his best friend, and Danielle played the teacher.  Who would Caulder be?  He got to be the hamster, and described himself looking very cute, waiting to be fed.

--Okay, going into this scene, I had no idea specifically how this was going to tie in with colony scene.  I figured Brian would have some kind of embarrasing thing happen, maybe he peed his pants, maybe he almost did etc.  But in retrospect it seems so inevitable, the framing of the scene so perfect and each person's contribution so inexorably leading us to exactly the right thing happening to bring it all together--but it's 20/20 hindsight--did any of us plan this?  Was it just the wisdom of the group's unconscious leading us to that moment?  In Clinton's scene it was me that brought in an element that brought it all together, but I had zero conscious intension to do so. 

So, back Tom's flashback scene: little Brian has to pee but it is his turn to feed the hamster. Vincent's little bully starts calling Brian a spaz.  My cute girl character starts flirting with him and saying how hungry the hamster must be. The teacher comes over to see what is going on and tells Brian to hurry up and feed the hamster so the class can move on to snack time. Brian is dancing in place, muttering "I've just gotta go...."  In comes his best bud, played by Clinton who completely nails the scene.  He comes up to Brian, "pssst....check it out..." He holds out the hamster ball to Brian, and dares him--no, double dares him--to pee, in there. 

I will never look at a hamster ball the same way again.

More to come
In this session, we played out Tom's scene, then one for Clinton's character where he had a total freak out while trying to cook us all some food using a lamp-like structure that gave him an awful sunburn and a flashback to screwing up his first real jeweler's task he did on his own.  Thrown off in a delicate maneuver by his mom noisily distracting him by chopping vegetables for his favorite dish. Bikram had to be tackled by the others to keep him from breaking out 6 months worth of E-Z rations in his panicked frenzy to take care of everyone. Tom and Clinton got to add these memories to their character sheet as an entry to their personal log, that would be a resource they can use in the future. They help flesh out the character, and may lead to a bigger "issue" that the character deals with that brings direction and drama to their life on the alien planet.

The rules that we were using, pretty much take you through the first phase of the colonists' life on the new planet. Learning about their own immediate environs.  As I've been reflecting on it since then, it seems like there will be three distinct parts: the initial settling in, when relationships between the colonists are formed and the characters of the humans are revealed. Then the exploration phase, where they venture out into the world, doing missions in small groups and forming relationships with aliens.  Then as issues that the humans get involved in accrue--the characters will have crises to deal with, working together or against one another as they are pushed and pulled by the pressures and new attachments the make as they assimilate and become naturalized to their new home, or refuse to do so. 

This is going to be a long form game.  Open ended, with a structure, but one that is flexible and changes with every play group and is dynamic over time.  And there is no gm. It's going to be very de-centralized, and character immersion oriented.  So, it's going to get some serious playtesting as it develops. So far I'm finding much more at my free-form/improv system experience than anything else for rules and guidelines that relate so far.

best,
Emily

It's hard to convey how & why it was so funny and touching.  More playtest on the way.

best,
Emily

Hey,

  This was a rare treat for me.  I don't think I've ever gotten to traumatize a game designer and a bunch of fellow players during a playtest.

  So, as Emily says, this is a long-form game and we didn't really get a chance to dig into the mechanics beyond set up and the first few scenes.  I will say that game prep is a hoot.  It along with Best Friends are in a rare breed of games that provides for group entertainment during set-up.  The mad-lib mechanics are the perfect thing for this.  It's also very intersting to look at the various aliens and review what people consider to be attractive and repellent in their alien beings.  Many of our aliens had an eating focus for the repellent end of things.  Either they were cannibals or they were slobbery when they ate or they had big mouths or something.  Maybe we all just needed a snack.

  One thing I remember from the set-up is that we had to come up with two jobs in English and then their equivalent alien word.  The idea being that they grabbed a couple of selections from the classifieds and translated it for you.  I thought that these were just examples to a.) highlight the feel of the alien language and b.) possibly highlight jobs that could exist in the alien world. I didn't necesssarily think that our crew was going to the alien world to do those jobs, but my impression is that other people figured we'd have to do whatever jobs were listed in the alien world description.  There are pros and cons either way, but you may want to be a bit more explicit about how those jobs should be interpeted.

  The other problem from those opening rounds is that our chances to correctly figure out the alien world were very poor.  That's perfectly fine, but I wasn't clear on how you would improve over time to actually be able to determine that the greeen square is really the sleeping surface.  This isn't necessarily a problem with the game, we just never really went on long enough to find out about it.  The same is true about the mechanics for how the alien world changes you and you become more inhuman as you figure out the alien world stuff.  We just didn't have enough time.

  Cetainly I look forward to more playtests as this game moves forward.

later
Tom

I am SO in love with this game. I have been since Clinton told me about the hamster ball. Thanks for posting more about it.

This game was great. I don't have a lot to add that hasn't been said, except this: you generate a stack of nouns (nouns, right, Emily?) at the beginning of the game. You have no idea why. These are later used to describe what you find when you try and do something on the alien planet. This mechanic is perhaps the most genius and hilarious thing I have ever seen.

This is going to sound a little fanboyish (and I am), but Emily is making games that are different from not only traditional RPGs, but different from anything here on the Forge. She is a true innovater, and this game is the most innovative of all. I immediately had the sensation of being thrown into unfamiliar cultural waters, and my flashback scene about making my first wedding ring as the bride's mother and my own father yell at me was a transcendent piece of role-playing.

Thank you, Clinton, John. That means the world to me. Really. Clinton, not to go all mutual admiration society on you, but you are an incredible inspiration for me. And this game (or any of them) would not exist but for what you've done with the Forge, so, you know, mucho gracias.

Glad you had fun, Tom. And yes, the way advancement and ability to be more effective in the world over time works will become clearer with further play.  The game will probably ratchet up into a Red Mars type narrative, so I'm working on the mechanics that will structure that. Simply, as your character gains more experience and connections in the new world, you as a player will gain more power to determine what and how things are. 

Also, I have huge thanks to give to Mike Holmes. This game came out of the second(?) iron game chef contest, and his feedback on it was amazing and crucial in many ways to my keeping on with game development in general. So, yeah, thanks team Forge. Y'all rock hard.

best,
Em

This game sounds truly fantastic, a complete departure to other games I've read (and particularly well written playtest too).

How would I go about selling this to a bunch of hard-bitten Science Fiction fans? They are open minded but the game must be presented in the right way. How might I do that?

Thanks Rob!

Good question.  What kind of hard-bitten fans are they? What do you think they would be looking for in a game?

Two influential models for the Sign in Stranger are Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, and Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy. (I hadn't noticed they were both trios of books before : )  The deep immersion of the characters in strange, unknown alien environments is straight from Dawn by Butler, and the later stages of the world where the humans become key players in political, military, or ecological complications of the world are inspired by Red Mars.  That might give them an idea about the kinds of stories they could create.

What the game offers is an opportunity to do in depth exploration of an alien world, through player collaboration.  So if they would love to dig their teeth into creating an alien world and civilization, and then develop and play out the conflicts that humans have with it on every level--physical, emotional, social--this would be a good game for them.

And if you haven't checked out Shock: Social Science Fiction yet, I would highly recommend doing so.

best,
Emily

I'm not sure what I can add here except that I could have watched you guys play this game all night. It was neat.

I read the booklet you handed me on the flight back to Portland, but I think I want to reread it before I comment on it.

Jake