Understanding where designing games overlaps with designing experiences

Our colleagues Logan Timmins and Kiri Bear share the amble and discuss their work with lyric games and ritual games. These emerging genres support players to have meaningful, emotional experiences in a way that expands the category of ‘game’. Exploring these genres, and the grey areas they inhabit, inspires fruitful reflections on designing experiences for purpose, and the nature of art itself. This includes ideas for how facilitators can incorporate experiential tools in their practice, and how game designers can bring their skills into facilitation practice.

Links to resources

Kiri Bear’s Itchi.io store
https://kiribear.itch.io/

Grief::Leaf by Kiri Bear on Itch.io
https://kiribear.itch.io/grief-leaf

Logan Timmins’s “Breathing Stories” Itch.io store
https://breathingstories.itch.io/

Logan Timmins on Twitter: @Ink_And_Stories
https://twitter.com/ink_and_stories

Preparing for Paris by Logan Timmins on Itch.io
https://breathingstories.itch.io/preparing-for-paris

Research into effect of rituals on losing money, reported by Harvard Business Review: “The Restorative Power of Ritual”
https://hbr.org/2020/04/the-restorative-power-of-ritual

The Weekly Service
https://theweeklyservice.org/

Jay Dragon, Possum Creek Games
https://www.possumcreekgames.com/team

AlMost by Jay Dragon, on the Possum Greek Games Itch.io store
https://possumcreekgames.itch.io/almost

Believe by Logan Timmins on Itch.io
https://breathingstories.itch.io/believe

Teatro de los Sentidos
https://www.teatrodelossentidos.com/

“The Echo of the Shadow” by Teatro de los Sentidos, at Melbourne Festival 2016
https://2016.festival.melbourne/events/the-echo-of-the-shadow/

Victorian College of the Arts (VCA)
https://finearts-music.unimelb.edu.au/about-us/vca

Dungeons and Dragons
https://dnd.wizards.com/

The Forgotten Realms fantasy setting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_Realms

The Society of Sensation (Sensates) in Sigil, from a Fandom Wiki
https://sigil-nwn2.fandom.com/wiki/Society_of_Sensation

Theory U
https://www.presencing.org/aboutus/theory-u

MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
https://cci.mit.edu/

Nora Bateson
https://batesoninstitute.org/nora-bateson/

Nora Bateson on Twitter
https://twitter.com/NoraBateson

Artefact by Mousehole Press on Itch.io
https://mouseholepress.itch.io/artefact

The Emergence Podcast
https://emergencemagazine.org/podcast/

Meguey & D. Vincent Baker
https://lumpley.itch.io/

“Powered by the Apocalypse” role-playing game design framework
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_by_the_Apocalypse

Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands by Meguey & D. Vincent Baker on Itch.io
https://lumpley.itch.io/firebrands

D20 role-playing game system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D20_System

MG Taylor method
https://www.matttaylor.com/public/mgt_tool_kit.htm

Art of Hosting method
https://artofhosting.org/

Humans are Nature blog by Kiri Bear
https://humansarenature.com/

Transcript

Hailey: [00:00:00] This is Amble, the podcast where we take a disciplined wander through the borderlands between ways of working and games. I’m one of your hosts, Hailey Cooperrider.

Jason: And I’m Jason, Tampake. And today look, we’re really, really excited because this is the first time on the Amble podcast that we’re hosting guests. We have two very, very, very special guests in our midst: Kiri Bear and Logan Timmins. They’re both Amble troupe members and designers of games and lyric games and rituals and other things.

Hailey: Yeah. So today we’re going to talk about all of those things, how you design for different experiences through their games and rituals. But we thought we’d start by introducing the folks that are joining us. I’ll start with Kiri Bear.

Kiri is an intrepid explorer of inner landscapes, an artist, [00:01:00] poet, and facilitator with a passion for nature connection and a background in preventing violence against women. She’s now just getting started as game designer and you can find her ritual game Grief::Leaf on her itch.io store at kiribear.itch.io. Welcome Kiri to the Amble podcast. How’s it going?

Kiri: It’s pretty good. Hey Hailey, hey Jase, nice both.

Hailey: Very good to have you here. Finally. Very exciting. Let’s get Logan in before we go too far.

Jason: Sure. So.I’d like to introduce Logan Timmins. Logan Timmins is a tattooed, forest loving transgender indie tabletop game designer. His games are gifts that move players to tell stories alone or with friends. Now you might know Logan from his first very, very successful Kickstarter, preparing for Paris, a game of dramatic sporty teams causing chaos in high school. You can find all of his other games on Itch, which is breathingstories.itch.io, and the man himself on Twitter [00:02:00] at @Ink_And_Stories.

We might talk a little bit about that later, because the Amble crew have had an opportunity to play preparing for Paris, and we have some pretty fun experiences to share, but we can get to that later on in the episode.

Logan: Sounds good.

Jason: Okay. So this week we’re hoping to have a bit of a conversation about how we design for experiences.

And we’re really excited to have Kiri and Logan here as they’re practicing game designers in this space, making games that create experiences for people and may not conform to the traditional definition of what is a game. We’re hoping to have a conversation more about those games that sit outside of your traditional definition, as I mentioned earlier.

These sorts of games are often known as lyric games or ritual games, but we’re talking about what it takes to design a set of experiences. And the reason that we chose experiences, is because it exposes a really interesting discussion about what makes a game and what counts as a game and how you go about designing a [00:03:00] game.

Because we’re not designing something that enables folks to know how to get points and win… what exactly are we doing as designers? What information are we providing for our players? What are we constructing that help them engage with our “game”, in inverted commas, to have a particular type of experience. That’s sort of the kind of thing that we’re hoping to get through. This sort of relates to how games crossover in collaboration because collaboration designers are often designing processes that enable people to get work done more effectively together.

And there’s a massive difference between designing a process that enables people to, say, learn this thing specifically, versus explore this set of information and come up with your own ideas. And maybe there’s something for us to learn in both sides of the equation around how we design and think about designing for people and experiences.

[00:04:00] One way of getting us into this kind of discussion might be to talk about specific examples maybe. Kiri, I know this is, this is something very, very close to your heart, but it’d be really interesting for us to get an understanding of your ritual game, maybe. Grief::Leaf.

Kiri: Yeah, so Grief::Leaf is a fairly short game. It’s just sort of two A4 pages that give a person instructions for connecting with nature and connecting with their own experience of sadness. And I guess what I was trying to do with Grief::Leaf was really give people that experience of their own sadness being held by the more than human world around us.

And I was really motivated by, I have a kind of passion for sadness. I think it’s a really important emotion. And [00:05:00] especially during lockdown in Melbourne lately, there’s been a lot of sadness around. People are feeling quite frustrated, quite limited in terms of how they can move.

And I feel like it’s a really magic opportunity to offer people to build the muscle, to be able to feel that feeling. I’m not sure if this is answering your question.

Hailey: Yeah, absolutely. And if you can maybe even give a little more detail about the specific activities that people do as part of the game and explain how those specific activities help to generate, help to create the conditions to generate the experience for people that you wanted them to feel.

Kiri: So there’s pretty much four main steps. The first one is inviting people to go out and pick up leaves. The second one is coming home and then like writing on the leaves, while reflecting on your experiences of sadness. And the instruction there is to really listen to your [00:06:00] body, to find the sadness in your body, and then let that trace come onto the leaf in some way.

Hailey: By which you mean literally writing something on the leaf in some cases?

Kiri: Yeah. Writing or drawing. I guess I’m trying to strike a balance between giving people a framework that’s helpful, but also giving quite a lot of openness for what’s helpful for them individually. So I don’t want to be too prescriptive. I guess the main thing is that intention that you find a way to feel into the sadness in your body and then place some of that sadness onto the leaf, with your texter or pencil or whatever you’re using.

Hailey: So what is it that people struggle with just doing something like this for themselves, or finding that place to feel and express their grief for themselves? And why do you think it is that having a game helps them with that?

Kiri: I think that the experience of sadness is often… um, [00:07:00] endless; this, this sense that if I open that box, I’m going to drown in it. And so giving people a ritual as a kind of container, you know, we’re going to go through these steps and know the ritual ends with kind of burying those leaves back into the garden. So there’s a sense of, I can feel this feeling for this period of time. And then at the end, I can, I can give it away. And, you know, my experience of doing that was that not necessarily that the sadness went away, but I was able to hold it much more easily with more of a sense of flow within myself. And that’s been some, some of the feedback that I’ve had from other people that have done it as well. There’s like research that shows that rituals are very powerful for human beings. That if you ring someone up and tell them that they’ve lost $5 or they’re being fined $5; and you have a control [00:08:00] group that gets that. And then another group that is given a ritual to do before they give the $5 away. That the group who has the ritual feels a lot better about that transaction.

Hailey: Right. Right. Ha ha. And you’ve actually taken Grief::Leaf into some interesting contexts. Can you talk a little bit about when you did it with the Weekly Service and what the Weekly Service is?

Kiri: Yeah, so the weekly service is very simply church for non-religious people. It’s a community of people who come together every week to have meaningful conversations, to sing together, to be in each other’s company without any kind of specific dogma around them.

Yeah, so Kirsty Moegerlein from the weekly service asked me to come and run Grief::Leaf for their community. And yeah, I was there online kind of talking them through the different instructions. We had a soundtrack going in the background… um, to [00:09:00] accompany people through the different phases of that ritual.

And I was surprised at how powerful it was. And my expectation in, in circles like that is that everyone would be speaking up and sharing exactly what was going on for them moment to moment. But this ritual was pretty much silent. So people were participating in their own homes in their own ways.

Hailey: It was on Zoom, right? Because it was during the lockdown?

Kiri: Yeah on zoom. But there was a real sense of connection and closeness that was generated in spite of that.

Hailey: Wow. Thanks. I feel like there’s a lot of threads to pull there, but let’s pass over to Logan and Jase and hear what he has to tell us.

Jason: Now, Logan, you want to talk about Jay Dragon’s game, which is inspired one of your own games. Do you want to walk us through that?

Logan: Yeah, so probably the first lyric game that I read was “AlMost” by Jay Dragon, and AlMost is also very short game. It is [00:10:00] one A5 piece of paper. Although the title takes up almost a fifth of that. What I found with a lot of lyric games is that you don’t create a character, necessarily. You’re playing as yourself and doing things in real life which, yeah, connects as a, as a ritual sort of aspect.

And they’re often very emotional things that you’re encouraged to do to tap into yourself in deep and intimate ways. And so, yeah, AlMost by Jay Dragon is a “game”, again in inverted commas, about having a crush or having feelings for a friend of yours that have been unspoken and rolling 2d6, rolling two dice, to determine what you’re going to do about that. Are you going to ask them if you can kiss them, are you going to say something and leave it hanging, or are you going to drop it and leave it be?

I’d never seen a game like this before. I was very intrigued about what you could do in the game space regarding real life. And I [00:11:00] guess the power that game designers have in encouraging people to explore different things in different parts of themselves.

And so yes, that led me to create a very similar game which is called “Believe”, and it is about uh, similarly, yeah, thinking about… sadness, but remembering all the good times… The line is think of all the things that make your heart smile. And you use that. And then again, roll two six sided dice to determine what you’re going to do about that. And basically it’s a self care ritual, really a self-care lyric game. Just to remind yourself that sometimes things go badly, but you can believe that it’s going to get better.

Jason: That’s fascinating. Logan. Look, I’m interested in this sort of attraction to a very, very specific human sentiment or a very, very specific kind of instance, and unpacking it and spending time creating a container, to use Kiri’s words, for other folks to explore [00:12:00] that sort of thing. I mean, that’s not what people would traditionally associate with game design, is it?

Logan: No, not typically. It is… lyric games are a niche within a niche that is rapidly expanding in very exciting ways.

Jason: Why do you think that is this sort of growing desire amongst folks to have these experiences on tap? What is it about the lyric game, the ritual game, the experiences that are particularly appealing?

Logan: I think they’re pretty powerful and I think they’re needed in – I’ll only speak for Western society here – there is not a lot of I guess care taken to, um, listening to your, your emotions in certain ways, acknowledging that all your emotions, your whole self – there’s nothing inherently wrong or negative about any of these things.

And, having that conversation can seem very intimidating or scary. And games are fun. You know, you hear the word games, you think of fun things. So it’s a nice bridge to use [00:13:00] a game to serve as a bridge between these two concepts and encourage people gently into these moments or experiences that they might try to avoid otherwise.

Jason: Thanks Logan. That’s, that’s fascinating, using game tropes as a bridge to encourage folks into spaces that they may not normally think about or inhabit. That’s really, really interesting. There’s a sense in which art in general has tried to do that. And it sounds like, there’s this sort of wave of game designers or gamers who are bringing the tools of gaming into that same exploratory service.

Logan: Yeah, for sure, and, I see a lot of games, especially lyric games, as pieces of art, as much as games as well. So I think it carries on that tradition of art encouraging people into new spaces.

Kiri: It’s a particular form of art though. [00:14:00] Because it’s so experiential, it’s not like you’re a passive observer. Although I know a lot of people have kind of picked up Grief::Leaf and just read through it and had an experience of it just by doing that. But what adds the exciting, creative possibilities for me as a designer in this space is that it’s inviting that active participation.

So any game that you might create is kind of a co-creation between the designer and the participant. And that’s true of all art up to a point, but there’s a whole other level of asking someone to do something, to follow these instructions. And it’s almost like the goal that I’m aiming for isn’t just an object that people can observe. It’s a state that I’m trying to create within the person that’s experiencing. Like the artist kind of happening inside them, rather than externally.

Jason: Right. This idea of there’s [00:15:00] intentionality behind the experience you’re trying to evoke. But that’s an active kind of participation. It’s a co-design thing. It’s not saying here’s my piece of art, now observe it and see what it does. It’s saying here’s this thing that I’ve created this scaffold or this container that I’ve created, that I’m asking you to engage with, to have your own steps in and walk through that. That’s fascinating. You know, the art in itself is an invitation to co-design an experience.

Hailey: Can I jump in Jason? Just trouble that a little bit. I think any artist would say that they’re trying to create an internal experience. Maybe not every artist. But viewing a painting isn’t about objectively observing the painting as object, but it’s about opening yourself up to an emotional experience that that painting might evoke inside you.

And I agree that there’s something that the co-creation or the participation of the audience or the consumer of art in a game versus a painting, or even a piece of literature… There’s more [00:16:00] interactivity, or more back and forth… more… This is what I’m looking for. This is the question I want to put back to everyone is: how is it different, or where are the places where it arrives differently in a game, as opposed to other works of art that are perhaps more static you might say?

Kiri: Hmm. It’s reminding me of a few things. like…. I was really inspired by a group called “Teatro de los Sentidos”, who are based in Spain, who create this theater that’s deeply immersive. So I went to a show called “The Echo of the Shadow” and the audience, if we can even call them that, walk in one at a time and go through this maze-like experience where you have a series of encounters with various people in various environments, incredibly detailed sets, and they pay attention to the sense… the textures underfoot. It’s incredible.

And I remember talking to my cousin about this. She studied theater at VCA and had a [00:17:00] background in that. And when I described some of the encounters to her, she was like shocked. And like, I would be furious if someone did that to me in an artistic setting. Like when I go to see theater, I don’t expect to be uncomfortable without kind of being warned that that’s gonna happen.

Yeah. I just think it speaks to a certain relationship with art. Different people are trying to do different things. I feel a little overwhelmed by that notion of trying to make claims or statements about art in general. But what I can lay claim to is this sense of excitement that I have.

I feel like what I found in that community of people that are creating lyric games is people who really want to go to those places, who really want to have, or curate, experiences for themselves and each other, that open up these kinds of Pandora’s box of challenging experiences of what it is to be human. And also really gentle and caring [00:18:00] experiences.

Yeah. It’s like the Sensate’s in Sigil.

Jason: Logan you recently…. Do you want to explain that? Kiri, do you want to unpack that a little bit?

Hailey: I can do that. Okay. So within, within the universe of Dungeons and Dragons, Forgotten Realms, it is a multiplanar universe. So there’s different, entirely different universes that people can inhabit. And in between all of those different, crazy universes there is a city called Sigil, the “City of Doors” that connects them all.

And in that city, it’s a bustling metropolis of weirdness and there are many factions, one of which are the Sensates. And it would be easy to see the Sensates as hedonists who want to throw parties all the time. But in fact, they are people who studiously pursue experiences of all kinds: emotional and aesthetic and sensory.

So, a good sensate may have tasted many different floors or flavors of dirt just to [00:19:00] see what they taste like. And that would also include pursuing different emotional states that they haven’t had before, or haven’t had lately.

Jason: Wow. Logan, I just want to respond, you know, you sort of, when Kiri was talking about the audience reaction to the piece of art, like saying, to the theater experience, saying, oh, you know, I would never expect to be put in a position like that. You sort of your face responded. I’m just…

Logan: Yes. I made a…

Jason: What were you thinking in that moment?

Logan: I made face. Yeah. About not being challenged by art. I, and then there was sort of, the rest of the sentence was: without having been forewarned. So that is understandable. But yeah, art is often challenging and should be, in the very least in that it’s come from someone else who has different experiences and beliefs to you.

And to view art, knowing that… just be aware that they’re from a different view, so it’s going to be challenging your own perceptions or your own perception of a piece of art is not going to necessarily be the same as the intention. And I feel like that in itself is a challenge to the audience.[00:20:00]

Jason: Actually that’s something I’d really like to pick up that this sort of idea. Oh, there’s so many threads I’d like to pick up. Actually,

Hailey: Yeah.

Jason: One, one, the idea of this notion of curating experiences, very, very carefully, very, very intentionally, very, very cautiously in order to enable others to engage with them. The idea of it being an invitation and interactive invitation that sort of opened to folks… And there’s this idea that I’m really interested in finding out more about is why games to do this? Why pick a game format to do this? Why you use a trope of games to introduce people to that kind of piece?

Logan: Where to begin. What’s the first question. That was a lot that you said just then Jase.

Jason: [laughs]

So let’s come back to the idea of carefully curating experiences, because I think, this is going to talk about, you know, our crossover to why are we getting engaged in this sort of thing and how game design and collaboration, design and ways of working can really be useful for folks going forward.[00:21:00]

Especially when we talk about that metaphor of experiencing different things in order to highlight different perspectives to the world. I think that’s fascinating and something that we really need to come back to. But if we focus on the really concrete idea of:

There are many ways to introduce new ideas to folks: literature, theater visual arts, music, conversation. There’s a bunch of stuff we could be doing. Why games in this sort of interest? What is it about the game format that is so powerful or so attractive to you?

Logan: I think it touches on what I mentioned earlier about games being approachable and accessible, especially now with online stores like Itch. You can upload a PDF for free. You can release it to people for free. All you need is internet access. It’s just very accessible, very easy to just put your own stuff out there.

Yeah, also a bridge, in that, games are fun. People like playing games and will explore things within games that perhaps they wouldn’t in other settings. Like [00:22:00] if I was to run a facilitation setting on self care and you know, looking after your, about after yourself, especially in lockdown, or what have you, I feel like that would get a very different response as opposed to, oh, this is a game but it’s also about self care. So I feel like…

Jason: So there’s a sense in which the, the language of games makes that kind of exploration more accessible to folks because of the stuff you said: games are fun, you know, we’re familiar with how they work. If you’re asking me to roll 2d6, it’s really different to asking me to take two deep breaths and visualize self-actualization for instance. I mean, I didn’t mean, I don’t mean to be, you know, making a bad example there, but there’s, there’s something in that . Kiri, what, what’s your response to that?

Kiri: I think games are connected to play and play is a really generative space, a really generative mode for people to enter into. When we’re playing, we allow [00:23:00] ourselves to do things that we wouldn’t ordinarily let ourselves do. So we’re, we give ourselves permission to step outside our own constraints, our own sense of what’s proper or allowed. like, oh, it’s a game.

Jason: Yeah, it’s just a game,

Kiri: And I think I felt similarly when I started making art or identifying as an artist, this sense of like, oh, if I call it “art”, I can just do anything. This sense of freedom and liberation. And then it didn’t take too long as an artist to start feeling like, oh, I’ve got to prove myself, or I’ve got to like enter this discourse and, you know, respond to artistic standards that other people have and critique and all this kind of stuff. Whereas games feel like a space that’s kind of blessedly free of some of that.

(Everyone laughs)

Jason: What do you think Logan?

Logan: That’s me making faces saying no, there is so much games discourse, but I’m glad you haven’t waded into it yet. [00:24:00] It’ll it’ll be there.

Jason: Do you want to expand on that Logan? A little

Logan: I mean as with any community or scene, there are arguments over various different things and games are no different.

Jason: Yeah

Hailey: Jase, I’m curious to try to tie this back a little bit to the ways of working piece,

Jason: Sure.

Hailey: One thread that’s that’s coming through for me around the personal development, personal, emotional experience. In my experience, trying to help people collaborate, it’s become very clear that one of the best things that makes someone be a good collaborator with other people is in a sense that they’re a good collaborator with themself.

They’re centered, they’re at peace with themselves. They recognize when they’re reacting to something versus responding. And they’re able to kind of manage that. And I’ve often thought if I could design my [00:25:00] ideal collaboration scenario, with a large group of people trying to come together around something, that there’d be a huge amount of just personal growth exploration and centering stuff and resources for everyone who wanted to participate in the collaboration to also grow as individuals. And uh, you know, some of the practices out there like Theory U and some of the other collaborative practices do incorporate that quite well. In our own Amble team are doing that quite well by bringing it all to the table.

And so, yeah, the there’s something, there’s a thread here, a possibility I’m seeing about the accessibility, and the, the sort of freedom to play that these games bring: ritual games and lyric games could potentially combine well with creating the conditions in which a collaborative group might have a better chance at success.

Jason: I’m going to say yes. I agree with you

(Hailey and Jase laugh)

Jason: 110%.

To [00:26:00] respond to it. Good collaborators are often very, very, self-centered very, very open to new ideas. MIT Center for Collective Intelligence tells us that one of the important things in collaboration is knowing the mind of others. So being able to empathize with your co-collaborators and I wonder if part of that is being able to literally walk in the shoes of others more effectively.

Like when I talk to Logan or I talk to Kiri, I think, part of the invitation of art in general is inviting you to see the world through someone else’s perspective. And I think anything that allows us to kind of do that could be a really useful tool to enabling some of these sorts of capabilities that make for good collaborators.

You know, human centered design asks us to go into the field and really deeply empathize with the people who we’re designing for, in order that our creations aren’t made for us, they’re made for the people who are going to be using them. And I think, you know, like I’m just going to run with this sort of thread, but there are, there’s this sort of push nowadays to start thinking, [00:27:00] well, what other ways do we need to think about problems? In order to get really interesting solutions emerging? So in what ways do we need to be able to empathize with the problem context in a way that’s not necessarily me-focused, so…

Kiri: Or even human focused. ….

Jason: Perfect. Kiri? Yeah.

Or even focused. Yeah, thank you, Kiri. Do you want to unpack more of that? Because I think there’s something in that that I I’m really fascinated by, especially in this lyric game, kind of context.

Kiri: Well, something I’m trying to do with Grief::Leaf is give people hints about how they can more gracefully hold themselves in the experience of sadness or the experience of loss by looking to trees. By looking to what they can learn from the more than human world around us, because I think there’s so much more wisdom in that more than human world than there is in the human world, [00:28:00] for sure.

And actually, you know, we’ve been so caught up in our own hubris, so kind of blinded by our fascination with our own intelligence that really what’s being called for right now is kind of stepping outside of that, stepping outside of our own perspective, to look at things from a more global perspective. And from the point of view of other species, other beings that are sharing the planet with us.

Jason: That’s beautiful because, in the collaboration space, there’s a lot of folks who are beginning to talk about this idea that you know, we’re getting reasonably good at human centered design. So using principles that design for people in particular contexts. But when we’re talking about systems problems, maybe we need to think through different lenses that are not anthropocentric.

But I believe it was Nora Bateson possibly raised something in Twitter, that was… where she was saying, what does it mean to think of a problem through the [00:29:00] lens of a watershed or through an aspect of an ecosystem or from a social context?

And there’s something really deeply resonant in that idea in the crossover to these lyric games. One of the favorite Kickstarters that I’ve backed recently is “Artifact”. And this is a game where you have to imagine that you are a ancient, magical artifact, that spends its time between owners.

So imagine I’m a magical sword. I get wielded by a particular fighter in a context for a couple of years. And then they either go on to success and put it on the wall of their castle or they perish in the field. And I get buried as a sword in the dirt. And there’s all this time in between where I’m waiting for my next owner to come along.

What does it feel like to be that artifact not used for a period of time? What are the sorts of things that I’m considering? What’s the sentiment that’s involved? For me, you know, games like that became this really interesting window into exploring this sort of other way of viewing problems, [00:30:00] other way of viewing the world.

Yeah.

I wonder… Is there something in that

Kiri: Yeah, absolutely. And I was listening to a podcast, “Emergence” podcast. Someone from Google thinking about artificial intelligence, not just in terms of human notions of intelligence, but how AI might communicate with birds and what kind of technology might the birds appreciate or want to engage with. Becomes very exciting.

Jason: It does, especially when we have these sort of tools that allow us to potentially flex our conception of what valid experience is, and sort of empathize our way into other modes of being. There’s something really exciting in that space. It’s one also for the embodied cognition folks and the biological origins of empathy folks, but,

We’ll have come back to them at a later stage.

Kiri: You’re saying [00:31:00] embodiment. That was the other thing that I was thinking about in terms of, you know, this place of lyric games and ritual games, that there’s a real opportunity to work with the body. And that feels really, I don’t know, like I was a “gifted kid”. I was really praised for my capacity to intellectualize and make sense of things with this beautiful brain that I have.

But the older I get, the less I trust that intellect and the more I feel that the root of truth within myself, if I can be so bold as to use the word like truth, is, is the body. That my body knows things that my brain perhaps doesn’t want to acknowledge. Even when I tested Grief::Leaf on myself by really honing into like, where is the feelings of sadness in my body? … I came out with very different answers than what I intellectually would have been aware of.[00:32:00]

Jason: Huh. And in many ways the, the process of designing or the process of creating something that’s meant to capture a particular set of sentiments, just gives you the opportunity to, to think in that way in a different way, like, huh?

Kiri: I notice Logan was nodding. I’m wondering what you want to say.

Logan: Yeah. So I was just nodding along in agreement to your statement about brain and body thinking differently. With regards to Grief::Leaf, I did participate in the Weekly Service offering of Grief::Leaf. And as I was sitting there, there is a step where you sit in and find the place in your body where grief lives and my brain expected it to be in a certain place. And I was kind of looking there and then found grief lived somewhere else. Which was surprising, but so just nodding along in agreement with that sentiment.

Hailey: I have a thought that’s coming up. Coming back to some of [00:33:00] my questions around how, you know, our facilitators who are listening might start to think about using this. And, Jason and Kiri you’ve run plenty of workshops, I know, um, might have experience of this where you’ve got a limited amount of time that you’ve got people together.

You’re trying to ground them. Maybe you’re bringing them into the space or bring them into relationship with each other and with themselves. And you’ll use things like getting them to check in and just talk to each other or turn to your neighbor and talk about a time when… And often, when we’re running out of space in our design, we go, what might we get them to do in advance?

Or what might we get them to just go off and do alone, because it’d be great to do that alone. And I’m starting to hear that … sending them off with a prompt or a question to consider is one way, or sending them off to go consider a piece of art or a piece of nature. But there’s something about the choice-making, the randomness that you might introduce in a game, or the branching pathways that they might find themselves going [00:34:00] on, the container and the structure… How might ritual games and lyric games play a role in a designed workshop or collaboration setting?

Kiri: I’ve considered that. I have a notion of a game that really stems from my prevention of violence against women work. The starting point of the game is to invite the person to find the most feminine item of clothing in their household. And then to put that on, and then to consider what things they can and can’t do while wearing that feminine piece of clothing. So as a facilitator, I’ve always been quite experiential in the way that I design things, because I’m trying to train people about things like gender equity, which are very personal. And there is that sense if, you know, if people are at work, they want to be professional. They don’t want to get personal [00:35:00] about things.

It’s the ongoing kind of challenge of how to give people opportunities to reflect on how this information interacts with their personal experience without you know, crossing that line and making them feel unsafe or vulnerable at work, where they’re willing to be vulnerable. And so I think actually, lyric games and ritual games of this kind can really fit in that niche because you can give someone instructions and send them off for a period of time. They can choose what they do with that time. They can choose whether they follow the instructions or how far they go with those instructions.

Jason: Can I push on that a little bit? Like, are there explicit, this is sort of for Kiri and Logan. Are there things that we’re, as game designers, thinking about, that you, as game designers, are thinking about when you’re writing those instructions. It’s this tension between: how much do I frame up for folks, how they should engage with this thing, versus, [00:36:00] how much freedom should I give them to explore it in their own way? All those things are choices that you’ve sort of given, that you provide to the player base. How do you personally go about saying, oh yeah I should put this in the instructions, versus, this doesn’t need to go on the instructions, versus, this is something that I really want to make explicit, versus, that’s something that I can just leave to folks.

Logan: Yeah, it depends on the game that you’re writing, and the experience that you’re trying to create. So from when I’m designing, I’ll have a sentence or maybe two about what I want the players to experience, as opposed to characters. Yeah, something that I want them to experience or take away or learn.

And it all comes back down to, you know, those pillars. So if there are certain points in the game that I feel need to be explicit in order for our player to make that connection and, and takeaway that learning, then I’ll, I’ll be pretty prescriptive. But in other cases, the framing or the context of the lead-up [00:37:00] of the game is a strong enough framework that it guides them into a natural takeaway there. So it really depends. But I always put down pillars and refer back to them.

Jason: The choice of pillars. That’s beautiful. Cause I mean, I wonder if this is a good segue into the experience that we’ve had recently with one of your games, Logan, in terms of “Preparing for Paris”, because that sort of idea of curated experiences that evoke or invite an exploration of something very, very specific was so close to the surface for me. Um, do you want to describe what Preparing for Paris is about?

Logan: Sure. Um, Yes. So preparing for Paris is a tabletop game where you are dramatic sporty teenagers in high school all trying to graduate top of the class after your four years in American high school. The catch is, every student at this high school, called Olympic Academy, is a personified sport. And by graduating top of the class, you are eligible to become a real Olympic sport and go to [00:38:00] the Paris Olympics. Hence Preparing for Paris. So it’s a very bonkers and fun concept. And that was one of the pillars that it just needed to be fun.

Jason: Hmm, but there are really specific things in that game that stand out for me. And I’m going to open this back up to the rest of the team cause otherwise I’ll riff for far too long, but the, one of the things it was really exciting for me are these… these curated moments that really evoke a particular feeling of being in high school.

Like I found my character trying to make friends with someone and the roll going really, really badly. And I really felt it, man, like I felt what that was like, you know, to be embarrassed in the, in the school cafeteria. Similarly, I had this redemptive moment where I could re-enter the school grounds with my, you know, flash bang, new Google Glasses on, you know, like, and I felt like, yeah, setting out for a new year and you know, that that didn’t happen by accident. That was that they were contexts that were created by the design of your game. So….

Hailey: Yeah, I’d encourage you to break it down for us a little [00:39:00] bit more. Logan, what are the different components of the game and how do they work together to create those kinds of moments that Jason’s describing?

Logan: Yeah. Okay. To get into the nitty gritty of it: Preparing for Paris is based off of two other preexisting tabletop games. These are “Powered by the Apocalypse” games originated by “Apocalypse World”. And the other game is the “Firebrands” framework, based on yeah, “Mobile Firebrands” is the name of the game.

Both of those are by Meguey and D. Vincent Baker, both excellent indie designers and pretty wonderful people. So the flow of the game is that it is made up of various mini-games, which players can choose. And each mini-game, basically, is a zoom in on a particular scene or moment within your high school experience.

There is some framing around that scene. You get to narrate what it looks like and describe a little bit of how you got into this particular situation. And then you roll two six sided dice [00:40:00] and find out what happens. The higher, the better.

So again, the Powered by the Apocalypse takeaway here is that a ten plus is a total success, seven to nine is a mixed success, and then six or less is a miss or a failure. But another part, a key part of the game that is drawn from Firebrands is the use of well, first of all, the mini games, but also questions, poignant questions asked between players that really help drive the story and build the relationships.

So that was another one of the pillars was the relationships between characters. I wanted them to, not necessarily improve, but you know, change, to grow, and to have a real impact on what the characters wanted to do next. And that is, I guess, hopefully most obvious in the “summer break” mini-game, which is done at the end of every year, where that’s basically an opportunity to level up or improve your character.

But in order to do that, you have to ask questions of each other and each of them is sort of related to how they view you as [00:41:00] a person within their school. So questions like, did I improve this year? Did we grow closer? These kinds of things. And yeah, so those really drive the relationships. So relationships and phone were, were two of those key pillars.

Hailey: Yeah, to bring it in a little more concrete, some of the mini games are things like “detention”, or ” “crown leader of the cafeteria”, you know, about, you know, which clique are you sitting with in the cafeteria. Or, ” club meet”, where you go to figure out what clubs you’re going to join. The talent show, where you get up on stage and do something.

And each of those mini-games has a slightly different setup that allows, puts the characters in a situation and allows them to do something wacky and expressive by way of first posing some questions to the players that they respond to and getting the players bouncing off each other. And then usually, culminating in a role of the dice to see what really happens to that randomness taking out an… it out of a pure improv experience and into that more gameful experience of: we’re not really sure which way this could go.

And then the game’s going to tell us, you know, we’re going to roll and [00:42:00] see if we got a ten plus or a six or less, and it’s a failure. And I think one of the things that really makes Preparing for Paris work is that it relies on us all having this library of tropes to draw on. Either we all went to high school in this particular kind of high school, or we’ve seen the movies, maybe not all of us, but quite a lot of folks.

But you know, in that process of getting into this situation, drawing on these tropes, having these crazy characters and having something crazy happen, it’s that freedom of play, it takes the seriousness away. And what results are these actually quite rich emotional experiences. And it’s quite magical the way that all that stuff comes together to have you, almost as if by accident, finding yourself, really feeling something.

Jason: Hmm,

Hailey: Well, you know, the good news is we only got through two years of our high school careers together.

Jason: We have another two to go. Yeah.

Hailey: [00:43:00] Right. And the, the other reflection I was having, listening to Logan and you’re naming these different systems is that there is just boundless territories of different systems and toolkits and bags of tricks in the game design world, and how similar that is to the facilitation world. You know, you say Firebrands and Powered by the Apocalypse and D20 and all these different kinds of systems you can draw from. We have Theory U, and Art of Hosting, and MG Taylor. And the way that those things, with their broad strokes principles and vibes, and also their very specific tools come together to create an experience. They’re so similar. And so I guess that’s my message to the game designers, to the facilitators of the world. This is what we’re trying to do here at Amble is show just how much crossover there is and how much potential there is to learn from each other and to enrich each other’s worlds.

Jason: Beautiful Hails. The only thing I’m going to say is that I really, [00:44:00] really, really enjoy talking to y’all. This has been a personal joy for me this episode. And there’s just seems like so much territory that we can continue to explore in this, you know, amble through the crossover between games and collaboration.

And I would invite you two back, please. You know, like let’s have another jam on this here topic, knowing that we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. I guess, you know, to wrap, Kiri, is there anything that you want to point us at like a particular website or anything that you’ve been up to recently that you think we should tap into?

Kiri: Like my Itch store? I don’t know.

Hailey: Yeah. You can find Grief::Leaf at kiribear.itch.io.

Kiri: Uh, I also have kiribear.com if you want to look up more about me or like employ me as a facilitator that can happen.

Hailey: And your blog at humansarenature.com where Kiri writes more on themes related to humans, being more connected to nature, and in fact, not being separate from nature, but being part of it.

Jason: And where do we [00:45:00] find you, Logan?

Logan: Uh, yeah, you can find all my games at breathingstories.itch.io. I am on Twitter as well, quite a lot, which is@ink_and_stories. Yeah. And you can find me talking about a little tabletop things there.

Hailey: As always you can find Amble Studio on the web at amble.studio, and on Twitter at @TheAmbleStudio, and please come and have a chat to us there.

Jason: Yeah let’s continue this conversation. But for the interim look, thank you so much, Kiri, and thank you so Logan, for being here. It’s very, very rewarding to be talking about this sort of stuff.

Logan: Thanks. Thanks for having us on. I had a great time.

Kiri: Bye.

Jason: Bye for now.

Hailey: We’d like to extend that round of thank yous to our listeners for ambling all that way with us and to ask you for your help. We’re just getting started on our journey, and it would mean a lot to us if you would tell your friends, [00:46:00] share us on social media, let people know that they can find us on their podcast app of choice.

And if you like, you can buy us a coffee by going to amble.studio/podcast and hitting that donation button. Every little bit helps. We’ll catch you next time. Wherever the wind may take us.