Music, Gender, and Art in TTRPGs
In what I am sure is an ongoing conversation I’m having with myself (and you too!) about embodying inspiration in TTRPGs, I’m pushing myself into fun new territory. How does one create a game based on music? I wasn’t prepared for how much more of myself I’d have to give to the game.
Others have certainly done this, but it’s my first time and it’s been a fun challenge. (It’s also why I haven’t been updating this blog like I should have, after recovering from Big Bad Con I ended up working on Memory Hunter and now this!)
Florence + The Machine’s album Dance Fever has been wonderful to listen to. Florence Welch’s music is honest and vulnerable, and had me interrogating my own relationship to my gender and art.
After listening to King for the nth time, a playbook for the Belonging Outside of Belonging framework materialized in my head. BoB feels like an easy fit, something that easily aligns with music and how we listen to it. BoB as a system is one that’s easy to pick up, difficult to master, and encourages individual interpretation of its moves. Idle Dreaming certainly feels like listening to music, doesn’t it?
When I look at a comic book, video game, or anime I’ve reached the point in my design practice that I can comfortably map character themes and narrative beats to an initial set of mechanics. But music, for me, feels like an entirely different beast.
While any form of designing around inspiration will require a personal interpretation and reflection of one’s background (as I talked about how Apocalypse Keys was me making Hellboy queer and empowering), it felt like I had to do that a hundred times more while working on My Yet Untitled Game Inspired By Dance Fever.
Florence’s experience of being a woman is integral to so much of the music:
“I am no mother, I am no bride, I am king”
"I used to tell the future, but they cut out my tongue. And left me doin' laundry to think on what I'd done.
It felt like I had to give the players space to explore and express gender and its performance. jay dragon’s approach to characters and gender in Sleepaway continues to be a favorite, but I’ve never been brave enough to emulate the approach until now.
But as I wrote different forms of gender (“a blade held in the hand,” “a kiss on the back of the neck”), it felt strange for me to leave them static. My current state of gender itself is fluid and aching to shift, to express. I am trapped, on the verge of medical transitioning and having difficulty moving forward in a country that doesn’t support it. It felt important that every playbook should have the move, “express or change my gender” to reflect my self in the game.
I know I make it sound like I had planned these playbooks and design in advance, writing out careful notes and creating diagrams. But I assure you that it all came tumbling out as I wrote the game. A lot of what I’m explaining to you now just became clear to me as I reflected on what I wrote.
In the album, Florence also spoke so much on art:
And how much art is really worth, the very thing you’re best at is the thing that hurts the most”
“Is this how it is? Is this how it's always been? To exist in the face of suffering and death, and somehow still keep singing?”
It felt essential that I should make art, the creation and expression of it, the journey of being an artist, an integral component of the game.
Even though I fully believe TTRPGs and game design are art, it’s difficult for me to fully accept myself as an artist. While writing this game I found myself drawing from the same incredibly personal source: the precious time I’d spend with a particular group of artist friends.
It always felt like I was encroaching on a magical space that didn’t belong to me, and watching their relationships form in ways that felt fairy tale like and surreal.
I’m not entirely sure what this game is yet, but the act of creation is a thoroughly enjoyable one. I’ve made a lot of game design decisions that I’m excited about, and I can’t wait to explore these new approaches. I look forward to playtesting it and seeing where it takes me. It’s a wonderful creative distraction, something personal and vulnerable and exciting and challenging.
I’ll be sharing what I have on my Patreon very soon. (I’m currently at four playbooks and five…events? Moments? Not sure what to call them just yet!) If you’re excited to see that, and are both keen and able to support me, I humbly ask you to consider becoming a patron!
I mentioned earlier that folks have written games based on music, so I definitely want to recommend some that really made an impression on me!
You Can Check Out Any Time You Like (But You Can Never Leave) is a firebrands horror game by Marn S. Each mini-game is based on music from the 70s and 80s, Who Can It Be Now” and “Time After Time” are my personal favorite minigames!
Reaching in the Dark is a Misty Fantasy light PbtA game by Josh Hittie that has a special place in my heart. It was one of the first ttrpgs I came across on itch that really moved me and showed me how poetic games can be. It’s also inspired by Florence + The Machine’s album, High As Hope!
Boy Problems is a cyberpunk heist by Colin Cummings with an irresistible premise: can you retrieve the vault of 200 unreleased songs by Carly Rae Jepsen and get away with it? We stan a CRJ game, right?
I’m going to cheat and say you should check out every iteration of the Record Collection game jam on itchio! I’m sure something awesome will catch your eye.
