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On the Conventions of Genre: Protect the Child and Hopeful Storytelling.
You might put them in the wrong dimension or have to talk them down after a nightmare, but at the end of the day... The Kid is going to be Okay.
The following is my first attempt to talk about a concept I hope to communicate in my tabletop roleplaying game Protect the Child, but might be helpful for other tabletop games as well.
In the Romance genre, there are a number of tried-and-true conventions that aficionados have come to expect and enjoy. One of the most important conventions is that of the Happily Ever After. The relationship of the couple is strained, put at stake, but a well-versed audience knows that by the end of the story, love will win out. Heated Rivalry & Bridgerton are two of the most mainstream, iconic representations of this - and due to their launch into the mainstream, are introducing new audiences to these conventions.
Ice Age. Monsters Inc. Star Wars: Bad Batch. Nimona, The Mandalorian, Tokyo Godfathers. If you look close enough, Lion King 1 & 1/2. These are not romance movies, but they share certain conventions within their own genre, a mix of "lone wolf & cub" and "found-family" tropes. Protect the Child draws from these genres in a couple of ways, especially in how the playbooks are constructed: the characters are jaded, hurt and emotionally-stunted, with arcs that are meant to propel them upward as you play. The Child is special and carries within them a special power that both gives them autonomy and puts a large target on their back. Their mechanics are meant to represent how children learn various lessons from the adults in their life, often not exactly the lessons that those parents hoped to impart. The Child in these stories also manages to teach their guardians something about themselves that previously went unaddressed.
But there's another trope in these stories that can be harder to communicate in a roleplaying game without stating it plainly to you, before you sit down and play this game. It is this:
The Kid is going to be Okay.
The thing about genre is that it isn't just storytelling's shorthand; it's also a tool for talking about concepts that are incredibly important to us as people. Science-fiction is a medium that places incredibly complex modern problems in a setting that is divorced enough from reality to allow us to engage with these problems without making them feel too personal. Romance is a fantasy that can allow its participants to communicate about the needs and desires they have surrounding intimacy, vulnerability and power. Protect the Child, and the media that inspired it, is a fantasy of its own, and (if you let it), it can be about something that is in its own way, incredibly complex and vulnerable - your childhood.
Genres also have tropes and patterns that allow you to enjoy the story, even if you're familiar with them; just because you know the ending will be happy doesn't mean that the journey to get there isn't worth watching. The formula doesn't take away from the value of the story; we draw value from how the storyteller works within it.
When picking up games similar in style to Protect the Child, an oft-repeated mantra is that you are playing "to find out." This is what makes roleplaying games as a hobby distinct from media such as movies and television. You sit down to discover the story as you go along, and even in games that are steeped in genre, like Brindlewood Bay, MASKS, and Slugblaster, the end is not written before you reach it. The joy of the experience is telling the story as you make it up.
To some extent in Protect the Child, this is true. However, before you start playing, it is very important that you recognize that you are not playing to find out if the Child is going to survive The Horrors; instead, you are playing to find out how the Child survives. Your Child is going to doubt themself; they are going to rush into danger, get mixed up in complicated situations, and get their heart broken. But at the end of the story…
…the Kid is going to be Okay.
Character bleed is a common accessory to roleplay; pieces of our characters seep into us, and pieces of us leech into our characters. There are a number of opportunities hidden underneath the dice rolls and downtime scenes to plant a minefield of moments that are close to home. I don't think this is a bad thing. There are plenty of instances in which I have rejoiced that this in fact, happens. At the same time, I think it's an incredibly vulnerable thing, and as a result, it's important to be prepared for that possibility.
Part of this preparation exists in the conversation you have during your Session Zero. This conversation should go over the Concept, Aim, Tone & Subject Matter of your version of Protect the Child. What do you want the story to be about? What kinds of outcomes are you hoping to see as you play? What real-world topics might show up as you play, and how do you want to navigate them?
In Lily's Angels you might touch on transphobia, religious trauma, or police violence. In Digital Glitch you might talk about ownership, medical debt, or disability. Your Session Zero is a chance to outline your boundaries on these topics, and make decisions about how they are going to be portrayed and how these elements might affect your characters.
When it comes to the kids in these settings, you as a table should affirm that the threat of harm will likely saturate the background of the story, but it will never actually come to the fore-front. The cops might chase you, but they'll never actually get a chance to hurt Lily. The shady laboratory might imply with their needles or Bunsen burners, but you will always be able to prevent them from putting Nova on the operating table. When you fail, the adults could get hurt, the Child might learn the wrong lesson, or perhaps a relationship is strained… but any threat that is too close to home can be averted.
The Kid is going to be Okay.
The danger in this scene is present, but we know that at the end, the kid is going to be fine.
Protect the Child is, in part for all of those kids I know that did not get a happy childhood. But this game is not meant to be a memorial; it is meant to be a gift. It is a chance for us to give the Child a safe and stable family that assures them that they are loved, and in turn, it gives us a chance to help ourselves conceptualize a family that we very much deserve. It is a game of danger and heartbreak and struggle, but it is also meant to be a hopeful story. It is a chance to give the storytellers and the audience the ending that they wanted.
Regardless of whether or not the game you are playing is Protect the Child, having these conversations before you start play gives you the ability to dive in deeper & closer to personal vulnerabilities with the assurance that your companions aren't trying to be malicious. This concept isn't new to the scene; I highly recommend reading about Meguey Baker's philosophy of I Will Not Abandon You Does Not Equal Nobody Gets Hurt, and the linked description of PH Lee's Luxton Technique. And the next time you sit down to play, consider making sure that everyone at your table knows what genre you're playing in, and what kinds of beats everyone can expect to see within that genre.
Also… maybe try out Protect the Child? I promise you, the Kid is going to be Okay.
Bright Eclipsis is a two player, play-by-post game about two alien pilots crashing into the same derelict rock and needing each other in order to survive. It is a game about communication, and building a connection with someone who doesn’t speak your language. It is a game about learning to understand each other anyways.
It's also a hack of There is a Light at the Edge of the World by momatoes and was inspired by media like Void Rivals, Scavengers Reign, Star Trek, and Project Hail Mary!
You can grab it for pwyw here: https://the-horned-sphinx.itch.io/bright-eclipsis
Buuuut if you want a little something extra you can pay $2.22 and get Appendices X, a 18+ supplement that contains six alternative gameplay prompts inspired by fanfic tropes!
A play-by-post game about two alien pilots who crash into the same empty rock and must learn to communicate to survive.
AITA for not telling my new party why I broke things off with my cursed greatsword?
I know how it sounds, but like, bear with me.
I (28/F/former paladin), had been travelling with a cursed greatsword (Immeasurable/F/Sword) and was really into her for a long time. When we first met she told me she was the disembodied spirit of an ancient warlord and beamed images of a beautiful raven haired warrior in gorgeous blackened Gothic armor into my mind, she told me it was her true form and I was super into it so I forsook my paladin oath and we started hooking up
Early on in our relationship she was really supportive when I started to transition, telling me she was "nearing her apotheosis" as well. I didn't think much of it at the time, and dutifully listened to her when she told me to travel the kingdom and assemble the ritual objects for her ascension. There was a team of adventurers that tried to stop us and she told me to kill them but one of them was my former best friend Sir Roderick The Bold (25/M/Paladin) so I refused and only incapacitated them. She didn't like that and we had a huge fight about it after we'd left
Long story short after I'd done the ritual and assembled the artifacts she revealed her true form was a ruse and she was actually just a mass of tentacles and eyes (which I don't mean to yuck anybody's yum mentioning, it's just that tentacles don't really appeal to me lol)
She said she was going to consume the world, "starting with you" and that I had "outlived my usefulness". I felt really shocked and betrayed and helped the adventuring party that was following us around to defeat her and seal her back in the sword (which I left there), but I feel really bad about it
I sorta got adopted by them since then and they keep telling me things like "Good job resisting the influence of the cursed sword!" And "How did you break free of her mind control?" Or "I am happy to see you've chosen the path of righteousness." And I haven't told them I wasn't ever under a spell or anything, I was just really mad at her at the time and lashed out. AITA?
on twitter this got a bunch of responses like “wow even the evil fujoshis? the homophobic yet hypocritically fetishistic ones? what if the fujoshi is racist?” and like well no obviously not in that case.
I'm soliciting suggestions for a 10-15 minute TTRPG that I can run repeatedly in a single hour-long session with a range of results for a group of local artists (many of whom are in the theatre scene so I anticipate some familiarity with performance/improv/theatre warm-up exercises) with no prior experience of RPGs or even really with board games.
They're a wide range of ages and disciplines (though like I said, mostly small theatre background) and I'd be running at a table for their Christmas party where they've invited people to offer table events.
People will probably be wandering up to watch, and those who play maybe only loosely know each other – bonus if the game can accommodate people dropping in once they've watched for a couple minutes and suddenly found themselves invested.
They've provided a supportive space for me to connect to my arts scene over the last few months, so I'd like to demonstrate what the hell this "indie ttrpg" thing I've been going on about has to offer.
All suggestions welcome, though I expect this will be the perfect spot for some one page rpgs from itch to shine!
I have been summoned. I've got a few!
For the Queen, by Alex Roberts. I’ve heard that you can play this in 20 minutes, and that it’s very beginner friendly. There’s plenty of Descended from the Queen hacks, such as We Did Start The Fire, a game about the people who ended the world.
Octopus Shipwreck Explorere, by SassWrites. You need a d8 for this one, and a larger - than normal group of people. If you’re exploring a shipwreck, give every person one thing to explore and one roll, and then maybe have them brainstorm what it is they’re exploring.
ImproVeto, by Plotbunny Games. A fun story-telling game that also teaches the group how to use the X-Card.
A Single Bullet, by LucaBarboni, is a short-form game that can be played in ten minutes, all about trying to craft a single bullet that will be powerful enough to kill a Kaiju.
A 10-minute RPG is a streamlined PbtA hack that’s… well, it’s designed to be played in 10 minutes! Definitely looks like it’s built for fantasy.
Freeform Just for Kicks, by Cezar Capacle, looks really easy to teach, as it’s designed for kids, with simple pre-made characters and a resolution system that’s just rock-paper scissors.
Elevator Dogs, by Blind Archivist, is about anonymous criminals trying to solve a problem before their escape elevator reaches the final floor. It looks like it might be small enough to fit in a tin!
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