Kayla from Rat Wave Game House

TTRPG Creator, ex-pro wrestler, dormant comedian, begruding podcaster. Rat of the City. Diana Jones Emerging Designer. Writer of Transgender Deathmatch Legend, Follow Me in the Night; a Cursed Radio, Terminal and more. Website: ratwave.uk

[charaznablescanontoyota]

A bundle by Marn S., $20.00 for 20 games

hiiii my car needs various repairs, which means i'm setting all my tabletop games to 60% off for the next month or so! or get all of em for $20!

these games include:

toxic divorce reality-hopping simulator

pvp action movie time loop soundtracked by the mountain goats

house of leaves inspired map-making game

journaling game where you’re a slenderverse protagonist

escape space prison with your friends

[bonivers]

going on a guilt trip do yall want anything

[secondbeatsongs]

if you really cared about me you wouldn't have to ask

[fellator]

this fetish stuff is getting out of hand what the fuck is word play

[dreamlogic]

asked one of my coworkers how she's doing today and she goes "could be better, could be worse," and another coworker nearby who was eavesdropping chimes in with "could be a lil bit o' alligator curse!" i have no idea what he meant by that but i do know that it has been immediately added to the lexicon.

[ratwavekayla]

Last month I announced an upcoming collection of monster-focused story games entitled Kayla Dice’s Absolute Monsters and outlined the project. Amid other busyness I have made progress on a few of the titles. I finished the first draft of Our Destroyer completely and am ready to approach an editor for the title and I figured out the fourth title in the collection: Darkness and Distance; or, The Triumph of a New Prometheus.

Darkness and Distance; or, The Triumph of a New Prometheus is a retelling of Frankenstein in the form of a roleplaying game. It is also an oral storytelling game, an asynchronous card game, a character creation game and an embedded branching interactive narrative. In playing the game you’ll tell the story of a scientist, his creation, the pain they caused each other, and the explorer who bears witness to the end. Play requires a deck of Tarot cards and the gamebook itself. Chapters cover events in the story and feature card challenges that must be completed and key choices that must be made. The decisions and consequences will influence the narrative and point to the next Chapter. Between chapters the narrative is relayed through a Storytelling Scene, with a player performing as different key characters depending on where in the gamebook they are.

The idea of the game is it could be played completely solo, but its best version is playing it with someone else as a hybrid solo play-by-post game with storytelling handovers. I finished a draft of some rules text and the first three chapters of the game¹. I then conducted a short self playtest mainly focused on the card mechanics, as I needed to be sure they worked before I committed to writing more of the game. Here was the initial draft of the card challenge mechanic:

Before playing a challenge separate the Major and Minor Arcana into two decks. Remove The Fool from the Major Arcana, add it to the deck of Minor cards and shuffle them together. This will be the deck you draw from during a challenge. At the start of a challenge a player deals themselves a number of cards dictated by your hand size for this Chapter. Individual Chapters will have specific rules for discarding and drawing cards. A challenge is represented by a Major Arcana card, to triumph over the obstacle you must play a combination of up to four cards, either of the same suit or rank. If the combination’s total value is higher than the Major Arcana’s number the challenge is overcome. The numeric value of Aces is 1 and Page, Knight, Queen, and King are all worth 10. The Fool is a trump card. It can be played alongside any four cards and it will count as a valid combination, regardless of suits or ranks. Integrate how a character’s folly aided their triumph into the story. After a challenge a player discards their hand. The discard pile isn’t shuffled back into the deck until the end of a Chapter.

Just as a brief overview for the early chapters the Scientists redraws were linked to sacrificing resources, which broadly could represent attributes like Emotional Regulation, material resources like a Large Inheritance and connections like an Amoral Hired Assistant. Whereas the Creature’s redraws in their opening chapter would involve gaining scars and eventually killing people (with it left to player interpretation whether that’s accidental, self defence or pre-meditated murder) and building a death toll. How many re-draws something takes gives shape to the fiction². An immediately apparent problem with the mechanic in the playtest was that it was simply too easy to beat a challenge, there was no real difficulty or chance of failure³. I tried a couple of tweaks, first restricting you to only playing a pair of cards, then further the pair specifically having to be a match. This finally resulted in playthroughs that had a variety of results, sometimes I needed to discard and redraw a lot and some challenges I beat without losing anything. It was swingy but that wasn’t a problem⁴, but a problem still existed.

Even when I’d made changes to the mechanic it didn’t feel right, there was a lack of satisfaction. Drawing a hand and realising you can instantly win didn’t feel lucky, it left like being denied the chance to play⁵. Even though the fictional outcome could be interesting, the experience of play inspired no feeling. I went back to the drawing board, the Major Arcana as obstacles worked fine but I looked to move away from beating the Major Arcana through card values. Instead of playing a hand I decided to use a predicting based mechanic⁶. Here’s the new draft for card challenge rules:

Before playing a challenge separate the Major and Minor Arcana into two decks. Remove The Fool from the Major Arcana, add it to the deck of Minor cards and shuffle them together. This will be the deck you draw from during a challenge. The rest of the Major Arcana will act as the obstacles you encounter over the game, with higher cards representing more dangerous challenges. You complete a card challenge by building a pile of cards the size of which matches the Major Arcana number of a given challenge. You add cards to your pile by guessing if the top card of the deck will be higher or lower and then drawing, if you guessed correctly then the card is added to your pile, if your guess was incorrect it goes to the waste pile. For the first card you draw, you are guessing higher or lower relative to the value of the Major Arcana, for all the following cards you are guessing relative to the current top card of your pile. Pages are valued at 11, Knight at 12, Queen at 13, and King at 14. When you first draw an Ace you declare if it is valued at 1 or 15, this value applies to all other Aces drawn in this challenge. If the card you draw is a perfect match it is not immediately added to your pile or the waste pile, instead it is set aside and your next guess determines where it goes. If at any point you draw The Fool you succeed against this obstacle immediately, regardless of the size of your pile. The Fool is then set aside for the rest of the Chapter. When a challenge is over, the number of cards in the waste pile determines the consequences you suffered during this challenge. Each specific challenge will present its own costs. In some Chapters the cards challenges will have a fail state, where if a certain number of cards go in the waste pile the challenge cannot be completed. An obstacle revealed itself as truly insurmountable to your character and the story will take another direction. Some challenges cannot be failed, regardless of how much is lost, you will triumph no matter what it costs. Once a challenge is completed shuffle your pile and the discard pile back into the main deck.

From my own tests this feels better to play and let me explain why I think that is. One reason is that this inherently involves more effort. Even if you get lucky and call correctly for every draw you do still have to draw those cards⁷. There’s more moments of tension; if the top card is a Queen and a player predicts lower and drawing a Jack would feel like a near miss while a King would have an unfair feeling sting and drawing a 6 would feel exciting then intimidating as you realise you have to predict again. These feelings can influence the emotion of the fiction, you have a sense of struggling against a challenge before getting a lucky break and that bleeds into the telling of the fictional obstacle, whether that’s pilfering corpses, trekking through the arctic or conquering Death.

Other changes flowered downstream from moving to the prediction game. Using the waste pile as a results table unique to every challenge may mean moving away from representing things as resources, essentially speaking in plain terms about fictional consequences and how they cause divergences in the narrative and which chapter is proceeded to.

The next step will be moving to a more detailed re-write of the initial chapters to align with this change. From there I’ll see whatever changes I need to make to the rules text and likely run another self play test⁸.

Because of the nature of this book I imagine it will have a high page count. I predict it will be the largest title of the collection⁹ by far, which probably means I’ll cap the collection at four games before the physical book becomes unwieldy. This could change when I continue writing, if my length expectations are wrong, or the book could grow to a size the format of the collection has to change around it.

Kayla Dice’s Absolute Monsters is coming to Kickstarter in the future. Please do follow the pre-launch page, it will be a big help when the time comes. I’ll likely write more about the individual games and the collection as a whole as it develops¹⁰. I also have other stuff to work on, some much closer to sharing than others, so the next time I contact you there may be some announcements.

Coming soon: Kayla Dice's Absolute Monsters

A hardback collection of monster-focused story games from a one of a kind creator.

1. A preview of the game was posted on my Patreon for free members but I’ll replicate important things in this post. I’ve decided to make some changes Patreon going forward where it’ll essentially be a place mainly for cross posting the newsletter/blog. I explain more in a post over there.

2. The connection between a sacrificed resource and discarded cards felt somewhat abstract, which isn’t bad per se but asks the player to make that connection themselves.

3. Admittedly it’s not actually possible to meaningfully fail in the first two chapters. There are certain things that have to happen in the story, the Scientist always makes a Creature and leaves, the Creature always tracks them down with a demand. In those chapters the only scale is how much of a struggle is. I’ll likely write something about trying to strike an inevitably tragic note with those chapters, in every possible version of events certain fates can’t be avoided.

4. Something I have learned and try to catch now is that the most statistically unlikely outcome will happen to someone, so you should try and make sure that is still an engaging situation. As an example the initial timeskip mechanic in The Gallant and the Virtuous had the number of years just be the number you rolled, until I realised a game where people only ever got to skip ahead by one year wouldn’t actually be that fun. So I changed it so the results correspond to different lengths of time and you’ll always skip ahead a minimum of three years. For Darkness and Distance I need to make sure a playthrough where everything is accomplished without any major cost is as interesting as a playthrough full of struggle and suffering.

5. A bad run of luck felt more substantial but that ties in to the issue of having to account for all outcomes, someone could get implausibly lucky.

6. Fun Fact: I have an unfinished draft of a mythological underworld football game that used Tarot Cards. Very different mechanically from Darkness and Distance but penalties in that game uses a prediction mechanic, not identical but similar in ways. Maybe I’ll get back to the underworld some day.

7. Yes, drawing The Fool is an exemption to this but that’s why you have to set it aside for the rest of a chapter. Every chapter tends to have around three challenges so its impact is limited. The Fool is only ever confined to a single challenge where you don’t have to try and that has its own narrative resonance, your character is succeeding through something without needing to put in effort but in all likelihood that’s something driving them to ruin. All the same I’ll keep an eye on The Fool as I keep writing.

8. I’ve been trying to rest mostly this week, well rest and watch football. I also have some layout work and other writing to do that’ll keep me busy for the rest of this month. Of course I often say this and then end up doing more work anyway because I get excited about whatever I want to write. Keep your eyes peeled I guess.

9. I’m not bothered by the disparity in length really. I have something I want to write about sequencing collections and how I think of priorities like an album sequence. Darkness and Distance was probably always going to be the last game in print order, it being much larger just gives it an effect like an LP where Side B is just one long ass experimental song.

9. This was a design diary, other stuff may be more using the games as a jumping off point. I’ve been threatening to write a piece complaining about the term cinematic in ttrpg descriptions (and how I think it’s often insulting to cinema) for a while now and many of my Absolute Monsters are inspired by cinema so it’d be apt.

[bleedthebeat]

[bleedthebeat]

[bleedthebeat]

don’t worry about it

[the-quasar-hero]

You can tell a lot about a person by entering their mind palace and encountering their greatest fears and darkest hopes in a labyrinth reflective of their subconscious thoughts.

[swagophile]

me in a heist movie scenario: [right about to execute the big plan] i hope you guys kbow if this plan goes south i'm killing myself

driver: what

me: alright team. we kbow our roles. lets get to it

demolitions expert: wait can we go back to that thing earlier

grifter: yeah what was that about

me: charlie, i want you to take point. you're the most important for the early phase so you gotta make sure to nail this. remember we only have a limited time to pull this off, so the sooner the better

safecracker: youre not really gonna kill yourself if we fuck this up right

me: [putting on my badass sunglasses as smooth bossa nova music plays] i'm definitely going to kill myself if we get this wrong

[kitschke]

i kinda love this response. just try reading my comment in a nicer voice and you'll feel better

[tippyturret]

[rabbiteclair]

auto immune disorders happen when the immune system ignores regulatory factors and begins attacking healthy bodily tissues, due to what scientists refer to as "sheer love of the game"

[anyataylorjoys]

The Watermelon Woman (1996) dir. Cheryl Dunye

[seeveekat]

Hey this movie is really important in queer history! It was the first feature length film directed by a black lesbian! You can watch it here for free!

I really recommend you do because while it is a rom-com (and a drama), it also looks at how the stories of black queers are over looked in history.

[ratwavekayla]

Decision to Live (UKGE 2026 Reflections Except Not Really)

Decision to Live (UKGE 2026 Reflections Except Not Really) UK Games Expo took place from the 28th to the 31st of May in Birmingham at the NE

I have a blog post up that's essentially about my decision to become a wheelchair user and how much better that's made my life. It's in a sort of disguise as a UKGE reflections blog, or at least uses that as a reference point.

[crackerjackalopegames]

Musings on Randomness

This post was written for the Random Blogwagon hosted by Prismatic Wasteland!

I’m going to open with an opinion that might get me kicked out of the blogwagon: I think too many game designers are too willy-nilly with the use of randomness in their games.

I don’t think this is a massively hot take that’s going to revolutionise the gaming blogosphere. But, prompted by the blogwagon, I wanted to finally get some more thoughts out there on the concept of randomness and its implementation in TTRPGs. There’s a book I really love about this, Uncertainty in Games by Greg Costikyan. I originally wanted this post to be a full discussion of that book, but time is running short so I’ll have to save that for another time. The book has come up in some of my previous writing before, most notably in Uncertainty in Legacy Games on my old site.

When I’m talking about randomness here, I mean pure mathematical randomness. Colloquially, people love to call things random when they’re not. The outcome of Rock-Paper-Scissors isn’t random, both players made a decision, but lots of normal people I speak to (as opposed to game designers) tend to call it random anyway. I like to use the term “arbitrary” for stuff like that, where you have little-to-no control over the outcome but no mathematical randomness was involved.

Die-hard randomness haters might say that randomness undermines agency, and that’s definitely true sometimes! Costikyan talks about the board game Candy Land, a zero-agency game who’s main objective is to teach children how to take turns. There’s also the classic RPG example of the swingyness of a d20 vs target number (“How can I, a level 1 fighter, make decisions in combat that feel important when I only have a 60% chance of doing damage in the first place!?”). But I think randomness can create strategy and interesting choices just as often as it stomps them out.

I’m thinking about the overkill result in the Powered by the Apocalypse game Godkiller. Godkiller uses a roll-with-questions mechanic where each move makes three statements, and you get +1 to your 2d6 roll for each statement that is true.

If you roll too high on some of these moves, you get an overkill: a success with a consequence because you were too powerful. This is a wonderfully flavourful mechanic that prompts you to consider whether you want all three statements to be true all the time. Maybe it’s safer to hold back so you don’t hurt someone close to you. The randomness becomes a big factor in establishing your character’s position in a scene. Especially when the odds of rolling 10+ on 2d6+3 are just over 58%!

Another important factor to consider when designing for randomness is the dynamic between the randomness and player choice. With the previous example of a move in Godkiller, the player’s action triggers the move (“When you inflict violence on someone...”) and then the player rolls to determine the outcome. The decision comes before the randomness. This is called output randomness. Output randomness can sometimes feel very chaotic, since players are forced to react to the consequences of the randomness as they appear, rather than be able to plan based on the results they know they could get.

The opposite of output randomness is input randomness, where the randomness occurs before the player makes a decision. A classic example of this is a hand of cards in Poker. The player gets their random hand at the beginning, then chooses how to bet based on it. In the comments of the Skeleton Code Machine post about Input and Output randomness, Exeunt Press describes input randomness in TTRPGs as “inherently limiting,” using a hypothetical example of a game that gives you a hand of random actions to choose from. But I don’t think this is the only thing that input randomness can mean in RPGs. For a different mechanical perspective, I want to propose Spark Tables, a mechanic that I love from the works of Chris McDowall, especially Mythic Bastionland. See the original post about spark tables on Chris’ blog here.

Spark tables are a GM’s best friend. I’ve been obsessed with them in my recent designs. They’ve shown up in my previous and upcoming solo games: Visitations (which came out last year) and the upcoming A Witch’s Pilgrimage (WIPs are available to paid subscribers!). They are a great example of input randomness: you are given some random words, then “react” by interpreting the words into a more fleshed out and meaningful narrative.

For a while I believed that input randomness was inherently better and lead to more player agency because of the greater information, but I don’t buy that any more. I think it depends on the range of the randomness in your game, something I have also previously written about. If the range of randomness in a game includes situations where the next decision is obvious, that will always have lower player agency than a game where the randomness always leads to interesting decisions. This can be okay! Especially if those non-decisions feel thematically appropriate. But they can also be frustrating if used in the wrong place.

I think this is why I find spark tables so compelling. The entries (at least with Chris’ tables) feel like there are almost always multiple ways to interpret them. Then, when you begin combining multiple prompts, the people, places and things you create feel completely bespoke to your game.

It’s like GM prep magic, I’m obsessed.

---

Thank you for reading! I really wanted to do a full rundown of Uncertainty in Games, but like I said I didn't have the time. All my blog posts are available for free, so join at the free tier to get them in your inbox!

Read more at the Crackerjackalope Games Patreon:

CJ Tucker | Crackerjackalope Games — Tabletop RPGs and Games Writing

Get more from CJ Tucker | Crackerjackalope Games on Patreon. Tabletop RPGs and Games Writing. Support CJ Tucker | Crackerjackalope Games and

[ratwavekayla]

Decision to Live (UKGE 2026 Reflections Except Not Really)

Decision to Live (UKGE 2026 Reflections Except Not Really) UK Games Expo took place from the 28th to the 31st of May in Birmingham at the NE

I have a blog post up that's essentially about my decision to become a wheelchair user and how much better that's made my life. It's in a sort of disguise as a UKGE reflections blog, or at least uses that as a reference point.

[7dmom]

I am so sorry you had a traumatic childhood and it made you stupid on line. I was raised as a lotus flower and I smell like vanilla all the time

[7dmom]

I put your name on a beetle and let it die of thirst

[ratwavekayla]

The Gallant and the Virtuous is now available as a physical book, you can purchase the paperback directly from the Rat Wave Webstore. In this game you play as competitors in jousting tourneys, meeting again and again across years divided by upheaval, until a tragic death brings your game to a close.

Jousting is resolved using a rock-paper-scissors derived mechanic, while your decisions and behaviour in other scenes affects your Doom and Fortune, the metrics which will decide your fates. The game involves collaborative world building elements as every player creates the kingdom their challenger hails from, and will share responsibility for entwining their histories together.

This is a game about what drives someone in a competition. It's about the relationships between people whose desires are in conflict. It's about struggling to find purpose in changing times. It's a game about jousting.

[the-big-mood]