🌈🚀 Reliable wonder engine. I make narrative role-playing games that imagine a weirder, queerer, more connected world.
why Dialect is so amazing
|
Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in and sit down. I thought the weather was looking up, and then we got cold rain. A good time to be inside—have some hibiscus tea. We also have rice crackers and surprisingly good toast. Tonight, we're playing Dialect. Dialect is a game about language and how it dies. And it's amazing. It may sound like some wonky, crossword-puzzle kind of thing, all up in the head. But it's not. It always hits me square in the feels. We play members of an isolated community. Maybe we’re robots, left behind on a trash-filled Earth after all the humans have left. Maybe we’re queer kids living in an abandoned parking garage. Dialect has an expansive list of options. Whatever we choose, to make your character, you just choose a card. The card says what role you play in the community. Over the course of the game, the complete person comes into focus. Our community has stages: it begins optimistically, grows, and ultimately dissolves. In each stage, we create words to capture our unique shared experience. We know ahead of time that things will fall apart. Either the larger society will reabsorb us, or we’ll die out in seclusion. This makes our time together precious. For our characters, but also for us, the players at the table. It’s poignant—piercing. When it finally ends, we’ve been on an epic journey together. And only we at the table remember the language the community spoke. I’ve said before how ephemeral the TTRPG experience is. It leaves us with nothing but memories. In this case, we have something more concrete: the words we created. Later, when we run into each other again, we might use those words. They’re our private language. They continue as long as we do. I don’t know how they do it, but these words make my heart ache. In a good way. Our isolated community was fictional, but the words are real. They make the community feel real. Tonight, I want you to have this same sense of community. And the words to give it life. xoxo P.S. If you know another game as heart-wrenching as Dialect, please tell me all about it! P.P.S. Sometimes we don’t want pathos, just a good time. That’s okay too! Raccoon Sky Pirates has zero pathos. |
Everlasting, Neverending Game Night
🌈🚀 Reliable wonder engine. I make narrative role-playing games that imagine a weirder, queerer, more connected world.
Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in, into the A/C. On the table, I've put bunches of honeysuckle in a jam jar. We used to pull the flowers apart and suck the juice from them. Today, in the most Raccoon Sky Pirates result possible, the ship carrying the Raccoon Sky Pirates Kickstarter exploded before making it halfway to its destination. That is, I canceled the campaign. s.If you backed it, thank you! And I'm sorry I had to cancel. If you didn't back it, no worries. I'll retool and come back...
Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. I put stalks of crown-pink in a jar on the table. If you can see them. Don't mind the smoke. The raccoons are in the back yard, getting their ship together. Tomorrow morning at 9 am Eastern, the Kickstarter for Raccoon Sky Pirates: Total Chaos Edition will finally launch. I made a hilarious video for it. I can't post it here, because it's too big. But you can see it on the Kickstarter page tomorrow morning. Yuri Lowenthal, the voice of Spider-Man, narrated...
Hi Reader, Whew! What a time it's been since we last got together. Unconscionably, I swiped a stalk of Lady's Gloves from a neighbor's hellstrip and put them in a milk bottle on the table. They look magical, but it's still theft. If you've been following along, you may think the Raccoon Sky Pirates Kickstarter should have launched by now. Yesterday, even. But a Kickstarter is always more work than I remember, and let's be fair, I was pushing too hard in not enough time. So now the Dumpster...