I’ve been in the process of rewriting Pets and Fedoras after the accidental break down of the game in the design process. I’ve made two big changes: the first in the core mechanic of the game, and the second in the layout of the game as in the title of this post.

Diceless

Pets and Fedoras started out as a hack of Lasers and Feelings, with a d6 dice pool as its core mechanic. However, in the latest version, I have completely removed the stat and dice mechanic. If there is a chance of failure at an action, players play rock paper scissors. Losers cartoonishly fail at the task, while winners succeed and have to help their struggling counterpart.

This means that player characters always succeed when acting in a group. If this was a trad-game, this would be blatant railroading (ie. forcing the gameplay down the pre-determined path). But since this is a collaborative storytelling game emulating a formulaic cartoon, Phineas and Ferb, I think this should be fine. If I get feedback otherwise, I may reconsider.

Slides

Finally, I’ve moved the layout of the game away from a one-page game. I have taken some design notes from For the Queen, which is GM-less and presents the game’s setup and instructions through cards. I like this because it decentralises the reading of the instructions, and makes the game not just collaborative in its gameplay but also its setup.

I currently have the instructions and prompts divided into presentation slides, which can be printed out and cut into cards and given to the players. Another reason I like this layout is because it is easy to convert for online play. In the near future, I intend to set up a slideshow widget on the game’s page on this blog, so that game hosts can just share it over a video call while they play.

What’s left

At this point, I believe I have the mechanics and prompts mostly locked down. What’s left is

1. to playtest the game
2. find art to add to some of the slides
3. upload the slideshow widget to the blog.

I am going to create a discord server for playtesters, so keep an eye out for that.

Peace, Mr. Zech.