Two Theories About Vibes

I. Dear Reader,

When I hear people talk about vibes, I’m like a sardine out of a can – completely out of my natural habitat. But I overcame my bafflement. I persevered. And so here are two theories about vibes:

1. Vibes make you want to play the game in the first place: In a recent interview, Cole Wehrle, the designer of boardgames like Root, talks about a joke that he has with artist Kyle McFerrin. Wehrle says it’s Kyle’s job to make people play the game once and Wehrle’s job to make them play twice. It’s a joke but it points at something central, right? The design might be good but no one will find out if they don’t play it. So there’s a whole bunch of a stuff that goes into solving that problem: illustrations, sure, but premise, titles, taglines, graphic design, form factor, etc. To give a non-illustration example, Brindlewood Bay‘s premise of “grandmothers solve lovecraftian mysteries” is a vibe, right? For some people, it’s enough to get them to play it once. If they like the game design, they’ll come back and play it again. When a game is “just vibes”, there’s no design backing up the promise and often, your first time is the last time.
2. Vibes get you in the right headspace for the game to work: Sometimes, to play a game, you need to approach it the right way. Whether that’s knowledge of genre or a broader mindset shift, sometimes the game doesn’t work without it. The first thing that comes to mind is games where you “play to lose” and specifically, the joy of characters dying in horror games. But beyond that, there’s loads of other subtleties: should we be playing fast or slow, should we be taking this more seriously or less, should we be ready to cry at some point or maybe flirt, or maybe flirt and then cry? Now, again, this emerges from all the same constituent elements of vibes. You can definitely do it through text and sometimes, purely through the design. When a game is praised for having great vibes in this sense, its probably communicated the ideal headspace quickly, effectively and entertainingly. For a non-pictorial example, I think the title Monster of the Week does a great job of explaining exactly how you should think about the game as a potential player.

I think there’s a subtle distinction between 1 and 2. For me, statement 2 is a design problem, while statement 1 isn’t. Statement 1 is a designer problem, for sure. But it’s not something you can iron out while playtesting, right? It’s more in the arena of publishing and product. That doesn’t make it more or less important. Just different.

Yours vibes-fully,

Thomas

PS. I don’t think any of this is particularly new but if it’s useful, great!

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II. Media of the Week

• This week, on Yes Indie’d, I spoke to Mint, the blogger behind all the recommendations from the tumblr, There’s a TTRPG For That. She’s also working on a cool Forged in the Dark game called Protect the Child, about monsters babysitters and found family.
• Blerdy Disposition has a nice video essay on queer politics and the wonderful pulpy mystery game, Moonlight on Roseville Beach.

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• We got 3 new patrons last week which is fantastic. Thank you to Andru, Pandetheist, and Stephanie! I’m going to start thanking people directly here. Should’ve been doing this the whole time honestly!
• You too can support the newsletter on patreon!
• If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.

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III. Links of the Week

Articles/Essays

• On their newsletter, mekhami writes about mindfulness and RPGs: “If players could set aside their fear of looking silly, of looking immature, of looking childish, what heights could they achieve with their imagination and roleplaying?”
• Mythic Mountains has a long, detailed post about what they would do differently if they were to start running Classic Traveller today. It’s good advice for anyone who wants to give one of the all-time classics a shot.
  • Also, every post that it links to is great.
• The Asked Questions newsletter talks about bleed using a Brennan Lee Mulligan clip and an academic paper. “Hugaas gathers three basic bleed components, as he calls them, which are: Emotional bleed—when feelings spill over, Memetic bleed—when beliefs and ideas spill over, Procedural bleed—when movements and perceptions spill over.”

News

• United Paizo Workers, the union, won the Diana Jones Award.
• Fallen London is getting a official tabletop RPG as a collaboration between the videogame’s developer Failbetter Games and Magpie Game. (Paywall)

Misc

• Ben Robbins has a repository of 600+ summaries of sessions played (organized by game) at their Story Games Seattle meetup.
• For designers, Nobile Press has an itch.io launch checklist which neatly lists all the optimal stuff to do before your page goes live.

From the archive:

• Good time to revisit this fun post from jay dragon called a dozen fragments of playground theory: “the process of game design is simply constructing skeletons for dreams.” (Issue 42, May 2021)
• Vincent Baker answers some reader-submitted questions about PbtA games: “My take is, my games aren’t genre emulation. They’re work in their genres, plain and simple. When you play them, you aren’t emulating those genres, you’re just plain no-bones making new fiction in them.” (Issue 42, May 2021)

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IV. Small Ads

All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section has sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to be featured here, read the submission form.

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This newsletter is sponsored by the the wonderful Bundle of Holding.

• There’s a quick deal (less than 24 hours left) with sword and sorcery investigation game, Swords of the Serpentine.
• Also, get everything published for psychedelic doom metal setting, Ultraviolet Grasslands.

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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!