Last week I entered a game in one of my favorite online competitions, the 200 word RPG challenge. Started by game designer David Schirduan in 2015, the competition rules can be summarized in a single sentence: write a role playing game in 200 words or less.
200 words are not many, especially when writing a ruleset for a game. And while some may think that it’s impossible to describe a game in so few words, the truth is quite the opposite. Since 2015, more than a thousand games were submitted for the 200 word RPG challenge and both the variety and the quality is incredible. Randomly clicking through entries shows that the idea of limiting the word count so much can lower the barrier for submitting a game, encouraging creativity and focusing efforts and design. Most of the games submitted for the challenge are tight, interesting and sharp as razorblades. They often describe specific and interesting scenarios or genres, creating novel mechanics that match the theme perfectly (one of the 2016 winners is a time paradox game where ice cubes melt the characters sheet… and powers).
I’ve been working on several games for the challenge but ended up submitting only one. It’s a game that scratches an itch I had for a long time: using haikus as a game element.
Here’s my game:
Chromed poets
There is a war in space. Big robots piloted by humans fight each other with laser swords and beam cannons. The war has been going on for a long time but it is about to end. It ends today, with this battle.
You compose haikus using at least one of the words listed below in each.The fastest pilot to compose the first haiku starts.
The pilots then alternate at composing haikus. The haikus should answer to each other and are about who you are, what you pilot, why you fight, what is this war about, your relationship with each other and scenes from your battle.
The first pilot to use all the words below in their haikus, wins the war. Their last haiku must describe the consequences for their faction. The other pilot gets then to write a final haiku with any word to describe the consequences for everyone else.
Metal – sword – sunrise – rose – planet – space – nuclear – explosion – dust – particle – chrome – ring – divine – rebel – fire – attack – transform – colony – door – peace – stardust – comrade – human – exploration – star – alien – terror – field – god – fly
Few words on what I tried to do here. I wanted to explore a bit the idea of evoking something instead of describing something in a role playing game. Most of the time, role playing games are chats between people that describe what they do or what they see or what they think. Using poetry as a communication tool allows us (or, at least, that’s my hypothesis) to bypass that level and evoke scenes or scenarios without fully explaining them. And the players need to fill in the gaps. Haikus seem fit for the job: they are easy and quick to write but the constrains force brevity and broad strokes instead of fine details.
The theme follows this idea: haikus are traditional Japanese poetry, sometimes written by samurais. However, I wanted to up the stakes for the players as much as possible, offering the chance to describe end-of-the-world stories where everything is on the line. When I remembered that my beloved Japanese mechas (and, specifically, Gundams) were no other than space samurais, I connected the dots and turned the players into space-robots-pilots-poets, evoking with haikus an incredibly charged final battle.
I haven’t play-tested the game yet, but if you are up for some poetry, feel free to send me a first haiku. I’ll be happy to fire back.
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