The Crater Village Game
The Crater Village Game is a cooperative storytelling game about the local history of a small, isolated community. Because passage in and out of the community is difficult and rare, many of the most significant events are arrivals and exits, literal or otherwise, and because the community is so small, each individual person, place or group has a chance to make a major difference to its history. The specific nature of the community, and the wider world it exists in, is up to the players, and can be determined over time as they play.
This is not a strategy or resource management game. The successes and failures of the community do not represent the successes and failures of the players. The story will be partially determined by random chance, and it will (hopefully) go in directions the players do not expect.
The Crater Village Game can be played with one or more players, at whatever pace the players desire, including in person or over a live call, or through messages.
The Crater Village Game has very few material requirements, and can be played almost entirely with just the digital files included here:
- Plaintext file containing a guide to playing
- Plaintext file with a numbered list of Event Cards
- Plaintext file with a list of the Event Cards corresponding to playing cards
The following other materials will also be needed:
- A standard deck of 52 playing cards, or other random number generator to pick cards
- A coin, die or other method of randomly answering yes-or-no questions
This version of The Crater Village Game was created for the Ludum Dare 54 game jam, with the theme "limited space" but I have plans to expand and refine it in the future.
The following are my top priority goals:
- Put together a nicer-looking PDF guide
- Create actual cards, for printing or use in Tabletop Simulator
- Get more feedback from players, and more actual testing
You can help with that last goal! If you find this game interesting, please give it a try, and let me know how it went, and what you think. If you didn't like it, or even couldn't get through a game, your feedback will still help me improve it in the future.
This is not a strategy or resource management game. The successes and failures of the community do not represent the successes and failures of the players. The story will be partially determined by random chance, and it will (hopefully) go in directions the players do not expect.
The Crater Village Game can be played with one or more players, at whatever pace the players desire, including in person or over a live call, or through messages.
The Crater Village Game has very few material requirements, and can be played almost entirely with just the digital files included here:
- Plaintext file containing a guide to playing
- Plaintext file with a numbered list of Event Cards
- Plaintext file with a list of the Event Cards corresponding to playing cards
The following other materials will also be needed:
- A standard deck of 52 playing cards, or other random number generator to pick cards
- A coin, die or other method of randomly answering yes-or-no questions
This version of The Crater Village Game was created for the Ludum Dare 54 game jam, with the theme "limited space" but I have plans to expand and refine it in the future.
The following are my top priority goals:
- Put together a nicer-looking PDF guide
- Create actual cards, for printing or use in Tabletop Simulator
- Get more feedback from players, and more actual testing
You can help with that last goal! If you find this game interesting, please give it a try, and let me know how it went, and what you think. If you didn't like it, or even couldn't get through a game, your feedback will still help me improve it in the future.
Comments2
LDJam user 3213334 Oct 2023, 21:19
Please by all means, if you and others like the Major Events idea, try and run with it! I like your idea about developing creation myth or other broad/background aspects of the village through them. It might be difficult to put something so big in a prompt, I don't know, but you certainly have the talent for it.
I appreciate you being so on top of crediting (and development generally). I've never been credited for anything before, so I'll defer to you, but sure, if you could mention me ("oter") in the guide that'd be really cool! (and my co-player declined being credited but is on board for all of the stuff I've posted).
I appreciate you being so on top of crediting (and development generally). I've never been credited for anything before, so I'll defer to you, but sure, if you could mention me ("oter") in the guide that'd be really cool! (and my co-player declined being credited but is on board for all of the stuff I've posted).
We liked the game a lot, very open ended with just enough structure to keep you going. You did a great job writing the secondary "O" questions so as to open the story to more creativity and storytelling, rather than close it off by looping back to the original event prompt too strongly (if that makes sense - regardless, well done!).
Also, we found it very useful to take notes as we played, so it was a good idea to suggest that.
The only issue we had with the game was the length. We played over dinner and hadn't completed half the deck by the time we were done, so decided to end the game ourselves rather than wait for the End Card, which had landed near the bottom of the deck.
We thought of a couple other ways to help the length issue:
1. Divide the deck by suits, so you can choose how long you want the game to take by how many suits you are playing with.
2. Allow more cards to be the End card, like any ace or aces and kings.
The second point goes into another system I thought might help pace the game, like a "Major Event" card. For example, draw any ace and the first major event happens. Then depending on how long you want the game to be, the next ace could be another Major Event, or it could be the End Card. This adds a little more sense of progression, but at the expense of some of the current open-endedness. But that might put the pacing and style too similar to The Quiet Year's seasons, so :shrug:
But to reiterate, great game!