Finding the Buzz
Chronicles of Rot: Part 1, a game design retrospective series
I have always viewed tabletop gaming as a strictly communal bloodsport. At last year’s GenCon, however, I noted a palpable demand for solo play games. I volunteer to help run demo games every year, and a repeated question from the convention floor was, “Does this have a solo variant?” At the time, I mostly dismissed it, but the pattern was impossible to ignore.
In September, I stumbled into the solo RPG space through Whiskey Blood and Dust’s article on Drug Pilgrims of the Apocalypse. I was intrigued enough to play through it a couple of times and began to realize exactly how much evocative narrative you can pack into a tiny ruleset. I really enjoyed that it was always my turn. There was no mind-numbing downtime waiting for another player to read through all of his spells again while divining what to do with his turn. Instead, you discover a full story of a pilgrim in this wasteland in 20 minutes or less.
My business partner Alex also introduced me to Exclusion Zone Botanist by Exuent Press given my enthusiasm for my first solo RPG play. This game did something entirely different. It took the physical act of sketching and made it a core gameplay loop. You discover an unusual plant, and you have to draw it to document it. Participating in the narrative physically was enchanting. You end up simultaneously in the driver’s and passenger’s seat. The game’s critical mechanic demands tactile engagement.
About the same time, Alex and I were having a discussion, and he made an offhand comment: “The game could be about anything, even living as a fly, but the player or the table itself is the thing that makes it interesting.” With my newfound respect for solo RPGs, a seed was planted:
What if I built a one-page RPG where you play a common housefly, but every micro-moment of survival is treated with overblown, tongue-in-cheek grimdark seriousness?
I love apocalyptic games and bleak aesthetics. I wanted to map those heavy metal survival themes onto a mundane setting. What we know to be simple kitchen would instead be a rotting battlefield. A grease-slicked stovetop becomes an impassable, toxic wasteland. A rolled-up piece of junk mail is the Hammer of God!
You get the idea.
At first, this was just a dumb-fun concept. You are a maggot. You have biological imperatives: Mate. Seed. Feast. Meet your end bravely. As I started drafting the rules, I realized there was maybe something to be mined here. In recasting the heroic feats of traditional RPGs onto a microscopic scale, everyday obstacles became world-ending stakes. I was building a tiny engine of my own.
This is Part 1 of the Chronicles of Rot, detailing the genesis of what eventually became Legacy of Filth. A game that I hope will be my first wholly self-designed and published game.
Next, I’ll dig into the lessons of one-page constraints, the frustrations of my first playtest, and why “simple on paper” is a trap when your ruleset finally collides with the reality of the table.
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