Listen to this episode here.
Alex Roberts, designer of Star Crossed and For the Queen, joins me to talk about pity points from Kagematsu, a mechanic that doesn't actually do anything itself beyond evoke a particular feeling when put in opposition to love points.
This episode is what I always dreamed Dice Exploder could be. We start from a simple game mechanic, but we get into power dynamics at the table in the past and the future, how people treat you when you’re disabled, cultural appropriation, my personal techniques for flirting, details of a new game Alex is working on, and of course “what is the true nature of love?”
Happy day after Valentine’s Day.
Further Reading
Kagematsu is no longer available in print or online
Kagematsu actual play, featuring Alex, on the One Shot podcast
What Dice Do blogpost by Graham Walmsley
The Quiet Year by Avery Alder
Alex’s finished podcast Backstory
Star Crossed by Alex Roberts
For the Queen, second edition coming May 14th from Darrington Press
Socials
Alex’s personal carrd page
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lily Pads by my boi Travis Tessmer.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and secretly judge it after it's left the room. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and my co host this week is Alex Roberts.
Alex is a superstar. She's probably best known for Star Crossed, a two player game of forbidden love that uses a Jenga tower, and which just funded an expansion, Star Crossed: Love Letters, last fall. Check it out, Bully Pulpit Games.
I think of Alex first as the designer of For the Queen, a devilishly simple game that always delivers a quality story and is my go-to for introducing new players to the hobby, and which has a handsome new edition coming May 14th from Darrington Press.
Alex was also the host of Backstory, for my money the best RPG interview podcast of its time, which ended several years ago, but which you can still comb through the archives of for tons of great interviews and lessons on design.
Apparently introducing Alex is an exercise in me recommending all my favorite RPG things. It's a treat to have her on the show.
Alex brought in Pity Points from Kagamatsu, by Danielle Lewan, an old story game from the aughts set in Sengoku period, Japan. In the game. In the game, one player, who must be a woman according to the rules, plays as Kagamatsu, a wandering samurai. Everyone else plays as women of a village that's facing some kind of threat. And each of them works to romance Kagamatsu in the hopes of convincing him to save the village. Kagamatsu, after every scene, bequeaths to that scene's suitor either a point of love or a point of pity. It's delicious.
This episode is what I always dreamed Dice Exploder could be. We start from a simple game mechanic, but we get into power dynamics at the table in the past and the future, how people treat you when you're disabled, cultural appropriation, my personal techniques for flirting, details of a new game Alex is working on, and, of course, what is the true nature of love? Happy day after Valentine's Day.
Before we jump in, note that Kagamatsu has been taken out of print by its creators, and there's no easy way to obtain a copy of it. Because of that, we try to be more thorough than usual in our explanations of the mechanics so you can follow along.
Okay, here is Alex Roberts with pity points from Kagamatsu.
Alex Roberts, thanks so much for being on Dice Exploder.
Alex: Oh my gosh, thank you for having me.
Sam: I cannot wait to talk about some sexy samurai with you. So yeah, tell us about Kagamatsu.
Alex: Sure so Kagamatsu is a game from, I want to say 2009, that I think was in development long before that, that is about wandering Ronin, who comes upon a village that is in some way kind of helpless or defenseless to a periodic or returning or ominous threat.
It takes place in the Sengoku era of Japan, so the idea is that all the able bodied men and people who could use a sword are off dying in the Shogun's wars. And so for basically the townswomen of this village, who are left behind, try to steer the ronin from his wandering course and convince him to help them.
And so something that the Townswomen players are trying to do is basically acquire love. Like, love is a bunch of points. There are love points in this game.
Sam: You can get a high score in love.
Alex: Yes, you can, finally.
Sam: Just like In real life.
Alex: But the mechanic that I'm actually so fascinated by is pity because those are different points that can be handed out by the Kagamatsu player instead of love kind of as that player chooses.
And much like contempt tokens in The Quiet Year I think it's easy to explain that as, yeah, they don't, they don't do anything, right? Or they don't have any mechanical impact, or they seem to not do anything, and yet they actually do a lot.
And so, I mean, I could talk about Quiet Year for an hour too, but basically I, I'm very interested in mechanics that quote unquote don't do anything. that don't get involved in any calc that are, like, Sort of quantifiable, I guess, but don't enter into any calculation at any point. I'm just totally fascinated by that.
Sam: Yeah. Alright, so I can't wait to ask you about that, but I want to get into, like, the nuts and bolts of how do love and pity points work, how are they handed out, just to establish that up front. So scenes in this game involve the townswoman deciding on an affection that they are trying to get from Kagematsu. And these range from a stolen glance all the way up to a roll in the hay. Or, there's a secret in the middle, or whatever. So, you know in the scene, what the townswoman is trying to get from Kagamatsu.
And you kind of roleplay out the scene, and then at some point you make a roll, that we won't get into the details of, to determine whether the woman wins that affection or not. And then at the end of the scene Kagamatsu decides whether to either give the townswoman a point of love or a point of pity.
And he also keeps these totals secret from all the townswomen. So they're running totals throughout the course of the game.
And then at the end of the game pity as we said, doesn't quote unquote do anything. But, Kagamatsu's highest amount of love with a townswoman is used to determine his strength when going up against whatever problem the town is dealing with.
Alex: Yes, I think that's a pretty good summary. I mean, basically, there are a bunch of affections. The Townswoman player kind of calls their shot at the beginning of their scene and they're like, okay, in this one, I'm going for a shared moment, a touch, a gift, a kiss or whatever. And the last one, the one that is the most difficult to get, is a promise made.
And so the odds of this game ending in tragedy, like in either kamatsu just walking away or kamatsu going up against the thing and failing are really high, which is one of my favorite things about it. And yeah, ultimately the townswoman never know what their love score is because they know which things they succeeded at, but that only tells them their highest potential love, because in every single one of those cases, Kagamatsu could have noted a point of pity.
And on this very physical level, too, like, if you're at the table with people you see the Kagamatsu player make a little mark on their paper. So, you know, like, something happened, but but yeah, you never know how much love or pity happens until, you know, of course, the end of the game.
Sam: Well and it's... It's such a... I played this just yesterday, and, we're all playing over Discord, we have our cameras on, and the way that we were playing was whichever townswoman was in the scene would turn their camera on, but everyone else would turn their cameras off and this was just not something we, like, intended, it just sort of accidentally happened.
But so there would always be a moment between scenes where You All the townswomen will have turned their cameras off, and the full screen was just Kagamatsu's player writing on a physical piece of paper and going, Mm hmm, mm hmm, and like, and it was everyone, all of us were just like, WAAA, like what's, what's happening there?
Yeah, it's, it's exactly as you say.
Alex: Mm hmm. And I am now thinking about all the times where I have looked down at my little paper and gone, mm hmm, and watched people at a table just like, sweating, panicking.
Sam: Yeah. So the other rule that sort of hangs over this whole game is that Kagamatsu must be played by a woman. This game was published in 2009. But I feel like that the game at large is so interested in power dynamics, right? In, in these relationships and love and pity, I think, play right into that. Like, love and pity are power dynamics.
Alex: Yes, absolutely. And so this is a game that is that I think engages with power in a really interesting way. It is extremely 2009 in the way it's designed, in the way that it looks in the people who are involved e everything about it. And, like, as someone who was playing RPGs at that time I, I don't think I played with another woman or non binary person until, like mid to late 2010s, if I had to guess.
So yeah, so when I first got into indie RPGs, I was used to just being the only woman at the table, and that was always, whether or not anyone wanted it to be, or whether or not it was written anywhere, that's a dynamic. That's, that's something that is happening, right? That has an impact on play.
And I mean, the obvious, power dynamic that we talk about when we talk about roleplaying games is the GM to player power differential. And I think all of us probably have had really bad experiences with poor use of that power differential, right?
This sort of... This joke maybe, or frequent just bad time, of the GM who's power tripping, right? Who's taking advantage of the power differential to do things that they would not otherwise really sort of have social permission to do.
And I think there's an equally common joke of the players sort of exerting power in this kind of, like, thumbing your nose at authority way, right? The perpetual meme of like, Oh, I'm the GM and I created this amazing world and this fascinating story for my players, but then they just wanted to talk to Scrungle, the elf who was supposed to be in there for five minutes. Ah, God, you know? Or I planned this huge encounter and then my players just wanted to shop and play dress up for four hours.
And that joke says a lot, right? that this power is there and that people have different ways of kind of poking at it, playing with it.
And so I think a lot of what has happened in RPG design is figuring out GM less games, or figuring out ways to in some way distribute power in a more kind of equal way.
The other game that I'm going to be mentioning a lot is The Quiet Year, Avery Alder's The Quiet Year, which... distributes power, right, in that way. it doesn't have a game master. And I think her game Dream Askew does that in an even more interesting way, where they're basically the GM's role is broken down into a couple of different things that you do, and then everyone gets a piece of that.
So there isn't no GM, it's more like everyone is part of a GM. It's yeah, it's interesting.
Sam: A GM but only over the digital world, or whatever,
Alex: or, you know, only over the outcome of this, or the outcome of that, or saying what this is.
So, I think that's really interesting, but I am kind of far more fascinated by games that take that power dynamic and try to see how far you can push it and still have fun. Yeah, the game I, I've, if anyone's ever talked to me about games in person, they've heard my Paranoia rant, right?
Paranoia is this amazing piece of satire you know, comes out in the, I'm trying to think, 80s or 90s that, you know, this, this period of time that where people, I guess, were just starting to feel the sting of the misuse of GM power, and sort of sets up this whole thing where, like, knowing the rules is against the rules, everything is against the rules, the players are constantly sinning against the all powerful friend computer that is hostile to you in every way. And you can be killed with a wave of the GM's hand, and the GM is pitting you all against each other.
And it, it exaggerates that power dynamic in a way that is, like, very funny and I think very fun to play and I think very kinky, but that's a separate discussion.
And so Kagamatsu also plays with that power dynamic in a way that I think is really interesting, and that is not exactly about exaggerating nor equalizing it.
Sam: It is trying to, like, offer that power to someone who normally doesn't get it,
Alex: Yes, yes, yes. And this is downright difficult to explain if you haven't been playing roleplaying games for very long, but you know, there was some interesting research on, like, business meetings around this time that I got interested in reading just about, like who gets listened to, who's, who speaks up more and less often, who gets listened to you know, the, the bit about, like, oh, I, you know, I said something, but eventually a man near me said it louder, so the suggestion was accepted.
And the thing is, all of that played out to some degree or another at the gaming table. And obviously in a better group it was a lot less often, and I was playing with wonderful wonderful people who were very, like, conscious of that and would actively kind of seek out contributions from players who were not speaking up as often or, you know, try to compensate for that dynamic. And so Kagamatsu is this way of compensating for that dynamic to the nth degree.
And I have this physical copy of Kagamatsu because my buddy Patrick, who really introduced me to roleplaying games other than D& D really like put it in my hands and was like, hey, our group wants to play this. If we're gonna do it, you're gonna have to GM it. It says so here in the rules.
And, my group did the same thing with My Life with Master, which is again, a different tangent that I, I GMed for different but similar reasons. But I was very shy about GMing, and I was very nervous to. I was less experienced, and I was younger than other people in the group, and, you know, probably gender was a factor. Probably. Gender is definitely a factor in who decides that they can GM or not. Let me put that there, actually explicitly.
And so there was actually something really beautiful in just being told like, well, we all want to play this game. Alex, you yourself thinks it's super cool. So if you want, if we want to play it, you're gonna have to run it.
And I became absolutely addicted to running it. And I ran it for our group and I ran it for some other friends and I ran it so many times at game conventions and because it, it facilitated a power dynamic that was, again, very different from what I'd experienced at the table before. It was very interesting to me.
And also, that's not just me being like, oh, it's fun to have power over people. I really saw a different side of a lot of my players. When they were asked not just to play women, but to play people who had to convince someone else to do things. And who were powerless to do certain things themselves.
had to do so in a way that... called upon their own ideas about what is lovable, what is cute, or what is sexy, or what is compelling, or like what would elicit the love of another person? And that's not something that I normally yeah, it was just a new side of people that I, that not very many, I think to this day, role playing games really elicit in an interesting way.
And yeah, it was something that that just kind of hooked me. Yeah. Mm
Sam: I have like three responses to the thing that you just
Alex: Mm
Sam: and I want to say a couple of them. But the first is, like, what a gift to have a game give you a push into GMing with a rule that says you have to do it.
Alex: Yeah.
Sam: like, like the, the game, the game having that bit of like power to encourage people who are maybe nervous about the idea but also maybe excited about it to give it a try.
I think there's something really lovely in that.
Alex: Yeah, and I'm still a little self conscious as a GM and I want to encourage other people to try GMing or to, you know, or to play outside their comfort zone in some way or to, I don't know, when I play with really shy players and I'm just like how can I get out your delicious, amazing, beautiful ideas? Because the people who speak louder don't necessarily have better ideas, my friend. So I, but I um, I don't know, I've, I don't know how else to like, So, so sternly yet invitingly elicit the first time GM. Anyway, I have very half baked thoughts about that, and I wish I could do it.
But yeah, sorry, that was the first thing. You had two more things.
Sam: Yeah, so you mentioned the way that this game sort of opened up a new side in a lot of your players, and something that I really noticed in myself as I was playing it was that I learned something about the way that I flirt.
Right? But like, there's this old story that my partner loves to tell about we were in college, not together.
She's directing this play that I'm in, and in the play I am playing the brother of the lead, and both of us are interested in the same woman. And we are in this scene and rehearsing it and doing a terrible job flirting with this woman. Just absolute dogshit job portraying flirting.
And finally my partner breaks down and she's just like, guys, guys, guys. How do you flirt in real life? And he's like, I TALK VERY LOUDLY, and I like, I STAND TOO CLOSE AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO, and I'm like, I STAND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM AND I'M VERY RESPECTFUL, and like, and like,
I saw, there was a, halfway through this game, you know, it's, I've been with my partner for like 11 years now, you know, it's, it's, I have not done a lot of flirting since, and There was a moment in this game where I was like, I'm standing on the other side of the room and being respectful right now. Like, that is the way that I, I try to make myself appealing to people.
And it was in that process I also sort of noticed I felt like this was a really great game for introducing people to the idea of roleplaying romance in
Alex: Mm. Mm
Sam: because first of all, it's sort of actually a series of duet games kind of layered on top of each other. Like, the townswomen don't have a lot of interaction, right? And that's not to say that they don't influence each other, because Kagamatsu is sort of... looking for differences between the women, right? Like, if I take out a really strong flirty stance, I'm kinda gonna be the flirty one, and like, maybe the other women are gonna be less so, right? But it's still not I'm not doing scenes with the other townswomen.
And that makes it, I think, easier to kind of step back and watch your friends, like, do the romance thing and be like, okay, I can get comfortable doing that. We can all do that.
But it's also, by virtue of its setup, it is like, ostensibly a game about romance. But you alluded to this earlier, this was like maybe the third thing I wanted to talk about, is how this isn't actually a romance game if you don't want it to be, like, none of the people in this game have to be interested in ro All of them could be genuinely interested in romance, all of these characters could be.
But like, also, if you are Kagamatsu, just sort of like, taking pity on these women and like, helping out the town because it's the right thing to do, and you're like, you know, a gay guy, like, that works. And if you are a townswoman who is just like, I'm going to use the weapons in my arsenal, like pity and sexuality, to like, get the job done for the town, that also completely works.
And I think that's so fascinating and helpful for coming into romance games for the first time. Yeah.
Alex: Yes, absolutely. I think a great way to explore romance in games is to have another option. It's like to have the option to not. That makes it easier to, to approach, and, and, you know, sexuality as well. And, so,
I mean, speaking of seeing a different side of people, like, I played this game once with someone who I'd never gamed with before, kind of a friend of a friend. and he sits down to the table, and, and we're all making our characters, and he's like, he's like, oh yeah, my character's uh, 14 years old. And I, I, I don't think we had the X card back then, I would have X carded it, but I was kind of like, okay, let me hear this guy out.
And he ended up being, I think he was my most loved, because he played this character that was like, that needed Kagamatsu, wanted Kagamatsu's love so bad, and it was truly in, like, a purely, like, parental way.
Like, I had this deeply, deeply paternal love for this, kid, and obviously she was, like, an orphan, and her dad had died in the war, and there were, you know, obviously, like, Kagamatsu as this ronin, reminded her of her dad in certain ways, and, like, she was really, like, grieving her parents in a way that, I think um, that first of all, like, really walked that love and pity line in an interesting way. But was, was so sincerely lovable in a way that, that did not in any way kind of have to touch on, on romance or sexuality.
And that's really interesting to me, and it's not any more or less kind of easy or helped by the game than the players who I've had where they're like time to seduce Kagamatsu. Like, that's what I'm going to do. and I, I, I love both approaches. Yeah.
Sam: So, I want to talk a little bit more specifically about like the love and pity mechanic at sort of a deeper level. Like, I'm curious if you have thoughts on what it says that in this game the only two responses Kagamatsu are love and pity.
Alex: What I would say is because again, right, it's not about developing a romantic relationship, although that could be one of the many strategies I guess you take, that the town's women are trying to get something from someone, and because they don't have riches, and they don't have, you know, physical power over this other person, the way for them to get what they want to be loved.
And so, when you are in a position where you are trying to get people to help you without making them feel like you are just trying to get them to help you, that can result in pity or it can result in... I mean people have a lot of different definitions of love, but to me that is a commitment to the well being and flourishing of the other person. And like a lived and active commitment to that.
And so that's, that's what happens. And it's something that for various reasons, a lot of disempowered people and I think for specific reasons under patriarchy, a lot of women kind of have to do. That, well, I can't really do this, you know, because they're the person with the access to power. I need some man to do it. But if he knows that I'm just trying to get him to do it either he will be angry or feel bad for me.
And I think something absolutely essential that this game conveys through its mechanics is that pity does not motivate actions that actually support the well being of the other person. Love does, and pity does not. Which is important, and I agree with. Mm.
Mm Ha What?
Sam: I, wait, you go deeper on that? Because first, just a bit of context from where I'm coming from is the game of this I played yesterday, we had this really interesting ending where a townswoman who we later learned had only pity managed to secure the promise from Kagamatsu.
like, she had just achieved a lot of successes even, but like the successes yielded pity, you know? And then at the end, she just rolled a little bit lucky and got there. And so it was like, pity was her weapon, you know? Like was the thing that had drawn this guy in and then like a different person had maximum love. That was me. Like I had maximum love.
And then I failed to I had previously failed to secure the promise and so we had this interesting dynamic of like the person with all the love was instrumental in Kagamatsu fighting the trouble and then failing and he died, it was very sad.
Um, But, the person with all the pity was instrumental in like getting him to agree to do so in the first place. And I, I loved it as this, like, dichotomy of, like, two weapons, like, you know, again, weapon is such a, like, wrong word, but, like, two different strategies achieved different ends, both of which, like, were needed to actually have a chance of, of solving the problem at hand.
Alex: Oh, that's so interesting. We've had profoundly different experiences. Because I I genuinely don't know, like numerically how it would be possible because of the way... I guess it depends on how many dice she would have been able to roll because the way that, sort of, success works in the game, right, is like, you take the result and then you minus, okay, so here's another thing about this game being from 2009. Is that I have never been able to play it without checking the rulebook multiple times and doing at least one thing wrong.
Sam: I can explain the dice roll, having done it yesterday, if that would be helpful.
Alex: Okay. Go for it.
Sam: So. when a woman is going for a particular affection, that affection has associated with it either charm or innocence, which are the women's two stats, and it also has associated with it a difficulty number. And the women roll a number of dice equal to their charm or innocence, whatever is relevant, and Kagamatsu rolls a number of dice equal to the difficulty number. And there's a little bit of funniness on like sixes, whatever I'm gonna skip that part but basically you just like add up the totals on both sides dice and whoever got higher, like if the woman got higher she gets the affection she was going for and if Kagamatsu gets higher she does not.
And then there are two things that can get added on to this. The first is that Kagamatsu's love for that woman is subtracted from his roll. So the more he loves the woman, the easier it is for her to extract an affection from him.
And also, if she fails on a roll, she can use a desperation, which are things that you sort of gradually accumulate from previous successes, like you can blackmail Kagamatsu as a desperation, or you can accuse him of impropriety, or whatever the specific ones are that you have unlocked. And when you use a desperation, you like, bring it into the scene in some sort of roleplay way, and then you get one extra die to your roll as a woman when you do that.
And so what had happened in our case here, with the guy playing this woman who had all this pity, was that Kagamatsu just got a bad roll, and then, you know, he didn't have, like, a lot of charm or innocence, but he had achieved a lot of desperations, and so he just, like, used all the desperations. It, he was so desperate, so he rolled a ton of dice.
And like, got the and it was this like, profoundly sad kind of scene of just like, wow, this guy, like, she really needs this, and like, Kagamatsu does not love this woman, he only feels bad for her, and the more desperate she gets, the more that feels true.
Alex: Right, right. Okay, thank you. That was a very thorough and well phrased explanation and I've been thumbing through my copy here and god I think there's a chance that I, because I really insist that like, either they failed the roll and they failed and they get nothing, or if they succeeded in the roll they get either love or pity.
But actually, Kagamatsu can award those based entirely on how the Kagamatsu player feels, and it's only if they succeeded that they get to try for more affections on the scene.
Anyway, it's finicky, it's fussy, but the point is, the point is that like again, you can acquire the promise, but like, pity isn't gonna work for Kagamatsu to save the town.
Sam: Yeah. If everyone only had pity, then Kagamatsu has nothing fueling him when he goes up against the trouble, right? Like, you might extract the, the promise from him to fight it, but like, he doesn't, he doesn't have it in his heart, you know? Like, he doesn't care about anyone here, and so he's not gonna do a good job.
Alex: Yes, like truly. And I think it's important, again, because someone being kind of helpless can elicit care or can elicit I don't know, sympathy or pity or whatever you want to talk, however you want to phrase that. Like, pity creates distance between people, right? In the same way that love brings them together.
And I... I don't know how common people's sort of experience of this is, but like, I think we've got a whole kind of note in here about love and pity and disability. And like, as someone who needs help with things that not everyone needs help with it has been, it's an interesting experience to to kind of just need help, and I, on a certain level, like, you know, I've been in a position where, like, I need someone to get that off the shelf for me, or I need this to happen, or I need this whatever. And on a certain level it's like, I don't care why you do it.
But my experience is that, like, people who, who love you, I mean, either as, you know, that individual relationship where that's how they feel about people, it's a spiritual commitment, whatever it is um, people who are acting from a place of love will be genuinely and very thoroughly committed to, like, Oh, your needs should be met.
As where the experience of someone just kind of feeling bad for you elicits very little, if anything, of what you actually need. I mean, used a wheelchair for quite a while and the difference between, like, the person who's like, oh, hey, you need that, or oh, let me grab a door for you, and the person who just comes up and is like... Oh, what happened? Uh,
Sam: Uhhh... Yeah,
I mean like gosh. I I like you describing all that, I'm thinking about how much of my own relationship to disability is about avoiding that feeling. About like how, like, y'know, as much as Kagamatsu shows us that you can use pity as a weapon against the person pitying you, I have constructed my life with invisible disability in particular to, like, avoid people doing that to me. Because it feels like shit. Like, I,
Alex: I don't want people to feel bad for me is a very common refrain. And I think again, like this idea of well, if someone feels bad for me enough, they might do maybe this one specific thing, but the social toll and the psychic toll will be so incredibly high. And also it does not, it, it's um, doesn't last the way that love does.
Right? Like, maybe someone will do a specific thing because they feel bad, but it A, is very qualitatively different from someone doing it out of love, and B, the person who loves you will actually be sort of committed in a longer term way to helping you get your needs met, right?
In the way that, that, that you are committed to helping them.
Sam: When I think pity in some ways is a selfish emotion on the act of the pittier. It is
Alex: Yep.
Sam: You agree, yeah, yeah it because it is I think often the woman who is saying that to you when you are using your Wheelchair is saying it because she is glad that she is not where you are, rather than having any sort of care for you, genuinely.
Alex: And pity is a way to create distance. Like that, that creates distance. And again, sometimes the act of doing something quote unquote nice for someone or that they have asked for help with or for whatever, It, again, it can be the thing that they want, but it is a way to create distance, and it is a way to maybe you know, absolve your guilt, right?
Oh, this person really needs this. Oh, give it to them, and then, oh my god, I feel so bad, huh?
Sam: And then, it's like, a white person who went to the movie about slavery, and now we don't have to feel bad about slavery because they solved it at the end of the movie.
Alex: Oh my god, yes, there is a whole... God, there is just a... Ah, the industry for that, you know? For like, well, I read the book I was supposed to read because I felt so bad about... the racism, and now I think you'll find I have created enough distance that I feel like I'm fine, right? Like, like this idea of like, absolution, right?
The pity motivated act absolves someone of guilt, and therefore it's stopped. sort of clears the uh, I don't know, there's like a, there's a financial metaphor I'm trying to make here, right? Like, okay, now we're even. You got me to do something because I felt bad for you, but now I did it, so we're even. And I don't have to engage with you any further.
Sam: I don't have to engage with you and I don't have to feel bad on like, I can sleep at night because I did
the
Alex: did the thing. I did the thing. And again, on this purely practical level, like, I know people who, like, work for certain charities, or are doing certain good work, where it's like, yeah, if you just gave me money because you feel bad, or if you gave me money for some other reason, I don't really care, I'm trying to run this important operation doing good work, but, but yeah, again, love is sustainable.
Sam: the that was this woman in the game last night, right? Like, I don't give a shit if you really love me. I just need you to save my fucking town.
Alex: Yeah, yeah. And, that, again, that emphasizes the distance between them, that creates a relationship that is transactional, right? I have induced some guilt; if you wish to ameliorate your guilt, you can do something for me, and then we're square and you can leave.
As where, again, like, I think, framing pity and love as these opposed things says a lot about pity, but it also says a lot about love and what love really is, which is which is a reciprocal relationship, and which is non transactional, fundamentally. That I do things because I love you, and you do things because you love me, and therefore, it's a reciprocal, we both, you know, prioritize each other's well being. But there is no sense and there is no desire that at some point, our commitments will be fulfilled, and we'll be back to zero, we will have resolved, you know, whatever we owe each other, whatever, and we're, we're back to neutral.
And like, you know, when you love someone, you look for ways to help them. And that doesn't mean you empty your cup completely and destroy yourself for the sake of them, right, but and I, this is, well, I mean, this is also, like the difference between acting out of love and acting out of a complete lack of love for yourself, and so you try to justify your existence, but, anyway, I'm a therapist when I'm a not a game designer, but I won't get into it.
Yeah, just that, like, it's also like self love, right? Loving oneself means prioritizing one's well being. It doesn't mean doing that necessarily over any other particular person, or constantly giving yourself everything you want, but it does mean like, oh, but I do love myself, so I will do my best to prioritize me being okay. Me being, being well.
And... and, yeah, in that sense, like, again, coming back to this fact that, oh, there are different kinds of love... now, I almost want to say the exact opposite, which is, there are different kinds of relationships. There are romantic relationships, and paternal relationships, and friendships, and admiration, you know, mentorships, whatever.
But, ultimately, like, the love... the, like, love is just love. Like, actually, there are different relationships, but love is just what it is. And so, again, like, thinking about this 14 year old orphan who just wanted his protection so bad, to love that person was to take care of her and look out for her. be reliable. And all of these other things, right? Loving a child is different than loving an adult, is different than loving your own parent, is different than loving your romantic partner, is different than acting with love towards someone who you maybe just know for a very brief period of time. Like, I truly believe that the way that you love a hookup, and the way that you love your partner who you've been with for 50 years, those relationships are really different, but I think like the definition of love remains the same. Like that kind of prioritizing.
Sam: The expressions feel different, but the core feels very
Alex: Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
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So another thing I wanted to make sure we talked about was the, you brought this up like right away, the idea of naming the negative space in a game. Like naming mechanics that don't quote unquote do anything.
Like, it's easy to imagine a version of this game where instead of Kagamatsu handing out a love point or a pity point, he either hands out a love point or does not. And the naming of the option to not hand out a love point as pity, opens up all of the discussion we have had today, right? Just by giving name to, like, an absence. And I find that really... beautiful and compelling. I don't know that I have more to say about it or what to ask about it, but I just wanted to put it.
Alex: That's fine because I have an infinite well of things to say about it.
Sam: Good, good, go on, go
Alex: um, lots of people have said some version of this, but Graham Walmsley in his most recent newsletter, you should subscribe to Graham's newsletter, you know, just wrote this thing called, What Do Dice Do?
And it's really Oh my god, did you read it? Oh my gosh. So good. So good. Like, just nice little diagrams and everything.
And he talks about, like, here are many of the things that dice can do, and the way in which they represent a kind of fork in the road, right? In of a story. And one thing that he really emphasizes is that if the fork in the road, right, is between the thing you want to happen happens and nothing happens, like, either a thing happens or it doesn't, then that's not very compelling. You want to have multiple options that are at least, at the bare minimum, something, something happens. And ideally those things that happen should be interesting and they should be different every time, you know, and they should fit the themes of the game and so on, right?
And so, that's the thing that separates this from the equally fascinating Contempt tokens from the Quiet Year where the Contempt tokens are kind of spontaneous. You just put them out there when, when you feel the need to, and so they're, they're like unprompted, and there's just this way of sort of making visible the Contempt that is building up in the community. And everyone can see them and look at them, and you have to sort of acknowledge that.
As where the pity points are hidden. You don't actually ever know how many, you know, pity points you have, or you never know when Kagamatsu is assigning love or pity. But knowing that they are there, the concept of the pity point, the threat, the terror of the pity point, right, means that you something is always happening. That, you know, again, dice are rolled, and either you succeed or fail, and then also, either you have acquired the love that you want, or you have acquired pity, and the difference between that and you've gotten love or you didn't, right? Like, the game would just be so much less compelling if it was either like, well, Kagamatsu looks at you and he's filled with love, or he goes, meh,
Sam: yeah,
Alex: doing it, for me. Yeah.
It's all right. Oh, sorry, babe. What'd you say? I was, I was playing Smash. Right? Like that's the lack of response.
It's not interesting.
Sam: yeah,
Alex: this thing that is not visible in the way that contempt is. it is like this haunting spectre. It is this quantum thing over the game, and in a way, like, it informs, I think, Kagamatsu's play. Because you really look and you see how much pity you have for each character, and that, I think, informs how you engage with them, when it's like, the pity is visible in front of you. But even as an invisible thing, it is the other thing that can happen, and it makes failure more interesting, and it is the, Yeah, it is making sure that the dice always do something, that there is no neutral response, and that in fact, like, and that the other option is pity. Like, I think this would be, again, I think this would be a much less effective, interesting game if it was just love or nothing. I think it would be a totally different game if it was like, love or anger. That's a profoundly different game. Or love, or,
Sam: I wrote that down in my notes.
Alex: oh my gosh, yeah! Which, and, and the thing is, that is another thing that can happen when people get the sense that you are trying to manipulate them, right, that you are trying to get them to do something is they can get angry, and I think that would add a powerfully different dimension to this game that you know, some, someone else can explore, but I'm, I'm not interested in it.
Sam: Yes. I would
Alex: Yeah. And so, it explicitly says, if you're not getting love, you're getting pity, and that changes the way that you play. It amplifies the power differential between Kagamatsu and the players so much. So much. It is not just your GM that you can kind of taunt and tease and, and ignore the plans of, and sort of lash out as. It is someone who... You never know exactly where you stand with, and so you're doing your best, but also if you're really obviously doing your best then this is going to feel bad for you because you look so desperate. Yeah, what an uncomfortable position to be in.
Sam: Must be bad.
Alex: Must be awful.
Sam: was something that my Kagamatsu yesterday said as we were debriefing about the game, was that it felt cruel to give pity, and that because pity and love are not transparent to the townswomen, that it, it was not clear to the townswomen that that cruelty was happening as it was happening, and that that felt powerful and also sad, I think, in a way.
And I'm curious to ask you, as someone who has played as Kagamatsu, what the experience for you is like of handing out pity and love tokens.
Alex: feels bad, definitely. Wait. It, it, pity doesn't feel good, and I will say that this mechanic, again it's very very explicit that this is based on your personal reaction to the scene, it's
Sam: Yeah.
Alex: something you are more like acknowledging than deciding and so it like because it's really based on that it's just like, You kind of have to be honest with yourself about how you feel, and what that evoked in you.
And again, you have no particular incentive, you're not really against the players, you have no particular incentive to give one or the other. And so you kind of just have to, like, be honest with yourself. And I think the fact that it is hidden from the other player allows you to do that.
I think it would be a totally different move to give someone pity right in front of their face and be like you just earned yourself a pity point like oh my god
Sam: Yeah.
Alex: because again because it's a because it's a power thing and so I think it doesn't feel good But also it doesn't feel bad enough that you don't do it. And I think on some level it it feels bad and I think on some level it also feels good. I really I'd really I just do think that, that there is a reason why humans go around arranging themselves in unbelievably complex whatever, read Foucault, not me. You're right, of these bizarre power structures, and on some level it feels good, and uh, you have to contend with that.
In the same way that I will say that being a townswoman, subject to love and pity, and trying to win the affections, and being in this like impossible position, also feels good.
Sam: yeah, feels nice to not have the responsibility of actually making very many choices.
Alex: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yes. I, I didn't, I didn't think I was going to like actually quote Foucault. Okay, thankfully it's not within my grasp, even though I'm near my bookshelf, but, but Foucault in the History of Sexuality, he talks about like this comparison that he makes between the doctor's office or the psychoanalyst's office and the confession booth.
Mm hmm. And to a certain extent, even the, like the confessions being extracted from from people in, during the Inquisition, the Inquisitor and, and the extraction, and he talks about how, intentionally or otherwise, it does set up a situation, this perpetual obsession with confession, and the confession of crimes, the confession of sins, the confession of your personal history and the things that you're neurotic about, the confession of whatever health thing is going on with you.
He's, yeah, he really says it, it sets up this feeling of this dynamic of, that is to some degree motivated by the pleasure of seeking, of finding out, and of demanding, and of forcing the other person to tell the truth, and of of exerting that kind of power, and the pleasure of evading, and the pleasure of confessing and making oneself vulnerable, the pleasure of dodging or giving into, or whatever, that demand. And, you know, in various ways he argues that that is part of what sustains those dynamics, which is a separate argument.
But, but that does exist, and that is why, you know, I really started this conversation talking about power, because that is the interesting thing that Kagamatsu does, is instead of just saying, Well, let's take the existing power dynamic that we're all familiar with and try to neutralize it, or let's take that and crank it up to a thousand, right?
Let's, let's just play around, let's see what we got. Let's do something, let's switch this, move that around. Okay, how's this power dynamic? how's that, how's that working for you? And yeah, the answer is, it's quite interesting. And we should, I kind of wish we'd talk more about the fact that, like, I've been Kagamatsu many times, although not in a long time, I will say, but I've never been a townswoman, and you've never been a
Sam: Oh, really? Yeah, Oh, yeah. I assumed that you would have been a townswoman at some
Alex: No. I think I have the excuse that no one else has ever wanted to GM it, but I, I might just not. I might just not be verse in that sense. Do you know what I mean?
Sam: Yeah, I, I do. Cool.
Do you have any questions you'd be curious to hear me answer about what it's like to play A Townswoman?
Alex: Mm hmm. Oh! Um, How does it feel to see your pity score at the end of the game?
Sam: Huh. So, for me, I had 5 love and 0 pity. And that felt really good.
Alex: hmm.
Sam: I know the person who had 0 love and 5 pity also felt really good about that, because that's what he had been angling
Alex: Right,
Sam: But for me, I want the pat on the head, and it was good to receive the pat on the
Alex: mm hmm, and you know, we talked about how this game brings up people's ideas about what is being flirty, or what is being adorable, or what is being, right, all these other things, lovable, right, and, you know, I made a two player game about love, and it is very strict about what players do because it's about flirting, and I teach you how to flirt. I don't just say flirt, I'm like, increase intimacy between the two of you by doing these specific things.
Sam: have learned how to flirt from that game to some extent,
Alex: thank you! That makes me really happy. But this game is just like, okay, go for it. Do go for it. Do do it. Do whatever you think you know, would, would acquire this affection. And so that I think makes it more intense and that gives it that kind of squirmy, okay, I want this to work feeling that is, you know, beautiful and, and very much intended, but also hmm. But also, that makes me wonder about what is it really like to look at the Kagamatsu player scratching their little point on their paper and wondering whether or not it's pity. Right? And, and I wonder about what it's like to see your pity score at the end. I really don't know. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: You know, the moment of watching Kagamatsu make that mark is... For me, it was like... I know I did the right thing in this scene. I know I acted the way I wanted. I know I wouldn't change anything, right? And I, I know what I expect, like, I felt something in this scene, and I'm pretty confident that that's love.
Alex: Mm hmm.
Sam: But. What if it's not? What if I was wrong? What if I felt a connection and they did not? And the fear of that, even with all the confidence that I had after every scene, fear of, but what if it was just me feeling that, was, was what came out in that
Alex: Yeah, which is a powerful thing, and a resonant thing, I think, with people's very real lives.
Sam: yeah.
Alex: And I really think about the reverse as well, of when you think, well, you know, someone's doing this or saying this because they feel bad for me, and if you find out that, no, I'm doing it or I'm saying it because I love you, like, that is, that's equally strong, right, in the other direction. And so I wonder if people have had that experience. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. I think there's a lot of validation, I think, in confirming that you were seen the way you wanted to be seen.
Alex: Oh, so true. And this is why your friend with all the pity points either decided early on or I would suspect decided at some point when they realized that this was kind of how it was going to go. Oh, you know what? I want to be pitied. Because as soon as you decide that, you're like, great, no problem, I'm in.
I can achieve that. But yeah, seeing, being seen the way you want to be seen I think is, is a good way of putting it. Hmm.
Sam: So, you want to make a robots game of this?
Alex: thank you for that smooth segue. I do. So here's the thing is that for every reason that we've been talking about this, this game is very compelling. It's really interesting and it produces a pretty unique experience. But, I've run it a million times.
But I, I don't know if I'll ever run it again. It's not something I would offer at a game convention. It's a game that has a lot of flaws and you know, a lot of it is just that it is kind of finicky and is written, again, in a 2009 way right? It can be a little bit hard to use as a text sometimes.
But there's also, I think, a lot about the setting, actually limits the story in many ways. And there's, I think, it is difficult to do a good job of being a bunch of people at a table playing mostly women in Sengoku era Japan. And in my experience of playing this with again, mostly white people, not exclusively, but mostly is that best case scenario, it sounds more like a Kurosawa movie than, like, real life, and worst case scenario, it sounds like a bad anime.
And neither of those are real things that people have experienced. and I won't get too much into into this partially because I, I, I was on the one shot podcast a couple years ago now, and I played this game. We had a wonderful game of it.
And then I was still doing my podcast backstory at the time, and I had James Mendez Hodes on, who is a brilliant designer, brilliant writer lovely guy, and also a, a cultural consultant. And so I had him on mostly to talk about his work, which is quite interesting. But I also was like. So you heard that game, what did you think? And we have a more fulsome discussion than you and I can have here about, like, what it means for people who are not Asian to have written this Asian setting, and
Sam: Yeah.
Alex: and how that fits into the broader history of, like, roleplaying games, which are often set in space and in fantasy worlds, to then for some reason also be set in, like, Japan and China a lot. And, like, exotification, and to what extent can you work against that, to what extent does this game, which does contain a bunch of information about life in Sengoku era Japan, which is quite interesting, and
Like, anyway, I, I, there's a bunch of limitations, and also, again, today I don't think you'd publish a game where it's like, well, this role has to be played by a woman. And kind of with the assumption that everyone else at the table is a man. In fact, I can't remember now the last time I've played with that kind of setup which was at the time so common.
So I think for various reasons it's not as well suited to the current gaming milieu as it was then. But lots of people have played with this formula in one way or another.
The game is out of print. The game was published by Danielle Lewon and based on a design by Renee Knight, and for various reasons they have kept it out of print, and I don't know exactly why, but I mean, literally, like, this game that I, like, this, this copy contains, as far as I can tell, multiple people's dead names.
Like, it's old and it would need some work so they have just
Sam: I saw at least one dead name in the
Alex: Yeah, exactly. So that I think is indicative of like, you know, you wouldn't just make another printing or just put the PDFs up somewhere. It needs a bit of care and and whether they've opted not to do that or have been like, it's whatever. I have deleted much of my own work and I, I think every artist reserves the right to do so.
But it, but for that and so many reasons, right, that it is this thing that is incredibly compelling and also very flawed. That's catnip to people who want to make things, right? Like, you don't write fanfiction about the perfect thing, you write fanfiction about the thing that needs a little, needs a little adjustment.
So there was, let me think, Ka-Gay-Matsu which is basically kind of instead of Townswomen, you have these other men. I don't know a ton about it. As far as I can tell, it's kind of like a reverse Seven Samurai, where instead of one guy trying to recruit seven Samurais, it's like a bunch of Samurais being like, Yo, come on in.
Um, Which is amazing. I think somewhere out there, there's like a Regency era hack of it, right? A gentleman in possession of a good fortune must be pursued by multiple women. Which is obviously like a perfect spot for it, and there's probably more that I don't know of.
But, something that I have not been able to get out of my head for years and years and years, the time will come, is to kind of take the basis of this game and change a lot of it. And... To set it in space with robots. This is my dream.
Sam: Makes everything better. Why would it not work here
Alex: Yeah, first of all, that's always my question. Why isn't this in space? Okay, so Picture this, there's a space station that was like basically a fancy resort. And things have changed in the quadrant, it's not really a popular spot anymore, and in fact it's become totally abandoned. The people who ran it have long since left, and they kind of just, they kind of just left it and had to go somewhere else. And so it's just this lovely, beautiful, but kind of crumbling space like an abandoned mall, maybe.
But it's still full of all of the androids that were created to work in it. And they are, like, A, just kind of programmed to help people have a nice time. And B I think they can't hurt people, it is against their programming, it is impossible for them to hurt people.
And so, instead of townswomen, you have those, and there is some kind of recurring threat. There is a person, or maybe people, who are coming periodically, or are about to come, who... wreck shop, right? Who are like, oh, these are just robots, we can do whatever we want, and they're just kind of like looting the place, or they're kicking robots around, or whatever, right, that's kind of up to the players to figure out what is the extent of what these robots need protection from.
But yeah, then someone comes along, a human, and the robots all kind of realize, oh, this is like a nice human, this is a good human, and maybe they're like a big sort of tough bounty hunter or something some other spacey thing, right, or a federation officer or something.
Sam: Least all the robots think they
Alex: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That, that the robots are like, maybe this human could protect us from, these others.
So again, the structure is kind of the same. The affections may, might be a bit different and the, you know, lots of things would be different, but that structure of these individual scenes in which the robot tries to convince the person who has the power to do what they need to do to, to do it. And somehow to do that in a way that gives them the genuine, real, enduring motivation of love, and not the empty, guilt ridden, you know, doing the least I possibly can motivation of pity.
That's my plan. I've announced it, now I have to do it.
Sam: Yeah, you have to. That's the gamer law.
Alex: mmhmm. Mm.
Sam: Alright, Alex, is there anything else you want to say about Kagamatsu or pity points?
Alex: I don't think so. I guess maybe I want, I want everyone to think more about intangible mechanics and what they can and can't do and play with them and and also I want to, to beat the drum of playtesting. That you can figure out what math does by doing math but you can only figure out what an intangible How something is intangibly represented when you actually get it to the table, right, and play it with people.
So so yeah, I just want to encourage all the designers to like, play around with this, and really play around with it, and see what happens when you make intangible things visible or explicit in some way.
Sam: I would add to that, it was so refreshing to play a game from before the time when all games were hacks of other games. I love hacks of other games, you know, Like I love the fact that Powered by the Apocalypse
Alex: yes, oh my gosh,
Sam: and like all of the stuff like that. What a gift and also this was just weird and different, you know It just felt unique. And I would love to see more games coming from the depths of your heart without the wonderful assistance of an existing
Alex: Yes, and I mean, then, again, one of the things that makes this game different, because, you know, it is from 2009, is just the fact that indie gaming truly was like a scene, and was not yet an industry, and it is an industry now. And that means you have a lot of incentive to give people something that is at least building upon something that they already know how to do. Really, really, like, hyper incentivized, right, to give people something that is a twist on something that they already recognize and can be comfortable with.
Boy, back in those days, I mean, you were like, I don't think anyone is gonna wanna play this anyway, so I guess I'll just make it whatever I feel like, and see what happens, yeah.
Sam: It is of course easier to make a twist on something and great designer training wheels. Like I don't want to like knock that kind of design again.
Alex: Bro, I literally just said I want to hack this game. Like, I'm
Sam: I know exactly right Yeah, yeah Like we're we're all and Star Crossed is a hack of Dread, right? Like I'm making For the Queen hacks out here all the time like where we get it, but yeah Alex Thank you so much for being here on Dice Exploder Really, just a joy to have
Alex: Thank you for talking to me, this was really, really fun.
Sam: Holy shit, thanks again to Alex for being here. You can find links to For the Queen, Starcrossed, Backstory, and her newsletter in the show notes. As always, you can find me on socials at s. dunnewold or on the Dice Exploder Discord. Our logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by PurelyGrey, and our ad music is Lilypads by my boy, Travis Tessmer.
And thanks to you for listening. I'll see you next time.