The Floor is Lava and Bored? Games!

The Floor is Lava and Bored? Games are Ivan Brett’s collections that between them total 201 games. I picked them both up at AireCon – I’d not heard of either of them before. (I was only aware of Ivan Brett as he was a competitor in The Traitors, the Werewolf-inspired 2022 BBC TV series. I didn’t know he’d written books of games.)

Anyway, both books are great and group the games into categories – games for the car, games for the table, party games, games played standing up, and so on. I’m considering them together here, although if you were only getting one, I recommend The Floor is Lava, as it feels like a slightly stronger collection.

Many of the games are familiar – Miss H had played The Floor is Lava at Guides, plus there are games like Wink Murder, Sprouts, Boxes and the like, which I’ve played before.

There are also games that have been turned into “proper” board games – in the same way that Werewolf is essentially Mafia and The Hardest Game in the World is like The Mind. (And, although it’s not relevant here, The Great Dalmuti is a reworked version of President.)

And while many of these games can be found on the Internet (the links above all go to Wikipedia), it’s nice to have an easily portable collection. (I hadn’t realised that Wikipedia was such a great store of such games until I wrote this post.)

Plus, there are loads of games new to me.

Inevitably, in a collection of 201 games, there are plenty that don’t appeal. But that doesn’t matter – there are plenty I would enjoy playing.

RPGs included!

The Floor is Lava even includes RPGs and explains them in five pages with an example of play and five suggested settings. Full marks for brevity, although I’d be surprised if anyone uses The Floor is Lava for their first RPG.

Is this even a game?

Some entries stretch the definition of ‘game’. Memory Palace is a trick for memorising lists. What’s that good dog probably called? is making up names for dogs you meet. Talk like Shakespeare is talking in iambic pentameter. Avagat is a made-up secret language. I guess they’re fun things to do, but I’m not sure I’d count them as games. (But then, I’m not trying to fill a couple of books with over 200 games.)

My favourite games

I’ve not played all of these, but they look like games I would enjoy:

From The Floor is Lava:

• Brian! Brian! A silly counting game – you count in Roman numerals but replace I with “Brian!”, V with “Your friend Ian is here!” and X with “He wants to know if you can come out to play!” And then you sound like an exasperated mother – fun and silly. (I have played this.)
• 1000 Blank White Cards where players create their own rules.
• Hangman Mastermind is a simple word game (and a combination of hangman and the old Mastermind game).

From Bored? Games!

• Mao, a legendary card game played over several rounds where you have to work out what new rule the dealer has added.
• My Card, where players trade and barter over coloured cards – the value of which they have to find out. (Could be used as a mechanic for something in a freeform, I think.) It’s based on a Sid Sackson game from A Gamut of Games, which I’ve added to my birthday list.
• Nuclear Apocalypse is a simple wargame.

Solo roleplaying

I enjoy solo board games but don’t enjoy solo roleplaying games. What’s going on?

(Quick aside. I’m not criticising anyone who enjoys solo RPGs. This is me gazing at my navel and trying to work out why they don’t work for me.)

Saving the world in Thunderbirds

Solo RPGs

I have little experience with solo RPGs, but that’s because I don’t enjoy them. The two I’ve played to any extent are Thousand Year Old Vampire and Starforged. (And even then, I had a guide to Starforged.)

I’m also not a massive fan of the “lonely fun” some games come with. For example, I don’t want to build spaceships or subsectors or star systems in Traveller. And I don’t enjoy creating stat blocks while preparing RPG adventures. (I’m a big fan of Fate Accelerated’s simplified approach to NPC stat blocks.)

(I admire the mechanics of solo RPGs. Both Thousand Year Old Vampire and Starforged seem good at what they do. They just aren’t pressing the right buttons for me.)

Fighting Fantasy gamebooks

What about Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, such as The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and its successors? Well, while I enjoyed The Warlock of Firetop Mountain when it came out, I tired of the later books.

A few years ago, I found some in a charity shop and revisited them, but I found them as frustrating as I remember. I was annoyed at the lack of clues – sometimes, the means to success was finding something completely at random. I also didn’t enjoy the fights – typically, I would ignore them and assume I won.

I also skimmed the text to get to the decisions – the bit l liked.

The only gamebook I honestly enjoyed was Dave Morris & Jamie Thomson’s Can you Brexit? I found this monster of a book (865 paragraphs) both educational and entertaining, and I played it all through (I even managed to reverse Brexit!). Can you Brexit? has an advantage over the fantasy fighting gamebooks – it’s meaningful, which maybe made a difference.

(So does this mean I would like “interactive fiction” more, as the bookish/less-gamey hobby calls itself? Apparently not – I’ve tried a couple and found they have the same problem as gamebooks – I skim them to get to the decisions. I think the problem is me.)

Solo board games

On the other hand, I’ve played many cooperative board games, including The Lord of the Rings, D-Day Dice, Pandemic, Thunderbirds, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and Ghost Stories. In addition, I often play competitive games with an “AI” such as Wingspan.

So why do I like solo board games but not solo RPGs or (with rare exceptions) fighting fantasy gamebooks?

Plot and role-playing

In an older post (Why I roleplay), I explained that when I roleplay, I like three things:

• Plot: I like games with a plot and a purpose. I’m not a fan of sandbox games.
• Characters must be important: Characters tied into whatever is going on. Session zero is important.
• Players talking to each other in character: I love it when the players talk to each other as their characters. They need not be speaking as their characters but simply interacting as their character with each other.

The solo RPGs I’ve played seem to be sandboxes. As I recall, Starforged felt like one. We went places, and we explored. And Thousand Year Old Vampire was similar – it was about existing as a vampire rather than being involved in a grand plan. But, on the other hand, a solo board game isn’t a sandbox – there’s a definite problem (storming the beaches on D-Day, saving the village from Chinese ghosts) to solve (and win).

Characters may or may not be important to what’s going on in a solo RPG. As I recall, the characters from Starforged were rolled randomly – they could have been anybody. On the other hand, in Pandemic, your character is someone from the CDC, fighting infectious diseases.

Of course, neither solo RPGs nor boardgames solve the problem of someone to talk to…

I like solo board gaming because I like solving the puzzle and winning, but I find it interesting that they tick more of my roleplaying boxes than solo RPGs do.

But I’ve not explored solo RPGs in depth, so perhaps the game for me is somewhere out there somewhere…

Suspending disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is a weird thing.

After struggling my way through the first third of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, my suspension of disbelief has died.

Not at the zombie nonsense (which is, after all, part of the premise), but in chapter 21, when the Bennet girls encounter a chipmunk and a skunk! In Hertfordshire!

That was the last straw, and I gave up. It’s in the give-to-charity pile.

Writing Writing Freeform Larps

Following on from my last post, I've now published Writing Freeform Larps on Lulu as a physical book.

So now you can get it on Lulu (as a book), DriveThru RPG (pdf) and Itch.io (pdf).

Last time I explained what it contains. 

This time, I look at the book’s development and history.

Genesis

I’ve thought about writing a book about writing murder mystery games for some years. Something that would help our authors at Freeform Games, who often need guidance.

While I directed them to various freeform-writing articles I’ve written over the years, they were scattered across the Internet and had a few gaps. I wanted to pull them all together into one place and fill the gaps.

At the same time, everything I planned to write about writing a murder mystery game also applied to freeforms. Only there was more to include in a book about freeforms – I often use rules and ideas in a freeform that I would never use in one of our murder mysteries (because of the extra complexity).

As I didn’t want to write two (very similar books), and because I wanted to include those extra bits, the book became Writing Freeform Larps (with sections that talk about murder mysteries).

Writing

I started by grabbing everything I had previously written and dumping it into a folder on my laptop. (Many of the previous articles are on the uk-freeforms wiki.)

I then started a blank MS Word document and created the chapters I thought I would need. I based the chapters on the basic process I’ve used for years. Not all steps needed a chapter, but I knew I would have chapters on writing plots, characters, and rules/mechanics.

Once I had a rough structure, I dropped in the articles I felt went in that section.

One thing I did was change the emphasis of those articles. I realised from the beginning that this book was how I wrote freeform larps. Other writers do things differently, and I didn’t want the book to come over as if my way was the only way to write freeform larps.

As I worked through the book, I realised that my articles didn’t cover as much as I thought they did: there were more gaps than I had thought. So I kept myself busy for a few weeks filling those gaps.

Early drafts

By January 2023, I had a first draft ready and asked for comments via the uk-freeforms mailing list. I got some great feedback – and spent the next month incorporating it. (I find the process of receiving feedback, and my reaction to it, interesting. I may go into it in more depth in a later post.)

By mid-February, I had incorporated the comments and uploaded the files to Lulu. I created a temporary cover using Lulu’s own cover generator, and ten days later, I had a print copy in my hands.

I then read through the whole thing, making notes for things that didn’t work. For example, I needed an extra page early, so the chapters all started on an odd-page number.

I pulled together a better cover using Affinity Publisher and had a second draft to review in early March. (While it might have been a “better” cover, it’s not a great cover. It’s workable and legible, but designing covers isn’t my forte.)

This time, while the interior was fine, I wanted to tweak the cover as it felt unbalanced. So I did that and ordered another test copy. While waiting, I uploaded the pdfs to Itch.io and DriveThruRPG and submitted the files for approval.

The three covers

Published!

Writing Freeform Larps was first available via my Itch page (no approval needed). DriveThruRPG followed a few days later, and I announced it on Facebook and elsewhere.

And finally, I was happy with the hard copy, so I made that public at the end of March.

That leaves me with marketing, which isn’t my favourite thing. So far, I’ve:

• Written about it here on the blog.
• Added a page on my personal site.
• Added a page on Great Murder Mystery Games (where I’ve had to explain what a freeform is and why I didn’t call it “Writing Murder Mystery Games”).

For the future

• Talk about Writing Freeform Larps on the Freeform Games blog (and mention it on our Facebook page and newsletter).
• Keep an eye out for bundles on Itch or DTRPG I can join. 
• Take hard copies with me to places like Peaky and Consequences.
• Promote it in the larpy places I don’t normally frequent. If I can find them.