Peaky 2026

I played two great games at Peaky 2026: Triremes in Space and Grease Point Blank. (These are working titles and may change.)

Triremes in Space

Triremes in Space is a 12-player game of Ancient Greeks in space, written by Helen Jones, Megan Jones, Michael Jones, and Ewan Munro. 

Hang on, Ancient Greeks in space? Yes - and this isn't even an original idea! As Megan explained to me afterwards, she was inspired by the second-century travelogue/novella A True Story by Lucian of Samosata, in which Lucian and his crew are blown into space and have a series of adventures. I've never heard of it before, and it's arguably the first ever SF story. 

Spider battle from A True History by William Strang, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Anyway, I was playing Selene of Luna, leader of the Moon people. And I was meeting humans from Terrus for the first time - Spartans, Corinthians and Athenians. All hated each other, and yet I somehow needed to get them to help me with my problem with the sacred cows on the Morning Star...

Structurally, Triremes in Space starts with four factions, with three characters (broadly a leader, a ship's pilot and a warrior - although some factions may have had a different mix). The factions may be enemies or allies – or in the case of the Moon people, unknown.

The Moon people were delightfully alien, and as I was meeting humans for the first time, I enjoyed misunderstanding them and (hopefully) being unclear.

Amazingly, I achieved all my important goals - although it turned out that one of my advisors was deeply dodgy, and I had no idea!

It was also helpful having one of the authors (Ewan) as my other advisor. Inevitably, we hit bits of lore that hadn't been fully explored, and he provided the explanation while also filing the question and answer away for later.

Grease Point Blank

Grease Point Blank is a 12-player 1969 high-school reunion game inspired partly by the movies Grease and Grosse Point Blank. It was written by Nickey Barnard, Philippa Dall, Heidi Kaye, Tony Mitton and Christi S.

I couldn't believe my luck when I opened my character sheet: I was playing the John Cusack character! Okay, I'm trying not to spoil this, so I'm not going to say who I was playing or what happened. But it was so much fun, there was angst, drama, unexpected attention and maybe even murder.

I think my favourite moment was a completely unexpected conversation with Graham, but the game was filled with lovely moments.

Other games

Two other games were also written at Peaky 2026. I didn’t play them, but it sounded like they went well.

For The Greater Good by Adam Hayes, Kirstine Heald, Kevin Jacklin, Peter Jones, and Julie Winnard. Strange goings on in an English village for 8 players.

Lord Gount's Expedition by Clare Gardner, Martin Jones, Alli Mawhinney and Rich Perry. Sailpunk, for 8 doomed players. (I may have got the title for this one wrong.)

And you'll notice I didn't write a game this time. That's because I started, but it didn't work out. That happens sometimes. I ended up talking about Cafe Casablanca and helped proofread For the Greater Good.

Sunday game scheduling

And I have to say, Sunday was lovely. Only four games were running, and that meant that instead of trying to cram three sessions and lunch into about seven hours, everything was much more leisurely. 

So our schedule was:

• 8:30-9:30 Breakfast
• 9:30-12:30 First game slot (Triremes in Space and For the Greater Good)
• 12:30-13:30 Lunch
• 13:30-16:30 Second game slot (Grease Point Blank and Lord Gount's Expedition)

So that was a very leisurely three hours for each game. Nothing felt rushed, and we had loads of time for feedback and relaxing between games. 

(Sometimes we have six games running at Peaky. So that means an additional slot, and all the slots are only two hours long with very little space in between. And lunch is either very early or very late. And no, we can't push into the evening because some people have to leave, and others want to just chill after a busy weekend.)

I'd like to suggest we do that every Peaky, but that means having more games that aren't ready to be run. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not.

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Peaky 2025

The last weekend of April saw me at the annual Peaky Games writing weekend, where 30 or so crazy fools gather to write and play freeforms. It’s my favourite gaming weekend of the year – friends, food, creativity, stress – and not enough sleep.

This year five games were written, Enemies of the Federation, On a Hot Summer’s Night, Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron, Nodding Donkeys, and Ldrbrd.

Spoilers ahoy! (Perhaps just think of this as something to whet your appetite.)

Enemies of the Federation

Enemies of the Federation is for nine players. Criminals’ personalities have been extracted from their cryosleeping bodies to operate repair mechs to save their stricken prison ship. But things aren’t exactly what they seem.

I co-wrote Enemies of the Federation with Kath Banks, Megan Jones and Peter Jones. The core idea was Peter’s – the game is partly a balloon debate as the players discover that although there are nine personalities, they only have three bodies to return to. (Each personality has been extracted three times.)

Although the personalities weren’t identical (we made slight personality differences to each - althought this didn't really come out in play), it meant that there were three core characters. As the others were happy to write the characters (and to be honest, I suspect my terse writing style would not have been to everyone’s taste), I stepped back from that job and wrote the background document.

I was rather pleased with my background document. Instead of writing a normal background, I wrote it in the form of three year 5 lesson plans: the history, the geography, and one covering unhappy people. This let me write the background in bullet points, while hinting at the dystopian future the players would find themselves in. (The Federation is more Blake’s 7 than Star Trek, and each lesson plan finishes with an instruction to sing the Federation anthem.)

So that didn’t take me much time, so I had enough time to reformat an old game, An Ecumenical Matter, into a more polished format. That’s something I’ve been meaning to do for years, so it was nice to get that finally done.

The game seemed to go well, and the players said they enjoyed it. It ran for about 90 minutes, which seemed about right. I’m not sure what I would do to make it a longer game – we’d need more events and stringing a few discoveries out.

Then it was time for Nodding Donkeys.

Nodding Donkeys

Nodding Donkeys was written by Dave Collis, Adam Hayes, Kevin Jacklin, Michael Jones, Ezzy Pearson and Julie Winnard. Inspired by Slow Horses, it featured washed-up spies on a training course. For 8 players.

I played agent Possum, one of the Nodding Donkeys, spies who have been put out to Croydon House, where they can do no harm. Possum was an old-school spook, a little like Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb, but without being as scarily competent (or gross) as Lamb is. So I embraced my inner Gary Oldman and enjoyed being old-fashioned and pretty obnoxious.

One thing I really liked was that each character had “superpowers” (abilities) and flaws, but to use a superpower, you had to display (somehow) one of your flaws. That seemed to work really well.

It was a lovely game, with a few rough patches here and there (but that’s always true of Peaky), and was my favourite game of Peaky 2025.

With the spies put to bed, it was time to go all Agatha Christie.

Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron

Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron was written by Graham Arnold, Nickey Barnard, Clare Gardner, Heidi Kaye, Sue Lee, Christi S and Mike Snowden. It is the third (and apparently the last) of a series of murder mystery freeforms written at Peaky, and is for 14 players. 

Anyway, I played the village verger, campanologist and budding archaeologist. While I had a few goals, none of them (I think) related to the murder, but that was okay – this was a game with a lot of convoluted plots, which I always enjoy.

Unfortunately, the verger felt a little underwritten. The stuff I was interested in was fine, but it felt tangential to the main plot (the murder and the film crew). I had a lovely time, but noticed that during the last third of the game, I was waiting for something to happen. I imagine that’s just a reflection of Peaky – a balanced 14-player game is hard to write in so little time at Peaky. Once polished and tightened up, I’m sure the verger will have enough to carry them through the game. (I don’t know if abilities are planned for the game, but a few might help.)

Interestingly, I wrote about the previous game back in 2016, and noted that I ran out of plot during that one as well. 

And with that, Peaky was over for another year.

On a Hot Summer’s Night and Ldrbrd

I didn’t play either of these games, but I heard good things about both.

On a Hot Summer's Night was written by Natalie Curd, Nick Curd, Phil Dall and Tym Norris. It’s a 1920s Buffy the Vampire Slayer game with vampires and a hellmouth, for 10 players, but I know little more about it than that.

Ldrbrd written by Jenny Donne, Kirstine Heald, Tony Mitton, Ewan Munro and Malk Williams. Ldrbrd features arcade game characters who are competing to avoid deletion, and is for 12 players.

Using AI to write freeform larps at Peaky

At Peaky 2024, I experimented with using AI (mostly ChatGPT) to help write freeforms.

How did that go?

Before Peaky

Ideas are usually discussed on the mailing list in the run-up to Peaky, and I said I wanted to experiment with using ChatGPT during the writing process.

This provoked the inevitable discussion about AI ethics and copyright, which I didn’t really want to get into, but clearly, there’s plenty of concern about using AI.

I explained I wanted to use it for brainstorming and ideas rather than actually generating text, which seemed to ease some concerns.

Steampunk name generator

On Friday night, when we were generating ideas, I didn’t get my laptop out and didn’t think about AI at all. But on Saturday morning, I wanted to start naming our characters. Being lazy, I headed over to the Steampunk name generator over on fantasynamegenerators.com.

While many were splendid, our characters were gender-neutral, so I decided to give ChatGPT a spin and in moments, it gave me several gender-neutral names suitable for our steampunk game.

• Emberlyn Steele
• Asher Grey
• Rowan Brass
• Quinn Gearhart
• Phoenix Thorne
• Skylar Steamwood
• Marlowe Copper
• Sawyer Ironwood
• Ellis Wilde
• Avery Clockwell

We found the surnames a bit cliched, but we used several of the first names. (Yes, we could have come up with those ourselves, but using ChatGPT saved time.)

I also asked for some Martian names and picked one.

Patriarch/matriarch fail

And then I forgot about using ChatGPT, until I was searching for a gender-neutral word for matriarch/patriarch.

I asked ChatGPT, but it was hopeless – I don’t know what it was thinking. (“Dominion Guardian” for patriarch and “Ascendent Sentinel” for matriarch!)

So I just went for “head of the family.”

And that was it for ChatGPT at Peaky, but it wasn’t quite the end of my AI experiment.

Dinosaurs for the win

Our game is set on Mars and has dinosaurs in it. We call them “marisaurs.”

Just as we were finishing writing, I asked Artflow for a picture of a “dinosaur on Mars”. And then I forgot about it.

When I came home, I remembered that I’d asked for the picture and sure enough, it gave me a picture of a dinosaur on Mars. You can tell it's a Marisaur because it has three legs! (I don't know if that's because AI art is crap, or it knows that Mars = tripods. I have my suspicions, though.)

After Peaky: content warnings

I was working through some of the comments from the players at Peaky, and one piece of feedback was that we ought to have some content warnings.

My first reaction was, “Really?” as we had deliberately made everyone equal, but the players pointed out that Steampunk could have colonialism themes. (I have blind spots on things like this; because I don’t find content warnings useful, I forget that some people do.)

So as I have blindspots, I thought I’d ask ChatGPT. Sure enough, it gave me ten:

• Violence and Combat: Expect intense combat scenes, potential gore, and steampunk weaponry.
• Colonialism and Cultural Sensitivity: Steampunk settings can unintentionally echo colonial themes; be cautious with depictions of Mars and its inhabitants to avoid harmful stereotypes or implications.
• Substance Use: If the game includes elements like steampunk-era drugs, alcohol, or smoking, this should be noted.
• Slavery and Oppression: Address the historical context of industrialization; avoid glorifying or minimizing systemic oppression.
• Classism and Discrimination: Consider how class structures and discrimination are portrayed in the game.
• Body Horror and Modification: Some steampunk settings might feature cybernetic modifications or body horror elements.
• Death and Loss: The storyline might include characters dying or mourning the loss of others.
• Language and Profanity: Highlight if there's strong language or profanity.
• Sexual Content and Themes: If there are sexual themes, innuendos, or explicit scenes, players should be aware.
• Mental Health and Trauma: Be mindful of depicting mental health issues or trauma, ensuring sensitivity and avoiding stereotypes.

Ten is a suspiciously round number (I didn’t ask for ten), and as the last four aren’t unique to steampunk (and aren’t appropriate for our game anyway), I think ChatGPT may have padded the list out. But it’s a good summary and contains points I wouldn’t have thought of (such as body horror for the cybernetic modifications).

I’ve summarised this as: Content warning: This is not a serious game. Victorian tropes of sexism, colonialism, class-ism, discrimination, slavery, and oppression have no place in The Canals of Mars. Everyone is equal on Mars (although some characters may think they are more powerful than others). (Again, that’s a first draft. The other writers have yet to amend it.)

Unfinished business

So there we go.

ChatGPT made a few things quicker and simpler, but it’s certainly not a paradigm change. At least, not for 2024.

Peaky 2024

I spent the sunniest weekend in April in a small-ish room hunched over a laptop writing a freeform. Yes, I was at Peaky 2024. How did it go?

TL;DR I wrote one freeform, played in two. Played lots of boardgames. Talked bollocks with friends for hours. Slept badly. Would do it again in a heartbeat.

Friday

For the first time ever, I didn’t drive to Peaky. A car was coming down from Scotland, and I was kindly picked up. So I packed lighter than I normally do, but I didn’t have to drive, which was lovely.

We arrived shortly before 4 pm, found our rooms and said hello. Peaky started properly with its AGM, followed by dinner and the pitch meeting.

Pitch meeting

We had 32(ish) writers at Peaky 2024, and the purpose of the pitch meeting is to form them into six groups of roughly equal size (so 4-6 writers in each group) who all want to write the same thing.

It’s somewhat chaotic. The first part consists of pitching ideas for games – we typically end up with about 20 ideas. Then we vote to remove the less popular ideas, and this continues until we finally have our writing groups.

This is all done with flipcharts. It’s loud and chaotic and can be awful.

Ideally, we ensure the writing groups have at least one experienced writer. We’ve missed that before.

I’d love to find a better way, but we’ve tried forming groups in advance (which can be cliquey). Part of me would like to do it randomly or with team captains picking writers (like at school), but there are issues with those as well. Maybe there’s an app we can use?

Anyway, I pitched a “time loop game,” which was popular, but I wanted to help Suey write a freeform taster session that could be played in a 60-minute SF convention slot. Our group was me, Suey, Tym and Alli.

The Canals of Mars

I’d already been talking about this with Suey. I had a similar idea a few years ago using pirates as a setting (when Pirates of the Caribbean was all the rage), but we decided on a Martian steampunk setting.

The rest of Friday was spent deciding what we wanted to include in our game. We were writing something for newcomers to experience a freeform in under an hour, so we wanted lots of interaction and goals and abilities and so forth – but without overwhelming new players with text!

We kicked ideas around and came up with an election (for the “Grand Architrave”) as the spine for our game, the framework around which we would hang other things.

We also decided to write for eight players. I reckon it’s easily expandable, and we could have many more than eight, but we decided to keep things simple and start with eight.

Saturday

I had a terrible night’s sleep. Peaky does that. Too late, the wrong food and drink. Just meh.

At this point in the game writing process, I like to have the setting and background settled. So I started to write the setting:

It is 1888. In the forty years since the first colonists arrived on Mars, Nu London has grown into a bustling metropolis, rich from the profits of mining lift crystals, the precious jewels that power the solar transports that sail the etheric void.

But all is not well. Nu London desperately needs investment, mining accidents are imperilling lift crystal mine production, Olympus Mons is grumbling, the canals are blocked with red weed, and the marisaurs (Martian dinosaurs) seem to be dying out.

(This was expanded later, but it didn’t change much.)

IT glitches

The wifi was really random, this year. I had the best connection I think I’ve ever had, while others in the same room couldn’t connect at all.

We decided to write in Google Docs, which only two of us had access to. The others had to resort to swapping files back and forth via a thumb drive like it was 2010 again.

Characters

After breakfast, when the writing team reconvened, we agreed this text and then decided on our eight characters:

• Addison Fotherington-Porter: An artificer of marvellous inventions.
• Valentine Fotherington-Porter: A writer of popular romantic fiction and candidate for Grand Architrave.
• Phoenix Belcher: A popular philanthropist and candidate for Grand Architrave.
• Blake Belcher: A director of cinematic productions.
• Captain Amos Gridley: Explorer, inventor and captain of a steam-powered sea-dirigible.
• Emberlyn Cogsmith: Wealthy investor and philanthropist.
• Seren:  A Martian mystic and candidate for Grand Architrave.
• Valen: Wealthy Martian investor.

With our characters in place, we wrote each character’s introductory paragraph. This is the first paragraph that the player reads and provides a broad overview. The rest of the character sheet then flows from that.

At least, that’s how I do it, and it takes me no more than 15-20 minutes to do this. 

However, I quickly found that other writers did things differently. One wrote in bullet points; others went into detail. (We made them more consistent later on.)

Plots

With the characters defined, we each picked a “plot” to write. I picked the election plot while others wrote about inventions, great works, and investments.

My plot document included brief rules for how the election worked, a timetable for hustings and the voting deadline, and a little bit of character background and goals. I also included a page of voting slips.

With that done, I put the text into the character sheets and the setting documents. (And for those that didn’t have access to Google Docs, I did the same for their plots.)

And that was it for plots. Given the players were only playing for 40 minutes, we estimated that most players wouldn’t have time for more than one plot.

Review and edit

With all the text added to the characters, we printed everything for review. Everyone made notes on the character sheets, which we then incorporated. (At the same time, I polished and buffed to remove the differences – so where one character was written in bullet points, I fleshed it out into full sentences and paragraphs.)

We then did the same again until we were happy with everything, at which point we printed it all out and called it quits.

With only eight characters, we finished quickly (before 6 pm). We could have written more characters (and I would have been happy to), but we agreed to limit it to eight. So we played boardgames instead.

Sunday

And on Sunday we played the games. Graham managed the Sunday running schedule, and this is how it went for me.

Starship Theseus

Starship Theseus is a 10-player game written by Adam Hayes, Nyx Hollindrake, Michael Jones and Christi S.

I played part of the crew of a colony ship. We spent most of the voyage in cryosleep, and the ship would wake us occasionally when it needed the command crew to deal with something it couldn’t manage. I played the security officer. As the game progressed, we discovered things about ourselves and the world we thought we knew.

I had a lot of fun with this game, although it finished somewhat abruptly because we ran out of time. It deserves a longer slot.

(Meanwhile, in another room, Elevenses had its premiere. Elevenses was written by Kirstine Heald, Malk Williams, Julie Winnard, Ewan Munro and Michelle Minett. When Dundee Bakewell does not return from travelling after a year and a day and is declared dead, the villagers gather over tea and cakes to divvy up their possessions. For 11 players.)

The Canals of Mars

Our game. Suey ran it while I kept track of time. The game went well – certainly no serious problems, and the players seemed to think it worked well as a freeform taster. 

We kept it to 60 minutes (including setup and debrief), which gave us an extra hour to relax while we waited for the other game to finish.

(That other game was Full Circle by Nickey Barnard, Nick Curd, Philippa Dall, Tony Mitton and Mike Snowden. For 12 players and inspired by Logan’s Run and Rollerball.)

Love Letter: The Silver Rush

Set in the American Old West, Love Letter: The Silver Rush is a 12-player game played over three scenes. The scenes are split by gaps where one half of the game goes prospecting while everyone else stays at home. During those gaps, the players write letters to each other. Events happen, and it’s an angsty game of romance and feelings.

(It’s also the third Love Letter game – the first was set during the Great War and the second during the Crusades. I was part of the Crusades writing team some years ago, but I can remember nothing about it now.)

I won’t say who I played (because of spoilers). I enjoyed Love Letter: The Silver Rush, but I’m not sure how I feel about it being longer. Two hours was about right for me – playing it for longer doesn’t appeal (although I know the games are very popular).

Love Letter: The Silver Rush was written by Ben Cole, Natalie Curd, Clare Gardner, Heidi Kaye, Elyssia McCormick, and Richard Perry. 

(And running simultaneously was Hotel Requiem, a 7-player game written by Malcolm Campbell, Emory Cunnington, Bethan Griffiths, Peter Jones and Elynor Kamil. You can check out, but can you ever leave?)

And then it was all over and I spent Sunday evening chatting and playing board games.

Overall

Peaky is lovely. I always have a great time seeing friends, writing and playing games. I wish I slept better, but it doesn’t take me long to catch up.

And I’m looking forward to Peaky 2025.

About Peaky: To learn more about Peaky, see the website (actually a wiki). If you’re interested in attending Peaky, bookings will open sometime around December. Keep an eye on the ukfreeforms mailing list or Facebook group.

Using AI to help write freeforms

At Peaky 2023, while we were writing That Second Difficult Album and coming up with ideas for the background, I asked ChatGPT for some ideas.

My prompt: Give me a band backstory for a folk rock band whose first album was in 1971. The band name is The Appleyards

ChatGPT then churned out 500 words of passable background that sounded exactly like it came from a music paper. (The actual text is at the bottom of this post.)

My first instinct was to embrace this brave new world, but several members of the team were against it, so we didn’t.

Brainstorming with ChatGPT

But perhaps ChatGPT can help with brainstorming? So after Peaky (while writing this post), I tried something different.

It is 1971 The Appleyards, a folk-rock band with 5 members, have just finished recording their second album at a recording studio. However, the stresses of recording the album are starting to show and the drummer has gone missing. Give 15 characters, including the band, with goals and conflicts suitable for a larp roleplaying game

(I had to tweak the prompt a couple of times to get the right response. Writing good prompts is going to be an essential skill.)

30 seconds later, ChatGPT replied with:

1. Jack "Jazzy" Appleyard (Lead vocalist/guitarist): Goal - Ensure the success of the album and maintain the band's reputation. Conflict - Struggling with creative differences with the other band members.
2. Lisa "Lix" Appleyard (Keyboardist/backing vocalist): Goal - Find a replacement drummer before the upcoming tour. Conflict - Dealing with personal issues that affect her focus on the band.
3. Simon "Strings" Appleyard (Lead guitarist): Goal - Push the boundaries of the band's sound and gain recognition as a skilled guitarist. Conflict - Clashes with the other band members over the direction of the album.
4. Mike "Mallets" Appleyard (Bassist): Goal - Reconcile the band's differences and maintain harmony within the group. Conflict - Struggling with creative block and feeling overshadowed by other band members.
5. Sally "Sticks" Appleyard (Missing Drummer): Goal - Find her true calling as a musician and decide if she wants to continue with the band. Conflict - Internal struggle with her passion for music and a desire for a different path.
6. Marcus "Maverick" Walker (Studio Engineer): Goal - Ensure the album's production quality and maintain a professional atmosphere. Conflict - Frustration with the band's internal issues interfering with the recording process.
7. Ruby "Roadie" Thompson (Band's Roadie): Goal - Support the band in any way possible and solve any logistical problems they face. Conflict - Dealing with personal issues that affect her ability to assist the band effectively.
8. Max "Manager" Chambers (Band Manager): Goal - Secure a record deal for the band and propel their career to new heights. Conflict - Balancing the band's desires with the demands of the music industry.
9. Brenda "Booking Agent" Harris (Band's Booking Agent): Goal - Secure lucrative gigs and opportunities for the band. Conflict - Facing pressure from other bands' agents who want their clients to get more attention.
10. Derek "Disc Jockey" Morris (Radio DJ): Goal - Promote the band's new album on the radio and help increase their fanbase. Conflict - Struggling with personal relationships and his own career aspirations.
11. Olivia "Outfit Guru" Reynolds (Band's Stylist): Goal - Create unique and visually appealing outfits for the band to enhance their stage presence. Conflict - Dealing with limited resources and clashing with band members over their desired styles.
12. Ethan "Enthusiastic Fan" Lawson (Devoted Fan): Goal - Support the band in any way possible and help create a positive fan community. Conflict - Overcoming personal obstacles to maintain his dedication to the band.
13. Natalie "Nosy Journalist" Carter (Music Journalist): Goal - Write an in-depth article about the band's creative process and the making of the album. Conflict - Struggling to uncover the band's inner dynamics and conflicts.
14. Dylan "Determined Promoter" Grant (Music Promoter): Goal - Organize successful concerts and events to increase the band's exposure. Conflict - Facing financial constraints and competition from other promoters.
15. Veronica "Vintage Collector" Sullivan (Collector of Band Memorabilia): Goal - Obtain rare and valuable items related to the band's history. Conflict - Competing with other collectors and facing ethical dilemmas regarding authenticity.

(I’ve tweaked the formatting to make it easier to read, but other than that, the characters above are exactly as ChatGPT created.)

I’m impressed. For two minutes’ work, there are many good ideas to build on. And there are at least three characters we didn’t even consider in our brainstorming – the outfit guru, radio DJ and collector. (Not that we would necessarily have used them, but even so.) 

And while only some of the conflicts work for a freeform, we could have used something like this as a starting point.

And had I asked for 20 characters, ChatGPT would have given me 20. (Results from earlier prompts included a vocal coach, a devoted fan who wanted to find the missing drummer and a rebellious, indie musician.)

The general hostility in the group deterred me from using ChatGPT further during Peaky. If you use it in a group, you need everyone’s buy-in.

Dangers of using AI

I’ve only scratched the surface of using AI, but already I can see a few dangers.

Tropes and stereotypes: As you can see, ChatGPT creates obvious tropes and stereotypes – not that that’s necessarily a problem, as most freeforms rely on exactly those tropes and stereotypes. But we can’t rely on AI if we want original ideas in the games.

Fluffage and garbage: There’s a danger that because it’s so easy to create text with AI, we give players too much to read. A 500-word background is fine if it’s important to the game, but if it’s nothing more than background fluff, it would be better off unwritten.

(I can see longer-written games as a result – in the same way that novels became much longer when word processors took over from typewriters. As a fan of terse, tightly-written games, I don’t see this as a good thing.)

Garbage in, garbage out: Learning to craft good prompts will be vital to getting the best out of AI.

A new frontier

I’m not sure ChatGPT is ready to write a complete freeform just yet, but once we work out how to use it, AI tools will be extremely useful – particularly in brainstorming and planning.

But they must be used carefully; otherwise, they will lead to tired, tropey games full of fluff. 

I see lots of potential for using AI to speed up game-writing, and I’m keen to explore how AI can help us write freeform larps.

Next time: plots.

Appendix: My original prompt and ChatGPT’s response

My prompt: Give me a band backstory for a folk rock band whose first album was in 1971. The band name is The Appleyards

ChatGPT’s response

The Appleyards - Nurturing Folk Rock's Roots

The Appleyards, an influential folk rock band, emerged from the vibrant music scene of the early 1970s. Comprised of five exceptionally talented musicians, they etched their place in history with their distinctive sound and heartfelt songwriting. Hailing from the small town of Wisteria Grove, their journey began in an old, creaky barn, where they spent countless hours refining their craft.

Formed in 1969, The Appleyards were initially a trio consisting of lead vocalist and guitarist Daniel "Danny" Fletcher, multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalist Lily Bishop, and the masterful guitarist and mandolin player, Lucas Sullivan. The trio's melodic harmonies and intricate instrumentation quickly captivated local audiences, leading to their first gig at a quaint coffeehouse in town.

Shortly after their debut performance, the band encountered drummer Timothy "Tim" Richards and bassist Ethan Anderson, both gifted musicians who brought a dynamic rhythm section to The Appleyards' evolving sound. With their complete lineup solidified, the band set their sights on crafting their first album, eager to share their unique blend of folk and rock with the world.

In 1971, The Appleyards released their self-titled debut album, "The Appleyards," which received critical acclaim for its rich storytelling and soulful melodies. The album showcased the band's ability to seamlessly merge folk-inspired ballads with the raw energy of rock, creating a sound that was both familiar and refreshing.

One of the album's standout tracks, "Wisteria Grove," paid homage to their humble beginnings and reflected the band members' deep-rooted connection to their hometown. The hauntingly beautiful song became an instant hit and helped propel The Appleyards to the forefront of the folk rock scene.

Following the success of their debut album, The Appleyards embarked on a rigorous touring schedule, crisscrossing the country to share their music with audiences far and wide. Their live performances became legendary, characterized by their undeniable chemistry on stage and their ability to effortlessly captivate crowds with their heartfelt lyrics and enchanting melodies.

Over the years, The Appleyards continued to release a string of critically acclaimed albums, including "Wandering Spirit" (1973), "Aurora Skies" (1975), and "Harvest Moon" (1978). Each album showcased the band's growth and maturity, as they delved deeper into their songwriting and incorporated a wider range of instruments into their sound.

Despite achieving commercial success and critical acclaim, The Appleyards remained true to their roots, always maintaining a genuine connection with their fans. They were renowned for their humility and commitment to using their music as a means to inspire and bring people together.

While the band eventually disbanded in the early 1980s, their legacy as pioneers of folk rock endured. The Appleyards' music continues to resonate with listeners across generations, and their influence can be heard in the work of countless contemporary folk rock artists.

Today, the story of The Appleyards serves as a testament to the power of music and the enduring spirit of a band that embraced the essence of folk rock, etching their name in the annals of musical history.

Receiving feedback

Peaky was only last week and is always a good time to reflect on feedback. It’s something I find both rewarding and difficult.

It’s rewarding because feedback is a great way to improve. It’s difficult because I have thin skin, and sometimes I take criticism a little too personally. But I’ve learned to deal with that.

But I’m not going to talk about Peaky feedback; instead, I’m looking at the feedback for Writing Freeform Larps. (But my overall response, and the process, are much the same.)

I had the first draft of Writing Freeform Larps done in January, and I asked on the uk-freeforms mailing list for volunteers to give me some feedback. I had a few responses, so I sent pdfs of the book to my volunteers – and waited.

Red reviews

Luckily, I’m used to receiving feedback. For the last decade or so, I’ve been a bid writer (and bid manager) on numerous tenders. Part of the tender process always includes a review (we used to call this red review), which can be punishing.

I always warn new bid writers that red reviews can be punishing. It feels like personal criticism. However, I find it helps to remember that the reviewers are not criticising the writer (well, they shouldn’t be) – everyone simply wants to make the bid as good as possible.

I’ve weathered plenty of these, but I still find receiving feedback a little challenging.

Feedback

I go through several stages when receiving feedback.

Initial response: When the email lands in my inbox, my first response is an immediate adrenaline spike. What will they think? Will they like it? I then read through the feedback, from start to finish, without thinking too hard.

It’s always tempting to defend my work – that’s almost always a mistake. If someone misreads something or has a reaction I didn’t expect, I try not to get defensive. Instead, I try to work out what I need to change to ensure I convey my message more clearly.

(At Peaky, most feedback is given verbally. I find it best to record it in my notebook rather than try and engage with the feedback at that point.)

Wait: As I know my initial reaction is to reject any criticism or suggested changes, I usually wait a day or two to process the suggestions. I’ll try not to think about them in this period, but I know that by leaving a gap between the first read and when I come to action them, I will be in a more positive state of mind.

(During bids, I didn’t always get the luxury of waiting this long, unfortunately.)

Reviewing the feedback and making changes: My process for dealing with the suggestions was straightforward: I printed the suggestions and then worked through them, crossing out each suggestion once I had finished with it.

Sometimes I worked methodically through the feedback; sometimes I flitted from one piece to another.

For Writing Freeform Larps, I got feedback at different times. So once I’d completed that, I asked those who hadn’t commented whether they wanted an updated copy. One advantage that gave me was that I didn’t get contradictory feedback. (It wasn’t unusual to get contradictory feedback during red reviews.)

Accepting feedback

For Writing Freeform Larps, I accepted about 80% of the suggestions. All suggestions had some merit – but some pushed the book into a direction I wasn’t interested in or wasn’t how I would write a freeform larp.

Often, the feedback made me adjust the text, even if I didn’t directly respond to the suggestion.

Second edition

So now that Writing Freeform Larps is published, if I get any more feedback I want to include, I must decide: do I update the files immediately or wait for a second edition? We’ll see. 

(And I'm pleased to say, the feedback I’ve received so far has been overwhelmingly positive.)

Peaky 2023

And what did you do during the coronation, Daddy? Well, I went to Derbyshire and wrote freeforms. Isn’t that what everyone did?

So yes, last weekend was Peaky 2023. 25 gamers congregated in Appleby Magna and wrote four freeform larps, worked on other freeforms, and watched the coronation.

I’ve talked about Peaky before, so I’ll just concentrate on the games.

That Second Difficult Album

I wrote That Second Difficult Album, an 8-player freeform with Kevin, Theo, Tym, Heidi and Mikey. (In typing that, I realise we had almost as many writers as players, which may have contributed to its smooth running.)

Here’s the teaser blurb:

August 1971. The Appleyards have been ensconced at Hurstmere Grange in the wilds of Sussex to record the follow-up album to their well-received debut. Tonight, they will reveal to the world the new album’s title, and some of the new songs, and announce where their next tour will be.

But has anyone seen the drummer?

As I hinted a few lines above, the whole experience was painless. We kicked around ideas on Friday night and got the shape of the game and ideas for plots and characters. On Saturday morning, we nailed down the characters and their concepts and started on the plots. By tea time, we were proofing the plots, followed by copying them into the characters. We finished shortly after 10 pm.

Observations and thoughts

While this is the first time I’ve written a music-based game, it’s not the first time we’ve done one. The Day the Music Died is a Peaky game and covered many similar themes (it’s set on a pirate radio station), and at Freeform Games, we have The Karma Club, featuring a similarly dysfunctional band.

We followed the approach I laid out in Writing Freeform Larps and it worked well. However, with some extremely experienced freeform writers in the group (Kevin wrote the first freeform I ever played), I was a little hesitant to do things “my” way. However, when I did a little project management and nudged the team in the direction I think we needed to go, they didn’t object and happily agreed.

To my amazement, Theo wrote on his phone. I couldn’t have done that – I need a proper keyboard.

We used Dropbox, which was a little frustrating as the wifi wasn’t reliable and created numerous conflicted copies, which we had to manage. In hindsight, a Google Drive folder might have worked better.

Paths not travelled: 

• We talked about players having more than one character, for some of the more minor roles. In the end, we didn’t write those but they’re something to consider if we expand the game.
• I asked ChatGPT for an example background for The Appleyards, and it produced a frighteningly comprehensive reply. While we didn’t use it, it was a clear indication of what AI can do for us.

Sunday running order

We had a few people writing games that weren’t planned for Sunday, so I asked Graham to sort out the Sunday schedule. As we had four games, the slots went as follows:

• 0930-1130: Across the City
• 1200-1400: The Restaurant and the End of the Dinosaurs
• 1500-1700: The Ashlight Labyrinth and That Difficult Second Album

As The Ashlight Labyrinth was a player short, I played in that instead of helping to GM our game.

Across the City

Across the City was written by Julie, Adam and Peter. It’s a horde game set in a Discworld-esque fantasy city. Bad guys have stolen a statue, and the guard must recover it. Three members of the guard are the players – everyone else was a member of the horde.

The guard in their splendid fezes (thanks Julie for the photo and Kevin for the fezes)

I’m not a big fan of horde games, but Across the City was the best I’ve played. The game was very structured – we started in the guard house (with two members of the horde to play with) and then visited three other parts of the city. Each part of the city felt different as the horde was different in each – the marketplace had stalls and people selling (and buying) fruit and veg. The artificer’s sector had more refined shops. The docks had fishermen and the like. 

As a non-horde player, I did find the horde overwhelming at times (noisy, chaotic, unhelpful, and easily distracted), but I really liked the sense that we were moving into different parts of the city. However, it was often hard to get any sense from the horde or find anyone who would help.

We failed to recover the idol before the villains made off with it, but we had fun doing so.

Things I liked: 

• A map of the city that meant something. We had time to visit three places, and it was up to us where we visited. (Poor writers, that meant there was material they wrote that never saw play – at least in this run!)
• Gentle roleplaying in the guard house. We had time to bond as a team (whether deliberate or not, that’s what happened), and it was fun to roleplay without having to chase the McGuffin or be overwhelmed by the horde. 
• As I said above, each area of the city had its own flavour – the city felt like a city.
• I liked the structure of the game – we were basically in four locations, and about 30 minutes in each. That was about right and helped keep the game from overstaying its welcome.
• As the watch, we all had fezes. Kevin had brought a box of hats with him, and found fezes for us all to wear.

The map!

Across the City felt like the most unique of the games at Peaky 2023 – it tried something different, and I would play it again.

The Restaurant at the End of the Dinosaurs

The Restaurant at the End of the Dinosaurs is a 12-player game written by Megan, Nickey, Phil, Kirstine, Megan, Ali, and Rich. It’s a “shenanigans” game with the players travelling back in time to view the last days of the dinosaurs before the asteroid hits the Earth. Of course, things don’t go according to plan.

I played Finlay, who, although being written as ungendered, I struggled to get my head around as I only know male Finlays. However, once I’d settled into the character and worked out that my spouse was being played by Mikey and my estranged son by Adam, I decided to play the character as female.

And as it was clear that I was an atrociously appalling mother, I modelled her on Jennifer Saunders’ character in Absolutely Fabulous. While it was fun, it ruled out any angsty resolution with our estranged son. (It was also potentially triggery, so care with casting is needed.)

I had a lot of fun in the first half of the game, roleplaying being just awful. Unfortunately, as a tourist, I had little to contribute when things started kicking off and going wrong. I’m not sure how easy it would be to make Finlay more relevant at the end of the game – it might be easier to give the character a second character and let them swap as needed.

Things I liked: 

• Dinosaurs! Why haven’t I written a game with dinosaurs in it? I had fun telling the experts that my favourite dinosaur was stegosaurus and that I wanted to see one. (And all the while knowing, as Steve, that stegosaurs had been extinct for millions of years by the end of the Cretaceous. But I figured Finlay wasn’t that bright.)
• Being awfully self-centred and rich with Mikey. I hope Adam wasn’t too upset with his awful parents.

I enjoyed The Restaurant at the End of the Dinosaurs – I hope we’ll see it again. 

The Ashlight Labyrinth

The Ashlight Labyrinth is an eight-player game written by Christi, Ben, Nick, Natalie, and Michael. It’s a character-driven last-ditch attempt to save a doomed land from an evil mage.

I must be careful what I say here, as the authors don’t want me to spoil the game for others. So, what I will say is:

• I thoroughly enjoyed The Ashlight Labyrinth.
• It’s very angsty. Very.
• Of all the games at this year’s Peaky, I think it needs the least work. (Probably just typos and layout. And maybe some GM instructions for others to run it.)
• It’s going to be compared to Critical Path, which is a highly regarded freeform larp. I played Critical Path in November, and while I enjoyed it, I wasn’t as blown away by it as I expected to be. The Ashlight Labyrinth addresses the issues I had with Critical Path – I think it’s better.
• I’m looking forward to playing it again, but maybe not for a while.

If you see The Ashlight Labyrinth being run anywhere, you should sign up for it. And as it takes only eight players, convention organisers should insist on multiple runs…

That Second Difficult Album

I didn’t see That Second Difficult Album being brought to life (as I was deep in the labyrinth), but I heard it generally went well. There were a few kinks, but we got some good positive feedback we can address.

The question will be whether to simply fix the things that need fixing, or do we add the extra characters we talked about during the writing?

Peaky 2023 overall

So three nights, four games written and played, 25 writers (plus the awesome Alison, who looked after us all), and a coronation to distract us on the Saturday. A brilliant weekend.

Peaky 2022

Last weekend I attended the annual Peaky freeform writing weekend. I’ve attended previous Peakys and written about some here.

Four games

This year, we had four writing groups and all four games ran.

The Tower of the Moon (if I remember the name right) was a 12-player game set in Minas Ithil on the edge of Mordor during the Second Age (whatever that is—Middle Earth fans will know). A game of corruption and heists, it was originally pitched as “Thorin’s 11”. I played the Captain of the Guard.

Deimos Down features a crashing spaceship in an Expanse-type future for 14 players. Originally pitched as “crashing spaceship where everyone dies”. Lots of characters died. I co-wrote this.

Brest or Bust is 20+ player game based on Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines/Wacky Races. It wasn’t completed, but we played a short preview with just the characters (no actual plot), which was fun.

Smoke and Mirrors is a 12 players game set at the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Time travellers discover that things aren’t as history remembers...

Favourite moments

My favourite moments:

The Tower of the Moon: Clare’s wonderful orc (poetry!). The GMs letting me tell them off (they were hopeless guards and hadn’t told me when something important was stolen). Megan for her wonderful put-down of me (we had one five-second interaction and she crushed me). The slow dawning of horror at the start when I re-read my character sheet and realised how much trouble we were in.

Deimos Down: The players enjoying themselves with our hastily-written characters. My improvised (and ambiguous) ending.

Brest or Bust: Tony’s whisky string (!). The mad characters. Demonstrating that players can easily entertain themselves for half an hour if given characters and a little direction even with no plot.

Smoke and Mirrors: Whispering advice into Nick’s ear while he was negotiating. (And Graham’s complaint that his advisor wasn’t advising him!) Figuring out what was going on and realising what we had to do--and then trying to persuade everyone. This was my favourite game of the weekend.

Not very photogenic

I’m not a costume-y person, but it’s a shame Peaky isn’t a more photogenic event. This is the only photograph I took:

My only photo - and not even a good one

Things I learned

I learned a few things this time.

Plots then characters: Writing Deimos Down reminded me that I struggle to write plot information straight into the character sheets. I’ve written a whole process for freeform-writing (see here), and while it isn’t the only way to write freeforms, it works for me. Particularly when writing as a team.

This time, after we created a spaghetti diagram showing links between the characters (see photo above), we moved straight to writing character sheets. We wrote the plots (as understood by that character) directly into the character sheets. We missed an intermediate step to flesh out the plots in more detail. That meant that things were missed.

So as an example, I wrote a character who had tried to blow something up with a mining charge. So I wrote that, but I didn’t write the other characters who would have known about that—and we had to add that into several characters at the last minute. (We missed other things.)

Had we written from a plot-centred perspective, I would have known that it was my job to write that bit of plot for all the characters. I would have done this as a detailed plot document involving all the relevant characters. We would have checked and agreed this, and then we’d have copied it to the character sheets once we were happy.

Keep general background and character sheet separate: Rather than have separate background and character info, we kept it simple and wrote everything on the character sheet for Deimos Down. In hindsight, I don’t think this worked as character sheets mixed general background info with personal background, and they became confusing to read.

If we had more time, we could have straightened out the characters and made it work. But even then, I prefer to keep background info in its own document and leave the character sheet to include character information. (As I was writing, I realised this was one of my unwritten assumptions.)

It didn’t help that our game was set in the future and so we had to give the players some background information. Perhaps we should just have said that our game was set in The Expanse, which would put everyone on the same page.

Complicating matters further, we started the game with a flashback. We did that so our two groups of characters could get to know each other before the main part of the game, but doing it as a flashback made the character sheets more structurally weird. It would have been simpler had we prepared a briefing sheet for the players to read between the two scenes, but we didn’t want to slow play down by making the players read more part-way through. But that meant we needed to put much more thought into how we structured the character sheets than we did.

Organising Sunday

I’ve worked out the Sunday running order for the last few years. 2022 was no exception, but it was simpler this year because we had a single stream. (It gets very complicated when there are two parallel streams of games.)

The problem this year was that four games wanted to run. It’s a problem because we start at 9:30 and finish at 17:00 (to allow everyone to get home in good time). Ideally, we’ll have 30 minutes between each game and an hour for lunch. With three games, that gives each game a two-hour slot. With four games, we had less time. Luckily Brest or Bust only needed an hour, and Smoke and Mirrors only needed 90 minutes. So while we overran, we didn’t overrun by much.

One problem with organising the games on Sunday is that it takes me out of writing the game. It can take a few hours to organise as it involves finding out from the organisers what their games are, creating a casting sheet, and juggling numbers to make sure everyone is happy. (Or at least, as many people as possible are happy.)

Besides not wanting to disappoint anyone, sorting out the Sunday games always takes me out of the writing. I can never commit as much as I want, which I can find frustrating. I suspect my fellow writers also find it frustrating that I’m not 100% committed—but then nobody else offers to organise Sunday so maybe they’re just relieved that they’re not doing it.

Peaky 2023

Next year it’s a little later, in May. Hopefully the weather will be nicer, and we can spend more time outside.

The Highgate Club - online using Discord

In January 2021 I ran The Highgate Club, a freeform I co-wrote back in 2010 at Peaky. I’m fond of The Highgate Club—It’s a place where the people of hidden London (vampires, werewolves, sorcerers, immortals and more) gather. There are various plots involving Atlantis, a volcanic island up for auction, the return of King Arthur, Russian cyborgs, the last of the elves, and more.

Discord

I updated The Highgate Club a couple of years ago and Covid happened before I could run it in person. Given the success I’d had with other freeforms online, I thought I’d try it out using Discord.

The item bot

The Highgate Club uses items. A lot. Happily, one of my freeform pals was developing a Discord bot to manage items, and they got it ready in time for me to try. A week before we were due to run the game I had a crash course in installing Discord bots, and we tested it beforehand—it was a success and hopefully development will continue.

During play, I inadvertently installed it in the wrong channel, which I don’t think caused me any problems, but next time I’ll know better. We also found that the locations weren’t working properly, so we had to manually sort them out.

If the bot hadn’t worked, our fallback was for one of the GMs (probably Alan, my co-GM) to be dedicated to managing a huge spreadsheet.

Problem #1: Discord

While overall I think the game was a success, it wasn’t without a few issues. The first was that one player failed to join. We carried on without her, but it was frustrating. We’re not sure what happened—she struggled with Discord despite rebooting her laptop. (One thing we didn’t try was to check whether she could have used Discord on another device, or using it through a browser rather than the app. Or through a phone.)

I don’t know if the problem was her setup, or issues with her local internet connection. We had 16 people present, but nobody else had any difficulties.

Problem #2: The Decision

During the game there’s a joining ceremony and two characters apply join the club. Unfortunately, one of them was refused entry, and this upset her. I sympathised with her (I couldn’t quite see where the decision not to allow her entry had come from) and she carried on playing, albeit her game was spoiled as a result.

Mechanically, it didn’t make that much difference (as she wasn’t barred from the club) but it obviously affected her game emotionally. I’ve since tweaked the writing to make it less likely that either character will be blocked from being accepted.

As a side effect, I noted that it also affected me as well. It upsets me when players aren’t enjoying playing my games—I want everyone to have a good time. And I may have been more sensitive than usual, as it turns out I had Covid.

Problem #3: Covid

A few days after the game, I tested positive for Covid. While I didn’t have any of the classic symptoms I had been feeling below par—I thought I was fighting off a nasty cold—in hindsight I realised that I was suffering from Covid the weekend of the game.

Covid also affected my mood.

Normally after a game, I’m quick to write up my notes and reflect on how the game went. While I did sort out typos to sort out some of the smaller issues, I didn’t feel like reflecting on the session. It’s taken me over a month to write this up.

And my view of The Highgate Club was soured as a result.

Minor niggles

We had a few minor niggles.

Late starters: A couple of the players misread when the game was due, and thought it was the following day. So we started about 30 minutes late while we got in touch and waited for them. It didn’t occur to me to send reminders in advance, but maybe that was also Covid.

Discord rooms: I set up a few small (2 or 3 person) channels on Discord for people to have quiet conversations. Unfortunately, that made it hard for some people to get hold of others, as they were often in those rooms with other people and there was no way of getting them out. (Not everyone was paying attention to direct messages, which didn’t help.)

In future, I will have more channels but set the minimum number at four to make it easier for players to talk to each other.

Reading the room: From a GM’s perspective, watching the game being played is a lot less satisfactory on Discord than in person. It’s hard to “read the room” online, and I had little sense of how the game was going.

As a player, I find it distracting when you’re conversing with another player and a GM suddenly appears. All they’re doing is listening in, but it’s still distracting. So I tried not to do that—but that meant not seeing as much of the game as I would otherwise have.

Make it longer: A casualty of not reading the room is not knowing when to stop the game. I had originally planned to run from about 7:30 to 10pm, but we started late (as described above) and at 10:30pm I was flagging. I called the end of the game at 10:30, but I know that players were still busy and had I been able to read the room I would have let it carry on for a bit.

I think that’s an inevitable consequence of online play, but for The Highgate Club at least, I’ve added another 30 minutes to the run-time.

Once more with feeling

So my memory of The Highgate Club is tinged with Covid. It's probably time for me to run it again, but ideally face-to-face rather than Discord.

Peaky 2021

It’s been over two years since the last one, but in early October I attended my favourite gaming weekend of the year: Peaky.

And yes, still my favourite.

Thanks to the pandemic, we had fewer people than usual. That meant Peaky was a little more spacious than it had felt in the past.

And for most of us, we haven’t socialised face-to-face much lately. And while meeting 20+ other gamers simultaneously in the same space took a bit of getting used to, it wasn’t too long before it all seemed normal again.

Organising the games

As usual, I organised the games for Sunday. We had fewer games this year – we had more players than games. I think that was another effect of the pandemic – more groups were happy to start work on a game rather than get something ready for Sunday. (We also had a request from Consequences for bigger, 20-30 player games, so that had an impact as well.)

As a result, while we split into five groups, only two were writing games that would be ready for Sunday. We played three as we also ran Culture Crash, which was written at Virtual Peaky earlier in the year.

So while previous years have usually involved trying to work out how to ensure there are enough players for each game, this time I knew that we would have players spare and that most people would need to sit out at least one game.

As usual, organising this took a fair bit of Saturday for me to arrange, which meant I didn’t contribute to The Castleford Ladies Magic Circle Meets Tonight as perhaps the others would have liked me to.

The writing team hard at work. (Well, the others are hard at work, I’m just messing around taking a photo.)

The Castleford Ladies Magic Circle Meets Tonight

Based on the ribald works of singer Jake Thackray, The Castleford Ladies Magic Circle Meets Tonight was written by Phil D, Kevin J, Suey L, Christi S and me. And although I’ve put the team in alphabetical order, it was definitely Suey and Christi’s game. (I had not heard of Jake Thackray until Peaky, so it was educational for me.)

The game is a horde game for around 13-15 players. A magic ritual has gone wrong, and the main characters are the Castleford Ladies Magic Circle, and the horde are ghosts summoned by the ritual. (It’s so tempting to call them players and NPCs…)

We tried to structure the game so the ghosts had plenty of reasons to talk to each other rather than just the main characters (which is a fault of other horde games we’ve played). Our experience on Sunday suggested that we had succeeded, and little polishing will be needed before it is rerun.

Some thoughts:

• It’ll need a content warning. There’s a fair amount of filth/smut/innuendo, which is very true to the source but isn’t very modern.
• Most of the characters are women, which is a pleasant change.
• The two above points mean it isn’t for everyone.
• I would have run the horde slightly differently than Suey did, but I didn’t make a big deal of it as it’s her vision, not mine.

The Coolham Caper

Roger G, Helen J, Charlie P, Rich P and Julie W wrote The Coolham Caper, a light-hearted game of misunderstanding and misappropriation, gangsters and garden produce for nine players.

I didn’t play in The Coolham Caper, but I heard good things about it from the players.

Other games

Games that were started but not finished:

• The Shining Ones (provisional title), a Fae game for at least 30 players.
• Casino Royale, a Bond-inspired game about spies, glamour and gambling. For 30-ish players.
• An unnamed game set in Restoration Britain for 25-30 players.

Hurrah for more games!

Culture Crash

Our last game was Culture Crash, by Jeff Diewald, Roger Gammans, Heidi Kaye, Richard Perry, and Julie Winnard. It was started at Virtual Peaky 21 but has had some work done since, and this was its third outing.

I played Quilh, Watcher of Stars and I was an alien in a first contact situation. (I didn’t think of myself as an alien, of course.) The game was splendid fun, with lots of mysteries and misunderstandings.

In full costume as Quilh, Watcher of Stars

Some thoughts

• Culture Crash was long by Peaky standards – it took around three hours. It started with a workshop for the alien cultures to sort themselves out, which added to the time.
• The character sheets need some work. They’re very long, and I found it hard to find key information during the game. Some condensing/restructuring is required.
• The ending suffered from the one-big-plot problem (once the big plot arrived, everything else became irrelevant and if you weren’t involved you had nothing to do). The ending was also very GM-intensive, and as a player, I felt I had little agency. But we gave the writers some feedback which hopefully they will consider. Despite that, I thoroughly enjoyed Culture Crash, especially the first two thirds.

The Culture Crash website is here.

Looking forward to Peaky 2022

And as always, the weekend was over much too quickly… But Peaky 2022 is already in the diary.

Virtual Peaky

Normally at this time of year I have just come back from Peaky, the annual freeform-writing weekend. This year, with the lockdown, Peaky has been postponed. But with everyone now having a free weekend, we decided to try a virtual Peaky.

TL:DR - It went surprisingly well, with about 16 people and four writing groups. Only one game was ready to be played on Sunday, which wasn’t a surprise. The technology generally worked well. We played lots of boardgames.

In advance

It was clear that the usual Friday pitch session at Peaky wasn’t going to work this time, so we formed games in advance (thanks to Clare for the hard work coordinating this).

• About three weeks in advance, we started pitching ideas for games that we wanted to write. We did this on the mailing list and FB group, and Clare kindly collated everything.
• Clare then prepared a Google Form, which we completed the weekend before.
• After the weekend, Claire, Heidi and I looked through the data and tried to fit everyone into groups. There were four clear groups, plus a few people who didn’t fit in.
• I then posted the results to the list, checking that everyone was happy with the groups and asking those who didn’t fit in which group they were interested in. There was a bit of discussion and one person decided to drop out.

Virtual Peaky Space

In advance of the weekend I set up a Virtual Peaky page on the Peaky Games Wiki with a rough agenda for the weekend, along with links to Google hangouts which I gave Peaky-esque names like “the comfy chairs” and “in the kitchen”.

I also put a link to a Jitsi, which we used for the big meetings (more than 10 people), but it was occasionally a bit hit and miss. I found Jitsi slowed everything down for me - but I didn’t find the low bandwidth setting until Sunday. We used Google Hangouts as well, and I found that more stable (but it has a 10 person limit).

We used Jitsi because of some of the security concerns around Zoom, although it appears that Zoom is fixing those.

We opened Peaky at 6pm in Jitsi. Here’s the agenda that we drafted in advance to keep the meeting short:

• Welcome to Virtual Peaky
• Groups: is everyone clear on which group they are in?
• Expectations: keep them low! We genuinely don't know if this will work.
• Take breaks for meals, real life, exercise and keeping those you life with happy.
• There's no pressure to write a game for tomorrow. It would be lovely to play something sometime, but it doesn't have to be tomorrow.
• How many people are you writing for? That's up to you. If you're thinking about writing a game that can be played in lockdown then we have access to plenty of players who I'm sure will be happy to join in.
• Check-ins - Jitsi. These are purely so we can get together once a day to make sure we're all okay. They're completely optional. (This first one is the only one that has an agenda.) We're using Jitsi because it can cope with lots of people.
• Check-ins - Hangouts. The Google Hangouts are even more optional - a place to spend a few minutes catching up with friends. Times are suggested purely to add a bit of structure - but the hangouts are available 24/7.
• Announcements - if we need to make any announcements over the weekend we'll use Facebook or the mailing list.
• Boardgames - if you want to play boardgames, some of us will be on boardgamearena over the weekend.
• Peaky rules - this isn't a normal Peaky, so the normal rules about being a member don’t apply, but we would like to develop and (possibly) publish the games as normal.
• Have fun!

It's a good job the check-ins were optional, because I missed most of them on Saturday...

Brainstorming

Friday night we (Julie, Roger, Suey and me) brainstormed. That normally means flipcharts and marker pens (sometimes with post-it notes). We used Trello, a project collaboration board. It worked really well - we had columns for characters, plots, setting and mechanics, and created (and moved) cards to suit.

Our Trello board

We didn’t go much deeper than that - but we could have added more description within each card. I was a bit concerned that we would then have to re-type everything, but I found that you can export to a json file (and then convert that to csv). It’s not perfect, but it means you could use Trello for more than we did. But for what we were doing, it was fine.

Writing

We briefly considered using MS Word and Dropbox before moving straight to Google Docs, which is a much more intuitive collaborative tool. Google Docs worked seamlessly for us.

At one point on Saturday afternoon the exercise felt just like Peaky. I had our hangout open in a tab but wasn’t looking at it, so as I was typing away I could hear the others typing on their bits and asking the occasional question.

I didn’t do as much writing as normal - mainly due to the additional distractions and chores with being at home. As a consequence, we didn’t get our game ready in time, but it should be ready for playtest in a week or six.

Unfortunately I haven’t been gripped by the subject of our game, and that also slowed my writing output. We’re writing Bridgetown Blizzard, a 1931 game set in rural Minnesota, which came about because we wanted our game to incorporate a “barbed wire telephone system” (which would be replicated by Skype or Hangouts or Jitsi or Zoom). It’s an intriguing idea, but I think I would have been more inspired had we chosen to transport the idea to another setting.

(Although I think one of my biggest difficulties was spending even more time at what is now my work desk.)

Sunday - more writing and a playtest

With only one game ready to play, Sunday morning consisted of more writing and then a playtest of Soooocks in Spaaace (written by Graham W, Tony and Heidi). In Soooocks in Spaaace we all played socks who had to save the universe from the evil gloves. It was very silly, but there were a few things to note:

• I liked that you could tailor your character in every way - the type of sock you chose to use as your sock puppet influenced their character. (So black socks are considered boring, and so on.)
• Technology was a bit of a challenge. One player got locked out because we had hit the Google Hangout limit. This arose because the game was designed so that we all needed to get together to agree a plan. With 8 players and 3 GMs, that pushed us over the 10-person limit, so a GM dropped out. It wouldn’t have been an issue if we’d been using Jitsi throughout - but it’s worth remembering as a design function for online freeforms.
• I’m not sure Soooocks in Spaaace  was a fair representation of the best of online freeforming though.

Other thoughts

Some other thoughts about Virtual Peaky that didn’t fit in anywhere else.

Other thoughts:

• We had an international group consisting of Megan in the USA, Adrian in Australia, and Rich in the UK. I didn’t hear much from them - I hope it went well.
• We played a lot of boardgames, as always. Instead of physical games we used boardgamearena.com.
• I don’t know how often the hangouts were used, but I found Jerry in one of them at one point. I used them quite a lot in the run up to the weekend, and I expect to use them going forward.
• We had a couple of drop outs, but that was inevitable. Jerry turned up mostly to hang out and help with the playtest, and it was lovely to see him again.

Things to take away

I think Virtual Peaky was a qualified success. We caught up with old friends, did some writing, and even played a game. I’m not sure that anyone is in a rush to do it again, though.

Here are some final thoughts:

• Virtual Peaky was definitely worth doing. We didn’t get as many games written, but we got more written than if we had let lockdown get to us.
• Online collaboration was surprisingly easy. The stars for me were Trello and Google Docs.
• I found Hangouts generally better than Jitsi (which slowed my laptop down a bit). Jitsi copes with more people in a call however. We didn’t try Zoom.
• Next time (if there’s a next time), I would post to UK Freeforms that we will be playing games on the Sunday and that there may be spaces, as that lets us open up the games a bit and allows us to write bigger games.
• Forming groups in advance worked was a bit fiddly, but it worked in the end. It helped having three of us looking at the results from the survey and forming the groups. I’d definitely do that for another Virtual Peaky, and I might be tempted to also do it for a normal Peaky as the Friday night pitch sessions aren't improving. 

For the future

I’ll leave the hangouts and jitsi in place on the Virtual Peaky page so people can go back and use them if they want.

It was nice to see people, and maybe we can have a Peaky evening when we catch up with progress and talk bobbins. I’m going to work on games and it would be nice to have a bit of company, so I may post on FB or the mailing list to say that I’ll be in the hangouts while I’m working.

Peaky 2019

Peaky 2019 was a really good Peaky for me - I don’t think it could have gone much better.

(If you’re new here, Peaky is a freeform writing weekend. About 30 freeform writers meet on Friday evening and form groups of 5-6 writers. The rest of Friday evening and all of Saturday is spent writing the freeform, and the freeforms are then all run on Sunday.)

I co-wrote Tea at Longbourne and played two other freeforms and several boardgames.

Writing Tea at Longbourne (Friday)

I ended up in a writing  group with Tony, Heidi, AJ and Phil. It felt a bit like getting the band back together - Tony, Heidi, AJ and I were part of the writing team for Once Upon A Time in Tombstone. So it was easy for us to write together, and we’ve all each written games with Phil.

Unfortunately, we struggled to come up with an idea. Peaky starts with a session where everyone pitches ideas for freeforms (that may or may not be written). In our case, I was getting a bit fed up with the process (nothing really grabbed me) when Heidi half-flippantly said that she didn’t care what she wrote provided she wrote it in the room next door. I agreed, as did Phil, AJ and Tony - and at which point we had formed a group. But we didn’t have an idea.

AJ had pitched an idea that involved meaningful decisions, so we kicked that around for a while. I’ve had an idea about a first contact situation where the players are members of the United Nations. They have to react to events (one of Jupiter’s moons goes missing, that sort of thing). We also talked about the old BBC tv show Crisis Command, which was like a Cobra emergency committee larp.

But someone wondered if we could do a different genre, and completely randomly I suggested Pride and Prejudice. And that stuck… We came up with an idea where the characters would make key decisions that would affect events further down the line. And because we’re all nerds and geeks, some of those decisions were a bit gonzo. (We really were taking the most appalling liberties with Pride and Prejudice!)

But we really couldn’t figure out how to do it. We kicked ideas around all Friday night. We thought about making it very Nordic and getting the players to do all the hard work. (That was appealing - we figured we could finish before lunch and spend the rest of Saturday playing games.)

We decided to sleep on it, and hope for inspiration.

Writing Tea at Longbourne (Saturday)

And inspiration didn’t come. We had some ideas, but they weren’t that much better and we couldn’t agree what to do. To me, the ideas felt a bit nebulous and I had a feeling that we had something, but we needed a bit more detail.

So I suggested that everyone spends 30-45 minutes writing their idea up - how they envisaged the game would work. (Tony reported to another group that at this point we were all writing our own game…) We then printed out everyone’s ideas and reviewed them all. We picked the best ideas from each and suddenly we had a structure we could use.

Once we had decided what to write, Tea at Longbourne turned out to be ridiculously easy to write. It helped that the characters are extremely well known, and we could take great chunks from Wikipedia. (In fact, the cast list was almost entirely taken from Wikipedia.)

Another thing that made it easy is that we had structured the game so that we had pairs of characters acting as a team. So once we’d written one, we just had to change the names and we’d written the other. That sped everything up and we ended up finishing by 6pm. (Another writing group finished before us, mind you.)

We spent the rest of the evening playing boardgames - and I organised the Sunday running order, as usual. (I have a system now and it works smoothly).

Sunday - playing the games

On Sunday we played the games. The running order was:

0930 The Circus of Wonders and Shadows and Here’s Dreaming of You Kid
1230 Tea at Longbourne and Berlin Station
1500 Seeds of Humanity and Imaginary Friends

In The Circus of Wonders and Shadows I played an insecure stage magician who had come into possession of a fabulous artefact - but unfortunately had terrible consequences. I had a lovely time agonising whether to continue using it in my show or not.

I didn’t play in Here’s Dreaming of You Kid, which was a four-player game about relationships. (The GMs ran two games simultaneously, otherwise we would have had spare players with nothing to do.) It sounded really interesting though.

Berlin Station was a cold-war spy game that I didn’t play because I was running Tea at Longbourne.

Tea at Longbourne went really well - apart from a few logic errors towards the end, the players seemed to have a great time and even held an impromptu dance. There are a couple of changes that I want to make - the main one to allow for an ending that makes everyone happy. In the current version of the game it’s not possible for everyone to get what they want, and I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do in a Pride and Prejudice game.

A dance in Tea at Longbourne

In Seeds of Humanity I played a Botanist on a colony ship leaving a doomed earth. Unfortunately I struggled a bit with this game - it mixed a murder mystery with a bunch of angst, and while that worked for some, my character was a bit too peripheral to be fully involved.

Imaginary Friends was the last game - which was about childhood imaginary friends (I think). It sounded good.

Six out of six

So six freeforms written at Peaky, most of which I’m sure will be played again at some point. (I know I’m going to work on Tea at Longbourne.)