The map idea evolved into my Town in a Pizza Box technique almost effortlessly, but developing a method of letter tiles for story prompts took a bit more work. I’m pleased to say that after three iterations I closed on the final form, and the fourth playtest produced an unexpected but fun narrative framework, with virtually no further mechanical tweaks required.
I created a custom, narrative-focused board to use in place of the normal Scrabble board. As the picture below shows, the board eliminates all references to scoring, instead showing a pattern of blank and colored squares. Tiles are placed from a hand of ten tiles, but refilling the hand back to a full complement occurs only when tiles overlay certain squares on the grid. Tile placement on the various colors suggests different clues to the narrative, and can even trigger narrative questions.
I start by drawing five chits, in a separate (virtual*) bag from the normal bag of Scrabble tiles. Four of the five chits represent story elements: Connections, Goals, Obstacles, and Settings. The fifth chit bears an “R” to signify that one color offers additional Refresh opportunities. The five tiles are drawn from the bag and placed on the color index track to the left of the board. As shown here in the example picture below, for this story the colors represent the following:
Orange: Refresh
Yellow: Obstacle
Green: Goal
Blue: Connection
Magenta: Setting
I created a custom, narrative-focused board to use in place of the normal Scrabble board. As the picture below shows, the board eliminates all references to scoring, instead showing a pattern of blank and colored squares. Tiles are placed from a hand of ten tiles, but refilling the hand back to a full complement occurs only when tiles overlay certain squares on the grid. Tile placement on the various colors suggests different clues to the narrative, and can even trigger narrative questions.
I start by drawing five chits, in a separate (virtual*) bag from the normal bag of Scrabble tiles. Four of the five chits represent story elements: Connections, Goals, Obstacles, and Settings. The fifth chit bears an “R” to signify that one color offers additional Refresh opportunities. The five tiles are drawn from the bag and placed on the color index track to the left of the board. As shown here in the example picture below, for this story the colors represent the following:
Orange: Refresh
Yellow: Obstacle
Green: Goal
Blue: Connection
Magenta: Setting
*NOTE: I use the website Playingcards.io to host my custom board and tiles, all of which were created by me; no copyrighted material used.
Next I draw five starting letter tiles and place them randomly on the board. The board has 225 squares total, with 81 squares split into nine central regions, each designated by dashed borders like a keypad. Rolling a d33 (two different-colored d3s) twice identifies first the region and then the actual square itself to place the tile.
Next, I start the story generation in earnest by drawing a hand of ten letter tiles. Unlike with Scrabble, I’m not trying to earn points, but rather determine significant story aspects. A number of constraints therefore drive tile placement.
A word formed with tiles overlying colored squares gains hints on how to interpret the word within the story context.
Placing a tile on the specific color marked Refresh allows an immediate refill of the hand back to 10 tiles. Since there are a finite number of these spaces, it pays to empty one’s hand by forming other words, while still being prepared to build a word on Refresh color.
Placing a tile on a “?” square triggers an oracle question, pausing the tile-laying (after the full word is laid down). The player reviews the words placed so far and any associated story elements indicated by colored squares, and asks a question to be answered by the game mechanism of their choice. As shown here, I use a 5d6 dice oracle; it’s a custom method that generates four possible answers: “Yes/No” each with a “But” or “And” modifier.
Triggering an oracle question also refills the player’s hand back to 10 tiles. Building over the “?” squares is therefore a key focus, but best done only after enough words have been formed to both guide the questioning and empty the hand of tiles. I find I get about three to four new words between each question.
The best way to explain further would probably be to just step through the rest of my fourth playtest as an example. I'll do that, but in the next post... this one has gone on long enough!
Next I draw five starting letter tiles and place them randomly on the board. The board has 225 squares total, with 81 squares split into nine central regions, each designated by dashed borders like a keypad. Rolling a d33 (two different-colored d3s) twice identifies first the region and then the actual square itself to place the tile.
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| Playtest #4 Set-up; Story Elements defined and five tiles randomly placed |
Next, I start the story generation in earnest by drawing a hand of ten letter tiles. Unlike with Scrabble, I’m not trying to earn points, but rather determine significant story aspects. A number of constraints therefore drive tile placement.
A word formed with tiles overlying colored squares gains hints on how to interpret the word within the story context.
Placing a tile on the specific color marked Refresh allows an immediate refill of the hand back to 10 tiles. Since there are a finite number of these spaces, it pays to empty one’s hand by forming other words, while still being prepared to build a word on Refresh color.
Placing a tile on a “?” square triggers an oracle question, pausing the tile-laying (after the full word is laid down). The player reviews the words placed so far and any associated story elements indicated by colored squares, and asks a question to be answered by the game mechanism of their choice. As shown here, I use a 5d6 dice oracle; it’s a custom method that generates four possible answers: “Yes/No” each with a “But” or “And” modifier.
Triggering an oracle question also refills the player’s hand back to 10 tiles. Building over the “?” squares is therefore a key focus, but best done only after enough words have been formed to both guide the questioning and empty the hand of tiles. I find I get about three to four new words between each question.
The best way to explain further would probably be to just step through the rest of my fourth playtest as an example. I'll do that, but in the next post... this one has gone on long enough!
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