Designer Notes: How Do Aliens Do “It”?

I’ve released a new game zine! You can grab How Do Aliens Do “It”? here, which is a pay-what-you-want-or-not Carved from Brindlewood game about Alien teenagers in a repressive, information-scarce society gather to share what each of them knows and try and work out how doing “it” works, and how they feel about that. It’s a playful game which tries to approach big stuff lightly, and I’m really happy with it.

And for those who want to know the process, here’s the designer notes (which are also in the game)…

DESIGNER NOTES

I was having lunch with a friend and fellow Gen-X-er. They were describing seeing a post from a younger Millennial who’s written something like “It was hard – we had no idea about how sex worked. The only information source we had was the internet.” 

We all laugh: “WELL, ALL WE HAD WERE THOSE THREE LINES IN THE RAUNCHY BOOK IN THE LIBRARY, THE OCCASIONAL AGONY AUNT COLUMN, AND THE PORN WE FOUND IN THE WOODS.”

 It suddenly seemed like the perfect topic of the game, using the Brindlewood Bay rules at its core. The wonder of Brindlewood Bay is players trying to solve a murder mystery with no set conclusion. You assemble clues, theorise and roll to see how true it is. This tries to apply the same mechanic to a different kind of mystery.

 It’s a game which is silly, but I hope captures the desperate confusion of our adolescence, approaching some big stuff lightly. What is normative? What is queer? What sexualities can we imagine in bodies entirely unlike our own? How are they echoed in the society we find ourselves?

I knew the game was onto something when in one playtest the concept of “Protozoic Ooze” was fundamental to sex, while the concept of “Gel” was something that society considered unattractive. That seemed to say everything, while also making me laugh. This game is about ridiculous species, but also reminds me that we’re a ridiculous species.

Playtests turned up interesting things generally – small tweaks for it to land where I wanted, and land it safely. The last addition (except changing the “Clue Counter” into The Grand Conspiracy of “It”) was the You Meanie rule, prompted by a group who were a little tougher than the other playtests. Inspired by Passover-inspired RPG Ma Nishanta’s Wait! Wait! Wait! rule (which (among other things) integrates a soft X-card into actual play), I realised having an explicit rule which kicks in when characters step away from the required kind tone was a good idea. It’s a game which often makes worlds which are cruel – so the kindness of the cast is absolutely key. 

I hope you enjoy this. Thanks to all the playtesters, and especially Max who provided the art. Thanks, Max. I couldn’t have done it without you. Okay, I could have, but it would have looked terrible, and what’s the point of that?