Live Shows vs. Home Games

Performing an AP Live for a Crowd

Performing in Live Actual Plays

How a Game Changes Once You Add a Audience

Uh-oh, Shenuque time! Breakout Con 2024 was an experience and a half. Playing games in the Great North was truly a grand time. I got to run games of Honey Heist and Great Soul Train Robbery with some delightful folks. The best experience I had, though, was playing in a live show of Call of Cthulhu. I’d never played Cthulhu before, and my TTRPG experiences have almost entirely been curated by the hands (and messed up minds) of Brian Flaherty, Elliot Davis, and Abigail Hepworth (that’s right, I used her full government name).

I was excited to play at an unfamiliar table, but also terrified. I always thought my first live play show would be with the My First Dungeon crew, but alas, I was wrong. That said, it was a very good experience. Here’s what I learned about the differences of playing/performing a TTRPG for a live, in-person audience.

Courtesy of Breakout Con

1. The audience is another player.

This doesn’t mean that the audience builds and controls a character, but it does mean they help make choices and create obstacles for the players to experience. If you’re GMing or playing, one of your biggest roles is to keep the audience engaged and feeling like they are part of the experience. Bridgett Jeffries GM’d this game of Cthulhu and essentially gave a performance that can only be described as a masterclass in GMing a live play show. She seamlessly integrated the audience as a player in ways that did not hinder the story and allowed for them to make decisions about how the story would play out.

What games would you want to see the My First Dungeon crew play live at future events?

2. Horror games are ripe for comedy.

If you watch a horror movie, odds are there are a bunch of moments that make you laugh. It’s an important part of the genre because laughter and joy are on the opposite emotional spectrum to fear and sadness. Subverting expectations is both how you get a good laugh and also how you get a good scare. If you want to make someone hurt, then make them laugh first.

3. You need to give a full-body performance.

Now this is particularly for those that perform primarily on audio, but live play shows allow people to see and hear all of you in your unedited glory. You don’t have Brian editing out your ums and ahs, and your audience is watching you react. So make everything big. If you’re afraid, show it. This is the time to let yourself have big physical moments.

4. Let your GM punish you.

Punish might be a strong word, but a good GM sets their players up for success. A good player returns that favor. Bridgett did such an incredible job setting an exciting playground for each of our characters to have fun moments and in return, we all let Bridgett have her moments of giving us our consequences. Brian would probably call it an “eat your veggies” GM moment.

There are so many more things I learned and that I will write about, but this last tidbit is that Bridgett Jeffries is an incredible GM and AP performer. You must simply check out her work and style of GMing (and keep an eye out for her upcoming interview on Talk of the Table). Her energy is incredible, and she is such an adept storyteller. I guarantee that you’ll have a great time!

—Shenuque

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Breakout Hits from Breakout Con

Three Games I’m Keeping an Eye On

Covers (Left to Right) by Nick Gralewicz, Earth to Elize, Julie-Anne Muñoz

We’re about one week out from Breakout Con (a gaming convention in Toronto with a delightful indie vibe) and I am still buzzing with the energy from playing games, meeting designers, and, of course, picking up new games.

The strong indie TTRPG designer presence at this convention meant I got my grubby little mitts on some fantastic ashcan/demo/amuse bouche(?) versions of upcoming games. Here are three that caught my eye.

Home - The Lost Edition

Do you ever hear an idea and immediately think “hell yes!”? Home is one of those games for me. It’s a mech x. kaiju mapmaking TTRPG (I know, right?) that exploded onto the scene during the most recent Zinequest. If you haven’t already, you should check out our conversation with creator Nick Gralewicz on Talk of the Table for a full breakdown of the game.

Writing, layout, and illustration by Nick Gralewicz

What stuck out to me in reading the Lost Edition was what Nick calls “Fronts.” These create a structure for your game by dictating the sites of your epic mech vs. kaiju battles, represented by drawn boundaries on the two maps you’ll be making and destroying throughout play. The Fronts are one of the ways Nick works to capture the scale of a Kaiju confrontation in a way I’ve not seen before, with years passing between each confrontation and a gradual move into the Kaiju’s homeworld, known only as “The Rift.”

But beneath all that large-scale, Pacific Rim-style action is a deep emotional core. Part of creating your pilot is establishing a connection, something from home that you love and fight for—a small but powerful piece of emotional fodder for the Kaijus to apathetically stomp on. I can’t wait to be hurt by this game!

Follow along with Home’s development HERE.

Little Wolves - Demo & Quickstart

The team over at Dinoberry Press simply does not miss. If you’re not familiar already, Jam and Nevyn are the powerhouse pair behind games like Justicar, Hark! Says the Frog Magus, and You’re in Space and Everything’s Fucked. With their latest project, Little Wolves, Dinoberry Press is welcoming players into their own take on a realm of fae and folk. To create new within something as well-trodden as the fae realm is no small feat, but I’d expect nothing less from these two designers.

Writing & Design by Nevyn Holmes & Julie-Anne Muñoz; Illustration & Layout by Julie-Anne Muñoz

There are two bits of design in here that make me excited to eventually bring Little Wolves to the table. The first is the “Moonlight that guides your path,” a way to both align the table on tone as well as trigger certain mechanical changes to specific adventures, monsters, and character abilities. With three levels of choice, you can twist your table’s version of the fae realm from full of “hope and wonder” to “hungry and insatiable.” This is the kind of mechanic that gets me so excited as a designer, when a familiar conversation like “tone” is given new mechanical weight and elegance in a way that is likely to change how I approach it in my own work.

Every player also gets a printable wolf mask to use and wear during play. This is your way of signaling when you transform into your lycanthropic form of choice and a quick-reference for elements of your character in the form of drawn symbols. It is a delightfully folkloric addition to any TTRPG collection.

Follow the upcoming Little Wolves campaign HERE.

Bug Dish - Amuse Bouche

My friends like to give me a hard time when we go to gaming conventions for being a sucker for food-themed games. If you put food in a game, I’m about 60% more likely to buy it. So when Ryan Khan first told me about Bug Dish at last year’s Gen Con—a game about bugs running a food truck and competing in cooking competitions—I was already fairly certain I’d be buying the earliest version of it I could get in front of me.

Writing, Design & Layout by Ryan Khan; Illustration by Earth to Elize

The Amuse Bouche edition of Bug Dish performs a feat of design magic that I didn’t believe when I first read it: “No prep necessary! Just read through these rules at the table. They will guide you through each step.” Like a tight tutorial level of a video game, this little book does exactly that, answering any questions I had as I had them. I will certainly be applying some of Ryan’s work here in future demos/quickstarts of my own.

Me being a slut for food-themes aside, there is a neat dice mechanic in here that I already love but hadn’t previously seen in a TTRPG: push-your-luck dice rolling. With a variable “sweet spot” target dependent on number of players, Bug Dish tells you to roll your dice as many times as you wish but the consequences are doubly negative for going over the target vs. going under. Combine this with a stat system that sets you with different dice sizes for each, and you have the perfect recipe for simulating the high pressure of a buggy food competition.

Grab the Amuse Bouche edition of Bug Dish HERE and keep an eye out for the full version this summer.

Ashcans, Demos, and Amuse Bouches. Oh my!

There’s a lot to be excited about with these three games but the big lesson for me is in the value of putting effort into a releasable/shareable minimum viable version of your game. Something to hand that player at a con game who already loves your previous release or to that designer whose work you admire. 

It’s something I will be incorporating into my future projects. In the meantime, I’ll keep grabbing as many of these little treats as I can at future cons.

—Elliot

DISCLOSURE: Home and Little Wolves were shared for free by the designers, Bug Dish was purchased from the designer.