Watching Great Civilizations Fall
Reviewing Icarus, Thoughts from Gen Con, and New Music from BE/HOLD
REVIEW: Icarus
A Storytelling Game About How Great Civilizations Fall by Hunters Entertainment
Who is it for? Both experienced and inexperienced players who want a GM-less game that isn't super heavy on role-play. Players are encouraged to focus more on the storytelling aspect and collaboratively create a narrative (though role-playing can be added). (Suggested age: 8+)
You'll enjoy Icarus if you enjoy:
If the idea of role-playing makes you a bit anxious, but the desire to tell a good story captivates you, Icarus is a game you must pick up.
Gameplay: This GM-less TTRPG, created by Spenser Starke (Alice is Missing), contains twenty dice that players use throughout the game to stack and represent their society. When the stack of dice collapses, it signifies the downfall of their civilization, and players will get to narrate what that looks like. The game comes with cards that prompt the narrative, progressively bringing the civilization closer to collapse. If, somehow, players are able to stack all twenty dice, the game has a Bitter End prompt card to initiate the collapse of the civilization. This game requires absolutely no prep and has a character creation system similar to games like DIE and Ten Candles. It's incredibly easy to understand and learn how to play for anyone new to the TTRPG world and a fun narrative game for experienced players. Gameplay takes anywhere from two to three hours.
To achieve the sense of a society falling apart, Icarus allows players to create a society based on the Pillars of Society cards that come with the game. Then, over time, players will narrate the end of that society through a card prompt mechanic that progressively worsens. There are three types of prompt cards: The Cracks in Our Facade, The Rifts Between Us, and The Final Hours cards. Each prompts negative events that your characters will attempt to deal with at varying levels of success based on rolling the dice provided by the game.
You'll jump for joy when you're successful, but the game is intentionally designed to make success a fleeting experience. It truly does create a sense of helplessness, as problems compound over time and turn into a giant behemoth ready to devour your entire city (or whatever end you may create with your players). Don't be sad that this society you built will collapse. Accepting from the beginning that your society will fail will only make your ending that much more satisfying.
Our Takeaways From Gen Con 2023
What we though, What we bought, and What we want for next year
At the beginning of August, Brian and I jumped in the car with our friends Keith and Collin and drove 13 hours from NYC to Indianapolis. The car ride was punctuated by repeat plays of “Indianapolis” by the Bottle Rockets* and ended with a double-booked housing fiasco. But that’s not what you want to hear about, how was the convention?
*Note from Brian: I can’t, in good conscience recommend this course of action to others, but it was pretty fun.
Favorite Moments
Elliot:
I had the wonderful opportunity to run two games of Honey Heist for our friends at Rowan, Rook and Decard. In the first, I had a jam-packed table with 7 players. It was chaos in the best way. As we rounded the corner to the end of the heist, I had two separate players pull me aside because they wanted to let their “criminal” stat get to 6 and stage a grand betrayal of the other bears. Craig and Snuffles were two of the most dastardly bears I’ve had the pleasure of leading through this game and this betrayal led to one of the most cinematic conclusions to a one-shot I’ve run.
Brian:
It’s always fun to meet people in person that you’ve only interacted with online. Getting to hang out with designers and writers I admire like Lin Codega, Jay Dragon, Zach Cox, Cassi Mothwin, Grant Howitt, Felix Isaacs, and Kieron Gillen was honestly a total dream. It’s always a joy when people who make cool things also, themselves, are cool. That is absolutely the case for each and every person listed here. When we’ve got our heads down editing a podcast or designing a game it’s easy to forget that there’s a whole world of people out there doing the same thing in new and interesting ways. Put a bunch of those people together in a room and you end up with a lot of great ideas and a weekend of fun conversations.
What We Bought:
Elliot:
Barkeep on the Borderlands by W. F. Smith
This is a system-agnostic pub-crawl adventure that is absolutely jam-packed with 20 different bars, pubs, and taverns for your next fantasy adventure. You can play through all 20 with the built-in adventure to save the dying monarch, or pick and choose your favorite bits to slot into your own game. All told, there are over 100 random tables throughout for you to use. With over 15 different artists, this is a gorgeous zine and a delight to flip through. Barkeep is a special zine for me as it’s a fellow alum of Zine Month 2022, the first month I created a game, and I can’t recommend enough that you check it out.
Brian:
After reading Hunt and NOVA I am now a HUGE Spencer Campbell stan. First off, the art by Galen Pejeau is so damn good. Good art will always pull you in, and the illustrations for the many knightly oaths immediately make you want to create a character as cool as the art. I’ve also got to give a shoutout to Mike Rieman for the excellent layout and eye-catching cover–I am an absolute sucker for an orange cover. The dice-less LUMEN 2.0 system that powers Hunt and other many of Spencer’s other games is something I’m very interested in trying out both on- and off-mic.
CBR+PNK: Augmented by Emanoel Melo
The great thing about gaming conventions is that you stumble across games you might never have found otherwise. While I was working at the Rowan, Rook, and Decard booth on Saturday, seven or eight people in a row came up carrying a copy of CBR+PNK : Augmented. Intrigued, I finally asked person number eight what the game was. They proceeded to open it up and show me the best game packaging I’d ever seen. Check out the promo video on their Kickstarter page to see how they put together dry-erase character sheets and brochures of one-shots into a sleek, yellow box–turns out I’m also a sucker for yellow.
Scene Thieves by Tyler Crumrine (+ an awesome Possible Worlds shirt)
All four of us dropped some money at the Possible Worlds booth to pick up a variety of great games from the ENnie-award winning Claw Atlas: New Maps for Beak, Feather, and Bone to the wire-bound RPG series. Scene Thieves is a theatrical roleplaying game where players collaboratively “write” a play while simultaneously choreographing an elaborate heist in the background. That single sentence hit the core of who I am as a person and I threw down my money as fast as I could. Expect to see us play this in the near future on our Patreon.
We each also grabbed an awesome Possible Worlds t-shirt as our group shirt for the con. BE/HOLD decided to go with an equally-cool Possible Worlds hat instead and was justly berated for not folding to peer pressure and participating in our group’s sartorial ethos.
What We Want From Next Year’s Gen Con:
Elliot:
I’d love to have 1-2 more games out on the convention floor next year. I always get excited when I stroll up to the IPR booth and see Something Is Wrong With The Chickens. 2023 was my first time running games at the convention and I would love to do more of that next year. Big aspirations would be: a Many Sided Media moderated panel, a My First Dungeon Live Show, going to the ENNIES as a nominee. In general, going to Gen Con this year makes me want to dive into design more in the next year, to continue learning from and being inspired by the designers around me, and to lean into the chaos of tabletop like my new friends, Craig and Snuffles.
Brian:
Next year I’m excited to be even more involved with the convention. I’d love to spend more time working at booths of creators and companies I love, but I also want My First Dungeon and Many Sided Media to have their own presence. Expect to see some of us moderating or participating in Gen Con panels next year (and hopefully competing for an ENNIE Award for best podcast). Going to a convention like Gen Con is a shot of adrenaline that reinvigorates my love for what we do and the community we do it for. Every second on the convention floor made me want to do one thing: more. And that’s exactly what we plan to do.
Talk of the Table Meets Triangle Agency
A few weeks ago we dedicated an entire newsletter to the outstanding Kickstarter campaign for Triangle Agency put together by Haunted Table Games. This week, we spoke to Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland on our new podcast Talk of the Table and they shared some invaluable lessons that anyone thinking of crowdfunding could learn from.
And if you like Talk of the Table be sure to subscribe on your preferred podcast player and leave us a review.
Project ECCO OST
If you’ve been listening to recent seasons of My First Dungeon then you know we’ve be including a bunch of original music from our good friend BE/HOLD. Our Project ECCO actual play is CHOCK FULL of original music that’s been dubbed “cosmic horror synthwave.” If that description piqued your interest then go subscribe to BE/HOLD on Spotify where he’ll be releasing a new song from the Project ECCO OST every week for the next 6 weeks. And if you simply can’t wait–or just want to support an excellent musician–you can download the entire OST right now for just $7 over at Bandcamp.
Upcoming Schedule
8/30 - New Patreon Exclusive Actual Play
9/1 - Project ECCO Talkback w/ Elliot Davis & Abby Hepworth
9/5 - Project ECCO OST - It Awakens
9/11 - New Episode - Talk of the Table
9/12 - Project ECCO OST - Tempus Cessat
9/15 - Shhhh…it’s a secret
Ray is the publisher, but Emanoel Melo is the writer for CBR+PNK.
Gen Con was a BLAST