Appendix S: Make-Believe

This one's about a few games I played as a child.

When I initially saw the Traverse Fantasy-inspired Prismatic Wasteland Appendices N challenge, I debated whether or not I'd join in. I could wax on about how many times I've read Watership Down or The Lord of the Rings (16 and 7, respectively). Or maybe pontificate about my love for Chrono Trigger and Dragonball. I could write about how reading Appendix N darlings Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Dying Earth in the last couple years has influenced my recent game design. 

But as much as I like reading when other people do that, the thought of sitting down to type all that out for myself didn't fire up my imagination. So instead, I'd like to talk about something that does. TTRPGs are playing make-believe with structure, and I started doing that before I ever touched a tabletop roleplaying game. Here are some examples.

Rabbits

Rabbits was a simple game my friends and I played at recess in the winter of 4th grade. I'm from northern Minnesota, which is no stranger to snowfall, and during the winters of my childhood the playgrounds would transform into these great empty spaces surrounded by giant snowbanks from the constant plow trucks. 

Naturally, inevitably, children dig a tunnel or two in the snowbanks. But that winter, my friends and I took it to another level. Between the various snowbanks, we had a couple dozen tunnels. An entire rabbit warren, a couple years before I'd ever crack open Watership Down. Any snow tunnel has a risk of collapse, and a project of that scale only increased the danger. So we had roles for every rabbit.

Some rabbits were Diggers, I bet you can guess what they did. Others were Movers, they'd haul out the snow as the tunnels were dug. Then there were Inspectors. They'd crawl around the already completed tunnels, reinforcing the walls and columns made by those plexiform networks we carved out under the snow. Some supports were too thin by mistake, others would wear down from all of us rabbits rubbing against them as we crawled through. 

We didn't experience a single collapse, by the way. Through organization, communication, and shared responsibility, we had a winter of make-believe that has stuck with me 30 years later. 

Calvinball

This one isn't exactly playing pretend, but bear with me. I don't know if every elementary school child in the 90s was obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes, but my friends and I sure were. I want to say it was spring of 4th and 5th grade that we played Calvinball at recess. 

Our version of Calvinball wasn't quite as chaotic as what we read in the comic strip. It was a lot like kickball. Okay, it was kickball. But with a twist! Each game, there were two referees, one that stood behind the kicker and one that stood behind the outfielders. It was up to them to not only enforce the rules, but to create new ones. They could institute a new rule whenever they wished, so long as they alternated. Certain rules became popular, whether because the players loved or despised them. All of the referees enjoyed both the groans of despair or the hoots of joy when a new rule was put into play. 

And if a kid didn't like the house rules implemented by the referees, maybe it was time they refereed themselves. Which is what inevitably happened, giving every kid a chance to be a player as well. Huh, I wonder what that sounds like. Anyway!

A Convoluted Way to Play the Game of Life/House

You know, like the board game? And house as in, "playing house" as a child? Well here's how you do it with a copy of Mario Kart for the SNES and a different board game with a name I can only imagine is problematic. Grab a friend and follow these steps.

Step 1. Take the game board and assign categories to each of the star's points. Divide the middle section in half and do the same. Things like, Career, Family, School, Money, Housing, etc work well for categories. You need 8 of them in total. You also need potential Results for each category, 3 to 7 work best. Different amounts of money for Salary, various jobs for Career, you get the idea. Map those Results to the star board as well, in whatever way makes sense with the number of entries you come up with for the category.

Step 2. Make up a person. This is your character. They could be you, they could be someone else. Think about their vibe, what they want out of life, etc. 

Step 3. Boot up Mario Kart on your Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Pick a level that's fun and easy to drive in reverse. Also, it should have walls comprised of colored blocks. I'd recommend Choco Island 2, Vanilla Lake 1, or my personal favorite Mario Circuit 3. Pick your favorite kart racer, and then drive the track in reverse a couple times. This is to ensure you don't accidentally finish the race. 

Step 4. Pick out little sections of the colored wall tiles to be various houses, schools, stores, etc. Create a little town out of those walls. You don't need to decide them all from the beginning, it's way easier to pick them out as they come up. 

Step 5. Play house! Go about your character's daily life. Narrate what you're doing to your friend. Do this until one of you starts to get bored.

Step 6. Time to shake things up! Go to the star board. Grab a marble and toss it on the board, wherever it lands is your Category. Toss the marble again to get your Result. Incorporate this life event into your character's life.

Step 7. Repeat Steps 5 and 6 until your character has lived a full life, dipping back into Step 4 as needed.

There you have it! Now you too can spend countless hours on a game I played as a child, first with my older cousin and then with my younger one. 

This one is probably the thing that most influenced me as both a game player and designer. SNES Mario Kart is the first video game I can remember playing my own game within, but it certainly wasn't the last. Now when I hack together two games to make a third, they're both tabletop rpgs, but it all started here. And to this day, any time I read or play a ttrpg my first instinct is to ask myself, "what other games are here, just below the surface, waiting to be discovered?"