Welcome to Bludology the first proper instalment, where we analyze the lessons in Bluey about gaming, game design and ludic intelligence, and we do it episode by episode.

1.1 Magic Xylophone 

Bluey and Bingo find their magic xylophone that can freeze Bandit. Bluey doesn’t share the xylophone because if Bingo is using it Bandit will catch her when he is unfrozen. Bingo freezes Bluey to explain how this hurts her feelings and Bluey relents.

It’s very common to see adult gamers argue from tactical advantage: “why would I make a pro-social move if it hurts the goal?”. Of course this kind of value ranking is not difficult to understand, but not everyone ranks their values this way and too many gamers can’t comprehend other rankings. Often itis actually about ego or anxiety: why pass the ball when I know I’m able to score because I’m that good? And others perhaps may not score? It is frustrating to watch others lose the game if your value is about winning at any costs. And there is no real way to resolve this: one value must come out ahead. It’s no fun for players to sacrifice their value for another (although Ted Lasso series one shows how ego can be tempered). But let’s assume it isn’t ego: players should take a moment to discuss their values in team or collaborative games.

Bingo can’t express her feelings outside of the game. Games can provide us with a safe space to talk about things, including games. We’ll talk about masks – a kind of positive bleed – more below.

1.2 Hospital 

Dad pretends to be a hospital patient. The only lesson here for gamers is good improv skills: Bluey takes a great suggestion on from Bingo as to how to get the cat out of her patient. Imagination play is still play though – as we will see in Daddy Robot (see below).

1.3 Keepy Uppy

This is the first big episode all about game design, and it’s only going to continue from here. Bluey and Bingo have a solvable game: as long as they stand close to each other and pass slowly they can easily stop the balloon from hitting the ground. So they ask their dad to increase the difficulty. But when the balloon goes outside it will pop when it hit the ground and there are no spare balloons. The imagined stakes (if the balloon hits the ground we lose) acquire matching real world stakes (if the balloon hits the ground it causes the loss of the balloon), causing bleed. Bandit doesn’t understand this bleed has occurred so keeps the difficulty high. 

Of course it is rare that a game’s structure would map over like this. More commonly bleed occurs through what the game represents. However one can easily imagine a fear of public speaking popping up in an rpg session where the GM asks the player to stand up and present to the group or act something out. A GM using darkness to create mood could run into an actual fear of the dark. We need to check for bleed in both mechanics and theme. This is of course more common with kids because for them all play is rehearsal and testing boundaries – they may be stopping the ball going on the road with the knowledge the ball could be lost, and so on. But as we grow we still need to practice losing things – including losing games. And often people who are experiencing a lot of loss in their life are less keen for it to happen in a game.

1.4 Daddy Robot 

Much like Hospital this is mostly about imaginary play. Daddy Robot is a role Bandit can put on which allows him to attack the children in a way they can half-pretend half-experience being frightened of, and fight back. Play fighting is common across lots of species and almost always involves wearing a mask. For humans these masks are not just physical symbols like laughing and exaggerated expressions but adopting complex fictional identities. Or simple ones; many a dad will yell “I’m a shark” before knocking a child into the pool or similar. But we also instinctively know we don’t need these masks when the children are older – we can roughhouse as ourselves because the emotional maturity of the child now can more easily understand it is not “real”. 

As grown ups though, we can get shy, and particularly with strangers, we want to again compete and attack, and the mask we most often use is games. Even masculine physical attacks like pulling down someone’s pants or “punch buggy” have rules. Not so much to keep it safe directly, rather the existence of the rules is the mask that says “this is a game”. Often dogs will bring a ball or a toy to another dog then ask to wrestle or chase instead. The mask matters. 

1.5 Shadowlands 

Coco, Snickers and Bluey are playing a game where they die if they stand in sunlight. As it gets harder, Coco suggests breaking the rules. Bluey is adamant they cannot. Who is right and why? 

“Why do rules exist?” Is a hell of a thing for a kids show to ask. The answer in this episode is being hard – and not knowing if you will win or lose – is what makes it fun. At the start of the episode, they are playing “what’s the time, Mrs Wolf” and Coco uses the rules to remove uncertainty, so she can always win. This then is balanced against the rest of the episode where Coco argues to break the rules, in order to let everyone win and be “safe”. Her instincts make sense to us (which is why it’s such a great episode) – we value social goals like everyone winning. Coco also wants to break the rules to help Snickers because he can’t run as fast, and when real life intrudes and they could just go and get the rapidly vanishing cupcakes. Coco’s lesson, that the fun exists in the drama of will they won’t they, is put against some heavy competition! Indeed, this is almost the opposite of the message in Magic Xylophone. Or rather, we return to different values – at different times, in different circumstances, in different people. Here, we champion the other value1

Some of us would instantly break the rules to help a lesser player or when real life intrudes, and that’s okay. But I also remember playing a coop game once where we lost near the end and another player was like “ah I’m just going to reroll that” because he thought it was dumb we’d come through two hours of shared social play only to lose. For that player, this was the only sensible choice, and he made it without thinking. But I felt a little cheated. It made it slightly less fun, because it made it all seem arbitrary. We could have done that at any time. Coco tries to suggest short term solutions in the episode but Bluey stands firm – any fudging can make the whole thing collapse for some folks. 

For kids these stakes are much higher because losing feels so bad – and also kids often see things as black and white. In games they get to experience two conflicting values: the thrill and challenge of facing a fair loss versus wanting to be happy. The truth is, most adults don’t know which one they believe and change their minds often. And there is no right answer!

The reason I think all of this matters is because we play more and more as adults but we don’t have play awareness. We don’t understand that this is a complicated question that others view differently. So games just end up in arguments and nobody wants to play anymore. Shadowlands, especially when linked to Magic Xylophone is a window into this issue of what I’m calling ludic intelligence. The ability to play well by understanding that play is complicated, and requires proper care and interrogation. 

At the end of the episode Coco gives everyone lots of room to run away, accepting a very high chance of failure. The final shot is Bluey perhaps about to be caught, or perhaps not and she is overjoyed by not knowing. It is a perfect encapsulation of the joy of not fudging the rules, of how that creates jeopardy and the unknown, and how vital that part of gaming is. This was also part of Keepy Uppy and it recurs as a theme in the show and a metaphor for childhood. It is scary being a kid and they must constantly trade between safety and excitement. Thats why games matter so much to the young. 

But games also connect us to the child within us, and so understanding all of this matters for all of us, and all our gaming.

Bluey, created by Joe Brumm, first aired in October 2018. This animated children’s show tells the story of the titular six year old anthropomorphic dog, her little sister Bingo and their two parents, Bandit (dad) and Chilli (mum), and a growing cast of supporting characters. Viewers were quick to realise that on top of being beautifully drawn, the show is sharply written in a way beyond even most ‘clever’ children’s shows. Bluey is an incredible artistic work that talks to children deeply about complex topics, while also talking to adults because good writing isn’t about an age group. Combined with the incredible performances of the child actors, free from any artifice, it manages to be innocent yet unflinching. As a result of both critical and popular appeal, it has become a national institution, a beloved cultural landmark and now an international hit and marketing juggernaut, being sold to Disney and the BBC.

It is also, almost constantly, about games and play.

As we will see, this is natural for any show that talks properly about childhood, but because Bluey is so smart and so well written it provides lessons in ludology that are amazing for everyone: for anyone who plays games, thinks about games or designs games. The world has begun to talk in hushed, reverent tones about Bluey, but nobody is talking about Bluey from a game design perspective. Hence: BLUDOLOGY, this new series on my blog. We’ll go through the episodes one by one (all 150+ of them, over three series) and talk about the gaming lessons within them, from the point of view of the player and the designer. There will be some moments where I’m speaking to the latter, but I intend this to be for a general audience, because I think all of us need to get better at what I shall called ludic intelligence – the ability to understand what we play, how we play, why we play, and how to negotiate our play experiences with people who have different answers to those questions.

The truth is, as I observed recently, that there are actually no rules about how to play games, and each time we play them we renegotiate our boundaries and processes. And often we stop playing games because of experiences where this lack of rules made us feel unsatisfied. Kids, however, have no choice: they need to play. It is primarily how they live and interact with the world. The stakes are higher for them. And often, as a result, they are much better at all of this. By necessity and practice, they have inherent ludic intelligence. Kids know when and why games don’t work, and talk about it often. That’s why it comes up so much in Bluey.

And yet we forget: I play games as often as I am able and see over and over again everyone struggling with ludic intelligence, and that’s as true for seasoned gaming nerds as it is for the new generation of board game fans, and as true for old hands playing Bridge or people who just want to play Uno with their kids. Living things, all of them, seem to love to play, and of course we don’t just use games to do so. Games are rapidly shedding some of their stigma as being child play and becoming both the new popular pastime and a respected art form. We may be heading into “Generation Game” or the gaming century. It therefore seems to be a good idea to get better at this stuff.

What a lovely bonus then, that we can do so just by watching Bluey.

In approximately 1010, a Japanese woman called Murasaki Shikibu wrote a collection of over 800 poems on courtly life as well as a fantasy world she created, and then she wove those poems into a complicated origami presentation piece, hiding meaning and creating meaning by which pages were shown and which were showing through the thin rice paper. This was called The Tale of Genji, and literary historians have generally decided that, due to its length and complexity and that it was written down as its first method of delivery, not transliterated from an oral story, that it is the world’s first novel.

The novel as we know it today is a relatively new invention, appearing in the late 17th century with works like Don Quixote which is still very close to an epic poem. By contrast, poetry is thousands of years old. Of course, we are living in an age of new media: the TV show, the radio program, the computer game and the roleplaying game have all appeared in the last century. The board game, of course, probably predates the poem and likely even the first painting. The point, though, is that as much as are getting used to living in an age of hyper-fast social change, art forms take time to coalesce into accepted forms, and those forms are shaped by the cultures that do the shaping. After 150 years we’ve come to a fairly solid idea of what a movie is, but we certainly didn’t have an agreement on that 100 years ago. By all accounts RPGs were invented around 1974 with the publishing of the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons, although things like it were being played a decade or more earlier, and it we go back to Floor Games by HG Wells it could be 1911. But it is reasonable to say, I think, that if it took us several centuries to figure out what a novel is, as a basic working definition, that a century and change isn’t enough to really pin down what a roleplaying game is.

(One time, I told James Wallis he was wrong to call his competitive storytelling game Pantheon a roleplaying game, and he was right and correct to scorn me for doing so. I was young and I had definitions and needed to draw lines. I still do, but I try not to be such an ass about it.)

One idea I run into a lot, however, is that there are right and wrong ways to design RPGs. I one hundred percent agree that there are good and bad ways to design RPGs, but the right and wrong seem to be much more prescriptive. One of the quote unquote wrong ways to design an RPG is, according to many, to try to emulate fiction. This would come as a surprise to, for example, Gary Gygax, who wrote the hit points system in his games to emulate the sword fights in the classic films of his youth. Like a lot of what passes for THE DISCOURSE in titterpigs, the question is much more interesting than choosing a side and being a dick about it. And it’s interesting because it asks the question we still haven’t answered yet: what are rpgs, and more importantly, what are they for. What are they supposed to do, and why?

Obviously since we haven’t decided what they are yet, we can’t know what they’re for, but they’re not the same question. The latter gets into why do they exist at all? What do they provide and do that other media does not? What makes them special and apart from other media? And it’s this question I think that people are trying to point at when they say that rpgs should not emulate pre-existing fiction, whether specific works or whole genres. They feel like that suggests that all titterpigs can do is try to copy something that already exists, and copy it in an inferior way, or in trying to copy it, make bad design choices. RPGs, for them, should not attempt to create something that feels like a movie, because that wouldn’t feel like an RPG.

Now I mostly agree with this, in two ways. Firstly, obviously, on the surface level an interactive storytelling experience where we create a story that feels like a movie won’t in itself feel exactly like watching a movie, because there are no images coming up on a screen. It may feel a lot more like writing a movie, in some ways, only way faster and cooler. But I think the story we produce can feel exactly like the idea of watching a movie, in the sense of feeling caught up in a story where the storytelling works precisely the same way. But I also agree that many RPGs – and many RPGers – have little interest in doing this. They don’t want things to feel anything like watching a movie. They want it to feel much more like “playing an RPG”.

One of the reasons I stopped making traditional RPGs is because I couldn’t really figure out exactly what playing an RPG was, and what it felt like, but I knew that a) it usually wasn’t something I enjoyed, and b) it got in the way of creating something that did feel like a movie. So my solution was to stop trying to make RPGs and make things that feel like watching a movie. To be as emulative as possible. For this crime, I am judged often. Which doesn’t bug me much but it DOES bug me when people post online (usually on twitter) that the thing I do is WRONG. Because I’m sure someone else out there is wanting to make games like me, and nobody gets to tell them to shut up. Not young Steve and not anyone else.

So my games mostly exist to spit out stories that feel as close as possible to the stories they advertise as being akin to. They don’t do that the way most RPGs do that. And as a result they often lack a lot of what people want in RPGs. Likewise, though, I think there are a huge chunk of people who either want what I make – storytlelling games that create incredible stories that feel just like movies and TV shows, except you get to live them and be the character, audience and author all at once – or they want a bit of column A and a bit column B. The combination, in fact, of improvised writing exercise and acted out radio show with weird skirmish level tactical game is part of the appeal. The former makes the latter wonderfully unpredictable; the latter grounds the former to stop it turning into children playing Let’s Pretend.

(I would argue that my takes also stop it from becoming that, but in a different way, because I’m not sure the marriage of those two things works all that well in the long run. But I am, at least so far, in the minority. But this isn’t my chief point.)

So the question then becomes, what does it mean to reflect genre in column A and what does it mean to do so in column B? What doesn’t it mean? I know what it means for the first group: you’re allowed to say this is the world of Conan, or Sherlock Holmes, and it runs on the rules of those worlds but more as those worlds as a simulation. For those who demand things be a tactical exercise or a simulation they can explore like a sandbox, things must have a physical representation in the world. A spell cannot recharge once per scene, but definitely can once per day (although of course a day isn’t really a thing even astronomically). Even though Conan is a book and a movie and a comic, we cannot use the constructs of those things, but we can of course use hit points and dice.

I don’t really play games that way, but I do get that stance. It’s artificial, of course, and it’s weird to insist it’s the only way to play, but I understand it. What I don’t understand is what people who want their games to involve improvised storytelling exercises and operate to produce narrative…I don’t understand why they don’t want to use the tools of other media. I don’t have a good sense of what they mean when they say “this game is poorly designed because it thinks RPGs are books or movies”. Is it to do with adventures? Are they running into scenarios written like scripts, or that are too scripted? Or do they mean we shouldn’t use words like CUT or BEAT in how we write our rules or talk to their players?

I only ask because every six months or so I’ll see someone loudly opining that to treat RPGs as emulations of other media is somehow to not only do bad design but to insult and demean the very art of roleplaying, and I feel like if they are saying that, they should be able to describe what that looks like. Do they mean me, who builds machines that perfectly mirror real world TV shows and movies? So much so people call me up to tell me they can’t believe how much like those media their games become? That my players start unconsciously thinking like TV writers because I’ve hacked their brains? Is this bad? Have I committed some cardinal sin of RPG design?

I’m going to keep doing all those things, but please, do take a moment and explain to me why I’ve ruined everything. I honestly have no idea. Or maybe you’re not talking about me at all, and it was all a misunderstanding. Comments appreciated.

Now reading: Misspent Youth by Robert Bohl. I skipped this one until now because my adolescence was literal torture so anything about being a teen is a trigger for me. But the mechanics of this game are also about bringing down authority and are also interesting in their own right. It’s the genre of rpg I like most and tend to write: the setting content is not specified but the themes and structure ARE.

You start by building the Authority that’s got the boot on your PCs neck, which basically builds the world around it by implication. Authorities are defined by such things as their chief Vice, their particular Victims, and the Visage they wear and the systems of control they use. Wisely, it is strongly suggested you add a dollop of SF to keep it from being too real and work in metaphor, but the first Authority I built was the Mass Media Consensus. ts Vice is Utopianism, because it believes that showing both sides of everything is a virtue. Its Victim is Progress. Its Visage (im such a sucker for alliterative stat names) is Systemic. Not a person or body but a way of thinking. And it’s Need is to get access to power. If people stop thinking journalism is super awesome then they don’t get to go to parties with powerbrokers any more.

Each teen player makes a Systems of Control which they can break down or attack through play…which is where the SF matters. We can more easily imagine how to break a fantasy system than one we suffer under. Letting the players not the GM design their own enemy and target is good buy in. If they decide everyone has a chip in their brain they can’t complain if the gm uses it to hurt them. In turn the GM gives them one exploit they have over that system and again it helps that the gm gives them this power. This game can get pretty confrontational so built-in safety matters.

Coming up with systems of control might not be easy and certainly this game requires some heavy heavy lifting my all, but the rules use examples as a way to help this. We will come back to the heavy lifting later. There is great help when it comes to making your teens – they get a Means (in what style they fight authority) a Motive (why), an Opportunity (an edge they have that lets them get away with it and a MO (the method they prefer to attack with). This is just a very strong list. Ridiculously strong. As are the options ON the list. Monte Cook did they thing where you’re an adjective noun who verbs, but this is yiure an adjective who verbs in an adverb way because of a gerund. Why and how are actually important to help you decide what you do in an rpg, which is for some folks the hard part. Unlike the first three, the MO is freeform, so can be tailored to the setting. Graffiti tagging isn’t going to bring down a regency dowager although I’d play that game …

The other three stats are taken from lists and in the best mechanic of the game, everyone of them has a dark opposite. A smart teen can grow up to be pedantic, a rebel to being just perverse, an altruistic type ends up being transactional, sneaky types end up being untrustworthy. Having spent a lot of time in revolutions, these lists hit my heart. Everyone in a movement have seen these things happen. Players can and will sell out to these versions, permanently, to try to defeat the enemy.

The last stay is your Disorder which is the part of your life that helps or drives you to rebel but also hurts you. For me, that’s my disabilities. Now I skipped over the bits in chargen where, as in Prime Time Adventures you all agree on the tone and brainstorm a whole roster of character ideas so everyone is on the same page. And the examples of play are all pretty light hearted. this could be as dark and gritty as Captain Planet. Actually it’s a perfect example BUT…I live in this world and this game bleeds like crazy. I know this is mostly me – my games are always incredibly dark because my mind is a nightmare palace and my past is a war crime, but I’m not sure you can make a game about fighting authority without anticipating real life bleed. It’s not that the game is cavalier. But I don’t think I could play it. There would not be a way to make it safe for me. I don’t know if the author thought of this. Either way, bring your x cards.

Unlike the amazing Starchildreh by Rich Ranallo et al the game isn’t really about chipping away too much at the authority over an arc. This can happen and many sessions end with a system of control broken or a new exploit but you’re almost as likely to lose an exploit or just have a new system replace the old. The game is more about the characters: when they sell out and how their friendships evolve. Every scene is either about a “friendship question” or an authority npc – not both. This split models the procedural vs character model of Hillfolk. But it rings the bell of heavy lifting again. Every scene must address either a face of the enemy or a friendship question between two PCs. But there aren’t any real mechanics or guidelines to make these. It’s not like Hillfolk where you build these tension lines to start. You could build a group where this is hard to conceive. And then on top of it, on the fly, build a scene that asks the question? That’s non trivial. For gm and players alike. Again, there are examples. The game is very good with examples. And like good examples, they show you how to think in a way to think of more good examples. But examples only go so far.

You do work out all the key authority figures and questions of interest at the start of a session though, so you have time to think. You won’t have to do it when the pacing is high. And I appreciate making the game actually about narrative themes, structure and subtext, and forcing them in. The second scene will always introduce a central question the episode is asking. Scene 2 and 5 always introduce a dramatic twist, which must be either catastrophe, complication, reveal or reversal. That’s just good solid writing advice. That would also make a good d4 result…but I digress.

Scenes then can have “free roleplaying” until the struggle starts, which plays out like a game of craps – the players as a whole announce vague intents (not what they’re doing, this is action after the roll which I like) and try to hit numbers from 2-12 that their side has already rolled in that Struggle. If they hit a number the authority rolled before one of their own, they lose, hard. The best part of this mechanic is if you hit another players number then you win because of them, which is great spotlight sharing and narrative sharing.

This is a dynamic interesting system where there’s a visual representation of danger closing in. The downside is the old Wushu issue of where the scene is only over when the dice say so. This means players and gm must keep finding things to do that advance a scene but don’t for sure end it. Again, that’s not always easy! Even without other game habits creeping in. There’s an old saw that some rpgs feel like they need the designer to come play them to work, but I think it’s more accurate that some only work for players like the ones the author knows and plays with. And this isn’t necessarily bad. It’s good to recognise that there’s a huge variety of play styles and not make games that are a mishmash for everyone. But also some games cannot be everyone. A classic example is chargen. Some players come to chargen with the view that the sheet is their canvas and their mind contains a masterpiece ready to be captured. They don’t need prompts beyond the setting itself and their character is mostly complete before the first rules choice is made. The systems job is to reflect the truth in their head as best it can. And some people don’t do this at all. In maybe five other ways of not doing that.

Players who naturally want to dig down and tear apart the relationship between their characters and make that the heart of every game they play will gobble up friendship questions like candy. And probably instantly see how to spotlight them in a scene. Players used to systems where you constantly just edge vaguely towards winning a scene until it ends will have no trouble making these kind of offers and threats. I think I would struggle to do both on either side. Yes, I’m curious as to whether Jack’s nitpicking of Madboy has crossed over into being actually mean, but we’re trying to set fire to a police car. It might feel forced if I stop the flow to try to think of something I can nitpick about Madboy’s arson techniques. On the other hand, that’s what roleplaying games are about – trying to make sense of random collections of things. Maybe we can just put the authority figure in instead. But I still feel like this needed either more flexibility or more help from the system for those of us not able to write character subtext at high speeds.

What I do love though is roll before you act and the system forcing actions to be what the system says. It’s great to find out what you just did by rolling the dice. I wish the system took it further, like attaching the numbers 2-12 to general ideas too, like say 4 and 8 involve your means, 5 and 9 your motive and 6 and 10 your opportunity. Maybe I’d suggest that as a hack, although of course this can make things hard just like above: if you were going to punch the guy but you have to use your motive instead, you have to sit down and think. But you’re already maybe putting square pegs into round holes if you can’t figure out how to add a denouement scene when everything wrapped up so nicely in six scenes – the rules demand seven. Again, the structure is useful but it asks a lot to think of things that fit it. Also, you can only use a stat once per Struggle anyway so you’re always going to have to punch someone with your motive.

And the system doesn’t need more bookkeeping by tying numbers to stats. As nice as it is to know that this scene of the movie is the dark night of the soul, it does require some more table lookup than you might be happy with. Print stuff out if you’re running this. It’s not complicated, but you have to keep looking stuff up.

All this said I don’t think the game is impossible or trying. It’s just going to suit different styles more than others. And between the drama of the craps rolls and the brilliant character design and the pointed execution of theme and the over abundance of examples, it does a lot to help where it can. And those things will also ensure that even if you go from running the handmaids tale to the smurfs your games of misspent youth will feel pretty distinct and interesting. Baking in points of loss and character destruction means the game isn’t so much about rebellion but loss of self as we grow. The youth is SPENT, and misspent, in tragedy and compromise. Which is weird if your setting is more like the Biker Grove than Stand By Me. But just like the scenes headlining success or failure up front giving you freedom to lose, you know going in your character is going to lose part or all of themselves, and most games end with one character betraying everything. That sense of doom frees up play choices immediately. And is the nature of childhood: nobody survives it. You always end up growing up.

And the nature of that inescapable apocalypse is why kids are the way they are. Doubly so if an authority system tells them they’re only growing up to die. Which for the first time since maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis feels like really the case again. So these days this might be too close to comfort for Gen Z. Then again catharsis helps, and metamodernism is keen for big feels. But watch out: the bleed might kill you, because this is the real life right now. And these kids aren’t alright. God help them all.

As we all know, beach lesbians are the most dangerous and exciting lesbians, and this cover promises them. It does come through with that promise: this is a “queernorm” setting, based on a real kind of place. In 1979, Roseville Beach is the kind of small holiday town that popped up along the eastern seaboard of the USA where being queer was so much the default that the town became a safe place. Much like San Francisco or parts of New York, if you can get there, you can be yourself. In this game, you are by default some kind of queer even if only as a supernatural metaphor. You are also mystery solvers, as the cover promises. This is maybe my favourite part of the whole design: your PCs are always in charge of dealing with the problem because there is nobody else. All rpgs have to answer “why you?” And here the answer is the historically correct: “because if you call the cops they will just beat your queer ass to death”

But this is a meta modern work very much of the zeitgeist so there is only queer joy in its pages not queer trauma. People can be open and out as they walk the streets of Roseville Beach. The art and fiction bring this to the fore, with the former making the brilliant decision to use art from queer pulp fiction. However, as far as I can tell this art is mostly from the 60s, more beatnik than disco. A small discordant note but there’s not much disco anywhere, and yet it is listed on the cover. There also isn’t really any cosmic horror. That would be too bleak probably! Instead the horror is much more gothic m, drawing room and cosy. There are strange obelisks and some of the inhabitants of Night Vale would fit in here, but the evil is mostly rogue sorcerers and creepy cults that can be found and destroyed, not inscrutable glow clouds that punish the good and spare the wicked. Scooby Doo villains live on Roseville Beach, except they’re actually ghosts and Fred is as gay as his ascot.

The art isn’t the only thing not quite right. I grew up in this era and some of the history is just wrong. Not a lot though, it’s just it’s my first time reading a historical work from my lifetime. I think if they’d rolled it back to say 1973 it would have worked perfectly. And I can forgive 6 years between friends. You will need to get used to no internet, very few phones and no cars on the island. Also no hospital, no supermarket, no newspaper except what the ferry brings some days. I think this is just as big a part of what makes the setting feel different as the queernorming. Roseville Beach is a holiday town and there’s not much to do but walk around all day and party all night. Much of the backgrounds, skills, occupations and locations are focused on bars, nightclubs and theatres. It’s subtle but it forces you into specific scenes and characters. The queer isn’t just in who you kiss, it’s in the accurate depiction of how queer and theatre were anchored together.

I like the subtlety and slow burn of all that. In a similar style, the six core “classes” are predominantly supernatural. You can be a shapechanger, a witch, a familiar, a shapechanging alien or two straight humans if you’ll forgive the phrasing (one newcomer, to queerness and the beach, one celebrity who was outed). Overall I think one witch will play much like another; the characters will differ by their Trouble: the people in their life they owe or who owe them. I’m ok with low mechanical difference here: I don’t think you’ll play a lot of games of Roseville Beach. I think it’s a game that wants you to set up a game of maybe a year long that changes the players hearts forever and then put this on a shelf to grow dusty for the next generation. And I think that’s good. It makes you go “I want to build the right group for this” and also “I want to be the player that fits that group”. And that’s in the game. The text asks you to take it seriously, even in its light tones. This matters. You matter.

And Roseville Beach matters. The authors’ love for the place runs deep and cannot help to infect the reader. This is a place of safety. We’ve answered why you are called; the why should my character care is equally potent. Anything that threatens Roseville Bay threatens the queer people who find their true selves there – threatens that self. Who cares if the history is wrong: this makes you understand queer havens from the inside, the way only TTRPGS can teach. “Safety is a gift we give each other,” says one of the pieces of fiction, but the game will make you understand that properly.

The system is simple and clever. Roll one d6 plus more if you have an appropriate skill, background or magical edge. Generally you want a 4 to succeed but annoyingly, sometimes it’s a 5 or a 6 and I think it would have just worked fine at 4. Unified mechanics are simpler, people!! The clever part is after rolling one to four dice you must assign them to the goal, injury, and spookiness. If the action is scary or unsafe you need 4s not be to hurt or scared. But you need 4s to get what you want. I like this because most of the choice comes after the roll and it also means the gm doesn’t have to constantly come up with yes but consequences on their own. Players get to choose if and when they take damage, when they think it is worth it. And they’re thinking about that not which stat to use. Got spare dice? You can put them in the clue box to get bonus clues. Need more dice? Add a die but you also must fill the trouble box with a 4 or someone in your life is in peril. this lets players gleefully drive their loved ones into peril to get more dice, driving good drama without asking players to go against themselves, and they get to own those consequences. It’s asking the gm politely to mess you up. It also means that anyone you know is inevitably going to need to get rescued which is exactly right for Scooby Doo romantic fun. Or you can not take a low trouble result because Carlos is here, so you put the low dice into Goal and you forgot to listen in on the villains.

The only thing missing from all this is a way to make things harder in a final showdown with a terrible villain throwing that dark sorcery. There’s no dice penalties just three injuries and you’re out. So GMs need to control tension by controlling tempo – more rolls in big conflicts. NPCs don’t have stats which helps cut down on load and I always say if you failed it means the task was hard so I don’t need difficulty levels but as it stands you could fail a few surfing checks and get messed up. GMs should only add Injury checks in dramatic showdowns, maybe? I think you might need to play this a bit to get a grip on how to match it to your style. (Technically you can not be granted dice if you are injured but there’s no rules or even guidelines for this.) Another weird thing about the system is you get extra dice when you “have a golden opportunity” or you’re protecting someone you care about from “dire consequences”. I sort of get what they mean – at big exciting moments or if you set things up, you’re more likely to succeed but what exactly makes it golden or dire? I think a golden opportunity encourages the GM to have the bad guy stand right next to the big hole in his space station while zapping your dad, giving you a golden opportunity to huck him over the safety rail, but it’d be better to be clearer.

Also: I know characters are just six lines or so but this game has no character sheet. It doesn’t even say there’s one online! (There is, see below.) As powerful as a rulebook can be to set tone and expectations it can only be held by one player at a time. The character sheet is the key driver of how to play the game, probably the single most important mechanic. I’d probably set up a shared sheet (my bugbear is char sheets draw attention away from each other) since everyone lives in the same bungalow. As an aside I’d love to see a mechanic here or elsewhere where your character sheet is your bedroom but as you add to it your life spills out into the shared space, and begins to cramp others. And if your writing crosses theirs you fight. Of course you could write small but you just kissed sweet dusky Carlos and you need to write that shit in all caps glitter pen my bitches, oh I’m sorry did that cramp where you wanted to roll for your yoga class? I’m too fabulous and you resent that …but I digress.

Everyone sharing the same house is again, good design (the party has instant cohesion) and historical (‘twas the way) and also funny. Yeah I live at The Bongo Drum, near the dunes, just little me, Rock Hudson, a sixty year old cigar huffing drag king, a were-tiger and a mermaid who is an illegal immigrant. And the triad who run the shared garden and the sex shop by the library. It’s just us, you know. Don’t ask about the tiger. Just don’t. Ugh, the hairs in the sink.

There is a character sheet online and it is gorgeous. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uy_r1-u8K-ko29Tbz2u3wtWB4DFVrc1p/view?usp=sharing now the only thing I want is a map of the whole island but Rose Island is a state of mind you know? And it’s also about people. Although there are loving and languid descriptions of the landscape and other small towns most of the books setting is business owners and other people. That’s fitting: much like how although the dog park is a place in Night Vale – it’s Hiram McDaniel and the man in the leather jacket and the angels that make night vale work. Plus random weirdness which there are lovely tables for. There are a LOT of sorcerers and drama queens and just too many pre-made PCs/allies but it is where the focus belongs. I also love that there are tables to generate not just random NPCs but also what they know why they might/not help and how they complicate things. Also random clue ideas which are reminiscent of Partners. It’s all very Scooby Doo. If somethings being stolen from a high room at 5pm then there will be a ladder outside Dave’s house and a torn patch of Susie’s coat caught in the door and a crumpled up note on the floor saying “tonight 5pm”. And I love that. It’s a strong genre well communicated that players will quickly get. There’s even a random table for how the villain over-reacts with eaxh wound they take.

And now the acid test: how do they bring all this together in the adventures? The answer is…decently but not great. The vibe is there: strong hooks, interesting mysteries, but mostly that’s all there is. Some of them offer a selection of solutions in terms of both what happened and/or how to fix it, others are more just fragments. The Scooby Doo vibe is strong. Honestly you can pitch this game as Scooby Doo directed by John Waters. There’s a touch of Night Vale but that metamodern cosycore vibe to not kill your queers rules supreme and that’s good. Still no disco.

Ultimately an rpgs job is to make you want to play it. I am a hard sell because I don’t want to play any rpgs. To get me over the line I need elegant design that punches way above its weight by combining things well. I need sharp design in setting and system that’s subtle and cuts deep, that creates the most power for the least effort from all players. And for the most part, Moonlight on Roseville Beach delivers this. That it also is so very much of the times and the mores, an interesting artefact that reflects who we are now and who we were then, painted boldly and beautifully – that is a bonus. I read a bad RPG recently where the author insisted on breaking character to remind us that our games will be good if we take them seriously. This game never needs to tell us this, because it shows that these lives matter. As they should.