Welcome to Part 3 of a design diary series about my tabletop role-playing game Brave the Dreamer. If you haven’t already, you can read Part 1 and Part 2!
One goal I hope to achieve with this design diary series is to show how something that looks like one person’s creation is actually the result of access, resources, community, and support. In short, it’s far from an individual effort, and nowhere is that clearer than in playtest.
Welcome to Part 2 of a design diary series about my tabletop role-playing game Brave the Dreamer. If you haven’t already, you can read Part 1 here!
This entry is about the design principles that went into creating Brave the Dreamer’s gameplay and prompts.
Welcome to the first Brave the Dreamer design diary! In this series, I’ll be documenting the process of making my first tabletop role-playing game. (Check it out here!)
Like any creative endeavor, making a game can be daunting, but I’ve been fortunate to have phenomenal support along the way. By writing this series, I hope to pay respect to the people and resources I’ve leaned on, to record a snapshot of my design process at this time, and to demystify whatever I can for anyone who might be considering making a game like this.
I made my first tabletop game! 🎉
Brave the Dreamer is a collaborative storytelling game about estrangement and belonging for 1-4 players. You play as youths who were transported to an alternate world, returned here involuntarily, and found each other on a niche Internet forum about the experience. The game is played without a game master or facilitator—instead, like For the Queen (on which it’s based), you take turns drawing cards and answering questions about your characters’ experiences.
It’s inspired by media like I Saw the TV Glow (2024), Past Lives (2023), the self-aware portal fantasy of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series, and hopepunk works in the style of Becky Chambers. A standard deck of cards, some writing implements, and a few hours are all that’s needed to spin a story about cherishing/forgiving/running toward all of your childhood fantasies, young adult disaffection, and adult actualization.
I made Brave the Dreamer for the (No) Strings Attached Game Jam, and over the coming days/weeks, I plan to post some design diaries to talk about my process of developing the game. (Spoiler alert: Possibly more fun than writing novel-length fiction, and almost certainly faster!)
In the meantime, check out Brave the Dreamer, and if you play it, I’d love to hear what you think!