Been pondering putting a thing like this in the back of Chorus when it’s finished (as you can see, there’s a lot of work done but also lots left to do) and since I’m presently unmedicated (and fucking hhhhhating it), and thus deprived of reliable focus without body-achingly uncomfortable levels of caffeine, I’m trying to do multiple things at once.
So, below is a list of works (largely but I won’t say exclusively games of some sort) which inspire me as I dive face-first into game design.
Before I start, though, I’m going to mention that Avery Alder’s Monsterhearts is the biggest one because that’s the game that made me realize how many things a TTRPG could be, simulating the emotional baggage people gain, lose, and use in a serialized supernatural romance/adventure where people's ability to be emotionally intelligent mattered orders of magnitude more than how many buildings you can punch through. And even though that inspired me and made me understand what game design WAS, I still ended up coming back ‘round to making a game that’s about doing large-scale killings of other living beings.
We all contain multitudes, I guess.
Anyway, I think laying out inspirations (direct and otherwise) is always valuable, even if you’ve moved past them or have Some Particular Thoughts (negative) about them or the people making them.
The list will be periodically updated for the sake of being honest.
These games I know from reading the books and maybe even playing the games they describe.
Monsterhearts by Avery Alder
The game which introduced me to the PbtA system, built to simulate contemporary paranormal action/romance in the vein (heh) of Buffy, The Vampire Diaries, and other similar sorts of things.
Apocalypse World (1st and 2nd Editions) by D. Vincent and Meguey Baker / lumpley games [sic]
This one’s special because while I do have the actual game, I mention it largely because the explosion of “Powered by the Apocalypse” games.
Masks: A New Generation by Brendan Conway
Made to simulate teenaged superheroes, the kind of specificity in design which creates some really interesting narrative turns which were massive “Oh, shit, you can DO that?” moments for me.
Dungeon World by Adam Koebel and Sage LaTorra
Less mind-blowing than the others but also a really solid job adapting a game built for one kind of play into a very different space.
Dungeons and Dragons, Edition 3.5 by Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, et al.
Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition by Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, et al.
I mention this because even as Chorus is a reaction to D&D, the thing being reacted to is good to bring up. It's just honest.
Stars Without Number (1st and 2nd Editions) by Kevin Crawford
The Black Hack, 2nd Edition by David Black
While SWN was my first foray into OSR, TBH2e here was the one where I started to click with what OSR was going after.
You can read more about that at Principa Apocrypha, which does a good job laying the stuff out in a more systematic way.
MÖRK BORG by Pelle Nilsson
CY_BORG by Christian Sahlen
Visual design for MÖRK BORG and CY_BORG by Johan Nohr
Both of these Swedish OSR games are notable not only for their grungy feel, but also for Johan Nohr’s fantabulous graphical design. Like holy shit, they are assaults on your senses. Particularly on a backlit screen like the one I’m typing this on. I confess, I don’t mention the artists in a lot of these games because I’m mostly here for the design, but you can’t talk about these mad Swedish dungeon grinds without mentioning their visual presentaiton.
For The Honor by Quinn Vega
Another game derived from a lumpley games TTRPG, Firebrands, which I have not played. It’s a GMless game built around a bunch of minigames which take the form of simple roleplaying prompts working to create an experience inspired by the 2018 She-Ra reboot.
ALIEN: the Roleplaying Game by Tomas Härenstam, et al.
This one gets mentioned because of the way it adapts a pre-existing mechanical framework (the one for the current edition of Mutant: Year Zero, as I understand it) into something that feels surprisingly specific to recreating the creeping everything of the first Alien film. Extra recognition for introducing me to the idea of a“cinematic” mode of play, where you condense big things down in interesting ways. Definitely planning on trying to make that a thing possible in Chorus because a two- or three- session version feels like it should be possible.
Gila Hack by Spencer Campbell
A more recent entry built using Campbell's own LUMEN system. There are little bits of overlap with Chorus that made me anxious at first. Then I remembered this whole page of "credit where it's due" so I can say explicitly that while I already had plans in place for making interacting with and building up your home base a decent-sized part of the non-combat part of the game, Campbell's idea of each character bringing something specific to those vignettes on a mechanical level rocked my face hard enough that I'm plundering the idea (though, pretty clearly, not the mechanical expression of it).
Couldn’t be honest if I didn’t mention the non-TTRPG games I’m trying to emulate with Chorus.
Please note: Inspiration is not the same as being shackled to a thing. I just happen to get on very well with these games and figuring out how to translate what was magic in them to something more easily shared is what keeps me going.
Drakengard
The ugliest duckling, a surreal, occasionally shockingly transgressive story of violence, failure, and impotence in spite of worlds-shaking power.
Drakengard 2
Actually a really interesting game to talk about, even as it’s bad on a lot of levels, because it’s the attempt by the same team as Drakengard (save Creative Director Yoko Taro) to make the first game fit into something like what a friend has called “fantasy-ass fantasy” as opposed to an angry and vaguely contemptuous reaction to same. No clue if it could work as a game on its own, but as a companion piece with and reaction to the first game, it's a fascinating artifact.
Yes, I am aware that's not exactly a compliment
NieR:Replicant ver.1.22474487139…
I note the remake/”version up” edition instead of the original or NieR:Gestalt (the Western version with Dad Nier instead of Brother Nier) because I hit a very stupid wall in the original and while I still have my copy, it has never been beat because I could not make sense of the fishing game and I needed to finish that to get further and that’s a kind of frustration I didn’t sign on for.
I signed on for other kinds of frustration.
Drakengard 3
I am quietly fascinated by this game because of the way it integrates so much of the irreverence of the first NieR game back into the Drakengard universe while still adding a ton to said universe and using that sensation of impotence in the face of terrible circumstance and horrible certitude to create a story which starts like a middle finger to the Character Action genre and then opens like a flower to reveal the insecurity at the heart of the fantasy. It's an interesting build from the first Drakengard game because of how it's moved from feeling like "Fuck you and your violent power fantasy," to a more pleading "Nothing good can come of this sort of thing; you know that, right?"
NieR:Automata
I should probably be writing these in some kind of chronological order, but I'm not so I'll just say here that this was the first of the Yoko Taro games I played. I bought it after getting super-spoiled for most (though, thankfully, not all) of the big stuff the plot had going. Then I couldn't quite get myself to play it because, frankly, a lot of the hype around protagonist 2B was, ah, horny to a degree that made me worry I'd picked up a game that was more about perving on some goth-maid-badass than about telling a compelling story. A year passes and I finally figure, hey why not, let's play the game.
Anyway, queue up to a week or so later and I'm calling my partner in to watch Ending E and we're both getting all weepy because of how much this game about all these heady themes like selfhood and purpose and meaning and the interconnectedness and interdependence of everything on this planet made us cry by doing a nigh-impossible bullet hell after doing a bunch of big, flashy cuts on some violently cute little robots.
NieR:Re[in]carnation
Yes, I'm even going to shout out the mobile game. I think it’s quite good for a mobile game but if you’re susceptible to gacha shit (no shame; they nearly get me on a regular basis), give it a miss and maybe go looking around for rundowns or youtube videos of the stories because it’s great at that.
Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars
Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden
Voice of Cards: Beasts of Burden
The Voice of Cards games get a shout-out here because even as they’re these weird sideways JRPG short stories, they keep the same narrative themes of the other Yoko Taro games of magic and sacrifice and beauty and pain and a very unusual (but very good) perspective on the prevalence of violence in video games.
These games I know from hearing things about them; the things I heard inspired me in some way.
Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition by Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt, et al.
I'd always bounced off of 4e, but listening to an actual play highlighted some mechanics not present in 3.5 or 5e which really highlights the radically different approach the 4e folks had going in. I hope a 6e will bring some of the more interesting ideas from 4e back, but that's neither here nor there. Never played it, never looked to close at it (fool that I was when it came out, I dipped because monks and bards weren't in the first Player's Handbook, but some of the ideas I heard? Those struck me as interesting and inspired some of the mechanics I'll be messing with in Chorus.
Dark Souls TRPG by Hironori Katou
Not the 5e-derived release from a bit ago that was apparently a real shitshow, but instead an officially-licensed one out of Japan that had some really fascinating ways of emulating the stamina mechanic.
Keep in mind I've never really read anything about it that wasn't a second- or third-hand account of the game so my understanding of that mechanic is pretty half-formed and there's also a lot of mechanical nuance throughout that I just don't have, but the descriptions of the ways Hironori Katou simplified mechanics to keep the tension present in a Dark Souls game (or at least a Bloodborne because I haven't played DS because I am a trash scrub with a garbage build) to the table is really thought-provoking.
I used a version of what I’d heard to start messing around with a Sonic the Hedgehog-inspired game tentatively entitled “Gotta Go Fast”. But since I don't know what I'm gonna end up doing with it, I just sorta put it out on my itch in hopes seeing it there inspires me to come back to it later.
Not everything is a thing I lifted directly from a game. Other things come from being inspired by people talking or just ideas put forth in various things. While some things aren't direct (and others are), I do want to give credit where I can to presences which have inspired me.
Michael Moorcock's Elric
It's been long enough since I ready any of the actual Elric books to mention any specifics, but from the way I want people to interact with their Chorus characters' Cursed Weapons to some of the melancholy atmosphere I'd like to build into things (YMMV if it works), it just seems fair to credit the work.
Matt Colville’s YouTube channel
Home of the excellent “Running the Game” series, a good entry into the kinds of designing one gets into just for running D&D and which also does a decent job at demystifying the perspectives you’d need to make a new game yourself.
Dael Kingsmill’s YouTube channel
Another channel which has D&D design ideas, but also a lot of talk about mythology and how one might bring specific ideas from myths or fairy tales into a game like D&D and, thus, any other game.
MCDM Productions
Matt Colville and his cadre of designers do a lot of stuff there and seeing what they add to D&D can highlight what the game doesn’t have, which has been a big inspiration for me.
Principia Apocrypha
Noted above, is an explanation of the OSR mode of play, explaining the games you should play as opposed to just laying out the rules and advising starting an adventure. You gotta know the philosophy behind a thing so you can approach it right.