We are all Fools on our journeys through this world. It's dangerous to go alone, take this game with you.
Author: caseyodonnell@gmail.com
Casey O'Donnell is a queer CIS white guy [he/him]. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. His research examines the creative collaborative work of videogame design and development. His book, "Developer's Dilemma" is published by MIT Press. Casey is an active game developer, releasing "Kerem B’Yavneh," in 2016 and "Fellowship of Fools: The (Friendship) Game" in 2018.
In the last couple of months the Affinity Games team has gone through a ton of changes in their lives that have demanded a lot of time and energy. But, make no mistake, we have been working too! New versions of the Romance and Sexuality decks will be available on The Game Crafter and FREE Print-to-Play (P2P) versions will be making their way to the website on December 21, 2019, the Winter Solstice. We’ve also done a lot of work on the website and creating new gameplay Modes for both single player and multiplayer Modes of play.
Penguicon is a annual convention held in the Detroit, Michigan metropolitan area every spring that consists of a three-day event of learning, playing, and sharing based on the two foundations of Open Source and Science Fiction.
“Over 1,600 nerds, geeks, and fans attend Penguicon every year to celebrate and share in what we all love. We are an all-volunteer, not-for-profit convention which brings together every kind of geek – software developers, moviemakers, authors and their fans, hackers, foodies – for a weekend of sharing in panels, workshops, and parties. “
In honor of The Day of Fools–April 1st, April Fool’s Day–you can now purchase a Print-To-Play edition of FoF: The (Friendship) Game for just $4.99 to download and print a paper copy of the game from home!
(And we aren’t Foolin’!)
This includes a pdf with:
22 Situation Cards for 44 Situation Prompts (Major Arcana)
56 Topic Cards for 112 Topic Prompts (Minor Arcana)
Code of Conduct Card
A couple of the shorter Multiplayer Gameplay Modes on Cards
November is officially NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and since some of the ways to play the game Fellowship of Fools include writing prompt generators and story development modes, we wanted to see if there was more out there on using the Tarot for writing. No surprise, there’s lots!
For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is a month long challenge for anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel to write 50,000 words in the month of November. That’s about 1,667 words per day, every day, for a month.
Fellowship of Fools: The (Friendship) Game Wins the People’s Choice Award at Meaningful Play 2018!
Fellowship of Fools won the People’s Choice Award at MSU’s Meaningful Play 2018 Game Conference!
2018’s theme for Meaningful Play was “Magic,” exploring the Magic of Meaningful Games. To us, this was such an appropriate theme to showcase our game under, after all, we are using the Tarot.
While at the conference we presented a peer-reviewed paper “Games of Fellowship: Affection, Empathy and Making Friendship Games” and addressed our use of the Tarot and its history and evolution over time, the theoretical and philosophical influences on FoF, and how our game (and Friendship Games as well as Affinity Games) differ from Empathy Games and Affection Games.
After we gave the talk, we received a lot of positive feedback and want to make it available for more people to see and engage with the ideas we presented. We’ll be adding the presenter notes and slides here to the blog soon.
Wands were given to award winners this year at Meaningful Play to go with the Magic theme.
During the conference, we found a lot of the other papers and speaker’s ideas resonated with our own, right from the beginning with speaker Tracy Fullerton’s words about walking sims, reflective play and Situational Game Design, games that are more than “a series of interesting choices” but rather games that offer meaningful situations for players to reflect and purpose a variety of alternative and meaningful goals.
Fellowship of Fools at the Game Exhibition at Meaningful Play 2018
Fellowship of Fools, we hope, offers many a meaningful situation with our Situation Cards and Prompts, from “We are starting a project together” (The Lovers card), to “You have lost your job…” (the Death card) to more mundane situations that players can find meaning in, such as “We are working out…” (the Strength card) or “You are having a ‘treat yo self’ day…” (the Empress card, reversed), and even in our more fantastical Situation Prompts, such as “Aliens Exist…” (The Tower, reversed) or “You are part of the resistance…” (the Emperor, reversed).
Our hope is to turn the self-reflection of the Tarot outward, to help players simulate, role play and explore meaningful situations and topics, to find friends, further develop friendships, or to find others with whom they have an affinity.
Thank you to everyone who came to Meaningful Play and engaged with our game, hearing about the many ways to play, the theories underlying its design, to playing a Topic Prompt with us at the Game Exhibition or sitting down to play a longer gameplay mode and play out a meaningful situation with us!
Fellowship of Fools: The Game, played in Multiplayer Mode, is a game about building and maintaining relationships. For a relationship to thrive both parties have to develop the skills of relating—open and honest communication, a willingness to be vulnerable, drawing and communicating personal boundaries, and learning the art of giving and receiving feedback.
Giving feedback is a way to offer a reaction or response to a particular process, decision, preference or activity so that someone can know how they performed, or how they did in relation to your personal preferences. Of people getting information essential to keep their efforts on track.
We want our players to participate in its shaping, to suggest their own ideas for alternate card prompts, as well as alternate ways to play with the cards.
As we look forward to possibility of making FoF a mobile app game, we feel like this will really allow us to explore and showcase player ideas for alternative prompts and play. Cards could offer a range of prompts that players could cycle through, try out, offer feedback, and vote for their favorites. After all, the cards have many different meanings.
We want our players to help make the game better.
Call us fools if you like, then fools we will happily be.
Public Beta of Fellowship of Fools: The (Friendship) Game to Launch 6/24/18
Fellowship of Fools will be launching a Public Beta June 24th! This coincides with the deadline for Meaningful Play, which we are submitting the game to, and if we are accepted we will post more information about our planned activities for the event.
