#crackerjackalope

Are you ready for another round of Blog Buddies? This is likely the last one of the year, and this month's guest is CJ Tucker, of CrackerJackalope Games, and author of Jackalope Mail, which you can also find on Tumblr at @crackerjackalopegames!

Hi CJ!

It's so lovely to get to do this little experiment with you, and I'm so grateful that you were interested in a chat like this. I'm a big fan of this kind of regular update on media and games that you're consuming on in Jackalope Mail - I think that in a way, it's kind of a road-map of what's going on inside your brain, loose dots that might end up informing the kinds of things you make down the road, and it also uplifts other people's artistic work, which I think is a great attitude to have in any creative space.

To honour that, I'd like to start of with a number of things I liked these past few months!

I've been consuming a lot of hot media a little bit late, but I got there eventually! I just finished watching the second season of Interview with A Vampire, and really enjoyed the slow unfolding of the plot, as well as the complex characters that we learn about over the course of in-depth interviews. I feel like some pieces of it reminded me of Thousand Year Old Vampire, by Tim Hutchings, particularly focus on how time can eat away at your memory, and therefore also eat away at pieces of your identity.

I'm also re-watching Stranger Things with my roommate, which I am enjoying particularly because my roommate is a) a horror aficionado, and b) has never seen the entirety of Stranger Things. There's something about watching a horror movie with someone who can call plot beats right before they happen that feels so satisfying, especially for my roommate, and I think this show has definitely made me more interested in returning to Liminal Horror, especially because the Halloween Monster Jam just ended -> so many new toys to play with!

I love love love pairing different pieces of media to ttrpgs, and seeing where that takes me. Having those narrative guardrails has made a number of the one-shots I've run over the past year feel super satisfying, because I can pull on a number of known tropes and plot lines to guide my players through beats that feel right for whatever genre we happen to be playing with. Using the media as inspiration feels like I've got a shorthand dictionary that I can consistently reference, with a fair amount of confidence that my group will be able to pick up what I'm putting down, and do something with it. I'd love to know if this is ever something you do in your games, either as player or as GM!

My third thing that I've liked a lot is this is how you lose the time war, by Amal & El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. I know it's been said by a lot of people, but it really is so good! It dangles pieces of a much much larger world in front of you that gives you just enough to let your mind fill in all of the empty spaces, and weaves such a wonderful tale of intimacy and distance that I think is so fruitful. I don't have a good ttrpg to compare this to - yet. I'm working on something that hopefully gets put up on Itch next year, something I'm tentatively titling time.war.

This brings me to my next piece of discussion - the things we like and how they influence what we create. Following those little trails sometimes leads me to trying to pinpoint what it is exactly about a piece of media that I'm interested in, and connecting those pieces back to games, asking how I can re-create that experience in a satisfying way.

When it comes to answering recommendation requests, this can be a really satisfying exercise - like trying to figure out what elements of a media franchise a requester might be looking to replicate, and working to make connections to various systems that might do the trick. In other moments, I might be working in a different direction - like getting a request about a specific game mechanic or play style, and then trying to sort through genres to try to figure out which genre is likely to emphasize this kind of play. I wrote my own game, Crush Curriculum, because of a request a few years ago that asked me about how one might make a dating simulator. My brain connected mystery mechanics to the genre because I realized (through Action Button Review's video about Tokimeki Memorial), that sometimes figuring out your crush is kind of like a mystery!

I feel like you might have experienced something similar, based on a blog post you wrote last year called How to Build a World like Breath of the Wild. I'm curious about how those pieces click like that when you watch or consume a piece of media, and whether there's anything you've published or are currently working on that you feel represents this experience the most.

When I was reading about your Breath fo the Wild post, I was thinking about your game Goodbye, World , and how I would pair it with Ech0, by Role Over, Play Dead. Goodbye World is an aysmmetrical duet game about the last words between a mech and its pilot, as the mech's systems slowly die. Meanwhile, Ech0 is a game that could take place years and years in the future: you play kids who discover the ruins of a mech, and build a world around you as you try to talk to the ghost of the mech's pilot. Ech0 allows you to allude to ancient history, and I think Goodbye World would let you experience a piece of that history in detail.

Another work of yours that I've peeked at is There's Something About The Deep, a game you created for the Deep Water Jam a year ago. In There's Something About The Deep, each character has a hidden objective, which will inform how they vote when they attempt to raise or lower the submarine that everyone is trapped in. Earlier this year, you wrote a post in Jackalope Mail about Uncertainty in Legacy Games, in particular the piece about how these pieces of hidden information contribute to the uncertainty of a game, which is crucial to keeping a game interesting. You also talked about narrative uncertainty, and used the example of Risk Legacy and how it dangles the possibility of various new plot beats, and how players can then play with the anticipation of whatever happens when you complete an objective.

I'd love to know if there's a thread between the your Uncertainty blog and There's Something About The Deep, and if perhaps these hidden motives were a sign of some game theory thoughts you've been having over the past few years! I've seen some other games over the past few years promote having players keep information hidden from each-other - in fact, I wrote up my own Hidden Role Recommendation Post back in February of 2024! Do you think this is an example of board-game mechanics bleeding over into tabletop rpgs, and do you think there might be benefits or drawbacks from borrowing this particular style of play?

In summary, here are the questions I have for you:

Do you ever pair media to your ttrpg games? Are there any genres or systems you'd like to marry?

How does your media consumption influence your artwork? Do you think it has a direct or indirect influence?

What do you think about the incorporation of game mechanics from other mediums into tabletop rpgs? Do you think they help keep the game interesting?

The Hierophant — Who is a fellow game designer you’ve learned a lot from? OR What is a piece of popular wisdom about games you think is nonsense?

i have a horrible memory, particularly for names, so i'm not confident in my ability to point at anyone in particular as a source of knowledge or inspiration. (that being said, i am going to shout out J.N. Butler purely for giving me the confidence to put price tags on my games). so i suppose i have to talk about popular wisdom... and pretend i know what that actually is, as someone who's still new to game design

i suppose i'd like to see more people and games blurring the line between game master and player? i very much view a game master as just a player with a slightly different role, and i see quite a few games that forget that game masters are playing the game too! or games that do away with them entirely, which is fine, but i do love running games. give me more games with multiple game masters, or where people swap in and out of the role, or where the "standard" responsibilities of that role are challenged somehow.

(if i'm just looking at the wrong kind of games, i'd love to see ones with the sort of thing i'm talking about! recs are so welcome)

The Sun — Talk about a game you’ve made that you’re proud of.

i was so hoping for this question!!! most of my game design in the past has been lyric games, solo games, or very short multi-player games. i'm a full-time student and have an irl job too, so those formats (200 word, one page, solo games) are easier with my limited time. but i've been wanting for ages to write myself a "proper", lengthier game.

i finally did that last month, in the form of 'til it kills us, my entry for the queer wrath jam! it's inspired by some of my favourite stories (both ones i wrote and ones other people did) and it's about 15x longer than anything else i've written. it was a massive labour of love, and it's still a work in progress! i'll be starting playtesting for it soon.

not only am i proud of it because of the amount of effort and the size of it, though -- it's also my favourite concept for a game i've worked on! the playbooks, each based on an emotion and the kind of magic i imagine that emotion would create, are so much fun to write. many of them are based on a combination of characters i love, real people i know who fit the archetypes, and just a very vivid imagination.

it's the best thing i've made so far, and i'm hoping the next thing i release will live up to the standards that this one set for me!

(and that i can get some equally cool art for it)