Posted by Amanda on Jun 04, 2024
Hi Friends,
This month I have a new game! This is a solo game & kind of a big experiment (actually if you play this & have feedback I would love to hear it. I'm thinking that if people like this, I might do a print run with revisions & a nicer layout that I have not just done myself). 
I've been thinking about this game since I did a few month's of Sean McCoy's Dungeon 23 project- the way you discover the dungeon room by room was so great, and seemed like you were almost playing through it as you went. This game adds simple rules so that, hopefully, it feels like you really are exploring the dungeon and interacting with the people there.
When you play you don't come up with a whole concept or anything beforehand- instead I have borrowed an idea from the author George Perec & created a huge chart of specifications that you roll on to determine what you find in each room. Perec was a member of a literary movement called Oulipo, whose members used games & random generators to fuel their work (Italo Calvino was in the group too). I've always thought that this was a lot like the way the rules of a ttrpg put constraints on what you can do, but the actual game you play immediatly grows beyond them. I kept some things from Perec's list (which was made to generate rooms in a Parisian apartment) and changed some of them, and some of them are blank so that you can fill them in yourself. I included a completely blank version of the chart as well, if you'd like to write your own lists of colors or types of furniture.
The book Perec wrote using the chart is called Life, A User's Manual and I super recommend it (The chapter about the basement might be my favorite bit of writing ever). The book was inspired by this drawing by Saul Steinberg.
I love this kind of back and forth between art & literature & games, and I hope that if you play you find things that are similarly overstuffed & human & personal.
I've also started working on a second riso printed postcard. I'm going to do 3 or 4 colors and have them printed for subscribers. I've made four sketches to pick from.
Let me know which one you like best here: google poll
and I will finish that one & get prints made.
Thanks and I hope you are having a good summer,
Amanda