We are making a tabletop storytelling game called The Cowboy: Is There Room in This Town for the Both of Us?
We began brainstorming the kind of storytelling game we wanted to make by thinking about the game’s theme. None of us had a lot of experience with tabletop storytelling games, so we felt more comfortable brainstorming around a theme than around mechanics. We decided that we wanted to make a silly, humorous game instead of a more serious game. Then, we started brainstorming about the time period and setting of the game. After talking through some options like pirates and vikings, we decided to pursue a cowboy themed game with a rugged queer aesthetic! At first, we wanted to make a tabletop dating sim/romance game, but we later changed the genre to allow different kinds of interactions in the game and to appeal to a wider audience. We were inspired by the aesthetic and mood of the game West of Loathing.
After deciding on a theme, we imagined an isolated town in the Wild West that a cowboy mysteriously appears in one day. We wanted to add intrigue to make the cowboy desirable, so we decided to make the cowboy The Cowboy and have other non-cowboy characters in the town. One player plays The Cowboy and also plays NPCs in the town, acting in a game master kind of role to make decisions about how scenarios end and to interpret dice rolls. Then, we came up with some other characters in the Wild West town for the other players to play: a bartender, an innkeeper, a stable master, a sheriff, a musician, and a rival cowboy. At first, we wanted the rival cowboy to be a secret character not listed on the list of playable characters that the players see on the rule sheet. However, because we did not want the game to only have romance options, we decided to introduce more antagonistic ways to engage The Cowboy and made the rival cowboy an official character option.
After thinking about what characters that players might be able to play, we started thinking about stats that each of those characters could have. We wanted stats that would match the overall Wild West theme and be applicable to every character in different ways (so “horse riding” probably shouldn’t be a stat because it is really only applicable to The Cowboy, the rival cowboy, and the stable master). We came up with charisma, stoicism, rough and toughness, and sensitivity. Each of these stats can be used in different ways for each character, whether their players want to play a romance or antagonistic route. We also thought of hat size as a different type of stat. We thought it would be fun to have paper or 3D-printed hats of varying sizes for players to flaunt or slam down on the table. The hats add some silliness to the game, and we want players to be able to steal hats from each other to facilitate interactions between players, not just between players and The Cowboy.
Now that we had characters with stats, we started to think about what the actual gameplay would look like. It felt intuitive that the game would play in turns, and the game would end when either the players reached some kind of goal or the turns ran out. We decided that The Cowboy is only in town for 5 days, and the players can interact with The Cowboy in a daytime scenario and a nighttime scenario. Then, there are 10 group interaction scenarios in a game. We wanted to provide more opportunities for individual interactions with The Cowboy too, so we decided to include individual scenarios, or “chance encounters,” that are played at the end of the night scenario each day. Group scenarios and individual scenarios would be written on cards and drawn from a pile on the table. We thought that in each scenario, players will roleplay with each other and The Cowboy and have chances to increase their stats and their hat size. Because we wanted to have more options than just romance, we decided to include a romance meter and a rivalry meter that players can build up through interactions with The Cowboy as well. By filling up the romance or rivalry meters, players can propose marriage or a duel to The Cowboy to end the game.
After considering what turns would look like and how game interactions would unfold, we began drafting rules and scenarios and experimenting with numbers. We split off to write independently, and we wrote a lot of scenario cards that detail potential interactions with The Cowboy and what stat boosts and increases to romance and rivalry meters would happen in each one. Through playtesting, we will modify the numbers and change mechanics based on feedback.
Edit: After playtesting we received a lot of helpful feedback:
- The encounters we wrote needed to be more structured, especially with respect to individual versus group encounters. It was confusing whether or not players were meant to engage with The Cowboy all together or individually.
- The players wanted to be able to play their townsfolk more, like the bartender playing a bartender in scenes that took place in the saloon.
- The character stats helped players get a sense of their character, but they didn’t have much of a role in gameplay.
- We had hats that we wanted to distribute to players, but it was unclear how players could acquire hats. The hats should also have some effect on gameplay.
- It was unclear how the game ended and who won.
- Players wanted to be able to flip romance and rivalry points to create enemies-to-lovers or betrayal scenarios.
We addressed this feedback in the following ways:
- We decided to restructure the day/night, individual/group encounter system. Now, we have two piles of cards, a daytime pile and a nighttime pile. Both piles have equal numbers of group and individual encounter cards in them, and the cards are labelled with “Group” or “Individual.” If a group encounter is drawn, players interact with The Cowboy as if everyone at the table were in the scene together. If an individual encounter is drawn, players take turns interacting with The Cowboy as if it were only them and The Cowboy in the scene. The Cowboy interacts with each player independently as if the other individual scenes did not happen, so the order of which player does the individual scenes first does not matter. We think that his change will facilitate more player-player interactions in group encounters and allow for more intimate moments with The Cowboy in individual encounters. Additionally, we decided to write clearly in the rules that encounters should look like a conversation between players and The Cowboy, not a player telling a story about The Cowboy by themself.
- We decided to include an Encounter Guide in the rules for the game master to read that provides notes about which players might have special roles in certain scenes. We also decided to be clear in the rules that players can play their townsfolk in relevant scenes, and players should feel free to make up details about the world within reason without stepping on other players’ toes. Additionally, we wrote more details and flavor text about all the characters and made special character sheets.
- Because we want the main mechanics of The Cowboy to be roleplaying, not rolling dice and counting, we decided to make character stats more qualitative and static. We changed them from being numbers to being words on a scale from “crummy” to “darn tootin’.” The new qualitative stats won’t change throughout the game, so there is less numbers for the players and the game master to keep track of, and they still provide players with a sense of who their character is.
- We wrote a Hat Acquisition Guide in the rules that detailed which scenarios could award hats and what conditions had to be met for a player to win a hat. We also added roleplay perks and more detailed descriptions of the hats so that players could take advantage of them through roleplay instead of through stat boosts.
- We simplified the ending of the game so that after 5 in-game days (10 scenarios), the player with the highest romance or rivalry with The Cowboy gets to propose marriage or a duel. The success of the proposal depends on how enthusiastically the player roleplays the scenario as well as a little luck of a die roll. If that player fails their proposal, the player with the next highest romance or rivalry gets to propose. This ending provides more structure for when the game is over, and it doesn’t completely exclude players who have low romance or rivalry with The Cowboy.
- We wrote clearly in the rules that a player can build up a large number of romance or rivalry points, then roleplay in one of the encounters to flip them to the other side. The game master agrees to flip the points if the player roleplayed well.
Aside from that feedback, we also wrote more encounters, added starting items at the beginning of the game that players can use creatively in any encounter, and added starting hats that can help players get into the roleplay by providing them with more details about their character. Additionally, we added a Vibes Guide and a Game Master/Interaction Guide to the rules document to make it more clear how the game should feel and what the game master should do if there is any confusion or uncertainty.
-Sara Hoggatt, Erin Matthews, Mars Duquette
