Jason Morningstar
@jmstar
Creative Director, Bully Pulpit Games. Designer of games and playful experiences like Fiasco, Night Witches, and Zhenya's Wonder Tales.
My mom's cat Greyson, veteran of 1000 cat wars, adopted from a Panera dumpster, absolute unit, I love him, he loves no one
I just had a lovely conversation about game design for teaching and learning with Prof. Marcos Vital for the RoleSimpósio conference in Brazil.
A little easter egg for my North Carolina friends in one of the things I'm working on
I just discovered John SIngleton Copley and now I want to make a game about the first shipment of Marsala wine to England in 1773
Reviewing Nine Space Games (Being printed now!) to answer a question from a player in Poland and this popped out at me, from the "How to make your own one hour game" section:
Revised already to tone down the royals' background and suggest that one of them (Caroline Matilda) isn't completely on board with the family business
@lizziestark.bsky.social and I have a weekly co-design session and sometimes I get way out ahead of my skis before we meet
In 1770 a comet passed only 0.015 AU from Earth, Lexall's comet, and it hasn't been seen since. There has never been a closer comet. Astronomers know where Lexall's comet sort of should be, but it isn't there. It's work is done.
IKEA in Charlotte, NC took the wreaths off the midsommarstång because Jesus I guess
Part of the game is manipulating the trial and the fate of the accused. So each character (There are 16; six are player characters) has indicators for whether they have access to a demon or have sold their soul (top) and a progression of potential outcomes. Green dot is starting position.
You can read the trial testimony and see exactly where the torture starts (Jennett Device was a cooperative witness; her brother James was not)
The main witches and their close connections. These are the player characters, I think, along with two to play the four devils (who may get pared down to two). Or maybe the devils are community property and don't have a player role? Unsure. Love the implied devil culture in the historical record..
Tired: Games about witch trials Wired: Games about Widow Demdike and Old Chattox carrying on their supernatural war while on trial and doomed, both their families being burned to the ground amid demonic mutually-assured destruction
"After hours at the museum" from the Soviet satire magazine Krokodil, 1971. I see the cast of Repin's Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who else is tuning in?
I just finished a playtest version of Red Ash, a Desperation playset about the 1905 Red Ash mine disaster. Here's a card that invites you to pick someone to linger for a while, crushed in a rock chimney.
@lizziestark.bsky.social and my vaudeville audition game, Crabbing the Turn, is ready for playtesting. It's a 5-6 player, 2-3 hour larp. Probably a little funny, a little sad, a little intense. Just reading the sides will be a delight. If you have a group and are interested please send me a message!
@lizziestark.bsky.social and I just wrapped the initial design work for Crabbing the Turn, a 5-6-player vaudeville larp. It's a big game, but honestly I think it'd be fun to just sit around and read the terrible scripts, too.