I played a two player game of In This World yesterday and had a great time making some bizarre worlds around the theme of space exploration. This game will immediately go into my shortlist of games for introducing new people to the types of games I like or for times I want to do a little worldbuilding.
I played it without knowing what the steps of the game looked like until we got there, but the gears in my brain immediately started the moment we were making the 'true and obvious' statements. Knowing that we'd be changing those statements later in the game, I started planning ahead with statements like "astrophysics works the same everywhere."
The world generation part follows up on those statements in such a great way. Starting each world with the very simple prompt of "choose one thing to make different and up to 2 to keep the same" lead to some fascinating variety among the four worlds we made once we fleshed it out completely.
I really like how little time you spend in the worlds you build in this game, it takes some of the creative pressure off and allows you to just let the weird ideas win the day. I'm looking forward to playing again some time and seeing the worlds that come out of different starting concepts.
"it takes some of the creative pressure off and allows you to just let the weird ideas win the day"
Yes that's exactly what I was shooting for! I find it such a relaxing game to play. You're making all these big ideas, but it just feels easy because you're working with the scaffolding you set up at the beginning.
A wonderful game. This runs light and it feels easy to keep an idea agile and ever changing. We've used this for world building a bunch of factions in the same world and that created some truly strange and interesting options. We had a real blast with this
I recommend just taking whatever the mainstream faction idea would be and making that your topic, like a thieves guild or a religion, and then seeing how those ideas morph.
If the factions are all very different types of groups (one's a religion, one's a merchant cartel), play multiple times, once for each type of faction.
Ben nailed it already, so I'll just kind of post this as a longform agreement. We just defined the game as about cults (they're a core part of the campaign we're playing). I'm not sure how far I'd push my luck with trying to create different kinds of stuff, but if I ever needed to say, generate a host of new gangs for Blades in the Dark, or maybe immortal beings for a Lord of the Rings esc fantasy, etc etc, then I'd reach for this game again.
I'd also just play it as intended too, which I'm actually yet to do. It sits in a really nice place for prompting and easy creativity.
EDIT: In re-reading this, I've realised that I implied something without saying it. We had concrete truths as we'd been playing in the setting for a bit already. Magic exists. This is the normal technology level. Blah blah blah. Then everything above that layer is fair game as usual. We also all knew the intention of this exercise going in.
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I played a two player game of In This World yesterday and had a great time making some bizarre worlds around the theme of space exploration. This game will immediately go into my shortlist of games for introducing new people to the types of games I like or for times I want to do a little worldbuilding.
I played it without knowing what the steps of the game looked like until we got there, but the gears in my brain immediately started the moment we were making the 'true and obvious' statements. Knowing that we'd be changing those statements later in the game, I started planning ahead with statements like "astrophysics works the same everywhere."
The world generation part follows up on those statements in such a great way. Starting each world with the very simple prompt of "choose one thing to make different and up to 2 to keep the same" lead to some fascinating variety among the four worlds we made once we fleshed it out completely.
I really like how little time you spend in the worlds you build in this game, it takes some of the creative pressure off and allows you to just let the weird ideas win the day. I'm looking forward to playing again some time and seeing the worlds that come out of different starting concepts.
"it takes some of the creative pressure off and allows you to just let the weird ideas win the day"
Yes that's exactly what I was shooting for! I find it such a relaxing game to play. You're making all these big ideas, but it just feels easy because you're working with the scaffolding you set up at the beginning.
A wonderful game. This runs light and it feels easy to keep an idea agile and ever changing. We've used this for world building a bunch of factions in the same world and that created some truly strange and interesting options. We had a real blast with this
That's lovely! Making different factions sounds like fascinating worldbuilding
Do you have any advice for doing that? It sounds like a really cool idea!
I recommend just taking whatever the mainstream faction idea would be and making that your topic, like a thieves guild or a religion, and then seeing how those ideas morph.
If the factions are all very different types of groups (one's a religion, one's a merchant cartel), play multiple times, once for each type of faction.
Thanks for the advice!
Ben nailed it already, so I'll just kind of post this as a longform agreement. We just defined the game as about cults (they're a core part of the campaign we're playing). I'm not sure how far I'd push my luck with trying to create different kinds of stuff, but if I ever needed to say, generate a host of new gangs for Blades in the Dark, or maybe immortal beings for a Lord of the Rings esc fantasy, etc etc, then I'd reach for this game again.
I'd also just play it as intended too, which I'm actually yet to do. It sits in a really nice place for prompting and easy creativity.
EDIT: In re-reading this, I've realised that I implied something without saying it. We had concrete truths as we'd been playing in the setting for a bit already. Magic exists. This is the normal technology level. Blah blah blah. Then everything above that layer is fair game as usual. We also all knew the intention of this exercise going in.
Thanks for the additions. I'm looking forward to trying this out!