Tabletop gamers, as a rule, are not often the most outdoorsy people. It’s very hard to roll dice from atop a mountain, keep your silly goblin voice up on a jog, or keep your character sheet from disintegrating while underwater. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t feel the call to adventure. In Full Send, a new game from Laurie O’Connel, the author of Lichcraft and Hieronymus, you get the chance to scale the highest peaks in the world without having to leave the comfort of your dinner table. In it, players use a custom deck of tarot cards, designed by artist and award winning writer Kayla Dice, to generate challenging climbs inspired by some of the wolds’ most famous peaks and big walls.
To overcome these challenges and answer the call of the mountain, players have to use the cards they have in their deck, competing both against the difficulty of the obstacles ahead of them, and the hands of the other players at the table. As you roleplay overcoming obstacles, trading cards, one-upping each other, and revealing more about your lives on the way, you’ll reach the summit with a better understanding of each of your characters, though you may not like each other more.
To get some more insight into crafting a game like this, in a rarely-used theme for tabletop, O’Connel gave us some insight into the design process and what it took to make a game of this…scale.
Where did the idea for Full Send come from? Why mountaineering?
As a designer, one of my big fascinations is how to emulate this or that type of media in an RPG. Every different genre is a design challenge, like solving a puzzle. I think that the most exciting things trying to get to the essence of why people are actually interested in consuming media from this or that genre, and then building that out as the core of the game, rather than just emulating an aesthetic.
As a (former) keen climber and quite an outdoorsy person myself, I’ve always been interested in mountaineering stories. I love reading biographies and watching documentaries about famous ascents and disasters. It’s something about combining the remote beauty of places most people will never see, with the sheer riskiness and danger involved with many such ascents. The fact that so many climbers’ careers end in death, and yet so many people continue to do it, is a fascinating contradiction. The world started to catch up with my interests when Free Solo came out.
I think the essence of why most people are interested in this genre is the characters involved. Why do people make these risky choices? What drives them? So in that way, it’s good material for an RPG. Also, a mountain is like the ultimate in terms of adventure terrain. If you can procedurally generate a dungeon, you should be able to generate a mountain.”
How did you use a tarot-based system to capture the experience on the mountain?
I’ve always liked tarot cards over dice rolls as a method of generating prompts. I’ve written several tarot-based games because of this. I think it’s because I’m a pictures guy. Being able to physically turn over a card and look at an image will always be better than reading down a table for me. Also, I’m really excited by the custom oracle deck we’ve produced. There’s just so much potential for art in a deck of cards.
When you turn over a mountain card in Full Send and you read the prompt on it, you might get a description of a weather phenomenon, a geological feature, an equipment failure or any other challenge. It gives me, the writer, the opportunity to surprise you on the climb with some of the most beautiful and dangerous aspects of mountaineering.
Then there’s the trick taking element of it. I wanted to have a little bit more tactical complexity in the game, to emulate the technical skill that climbers need to get up to the mountain. Card games, especially those which you play from your hand, have a little more back and forth to them and require more planning ahead than simply, say, rolling a skill check. So the trick-taking game players play as they make their way up a peak gives the adventure more risk, but also more ways to mitigate those risks and plan for them, than a dice based RPG. I also think it’s more elegant to just use a tarot deck rather than a tarot deck and dice.
I wrote a little bit more about how and why I use tarot on my blog.
Death and danger are palpable parts of the climbing experience. How did you go about capturing “The Void” and what happens when those dangerous times end in tragedy?
This was one of the big challenges of the game. I think for people who might be addicted to adrenaline (not all climbers, but certainly many of them) it’s those moments where everything starts to go wrong where you really start feeling alive. It’s cliche but it’s true.
So I wanted to build death in as a distinct possibility, but I didn’t want it to feel too sudden. I wanted to build some suspense and tension, which is why there’s a phase entitled “Touching The Void”. When you run out of Luck (which is basically the number of times you’re allowed to fail in defeating an obstacle) you enter a new phase where you have your secret second health bar; your Will To Survive. At that time, everything is extremely dangerous and you could die at any time. But you’re in that phase, so the player can’t be taken by surprise even if the character is.
There are also ways in which we deal with dead characters in the game; obituaries, documentaries and memorials which have their own specific rules. They’re based on the ways actual humans often deal with death; by dividing out possessions, sharing memories, and focussing on legacy. Players get to wrap up their characters’ stories even if they die young.
A competitive TTRPG is a rare thing, why add that aspect here? How do you fit that into your design process?
Genre wise, it makes sense. There’s a reason we talk about first ascents. In the world of climbing and exploration, people are constantly racing against each other. I don’t think it’s healthy, but it’s the reality of what happens. And you’ll almost always get individuals who get the credit or the spotlight even in bigger groups. Think about all the sherpas who helped people up Everest, who didn’t get the credit until much later.
Of course, the game is set in the real world, so there’s also a financial element to it. Famous climbers are followed around by documentary crews, sponsored by North Face or Red Bull, etc. The limelight pays. So the more you individually dominate on a climb, the more points you get, which you can use to upgrade your lifestyle and your character. THere’s a competitive, asymmetrical leveling system. I’ll say, a lot of climbers I’ve met have been the nicest, most teamwork oriented people. But the system that exists often forces people at higher levels into competition. It’s a bit of a critique on that, by replicating it in a game, I’m not praising it.
It also makes the game more fun. Because the card game element is something I want to see more of in RPGS. We have loads of RPGs inspired by war games and board games, but not enough with card games. My partner, Kayla from Rat Wave Game House, developed a trick taking mechanic for her game Transgender Deathmatch Legend. I thought it was fantastic so I stole the idea.
The card game you play is based on Bridge and Hearts. I played a lot of bridge as a kid, because my dad loves to play it. In a way, Full Send is an attempt to design an RPG that my dad would like, since it’s partly based on his favourite game. I knew he would back my kickstarter because he always does, no matter if it’s doing really well, so I thought might as well make something he’d find interesting.
There are balancing elements to the competition. You want to get more points than everybody else, but if someone dies on the mountain, it causes problems for all of you. So you also need to elevate each other and make sure everyone makes it. That mechanic was a late addition. I was inspired by the board game Molly House, which I picked up at UKGE this year. Also, the more freeform roleplay elements in the downtime phase balance the crunchy competition of the summit phase really well. The downtime and the summit phase are like salt and chocolate. They contrast to make the whole game better.
I’ve done competitive games before; my game Death Game is an emulation of the battle royale genre. In that I used different mechanics; rapidly escalating peril and a rotating GM. There’s no one way to do competitive roleplay.
What’s your favorite mountain to “climb” in this game?
Everest is the best documented ascent, so there’s so much possibility in the prompts. And playtesters know the most about it, which tends to make it more fun. However, personally, I think the pregenerated summit for Matterhorn is great. It’s a much easier summit so perfect for a starter peak.
You can back Full Send on Kickstarter now, with the campaign running through September 17th.
Images via Twelve Pin Press