Making of Mater Dolorosa
On April 18 Ludum Dare (my favorite video game jam) was starting and I couldn't participate because I was going to be busy that weekend. I felt a bit sad, and then I saw in my feed something else: the Breathless Jam 3. And something inside me lit up.
I had been wanting to make a tabletop role playing game for a while, but got stuck. It was something I had never done before, I was feeling overwhelmed and suffered from analysis paralysis. But a game jam? It unblocked me by:
- Enforcing constraints: it had to be either a game derived from Breathless, or a module for it, so the core of my rules was already defined.
- Lowering the bar: Breathless is a one-page TTRPG. Suddenly, I didn't need to do a complex setting, or a well-crafted 16+ pages zines. I set my self to make a one-page TTRPG, like the original.
- Setting a deadline that was close enough in time for me to feel motivated, but not that close that I would realistically not have time to submit something.
Coming up with the setting
Breathless is a zombie survival game, and its core mechanic revolves around characters getting exhausted and performing worse until they rested (at the cost of complicating the story).
I needed to come up with a setting that would fit into that exhaustion. I brainstormed a list of survival games, movies, etc. And a short story I wrote for an anthology, Mater Dolorosa came up: it was about a female catholic-inspired order that hunted vampires and werewolves — and the ever present question of who is the actual monster.
I decided to borrow the title and the setting, sprinkling into it more supernatural elements (like demons) and making it more action-based.
Drafting the rules
Breathless' SRD (System Reference Document) has a Design Guidelines section that functions as a tutorial of sorts to come up with the rules of your game. It guides you to a series of steps to resolve and questions to answer so you can rewrite the rules, adapt them to your setting and inventing your own.
An example is to come up with a list of skills characters have. Choosing the names for your own is a way of embedding the theme and setting within. Which is important, because in a one-page game you don't have that many words to spare! In Breathless the skills are: Bash, Dash, Sneak, Shoot, Think, Sway. In Mater Dolorosa I came up with Faith, Secrecy, Martial, Mind, Presence and Resilience.
The same with the "Catch your breath" mechanic. I re-skinned it to be "Pray", which makes sense thematically.
I also added a new element to the game, which are relics. They are a special type of item that cannot be fully destroyed/broken. And character kits (aka "classes") as well.
For writing all of this I use Obsidian, a markdown-based notes app.
Laying out the game with Affinity
I had never used any publishing software, but Affinity turned out incredibly easy to use. I set the page to be a trifold document, with 3 narrow pages per spread.
I started with the cover. I browsed Unsplash for a image I could use as the background, and then Google Fonts for a font for the logo (Cinzel Decorative) and another one for headings (Cochin). For the body, I decided to keep the font that Breathless uses, Lato, which is very legible even at smaller sizes.
After the cover, I wrote down the rules and had to tweak the copy a bit so it would fit on the pages without cutting any section. I also had to remove some rows from the rolling tables… not enough space.
The last thing I did was to make the character sheet (in which I sprinkled some neat icons from game-icons.net) and then I exported the first "Release Candidate" in PDF format.
Asking for feedback
I shared this PDF with people I knew that played TTRPGs and/or designed them — even at work! A few people pointed out typos, asked questions about the rules and told me they loved the setting.
With that, I reworked the copy to clarify rules, tweaked the character sheet, and made some minor changes to the cover.
I also made a printer-friendly version in black and white, which I printed to test out if the text was actually readable (it was!) and if there was enough space in the character sheet to write things down (it's a bit tight, but I think it can work).
Some people asked me about a Spanish version, so I translated it as well.
Submission
I set up a page at itch.io and uploaded the PDFs. I also took screenshots and created the thumbnail and hero image for the game.
And that was about it! The whole process, front start to finish, took me 8 days. This is how the game ended up:
Lessons learned
- I can get unstuck from creative blocks by reducing the scope, adding constraints and setting a deadline.
- TTRPG game jams are loads of fun!
- Reading the designer notes on a SRD is extremely helpful.
- "Do not make up your own system, use an existing one" popular advice is wise.