killing fools reflections
these are reflections on my experience with sraëka lillian's "killing fools", their latest weekly rpg sketch. you can find it here. spoilers below!
when I started this one up I became quickly excited. killing fools has a kind of game structure I adore and have found myself exploring in my own ways lately: everything is in front of you from the start, and it's up to you to digest and organize that information into a successful run of the game. (that was the core of the design behind kaeru, for example)
it felt surprisingly dense to me for such a quickly made game. first, I introduced myself to all the party members, and was pleasantly surprised by how the character you start with can be swapped out through the same mechanism as everyone else. that felt so nice!
first I tried surveying the game world to internalize the structure. with a game like this, it feels crucial to me to develop a mental map of the full journey in order to best navigate it. I ran headfirst with the single starting party member into both the Demon God and the dragons and experienced a quick defeat. I recognized the element of using money to recruit characters and how each character could be understood as an expendable resource...
... except Ullar, who is free to recruit and offers you money, but humorously won't let you dismiss him either. I found this to be a wonderful use of the structure, something I immediately hoped it would explore. the way each party member both constrains and expands your options along varying dimensions feels great, and to me almost like a "wish fulfilled" of a design space I always yearn to see explored further. the way it's explored here with a mix of humor and seriousness felt great to me.
especially with how party members were recruited with money, it felt like they played a role somewhat like equipment, or you could say blurred the theoretical distinction between them. similarly, I appreciated how almost every character has a mixture of free and MP-costing abilities, heightening the sense of each character having something they excel at alongside thoughtful considerations of resource management and tactical utility. I found myself asking questions like "is this ability worth expending this character faster?" "who is most appropriate for these encounters?" and "how can I adapt my strategy when I switch party members?"
the battles tested thoughtfully who I chose to bring along. they're long, drawn out fights which felt made to both tease my resource management and encourage me to explore gradually both my characters' capabilities and the enemies' vulnerabilities.
I wound up fleeing from the random encounters in the cave, though they seemed also like a good way to build up funds to recruit new characters. compared to the static encounters, they seemed designed to be relatively quick and simple.
Nuester jumped out to me quite quickly as an especially useful party member, doubly so for being free: they have a wide variety of utility skills, many of which have no MP cost. it was sometimes difficult to identify elemental or status weaknesses in enemies, but it became easier to depend on with free status debuffs. The cheap stat debuffs also became a large part of how I was able to complete my run.
Boxos was another party member I appreciated: they have high stats, but only attack each turn. In RPGs with complex decision making, I appreciate having having a "pure power" character who can reduce my cognitive load.
after having defeated both the Dark Knight and Dragon Knight once in separate runs, I decided to try the Demon God in earnest. this one is clearly the hardest encounter and would test my preparation the most. I was defeated quite quickly after being destabilized by their status effects, and it became apparent to me that the starting character's abilities, while broad, weren't well suited to any particular encounter either, and best swapped out. I managed to narrowly defeat the Demon God using Boxos and Kudephra's brute force (she's much like Boxos in that you can't control her, but has healing spells), with Nuester to support and Ullar... died pretty quickly.
I was able to dismiss Ullar after he died and recruit him again, but he'd still be dead. this created a loop where I was able to gain infinite money, an exploit I found fun and potentially useful, though I didn't wind up needing it. next I tried Boxos, Kudephra, Nuester and Edellith to challenge the remaining two terrors, and found relatively swift victory at this point. even though I didn't have control over two of my party members, their average output was excellent and simplified my decision-making in case I needed to make any more attempts.
all together I really enjoyed my time with this sketch and what it was meditating on. it felt great to feel out its corners and and see what I could get away with. I've come away from it reflecting more on this sort of game structure and what I myself might want to explore within them. and just as much, a strengthened appreciation for sraëka's creative ethos.
I felt wonder that this was a one-day project (also being the first of the sraëka's series of rpg sketches I've tried), but I believe that shows the sraëka's experience with rpg design and intimacy with rpg maker 2000.
one could say there's two basic archetypes of a creative person*, a generalist and a specialist. and to me, sraëka's work feels like it embodies the work of a specialist and what that mode of craft is able to achieve. as a specialist, you may naturally be confined to a certain subject area, but at the same time you come to explore it deeply and thoroughly, where its language becomes a part of you as much as breathing. that's what killing fools felt like to me, anyway.
(* in the "all models are wrong, but some models are useful" kind of way.)
I tend to understand myself to be more of a generalist, at least up until now. I take joy in immersing myself in any and everything, and find it hard to stay satisfied in one place. but at the same time, the strength of such approach can be in developing broad and adaptable frameworks and higher sorts of perspectives.
I can't help but wonder if this is something that draws me to sraëka's work - there are many ways we appear to share values and perspectives, but another in which I admire their dedication as a specialist and learning from what they explore. each time I visit their work I feel I've learned something about the language of rpgs and what they can be. these games ask me to be invested and reward my engagement and curiosity, not just with understanding of their game but with increased understanding of rpgs themselves. all of these things feel wonderful and precious to me. I'm sure they don't need thanks, but nonetheless I'm continually thankful for what sraëka contributes towards the exploration of rpgs as a medium.