Liaison: A Series of Inspirations
Earlier last year I got to play For the Queen for the first time. (You can read my write-up of it here.) I was really enamored with the game, and getting to play it as a two person experience was really, really fun. To me, it felt like the way I wanted to play the game—don’t get me wrong, I would play it with a group—but it felt like the right way at the time.
I also played Starcrossed while at BigBadCon, and got introduced to tumbling tower based games, namely one of Starcrossed’s inspirations, Dread. I haven’t gotten to play Dread yet, but I did buy a digital copy and read it, and thoroughly enjoyed the designer’s view on what towers represented, and how it’s used to build narrative tension in the game.
In early September of 2023, I read a short story collection, “The Best American Short Stories, 2013” and came upon a story by Jim Shepard titled “The World to Come” about two ladies in love and their tragic situation filled with yearning and loss. (Some spoilers for the story ahead! It’s a great story, you should read it!)
In Shepard’s story, our narrator, Abigail, is married and dealing with the recent loss of her child. Set in the mid 1800s in a rural farming community, the landscape is bleak and isolating. A new couple moves close Abigail and her husband, and a friendship forms between the narrator and the wife of the couple, Tallie. Soon, they find they have fallen in love, and begin an affair.
After Tallie’s husband’s need for control becomes too much, he moves the two of them away, and Abigail receives a letter from Tallie, saying that she is adjusting okay to the new living situation, despite it being so remote. Soon, though, Abigail learns of Tallie’s death, supposedly of sickness. She goes to confront Tallie’s husband, and finds that Tallie has already been buried. Stricken with grief, she can only return home and mourn once again.
Very sad story. I definitely cried, and was kind of blindsided by the ending. I wanted the ladies to escape! To live happily ever after! To kiss after they milk cows and sit by the fire and sew together until they’re super old! I loved Jim’s story, and wouldn’t change it, but I wanted to come up with a game that explored the themes of sapphic longing, despair, and possible happiness that I feel the story presents.
So I made Liaison, a tumbling tower game about ladies in love. I knew immediately it should be a prompt based game, but I wanted the same tension that Dread brings, while clinging to the beautiful simplicity of a Descended from the Queen game. Still, a single end point/card would be too final, too easy. I wanted the tension to ramp up over time. Will they escape? Are they close? How far can they make it? What will they have to sacrifice?
To achieve this, I made Escape Cards—cards you accrue as you pull them, and you must collect all three, signifying your escape plans coming together, in order to actually escape. This, balanced with pulling blocks, answering questions, and crafting a world, makes for a tense, but, at times, joyous experience. You badly want your ladies to succeed, to escape, but you know that at any moment, one wrong move, one aggressive pull, or one careless touch could cause it all to come tumbling down.
If your tower falls, the husband labeled the “Bad One” (decided by a coin toss at the beginning) kills the lady whose tower topples, or the one who pulls the last block, causing the tower to topple. (Did I mention this can be played with two towers? You can even play it online!) An epilogue is held after the death, and the game ends. Hopefully, this should only happen about two in every five or so games, but the cards can be cruel, and in some games, unless you are a very good Jenga player, escape may lay at the very bottom of the deck, and therefore, out of reach.
I’m really excited to release this game and I hope that folks will give it a look/try. It’s been an exciting process, and it’s technically my first “real” TTRPG—in the past I’ve made LARPs, supplements, zines, and lyric games. It’s been a joy to write, design, and playtest. I can’t wait to get started on the next project, and to see where my design journey takes me next. Until then, I urge you to check out Liaison when it comes out! Here is a link to the itch page, which will go live on January 19th!