VoidPunk Games

As a foreword: this article follows « Rules are a Ship ». While it’s not a necessary read before this one, I will mention the cage-and-ship styles of rules on a couple occasions.

I am VoidPunk

I am VoidPunk, and that is the core of my multi-faceted identity. I couldn’t describe it better than the LGBTQIA wiki (you should definitely read it, I could just copy-paste this here and be done with this chapter, tbf), but if you don’t have time for some more words before that much words, I’ll be brief: I am not human.

Humans made it clear on many occasions that I’m not one of them, and I won’t bother. On the contrary: I stopped measuring myself to their standards, adapting to their way of thinking and talking, and assumed (and further developed) my own way of functioning. And thus I walk the street, talk and write as a creature, and the divide between humans and I often feels like a civilization gap.

More generally, VoidPunks may be dehumanized and marginalized for their genders (or lack of), orientations (or lack of), skin colors, neurodivergences, etc.

Not VoidPunk Enough

I’d lament that many non-humans in fictions are too often humanoids, especially when they are “good guys”, like Matrix’s programs (including bad-guys agents), the swathe of humanoid robots (from Terminator to I, Robot), and the omnipresent humanoid elves, dwarves, green aliens, blue aliens, etc, etc, which are all frankly just humans with pointy ears and/or unusual skin colors.

I’d also lament that non-humans are too often ancillary, and supporting roles, when they’re not straight up “the menace”. But black and queer folks know that all too well. Tolkien’s One Ring, the eponymous “Alien”, the evergreen Zombies (as a uniform mob, not individuals), etc, are good examples of non-human entities, but still, they’re the bad (non-)guys.

Many queer TTRPGs touch upon that chord, the most known example being Monsterhearts. But yet, all monstrous they are, the characters we play are people interacting with people. Worst: we are desiring (rules-as-cage-style) to be humans; adults, even. (The grown-up moves are a late-game reward that finally break that teenage-drama-cage.) And this is the crux of the difference between the Queer VoidPunk and the non-VoidPunk Queer: the latter wants to be recognized and treated as human, while the former rejects its own humanity, saying to humans to stop treating non-humans (and dehumanized people) so poorly. (Something something Gaza, ecology and veganism. Different article.)

I’ve played my fair share of queer games (and love them all, don’t get me wrong), yet I’m left wanting.

Non-People Entities

My personal favorite for true non-human having its say in a plot is Mjolnir, and I can’t help but love the very few substantial moments the MCU gave it, especially its relationship with Steve Rogers. (Notice how I use the words “it” and “relationship”.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mentioned the “alien swarm”, like the Zergs or Tyranids (weirdly popular among trans women) as another nice example.

In the context of games (as I’m being reminded is the topic of today’s article) I struggle to find examples where I’ve been put in the shoes of something else than “someone”. Real-Time Strategy video games do elicit in me that sense of being something growing, advancing, “behaving” (aka interacting with its environment) in ways remote enough from the human experience. (Being at several places at the same time is chief in that specific VoidPunk sensation.)

I love Belonging’s non-character roles. Truly. The Scarcities, Nature Itself, the Psychic Maelstrom, etc. But there again, it’s not enough to my taste. They are subsidiary, underdeveloped (compared to the “normal”, people-roles), they’re everyone’s / no-one’s responsibility, and often they’re “the menace”. They’re more shards of a divided MC than true roles. I’d love to see BoB games where the non-people-roles are treated equally with the people-roles, where they’re each the sole and durable responsibility of someone at the table (just like people-roles traditionally are), and have their own VoidPunk ways (cage and ship) of interacting with the game.

I want entities at my table.

What I did so far

I’ll try to get this self-promoting section short. (Emphasis on “try”.)
(And I’m sorry in advance for the non-french readers, I hope to translate it all in English, one day.)

Times ago, I wrote a… sort of a booklet, really, not because of its length, but because it contains no setting, no plot, barely any rule, just exhaustive descriptions of weird entities and their weird powers: the Archaic Divinities. None of them have a coherent sense of “body”, and some of them don’t even have a visible, physical presence. Ereldrings are living flesh constrained only by the allowance of a single kind of organ (fangs, scales, wings, eyes, tentacles or nerves). Yoglings are living thoughts and skills, or extra-temporal/trans-temporal entities, or spacial distortions. Nhyfhsians are measures of exotic matter, constrained only by their state (solid/liquid/gas/…)

I wrote Ka & Ichor, a PbtA that I dubbed “homeric-fantasy”, where the roles are, beside the Hero, quite VoidPunk: the omnipresent Divinity, the inhabited Region, the walking natural disaster Elemental, the hero-(in)dependant Artifact, the dual Angel-and-Demon, and the adversarial Scourge. They’re all attempts at non-people roles, with their own ways of interacting with and within their collective saga.

I’m currently working on a self-hack of it in a sci-fi setting, where the Hero is a Spaceship (not just a captain of), and I added the roles of the Alien Swarm (I mentioned Zergs and Tyranids, didn’t I?) and Mystical Order (think Jedi or Bene Gesserit), pushing the theme of playing a community as a whole, or an amorphous swarm.

I also very recently wrote a strange BoB game, Némésis, following the expressionist games’ cookbook, where the only roles are the Laboratory (VoidPunk in the sense of being a place, yet having agency in descriptions and actions such as traps and shifting geometry), the Creature (VoidPunk in the Queer sense) and the Templar (the human counterpoint for the two others). Notice how the non-people role is not a subsidiary environmental thingy that players share. It’s someone something at the table.

And I still feel I could do much better. Yet again, I’m left wanting.

Asymmetry as a VoidPunk tool

I must confess yet another kink of mine: Asymmetry. My works of fiction are infused with this fascination, and pack-full of attempts and half-success of its application (different ways of existing through time being my favorite kind of asymmetry). But when I try to talk about asymmetry between players in TTRPG circles, it often gets confused for the asymmetry between the DM and the PCs. Actually I should write a whole article about the whats and hows of the PC-asymmetry I have in mind, but suffice to say, for the purpose of this article, that I crave that asymmetry of nature among the characters, of abilities and constraints (cage-and-ship, again), of narrative responsibilities. PbtA’s and BoB’s non-miscible skins, moves and setting elements are definitely a step in the right direction.
More!

Asymmetry, when pushed far enough, does provide that non-human — or at least non- human-centric — roles and interactions. Just like dehumanized people meet each other in marginalized spaces, and face the asymmetries among them (because there is no one way to be dehumanized), asymmetry in play reproduces that community of incompatible pieces in order to increase the diversity of roles around the table, to make them hardly able to speak the same game.

Wait! Is this a manifesto? Again?!

What would a VoidPunk game be like? Simply put, a VoidPunk game would be a game that gives you the opportunity to play non-human entities. More so, it would be non-human-centered (in its rules, plots, settings, etc). And more than non-human entities, I yearn for non-people entities. To truly do so, it would need to have rules (both cage and ship kind of rules) to allow (and restrict) interactions with the world and other entities (PC and NPC, humans or not) in non-human ways. In non-people ways.

Lemme try that manifesto game that all the cool kids are playing. Here we go.

A VoidPunk game proposes to play VoidPunk entities. A VoidPunk entity has several traits among the following. All of these traits are not strictly required to be considered a VoidPunk entity. A VoidPunk entity may lack some, even several of these traits.

• Isn’t humanoid.
• Isn’t treated as a person.
• Doesn’t behave / interact with the world as a person.
• Doesn’t desire to be (or be treated as) human / humanoid / a person.
• Suffers from being (or being perceived as) human / humanoid / a person.
• Has abilities that humanoids don’t / can’t have.
• Has constraints that humanoids don’t / can’t have.

A VoidPunk entity must retain dignity (or being allowed to strive for dignity in a hostile context) and have at least some form of agency. (And by “some form of agency”, I mean I’d go as far as saying that plants have “some form of agency”.) The game, through its rules and dynamic, must permit and protect this dignity and agency.

A VoidPunk game proposes non-miscible roles, with radically different narrative responsibilities. Asymmetry can go as far as giving whole parts of the rules, universe and narration to only one or a few roles. Human role(s) in the game may be used to provide a stark contrast to VoidPunk roles (while still being interesting player roles).

A VoidPunk game off-centers humans and humanity. If the game contains humans, humanity, humanoids and/or human-like civilization(s), they are not the center of the story. The stakes of the narration isn’t (all or at all) centered on humans or human-like characters.

A VoidPunk game has rules that constraint and foster non-human interactions, both through meaningful interactions between non-people entities, difficult interactions between human-like and non-people entities, and limitation (or out-focusing) of human-like interactions among themselves.

A VoidPunk game still finds ways (dynamics, rules, systems…) to be a game, to still provide these arduous, asymmetrical interactions between entities that are not supposed to play the same game by the same rules.

Parting Words

I know PvP and PvE. I want EvE.

I know Queer games and the puppy-play of being othered. I want to be other. I am Other.
(An expressionist-voidpunk game would certainly play up that human dysphoria, and sing the pain of being stuck in the wrong body to a whole other level.)

I know elves and vampires and aliens. I want objects, places, epochs, civilizations… I want shapeshifting, ubiquity, transtemporality…

I want to know how it feels to be an entity with no notion of anatomy, of here, of now… and to interact with other vastly different entities, and try all my might to talk the same rules and to play the same game.

I want VoidPunk games.

I want you to make VoidPunk games.