Writer / Narrative Designer
Published: March 2019
Download Excerpt
Published: March 2019
Download Excerpt
Cherry Blossom is an RPG setting for Weave, a card-based Tabletop RPG published by Monocle Society. Inspired by anime themes and tropes, in the Cherry Blossom Playset players take on the role of heroic teenage protagonists, with powers and attitudes to get the job done. They are tasked with defending New Kroy City from a myriad of threats from giant kaiju monsters, and demon infestations to suspiciously charismatic government officials, all while dealing with the everyday struggles of teens.
Contributions
- Designed and developed the concept for Weave Playset.
- Established larger goals for the playset, as well as individual card concepts.
- Wrote card text for 500+ individual entries, including character abilities, items, locations, and plot hooks.
- Ran playtesting sessions and integrated player feedback.
- Established larger goals for the playset, as well as individual card concepts.
- Wrote card text for 500+ individual entries, including character abilities, items, locations, and plot hooks.
- Ran playtesting sessions and integrated player feedback.
Challenges and Process
Weave playsets consist of roughly 500 distinct entries, for items, character abilities and backgrounds, locations, plot hooks, villains, and more. The primary challenge for the Cherry Blossom playset was to design a setting that allowed players significant freedom in their gameplay but would also support generating the needed individual concepts for the playset.
The initial process was to establish the overall tone and theme of the set, in this instance high action anime. From there I broke down the requirements for settings, items, character abilities, and backgrounds into major themes based on well-established anime genres. Once the overall spread of needs was established, I generated high-level toplines for each entry in order to assess the balance of the playset before finally generating the full card text and refining the concepts through playtesting.
