December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas!

Under the Christmas tree, you find the sketch of a new character ...
May the Christmas night be full of happiness and peace!
Jocularis, Hide, Matteo

December 2, 2011

The English version of Winter Tales website is now on-line!

Welcome, friends, to Winter Tales blog... Take a seat, have a cup of hot tea and get ready to discover the Regime of Winter and the Fables that fight for Spring. Winter Tales is a narrativist board game and in this site, we are going to delve into the phases of its development.




Matteo Santus

Mangiafuoco: Background


The terrible charismatic dictator of Pleasure Island, Mangiafuoco, aimed at more desirable goals. Enlisted in Regime's army, Mangiafuoco led to battle the soldiers of the Regime with ice-cold cruelty. He was wounded during the Autumn War by a Fable not yet identified, thus he has been promoted Supreme Judge of Winter, governor of the country and great general commander. He is the tyrant who dominates the fate of the inhabitants, with iron hand and without any piety.
Jocularis

November 16, 2011

2 - Work in Progress: Board

I have started working on the single elements that are going to compose the game board. It's going to be many elements, so I will need a working method which is based on the multiplication of elements. This is an example, I used the same building to test this kind of method. Next week you will read other news from Wintertown!

Hide

November 5, 2011

1 - Work in Progress: Board

Here is some preparatory study to identify the right style to depict the Land of Winter. Other studies and preparatory images will follow soon!

Hide

November 2, 2011

Pinocchio: Background


Once Pinocchio became a child, he chose to be a puppeteer. After his old father Geppetto died, he met Mangiafuoco, who had already become the tyrant of the land.He saw, embodied in his figure, the oppressive and persecutory ideology of the Regime of Winter, and saw the strings that bind every man's doom to the powerful. He believed with no doubt that all the inhabitants of the land should be rescued from oppression. Obsessed by the nightmares of his adolescence, he is now hunting for redemption. He is a revolutionary and acts fomenting rebellions and hatching plots to the detriment of the Regime, making sure no-one finds him and always persecuted because of his progressive ideas.

Matteo Santus

October 11, 2011

Alice: making of



When I started working on the characters of Winter Tales, I remember spending hours in Jocularis' company, drawing on the same paper, trying to find a symmetry between our ideas, crossing signs and correcting each other, to decide what was really interesting and what wasn't.
We needed an adult Alice, that would remind us of Carroll's child that we loved so much but, at the same time, would be different and darker, a little exhausted by Wonderland's follies.
You can follow Alice's realization by clicking on this LINK.

Hide

October 8, 2011

Concerning Game Design

When we first talked about Winter Tales game play, I must admit I was a little bit puzzled. Narrativist board-games, as I had tried them, used to leave a bad taste in my mouth. They usually lacked narrative rules and gave players so much freedom, that the story was deprived of any logical tie, pushing the player more to unjustified simplistic conversational actions, than to a construction of a credible and sensible story. Surely, a big part of the problem is that the player first wants to create a beautiful story, without simply growing up during the session, but I'm sure that the system must provide tools that help players create both a beautiful and sensible story.
This is why, when we started working on Winter Tales, I decided to always keep this idea in mind, to determine what our game should be.
Now I have to gather my thoughts in order to bring the many versions of Winter Tales into focus and decide which one is worth telling...

Matteo Santus

October 4, 2011

Introduction

Winter Tales is set in the context of the great conflict between the Kingdom of Winter, that represents hatred, fear, and the destruction of dreams, and Spring, that embodies hope, love and fine sentiments.
The role play takes place in the Land of Winter, Wintertown.
Lying on a hill facing the East and sheltered from the cold winds blowing from the mountains, the Land was once the home of Fables and dreams. One day, however, the Kingdom came and caught in its grip homes and people: frost and darkness are now smothering any fire of hope and love.
After its victory in the Conflict of Autumn, in fact, the Kingdom of Winter caught in its grip the Land of Fables. The inhabitants of the Country, now deprived of their ancient freedom and happiness, walk shiftily in the narrow alleys hit by the freezing wind of the North, hoping not to draw the cruel attention of the Soldiers.
Fed by hatred and fear, Winter wants to suffocate all flames of love with the frost of the snow and obfuscate forever any light of hope in the eternal darkness of winter night. Appalled Fables now move in the shadows, but they know they cannot leave every hope for the future in the hands of frost and are ready to fight to chase the Winter away and let Spring bloom again.
This is the setting and the scenario of Winter Tales, that is a narrativist board game in which a different story is always told in each new game session. The game is then not only limited to moving pawns and using skills or rules, but also deeply involves the player, making him become the narrator of a collaborative and always new story. Winter Tales is primarily a story that all players create together!

Matteo Santus

September 27, 2011

Some History

It was a winter night in 2006. I remember I was driving back home, after spending an evening with friends. I don't remember exactly what board game we tried that night, maybe some Avalon Hill game. I was used to spending some evenings every month with Gomez and Teo, two dear friends: it was pleasant to share our cold winter hours in the Po Valley warmed up by the gas heater in a disused premises at our disposal.
It must have been one of those nights that I first thought of a board game in which players built a collaborative story using characters of the traditional fables revisited in a “twisted” way (though I have prior memories, even if vague and lost in my childhood past).
The initial idea couldn’t have been so particularly brilliant, but reading the chosen fables again (Pinocchio, The Wizard of Oz, Alice, etc..) I suddenly realized that we could go even higher: events narrated in the stories were often cruel and sad, sometimes joyful, but always intense and never predictable. I watched Tim Burton’s movies again to try to catch a style. In the same period the TV played a series of documentaries on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and the main theme was always the incredible power of control and coercion wielded by regime propaganda and their force to suffocate hope and liberty. WT elements were all present already, though the shape was confused and unclear.

I decided to stick down a draft of the game: at first it was a Narrativist cooperation in which players could control Fables fighting against the Regime. As to components, the idea I'm most proud of is Narration cards: it was one of the first ideas that came into my mind and was subject to very few alterations. I must thank first of all the two young drawers (ages 8 and 5) who designed most of the cards. Their contribution is still today the heart of the game.
Concerning the game, the narration part has always been the pulse of Winter Tales. I can't even say how many plots we narrated during play testing, but I can say for sure they have become more and more intense, involving and efficient while we strengthened and enriched the narrative part of the game. It is fantastic that the game developed depending on the mood of that particular evening and especially on the character and cultural “style” of each player: some preferred the “dark” side, others the “pulp” one, others concentrated on the romantic aspect, others on war and regime oppression; some couldn't even avoid a humorous implication, creating unusual but extremely funny sessions. The Plot was always a perfect mixture of the players' narrative styles. This has always been good to me. However, among all the most vivid memories I have in my mind, still today there is that car trip in that winter night, on a dark provincial road while it was snowing, through the window: from that night, the snow didn't stop falling. The last thought about this new adventure goes to my dear friend Gomez, as usual.

Jocularis

June 25, 2011

"Winter is coming.."

A warm welcome everybody, here you can keep up with the news about Winter Tales, a narrativist board game now in progress.