Non Fungible Spells Postmortem

The jam

On a random day, I was in a discussion with some fellow gamedevs on Discord, where they were asking about game jams to participate. I knew already that pretty much all of the online ones, at least, get hosted on Itch, so I checked its jam calendar. Infortunately for them, despite the huge amount of jams running all the time, I failed the goal of finding one for them since they were asking for brazilian game jams, and there is no country filtering on the jams calendar (and I doubt it ever will anyway).

But, in the middle of said search, I stumbled across some jam named Tiny Library Mosaic game jam (Modern Fantasy). I checked on it and got interested on the theme (A fantasy game, but on modern times), and the concept seemed interesting (making only a tiny piece of a game, which is supposed to be used along other 49 submissions). This wasn't my first game jam, but it was my first one doing an analog game instead of a video game.

Jam rules and my resources

The main jam rules were: make a game fragment (under MOSAIC Strict rules), on a Bridge card (both sides allowed). Maximum of 3 submissions per participant, only one gets accepted for the 50 card Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy deck.

I didn't find out the jam on its first day, in fact, the jam lasted 3 months, but I only found out about it around 10 days before it finished. Not a problem, most jams I participated were weekend ones, and this time, I only had to game design and write, and not also code and compile (the last one wasn't entirely true, but it worked out anyway). And I only needed to work on a single card fragment, not on a full game set.

Since I have no design experience outside learning things from designer coworkers by osmosis (I work at a game studio, but as a programmer, not as a game designer or illustrator), I stuck with tools I already knew how to use: Google Slides, and opensource visual assets, and focused mostly on writing (not that I am a writer, but as a programmer, I at least know how to write instructions).

First submission and first brainstorming

My first submission was actually another one: Balanced Score Rolling Methods. Being short (since this is not BSRM postmortem), it was a set of ability score generation methods designed to be always balanced, and remove the need for rerolling. I already had studied about it before the jam, so I just needed to write the ideas on a card and do some formatting.

Now, for my 2nd submission: one advantage of starting so late, is that many cards were already written at this point, and I could see where people were going.

There were already some conflict resolution and chargen cards, and I had already done one, so there was no need for more of them. Maybe a RNG alternative to dice 🎲 through card drawing, so the game didn't need to assume it was being played with them. It is a bit funny to think on what hidden assumptions exist in every card. I tried to avoid the ones most obvious (like the dice ones), but even my cards might have some hidden assumptions as well. I discarded the idea anyway, because I would need a bunch of cards to have a card drawing RNG, and the rule could only use a single one 🃏.

There were few creature cards, so I could try it, but I didn't have any really cool idea for a modern take on a fantasy creature (and d8 Modern Slimes already handled Slimes). And I didn't want to make "generic instance of fantasy creature X", it needed to really be something "modern". Also, I assumed the game wouldn't have a huge bestiary anyway, because of its content limitations (only 50 cards, for both mechanics and every kind of content).

So I went with magical items. One thing that frustrates me in pseudomedieval fantasy games, is how technology availability feels counterintuitive. Powder is usually restricted (too scary and dangerous, gets wasted easily) so people don't all get guns, but no one thinks on obvious alternatives to it (like making a magic powered railgun). Illiteracy is exception, not the norm, most people can read and write (now what do people read?). And, talking about reading/writing, the one weirdness that inspired this submission: Scrolls destroy themselves by being read or copied, like their text isn't just some information that can be used more than once (I know the excuse, Vancian Magic. And it still feels like nonsense).

The card

Aside from the magical scroll parody, the card was also intended as a NFT parody. The point is that vancian magic scrolls feel a lot similar in purpose to NFTs: they are both intended to enforce scarcity on data, despite data not being a consumable and scarce object. So the parody was that you would have a modern evolution of magical scrolls: cellphone apps that have spells installed on them like apps, issued by some greedy corporation willing to maximize profit on selling magical power, regardless of means, or consequences.

The card has two faces: one for the terms of use and the other for a list of the apps themselves. Both sides have a frame that emulates a cellphone screen, so it looks like someone is acessing a shop on its cellphone to download the apps and also reading the terms through it.

The app list not only lists some spells, but actually lists a sale. This implies there are more apps other than those displayed. Some of them also mention or imply the usage of the camera, which gives some practical examples on the hardware requirements of the apps (mentioned on the Terms side). So you can actually assume any kind of spell could be bought as a NFS. Also there is no price tag, because I am not assuming any specific currency or its value.

The Terms side lists some of the Terms of Use of those apps. I had to balance between making them look like terms of use and keeping them readable (despite these kinds of contracts being infamous for being unreadable, but I eventually handled that in a way) and short (card space constraints) so they were useable on a game. My first version, done for the jam itself, was enough to include my card in the compiled deck, but it still felt too benign, and it had some low-priority fluff, such as mentioning a magical data format, directly comparing the NFS with magical scrolls behaviour or that they were portable apps (yeah, I am a programmer, not a writer), which I dropped on the second version, after realizing the card wasn't as corporate evil as it should.

So, after some testing and reading an actual Terms of Use contract for reference, I made another version of the card. It would just have a short definition of Non Fungible Spells, followed by some contract terms, dropping not so useful stuff, like. It looks like an actual Terms of Use screen: a scrollable wall of text with the Refuse (grayed, no background, and small, so you hopefully ignore it, like a real opt-in contract) and Accept buttons at the bottom, and a small scroll bar on the right, to imply a much bigger contract, with extra terms you will never read.

The NFS developer/vendor has no name for three reasons: lack of space, I didn't think on a good enough name, and I eventually thought having the NFS developer be referred only by pronouns would make them feel more unreachable.

The terms

Now, on the contract terms. First, the NFS is non transferable, which violates the point of an NFT being property, but the fact is that most NFT implementations aren't freely transferable anyway. In fact, the promise of them being "like game items, but actually your property, and you can freely buy and sell them" ignores completely the fact that most MMOs actually have rules prohibiting players to sell accounts or items (and some games would later even restrict what you can buy or sell from other players). So it was never a solid promise, and the first term is just straight with it (later terms also point out how NFS aren't really yours, in different ways).

The first version actually allowed you to transfer them from different devices (so it was more true to the NFT promise). But after Unity's hated proposal to charge developers per every game install (including installs on different machines by the same user), I figured out the card should just force the character to pay for every time it install the NFS again. Now that's some corporate greed.

The second line can be summed up as "we don't take responsibility for anything that goes wrong from your involvement with our products". This is the typical part where the company will just cover itself from any potential source of lawsuit and throw all the trouble they can on the user, regardless of how responsible they should be for what happens with their products. Also the energy consumption mention, since this was my approach to balance the power of the spells.

The third line is the typical "don't take our stuff to yourself"/"don't copy our stuff". No company wants people building concurrent stuff for their products, so you're forbidden from replicating, modifying or creating derived apps from a NFS. This means you not only are forced to use NFSs as they are, but what happens if your character also creates spells (being those spells NFS or not)? Could it be interpreted as a copyright/terms of use violation? Also notice the "disable usage tracking" part. Every time you use a NFS, someone might be watching you.

Then comes the fourth line, what happens at a term violation? The usual "we suspend your service whenever you want" (yeah, you paid for the NFS, but they can just take it from you whenever they feel like it). Also, they can sue you for it if they feel you hurt their precious profit (why not? It's a huge company with lots of lawyers and money enough to sue you into oblivion). And to make sure they always have the upper hand, they will always fight at home. Their court, their laws. So not even the laws of your country can protect you.

Line 5 is self explanatory. It is MOSAIC Strict, so according to Attested, it should say it is.

Conclusion

When submitting this (and the other submission), I ended with a not very practical process: the cards had to be printed as PDFs, then converted on GIMP to PNGs, so I could put the card on the header. Ended submitting both formats, so people could pick the most convenient one. But it worked in the end, at least for just those 2 submissions.

I hope this postmortem helps to explain a bit my thought and execution process with this card.