Using the Princess Sword framework as a base for design feeling strikingly similar to playing a Princess Sword game. As with any other framework, the designed needs to figure out how all of the different mechanics weave together to create a toolkit for them to build their game with. Each piece has a different reason for being in the kit, and the Princess Sword System Resource Document (SRD) is extremely helpful when explaining the mechanics of the game.
Princess Sword is one of the most-used frameworks for my game (as long as we’re including those that are forthcoming, anyway…) just because of the versatility inherent in the mechanics. The games mostly leans on a tarot deck to guide the narrative, with five different suits available to create unique groups of basic prompts. Each suit refers to a specific thing, then provides a small list of ideas to help the player generate inspiration. For example, in my upcoming game To Inflame a Missing Sun, I use each suit to represent a different room on the spaceship and provide a small list of things that could happen in that room, like a whispered conversation in the crew quarters, or an oxygen garden sabotage in the laboratory.
In the original Princess with a Cursed Sword, the mechanics also utilize a coin flip to determine if the player character succeeds during challenging encounters. This is a mechanic that I personally struggled with during play, as I wanted nothing more than for my Princess to survive. In my game, I use the upright and reversed statuses of the cards to create a complication or challenge for the character to overcome. To me, this feels a bit more organic as the issues are presented naturally by playing the game and the player needs to figure out a way to adjust to the new narrative.
In To Inflame a Missing Sun, I did choose to use a coin flip mechanic, which isn’t something I had included in previous Princess Sword games I’ve designed. Because the game takes place on a spaceship with a crew, I used it in order to have the player determine if they were experiencing whatever the card has presented them with on their own or with another crewmate. This use of the coin flip, again, feels organic to me and helps create another fold in the narrative of the game. In such a small space, the player character could be extremely isolated… Or they could always be around others. Leaving that up to chance is an interesting way to help forge the character into who they become through the story.
While the Princess Sword framework has helped me create so many of my games (four, now), I have expanded on it and made tweaks that I think lend my games to more short-term, structured play, such as the inclusion of a dice roll at the beginning of play to determine how many turns your game will last. Something like this is totally optional for the player, should they choose: If they just want to go until the story feels completed, they don’t have to roll at all.
If you’re interested in creating a Princess Sword game on your own, I highly recommend purchasing a copy of the SRD from Anna Anthropy, and taking a look at the document yourself. This is one of those systems that I truly feel has so many possibilities for storytelling, and I’m really excited to see what you choose to do with it in the future. You can find other Princess Sword games here in this collection, if you’re looking for more understanding of what you can do with it.
Thanks for joining me for another Indie Systems breakdown! If this sort of thing interests you, you can check out the rest of the series here. Remember to join our mailing list - Scroll to the bottom and add your email address for biweekly updates with all our posts, photos and the occasional discount code to the shop. See you next time!