The Blue Way is a game of lost stories, colonialism, and its cultural aftermath from Jason Morningstar and Central Michigan University Press.
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Central Michigan University Press
about 19 hours ago
Ray Kimball The Blue Way Curriculum Guide Q&A
Hello, friends of CMich Press and The Blue Way!
Today we want to introduce you to Dr. Ray Kimball, one of the authors behind The Blue Way Curriculum Guide, and share a bit of his experience. (If you have played Eyeball to Eyeball: The Cuban Missile Crisis from CMich Press, you already know his work!) Read on for more!
Q: What is your background/connection to education and games?
RK: I started using games as a junior faculty member at West Point in 2005 because I was teaching in the core first-year history curriculum, which meant half of my students at any given time weren't taking the class voluntarily. I needed something to keep them engaged, and classroom tabletop and role playing games quickly became the way I did that. 20 years on, I've been creating classroom games and helping others do the same. I currently run an educational games coaching service helping higher ed and corporate educators bring games into their learning spaces. [42 Educational Games Coaching and Design]
Q: What did your process look like for creating the Curriculum Guide? RK: It was really important to me to understand Jason's vision for the game and how he wanted people to experience it. Reading some older interviews about the first edition and a Beyond Solitaire podcast about the CMU revision was incredibly helpful to me in creating material that was respectful to the game itself. Then I put myself in the shoes of a teacher playing the game: What could potentially go wrong? Where were my students most likely to struggle in the game? What were the portions most likely to generate "aha" moments? At the same time, I tried to think about all of the different types of classes that might use this game, both in terms of subject matter and size, composition, etc. The result (I hope) is a document that makes the game accessible without compromising the core ideas of the game.
Q: What element was the most challenging to develop?
RK: Although The Blue Way doesn't directly reference any particular historical era, it draws heavily from several that are outside of my general area of expertise. I felt compelled to explore some of the recent scholarship on the lived experience of colonialism to make sure the things I was creating were both academically rigorous and useful from a classroom context. Jon Truitt was incredibly helpful in this respect, steering me to some work on the colonization of Mesoamerica that I would never have found on my own.
Q: What from The Blue Way and its Curriculum Guide would you be most excited to use in your own teaching space? RK: I'm always excited to get a new game from CMU Press into my hands! For this game especially, I'm excited about the new artwork. It creates such an amazing sense of dread and dehumanization that perfectly captures the game's themes.
Q: Do you have any advice for educators who are considering using games in their classrooms but haven’t made the leap yet?
RK: Find something that's familiar to you and start there. You probably have more games in your life than you might think, and some component of one of them is just waiting to be put to use in your class. And if that’s too much of a struggle, just hire me. :D
Q: Do you have anything else you’d like to share?
RK: If The Blue Way is your first introduction to CMU Press games, welcome! I hope you’ll explore their library of other games to see the amazing stuff they have on offer - including my game, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Cuban Missile Crisis. If you’re a returning CMU Press customer, thanks for joining me in supporting this incredible outlet and their work. Either way, I hope you’ll jump on the Backerkit when it opens in June!
***
Thanks, Ray! We are so excited for the upcoming launch for The Blue Way -- only a few days now! Follow the prelaunch page to get an alert when we go live on June 16th!
Today we're rolling out a design Q&A with Jason Morningstar that will take you behind the creation of The Blue Way. Jason is the designer behind big hits like Fiasco, Desperation, and, recently, Zhenya's Wonder Tales. (Is June 16th here yet?!) Without any further ado, please enjoy his thoughts on The Blue Way:
Q: What motivated you to create this game? Where did the first idea come from?
JM:The Blue Way was the result of a deep dive into the fall of the Ēxcān Tlahtōlōyān to the Tlaxcalans and their Spanish allies, starting in 1519. I was particularly struck by the conquest’s aftermath, where indigenous art, religion, politics, and culture were simultaneously overtly destroyed and also assimilated into Spanish colonial rule. In some cases historians have little to go on in understanding pre-contact Aztec life and in others they must rely on pretty suspect primary sources literally written by the victors and their proxies. What remains is sometimes a patchwork that tells a story, but not, perhaps, the whole story. You have to read between the lines. This dynamic plays out again and again all over our world (The Roman arrival in Britain in 43 AD is another great example of this process), and we’ve lost so much. It got me thinking, and as a game designer that’s usually trouble.
There are lots of games about colonialism, most of them sort of horrifying at a slight remove (I’m looking at you, Puerto Rico). I think you can argue that even games like Dungeons and Dragons are colonial enterprises at heart. Most of them are written from the point of view of the colonizer - traditionally, someone making a roleplaying game about the the fall of the Ēxcān Tlahtōlōyān would position the player’s characters as heroic Spanish adventurers. I wondered how to invert that tired formula.
Q: What surprised you during the development of this game? Did you learn/try anything new?
JM: Something I learned in playtesting The Blue Way was that players often approached the game from wildly different points of view that made for a great shared experience. When one player really digs in and resists the Dusians, and another cares so deeply for all the things they hold dear that they are willing to make painful sacrifices to accommodate the newcomer’s demands, a spectrum of responses emerges that is both useful and entertaining for everyone to observe. There’s no wrong way to approach play, but the game really sings when you get diverse opinions and decisions. Q: Did the story or the mechanics come first? How did you pair them together?
JM: In designing the game, I knew I’d need a destructive mechanism to simulate the loss of cultural assets, and that drove the design process. The “story” bits - both the actual stories and the many difficult, card-based inputs that would challenge the players to make awful choices, came later. The societies of the Dusians and the Sathani sort of grew organically as I wrote the prompts, but the framework was in place.
Q: How did you develop the world of The Blue Way? What were some of your influences?
JM: Throughout the design process, the Spanish colonial rule of the Valley of Mexico in the 1520s and beyond, was on my mind. My other two touchstones were the Roman conquest of Britain and the much-later Norman conquest. I think you could easily make a list of dozens of similar events worldwide. I wanted big, obvious differences, so the invading culture is sort of medieval in its outlook and a little hierarchical and effete perhaps. It doesn’t really have a clue about, or respect for, Sathani culture, which is pastoral, agrarian, and tied to the land in specific, religious, ways. There’s no cultural value judgment implied, but all the Dusian colonizers you meet are terrible people, just the worst.
Q: What was something you chose not to include in this game?
JM: One of my initial decisions was about abstraction - did I want to make a game about a historical moment, like the Norman conquest, or did I want to abstract it into a low fantasy analog? The advantages of the former are obvious - historical grounding, the ability for the participants to become WIkipedia-level authorities if they want, maybe lessons made more impactful by being pulled from real life. The advantages of the latter were persuasive, though - abstraction made the themes universal and - more importantly - removed the participants from any responsibility for “getting it right”. I make a lot of games where I make the opposite decision, and in those, I need to be very careful about supporting the players and helping them avoid what I call “history panic” - excessively worrying about making mistakes when playing out real events. It’s counterproductive and no fun at all. If The Blue Way was going to be about the cultural impacts of colonialism and assimilation, I wanted to foreground that - not historical minutia. I would abstract it, make up my own low fantasy analogs, and make it approachable.
Q: What do you want players to take away from your game? What do you want them to learn/feel/reflect upon?
JM: I feel like games like The Blue Way are a really good way to provoke a little empathy and help people wonder about the topic. I don’t pretend to be an expert or authority, and my ultimate goals are to create a fun experience (by some definition of fun) and infect the participants with a little curiosity about the subject matter. In the case of The Blue Way, I’d love it if they’d emerge from the game reconsidering how the topics of colonialism and assimilation are generally addressed (or ignored) in games.
Q: How do you see this project as unique compared to your others? How does it borrow/connect to your other games?
JM: The Blue Way is a logical extension of my design work both procedurally and thematically. Procedurally I love card-based play, which has so many great advantages in a contained-but-replayable experience. You see that all over my design work, from the second edition of Fiasco to my latest game, Zhenya’s Wonder Tales. In terms of theme, it aligns with other games of mine that are history-inflected or even history-dominated. The Blue Way is abstracted the way games like The Lesser Players’ Tale or The Broadcast are, and for all the same reasons (approachability, universality, avoiding “history panic”).
Q: Is there anything else you’d like players to know about this game or how it was created?
JM: I’m really proud of The Blue Way and I hope that people will engage with it thoughtfully but enthusiastically. It’s a pretty heavy game, so be kind to yourself and your friends when you play. In my experience it is very rewarding and fun.
***
Thanks, Jason!
We can't wait for the launch of The Blue Way's crowdfunding campaign in ONE WEEK! Follow the prelaunch page now to be one of the first to back this standout project and explore its secrets for yourself.
We are fast approaching the launch date for The Blue Way, and we are so excited! One of the coolest things that we are looking forward to sharing with you is the new Curriculum Guide, authored by Dr. Jon Truitt and Dr. Ray Kimball. While a curriculum guide for a game may sound strange -- and it may sound even stranger to be excited about it -- we have good reason! We'll explain...
You may (or may not) be surprised to hear that the games in CMich Press' Scholarship & Lore series, like The Blue Way, actually go through peer review before they go to crowdfunding. That means that the games are sent out to experts in the game's content area AND experts in game mechanics for edits. Our goal with these games is that if you are an educator who uses games in the classroom, they will perform well in that space as a teaching tool. At the same time, we want to ensure that any game we put forth will play well in a recreational space for folks who are seeking something rewarding and different. And so -- voila! CMich Press games are unique labors of love that do both.
Now to the Curriculum Guide. The curriculum guides we publish for games in the Scholarship & Lore series are aimed at people who wish to use the games in an educational space. However, The Blue Way Curriculum Guide will be different. Part of the teaching tools included in the guide are new cards to use with the core version of The Blue Way. With this addition, we hope that even non-educators will be interested in taking the new deck for a whirl!
Today, we want to share a Q&A with Dr. Jon Truitt, one of the authors of The Blue Way Curriculum Guide and primary designer of the expansion cards, to give you a glimpse of the cool things in store with this project. Enjoy!
Q: What is your background/connection to education and games?
JT: I am a professor of Latin American History, a co-designer of the Reacting to the Past Game Mexico in Revolution, and I have been the director or co-director of the CLGS [Central Michigan University Center for Learning through Games and Simulations] since it started.
Q: What did your process look like for creating the Curriculum Guide?
JT: I am creating expansions for the game that professors can use in new settings. My process has been going through lecture notes or back through books that I use in my scholarly research on colonial Mexico. My aim is to muddy the waters on colonialism a bit. It used to be that people praised colonialism, now they proclaim its evils (as we should), but if we focus solely on the bad we miss a lot of the other human experiences that happened in that space. As I have researched Mexico I have fallen in love with that culture. I mourn the loss of indigenous cultures but I also love the Mexico that we have and the people who make it. I want players and students to understand the human experience that made up the colonial era and I want them to be able to see some of the good alongside all of the bad of the moment.
Q: What element was the most challenging to develop?
JT: Getting the balance right so that it doesn’t seem like praise for the colonial period is something that really concerns me. I am not trying to praise colonialism. I am trying to insert some more mundane human interaction into some of the expansions. I am also trying to give more indigenous agency to the game in some of the models that I am trying to build. I haven’t finished them yet, thus the difficult part, but I am hoping to give some power back to some indigenous voices that are overlooked in the current historical understanding of the period.
Q: What from The Blue Way and its Curriculum Guide would you be most excited to use in your own teaching space?
JT: I am excited to use all of it. I am using it to teach the early contact period of colonial Mexico.
Q: Do you have any advice for educators who are considering using games in their classrooms but haven’t made the leap yet?
JT: Replace your worst lecture with a game. If it is already your worst, it isn’t going to get even weaker! You will get more buy in from the students. Let them know you are experimenting and want their feedback.
Q: Do you have anything else you’d like to share?
JT: The game is still a work of fiction. It is an amalgamation of experiences from various colonial spaces. We are just trying to make it something that creates an opening for conversation about the period.
***
Thanks, Jon! We are so excited to share the new cards and curriculum guide for The Blue Way with you soon! Make sure to follow the prelaunch page for The Blue Way to jump on the Backer Train on June 16th when it launches!
As the launch date for The Blue Way creeps closer and closer, we wanted to share a design Q&A from the artist: the amazing Samuel Araya! If you've followed CMich Press projects before now, you'll recognize his haunting style from art in Five Hundred Year Old Vampire and Dog Eat Dog. We enjoyed learning more about his approach to the art in The Blue Way -- check out his Q&A below!
Q: How did you get involved in this project? SA: Jonathan Truitt of CMich Press approached me and sent a game to see if it would spark some creative ideas. This turned into quite a fire.
I seek projects that give me creative freedom, especially in gaming. The Blue Way was a dream come true, a layered, complex project that is exceptionally unique in the atmosphere that it creates at a table. I loved the idea of the player tearing pieces of art, as destruction is an integral part of my artistic process and cutting paintings is something I do quite often.
Q: How did you develop the look of The Blue Way? SA: At first, I was really fascinated by the art of Simon Bisley in the comic SLAINE, so I thought of something along these lines, something heroic and epic to contrast with the serious tone of the game. I tend to approach projects from a contradictory standpoint when given full liberty, just because I want to see what happens.
But the more I delved into the game, the more I was convinced I needed to portray the characters in a quiet, dignified way. I turned to the work of one of my favorite painters, Odd Nerdrum. At the time, I met some of his students and was inspired by their incredible work.
Nerdrum’s school teaches the classical sensibilities of art. But I have a strange sense of humor, so I wondered what would happen if I put some abstract painting within classically-inspired art. Again, my intention is not to offend anybody as I hold Odd and his student’s work in the highest of regard! But the act stuck as the sort of thing that wouldn’t make anyone happy, hah!
And that was it, that was the Blue Way! Tradition vs the new. Classically-inspired art against bold splashes of color. I decided on the square as the main theme because of the pun in the expression “square rules”. It also struck me that the square was the pixel. At the time of writing, I’m trying to cultivate a more healthy relationship with technology, so the art works on so many levels, not just as a functional piece of the game but also in a personal journal of my own.
Q: What inspired your interpretation of The Blue Way characters? SA: I wanted these to feel like real people rather than heroic characters. I have seen too many portraits of characters doing quirky things or just raising one eyebrow in a sassy expression and this has scarred me for life.
“The Warrior,” for example, has an androgynous element. Initially, I really wanted a shield maiden type of character, but as the drawing progressed, I liked the idea of ambiguity, so people can project their own characteristics to the image.
Continuing with the theme of “tradition against the new,” I also took the illustrations of the Book of Kells as a theme for the characters. A painting teacher of mine, Vanessa Lemen, did a lot of work incorporating the Book of Kells into her paintings, and it fascinated me. The delicate, intricate knotwork illuminations are a stark contrast to the dripping square paint of the Blue Way.
Q: How does your work for The Blue Way fit into your catalog of other created works? Did you find connections between the monsters of your other pieces and the characters in this game? SA: I like the idea that we human beings are made of boundless potential. This project serves me to explore different and subtler expressions.
But, I couldn’t help myself and bought some influences of the horror genre for The Blue Way. The “antagonists” are the prime example. Lord Gjerch Bravn is an eyeless ruler who belches narcissistic expressions, and his wife, Lady Kløyk Bravn, is a faceless thing whose singular eye only judges. If eyes are the mirror of the soul, Lord Gjerch has none and Lady Kløyk has a terrible, lidless one. If these interpretations are purely symbolic or literal, I leave that to the players.
Q: What art medium/s did you use to create the game art? SA: It's a mixture of acrylic, photography, and digital painting.
Q: What does the process of creating art look like for you? Did you try any new techniques or experiment with this process? SA: Creating art for a project like this, where I have a lot of creative control, is a joy and a bit of a challenge. I discarded a lot of ideas and sketches, it simply wasn’t their time. I would usually complete a portrait in a day and work on the next one based on what I learned. It's a fun process where I usually frankenstein features of the characters from various photographic sources and paint over to unify and create new faces.
I created textures in acrylic using a fun process called “Decalcomania”, which adds tactile elements to the work even if the final product is digital.
Q: Were there any art ideas that you did not use in your final designs? SA: I thought of trying more conventional heraldry symbols but they diluted the impact of the blue squares as pieces of pop art. I wanted to include weapons like an executioner's axe, but found it maybe too literal.
Q: What was one choice you made while creating the art for The Blue Way? SA: 'Do not make art like if it was a cinematic universe or video game franchise.' I like these as much as anyone, but, 'make art different' because it's my chance to say something deeply personal with illustration. In this case, my strange sense of humor served as a conceptual framework to portrait tragedy, sadness and the loss of stories. I couldn’t be luckier.
Q: Is there anything else you would like people to know about the art or how you created it? SA: As with things, game art has trends. This is not necessarily bad.
What would be horrible is if everything followed the same trend. I like experimentation, showing something different, and mostly important, injecting a lot of my personal experiences in the work. Those are commodities in the tabletop gaming world (or at least I feel as they are). To me, it is a breath of fresh air to create something that could be not just a functional illustration but an autonomous piece of art as its own. I’m deeply thankful for that. I hope this feeling comes through the work and it brings you many days of joy.
Finally, the cover art deals with the loss of identity in the hands of a faceless judgmental ruler. Something we all can relate to, I think.
***
Thanks for the insights, Sam!
If you haven't already, follow the prelaunch page of The Blue Way to get ready to secure your copy of the game dripping with Sam's scarily gorgeous art!
Welcome one and all to the Launch Party for The Blue Way!
We are thrilled to share updates about this unique, enhanced version of Jason Morningstar’s game with you starting NOW! Watch this page for designer diary drops, product updates, and more as we build towards our official campaign launch on June 16th.
To get things started, we wanted to share a bit more information about this project and invite you to follow our prelaunch page! (To those of you who have already done so, thank you!)
What is The Blue Way?
The short answer: The Blue Way is a bleak, gritty cooperative tabletop fantasy storytelling game about colonialism and lost stories.
The long answer: You are one of the Sàthani. Your name, your tongue, your faith, your land, your position in your village – this is who you are. Amongst you are leaders, farmers, healers, warriors, and even witches. A year ago, Dusia invaded. There was a war and Dusia won. Your village now belongs to Lord Gjerch Bravn and his wife, Lady Kløyk Bravn. The Dusians want to bring peace, order, and a sense of normality to the village by the standards of Dusia. Only you stand between the invaders and your community. What will you give to stop them?
In a group (or solo) explore the story of Sàthani resistance against their Dusian conquerors. Shape your map, breathe life into your characters – and prepare for the fight of their lives. Your character sheet is the anchor of your experience, providing the core mechanics, your inspiration for storytelling, and elements which inform the map you will create. Each turn, you will tear pieces from your gridded character sheet to combat the latest demands from the lord and lady of the manor – or swallow their orders and dread what happens next. With each stand, your shrinking sheet reflects a transformation within your character.
Make no mistake: this is a dark game. The fruits of your struggle may be small. But they will matter.
What can you expect from The Blue Way?
First-time players: this is a heavy, challenging, but rewarding game. That said, it is accessible for both beginning and experienced roleplayers! Especially if you like The Quiet Year and storytelling games, you’ll enjoy the map creation and character exploration in this game.
Return players: Central Michigan University is producing an enhanced version of The Blue Way, which was first introduced to the world as a Bully Pulpit project. The enhancements include stunning art by renowned artist Samuel Araya, a tearaway pad filled with character sheets, and darkly beautiful box art to help set the scene for your story.
BONUS features!
At CMich Press, we always make a curriculum guide for games in our Scholarship and Lore series: these are the games which are peer-reviewed for mechanics and content to make sure you can use them in the living room and the classroom. However, we are trying something very new with this project: alternate decks that characters can use to explore different game scenarios based on historical precedent. These decks will currently only be available through purchase of our curriculum guide for The Blue Way, but who knows what will happen once we start hitting our Stretch Goals...
Last but not least, we will be doing a cross-collaboration with Chancers by Jaunty Goblin Games! When you back both of our campaigns in June, you will receive a pair of beautiful dice from Chancers and a set of card sleeves from The Blue Way! Preview images below!
Whorl dice from Chancers!
Gorgeous art from Samuel Araya will grace the back of The Blue Way's card sleeves!
We are so excited to kick off this campaign with a bang! Check back for more updates and other tidbits as we all wait for June 16th, when the real fun begins...
Thanks for following this project! We'll be back with more fun content soon!
A bleak, gritty fantasy tabletop storytelling game about colonialism and lost stories.
A year ago, Dusia invaded. There was a war and Dusia won. Now your village belongs to Lord Gjerch Bravn and his wife, Lady Kløyk Bravn. The Dusians want to bring peace, order, and a sense of normality to the village, by the standards of Dusia. You are not going to like it, but they are in charge now regardless of your feelings.
