The design of Rusałka

Thank you for coming to the secret pool! We're all speechless before your support and enthusiasm. So let me gloss over my awe at your generosity and speak of the game straight away. 

Rusałka was an easy choice in terms of projects to work on, because the game fits the style of NessunDove to a T and Nick was open to discuss it from our very first contact. It's a focused game with an extremely original theme, with bespoke rules and an unusual experience to offer. The mechanics are easy to grasp, even if you know nothing about roleplaying games, and yet they offer depth both in terms of gameplay and of narrative. I think the interconnection between memory and storytelling is a primordial force, and I love when magic offers interesting questions rather than easy answers. I also think the idea of embracing the victim's point of view through the lens of folklore and without necessarily turning this into a revenge plot is a breath of fresh air.

But what about the game design? Well, tweaking with a mechanism as simple and effective as the one Nick devised is always risky. To work on the rules as an editor, I started from actual game experience (my own, and that of some friends) and from dialogue with the author. It became immediately apparent that the point that needed some work was people underestimating the potential of the Rusałka's recollection: some players gave little thought to the flashbacks (or even forgot about describing them entirely!) in favor of focusing on the spirits' reactions to mortals in the present. So I suggested moving the recollections before the answers, both visually on the cards and in the flow of play. 

A mortal's plea dredges up a recollection of the Rusałka's past life, and we listen to her tale or see what goes through her head. So we understand the reasons behind her answer. In focused games like this one, you end up finicking with little things like this-- but as they say, the devil is in the details.

The rest of my contribution, aside from Italian translation, was as always to polish up the text and make it both evocative and functional at the same time. I think it's one of the fundamental traits of roleplaying games.

Thanks to Nick's openness, I was able to do my best. I hope you enjoy the result.