Aaron A. Reed

Thousand Hells

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote multiple missions and settings for this "tactical narrative" game about underworld heists, coming in 2026 from Kitfox Games. Like designer David Dunham’s prior games King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, text is designed to vary considerably based on game state, including especially the traits of the companion characters you’ve brought along on your mission.

In the excerpt, from my scenario “The Midnight North,” the player is meeting a goddess of weaving in a Hell inspired by Finnish mythology. Content is authored in Inscription, a custom scripting language created by Dunham for this project (I contributed the syntax highlighting library).

Downcrawl

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

An indie tabletop roleplaying game that helps players collaborate on stories of weird underground empires. I wrote, designed, and laid out the game from start to finish. In fall 2024 I raised over $100,000 via crowdfunding and preorders for a second edition of Downcrawl.

Downcrawl features a number of unique mechanics and systems for helping players be spontaneously creative together. The excerpt below focuses more on writing and worldbuilding; for an example of narrative mechanics design, check out this blog post.

The Ice-Bound Concordance

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Winner of IndieCade’s "Best Story / World Design" award, this collaboration with Jacob Garbe paired a digital game with a printed art book, exploring the story of a writer resurrected by technology and tormented by an incomplete final masterpiece. Game Trailer

Ice-Bound’s game half used complex templated text to create story fragments that responded to changes the player made as they reconfigured the story, using a custom narrative engine developed as part of my graduate research at UC Santa Cruz. More about the technical side of the game here.

The excerpt linked below is from the book half, and introduces Katrin, a 1970s scientist at a polar station having increasing trouble with her male companion.

The Zone

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was commissioned to write an alternate sci-fi setting for this tabletop roleplaying game’s "Book Of Twists." Challenges included re-mixing fixed game elements (the deck of idea cards that come with the game) to tell a different kind of story, and effectively communicating tone and expected play style in a minimal amount of space.

Virtual Virtual Reality

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote multiple characters for this award-winning indie game from Tender Claws, including "the whale that appears in every VR demo."

Blade Runners (Prototype)

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This unreleased prototype from award-winning indie studio Hexagram proposed a licensed game built around a living city of thousands of simulated NPCs, acting and reacting to complex stimuli. I led the creation of an action library for NPCs: atomic units capable of combining into emergent stories of cause and effect. (Post art courtesy the official Blade Runner roleplaying game.)

The excerpt here shows action code written in Viv, a domain-specific language for action definitions created by James Ryan.

Achaea

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Achaea is a commercial MUD (text-only online multiplayer game) that has been in business since 1995. I was commissioned as part of a series inviting outside writers to create a quest line for the game. Writers were not required to learn the game’s complex scripting language, but were expected to specify responses to actions and consider other interactive elements.

In this excerpt from my quest line, The Secret of Orshuu’s Heirs, the player has just activated the Last Journal of Alcibiades in the lost troll city of Kasmarkin, receiving the quest from an NPC.

In the Library of the Magi, the Last Journal of Alcibiades has indeed appeared:

name: journal
short_desc: an ancient journal
long_desc: An ancient journal bound in read leather sits atop a stone plinth rising from the center of the chamber.
extended_desc: The journal is bound in an archaic style, though does not appear yellowed with the passage of time, or indeed even dusty. An aura you can’t quite see or hear surrounds it, a vibration of some keening energy, and the book floats a hair’s breadth above the plinth beneath it. The red leather of its cover is embossed with ancient trollish runes inlaid in gold. [If the player speaks trollish: The runes on the cover read: “The Last Journal of Alcibiades.”]

If the player tries to take the journal: “The book feels infinitely heavy, as if not even a team of mules could remove it from the plinth, but it can be opened.” Others see: “{player} reaches out to take the book, but it seems fixed to the plinth.”

If touched, opened, or read, move The Spirit of Alcibiades to the location, and trigger this scene:

The runes on the cover glow hot, then leap into the air.

They swirl madly, glowing and multiplying until they fill every corner of the chamber, before condensing into the shape of a ghostly figure.

The spirit moves, breathes. It turns to face you, a shape made of runes and sigils, writing and rewriting themselves in whirling scratches.

Alcibiades: “It would seem my plan has worked. Good. Greetings to you, child of tomorrow. I am Alcibiades, archmage of Kasmarkin.”

“Or, perhaps, an echo of him. A loose thread of a life, unstitched from time, cast forward like a fisher’s line into deeper waters, far from the shores of the mortal.”

The spirit’s eyes flicker to the book on the plinth.

“This book, my last journal, was meant to tell one final story of Kasmarkin before its end. But it is empty. The tale I meant to write was ripped from my memory, and all memories across time and space.”

“All I now remember is a name, and a calling. Orshuu. Orshuu the druid.”

“I don’t know who she was or what she did to deserve such a terrible curse, to be rubbed out of time and of memory itself. But I think her story must have mattered.”

“Only if it mattered would someone have tried so hard to untell it.”

The spirit walks to the plinth, runes shimmering and reshaping themselves like a thousand million insects, and places a hand made of ink atop the book.

“In this journal is only a poem, or, perhaps, a riddle. I have no memory of writing it. But it speaks, I believe, of four children, four trolls. The last descendants of Orshuu.”

“They are grown now, and might have no knowledge of each other or their part in this story. But I suspect each might carry a piece of it, even if they don’t know its importance. A family heirloom, perhaps, which protects them, and may well harbor other magics too. But that is only a guess.”

The spirit turns, fixing his stern gaze on you with all the power of an archmage.

“Find Orshuu’s descendants. Four trolls, scattered across the lands. They will know the sound of her name. Find them, and you’ll find the druid’s story. A story I fear the trolls should never have forgotten.”

“Read the journal’s riddle when you wish to begin your search. May your hunt be swift and your tale run true. Farewell.”

The shimmering rune-cloud quivers, then swarms back into the journal, sinking through the red leather with a sound like a million rustling pages, a library’s last sigh. All that remains is the lingering scent of ink.

The Spirit of Alcibiades
name: Alcibiades
short_desc: the spirit of Alcibiades
long_desc: The ghostly spirit of an ancient troll mage paces, formed from a shifting mass of living runes.
extended_desc: The spirit is formed from a dense cloud of shaped fog, made from a mass of millions of floating, shifting runes. Once a thin but towering troll, he wears the fine robes of an archmage of Kasmarkin, and his arms and cheekbones are tattooed with sigils of power. Even in ghostly form, you sense in his penetrating gaze a will that must once have wielded awesome power.

If attacked or touched: The cloud of runes swirls and reforms around the spirit, who seems not to notice.

Subcutanean

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Subcutanean is a queer horror novel that reconfigures itself for each new reader. Each time a copy is ordered, a different variation of the story is assembled, from a library of hundreds of hand-authored alternatives, both to minor details and major plot points. The book was a Lambda Literary Awards finalist in 2020. More details about how the book works technically can be found here.

In this excerpt from (one possible version of) the novel, narrator Ryan is hiding from a ’90s college party with his best friend Niko, whom he’s secretly in love with.

I was staring idly at a dark-haired girl and a bearded jock flirting on the couch across the room, words swallowed up by the thumping of the stereo. Thinking about the music echoing down all those empty halls. “I can’t even imagine getting married.”

“Yeah, neither can the government.”

“Not just that, asshole.” I side-kicked him, then frowned, trying to figure out what I wanted to say, how deep I wanted to go. Fuck it. I let the tequila talk. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to spend the rest of their life with me. Or that I could believe someone would say yes, if I wanted to with them.”

I closed my mouth, feeling stupid, but he was nodding. “Yeah, I dig you. Thinking you could be that for someone. Believing in yourself that much.” He was frowning. “I can’t believe in anything they fucking want me to be.

He tilted his head back, eyes closed. “Well, you ever make it there, you got a best man lined up at least.” He opened one skeptical eye. “Or are there two best men? How would all that even work?”

“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes, too. Dear LiveJournal. Figure out how all that even works.

We listened to the music for a minute, surrounded by people who naturally knew how to Saturday night, without training. It was kind of nice being near them, at least.

Niko said, very quiet: “You think there’s something wrong with me?”

I opened my eyes, looked at him. His were still closed. The flashing Christmas lights were lost in his black curls, more swallowed up than reflected by them.

A corner of his mouth lifted. “Stupid question.”

“You’ll make it,” I said, more because I wanted him to believe it than because I’d given it any real thought.

I’d rarely seen his face at rest like this, without its usual mask of social engagement—he liked to play gracious host, loud-mouthed philosopher—and the strong curves of his prominent jaw, his sharp nose, seemed fragile in the shifting light. Sharp, but delicate. Able to be shattered.

“Not fucking likely.” His brow furrowed, but then his face relaxed. He downed the rest of the shot, clinked his empty glass against mine, and leaned into me, just a little. “Nice to have someone around to humor me, though. Keep doing that, yeah?”

“No problemo,” I said, leaning into him, too.

We stayed like that for a few minutes.

Then some friends of his tromped down the stairs and he leapt up, pulling a sparkling smile and manic laugh out from somewhere, pouring drinks and giving high fives, and dragged me with him into the noise, and one of his friends talked me into getting trounced at foosball, and everyone kept drinking. And the moment between us faded into ephemera and lost any possible significance.

Even to me.

The Spirit of Camp Pinewood

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I was commissioned to write this scenario for Mote, a chat-based multiplayer storytelling platform. Scenarios had to succinctly give players characters, motivations, and integrate with the platform’s affordances for forward momentum.