In which I talk about how the differences between how each character in The Wolf King’s Son is designed and the plays they have access to frame what the game is about as well as the kinds of stories and character arcs that are set up to be explored during play

At the heart of TTRPGs are the characters that the players play, and the ways that games frame distinguishing between characters is one of the fundamental ways RPGs inform the stories that result from playing them. The Fighting man is different from the Magic-User because one has the ability to cast spells and one does not. As a result one player will be thinking a lot more about how to solve problems with magic and one a lot more with their fists. These mechanical differences encourage different styles of play and varying characteristics between characters.

The Wolf King’s Son is a game by Meguey and D. Vincent Baker that is about a coming-of-age story of self-discovery, told through folktale figures of fairies journeying through a fairyland. Players take on the role of the eponymous Wolf King’s Son and the other people they encounter in their journeys.

I found the way that The Wolf King’s Son uses asymmetrical character design elements and mechanics to be particularly powerful in framing the world and the kind of stories that the game wants to tell without relying exclusively on extensive lore text. This post is about taking a deeper look at these asymmetries and seeing how they work and what they achieve.

The Object of the Game

Included in the description of each character is “The Object of the Game” which are the main goals that each character is intended to pursue during play. These hold procedural significance in ending sessions of the game:

The Wolf King’s Son has the objective of throwing themself into new situations in order to figure out who they are while the other three characters have the objective of finding out what their relationship with The Wolf King’s Son is. The Son is in a sense the main character of the story, having the most active role in making things happen and discovering new things in their pursuit of their self. The Son’s companions are framed around that journey, which gives the players a shared goal during scene play.

Structuring the story around one player character is a rare choice in TTRPGs, but it opens up the possibility of stories that are much more focused thematically and cohesive. This design is supported by the fact that it is expected the players may swap which characters they play between sessions, so there is not the sense that the story is being structured around one particular player. Because the players’ efforts are focused towards creating moments that contribute to the one central story of the Wolf King’s Son’s self-discovery, the Son’s goal of getting into new situations becomes the dynamo that pushes scenes forwards. Altogether, it promotes play where each moment builds towards one narrative pushing for each character’s story to be directly related to each other instead of branching out on their own, as tends to happen often in pure ensemble stories. Having a clear goal for the players is also critical in structuring sessions of the game, where the open-ended nature of the setting and its stories might make beginning and ending sessions difficult and confusing.

More About the Son

The game continues to make distinctions between the Son and the other characters in significant ways. There are four playbooks in the game — “The Wolf King’s Son”, “A Briar Elf”, “A Graveyard Bird” and “A Young Witch”. While all of these titles imply a specific position in the world for these characters, only one them is given the definite article “the”, which solidifies the Son’s unique position within the world. It is a small touch but again helps to reinforce the idea of the story revolving around the Son. It is also worth noting that “The Wolf King’s Son” is the only name out of the four that defines a character by their relationship to someone else. It says what the Son is to the King, but implies little about the actual personhood of the character themself. This is congruent with the Son’s objective of the game, self-discovery. The Son’s pronouns being defined as he/him at the start of the game, contrasting the other characters where it is decided by the player during character creation, is another way that the game gives the story a definite starting point through the Son.

The Son being a more defined character is also reflected mechanically — each character has access to a set of ‘plays’, what the game calls the ‘moves’ those familiar with Apocalypse World and the PBTA sphere of games will know well. To briefly explain, the plays frame specific narrative actions with a individual compactly worded mechanic that helps create interesting outcomes. For example, when the Son is Resorting to Violence, the play provides a procedure that frames how things will turn out when the Son is using violence in the story through providing prompts for outcomes to pick from. Each play is assigned a bonus from -1 to +3 to the d6 roll that takes place to decide if the outcome is a strong or weak play. The Wolf King’s Son starts with values already assigned to each of their plays, as opposed to the other characters where values can be freely assigned from an array during creation. This further defines the Son at the beginning of the story as for example, being bad at opening up to someone but good at sizing someone up. It also incentivises players to take certain actions in the fiction that line up with the higher scores on the plays, as a higher chance of a strong play gives them more opportunities to directly change the fiction. The plays the Son has +2 on are Size someone up and Sniff the wind, which are both moves about establishing new fiction about the world and the characters in the scene. They also have -1 to Tear someone apart, which can remove characters from the story altogether. The result of this is the players being assisted more in adding to the story from the outset, which gives more mechanical support to beginning sessions of the game.

Resorting to violence and Fighting back

Both the Son and a Young Witch have the play for confronting someone, but when a verbal confrontation goes wrong the Son has Resorting to violence and the Witch fighting back. Both plays are focused on the act of using physical violence but frame their character’s relationship with violence in different ways. The Son has the explicit option of resorting to violence if they don’t like the outcome when confronting someone, but the Witch only fights if attacked first. The choices they are given if they gain the upper hand during the physical conflict are also different:

Resorting to violence:

Fighting back:

Resorting to violence explicitly gives the Son the ability to subjugate someone to their will, which is not given in the Fighting back play. These plays give us a better idea of who these characters are and how they relate to violence and their overall places in the story.

Asymmetric Narrative Positioning in Like Mechanics

Majority of PBTA games have a list of shared moves that every character has access to (Apocalypse World calls them basic moves and many PBTA games have followed suit) but The Wolf King’s Son does not. Instead, it has a singular catch-all play for any time you would roll a dice to figure out what happens next but does not fall into the more defined plays the character has. However the game keeps to its use of asymmetry here and frames each move slightly differently. For The Wolf King’s Son it is Trusting Your Instincts, A Briar-Elf has Trusting Your Luck, A Graveyard Bird with Trusting the Wind and A Young Witch has Trusting to Luck & Protection. Each move is structured in the same way, except for the verb that is taking place, which is an act of trust for each character. The rules state that when something is outside of that character’s control, the player either submits to the opposing forces’ whims or makes a play. Each unique trusting play works as a fallback, but still asks the player to frame the action being taken from the unique context of what each character relies on when they are performing an action that’s outside of their usual playbook. It’s both thematically resonant and iterates on the familiar ‘try something challenging’ move that most PBTA games will have.

In a sense, the catch-all plays are essentially the same mechanic but with the narrative positioning changed. A similar ‘reskinning’ is being done with the harm mechanic that each character has. Certain moves will ask the character to mark on a tracker when rolling a weak play (result of 1-4 on the d6+bonus roll) — the Son and Witch mark Danger, a Briar-elf attains Mistrust and a Graveyard Bird incurs Debt. The mechanical consequences are the same, replacing one of the imagery associated with the character, for example “My eyes twinkle with laughter and mischief.” with a darker one “I have an uneasy, untrusting look in my eyes.” (these are freely picked from a list unique to each character). But like the way the trusting plays tell us about what the characters rely on, this mechanic tells us what the characters risk when they assert themselves over others.

Concluding

There is so much to think about when reading this game, I could get into how the Son has mostly directly interpersonal plays, or how the Bird has no explicit play for fighting others physically, but I think I have illustrated the general point that The Wolf King’s Son uses these subtle asymmetries in how it frames the characters mechanically to convey who these characters are and what kind of stories they are primed to tell. I’d love to hear what you think, about the game or my analysis of these parts of it here.