If you mean follow folks in the starter pack, you can use the Follow All button in the upper right:

If you mean join the starter pack, we're currently limiting it to designers the Polaris organizers or attendees know quite well, so we can vouch for them personally in some way.

The group actually explored "planting" vs "harvesting" player stories as an extensive metaphor and found some interesting design bits there too.

To learn more, read the whole thing, I dare you: polarisgamedesign.com/2022/a-toolk...

To encourage player stories:

1 Define an expressive range
2 Leave gaps
3 Acknowledge the player
4 Support player framing
5 Curate/summarize their play
6 Procedurally generate
7 Manage your community

We can't tell the player's story for them... but we can plant the seeds! 🌱🎮💬

Tool 7: Community Management

Hey a tool to use AFTER dev!

So you made a game.

Now, as players play it, give them explicit spaces to tell their stories! Make it safe and and easy welcoming to share and maybe you'll get storytellers like the Dwarf Fortress & Qud communities.

Tool 6: Procedural Generation

Good proc-gen creates moments that = singular, non-repeatable, & unexpected, which humans love telling stories about. It also lends itself to collaborative storytelling, with more room for interpretation & expression than passive experiences. (See: Caves of Qud)

Tool 5: Curation

Summarize the player's experience to help them along the road to interpreting meaning and sharing it with others. Help the player understand what happened, especially if it was systemically complex.

Ex: Dwarf Fortress legends mode distills huge volumes into meaning-rich subsets.

Tool 4: Support Player Framing

Let the player emphasize & highlight pieces of their play experience. Ask the player open-ended, subjective questions without consequences and they might enter a storytelling mindset.

Ex: Fallen London provides scrapbook & mantlepiece spaces in player profiles!

ALSO this toolkit for encouraging player stories (see surrounding thread) was brought to you by the hard work of @galaxykate.bsky.social @jfg.land @rainysector.bsky.social @emilyshort.bsky.social @tanyaxshort.bsky.social, with special thanks to @catacalypto.bsky.social and @bravemule.bsky.social 😍🤩

Tool 3: Acknowledgements

(Devtime) Players want to feel seen! Whether it's ye olde achievements or elaborate scripting (Ex: Facade), figure out how the game can say "yes, and" / "yes, but" to the player's expressions, reflecting them, even if you can't be sure of what exactly they're trying to do.

Tool 2: Lacunae.

(Devtime) Intentionally leave gaps in the lore, encouraging 'reparative play', where players bring their own personalization to explain the details.

Ex: Boyfriend Dungeon devs didn't answer all questions about weapon-transformation, to make room for fan & community explanations

Tool 1: Define an Expressive Range.

(Devtime) Set expectations about what stories look like "here", to help players accurately imagine what KINDS of stories they might tell, and how those stories might be unique.

EX: Sea of Thieves leans into various archetypes, aiding in player pirate stories.

First, these designers found 3 major phases of a player story lifecycle:
- devtime (while making the game)
- playtime (while the player plays)
- sharetime (after playing, players tell their story)

These tools come into play or show their results at different points in the "pipeline". Let's dive in!

Here's a few other examples visualizations for different PAUSEs... can you guess which are for what? Afterwards, check the paper and learn more! Spreadsheets are great, but it's just one tool in the toolbox.

polarisgamedesign.com/2022/when-sp...

Purpose: relating to the rest of the game
Audience: dev team
Use: consulted periodically, kept up to date
Scope: complete mechanically, not content
Emphasis: emphasize effort of connections between systems

Maybe we'd make this!

If I were to viz a crafting system in a survival game, for my team... should we use

a spreadsheet of items?
a diagram of the game loop?
a state diagram of inputs?
a node diagram of recipes?
a filterable graph of items v costs?

Hmm. WELL. Let's think about the PAUSE!