Convenient Definitions

This project is still in a playtesting and editing phase.  If you would still like to download and give feedback in comments or in messages please feel! Everything helps.

“You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.”

- Brian Johnson, The breakfast Club (1985)

Youth has always resisted the experience of growing up, while simultaneously striving to achieve the independence of adulthood, and being haunted by the inexperience of adolescence. Convenient Definitions is a game that captures the feeling of coming of age stories in the 80s and 90s American High School experience, as portrayed primarily by John Hughes in films such as the Breakfast Club, Farris Bueller's Day Off and Pretty in Pink.   Other inspirations and touchstones for this game include films such as The Outsiders, Stand by Me and Footloose.  This book uses the Belonging Outside Belonging diceless and GMless engine to create hyper collaborative stories and drama that evoke the anxiety, angst and passion of youth.  

Think back to the first time you saw a John Hughes Film.  There is  a certain magic in the way these films capture the vigor and apathy of teens in the 1980s. From the limited set pieces and intimacy of Breakfast club, to the direct frankness and honesty of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, emotion wells from these performances and captures what it meant to be young.  To be sure this is not the only way to experience "Coming of age" stories, but they do strike a unique cord.  In this book you will find all the tools to create your own unique story in this same genre. 

So here are the tools to make your own stories.  To capture that moment of winning the football game with a hail mary pass, despite what everyone said about your chances.  To Stand up to the bullies and the adults breathing down your neck.  A chance to rewrite the treatment of all the downtrodden or ignored kids and tell a story that makes us feel like everything is going to be ok and that we can "keep on, keeping on." 

The Game 

Convenient Definitions includes 7 playbooks that attempt to capture the feeling of school stereotypes and provides tools to overcome and break out of these roles.  This includes The Jock, The Nerd, The Prep, The Alternative, The Burnout, The Stoner and the New Kid.  The game also innovates the No Dice No Masters system, by introducing a mechanic to borrow moves from other playbooks when the barriers that divide these archetypes are broken and connection is found.

The world is defined at the table and by everyone and is represented through Pillars or in Belonging Outsider Belonging terms, “Setting Elements”.  The game world is driven by 4 pillars, Authority, Temptation, Connection and Hierarchy, all of which act on the players in dynamic ways.  These can be rooted in NPC’s that players create, or in the real world imposing itself on the idealistic teen spirit.  

Contributors

Alex Semmons, Creator and game Designer