Who Are They? Deanna Abrams and Mike Jones

It’s no secret that sometimes our staff meet their person at camp. Two summers ago I, along with many other community members, had the pleasure of attending two long time staff members’ commitment ceremony, which was a truly magical celebration of the playful love these two have. They navigated working together, long distance, and competitive natures to find themselves here. And now they’ve moved across the country, Deanna taking on a full time position with us and Mike playing up a storm of percussive music. So of course I start by asking: If you needed to be summoned, what three objects would someone need to ritualistically summon you?

To which Deanna replied: “Number one, of course you would need a frisbee, because I would be so excited to come and chase it down. Number two would be a bottle filled with air from like a warm sunny day that had been captured. And number three would be some dark chocolate.”

And how to summon Mike? “I think you would need a pair of drumsticks.
It’s the obvious one. I think you would need a book, which might make it hard to summon me, because you’d need to find a copy of whatever book I was reading at that time. And then you would need a small vial of rain water that fell on a day in which I did not have to go outside. Because I love a cozy rainy day.”

They both started their Wayfinder journeys as campers and, weirdly enough both heard about camp through a cousin, though they never went to the same camps. Deanna’s competitive spirit brought her back year after year to play harder and try each new level of involvement (community leader, apprentice, staff, summer director). Whereas Mike savored his sword fighting time as a camper, only apprenticing when he was 18 because his friends told him too. Lo and behold, those same friends didn’t come back, and if it wasn’t for Mike’s steadfast nature to follow through on his apprenticing commitment, we would have lost him, but those two weeks apprenticing found him making new amazing friends and finally coming back for the community.

The two finally met at Staff week 2013, where they became friends, and they worked together, a lot, the following summer when they fell in love. Neither living near camp or near each other made camp a very special place where their relationship flourished (after hours and off campus, these two are very professional). “I love people who are motivated, who are good with kids, are exciting to be around, love fun and games, and don’t take themselves too seriously, and all that stuff was on full display.” Deanna said, while they were working at day camps. And they didn’t let their feelings make things complicated at camp, Mike felt that “working with Deanna has always felt really really really easy.”, thanks in part to the soft skills they learned at camp, such as how to really listen to someone, how to see from one another’s perspectives, and how to hold space for big feelings. Skills they both also use in their other careers.

Deanna has always been a passionate person and learned to follow those passions into a number of amazing jobs. As a kid she loved math and science which led her to a degree in physics, which was “very fun, very interesting.” After a couple of years working at a quantum computing startup doing quantum engineering (“which was really cool”), she was ready for a chance to follow her new passion, combating climate change. Having picked up some software engineering (noting that quantum engineering skills didn’t transfer well), she decided to find a startup that needed software engineers to work on climate tech. That’s how she ended up at her last job at the time of this interview. Deanna was working remotely as a senior software engineering manager. She led a team of software engineers, however most of the work force at the company were chemists trying to do something pretty cool. “They are trying to use chemistry to turn carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and then carbon monoxide can be used to make a bunch of stuff like jet fuel or other consumer goods that are being made. The tagline is Made From Air. So more carbon neutral or even potentially carbon negative products. We’re still a startup. We’re still in the prototyping phase. So this works in the lab. We’re trying to make it work at a scale where it is useful to anyone and fingers crossed that that goes well.” And now, lucky for us, her passion for working with kids has led her to take a full time position with us.

Mike graduated from grad school with a doctorate in Musical Arts in 2024. “I’m a percussionist by trade. So nowadays I am teaching.” During grad school there wasn’t time for much else, so Mike is finally getting a chance to breathe and see what new jobs and hobbies might come his way. He started this year off touring, playing music and teaching master classes at Bard and other universities along both coasts. He specializes in modernist music. “For those who don’t know, modernism was this artistic period in the late 19th century up until the late 20th century.” He goes on to describe his feelings for the music, “I think it is quite beautiful but [the music] does not care if you think it is.” Finding that fascinating in college he went to grad school to work with Steven Schick at UCSD who is a leading modernist percussionist in America. Mike has found that many skills he honed while teaching at camp he still uses. “I think that the biggest, most practical one is how to hold space and how to hold the attention of a room, especially when teaching or directing ensembles. I had someone ask me how I became such a good teacher one time” to which he said “it’s because I had to do it with 58 eight year olds in Woodstock in 90 degree weather.”

Wayfinder also helped Mike in other ways. “Wayfinder had a big impact on my development of empathy as a young man (biologically speaking). My gender has transformed as a result of knowledge which came from Wayfinder as well. The ability to communicate empathetically, the ability to think about other people’s perspectives came from the programming we do.” Deanna also notes these skills and more as useful in her life and work. “In my career I have run a handful of team bonding retreat days where we have icebreakers and we have trust workshops/team building.” So she has made play-maps and plotted out ways to have her work teams feel closer in a trusting and safe environment. “That’s just running a camp workshop for adults, a hundred percent.” Through her work, she has also been made to go to manager training which feels wild because “ these are skills that we’re teaching 11 year olds at camp.” These types of skills sadly can be lacking in the school system; and while they are often taught at summer camps, we bring it to another level at Wayfinder. We teach “how to be an active listener. how to create and hold space for vulnerability and how to receive vulnerability and respond to it in a positive and constructive way.”

This ability to hold space and really listen is at the heart of everything we do at camp. To be able to be playful, to be able to tell when it is ok to push a little, is a skill we are all working on fine tuning. When these two get into Adventures Games they are no stranger to reading these cues. They both told me fun stories of how they will invite play with each other while in character. They are both very comfortable with their competitive spirits and with one another, so they can use competition as a form of play as well. While playing Golden Blade, a player vs. player Adventure Game where teams got points by killing monsters and completing quests, Mike saw Deanna, who was on another team, sneak into the woods. Mike sent a teammate after her and within a minute there she was walking past him wearing a spirit costume as they exchanged knowing looks of “you got me.”

Deanna’s story was from The Interstate, a horror style Adventure Game where a small town gets visited by demons. She was playing a mother with a family and found herself confronted by demon Mike giving her the choice of which family member he will kill. She had led a bunch of players, playing as a baseball team, to the scene, and they were waiting outside of the small cabin while Deanna had to make her choice. “My favorite moments in Adventure Games are when my character surprises me, Deanna, and I’m like, oh, that felt like a decision someone else would make, or like a reaction someone else would have, or I didn’t know that I was capable of that.” In a panic and in character Deanna said what she thinks is one of the worst things she has ever said. “There are children outside. Take them instead” Luckily demon Mike didn’t take the kids and took her pretend husband instead. “It was my darkest moment. And my character had a breakdown thinking ‘I can’t believe that just came out of my mouth.’ And out of character I was thinking ‘I can’t believe that wasn’t premeditated.’ That wasn’t to make the scene better. That was just a desperation thing.” However, out of character, Deanna doesn’t think she would make that same choice should our town suddenly be overrun with demons.

That is what LARPing is all about for us at Wayfinder, learning about yourself while trying on different mindsets. Growing your understanding of others and the world through facing challenging choices. And learning when, how, and why to fight. A big thanks to these two for sitting down with us and being such instrumental staff in their own ways. Wish them joy and luck settling into the Hudson Valley.

 

Written by Trine Boode-Petersen from an interview in 2024

What’s the Word?

What’s the Word?: Using Verbs to Make Better Flow Points

Written by Milo Duclayan 5/2024

Imagine you’ve just written your first adventure game. The world is awesome, the characters are unique, the lists are gorgeous, and the flow is… well, the flow is written, to some extent. You know what you want the story to look like and some major plot points, sure, but there’s a problem: the gameplay is just not engaging. 

Gameplay and story are two very different things. The story is like a bird’s eye view of the entire game: it covers the themes and the aesthetic and the mission statement, as well as the plot at large. The gameplay is on the ground: the things that the players are actually experiencing and doing from moment to moment – the individual flow points. If the story is like looking at a forest, the gameplay is looking at each tree and seeing how it aligns with the rest.

So, your story is good, but your gameplay is struggling. You have your flow structure (see “Flows for Algernon” elsewhere on the blog for more details), but you’re struggling to make the flow points themselves interesting enough. My solution? Verbs.

This article is going to cover two things: what verbs are (in game design) and why they’re a useful framing device for your flow points, and a quick exercise that you can use to practice with verbs and get more creative with your flow.

First, what the heck is a Verb?

The verb of a flow point is the main action that player characters will be engaging with. Every flow point needs a verb, and most flow points already have them, even if you haven’t noticed it. 

Here’s a quick example flow point: The PCs battle through a horde of angry skeletons.

The verb here is actually already in the sentence: “Battle”. “Battle”, “Fight”, and “Kill” (and other verbs along those lines) are some of the most common verbs in adventure games. Other common verbs are things like “Fetch/Collect/Retrieve/Get” or “Talk/Listen/Learn”.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with those verbs. They’re common for a reason. But because they’re so common, it’s very easy to end up with a game full of them, and a game full of the same verbs gets repetitive fast.

The Exercise – Verbing your Flow

Here’s the exercise. This won’t give you a perfect flow point, but it’ll really help you kickstart your brain into thinking differently about how they tick in a helpful way. 

Head to google and find yourself a Random Verb Generator. Try not to have any story in mind when you start this exercise, just be open to all possibilities. When you’re ready, roll yourself a random verb.

Now, take no more than 10 minutes, and make a flow point that uses that verb as its core action. I’ll do one alongside you so you can have some reference. Here’s the verb I’ve rolled: “Heat”.

When you roll for random verbs, you will get some very weird ones. At first it might be hard for you to imagine how you could make them into a flow point, but that’s why we’re doing this. The more you find ways to fit weird verbs into flow points in practice, the more unique and engaging your real flows will start to become. The easiest way I’ve found to start building a flow point is to define some or all of its five W’s (and H): Who, What, When, Where, Why (and How).

So, I need to make a flow point around the verb “Heat”. I can start by thinking about what they might be heating – let’s go with a furnace for an engine. Next I need to decide how they go about doing that action – maybe they have to take turns pumping a set of bellows. Lastly, the consequence – why the players are doing this flow point – if they don’t keep heating this engine, their friends inside the building will freeze. I’m missing the Who, When, and Where, but I think this is enough to give myself a solid idea of the flow point.

Done! Alright. Is this a good flow point for a game? Probably not. But it doesn’t have to be. The goal of this exercise isn’t to make perfect flow points – it’s to get you comfortable with using unusual actions, and finding more creative ways for your players to play your game (and also teach you some new verbs! You never know when a verb might come in handy). You can translate this skill into your real games, too.

Making verbs work for your game – Foundations

The reason this is an exercise and not something you can use for every adventure game is that some verbs just aren’t good fits. We write games for our players, so when we come up with the verbs that we’re actually going to use for our game, there are a few extra things we need to consider. These can be broken down into three main categories: empowerment, diversity, and mission. The first two are more foundational so we’ll do those first, and we’ll get to mission a bit later.

Empowerment is something that we often talk about in a vague way, but using verbs to define our flow points can make things much clearer. Empowerment is all about choosing engaging verbs, things that will give our players strong, active emotions. Active is an important word here, because verbs that let the players be active participants will almost always make for stronger flow points than passive verbs. Listen is a much less engaging verb than Talk. This is often the make-or-break for beginning game writers, and it’s one of the first things we look for when picking games to run for the summer. If your game is full of inactive verbs, you are relying on the players to make their own fun – and while they certainly can and will, it’s always better for them to have an engaging game to build on.

In addition to being active, your verbs should also be chosen with intent. While verbs like “Fight” and “Talk” are useful, they’re often used as a backup for when a writer isn’t sure what they want out of a flow point. When you decide what verbs you’re going to use for a scene, try to keep in mind the actual goals of that scene, not just in terms of the story and plot, but in terms of what emotions and challenges you want the players to experience. If that happens to be a fight, great – but choose all of your verbs with intent, and the players will feel it. 

Diversity of verbs is another key thing you need to consider when you’re making the verbs for your game. Diverse games have two main things: wide ranges of verbs across the entire experience, and original verbs to create unique experiences. A diverse game will feel completely different to the players than any other game they’ve played, and will keep them engaged all the way through. 

When considering the diversity of verbs in a game, the top priority is to make sure that your game as a whole has a wide range of verbs. This is another one of those key issues for early writers, but the reasoning is pretty simple: having flow points with different types of verbs available at the same time during your game will give everyone a chance to do something that they’ll enjoy. A game shouldn’t be all fight and fight-related verbs, because some players just don’t like fighting. A lack of diversity of flow points can often be hard to recognize when you’re writing a game without guidance, but being able to condense the experience of each flow point down to a verb makes it much easier to recognize and resolve.

After you’ve built a diverse foundation of verbs across the entire game, there’s the more advanced problem of common verbs. Your PCs have likely played tons of games filled with verbs like “fight”, “get”, or “talk”. It’s fine to have some of these verbs, and it’s often necessary to have some or all of them in some parts of your flow. Once you’ve learned the foundations, though, being able to find creative and unique verbs for your flow points can really help elevate your game to a whole new level. These flow points tend to be the most memorable, the things that people think about long after the game is over. That being said, creativity of verbs can’t come before the player experience. It won’t matter how unique your flow is if your players aren’t feeling empowered and engaged.

Making verbs work for your game – Putting it into Practice

In a game I ran back in 2022 called Tales of Anywhere, I had a series of flow points where the PCs needed to retrieve powerful relics from the gods of the world. While I could’ve just used the verb “Get” for all of those flow points, that would’ve meant having players do a really similar thing three times in a row. Instead, the verbs I used for those scenes were “Trick”, “Sneak”, and “Die”. These are all methods of achieving the same thing, but the core action is entirely different and way more engaging. In the “Trick” scene, the PCs went to a powerful god to get the artifact from them directly. This could have easily just used the verb “talk”, but remember, it’s always better to use active, intentional verbs when possible. Instead of just having a conversation and then giving the players the object, the players needed to actively trick the god into giving it to them, making it a much more empowering scene. Also notice that while the end goal is the same, each of these verbs is very different: “sneak” is more combat-oriented, “trick” is a social challenge, and “die” is a roleplay-heavy scene. Because of this, players have plenty of variety in the experiences they can choose from.

Here’s another one: in Jay Dragon’s 2016 game The Horned King, there were a series of boss battles – it would be really easy to call these “fights”, but again, that would be exhausting to do over and over again. Instead, each boss battle had a different verb that made them feel really unique – Chase, Defend, Survive, Deceive, etc. This made the entire game feel incredibly dynamic, while still getting to keep the ‘boss rush’ style of flow.

The Mission Statement is something that Jay talked about in their article Drawn with Courage, which you can find earlier on the Story Board blog. At its core, the mission statements are like the overarching verbs of the entire game. In that article, referencing The Horned King, Jay uses the mission statements “Participating in the Ritual, Preparing Tactics and Executing Them, Feeling Unsure and Betrayed, and Fearing the Horned King” to describe the game’s core actions. Each of the verbs you choose for your flow points should support one (or better, multiple) of your mission statements. If your game is about glorious combat, choose verbs for your flow points that are powerful and combative. If your game is about dying in the darkness, choose verbs about running, hiding, and sacrificing. This won’t be the thing that makes a game unable to run, but making sure all of your verbs align with your mission can really help push the cohesion of the game to a new level. 

Connecting verbs to your mission statement is also a great time to make use of unique game systems and mechanics. If you have a verb you plan to use often in your flow but you don’t think there’s a way to do it with the standard Wayfinder magic system, you can make one of your own. In Tales of Anywhere, I wanted “forgetting” to be a core verb of the game. There’s no memory mechanic in the Wayfinder magic system, so I made my own – for each second a certain monster was touching you, you’d forget a year of your life. Then I tied this mechanic into a bunch of my flow points where I wanted “forgetting” to be the verb. Just remember not to make too many new mechanics or you risk diluting your theme, or worse, ending up with a bunch of confused players.

Here’s a little bonus trick to wrap things up: you can do this exercise in reverse, too! Take any set of flow points that you’ve already written, and take a minute to try and break down what the core verbs of those flow points are. This can help you get a better idea of what your own game will actually look and feel like from the ground. It can also help you see where you’re starting to fall into the traps I mentioned above, like if you have a bunch of “fight” flow points in a row, or too few unique verbs, or your verbs just aren’t active enough.

If you look at a flow point and you can’t actually find any core verb for the PCs, that’s something to fix too – chances are you accidentally focused too hard on what’s happening with the SPCs or overall plot, and the actual actions of the players slipped away.

Conclusion

Verbs are an incredibly useful tool to have in your toolbox, and they’re big all over the world of game design for a very good reason. Even if you never end up using the exercise or breaking down your previous flow points, understanding that the core of your game is player action can help you hone in on what will make your game genuinely fun to play. The point of verbs is to remember that the game, at its core, is all about what the players are doing – you can make the most beautiful sets and the best story ever, but at the end of the day, the players will experience what they do above all else. 

For me, there are two key takeaways from these exercises with verbs. First, you need to make sure that your verb foundations are solid before you start getting fancy with it – lock down your active verbs and make sure your game has a wide range of action types before you start messing with anything else. Second, when you are ready to start getting funky with your verbs, have fun with it! Trust your instincts, and let your creativity flow. Believe me, your game will thank you for it. 

 

Written by Milo Duclayan 5/2024