Thank you so much to everyone who has backed and shared our campaign today! We are tantalizingly close to being halfway funded, and we can't wait to share more of the game with you over the next 30 days!

We asked Zhenya for some encouraging words to support our campaign, and they replied:
 

…So a big thanks to our good friend and evil witch Zhenya, who tends to be a little intense and speak in riddles and curses. On a more positive note, we’re thrilled to be crowdfunding their namesake game, Zhenya’s Wonder Tales!

The campaign is underway, and we’re carefully observing, and you can expect frequent updates and fun surprises as it proceeds! Please tell your friends - word of mouth is absolutely critical to our ultimate goal, which is to prove Zhenya wrong. 

Zhenya’s Wonder Tales is near and dear to our hearts because it encapsulates many things Bully Pulpit Games is all about. It’s fun out of the box, it’s carefully designed, and it’s beautiful. It’s weird and dark. Hopefully it will expose a bunch of new people to something new! We are all very proud of it, so thanks for stopping by. 

If you have any questions about Zhenya's Wonder Tales, please let us know. And if you’re excited for this project to be a success like we are, please tell your friends about it!. We’d really appreciate it.

--The Bully Pulpit Crew

For this update, we're going to dig into the anatomy of a wonder tale, and show you the structure so that you might be able to make your own. Consider it our version of a System Reference Document if you like!

A wonder tale is, in essence, the minimum scaffolding required to reliably tell the story. If every move card is brought into play, every beat of the original folk tale will come to light. In fact, the tales are robust enough that a few un-triggered move cards won’t present a problem. The vast range of interpretation and growing meaning-making during play means that every game will be fresh and, often, surprising. 

Each of the six wonder tales consist of 22 cards:

Written in Zhenya’s voice, this is a slightly mocking orientation to the nature of the tale. It is intended to whet the players’ appetites and set the tone. 

This card establishes the setting and offers suggestions for initial scenes, one for each character. It also includes four lines of doggerel! The goal here is to orient the players and get them started in the right direction. 

Each tale has four characters of equal interest and importance. A character card has an evocative illustration and name on one side, and information on the other. The information is broken into public and private information. Depending on player preference, “private” may mean initially secret from the other players, or openly shared at the table but initially secret from the other characters. Characters are highly tale-dependent, but where possible they are chosen to present a range of genders, ages, and outlooks. 

Each character has three moves explicitly tied to them. Triggering these moves is the core of the game, and as long as everyone is actively looking for ways to trigger moves for all four characters, the game will reliably roll along. As a general rule, each of the three move cards tied to a character has a slightly different focus. One will add new information to the tale, one will ask the player of the character to make a choice, and one will ask another player to make a choice. Again generally, the cards in this final category pointing at others are evenly distributed, so that each player will be called on one time by another player. 

These four cards address any specific events within the tale, as well as always including a “when two characters are in conflict” option flavored to taste. Often one card asks the whole group to lay on details to a scene the tale demands. These cards are necessarily flexible, and it is all right if some of them won’t be routinely triggered in play. 

That's it! It's pretty straightforward, but the nuance comes out in play at the table. We hope that once you've had a chance to try Zhenya's at your table, you'll start to think about how to make your own tales!