Hundreds of copies of Assemblage, Nat Mesnard's card-based TTRPG of World Building and World Breaking, are officially crossing an ocean to make their first stop in New York City before heading to homes all over the world next month!
Check out this rad article that Nat wrote about Assemblage for Edge Effects.
"This project in particular has taken me on a weird (and wonderful) journey toward relating more intentionally with my own power. Increasingly, understanding such dynamics has felt to me like a matter of queer survival—which is why, I think, Assemblage ended up telling stories of strange organisms who contend with world-breaking cataclysmic change..."
A Special Update from Nat on Assemblage Bonus Content
Dear Assemblage Backers,
I've been working with Laurie Blake, the author of Why We Fight, to develop our "Collective Action" expansion and design a hybrid experience that merges dice-based, GM-less fascist-fighting TTRPG mechanics with the squishy story game design of Assemblage.
We've been meeting weekly to make progress on the design for the expansion. Our design conversations have ranged from a mutual love of Scavenger's Reign, to exploring ways to apply crunchier mechanics to story game cards, to imagining eco-horror endings. It's been so much fun.
Recently, I had the opportunity to take our in-progress design to Metatopia, the game designers' conference in Morristown, NJ where I playtested two sessions under the name "Solarpunk Naturalists." These playtests showed me a lot about where the join between the two game systems resonates most, and benefited from the perspectives of designers with expensive experience in TTRPG, LARP, sci-fi writing, and more.
There's still more work to do following those playtests, but I think we have a really exciting game on our hands — and Laurie and I are already imagining new things we can do with this hybrid system, which I'm calling a "system of encounter" since it lets groups embody both a human team and the environment they're investigating and exploring.
I can't wait to show this game to you. The tentative release date for this exciting expansion is early next year, but we'll keep you in the loop as things evolve!
