Welcome to the fourth in a series of Design Diaries for Rocket Club by the game’s creator, Em Hubbard:
…
There’s one little numbered cube in Rocket Club that sparks all kinds of reactions, positive and negative. It’s the Mood Die. Every time dice are rolled, the Mood Die helps describe a character’s emotional state.
I can’t count the number of times someone has expressed concern about the idea of a dice roll telling them how their characters feel. It’s a natural reaction. We’re accustomed to dice telling us whether a character succeeds or fails, or what random event occurs, but the inside of our characters is a sacred space. That’s where we have the freedom to tell whatever story we want. The ogre knocks me over with its club? Well, that makes me angry… or scared… or I suddenly fall madly in love with them. I can understand why readers bristle at the idea of that agency being taken away.
So far, everyone who’s told me they were concerned about this changed their minds once they played the game.
The Mood Die’s purpose was never to demand that a character feel a certain way, or to force a player to roleplay according to a dice roll. My idea for the Mood Die came from thinking about the emotional turbulence of youth (and adulthood too). Feelings come and go fast, zipping by like rockets and either disappearing from view or exploding. In life, we never have complete control over our emotions, and this is especially true for kids.
Feelings are often passed over entirely in roleplaying games, or they exist only in the mind of the player. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions. My experiments with mood were inspired by The Veil, by Fraser Simons. In that game, emotions are the characters’ only attributes, and for every action, you must decide how your character feels before rolling. There’s also Daggerheart’s hope and fear mechanic and countless others. In Rocket Club I wanted emotion to be a constant and vital part of the story. When a player rolls dice, it’s always a situation that could go sideways or lead to dramatic consequences. Therefore it’s always a situation charged with emotion.
When a character decides to try to leap from rooftop to rooftop using their jet boots, they’re brimming with all sorts of feelings. There’s obviously excitement and fear, but there could also be love for the friends they’re rushing to protect, worry about someone left behind, a lingering anger over being put in this situation to begin with, and countless other emotions, big and small. The Mood Die doesn’t force the character into a single feeling, but rather focuses the player’s attention on one part of their character’s internal life.
Whenever a player rolls dice during the game, the result of the Mood die gives them a general mood and a question or statement to respond to. The questions lead to subtle descriptions of how the character feels – how does fear show on your face? What have you learned from sadness in the past? The statements represent an urge to act on a feeling, generally in a way that complicates things – break something; make a promise you might not keep. There’s a choice here. Do they let their feelings push them into action, or do they push the feeling away?
While the Mood die doesn’t force a character to feel a certain way, it does make the player slow down and think about how their character feels from moment to moment. It might just be a quick reply to a question, or it might dramatically shift the course of actions. Whatever happens, this moment places the character’s feelings in the spotlight.
Some of the best Mood die moments I’ve experienced were very subtle. A player rolls Fear and their Mood Prompt asks them how the emotion shows in their movement. They describe their fingers trembling as they pour fuel into a rocket. A player whose character always fades into the background rolls Hope. Their prompt says, “Stand up for someone.” Feeling like their character wouldn’t, they instead describe the heroic act the character imagines while they stand by and do nothing.
The Mood Die is ultimately expansive, not restrictive. And it leads to beautiful moments like these, moments that wouldn’t have been described without it.
Ready to jump into your own Rocket Rig and start testing the boundaries of science? Learn more about Rocket Club here or sign up for a playtest at this link!