This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

Bare Threads is a trifold pamphlet game by Axiom Delver. It’s a game in which you use a Cat’s Cradle to help to communicate the complexity of difficult conversations.

The basics of the game are that you engage in conversation with the other player, with each exchange in the conversation being a new position in the progression through the figures in the list. When you complete an exchange, shorten the string and continue. The example given is two ambassadors who are negotiating a treaty while also dealing with romantic tension.

Bare Threads is the third prompt-based game I’ve read this month as part of Critique Navidad (see Dead After Dinner, Hwæt! and The Cog That Remains) and I’ve spoken at length by this point on the weaknesses of the format. Suffice to say, Bare Threads doesn’t consist any support at all for what you’ll be playing: It comes across as more of an SRD than a game. It cites Star-crossed as inspiration, and I see the connection, but Star-crossed contains settings and characters and a set context for play, right there in the title.

In many ways Bare Threads reminds me of The Fishing Minigame, which is both praise and condemnation. It is a fantastic concept, and one that actually makes the experience of a fraught conversation feel fraught. That’s exceptional! What a cool achievement! However, is it a whole game? No, it’s not enough. Maybe it could be enough if it had chosen a specific situation. Specificity makes for better art. But in the other direction, it could’ve been an exceptional module for MOSAIC-STRICT, rather than trying to stand alone as a game.

The issue here is one I’ve seen a lot this month: one of the pitch. I knew about Dawn of the Orcs, but the game is so much better than its pitch which went over my head simply because it doesn’t feel pitched at parlour larpers. Xeno shouldn’t have been a pamphlet game, and even then might have been better a module for another system than its own game. Wulfwald isn’t just “the setting OD&D should’ve had”, but its own whole unique thing in competition with completely different company. I’m seeing games repeatedly that both pitch themselves poorly from a marketing perspective, but also in their internal production goals. I don’t know if this is blindness to the market, or something else, but it means clever seeds often don’t come to fruit, and if they do, they’re not finding their audiences.

For me, Bare Threads doesn’t come to fruit, but there’s a version of Bare Threads that’s an essential part of any game that involves difficult conversations, that is brought out whenever politics or intrigue comes into play. That version of Bare Threads will linger in my mind for a long time to come.

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