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Howdy stargazers! It’s time for us to take a look at a different game made over here at Tin Star Games. When browsing their library of games, I found myself landing on their newest addition to the family, Partners!  If you haven’t heard Partners is a fun game designed for two (though they have rules for varying player numbers). Any theater kid will feel right at home picking it up—no kidding, picking up the game felt like I was right back in improv class, I loved those classes. In many ways this game feels more like telling a story or a fun mad lib exercise

After reading through I thought I would go over the mechanics for building a cast of characters before building two lead characters to give you an idea of what starting a campaign in Partners could look like, and for you active players maybe give you some new ideas for your next game!

The Mechanics
Partners gives you a sheet with some questions to fill out for each cast member. Among the cast, there are two lead roles—these are each player’s main character if you will—and each of them fills a certain trope: the straight shooter and the wild card. The supporting cast—each of which is played by the two players respectively—consists of the subordinate and touchstone for the straight shooter player, and on the wild card side you have the superior and the oddball. The book gives you a lot of great examples for all these characters and how you might portray them in your game, but for today we are just going to focus on the lead roles!

The straight shooter is the by-the-book, rule-abiding character. They generally care what others think and have a strong code they follow. The wildcard is certainly the counterpart, a loose cannon who plays by their own rules not giving a damn what others think. The player’s guide gives you a bunch of examples from pop culture for these roles, so instead of giving my own I will just focus on the how of it. Each role has three questions to answer; what were you before becoming a detective, how can you tell that you are the straight shooter/wild card, and deep down what is the reason why you respect the other role?

The idea is to answer these questions on your own and then meet back up to see what you came up with, by doing this apart you get a show you could never have planned out any other way! For the supporting cast, swap sheets fill out one of the characters, and then swap again and fill out the remaining one. Simple as that.
Now with the basics out of the way, I thought I would create the lead roles and share them here to give you some ideas of your own. Because this requires two players—and to keep in the spirit of creating characters randomly as the game intends—I grabbed my wife and gave her the responsibility of filling out the wildcard. Below you’ll find our creations!

The Straight Shooter
Zabaniyya Mahdavi, friends call her Ani, made detective a year ago. Before making detective, she was a guardian of hell. Yep, you heard that right. After being a warden of the underworld for the last millennium she decided it was time to go where she could actually make a difference. Contrary to the common misconception about fiends, they are actually very good at following rules and taking orders. It’s how you can tell she is the straight shooter after all, she’s good at playing by the rules and her demonic background makes her have a fierce and passionate desire to dispense justice. Though it irks her to say it, the thing that she actually respects about the wildcard is the way that she is her own boss and doesn’t take crap from anyone.

The Wildcard
Lailah Valenzuela is a private detective and has been running her own firm for the last five years. Before that? She was an angel of law in heaven. She got tired of being the middle lady and doing other people’s errands, so she went on sabbatical. Now she is her own boss, because obviously an angel doesn’t take orders from some human—they’ve been in existence for like, what, half a minute? They’re hardly old enough to boss themselves around. Everyone knows she’s the wildcard because she walks onto the scene like she owns it, other people’s rules were made to be broken or just outright don’t apply to an angel like her. Lailah doesn’t know why, but the thing she really respects about Ani is the way the girl truly cares about these humans. It makes her sometimes realize just how apathetic heaven has made her.

The Finishing Touches
So, there you have it! Two leading ladies for a new cop drama. A hard-working demon who believes in closing cases to make sure the bad guys get what are coming to them, and an apathetic angel who thinks she needs no one else to do what she does best. Just by answering those three questions my wife and I have created some interesting characters for a show that I would honestly love to watch. And yes, even though these two characters seem so in sync, we did make these characters separately without discussion—I blame the last two months spent on Relics!

This show seems like it could be somewhere along the lines of Castle meets Lucifer if you ask me! For a name we landed on In-Between Cases, playing on the fact one comes from heaven the other from hell and that they are cops on earth.

Let me know what you think over at twitter @tinstargames1. Bonus stars to anyone who shoots their ideas for supporting cast members on discord and I’ll feature them on the next installment. Next month I plan on breaking down how to play an episode—PS it’s really easy all you need is a deck of cards and a word generator/dictionary—so, if you haven’t already, join the newsletter and keep up to date with everything going on over here. 

​Hello Star Gazers! Last month I showed you a way to play a Supernatural themed game of Relics, and this month I wanted to follow up by diving a little deeper into the memory system. To me, the memory system is one of the things that makes a game of Relics so unique. As a forever GM, the first time this system had me letting the reins go to my players to define moments of the past was pretty bewildering and exciting. There is something so much more engaging about having the table take such an involved part in the storytelling. It is honestly a great tool to utilize and the more effort your players put into it, the better your overall story ends up, and the more engaged the whole table ends up being. With this in mind, I am going to be giving you a gaze at how memories work and also giving some suggestions on how you or your players can come up with a new memory on the spot—which, let’s be honest, can be one of the most intimidating part of this system—so what do you say, will you take a walk down memory lane with me?

What is a memory?
Out of context this is a pretty funny question, but like any tabletop game, the memory system has mechanics to it and isn’t just a device for storytelling. Before we get into the meat of the content, however, I think it prevalent to start with a little rundown of how this system works on a mechanical level. As always, Relics leans heavy into the story part which makes their mechanics light and easy to understand. The most mechanical “crunchy” portion is that each memory a player has connected to their persona/character imparts a certain connected skill which the player themselves design based on the memory. While the specifics of the skill are chosen by the player, they all fall into one of the five categories in the game (striking, enduring, moving, speaking, or knowing).

Now, to keep it short, sweet, and simple, the creation of a memory looks like this; one player needs a memory (aka a skill)—either as part of their starting memories at persona creation, or in the heat of the moment during a session—a different player offers this by retelling a moment their personas shared. The player giving the memory is responsible for shaping the story and creating what will be a canon history between their two personas. The player receiving the memory has the right to interpret the memory as they see fit, pulling the skill necessary from their interpretation of the memory told to them. Relics gives some great examples of how this may look, which I will go into at the end; additionally, I will also share some of my own ideas for some ways to frame the mechanical side of the memories.
Now with the mechanics out of the way the question is how? How do we give a memory in a fun and constructive way that benefits the table and doesn’t move the spotlight away from the story that has been being told?

Give me a memory. Did somebody say Flashback!
One of the best tools for explaining past events in books, and especially cinema, is the method of using a flashback. I found looking at this narrative structure as a great way to start thinking about how to frame a memory while playing. Every genre of TV show and movie has examples of this, and every great director has done their take on how to deliver a flashback, so no matter your flavor of story, there is something you can find to help in this task! You have classic flashbacks where the past is simply retold or shown from movies like the Godfather, to more abstract takes on flashbacks like is seen in the entirety of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. TV shows will often spend entire episodes doing a flashback to showcase how a character got through a part of their life or made it to where they are now, and then some like Loki use it as a literal backdrop movie playing in a scene while the character is questioned about the events.
As a player, look at some of your favorite retellings and ask yourself “how can I take the bones of this for my own storytelling toolkit?” Really take the time to break down these scenes and see what motivated the flashback and what said flashback accomplished in its telling. To further help I will conclude by breaking down a scene from Loki and showing how this can be explained in a mechanical manner as well. The smallest of spoilers for Episode 1 of Loki follow bellow!

Wait! That was you all along!?
In a nod to history, Loki reveals that the main protagonist of the same name was responsible for the great unsolved mystery of DB Cooper. This is revealed by the interrogation of Loki by Mobius where he shows him a reel of his “greatest hits”, if you will, one such scene being him as DB Cooper jumping from the airplane with all the money. Okay spoiler complete! Phew! So, let’s turn this into a Relic moment, shall we?

Here’s our scene; we are at the table and a player needs a skill to get through an intense moment involving needing to escape a well watched area in an upcoming heist. Let’s call this player Loki, he calls for a memory and another player—let’s call him Mobius—offers this memory. Now he could have paused and described this memory out of character and how he observed Loki in the past, but instead we are going to keep it in the moment like the show. So, Mobius turns to Loki and grabs him by the shoulders and says “What are you afraid of? This is hardly the worst moment you’ve gotten yourself out of Loki. I mean remember that time on a whim where you thought it would be funny to scare all the humans by hijacking a plane, convincing them to let you take all the money and fly off again, then you jumped from it midflight with all that money instead of landing? There are still people looking for that money, and even more convinced that it never happened at all. Your prank became a myth, if you could escape as DB Cooper, I think you can walk yourself out of this one.” Loki grins and quickly jots down this information—here comes the mechanical choice—Loki could decide that this memory is telling of his skill to convince his way out (speaking) or perhaps is telling of his acrobatics prowess of skydiving (moving). His heist isn’t taking place on another plane, so he decides to make the skill speaking based.

This little example not only shows you a method of telling a memory, but also how to receive and interpret it in a couple ways. This memory did more than just supply a means for a skill though; this anchored the persona to a historical moment and identity that can potentially be referenced in the future in countless ways.

Until Next time!
This concludes another month, so head on over to the discord and tell us what you thought of this little dive on memories. And if you are feeling extra creative how about a little challenge! Head on over to twitter and @tinstargames1 sharing some of your best made memories. I look forward to your shares and hearing from my fellow Star Gazers. Next month I will be sharing a fresh take on a different game, so stay tuned by joining the newsletter because I’ve got a lot more coming!

Welcome Tin Star Fans! Time once again for our monthly company update! And the biggest news of all has to do with images like the one to the left there. You might have seen images like that popping up on our social media over the last few weeks. We've started counting down...but down to what?

The answer is TREASURES ON EARTH our new deluxe supplement, coming to Kickstarter in early October. Over the coming month we will be revealing more and more about this book, but as you may imagine it will focus on new relics and their powers. The kickstarter will also be a chance for new backers to pick up the core rulebook and we have other surprises in store!
​And Speaking of Kickstarters, Tin Star is very proud to be contributing to the Tiny Library ​a collection of 50 games, each small enough to fit on a single card. The kickstarter is already 700% funded after just two days which will allow for a truly gorgeous collection and all the profits will be shared with all contributors!
And we haven't forgotten Partners! The hardcopies are on their way to Australia now and then it should be just a few weeks to get them out to your waiting hands! With any luck we'll be fulfilling the final part of the Partners kickstarter as the Relics one rolls out! The final stretch goal, our seventh, is the Tea Time Files, focusing on the more genteel murders and the ladies of a certain age who pursue them. It's been a joy to see what we can put the Partners engine to, and we'd love to see what ideas you have! If we get sufficient interest we'll set up a license so you can produce and publish your own Files!
Till Next Month!

Welcome to a new series of Tin Star Blogs. Each month, our resident Tin Star expert R. Chauncey Gunmere takes a look at parts of our games in new and interesting lights. This week, the star is Supernatural.

Monthly Updates Now Coming to this Blog!
We now have so much news coming out we're going to make it much easier for you to keep track of by posting updates about all our products at the start of every month! We'll also be posting more stuff here about tips and tricks to get the most out of our games, which we'll be called Tin Stargazing. Look out for those! You can sign up to get an alert whenever the blog updates (see nearby box) AND you can also sign up to our mailing list, which will also be sending out the same content! Choose the method you prefer to get all your Tin Star news!

We can confirm that in October we'll be launching a kickstarter for the next big Relics supplement. Over the next few months we'll be leaking hints and tidbits about the supplement and all the other goodies we'll be adding to the campaign. We want there to be tons of options for extra stuff so that even the dedicated Relics collector has new toys while also providing a place for the new fan to get started.

Partners books are now in our warehouse. We are currently doing the last bit of calculations into postage costs and once that's done we'll be sending out postage bills to all backers. Then we start mailing them out! We should have them to Australian backers by September, a little later for international folk. In the meantime remember we have FOUR supplements already out for the game and available through our store on itch.io

Colin Kloecker of Terribly Beautiful has built a terribly beautiful machine: a​ simple program that takes as its input any body of text and spits out the most common words within it. With whole novels uploaded thanks to Project Gutenberg, this gives you an enormous amount of cool options to develop your own random word lists and "oracle" mechanics, perfect for games of Partners! We liked it so much we installed the bot into our Discord. Instructions are in the pinned post and we also have Tin Star staff mooching around the Discord at all hours if you need any help - or have any other questions about any of our Tin Star Games! 

As promised, Partners is now available since backers have been sent their copies! You can grab it here, or pledge for the hardcopy instead! Now get out there and find the killer!

Check out the pre-launch page! ​

You know how it goes. One's a real straight shooter. The other's a total wildcard. But on the case they are always...Partners.

Partners is a unique new storytelling game for two players from award-winning designer Steve Dee. A love-letter to the police procedural and mystery of the week television genre, players take the roles of detectives hot on a murder case each session of play. Instead of players trying to discover a plot created by a GM or freeform a solution, random card draws slowly reveal which suspects are in play and what kind of clues they provide. Only when the final card is drawn in the final scene will the detectives - and the players - know who did it.  

Designed to suit anyone from experienced roleplayers to crime fiction writers to novices who just love the genre, Partners is the perfect game for anyone who cannot get enough of solving mysteries, and being an irascible duo along the way. Published as a beautiful softback book and only needing a single deck of cards it can be played anywhere by anyone who has ever seen a cop show, and you can even expand it out for more than two if you wish. It also plays well online making it a great gift in these isolation times. 

Partners​ will be kickstarted in May. ​

​Relics is now available on Roll20. This mod gives you access to the Quickstart Rules and lets you run the game on a beautiful backdrop complete with fillable character sheets and the beautiful Relics tarot cards. To celebrate this we are looking for someone to be paid to run Relics online! If you stream your RPGs or would like to and want to run Relics through Roll20, get in touch with us right away and find out how you can earn money playing RPGs!

If you'd like to join a game you'll find us at Arcanacon Online on the 23rd and 24th of January. One of the Relics writers, Jake Nelson, will be GMing and seats are still available as of this post!

Looking further afield, Tin Star Games will also be appearing at Session Zero Con, a digital convention in the Phillipines on the 30th and 31st. The RPG scene in South East Asia is among the most exciting on the planet and we are very proud to connect with our neighbours!

Finally, if you love solo RPGs (like our game The Tin Star) you can find our other solo RPG Two Faces in this astounding bundle of solo RPGs: 87 games for just $10, and all to raise money for mental health care! 

And this is just the beginning. 2020 sucked; 2021 is going to be a banner year for you, for us, for Relics!

Now you can get it on a t-shirt. Or a phone cover, or a throw cushion or a postcard or a shopping bag. Shop till you drop and ascend to heaven at Redbubble!