Couple of weeks ago, I sat down and thought about the next steps for Arvel’s Archives. This place should be a general hub for all creative ideas and publications that I’m currently pursuing and offering. In general, Arvel’s Archive has more or less three pillars: Offerings in the general space of TTRPGs for already existing properties like D&D and own stand-alone products, and stories that I want to share with the world. On the D&D side, I’m currently doing several blog series about DM’ing and things that I have experienced in the past 5 years since starting this journey. With regards to my stories, there will probably an announcement in the next following weeks about a potential publication… it’ll be my first published fiction story and I’m so proud to see it be released to the world soon. And on the third pillar, there was the release of The Dream Date at the beginning of May. Let’s just say it like that, it hasn’t sold that much, but I’ve learnt so much about game design and especially journaling games that I’ve researched a bit about the current state of solo journaling games… when I found this amazing game named Void 1680 AM. It’s been amazing to play, as you’re taking the role of a radio DJ hosting an hour-long show, discussing some amazing tracks. It’s basically a simple game that lets you create a Spotify playlist on the fly that’s filled with so much memories and thoughts, that was really my jam. Truth be told, I’ve been having multiple playlists in the past that were basically „Kai’s soundtrack“, like what if someone wanted to make a movie about my life and what songs to choose for my autobiography. And it felt like that to some degree. Oh, by the end I not only had a 13-track playlist (I put one additional one there for the fun of it) but also a text that had around 1700 words.
So, most of all Pet Shop Boys, Dua Lipa, Daft Punk and some songs that might surprise some of my friends and family. But just during this very first playthrough, it reminded me of my uncle who did those radio shows on free local radio channels … and to some degree to what I did with movies at the university.
Back in the mid-2000s, I was at Saarland University and at some point I was in a lecture course about Artificial Intelligence. Prof. Dr. Siekmann proposed to do a film series with a local cinema about movies that dealt with A.I. And this turned out to be an interesting experience not just how to organize a film series, like getting film rolls, presentation rights and getting permissions to show a movie from estate rights holders. We also had talks with sponsors, created press release messages and at the day of the movies, we had a fifteen minute talk before each movie, discussing the topics and current state-of-the-art research results. I think I had a few talks but the stuff that I could save from that time was a presentation about I, Robot and Terminator 2. Since this was the last movie for that year before Christmas, I wanted to end with a bit of a laughter and made a „How to survive the Robot-Apocalypse“ talk. Let’s just say, if 2008-Kai saw today’s developments in AI and robotics, he would be more afraid than whimsical.
What does this have to do with Void 1680 AM you might ask… It’s basically the premise of that new game that I’m currently writing. In Reel to Real, you’re creating your own movie festival (or PJ watch party with your friends, if you like it more) where you select three movies out of… well… the entire film history based upon prompts. You will then host this small festival, make some remarks about the movie, have discussions with the auditorium and hopefully have lots of fun. I’ve had a lot of fun writing it in the last few weeks, making me reconnect with some amazing movie soundtracks that I had running in the background. And yes, it made me take a look back at some of my favorite movies of the past, some that I haven’t seen in over 20 years and revisit them now, years later. Just like Void 1680 AM did it for music and songs, I hope you’ll have a similar experience with movies and movie soundtracks when you’re playing this game.
I’m still doing some layouting, example playthroughs and hope to find some vict… I mean play testers to have additional remarks on the game. But overall I hope to release it soon on any of the TTRPG platforms.