Overview
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Description: The Whale is a Survival Horror Tabletop Role-playing Game where you play as a Sunken, someone driven mad by an Obsession they follow to the ends of an infinite ocean. You will satisfy your Obsession – or you will die trying.
This project was created for IGME-624: Tabletop RPG Design.
Project Length: September 2024 – December 2024
My Contribution
For this project, I was the team’s lead, producer, primary setting writer, and art director. I would lead meetings and discussions around major design decisions and delegate tasks to my team. I also worked on the game’s worldbuilding, and coordinated with artists to create art for our manual. Other responsibilities include:
- Organizing documentation
- Proofreading writing
- Testing mechanics
- Assisting in mechanics development
Worldbuilding & Conceptualization
Like many ideas, The Whale started as some thoughts jotted down on a piece of paper. The concept was simple: a game where you sail a ship on an endless sea. From there, the game concept was expanded upon; we added a magic system called Whale Marks, physical objects that when sewn into one’s skin allowed you to access its strange powers. The game also includes a mechanic called Obsession, where risking your life and following your Obsession to the ends of the ocean would grant you benefits. The setting and many of its mechanics are based off of the novel Moby Dick, and its inspiration is worn clearly.
When creating the locations in this world, we had to be careful to toe the line between telling too much and not saying enough. As the vision holder on this project, I worked with the team’s other writer to create locations that would provide a convenient access point to our game’s interesting mechanics and elaborate upon the world itself.
We created a number of areas for our players to explore while keeping plenty of space open in the world for a creative GM to build off of.
An important part of the world we had to consider was how these people would realistically live in this hostile environment. A fair amount of our mechanics and worldbuilding were built off of this singular conceit.
Coordinating Art
Creating the cover art for The Whale was particularly difficult as it needed to convey a sense of mystery while explaining the core of the world. The cover went through several iterations, but eventually became the cover as shown here. For The Whale, creating an artstyle that conveyed the our tone was paramount. I was responsible for coordinating our team’s artists, giving them tasks and keeping an artstyle consistent with our work. Our artstyle was reminiscent of sketches, with games like Darkest Dungeon being prominent inspirations.
Creating a functional and stylish map for our world is very important. It acts as both a birds-eye view into this games’ world and the first look into some of the game’s main locations. I spent a significant amount of time with our artists, mapping out the world of Nrost-Loch and creating a map that could represent both the mystique and the danger of the endless sea.
Composing the Book
I took on the bulk of formatting and book design when our book made the transition from google document to finished book. I spent three days putting a majority of our text and our images into our book, making decisions on where to use our art assets and how titles, tables, and other information were presented.
I got to exercise my visual aesthetic and interaction design skills, crafting a cohesive experience that introduced new concepts and mechanics seamlessly. I also kept reading fresh by using images that I helped coordinate the creation of. Many of these skills were skills I have never used in this medium and experimenting with it was an engaging experience.
Josh Chen 