I love Puppetland because of its surreal and disturbing setting. Also, the review by Fatal & Friends is neat because it highlights how Puppetland has suffered internal contradictions due to feature creep in second and third edition.

What do you think of Puppetland? What do you think of the feature creep and internal contradictions?

Dude, is that even a RPG? I could only get 3 paragraphs in to the blog post about it before realizing that I would never get anybody I wanted to game with interested in playing that.

Quote from: jeff37923;1145414Dude, is that even a RPG? I could only get 3 paragraphs in to the blog post about it before realizing that I would never get anybody I wanted to game with interested in playing that.

The third edition is available on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/186347/Puppetland

You can read the first edition here: http://johntynes.com/revland2000/rl_puppetland.html

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I don't know if I'd ever be able to get a group together to play the game, but I do find it interesting enough that I'd like to fix the gaping holes in its world building.

The review points out that several elements of Puppetland 3rd edition, like the Devil and the Blue Fairy, don't make sense as something the Maker would have created. I think this would have made more sense in the 1st edition, ironically, because the 1st edition backstory states that Maker's Land was a home for all puppets from across and not just those created by the Maker.

The "creation myth" of Punch killing the Maker has three different versions and each has dramatically different implications.

One idea I liked from the Something Awful thread:

QuoteReading the notes on the third version of Puppetland I sighed a little, because I fell in love with the 1995 edition long ago and particularly loved that little twist about the world being a toyshop display that the second edition moved firmly away from. I can't entirely blame it, but I always felt it was a better idea for what is ultimately a horror game.

You see, it was a valid take that perhaps Mr Punch did not kill the Maker. Rather, Mr Punch saw the Maker dragged away by the Brownshirts and knows he is not coming back (hence the missing body). The sheer horror of confronting a child's toy with the reality of the Holocaust and that sending Mr Punch insane was, I felt, a genuine suckerpunch to round out the setting - he really does know a dark and terrible secret and the puppets can triumph by working out (a) a way to get him to come to terms with it, and (b) working out a way to survive without the Maker. But I can understand some groups not wanting to go there, I suppose.

Although very evocative, this explanation has a couple of holes. Where did Punch get the human skin from? How did Judy get the Maker's Tear?

I think a possible way to fix the creation myth and adequately answer questions would be to combine the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition versions.

Maker's Land is a Christopher Robin-esque self-contained world the Maker created to be a haven for all puppets across the world victimized by the war. The Maker's own puppets were basically just normal puppets. However, some of the puppets from elsewhere in the world had magical powers, such as the Blue Fairy and the Puppet Devil, or were dangerous beasts like the Crocodile. The Devil in particular brought his entire domain of Down Bellow with him, though nobody went there while the Maker was still alive because the Maker could always repair the puppets back to full functionality.

The Castle was the Maker's House in Maker's Land. Punch and Judy visited one day, and Punch slew the Maker. Judy captured the Maker's Tear and fled. Punch skinned the Maker's head and then pushed the body through the trapdoor. Then Punch closed the trapdoor, not realizing it only opened one-way. Judy thinks Punch hid the body somewhere, not knowing it's under the castle beneath a trapdoor nobody can open.

The nutcrackers are harder to incorporate when Punch's limitation is that he can't create more puppets without human skin. How does the Nutcracker factory invest nutcrackers with life that Punch cannot? The best I can think of is to explore the statement on p104 that nutcrackers are actually from the Land of Sweets (I'm not going to touch that can of worms yet). Inside the Nutcracker factory is some kind of fairy blackbox that brings the nutcrackers to life? I don't know.

Puppetland sounds really interesting, so I'm frustrated by all those inconsistencies.

Not my cuppa, but have fun with your storygame.

I've read through the First Edition, which I found intriguing but never tried.

I dislike the idea connecting it to the Holocaust. I think it's much stronger to connect play to the dark side of traditional children's stories - which to my mind is the point of the game. I might be tempted to try running a convention one-shot of it -- that's one of the more common ways that I get to play weird games like this, because it's drawing from a wider pool of players for only those who would be into this sort of thing. A lot of the play would revolve around who the PCs are and how they interact, though. It's a very characterization-heavy game, since all speaking is in-character speaking.

Honestly it sounds pretty cool despite the lore problems.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1145396I love Puppetland because of its surreal and disturbing setting. Also, the review by Fatal & Friends is neat because it highlights how Puppetland has suffered internal contradictions due to feature creep in second and third edition.

Well damn, I didn't even know it had a second and third edition.

I liked the first.  From your notes, it sounds like maybe I didn't miss too much.

Quote from: jeff37923;1145414Dude, is that even a RPG? I could only get 3 paragraphs in to the blog post about it before realizing that I would never get anybody I wanted to game with interested in playing that.

I have one of the early versions. Not sure if its the first or not. But it reads like a grimdark storygame version of Fuzzy Heroes.

Quote from: Slambo;1145443Honestly it sounds pretty cool despite the lore problems.

I thought so too. The premise is just inherently cool. Grimdark puppets? Sign me up!

Quote from: Thornhammer;1145445Well damn, I didn't even know it had a second and third edition.

I liked the first.  From your notes, it sounds like maybe I didn't miss too much.

The third edition has tons of neat stuff compared to the first edition. The downside is the rather haphazard world building. Despite that, the setting is still super cool.

Quote from: Omega;1145451I have one of the early versions. Not sure if its the first or not. But it reads like a grimdark storygame version of Fuzzy Heroes.

The 2nd edition was the first to be physically published, and it was a double package with Powerkill. The 2nd edition introduces the Candy Cave, if you want to make sure.

Quote from: jhkim;1145441I've read through the First Edition, which I found intriguing but never tried.

I dislike the idea connecting it to the Holocaust. I think it's much stronger to connect play to the dark side of traditional children's stories - which to my mind is the point of the game. I might be tempted to try running a convention one-shot of it -- that's one of the more common ways that I get to play weird games like this, because it's drawing from a wider pool of players for only those who would be into this sort of thing. A lot of the play would revolve around who the PCs are and how they interact, though. It's a very characterization-heavy game, since all speaking is in-character speaking.

Yeah, I didn't like connecting it to the real world either, since (as the review explains) that is a can of worms which turns it into a horrific urban fantasy rather than the storybook fantasy it was originally.

If I was trying to make the setting more of a Christopher Robin type deal, then I'd introduce other magical realms instead of the real world. Like, the Land of Sweets would be accessible through a Coraline-style eldritch doorway. It briefly occurred to me to introduce the Land of Nightmares as a source of external threats to Puppetland rather than the real world.

Quote from: jhkim;1145441I dislike the idea connecting it to the Holocaust.

I find the idea it kinda tacky. Trying too hard in a way. At the very least find some other catastrophe to link it too.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1145508I find the idea it kinda tacky. Trying too hard in a way. At the very least find some other catastrophe to link it too.

Fair enough. I think it's okay to just leave it timeless rather than tied to any point in real world history. That way, we can include more modern varieties of puppets, like those made using materials from craft stores and stuff. I remember owning a book about how to make puppets out of household junk, but I can't find it right now.

I should still have one of those from several decades ago. And should still have one me and my grandmother made together from one of the books. Scrap cloth and glue and some stitching. Gloves was another one. And of course the old standby of the sock.