I was recently lucky enough to get hold of review copy of Jess Levine’s Going Rogue. This GM-less Anti-Fascist RPG about making the ultimate sacrifice took me and fellow players on an epic narrative journey that I am still reeling from. You can check out my thoughts and experiences playing the game in my Going Rogue review.
As well as gifting me this review copy, Jess also took the time to speak with me about the story behind the game and giving players the narrative building blocks for their own heroic sacrifice stories.
Going Rogue’s Origin Story
Like many of us, during the height of the pandemic, Jess took to games as a way of connecting with others and keeping herself mentally active. During this time she played a lot of Galactic, a Star Wars Inspired TTRPG made by Riley Rethal.
Me and three other people were playing this game. We became so obsessed with our characters, we ended up writing 150,000 words about them.
Jess had a fantastic time adventuring in space with her friends, but realized that there were stories she wanted to tell that she couldn’t in the framework of Galactic. The stories she really wanted to tell were inspired by her experiences of an Anti-Fascist organizer. She wanted to explore stories of flawed heroes grappling with ethical quandaries about what it truly means to fight tyranny. These stories were less in line with mainstream Star Wars adventures and more in line with the movie, Rogue One, and the current Andor series on DisneyPlus.
Rogue One: a big inspiration for the character playbooks in Going Rogue.
And so she developed Going Rogue as an expansion to Galactic. Over time, Going Rogue become more and more independent and is now out in its second edition.
Setting Up Impactful Character Journeys and Relationships
I asked Jess about the design choices she made to put narrative and character development front and center in Going Rogue. One of the mechanics she’s most pleased with in this regard is the ask left & ask right feature. When you’re creating your character, one of the last things you do is ask a player to either side of you a question about the relationship between your characters.
Jess deliberately designed these questions to be probing to push players to develop reasonably complex relationships between their character. Each character playbook would have three questions and the player would choose two to ask to their neighbors. Jess chose to always have two questions that established a positive connection and one that inspired distrust or antagonism.
This was very intentional as she wanted at least one of the connections to be supportive, whilst keeping the option for drama between player characters open. She also spoke of the importance of players being able to be comfortable enough with each other to have antagonism between their characters but not themselves.
We also spoke about how she used the novel token system. The token mechanics used in Going Rogue and Galactic comes from the Belonging Outside Belonging game system developed by Avery Alder. Rather than using dice or a GM, there is a token economy to oversee actions that players can non-player characters can take.
Jess spoke about using tokens to direct the narrative spotlight in Going Rogue. There are more details about the token economy in my Going Rogue review. All you need to know here is that there are three different types of moves you can use with tokens. With a Strong Move, you spend a token to do an action that benefits your character and your team. A Vulnerable Move is where your character fails or struggles and receives a token. A Lateral Move is where you interact with another player or pillar and transfer a token to them. Jess explains beautifully how this token system provides such an effective narrative framework.
A Strong Move is when a character is showing their strength, and it’s telling everyone at the table “Hey, let my character hype themselves up and show off their skills”.
A Vulnerable move is when you say “Mess me up. I am inviting you to do something with my character to show why they are struggling”.
What Lateral Moves are meant to say are “Play into me, play into my character, play into my story and the sort of person I am trying to make, and if you do, I’ll give you a token”.
The Liberation Discourse
We also spoke about the relationship between The Parliament and The Intelligence. These are both wings within The Liberation which seeks to oppose and overthrow the tyrannical Mandate. Whilst both wings are committed to the cause, they often clash over methods. Whilst The Parliament want to preserve the morals and democratic values of The Liberation, The Intelligence tend to want immediate action and are more willing to get their hands dirty for the cause.
As Jess puts it:
If they don’t have those democratic principles, then the thing they’re fighting for isn’t worth it. But if they are too cautious or too conservative to take action, then they don’t actually get to achieve their goals at all.
Going Rogue asks you to consider what you would do in the face of tyranny.
This dynamic is partially based on ethical debates around The Rebellion brought up in Rogue One and Andor. However, it also comes from Jess’ experience as an Anti-Fascist organizer.
I paid a lot of attention to depicting two very important impulses that I have all of these experiences with [from organizing]: to do whatever we have to [to accomplish our goals] and to work ethically in a way where you’re responsible to everyone. I want players to explore [those perspectives] and realize that they’re both right and how to reconcile them.
Talking with her design consultant, satah, helped refine the game. This was particularly true when it came to the Parliament and Intelligence discourse. Because of satah’s help, she avoided the trap of The Parliament becoming ‘the bad guys’ but rather struggling for a better world in their own way.
Satah was the design consultant for Going Rogue who helped refine it into what it is today.
Hope Among the Hopeless
One of the big questions I had for Jess was how do you make a game where you know your character’s going to end up dead enjoyable.
She acknowledged that Going Rogue deals with some very heavy themes around war, rebellion and how you respond to tyranny. Like with any game that explores such themes, it’s important to look after players’ mental wellbeing. This includes making use of safety tools such as lines & veils and x-cards.
As to the positive benefits of playing Going Rogue, Jess spoke candidly about her experience as an Anti-Fascist organizer. She spoke about sometimes feeling hopeless about her work, questioning whether it has an effect or not. For her, Going Rogue was a cathartic narrative experience because it allows you to vicariously experience the absolute certainty that you are doing something meaningful.
She spoke with particular fondness about the Spy playbook, as it lends itself to going from being hopeless to hopeful.
My intent is that you can go in with a character who feels hopeless, but is still trying to make things better and I want [the player] to feel emotionally empowered [by this].
Even though the character journey will ultimately end in sacrifice, the players get to experience the journey and the difference that their character’s sacrifice makes. Have that felt sense of knowing your actions lead to positive change was something she felt was important for people to experience, especially in her line of work.
Going Rogue is currently available in its second edition on Jumpgate Games’ itch.io page for just $10. You can also get hold of Galactic for $15 from Riley Rethal’s itch.io page. Both are currently available as part of a ‘We Have Star Wars at Home’ bundle. This bundle features a number of other TTRPGs that are well worth checking out.
