Friday, June 05, 2026

The Mock Duck Trap

A goodie in the Kate Gray's Kaleidoscope interview: "write for someone who likes your game." We spend a lot of worry on, for example, making sure people do not like narrative can avoid it. In narrative games!

While there are clever ways to do that (e.g. lots of player-pulled narrative), why not write for people who do like narrative? They're most of your players, eh?

This is the Mock Duck Trap.

 


Mock duck is not the best duck. It's made of wheat gluten and oil, for vegetarians. If you owned a duck restaurant, you would not, because many folks are vegetarians, serve everyone mock duck.

(There is also mock duck made out of beef, though I am not sure why.)

After all, not that many vegetarians will choose a duck restaurant, anyway. Lisa's parents are vegetarians, and we do not at all go to Gibby's, a wonderful nearby steak house.

If you can offer duck AND mock, great, go for it! But if you have to choose, choose duck.