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Emily Care Boss

Emily Care Boss is an indie roleplaying game designer, theorist and publisher. She was a foundational member of The Forge, an early leader in the indie role-playing game movement and is considered the creator of the American Freeform genre of roleplaying games, which combine indie RPG principles and mechanics with Nordic freeform and American chamber live action role-playing techniques.[1] She has been referred to as the "Dean" of the North American school of structured freeform game design.[2]

Emily Care Boss
Emily Care Boss in 2008
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst
OccupationGame designer
SpouseEpidiah Ravachol

Career

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Emily Care Boss got involved with role playing games while at college in the 1990s, playing Ars Magica using a shared world setting created by friends.[3] She credits talking with other users at the Forge Forums during the early 2000s with helping her to get involved in design and self-publishing.[3] Her first game Breaking the Ice was published in 2005.[4]

Boss and fellow Forge theorist Vincent Baker are co-credited with formulating the Lumpley Principle (a.k.a. Baker-Care or Baker-Boss Principle), which states, "System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play." Further development of the Lumpley Principle describes player contributions as being assigned credibility by the other players in the game.[2][5] She authored Dream Bear, a game about exploring dreams and symbolism.[6] She also coined the concept of "bleed" at Ropecon 2007 and defined it as the emotional transfer between player and character, in either direction, during a role-playing game.[7]

In addition to her design work, Boss is the founding owner of Black & Green Games, which is best known its romance-themed indie games, Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, and Under My Skin.[2] The three were collected into one volume as the Romance Trilogy in 2016.[8][9] In 2009 and 2010 she published two volumes of RPG Zine, which stood for "Role Playing Girl".[4] Many of her games have been noted as being adept at handling narratives of romance and sex,[10] and Boss has been outspoken about the handling of love and sex in the design of RPGs and LARPs.[11]

From 2005-2009 Boss co-wrote an RPG theory and design blog Fair Game, with fellow designer Meguey Baker. She was a contributor on a panel that wrote The Wyrd Con Companion Book 2012.[12] She was a contributor to the role playing journals Push, Playground Worlds, the Knutepunkt publication States of Play, and the companion publications for WyrdCon in 2012 and 2013. She organized the JiffyCon series of indie roleplaying game (RPG) mini-conventions in Massachusetts. Her game Last Chance Noir is a LARP game inspired by the Intercon LARP convention she attends every year.[3] She assisted with judging in the second "Golden Cobra Challenge" for LARPing in 2015.[13][6] She was on the programming team for the Living Games Conference in 2014, helped in 2016, and chaired the conference in 2018.[14][15][16]

Awards, Nominations, and Honors

Under My Skin won the Fastaval 2009 Player's Choice award.[17] Bubblegumshoe, a Gumshoe System Teen Noir setting, written with Ken Hite and Lisa J. Steele, won the 2017 Gold ENnie Award for Best Family Game.[18]

Breaking the Ice was nominated for three Indie Game Awards in 2005, including Game of the year.[19][20][21] Romance Trilogy was nominated for the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming in 2017.[8][9]

Boss was the Guest of Honour at Ropecon 2007[22] and Fastaval 2009.

Personal life

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Boss graduated from University of Massachusetts Amherst with a bachelor's degree in Social Thought and Political Economy and a master's degree in Forestry.[23] Boss resides in Greenfield, Massachusetts[24] and is married to fellow game designer Epidiah Ravachol, creator of Dread.[25]

Roleplaying bibliography

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  • Breaking the Ice, nominated for three Indie Game Awards in 2005, including Game of the year.[19][20][21]
  • Fluffy Bunny, 2005
  • Heart of the Rose, 2007
  • Shooting the Moon: All is Fair in Love and War, 2008
  • The Colour Game, Tiny Tales of Romance, 2008
  • Sign in Stranger, 2009
  • Under My Skin, Winner of the Fastaval 2009 Player's Choice award.[17]
  • Dread House, a boardgame for children and adults, 2010.
  • MonkeyDome, 2010
  • Playing With Intent, a system to structure freeform games, 2012
  • Misericord(e), 2013
  • Remodel, an American Freeform game about women's experience in mid-life, 2013
  • Blood on the Snow collaborator including a live action system for Robin Laws's DramaSystem Hillfolk, 2013
  • Girls Elswehere collaborator, a supplement for Josh Jordan's game Heroine, 2013
  • King Wen's Tower, premièred at Fastaval, 2014
  • "Ma, Can I Help You with That?" nano game in #Feminism: A Nano-Game Anthology, published by Fëa Livia, 2016, and Pelgrane Press, 2017.[26]
  • Bubblegumshoe, designed with Kenneth Hite and Lisa Steele, published by Evil Hat Productions in June 2016.[27]

Publications

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  • White, William J.; Harviainen, J. Tuomas; Boss, Emily Care (2012). "Role-Playing Communities, Cultures of Play and the Discourse of Immersion". In Torner, Evan; White, William J. (eds.). Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Participatory Media and Role-Playing. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 9780786468348.
  • Boss, Emily Care (2008). "Key Concepts in Forge Theory". In Montola, Markus; Stenros, Jaakko (eds.). Playground Worlds: Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing Games (PDF). Finland: Ropecon ry. ISBN 9789529235797. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-08-02. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  • Boss, Emily Care (2006). "Collaborative Roleplaying: Reframing the Game" (PDF). Push: New Thinking About Roleplaying. 1.

References

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  1. ^ Stark, Lizzie (April 1, 2014). Pocket Guide to American Freeform. p. 12. ASIN B00JF4Z3B8.
  2. ^ a b c White, Bill (2010). "Blurring the Boundaries: Structured Freeform in the Indie RPG Design Community". In Eagar, Amber (ed.). Journeys to Another World: Companion to the 2010 LARP Summit at WyrdCon. Costa Mesa, CA: LARP Alliance. pp. 17–24. Archived from the original on 2 November 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  3. ^ a b c "Interview with Emily Care Boss". Archived from the original on 2015-04-25. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  4. ^ a b Designers & Dragons: The Planinum Appendix p. 19
  5. ^ P., Nathan (12 January 2008). "RPG Design Handbook: Chapter 3 (parts 2 & 3)". Hamsterprophecy. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  6. ^ a b "Do You Want to Write a LARP Game? The Golden Cobra Challenge". Themarysue.com. 19 October 2015. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  7. ^ Bowman, Sarah Lynne (2015-03-02). "Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character". Nordic Larp. Retrieved 2019-08-23.
  8. ^ a b Duffy, Owen (2017-02-08). "Monsterhearts: 'A lot of queer youth are made to feel monstrous by people around them'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  9. ^ a b "The 2017 Award". The Diana Jones Award. 20 September 2017. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  10. ^ Richardson, Sarah (8 October 2014). "Sexy Times with Dice: 10 RPGs That Deal with Sex and Sexuality". Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  11. ^ "AlterConf Schedule: Sex & Love (vs Violence) in Games". aLTERcONF. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  12. ^ "Free Anthology Celebrates LARPing". Wired. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  13. ^ Depra, Dianne (21 October 2015). "The Golden Cobra Challenge: Calling On LARP Game Writers And Designers". Techtimes.com. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  14. ^ "The Living Games Conference: A Few Lessons in Larping (Live Action Role Playing)". Themarysue.com. 31 March 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  15. ^ Living Games Conference. "Living Games Conference 2016 Kickstarter". Kickstarter. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  16. ^ "Larp, Social Event, and Workshop Schedule Now Available!". Living Games Conference. April 25, 2018. Archived from the original on 3 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  17. ^ a b "FAQ | Fastaval". 2013-12-08. Archived from the original on 2013-12-08. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  18. ^ "2017 Noms and Winners". ENnie Awards. Archived from the original on 20 January 2020. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  19. ^ a b "Indie RPG Awards". Indie-rpg-awards.com. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  20. ^ a b "Indie RPG Awards". Indie-rpg-awards.com. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  21. ^ a b "Indie RPG Awards". Indie-rpg-awards.com. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  22. ^ "Ropecon 2007 Guest of Honour Profile". Ropecon Official Site. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  23. ^ "Emily Care Boss - RPG Designer - BoardGameGeek". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  24. ^ "Emily Care Boss - Emily's Bio, Credits, Awards…". Stage 32. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  25. ^ "May 6th, Epidiah Ravachol, Boardgame Designer Extraordinaire! – Pioneer Valley Game Developers". 2023-03-22. Archived from the original on 2023-03-22. Retrieved 2024-10-31.
  26. ^ "#Feminism: A Nano-Game Anthology (2016)". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
  27. ^ "Bubblegumshoe". Evil Hat Productions. 15 February 2016.
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