Back to the Beginning 2e
A downloadable game
Back to the Beginning is back! The continuity-bending storygame has returned, with new features in tow!
Create a story, starting from the final event, going back until you reach the beginning. Then, once done, reflect on the story and rearrange it as you see fit.
Craft awesome backstories for your characters, or play it for fun!
For 1 to X players. Solo and duo gameplay recommended, bigger groups are a mystery yet. Uses a single six-sided die and a deck of playing cards.
New features
- Story deck: Each suit has been given a theme, and you can tweak the story by choosing a certain number of cards from each suit. Want a tragedy? Add in those Clubs! Want to make a lone rider? Keep away from those Hearts!
- Flipping: Sometimes, events such as betrayals and or losses require a little more setup. Now you can (and sometimes must) flip cards to tie them to events further down the line.
- Foreshadowing: Each time you resolve a card, you shuffle it back to the deck. When you get the same card for a second time, you get to foreshadow the coming event.
Download
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Comments
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Great generator for an interesting and unexpected backstory! If you're on the fence about using this, I'd definitely recommend giving it a go - it's one page, and you can tailor it to what you need it to do with the amount and type of cards you select. (Full review below!)
*For reference, I tested this solo game by myself, without having made a character in any system to begin with. So, when the game asked me to use a multiple of 10 cards, I used 11, with the first one acting as my end state.
This is a really interesting game, with a lot of good ideas I'd love to see expanded. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was only one page, which meant it would be a quick read and I could jump straight into playing, which I did after 5-10 minutes worth of reading.
Separating suits of a deck into different themes (like Clubs being Misfortune) is a great idea, and the added element of dice rolling to get a bit more detail (like a result of 1 being "Foe" for example) was a nice addition to help nudge me in a given direction.
Despite having no concept to begin with, I came up with the tragic story of a vigilante, Tony, AKA "The Legendary Knuckleduster" as he survived an explosion because of his friend, Mark the police officer for the Venture City PD, who jumped in front of the blast. The whole story had ups and downs, and I only had to move a result once to make better sense of what was going on - obviously a lot of thought went into this. I really enjoyed the story created, and I'm not sure I would've come up with it had it not been for this game!
That being said, the non-printable PDF is very hard to read, and the printable version looks a bit less interesting than the overall aesthetic presents itself to be.
The game also tells you that you can play "with a friend", but I personally don't see the benefit of doing this, as you are coming up with a sole character's backstory, using tools like cards and dice already. More minds are better, of course, but it feels odd that you'd want two, even when the game itself says that any more is untested waters. Odd!
While the game itself is definitely really well designed, the language used to explain it leaves a bit to be desired. Unfortunately, the "building the story deck" section suffers the most, where it isn't clear what you should do and when as you are building a deck from different suits. A numbered list would've been great here, but for anyone reading: separate all cards into suits, shuffle each pile, then choose how many cards your final deck will have. Then, you just take cards from each pile and form a final deck, which you then shuffle. When you play, you're going to draw cards, and if you want a specific ending, you add/make sure one card is at the top. At least, that's what I did.
I was a bit confused with the Foreshadowing mechanic as well, so much so that I chose not to implement it. "Flipping" cards to save them for later is also a great idea, especially when you're not make sure what to make of them yet. I'd say that you only need Flipping, as it renders Foreshadowing a bit redundant.
Finally, "Foe", "Family", and "Friend" all are quite universally applicable as details, but "Item", "Conviction", and "Memory" aren't. I wonder if the designer was struggling with the last 3, because they seem to apply less to the other results than the first 3. That being said, when Item and Memory came up, I did use them to my advantage, though I feel like it might skew stories in a certain way - depending on how often they come up! Conviction was an odd one, when my dice landed on it I just rolled it again as I wasn't make sure what to make of it.
All in all, a great backstory generator, with a great idea and a great implementation. With a bit of added TLC, this could be one of the greats for sure! Hope to see a version 3 sometime soon!
This seems cool and I want to play it! I need a few clarifications first though.
I’m kinda having a hard time understanding how flipping cards works? Like do you not write for that event yet? Like leave a blank space and come back to it later?
I think I understand the foreshadowing aspect but the note after it “you don’t put either types of flipped cards back into the deck” seems contradictory as it explicitly states to flip cards and put them back in the deck.
Was that sentence just meant to refer to the Flipping paragraph and is just in a confusing place?
The wording is a little confusing there, I must admit, but the point with that sentence is that once you have RESOLVED a flipped or foreshadowed card, you don't put it back to the deck.
Normally, when you resolve an upright card, you may flip it and put it back into the deck, to facilitate foreshadowing. However, once you have foreshadowed the event, you do not put it back to the deck again. That's what the 'either type of flipped card' meant in this context. Because otherwise you could technically loop foreshadowing events forever.
For the actual flipping mechanic, I do admit that it's vague, but on purpose. The reason is because the timeline is fuzzy, you can leave an entire event hanging like that. I usually do it like you describe it, by leaving a blank space which I fill once I have chosen to connect it to something. But sometimes I might juggle the actual event further back, if it doesn't fit the current timeline of events.
I guess it would have made more sense if I had the two paragraphs (Flipping and Foreshadowing) the other way around, and instead say that if you flip an event, you write it only after Foreshadowing it with another event?
Flipping as a mechanic is older than Foreshadowing (which was added quite late), so I didn't really realize this kind of obvious connection with the two.
Edit: I'm probably going to release an updated version soon.
Thank you for the clarification!