Emily Care Boss Explained

Emily Care Boss
Spouse:Epidiah Ravachol[1]
Nationality:American
Alma Mater:University of Massachusetts Amherst
Occupation:Game designer

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.[2] She has been referred to as the "Dean" of the North American school of structured freeform game design.

Career

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.[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.[8] The three were collected into one volume as the Romance Trilogy in 2016.[9] [10] In 2009 and 2010 she published two volumes of RPG Zine, which stood for "Role Playing Girl". Many of her games have been noted as being adept at handling narratives of romance and sex,[11] and Boss has been outspoken about the handling of love and sex in the design of RPGs and LARPs.[12]

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.[13] 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.[14] She was on the programming team for the Living Games Conference in 2014, helped in 2016, and chaired the conference in 2018.[15] [16] [17]

Awards, Nominations, and Honors

Under My Skin won the Fastaval 2009 Player's Choice award.[18] 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.[19]

Breaking the Ice was nominated for three Indie Game Awards in 2005, including Game of the year. Romance Trilogy was nominated for the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming in 2017.

Boss was the Guest of Honour at Ropecon 2007[20] and Fastaval 2009.

Personal life

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.[21] Boss resides in Greenfield, Massachusetts[22] and is married to fellow game designer Epidiah Ravachol, creator of Dread. She is a forestry consultant in the woodlands of western Massachusetts.[23]

Roleplaying bibliography

Publications

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: May 6th, Epidiah Ravachol, Boardgame Designer Extraordinaire! – Pioneer Valley Game Developers . 27 April 2018 .
  2. Book: Stark. Lizzie. Pocket Guide to American Freeform. April 1, 2014. B00JF4Z3B8. 12.
  3. Web site: Interview with Emily Care Boss . 2016-03-05 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150425041802/http://www.contessa.rocks/contessa/interview-with-emily-care-boss . 2015-04-25 . dead .
  4. Designers & Dragons: The Planinum Appendix p. 19
  5. Web site: P.. Nathan. RPG Design Handbook: Chapter 3 (parts 2 & 3). Hamsterprophecy. 12 January 2008. 20 October 2014.
  6. Web site: Do You Want to Write a LARP Game? The Golden Cobra Challenge. Themarysue.com. 19 October 2015. 12 April 2018.
  7. Web site: Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character. Bowman. Sarah Lynne. 2015-03-02. Nordic Larp. en-US. 2019-08-23.
  8. Book: White. Bill. Blurring the Boundaries: Structured Freeform in the Indie RPG Design Community. Eagar. Amber. Journeys to Another World: Companion to the 2010 LARP Summit at WyrdCon. 2010. LARP Alliance. Costa Mesa, CA. 17–24. 20 October 2014. 2 November 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20141102033407/http://www.personal.psu.edu/wjw11/Blurring_the_Boundaries.doc. dead.
  9. News: Monsterhearts: 'A lot of queer youth are made to feel monstrous by people around them'. Duffy. Owen. 2017-02-08. The Guardian. 2017-10-12. en-GB. 0261-3077.
  10. Web site: The 2017 Award. The Diana Jones Award. 20 September 2017. 3 August 2018.
  11. Web site: Richardson. Sarah. Sexy Times with Dice: 10 RPGs That Deal with Sex and Sexuality. 8 October 2014. 16 October 2014.
  12. Web site: AlterConf Schedule: Sex & Love (vs Violence) in Games. aLTERcONF. 16 October 2014.
  13. Free Anthology Celebrates LARPing . Wired . 12 April 2018.
  14. Web site: Depra . Dianne . 21 October 2015 . The Golden Cobra Challenge: Calling On LARP Game Writers And Designers . 12 April 2018 . Techtimes.com.
  15. Web site: The Living Games Conference: A Few Lessons in Larping (Live Action Role Playing). Themarysue.com. 31 March 2016. 12 April 2018.
  16. Web site: Living Games Conference 2016 Kickstarter. Living Games Conference. Kickstarter. 3 August 2018.
  17. Web site: Larp, Social Event, and Workshop Schedule Now Available!. April 25, 2018. Living Games Conference. 3 August 2018. 3 August 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180803224017/http://www.livinggamesconference.com/larps-workshop-schedule-now-available/. dead.
  18. Web site: 2013-12-08 . FAQ Fastaval . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20131208172638/http://www.fastaval.dk/faq/?lang=en . 2013-12-08 . 2017-10-12.
  19. Web site: 2017 Noms and Winners. ENnie Awards. 3 August 2018. 20 January 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200120200949/http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/about-us/2017-noms-and-winners. dead.
  20. Web site: Ropecon 2007 Guest of Honour Profile . 16 October 2014 . Ropecon Official Site.
  21. Web site: Emily Care Boss - RPG Designer - BoardGameGeek. boardgamegeek.com. 12 April 2018.
  22. Web site: Emily Care Boss - Emily's Bio, Credits, Awards…. Stage 32. 3 August 2018.
  23. News: Harvesting the Forest. 18 February 2008. The Berkshire Eagle. 12 October 2017. subscription. LexisNexis.
  24. Web site: Indie RPG Awards. Indie-rpg-awards.com. 12 April 2018.
  25. Web site: Indie RPG Awards. Indie-rpg-awards.com. 12 April 2018.
  26. Web site: Indie RPG Awards. Indie-rpg-awards.com. 12 April 2018.
  27. Web site:
    1. Feminism: A Nano-Game Anthology (2016)
    . BoardGameGeek. 2018-03-07.
  28. Web site: Bubblegumshoe. Evil Hat Productions. 15 February 2016.

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