Welcome pardner, to the world of Past Participle. A world where...wait. Who the hell names a world, or game for that matter, Past Participle? And why did you just call me pardner?

Past Participle is named as such because even though I am not that clever, I sure like to pretend I am. Past Participle is an offshoot of Future Imperfect, but instead of being set in the far future, it is set in the Old West, the setting we have colloquially referred to as Old West X-Files. There you have it, pardner.

Ugh, I cant believe you just called me that again.

Past Participle Unleashed

During testing of Future Imperfect it became clear that we had bitten off more than we could chew. The project could be completed, but many issues were apparent. For one thing, we had so many moving parts that it was difficult to determine how each of them affected the others. This is where the idea of PP came into being.

By transitioning to a different setting, we allowed ourselves to strip out a bunch of elements that while essential to FI, do not appear in the old west. These include things like aliens and other races, psionic powers, armor, vehicles and high tech equipment.

The Setting

This is a description of the world of Past Participle, including geography, history and important elements. Eventually the setting got a name, and that name is...

The West that Wasnt (Basic intro-original version)

The West that Wasn't: The History of the DTI

Here are descriptions of the types of gear and weapons that are available.

The West That Wasnt - Gear

The Rules

The design goals from Future Imperfect were ported over the PP, and then to TWTW. Eventually, they became more and more well defined. This is the first attempt to put them all down for perusal.

Design Goals

The first set of design goals focused on Action Cards: Action Card Concepts. They are:

1. Use what you need, ignore everything else.
2. One card, one resolution.
3. Leave the rulebook on the shelf.

Actions cards are designed to deliver exceptional detail, very quickly. They are loaded with information. They require a short learning curve to master. Because they have so much information, the rulebook is rarely necessary after the first session or two.

Action cards are also extensible. Even though they are designed for one card, one resolution, once they are mastered it is easy to customize the game experience for your group. In fact, the extensibility and modularity make it simple to customize the game experience to each player, so that individuals at the same table can tailor their own experiences to the level of detail and mechanical depth they prefer. This leads to arguably the most important design goal:

Play the game that you want!

Just about every game has a section discussing the idea that the rules are just a guide, and the players should work together to craft the best game experience. TWTW (and the other tenses) take this one step further. Most rules in the game are designed with a set of goals (that you are reading) but they also are created in a modular fashion to facilitate easily swapping out and customizing rules as you see fit. The game also has multiple appendices dedicated to doing exactly that, providing suggestions for using the rulebook as a road map, showing you many paths to the same goals, and also illustrating how different players can take their own road without impacting the others.

Mechanical depth is important to the design. This is clear in all facets of game play. Most of the choices themselves are relatively simple, but the wide variety greatly increases personalization and flavor. The game is created to provide mechanical support for many different play styles. These choices need to be simple enough to implement that they never block the delivery of satisfying narrative.

While the game does not attempt realism, it does attempt to simulate the kinds of choices that bring a level of tactical verisimilitude to the shared hallucination that is created at the game table. This is especially true in combat, where concepts regarding action speed, covering fire, and tactical movement are implemented so that they are easy to use, rather than fully grounded in reality.

Speaking of combat, why does every game have a combat minigame of some kind, but few other interactions are afforded such a level of detail? The tense games attempt to provide optional minigames that allow diverse characters to have dedicated and mechanically deep minigames to enrich the experience.