Front Porch

Front Porch is a worldbuilding game about gossip, community, and the feeling of sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch, commenting to your company about what is unfolding in the world around you.

We know gossip by many names and an often less-than- complimentary reputation. Gossip is frequently spoken about as frivolous or destructive. While this can be true, gossip is also an integral connective tissue of community. It’s a treasured ritual that enables us to talk about the intricacies of our complex lives, both as individuals and as people in collective relationships. Gossip can be a loving expression of affection for a certain person, event, or time. It can undermine or threaten, and it it can be humorous, incisive, and insightful.

Gossip provides an opening to dabble in shaping a wider world. It calls into question the specifics of place and time, of people and institutions, and of small everyday matters. The act of gossip builds the world around us even as it occurs in response to that same world.

This game is an attempt to think about the purpose and impacts of gossip and the ways in which it shapes our worlds.