Tower Tree Stories

The Greensburg High School, Indiana, class of 1927 is about to graduate. It has been a big year for the students as they ready themselves for their futures. During their schooling, they have developed a complex web of friends, associates, rivals, and even antagonists.

The final ritual of the year has arrived: the yearbook distribution and the special student awards. As the students have their yearbooks signed by others, they reflect on the year—their triumphs, failures, entanglements, dreams, and secrets. And they imagine a future, not so tied to the conservative norms of a school in a town of 5,000 people.

That future is still to come but, for now, students want to know who will win the most desired awards—not the principal’s Tower Tree awards—but those from the student body, the infamous “Deep Roots” awards.

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In this game, players will explore the relationships and connections between the graduating students of Greensburg High School 1927. They will tell stories of the students based on their yearbook entries, but digging beyond the words on the page.

These students have been confined by the strictures of a conservative education system but some of them are yearning to be let free. That desire peeks through the writing in the yearbook, trying to get out, but not so much as to overly alarm the teaching staff.

Players are rewarded with points for forming more and complex connections between the students, manifested in narrative scenes, and through the anti-establishment “Deep Root” student awards.

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The game is designed for 2-5 players although can be played solo. It will take approximately 25 minutes per player, or perhaps a bit more if players are particularly effusive or theatrical.

You will need the ruleset, the Tower Tree 1927 yearbook, a six-sided die, a large sheet of paper, and pens or markers.

Ideally you will have a printed or digital copy of the Tower Tree for each player to consult during the game. However, if you only have one copy, it would be worth each player spending some time before the game familarizing themselves with the contents so they can quickly refer to it during play.

The files for this game include a four-page ruleset including a sample partial playthrough, the Tower Tree 1927 yearbook, and the roster of students separated from the yearbook for optional print and play purposes. If desired, you can cut the roster pages into cards for each student for ease of use and reference during the game.

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Gaming Like It's 1927

Tower Tree Stories was made for the Gaming Like It's 1927 jam in January 2023. It uses public domain works, primarily the yearbook of Greensburg High School, Indiana, from 1927.

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Designer Notes

This game searches for the undercurrents of teenage lives as they emerge into independence beyond high school, beyond what formal, official documentation allows.

This speculative exploration allows us to be both voyeurs of experience, and to re-inhabit our own experiences of school, realizing that we might be separated by a century but that so many concerns are identical.

The game uses the yearbook from the Greensburg High School, Indiana, a town of about 5,000 people in 1927. The yearbook has just entered the public domain in the United States in 2023. It serves as a reference source and inspiration for exploring and elaborating the lives of these graduating students.

The game can take on a variety of tones, and these are heavily influenced by the Deep Root awards that you choose. Although they might seem like a small part of the game, the way they bookend it affects the kinds of connections you make between students, even if just at a subconscious level.

If you read through the yearbook both before and after playing this game, I think you’ll find it changes in character. What was initially a fairly plain accounting of high school careers has become a doorway to a much more complex set of relationships and circumstances, that just gets deeper with closer reading.

In designing and playtesting this game, I discovered how much yearbooks are really a historical record of relationships, not just of activities and memberships. And like all histories, somewhat obfuscated, but when we look at them just right, they reveal their secrets to us.