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radiantfracture) wrote2021-12-02 02:47 pm
Getting There: A Collaborative Question-Based Story Game
Folks! I don't know if you know this, but there are a lot of games.
Let me propose a nonce spectrum, for this post only, from story prompt to rule set, where on one end is an improvised story based on a few seed ideas, and on the other an elaborate clockwork mechanism like D&D.
Just lately I'm captivated by games that lean towards the story-prompt end of the spectrum, which I found out about through the Party of One Podcast -- listening to Johnny Sims play Big Fight Feel with the host, Jeff Stormer, using MacGuffin & Co.'s micro-setting Primetime Colosseum.
Big Fight Feel is a great storytelling Q&A game that develops the backstory to a climactic pro wrestling match. It is a hack of In the Air Tonight, which tells suspense-heist-chase stories. Air is inspired by the "In the Air Tonight" scene from the Miami Vice TV show. Stormer has also done a playthrough of another Q&A game called Knowing You, which tells the story of a relationship in reverse, from breakup to first meeting.
What I like about story games is that even this minimal mechanic of the questions lifts away a lot of the stakes of "proper writing" and lets people revel in story.
So for my creative writing class, I made a little hack of the hack. It's very much a mini-game, designed to be played in a few minutes.
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Getting There: A Collaborative Question-Based Story Game
(This game is a quick hack of “In the Air Tonight” by Austin Ramsay)
This game creates a story between two people, discovered through asking and answering questions.
Decide who is PERSON 1 and who is PERSON 2. Ask and answer the questions in turn.
Answer spontaneously, as the ideas come to you. Let the story take shape. If one person is having trouble coming up with an answer, the other can help them brainstorm.
When you have finished asking and answering the questions, use your story as a prompt to write.
PERSON 1: What vehicle are we driving and what’s wrong with it?
[PERSON 2 replies]
PERSON 2: Why are we late and whose fault was it?
[PERSON 1 replies]
PERSON 1: What are we bringing with us and what did we forget?
[PERSON 2 replies]
PERSON 2: Where are we going, and who chose the destination?
[PERSON 1 replies]
PERSON 1: What are you not telling me until we get there?
[PERSON 2 replies]
PERSON 2: What happens when we arrive?
[PERSON 1 replies]
* * * * * *
My colleague and I did a quick playtest. We ended up as waster surfers on our way to a family reunion in a broke-down Vanagon burning oil, on a sweltering day, with a Styrofoam cooler full of fresh fish on rapidly-melting ice, trying to make it to the Okanagan in time to show everyone that we can too accomplish something, even if it isn't getting jobs, except we end up at the Naramata ER because it turns out, hey, we're also having a baby, so in the end my sister gets stuck with all that fish.
I must say I feel quite satisfied by that outcome.
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Okay, that makes mine this:
Why are we late and whose fault is it?
We're late because your biomechantronic arm caught a virus and went all evil hand and kept swerving us into the ditch. We had to pull over and have a long argument with it about fate and destiny and being a part of something larger than itself.
It's partly your fault for not downloading the software updates and partly whoever set loose the virus, and partly me for starting a conversation about free will with it in the first place (I was bored and stressed out), so everyone's in an extra bad mood now, and also it's possible we're too late to stop the pseudoSingularity which might, as we explained tersely to your rogue arm, render all this free will more or less moot.
What are we bringing with us and what did we forget?
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Where are we going, and who chose the destination?
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We're going to the Pit, that toxic junkyard of discarded magitech a thousand stories deep, with a seething lake of heavy metals and vampiric data spectres at its heart.
That's where the Sibyl sent us after a very rushed and expensive divination. There's at least a 50% chance that she's in the pay of the BludDies anyway, but we're out of options.
I'm frantically chanting every incantation I know in case one of them is the right one, so occasionally the windshield wipers start up, or flames shoot out of the hand-of-glory hood ornament.
Oh, and we're running low on blood.
What are you not telling me until we get there?
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After all, the High Queen of the BludDies is an old friend and sometimes lover, and I wouldn't want to disappoint her.
What happens when we arrive?
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And there's the High Queen between me and the edge, her void eyes glittering, information streaking down her limbs like mercury, but she's not looking at me. I might as well not be there. In a minute I won't be.
I'm just the means to this end, you and this dead-eyed glory burning like a phosphorous flame.
It's never been you and me, not really. It's always been you and her, and it's you and her now, here at the last showdown before the next showdown.
And maybe you didn't even know what you were going to do when you got here, until you got here. Maybe you were teetering between hero and heel turn.
But you know now.
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I haven't tried the original games, but I plan to.
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Rory's story dice.
Mysterium
Dixit
(I'm sure there will be examples of people playing them on You Tube)
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I do like Dixit. I believe I played Mysterium once at the local board games cafe and found it intriguing.
Which of those is your favorite?
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Horses for courses.
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