An AmberCon Report
It is 2 am in the morning on Sunday the 22nd and I’m writing this lying in a bed in the old room of Lorenzo Trenti’s little sister in Modena, Italy. I’ve had my first and only day of Italian gaming convention, and the fact that I have to skip tomorrow to go back home sucks in the worst possible way.
I’ve played three games since I came here on Friday: Sad Reflection by Luca Fabbricotti game mastered by Andrea Castellani, a Hamlet scenario by Luca Giuliano for his On Stage! game, game mastered by Marcello Missiroli, and Donnie Darko by Francesco Rapisarda game mastered by Maurizio Corsaro. I’ve held a Jeepform presentation and game mastered The Upgrade! together with Frederik Berg Olsen. And I’ve listened in people playing Dubbio – Doubt/Tvivel/Tvivl in Italian. Obviously I’ve had a great time. I’m sad to leave, and eager to go back. And I have the feeling that ModCon in September, the big con in Modena, will clash with the Stockholm Gaming convention.
And don’t get me started on the coffee and the food. Francesco Iori took us (Frederik, Line and me) to a really nice restaurant together with the wonderful Silvia and Marzia. There was a lot of talk about role-playing of course — playing with or without secrets, and surprises or no surprises in the game. Francesco turned out to know his way around food, and provided us with great recommendations and nice wine. Last, he introduced us to what he described as the chocolate equivalent of the Athelas cake (warning: nerdy Tolkien reference, but I’m so proud that I spotted it that I just have to include it here. [Update: Emma tells me it is called lembas bread. So I’m not so nerdy after all…]).
As for Doubt, Andrea Castellani was kind enough to translate parts of it into Italian (with some help from Emma Sansone, that I sadly did not get to meet Update: Andrea tells me Emma did the work with him helping, so main credit should go to Emma Sansone for this one.) and Lorenzo was kind enough to run it in Italian with four Italian players. Apparently, one of the players had said something much like what Madda said after the first test play: “There was not one line I spoke that I haven’t at some time thought for myself.” To me, that is ace. And it really seemed to me like their game was very much the way that I want doubt to be like. Weather they enjoyed it is another story, but as far as I understand, they did. So that feels great.
Frederik and I gave select parts of a Jeepform presentation, rehashing some of the Ropecon material from last year. Here, the crowd seemed more used to the style of things, which made for very interesting discussion. The fact that there was only 15 or so people in the audience of course made a dialogue much easier. It was fun and rewarding. And I found myself describing the Swedish Drakar och Demoner game like the red D&D box with the only substantial addition being the race Duck. It is amazing how much shit you can pull from memory when “required” to.
After the Jeepform talk, we played The Upgrade! which went very well. The players were funny, and even though there was a clear language barrier, the game’s techniques worked fine — there was sometimes trouble understanding the language, but never the form, or that’s what we said afterwards. I would have wished for more possible futures and pasts, but I’m definitely not complaining. Watching the players hitting it off was so rewarding.
On a side note, it turns out Frederik and I make quite the GM team. I found myself missing doing tag-team game mastering with Olle all of a sudden. Frederik and I have only game mastered together once before, doing No Sign of Alex at Fastaval in 2004, but we felt synced and secure. There were many laughs, and Frederik was extremely funny and evil in his role as Jim, the show host and interviewer.
(BTW: I’m now on the plane leaving Italy. I found myself being very unstressed and “Italian” at the Airport, finding a coffee shop for a shot of espresso and a small breakfast even though boarding had started while I was still queueing for checking in. Thank you, wonderful Italian people for this unstressed way of life!)
Since Italian games rely a lot on secrets, it is hard to describe them without spoiling them. So I won’t do that publicly on the net. Sad Reflection and Donnie Darko are built around understanding what the hell is going on. Sad Reflection has a lead character under heavy constraints, and the rest of the cast play supporting cast with what seemed like quite the freedom to me. The game reminded me of one early game, long lost, which I wrote with Jakob Wohlert (in 1995, time sure does fly) which was called “Quius Ultima Mr. Pettigrew”, which was a Cthulhuesque game where in every scene, all the players are pitched against one other player, which was slightly controversial at the time. (Update Andres tells me Sad Reflection could be downloaded here: file1 file2.)
But I’m digressing, sorry. I should mention that I was forced to wear a severly bent cat mask for Donnie Darko over my glasses making my appearance silly as hell. Frederik had trouble at times to look at me because of that, and I was avoiding my reflexion in the mirror. The Italian players never moved a muscle, not even smiled at my appearance — very impressive.
Donnie Darko was extremely surreal and I had basically no idea what was going on, how to play and what to do. After a while, I got the hang of it. My hat off to writers that dare to include characters in a game that only has one line that he repeats constantly for two hours.
In contrast to Sad Reflection and Donnie Darko, the On Stage! Hamlet game was built around collaborative story creation, with a shrewd voting scheme to determine who gets to set up the next scene and have some GM power over it. Mind-bogglingly (if there is such a word), it was written in 1993. Somewhere on the Computer Internet, someone has written something like this about Jeepform: “If could have smuggled in the Jeepform dictionary into Gary Gygax’s mind circa 1973…”. On Stage! gave me similar feelings for myself. I was still running (effectively dice less but far from freeform) Star Wars games by ‘93 and this game would have blown me away. On Stage! reminded me of Jacob Schmidt-Madsen’s “Dream of a King In Yellow”, Thorbiörn’s Freeform Soap Opera and my own “Doubt.” The voting scheme was actually quite interesting, even though I found the few stats and action cards pretty useless (Francesco, doubling as GM, was very clever to make certain things into challenges to show us the mechanisms).
[I’m making a mock Jeepform On Stage-esque game next week with Kristoffer Lindh. More about that later.]
The Fastaval bar is fantastic, and the AmberCon coffee bar is definitely on par. We had excellent shots of coffee in-between all the activities. I had my “Doubt” (”Dubbio”) briefing with Lorenzo outdoors on a bench, and a post-Hamlet beer in the warm sun overlooking a minimal, green park. Wonderful.
It turns out that the Flying Circus, the organisation behind AmberCon, doesn’t work like much I’ve come to be used to. As Marzia explained, it is more like a movement. Anyone can print a Flying Circus t-shirt and get going. Lorenzo described it as “an open-source conspiracy.” Apparently, the Flying Circus manifesto says that it is important to be nice and inclusive. Without having read the manifesto, I’m certainly inspired to make a Flying Circus game. (But I’ll wait until I’ve read the manifesto.)
The Flying Circus is a group of friends, and AmberCon is their in-house con. It really has a feeling of a (huge) group of friends hanging out and I must say that we really felt included in that friendship. In many respects, the Flying Circus feels like a huge Jeep. Perhaps the percentage of really active people is the same, but since their number is so big, it seems like no problem. Andrea showed us that other Scandinavian games were being played – Festival by Carsten Andreasen and a game of Mike’s (Pohjola) whose name eludes me at the moment and possibly others. The openness and willingness to experiment and take in new things is inspiring and will surely take the Flying Circus far. I know some Knutpunkt goers think that the Nordic scene is the only interesting scene, but I’m not so sure. Most certainly, interesting things will come out of Italy in the future. (I look forward to bending Andrea’s arm to force him to translate some of them…)
One insight for me over the last to years is that the one thing that seems to be really the driving factor behind evolving role-playing seems to be the practise writing of scenarios that can be played by someone else who hasn’t played the scenario before, or watched it being played. If you are not doing that, you should. If you want help, I’m no more than an email away. (No, really.)
To round off this blog post before it fills my Internet quota, I’d like to say a big thanks to Lorenzo and Andrea for inviting us; to Federico Misirocchi, Devan Maggi and Paolo Albini for playing Sad Reflection with us in a dark park somewhere in Milan; to the people at the Jeepform presentation who took us seriously spite my constant duck jokes and who were willing to challenge us, understand our sometimes categorical statements and discuss whatever topics we brought up; to the Hamlet crew (Marzia, Giulia, Francesco, Marcello, Silvia, Alessandro, and the rest of you whose name tags I was unable to memorise); to the players of The Upgrade! (Francesco, Max, Claudia, Michele, Moreno and the rest of you — Mauno, Raija, Mauri and Päivi) for going along with crazy ideas and for coming up with great comedy material on the spot (”6 months later: I now have Tits and am living with Bob”); to the crew of Donnie Darko (Silvia, Marzia, Giulia, Francesco, Maurizio, Ciro); to Francesco, Marzia and Silvia for showing us great food and a great time during dinner; to Andrea’s parents for giving us beds to sleep in, and showing us around a typical Italian fridge (Update Andrea’s mother tells me her fridge is more typical central european than Italian); and to Frederik and Line for not letting me stay home.
Disclaimer: some names are probably spelled wrong. Others are probably the completely wrong names. If something is right, it is all Lorenzo’s doing.
Oh, and you should all look forward to Line’s “Attack of the 50 foot fembot” at next year’s Fastaval. I know I do.
More updates
Here is a complete log of what non-Italian games were played at Ambercon (thanks Andrea!):
- “Festival”, by Line Thorup & Carsten Andreasen, several times;
- “Di tutti i mondi” (”Af alle verdener”, “From All the Worlds”), by Carsten Andreasen, several times;
- “Cinque personaggi in cerca d’identità” (”Fem roller søker en identitet”, “Five Characters in Search of an Identity”), by Matthijs Holter, twice;
- “Col senno di poi” (”Retrospect”), by Even Tømte, twice;
- “13 a tavola” (”13 til Bords”, “13 at the Table”), by Kristin Hammerås & Solveig Askim Malvik, once;
- “Non manco di nulla” (”Ei minulta mitään puutu”, “I Shall Not Want”), by Mike Pohjola, once.
All of these games have been played several other times in Italian conventions and gaming clubs.
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:13 am
Hi! I am the player who played “Tom” in “doubt” saturday afternoon (and the one who played Raija in “the Upgrade” in the morning, and the one who asked about The Forge, and the Fixed-premise games at the presentation: I hope this is enough to make you remember me
)
I can confirm that we (me and all the other players) enjoyed both “The Upgrade” and “Doubt” very much (even if we were very unused to play in English, and it showed in our performace in The Upgrade. The scarcity of future or past scenes, for example, was due to the fact that for a quick “trought scene” we could prepare a short phrase before moving on the area, but a longer scene had to be improvised a lot, and we didn’t feel enough secure in the language to try it). These two games were the one that we enjoyed most at the CON.
I, and at least other two people who played “doubt”, have a somewhat different gaming background than Andrea and Lorenzo. We usually play tabletop games (in preference narrativist forge-ish games like Dogs in the Vineyard, Primetime adventures or Sorcerer) and very rarely “live games” (at the two annual cons in Modena, usually), and this was our very first experience with jeepform games. At the presentation I was not so much surprised by the differences with the Italian freeform scene, than by the many similitudes with “forgeish” narrativist games. A kind of design that I considered very difficult to “translate” outside of the tabletop environment, but you really showed us that it can be done, and with exceptional results! I am really looking to playing other Jeepform games in the future!
Really you and Frederik only game mastered together once before, and not on “the upgrade”? Commenting your performance after the game we commented on the way you were so perfect as co-hosts, and reached the conclusion that you surely had played that game togesther a lot of times to get that level of coordination! =:-I
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Hello Tobias, I’m the guy who played Anteo (which is, by all accounts, an Italian male name, too) and made the second half of the female panel who got to decide which of the male contestants was (or, after the aftermath, I should say “appeared”) “the most man o’ them all” and made you raise old sad memories of black ducks from your past
I have enjoyed your game a lot. I even dare say it was kind of an eye-opener to me. While, as a GM, I already (subconsciously) shared most of Jeep “truths” (speaking of “form”, I don’t know of anyone using music as a task resolution mechanic), I still clinged to a table-top roleplaying style that while it did away with most written rules and silly constraints, showed however a certain awkwardness that, I suspect, belongs to most of standard tabletop roleplaying games (even my favourite ones like Unknown Armies is not immune of this, methinks…)
I was — and still am — impressed. I am the most happy to have met you and I hope to attend one of your conventions in the far north, one of these day.
You guys were great. Bravo!
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Hi Tobias, this is Claudia (only female player of The Upgrade! and playing also Doubt).
Just wished to greet you and thank you for the great time I had playing your games.
Also you and Frederick can make really good panels.
As it happens I feel like subscribing almost everything you said about Jeep and some play techniques you introduced to us were just brilliant.
Please let me praise the awesome writing of Doubt as I really loved it.
With such a work behind us it was really easy for us players to create a satistying story, act some very intense moments and be rewarded in the end by that nice closure feeling so few games are able to give.
I really enjoyed the collaborative writing aspect of the game and was pleasantly surprised by the brilliant story contributions of my fellow players.
That experience was absolutely my Ambercon highlight, to the point I hope to be able to direct this event at some Con in the future and have more people enjoy it.
Please let me know if a more detailed Actual Play report would be useful to you, cause I would gladly write one.
Best and please keep on writing like this!
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Moreno, Max, and Claudia. Of course I remember you all. (I suffer
from the common ailment of connecting faces with names, but faces
I do remember.)
Thanks a million for all the kind words! I’m very happy that you
liked our games and our panel. It is always a bit nervous to go
somewhere else and run a game and see if it is likeable to another
gaming culture.
@Claudia: I would be very happy to get an actual play report. I’m
working on making The Upgrade!, Doubt etc. available on the web in
the next couple of days, so if you want to run the game (please
do, and please tell me how it went), the material is there.
@Max: actually, Anteo is a misspelling. It should apparently be
“Antero” in finnish, but I’m happy that we accidentally made him
Italian! If you ever think of visiting a Swedish con, holler!
@Moreno: I fully understand the language problems. Language +
alien form at the same time. By my standards, you did a great job!
April 25th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Doubt – Actual Play
Hi Tobias,
as agreed I’m posting the actual play report but I warn you: this thing is HUGE. Please feel free to use it as you wish. Like taking just excerpts from it, for example…
We played at 2007 AmberCon in Modena (Italy).
The director was Lorenzo Trenti, one of the more active members of Flying Circus.
The players were:
Benedetta – we met her here for the first time. Talking I learned she started playing live games since about a year ago and likes it very much.
Moreno – he’s friend with me and my husband Michele and we play in a weekly tabletop rpg group with other people. He’s very interested in game theory and a Forge enthusiast.
Michele – Like me and Moreno he plays tabletop since many years. Very interested in game theory.
Claudia – that’s me. Game theory fascinates me but I admit I don’t have much time or patience for it. It interests me only for the help it can give to get games I like.
Michele, Moreno and me listened to the Jeep panel in the morning and agreed almost to everything that was said. All of us were intrigued by the techniques you showed us and experimented in the previous game The Upgrade (inside-outside, shared character ownership, playing in different times, etc.)
Lorenzo explained the game to us and then we started writing down the Real Life scenes.
I enjoyed this part and think the others did too. We players started talking about which of the supporting cast were more interesting to insert and which places and circumstances seemed more promising. Some ideas for interesting scenes started to form, but nothing too defined.
We choose to limit the supporting cast to Alice, Cecilia, Miriam, Jennie, Mary-Anne, Robert, Garrison, John & Samson, and of those only Jennie, Mary-Anne and John were used more than once (we first identified in John and Jennie the Temptations, and used the others when a situation we liked called for their presence)
We then proceeded to the casting and were randomly coupled. Moreno and Benedetta got to play the bed scene (which ended with her angrily leaving) and me and Michele played the living room.
Here we noticed it felt quite awkward to us to play a struggling couple and it was difficult to play a couple forgetting we were one, so we agreed I would play Julia and Maude, Moreno would be Tom and Lewis, Michele would be Peter and real life male extras and Benedetta would be Nicole and real life femal extras. (this suited me well ‘cause I was intrigued by the idea of playing “dream Maude”. It also proved useful later in the play).
I hope I remember the scene sequence correctly. Moreno helped me rereading my actual play, adding some details and correcting the order of some scene but still we’re not completely sure.
As for tecnique, we didn’t do any inside-outside. Maybe that would have been appropriate but perhaps we have to get a bit used to it. Or maybe the theatre atmosphere affected a bit our frame of mind and we just relied on gestures and dialogue to deliver our story.
From time to time Lorenzo would ask some detail like “how’ Jenny’s dress?”, “who cooked?” that casted further light to some aspects of the story.
AT THE DOOR
The play started with Nicole’s monologue casting some uncertainity on Peter’s and Nicole’s relationship.
Coming home after a great show (Tom & Julia)
(Maybe here we made an error, we decided to set this scene in the taxi taking them home after the show, but not thinking about it we should have used one of the listed locations)
Information added by this scene: the couple is having a nice success with this stage play, after years of struggle, and they are talking with a producer about a high-budget movie. It could be their big break into stardom.
She enjoys her current popularity and is optimistic. He is unsure, always read the reviews fearing the worst, and even if he jokes about it the fact that Julia is the one most popular, he doesn’t like it. Seeing Jenny (or someone who resemble her) outside the taxi window for an instant make them talk about her, showing that Julia - who went to the same school, when Tom and Jenny were an item - is still jealous of her)
Later the doubts and worries of Tom would come again to contrast Julia’s optimism.
At the restaurant with Garrison an Cecilia.
(we didn’t decide anything beforehand for this scene apart for the characters and location. We inserted this scene here to avoid having two consecutive scenes with only Tom & Julia, and keep it here even after we modified the following scene)
The friends were played as a happy, succesful couple trying to have a baby. Here the apartment was first mentioned as Julia told Cecilia she might soon be needing her services as they were about to buy an apartment. Tom didn’t say much while Julia showed enthusiasm for the apartment thing.
They talk about babies, too, another issue that make Tom uncomfortable and morose..
The video camera
(We discussed this scene quite a lot, because it didn’t feel right using two consecutive scenes with only Tom & Julia, and even after inserting the restaurant scene we were unsatisfied, but we had some difficulties finding the right way to insert another character, until someone suggested a surprise visit by Julia’s parents with the father showing off to the camera. At this we laughed and agreed)
Again a serene scene of Tom and Julia. (Lorenzo gave us some very good questions) They praised each other work and seemed a great team.
They were interrupted by the early arrive of Julia’s parents. Julia’s father was quite unpleasant with Tom, betraying professional jealousy. Julia and her stepmother did their best to smooth things out but without great success. As the bickering continues Julia got a bit angry, she turned off the video camera and scolded Tom and her father.
[Tom’s player here: this was one of the “comedy relief” scenes, based on the petty bickering between Tom and Samson. At this stage we were still unsure about the general tone of the story we wanted, but seeing how it turned “dark” at the end these scenes make for a nice contrast]
In Lorenzo’s opinion here is where the serious tone for the whole live was set.
The situation was quite comedic, but Julia didn’t react like a comedy character, she acted like a real person getting angry cause her family are making fool of themselves in front of a camera.
After her outburst the situation wasn’t funny anymore.
Maybe Lorenzo is right, anyway I’m happy we didn’t do a comedy event, cause comedy detach you from situations and this event in my opinion gained much from us feeling so involved.
The Party (Tom & Jenny, Julia & John)
we decided to use this scene to present Jenny and John to the “audience”, keeping the meetings separated from each other: here Julia met John and Tom met Jenny without crossing each other.
John was quite flattering and maybe hitting a bit on Julia, but she didn’t show to notice it. She talked again with great expectations about the apartment he was about to show her.
Tom and Jenny meeting was very warm. She was quite seductive and he showed to be fascinated by her. He admitted his relationship with Julia felt a bit constrictive and she showed her despise for clingy women (implying she was the opposite). Tom seemed quite struck from her and invited her at the next show.
At the theatre in Tom’s dressing room with Jenny. Then Julia arrives.(we decided beforehand that in this scene Jenny would go to the show - having been given free tickets by Tom - and would go to the dressing room afterward to talk to Tom. And in this scene there would be some beginning of a “spark” between them, and Julia would arrive. We always left the specific of every scene to improvisation)
Tom and Jenny are chatting pleasantly and flirting a bit after the show when Julia arrives. It feels awkward. Tom introduces Julia to Jenny and states he’s coming in a minute, implying Julia should leave. She appears hurt and hesitates before leaving. He doesn’t seem to notice.
NICOLE’S SHOW
Maude greets Peter warmly. She’s flattering and bit flirty. He seems to like it.
RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
Dream Lewis asks for forgiveness very sweetly and humbly. Nicole seems touched and readily forgives him. She is nostalgic and sweet with him.
John shows Julia the dream apartment.
(nothing was decided beforehand for this scene, apart from characters and location)
Julia is clearly in love with the apartment. John is flattering and hitting on her. She treats it as a joke and dismisses it. It becomes clear the apartment is very expensive.
MARTYR
Peter arrives with flowers and a dinner reservation for Nicole hoping really to see Maude, not Nicole. While Nicole excuses herself we learn this is not the first time. Peter laments it is so hard to see her as she’s constantly working. She admits it and promise she’ll try to do better. He doesn’t seem very trustful of her promise.
THE DREAM OF THE IDEAL
Nicole starts with a monologue about Peter’s faults, then Dream-Lewis and Nicole act disgustingly sweet to each other. They go on about the wonders of their house.
Tom and Julia in their current apartment
(nothing was decided beforehand for this scene, apart from characters and location. But we asked the GM to put “the dream of the ideal” between the previous real-life scene and this, to have a sequence of “real-life apartment of her dreams- dream apartment in the play - rented apartment where they live now”. We didn’t choose at any time between us to make the apartment a big deal and the principal straining in the relationship, but thinking about it afterwards when we choose this sequence “because it would be fun” we set his importance)
Julia enthusiastically tells Tom of the apartment. He seems mildly interested but freezes when she shows him the price. Tom thinks it is too much, maybe they’ll be able to afford it in 2 or 3 years.
Julia cannot believe his reaction and replies they have to take some risk and commit if they wish to build something for their future.
The discussion is very tense even if they’re not actually arguing or screaming. It ends with Tom agreeing to see at least once the apartment and try to talk to John to bring down the price.
Julia in her dressing room with her stepmother Mary Anne, then Tom arrives.
(this scene was to let Julia talk to someone about her feelings)
Julia is not her usual self, she seems nervous and uncertain. Mary Anne express her worries and suggest she should leave Tom. Julia is appalled at the suggestion and seems desperate at the idea.
Tom enters to say something to Julia and the conversation stops. She is different with him now, more reserved.
Tom at Miriam’s, then John arrives.
(this scene was at first to let Tom talk with someone about his feelings, but was fast turned in a comic relief scene. This was the most pre-built scene. We couldn’t stop adding fun bits at the planning stage, so it was the most fun moment before playing. (But - it’s Tom’s player talking here - playing it was a little too constrictive, like redoing another time an already-played scene. Thinking about it now I am happy we choose to leave all the other scenes much more open to improvisation)
Tom laments the clinginess of his partner to a not very interested Miriam. Then John arrives and starts drinking and talking about this great woman coupled to a jerk.
Tom suggests John should’nt miss his chance (he’s evidently thinking of his past with Jenny), John gladly accepts the suggestion and they get friendly drunk together.
They wonder why women always end up with jerks and ask Miriam about it.
“I wouldn’t know, I’m not with a jerk”, she replies.
A GOOD DAY
skipped
SURRENDER
Peter wakes and monologues about the difficulty of their relationship, the little time she has for him. He hesitates, than goes to sleep next to Nicole.
Julia brings Tom at the dream apartment, then John arrives. (all we decided was that here Tom would learn about John)
Julia hopefully and nervously shows Tom the beauty of the apartment but he replies talking about money. She gets cold and silent. John arrives and Julia leaves the 2 men talking about money.
John and Tom recognize each other and Tom realize Jonhn were talking about Julia.
Tom says to Julia that they will, in fact, buy an apartment. He changed his mind. But not this one. Some tense, whispered exchange follows [Tom actually menace John, warning him to stay away from Julia] until Julia nervously interrupts them stating she changed her mind: Tom is right, they shouldn’t buy the apartment.
John leaves greeting her warmly despite the angryly ogling Tom.
Tom makes a scene to Julia for John hitting on her. She angrily replies throwing in his face the dressing room scene with Jenny. This is the first time they actually scream at each other.
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
Peter and Nicole conversation in their apartment quickly turns to an unpleasant discussion. Peter says Nicole is neglecting him for her work and Nicole stresses all of Peter faults. Dream Lewis and Dream Maude suggests the other partner faults and how better it would be with them.
Nicole and Peter end up angry and resented towards each other. Lewis and Maude leave commenting “they don’t stand a chance”.
LIT CANDLES
The dinner proves cold and unpleasant from the start. Peter and Nicole quickly starts arguing and Lewis and Maude suggests evil things to say.
(Here it helped a lot that Michele playing Peter was my husband, while I was playing Maude. It allowed us to get a bit phisical. It was just a hug and a kiss but it seemed right for the scene.)
ALL OUT WAR
Peter and Nicole have just had sex, and they are laying in bed, when Dream-Lewis and Dream-Maude arrive, together, having decided to make another try to make the couple break-up. Dream-Lewis kneel near the bed on Nicole’s side, and begin to angrily talk to her in a low voice, really laying into Peter, beginning with “he couldn’t even satisfy you. As always. You could do better by yourself. He treat you as his house servant, and can’t even pay his part in this contract” and ending after a lot of more verbal abuse with “leave him. Drop him and live again! Search for me. I am still waiting for you. I still love you, after all this time. I will take you and treat you like the princess you are” . Dream-Maude insinuates her part of evil things while embracing and caressing Peter from behind. He agrees with her observations.
After this the two dreams get up, join behind the bed, and leave after exchanging an exasperated look and saying “if they don’t break-up after this…”
Tom and Julia in Paris with Tom’s parents in their apartment
(nothing was decided about this scene, but we felt that it would be the right setting for a final tantrum or love scene between Tom and Julia. When played it had instead a very different meaning than the one we imagined)
The four chat a bit. Julia and Tom seem more distant then usual. Alice asks about the apartment and Julia quickly dismisses it “we didn’t buy it”. Alice has an announcement to make: her and Robert are divorcing (this was a great idea from Benedetta). They are still very civil and courteous to each other but unmovable in their decision. Tom is appalled and angry at the news. Julia doesn’t say a thing while Tom discusses with his parents. Then she states she admires Alice and Robert for their courageous decision.
AT THE DOOR
Nicole comes home finding Peter sitting at the table. Suitcases are near the door and he is leaving. They agree this would be the right thing to do. Everything is cold and sad.
Here we finished our planned scenes and decided to use a fast scene to play the real life finale.
Moreno and I discussed briefly. Breaking up would seem the natural outcome but it felt a bit obvious. He proposed an unheard monologue of Tom to Julia recognizing his faults and begging her not to leave him.
I liked it and we entered the scene with Julia assuming the same sitting position of Peter while Tom walked around like Nicole, in the theatre after the curtain falls, people leave and all is silent. . He gave his monologue to Julia while she stares at the floor. When it ended she met his eyes. We felt this open ending was poetic and very satisfying.
[Moreno - Tom’s and Dream-Lewis’ player - here]: I must say that the ending surprised even me. I can’t say that “the characters decided differently” - I am not a very immersive player, I always think about the story first, sometimes setting my character up to a fall and failure, when I play narrative games, to get a more interesting story - but the act of playing the scenes gave every time a new perspective about the way we could go from then. It was really a interactive and fun process. I began playing with every intention to be the one who would betray his partner, and played the first two scenes with Jenny with that intention in mind. But the way the story moved from that, with the fleshing out of the characters, made me see Tom gradually in a different way, like someone who simply searched for an out to avoid responsibility, and for this reason flirted briefly with the idea of returning to Jennie. But at the time of the Bar conversation with Miriam he was already deciding to stay with Julia [and he was drinking to find the courage to make this difficult decision]. It felt just “right” for him to take this decision at that time, just before the tense meeting with Julia and John at the apartment, where he panic. He has finally decided to make the commitment to stay with Julia, and now he find out that maybe it’s too late. In this and the next scene his world is crumbling down and he is unable to do anything to stop it. Making Julia leave him seemed overkill and too obvious. But we couldn’t find any good reason for making her stay with him at this time. The end I proposed is very ambiguous. I asked to lower the lights as we always did every time a dream-character was in the scene. Apart from the meeting of the eyes at the very end (unplanned, but just right at this time), Julia’s character didn’t acknowledge Tom’s presence in any way, and he walked around her, whispering behind her, exactly like Dream-Lewis. Was really Tom talking to Julia in that scene? Was Tom Julia’s dream? Was Julia Tom’s dream? For myself, the ending I prefer is that Tom is really calling for Julia forgiveness at the end, but he isn’t really in that scene. I was his feelings talking from afar to a woman sitting alone, who has to make a decision. But I didn’t want my interpretation of the ending to be “the right one”, both for the other player’s and “the audience” (hi, Lorenzo!)
I must add that I enjoyed very much playing Dream-Lewis, both in his saccharine moment with Nicole, and when he really lay into Peter. I could play both over-the-top sweetness and very vicious verbal attacks to other characters. Great fun!
April 26th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Thanks to both of you! I’m always very interested in actual play reports (no matter how long), and general comments and this material is great for me.
I too am happy that you did not play the game as a comedy, and agree with Tom’s player that it is essential to have comedic or fun parts to show the contrast with the serious ones.
I like the fact that Julia, Tom and Jennie went to the same school. I wouldn’t have come up with that (and if I had, not all players would have liked it), which really is a point in favour of this pre-game collaborative creation part. Dubbio is the first game in which I have tried this out so fully, and I’m very happy with the results. I’ve always believed that talking things through before is a good thing (as we said on the panel), but this is the first time I’ve “formalised” it.
I’m also very happy when you say that you were still surprised and that the more open-ended scenes were more interesting to play than the heavily planned — this is my belief too, and I’m happy that someone else is saying it. (Some Danish players at Fastaval made similar remarks.)
About the video camera scene, the idea is that Julia’s parents are coming to visit, and I’m glad that you arrived at the same conclusion as I. I want the scene to be about how you behave when the camera is off and on, and how you behave when your parents (in-law) are there and not.
“… she states she admires Alice and Robert for their courageous decision.” Brilliant! Lorenzo said “I had excellent players,” and it certainly seems so.
Great AT THE DOOR scene. Great.
“When it ended she met his eyes. We felt this open ending was poetic and very satisfying.” — You are making me one happy game wright here.
Lorenzo said that this game is hard to play. I both agree and disagree. I think the game is always playable (provided you can relate to the emotions and are interested in doing so), but to really make it shine the players have to do some hard work in planning, making dramatic decisions on the fly, finding contrasts between the play and the everyday life, etc.
I’m happy that you enjoyed the game and am very grateful for the feedback. I’ll make a serious effort to get the game on-line today.
April 26th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Hi To all.
I’m Luca the writer of Sad Reflection game.
I’ve to say that, listen to all the review by people on the flying circus mailing list i’m a bit sad because i hadn’t the chance to try one of your games!!
But i hope to play one of this games as soon as possible.
Just three point about SR only to try to expose the theorical purpose of the game, to see if someone could see how to refine it.
The main themes, when i’m the one that organize the game, is not “understand what is going on”, simply because nothing is going on, nobody really knows what happen because it isn’t written anywhere.
The main theme is the choice of the player, through the main character, of a fate. You will be the one that, being not sure of what really happens, will decide to confess something to relief from his burden or the one that will not tell anything?
The game ends in the moment in which the main player make the choice.
All the other player are the eyes and the ears of the MainPlayer, because they will build the details, put pressure and so on, so that the MP will be convinced of a possible version of the story, and at this point he will realize what he really want, his choice.
The entire game is a three episode game to rotate people in the leading role, and his a lot theatrically because i would like a passionate view of the story conveyed to the MP through the storybuilding and acting of the other. So, in my idea, it’s a game of choice and mood…
April 26th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Hello, here are some of my comments too.
Luca about Sad Reflection:
“The main themes, when i’m the one that organize the game, is not “understand what is going on”, simply because nothing is going on, nobody really knows what happen because it isn’t written anywhere.”
I totally agree, and it wasn’t my intention to make “understanding what the hell is going on” the main theme of the game. I was also surprised by this impression of Tobias’, and especially by the comparison with Donnie Darko, that’s a game with very different purposes. I’d love to hear Tobias elaborating on these ideas.
“The game ends in the moment in which the main player make the choice.”
Exactly. The problem is that, because of the open-air setting, it was REALLY difficult to understand what the players were saying. So, when the Dark Soul (Federico) had finished to release all of the main character’s memories, I decided to make every player leave, except for the main character and the Dark Soul. I was sure that Federico knew about the way the game ends, so I let him the choice about when to leave and end the game. After much talking with the main character (Tobias), Federico left too, and Tobias sat for a few minutes in the dark, alone with his thoughts. It was quite a nice ending, I think, even though I’m not sure that was what Luca had in his mind.
When we played Sad Reflection in Copenhagen with Nathan Hook, two Scandinavian and three Czech players, it was much easier for me to follow the game (the setting was a small room), and I think it went a lot like Luca wanted. Unfortunately the choice of the Czech player playing the main character was not very clear (he looked very confused until the very end), so I was not very sure about the right moment for the end of the game. But in the end it was fine, I think.
I hope to see you guys back to Italy soon! Cheers!
April 26th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Just a VERY quick reply to Luca and Andrea’s talk about Sad Reflection. I’m busy prepping a friend and fellow Jeep for a 2-hour talk tomorrow on open source in front of my students, so I must be quick.
So: What I aimed at when I say “understanding what is going on” was to distinguish it from the “let’s all discuss what this is about and then play it the best possible way.” In this respect, it was very close to Donnie Darko — pitch the players against each others (in a way) — or the Main Player — and let the story unfold. More about this on a later date.
I was trying to give some impression of the game without spoiling anything for potential future players. I mean no disrespect to anyone. And I don’t mean to say that the game are about that — but that’s how I interpret the structure (the form which tries to make the game about what Luca intended). But now back to work.
Oh, the ending was indeed very nice.
April 27th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Let’s talk about form. In a way one could perceive this sort of form as a very “free” form. Probably it is more free than other more formal events.
I’ve already thought that probably it is less free than it seems because other player gives you the limits. Yes the form is slim because the idea is “a game about choiice, emotionally involving, fast and direct in which you can play without any introduction because the system doesn’t need to tell you the structure, the structure is built around you”
Leaving the details i will try to launch a discussion.
It’s possibile in your mind, to have a really structured play, without the need to put it all on each player shoulders? A combination of slim playing structures that when activated by different players at one time will give an unique detailed structure…. ok, a bit convoluted phrase i know…
April 27th, 2007 at 2:05 am
“It’s possibile in your mind, to have a really structured play, without the need to put it all on each player shoulders? A combination of slim playing structures that when activated by different players at one time will give an unique detailed structure…. ok, a bit convoluted phrase i know…”
Guys… Elaborate please! What you are talking about is indeed interesting.
Do you mean something more similar to Jeepform, or more similar to Fateplay?
April 27th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
It’s an old idea of mine…
A live is a collective experience in his build up. What happens in that shared space is something that is made by action of different people.
But a live is also a personal experience. A player seeing an act could metabolize it in a different versione based on his mood, knowledge of the situation, point of view.
So you could have double reality.
The easiest way of using such a thing is something oriented to a fixed narration, where a piece of story means something different to different players only because of the previouse information you gave them.
In this way it is used a lot of times, especially in long lives, but it doesn’t interest me a lot.
I was thinkign about using dobule reality on the structure of a big game so that you could have a structure that push the play along the purposes of the designer ina strogn way being perceived different from person to person. (you can push this thing to the point that a player could simply leaved in a room with no instruction and play along a very detailed structure of playing only by the side effect of people around hiom)