Random Thoughts on The Game

I have so many notes on this game, I almost feel overwhelmed by the amount of ideas. So I just wanna throw 'em up here. Brace yourselves!

Tears at the End of the Fourth World

About what does the game concern itself?

T@E4W concerns itself with secret underground tribes in the modern world holding families together and the connection to the land in the face of the last dying throes of an impossibly powerful and seductive world-devouring civilization.

What do the characters do?

They heal imbalances in the spirits of the land, stuck in the civilized net of pollution and mechanization. They travel through the Dreamtime to cure family sickness, to beat back demons. They resist the seduction of the machine world which always seeks to turn them to its ultimate purpose of reducing the living world to ash and ruin. By feeding the land and each other with poetry, song and gifts they build up the strength of their families and their relationships to the wild community of life to accomplish these purposes.

What do the players do?

They immerse themselves in the a web of relationships based on gifting, heartache, and peerage with wild non-human persons. The use their characters to explore the struggle central to the game, strengthening their family networks, deepening the relationship with their landbase, by taking risks to offer precious gifts to those they want to keep in their network of family and land. They take on the role of the Machine, pursuing nonstop these free families, until it can catch them and either put them to use or destroy them through spiritual and/or physical death.


IDEALLY

About what does your game concern itself?

Eloquence, Relationships, and the importance of Family and Connection to Land.

What do the characters do?

Court and maintain friendship, family, and allies (human and non-human), while avoiding the pitfalls and seductions of the civilized Machine culture dominating much of the world.

What do the players do?

By taking on the roles of their primary character, and of the supporting cast, including the agents of the Machine, they struggle to strengthen their family and land relationships while playing agents of the machine

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What does your game provide?

It offers a structure in which players can reflect on their experiences with people and nature, and learn from them through story.

Much Like Land of One Thousand Kings, players may mine their own experiences with animals and plants to help others out in their attempts...

One collects relationships like cards in a deck - the more relationships, the more mythdeck cards.

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What kinds of fun does your game encourage?

Competitive eloquence poetry slamming...of a 'A: Thank you! B: NO, thank YOU! A: NO, THANK YOU! B: Not even, THANKS TO YOU MORE!'

Playing with non-human perspective, values, and needs, much as the demons in sorcerer - What do trees want? What does the wind want? What does a river want?
[appreciation, companionship, perpetutation, and diversity (which mechanically supports the first two]

Players fill different roles of both humans, non-humans, and Machine demons, because the game encourages EMPATHY - what needs and feelings do these other beings have? Players also have a primary character, because the game encourages SACRIFICE - what will you offer of your limited resources, the hairs on your head, the coins in your pocket, the effort in your heart, to those you wish to connect with?

Players choose relationship goals with non-humans to increase throughout the game (fox, cedar, willa river, thunderheads). Relationships = character effectiveness.

Players experience the fun of another culture, a culture where allies and family, developed and maintained through gifting and eloquent courtliness, drive the central issues of play.

Ritual elements and phrases - "Hat's off!" combined with the doffing of headwear. Burning sage when asking a favor. Offering an artifact (something found from outside!) to drive character story.

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gameplay drives through a cycle of 5 roles, which a player can start in any place. Child, Initiate, Adult, Elder, and Ancestor. Players have a specific dynamic tied to their role - children wish to grow up, but have the power of 'beginner's mind' and play. Initiates wish to acquire reputation, but have passion and foolhardiness. Adults wish to create security for their families, but have reputation and craftiness . Elders wish to understand tradition, but have emptiness and physical fragility. Ancestors wish to help, but have hungers for the innocent youth if their families do not feed them.

When a role reaches loses its gifts and gains its goals (as they slowly shift over play), it then moves on to the next stage of life.

A player's role shifts as a partnered player (playing the demonic force) pushes bangs to force the player to make decisions and acquire world-wisdom.

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GM or not GM?

A facilitator, standing outside of play, but coaching from the sidelines, enable players to stay focused and immerse themselves fully in the experience/flow. A player cannot both fully immerse and facilitate play. Possibly, to distribute the facilitators role among the players means to break up/stagger/periodize immersion in the flow of play.

Does an open space require a facilitator for full immersion? Only to kick it off, to provide structure and permission/pressure to engage the structure. After it starts, if the players have engaged, the facilitator can leave. If the players have not fully engaged the facilitator must stay present to refocus play/participation. But then of course what about closing? The facilitator must return for that.

Facilitators hold a precise space. Sometimes players internalize a facilitator role and it unconsciously distributes among them, but they needed a facilitator to get there.

Much like the dream interview game: Dreamer, Interviewer, Coach.


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