I’ve said before, that I try not to tell war story in these posts, but I’ll break that rule now, because my story have some interesting elements with connection to character shifts and steering. But to do that, I need to tell the story we experienced, so here goes:

SPOILER ALERT:
I’m going to reveal things about the game in this post, that you really want to have as a surprise, if you want to play it.

To keep this short, I’m assuming you’ve read the first post about “Things that happen to other people” if not you can read it here.

There was four characters, each character had a focus or a goal with the stories they told or the bits they added to other’s stories. For my character, Henrik, it was ambivalence. He’s a man without a foothold, not being able to keep his focus on the same thing for long, growing tired with one thing and then moving on to the next, never able to make a final permanent decision, but fully aware that he should. He’s also ambivalent about their situation, on one hand he knows that it’s dangerous, but on the other:
it’s something new, its an adventure.

At one point the characters come across a house, they assume that it is abandoned, but it turns out an old man “lives” in there. He’s an old soldier, evident by the rifle we found. He’s clearly been left alone for days, stuck in bed, delirious and impossible to get in contact with. He rambles and talk to people not in the room and ignores the players. They can’t even feed him.

Henrik, kind of seeing himself as a hero, wanted to help the man, (me the player knowing that was impossible). Henrik tried suggesting staying here taking care of the old man, but that was not safe, the others would only stay for one night, but that would not help him. Henrik then tried suggesting bringing the old man with us, but no that would slow us down, even Henrik could see that.

He started stacking some food next to the old man’s bed, but no, what when that ran out? This would only prolong his suffering. Desperate and in tears Henrik asks the others: should we maybe end his suffering? The others horrified said: no! and no more talk of that. In the end we all went to bed, and the GM asks: so what do you do about the man? And everyone looked at me.

The way Henrik is written, I don’t think he could have killed the man, but I also knew, that if Henrik did something so violent, that it would change him forever. So remembering the talk about steering from Knudepunkt this year, (steering: the act of you as a player making choices about what your character does, to get a stronger or different experience. There’s one or two articles about it in the KP book.) I decided ok, lets go for broke, and see where that gets us.

So I slowly narrated how Henrik couldn’t sleep, in his mind going through all the options again. Tried to feed the old man, tried to talk to him. And then just ended my narration with the words: “the other three are suddenly woken by the sound of a rifle shot.” The look of horror on their faces was almost intoxicating. I did say, I went for broke. Everyone had expected Henrik to use a pillow, but no, the whole point was to end his suffering as quickly as possible.

After that shock the GM had us all do an inner monolog, about how the characters reacted to that. And it was just: everyone hates Henrik! (Well except Andre who was “secretly” in love with Henrik, he was in shock, how could Henrik do that? What is happening to him?) I had no words by that point, what does Henrik think now? Nothing, so thats what I did. (You know I love silent role play, so now I have done a wordless monologue!) (achievement unlocked.)

The reason I tell this long winded story, that no one will read, is this: it completely changed the character, but the change still had roots in the dilemma of the character. He went from someone who thinks too much and never makes a choice, to someone with a blank mind and who now finds action all to easy, (evident later where he rather cold hearted knocked a man down and robbed him.)

So I thought thats it, game over for Henrik, no coming back from that. But I was wrong, the second to last scene took place on a ferry, taking the characters out of the country. A journalist, played the the GM, Kat Jones, asked to interview the players. It was a powerful scene, because we all reacted to her questions in such different ways, one by shooting questions back at her: “how do you think it would be like to lose everything?” One shut up like an oyster, and one while crying tried to give her an impression of the war, (it might help, if other people learn of our suffering.)

I being cold and dead inside just went for the unrelenting cold truth. But when I told her about the old man, she asked: “Oh so you murdered and robbed him?” That came out of the blue and struck me (and Henrik) very hard, this was the opposite of steering, I had not seen this coming, but went with the flow, and let Henrik finally break down and cry.

Ok I thought, right so this time, this is the end for Henrik right? Not a cold dead inside shell, but a broken traumatised weeping man. But no I was wrong, (again). The last scene was open to us, a song played, and when that ended, the game was over, but we could do whatever we wanted during that time. Henrik curled up in the lap of his sister who caringly caressed him, I tensed up my whole body and just let it shake once in awhile.

In the mean time I could hear Andre confessing his love to Henrik to his mother, and his mother encouraged him to go to Henrik and tell him, “he needs you.” I thought great, when Andre does that, I’ll say nothing but turn away! Yes so cruel (God Nordic larp right?) But Andre surprised me just as much as the journalist, by going up to me and softly asking: “can I lie here with you?” What could I say? I let him, and together we curled up. Slowly I let the tension ease from my body and just like that it ended on a happy note. It was so beautiful and so unexpected.

And that is why I told this long story. It was unexpected! I could never had foreseen this outcome. It was those so fundamental shifts, they really surprised me. Especially the last two. That so much can change from so little. But only if you let it. I could at each point have chosen to stay with the direction the character was going in. The way Henrik is written, he could never have killed the man, but by steering, and accepting this change, I got a much more powerful experience. In the other two changes it was much more going with how my body reacted. My mind had chosen a path, but I listen to the way I emotionally reacted to those two small events and said yes to that input.

So the lesson is: don’t stick to the word of your character, but use it as a starting point, and let the character evolve, using the words as guides. And allow yourself to be surprised and say yes to outside inputs, even though you had decided otherwise. If we do not open ourselves to those things, we will not take full advantage of the unpredictability of the role play medium.

The game (and this post) ran long and the after talk even longer, so in the end we only stopped talking when the next group of players arrived, a bit embarrassing (sorry Tim.)

Tomorrow the last post, with the rest of saturday and sunday. Don’t worry it’s short.

Saturday the last real day of Fastaval, (sunday is mostly given over to the big otto party.) I had just one game: “Things that happen to other people”, a game by Tor Kjetil whom you may remember from “Just a little lovin” and “I say a little prayer,” (which I played at last years Fastaval, read about that here (again in Danish sorry).)

It was this years most emotional experience, which I had not expected from a storytelling game with a lot of breaks and shifts in style. (Flow is something I’m beginning to find really interesting (as I’ve mentioned in some of the other posts). To give instructions in roleplay, you have to stop the flow, so strong games tend to be games where the flow isn’t interrupted or it is interrupted in a gentle way, like Deranged does, or like most black box games do.

The game is, well I wouldn’t say complex, but it does have a lot of elements, and the style switches a lot. That’s one of it’s strong points, the way the storytelling works, differs from scene to scene, but that also means that the game flow is interrupted many times for new instructions on each scene.

My group also had the problem of a player who liked the spotlight, and wasn’t so good at giving it away and a bit to good at grabbing it from others, which is unfortunate in a game that has some clear instruction on how each scene must run. If we are instructed to have a scene where someone tells a story and then afterwards everyone adds their own thoughts and versions to it in character, it’s not a good idea to interrupt that story within the first 30 seconds. Respect the meta-rules man!

The problem was, I think, that he wanted an immersive game, where the goals and feelings of the character was the guiding stick. But that just isn’t this game, yes you are supposed to feel and immerse, but more than that: be part of the shared storytelling.

In Lasses description of the game, he also points out, that the character description apparently encourages this behavior. A few meta pointers in the character could properly help, (you might want to do this and that, but it would help the game if you held back once a while or do it in this less disrupted way).

But enough whining, as I said even with all this, it was still an amazing game, I shudder to imagine what the game would be like with more focus on flow and a less intrusive player. That being said for my experience a lot of it came from the other two players being really good, and the intrusive one wasn’t bad, just not a good group player. (Although some of those strong scenes really also do pack a punch), As I’ll talk more about in part two).

So “Things that happen to other people” is a game where you follow four refugees in a fictional modern country torn apart by civil war (*cough*Syria*cough* sorry about that). The scenes often have a strict storytelling part and a more freeform larp part, and the two sort of interacts, sometimes a scene would start with storytelling that then would graduate into freeplay, or the story telling would pop up once in a while. It was a very cool form, and a great way of using storytelling, but requires concentration from all involved.

The focus was very much that the characters experience hardship but also told each other stories about others in similar situations, as a way of reflection on their situation. Did that work, I don’t know. As I said I had a powerful experience, but i’m not quite sure it came from that element, or just a good group or from the fact that it’s a very strong story with some thought elements in it, (properly a mix).

I ended up writing a lot about this game, so this is only the first part, the next will focus on my in game experience and the insights that game me. It’s even longer than this one, so yay!

At Fastaval there’s always someone who doesn’t show up for the games they have signed up for. I’ve done it myself, if I have no energy. For that we have the reserve que, were people who wants to play can show up and get one of the spots that aren’t filled.

I didn’t have any games friday evening and one of the games I really wanted to play, but hatten’t gotten a spot on was running that evening. So I got a number for the que nice and early and hoped to get a spot on Room, and luckily I got that, so I went to play that game.

Room kinda does the same as my own game “The Courage of Teddys.” It takes a child’s viewpoint on something very serious, in Rooms case one of those horrible long term kidnappings and especially the difficulty of helping a child that has never seen the outside of his little room, when the horror is finally over.

It kinda have much of the same feel as the film Mary and Max, where a lot of very dark things happen, but you still end up laughing between the tears and in the end it’s still a feeling of beauty you have inside. Very strange.

The language of the game is childish and simple and because a child can’t comprehend the horrendous situation, he is in, the horrible details are left unsaid and just hinted at, which almost makes them worse. Because then we can just imagine them.

The first half of Room is played in Old Nicks shed, (thats Room). Old nick took Mom and placed her there when she was 17, after some years Jack was born. Jack has many friends in Room, there’s: Closet (where he sleeps at night), Bed (that creaks when Old nick visits in the night) Carpet With Stain On) and so on. One player plays Room and can interact with Jack, talk to him and even move him around and move the objects he is interacting with.

Room is kind of Jacks invisible friend very much like Calvin and Hobbs. Room is real for Jack but for everyone else He’s talking to the furniture and messing things up, “But mom it was Pensel that didn’t want to write numbers.”

One player plays Jack the whole game, and the game is really about him, the same way the game is about the wives in Distance. But the other three characters shift in the second act, where Jack is at the crisis center trying to come to terms with his new surroundings.

In the first act I played Old Nick, which was just as hard as playing the dad in Tilbagefald (Relapse, which I wrote about here: In danish though). But he had an interesting meta technique: He could enter and leave the playing area as He felt like, (the Room, which we had designed our self, both by narrating about it but also by physically building it, btw another cool thing)

It’s a small but important distinction. Normally you have a responsibility to time when you come and go, but here it was presented as a power. You were encouraged to increase the pressure on the players by appearing more and more often, but it was a power not a responsibility, which was scary as shit. One scene I just went in and stood there for a minute, watching, just being a pressens. Oh and btw: He also decided when the act ended by taking Jack out of Room.

In the second act the player playing Mom is now Social Worker, Old Nick (me) is New Room and Room is Mom. Where Rooms job in the first act was to support Jack and keep him safe New Rooms job was to be a counterweight to Jack. When he was moving forward I should push him back, make life difficult for him, show how he just couldn’t adapt to New Room. But if he was sad I could chose to have sympathy with him, and support him.

The small brilliance is that Old Nick and New Room are both kind of the pressure players, the ones that move the game forward, but in New Room you have the ability to also be nice, and I needed that after playing Old Nick and being a bastard.

We had a great game with a very beautiful ending, that I would love to keep on telling about, but it’s already too long, and war stories are only fun for us players.

My brilliant group. In our story closet ended up playing a big role, so we had to try and take a closet selfie, it didn’t quite work out, but well there you go.

After the game more late night talking. I remember a lot of conversations, but when they happened I don’t know, it’s all a blur. Oh yes now I remember: my whole group went to the bar and just talked and talked and at some point the author arrived and humbly asked if she could listen, we shouted “yes!” and continued to praise her game and tell and retell war stories. As another author I know how wonderful an experience that is.

But I began to feel tired and when other players from other groups join the conversation and told about their games, that been much more cruel, I left. I didn’t want my experience sullied. I decided to go home, but on the way bumped into Kroll, one of the original Fastaval people, and a general from the ancient times (at least it feels like that) who convinced me to go to the after party at the hostel, so I ended up getting home even later. But it was good.

After Deranged there was a bit more time before the next short game, but my energy levels were low and I hung out with Jeanette in a kind of stupor and considered dropping the game. But we convinced me to go. So glad I did! It was a simple game, it was called “Prunes and Prejudices” and it was a humoristic improv game about judging the other shoppers in a super market based on their groceries.

The game really is as simple as it sounds, it’s based on a similar game called IKEA but this was kinda more coherent, also IKEA is semi live but this was a pure storytelling game. It consisted of some instructions and a deck of cards. It wasn’t GM less, but after the GM had introduced the game he played along like a regular player, and could just help answer questions, just like with a board game, that someone teaches you and then you play with them.

So we each got a card with a picture of a different kliche: the old lady, the man straight from the gym, the hipster and so on. (Remember this is a game about prejudices). Then we got five cards that each showed a grocery, you might find in any supermarket, on the top and bottom of the card there was a number, a high and a low, this showed how many of the item you character had in her shopping basket, (there’s a difference between going home with just one bag of toilet rolls or 12.

We then choose three from our five and which number of them we have in our basket. Then we take turns turning them over and the other players give out inner monologues on what they think about the person, it’s okay to be a cliche and a bit nasty, thats the humor in the game, and we went for broke. It was great fun (in a more quiet way than “And I lost my fangs”).

It’s a game I would consider running with some of my non role playing friends as a way of showing what we do without going for a big game. All in all quite and easy, just right for my situation. I didn’t end up expending a lot of energy but had some nice laughs and went away form the game with more energy than before. I had forgotten how roleplay can give energy as well.

So it was with energy I went to the reserve que, but more about that and the game that got me tomorrow.

The big one, my record breaking three games day. I started out with Deranged, that later went on to win three ottoes (the oscar of Danish role play and one of the reasons the games at Fastaval are of so high quality.) What amazed me was the player composition, they were mostly over 30, most of them very experienced, and the ones I knew was of the same player type.

It just gos to show what a well written preview can do, they got just the right players, (oh and a strong clear theme, such as classical music.) This actually ties in to one of the points in my post about what games I wanted to play: be honest about what your game is and who should play it. Don’t beat around the bush, just to get more players.

I ended up with yet another international group alongside Lasse, who also played in my group from Distance. It’s become apparent, that if you play a lot with international participants, you will end up playing a lot with the same people. Luckily Lasse is competent and fun, so it’s kind of a first world problem. The other players were: Lars Nyberg a singer (!) and a british girl with the loveliest british accent (I often long for good accents from my second home country.) She turned out to never ever have played role play before, but you really couldn’t tell, she did a great job.

Deranged have the flow I felt This Miracle (and as you shall later see “Things that happen to other people”) lacked. It had a lot of scenes, and they had clearly worked very hard at creating a perfect cutting technique.

The frame of the game is that the german composer Robert Schumann is dyeing at a mental institution alone and mad. As life slowly leaves him, he remembers central scenes in his life and tries to make sense of it all, in his mind creating a symphony from his own memories. But because this all takes place within his deranged mind, things doesn’t have to makes sense, we can jump back and forth in time and even play some of the same scenes several times. We were actually encouraged to play the same scenes several times rather than try and play many different scenes. The whole point being the scene could be changed, he could remember it in a new light or focus on something else, or even change it.

Like this:

The way it is done is where the flow comes in:
On one of the walls in the room a lot of scenes was arranged in three acts. But not just in any odd way, they are arranged as notes on a sheet of music paper, (it looked great, and became a backdrop for the game.) There’s three acts or stages (each with a separate overall theme), in the beginning we can only choose from the first act, but as soon as someone picks a scene from the second act we can start to play that as well, and the same with the third, så we ourselves decide the tempo of the game, although the GM could place a symbol signaling that now there was only 20 minutes left. But we still decided when it ended by someone picking the epilog scene.

So we would play a scene, when one of the players, even those not on stage started saying a certain line from a piece of music written by the character you played (we all played historical characters and it was their music that was used) that meant the scene had ended, but we would continue to say the sentence either going lower or higher until the music the sentence was from started. (Mine was “Die Rose Die Lilje”) While that music played one of the players (didn’t matter which one) would just chose a scene read it out and then we would play it.

So the cutting and pacing of the game was completely in the hands of the players. It was done on an individual basis, but we still managed to create something coherent. It’s interesting that it can be such a cooperation even though the choices where individual.

When I talked to Marie and Jeppe afterwards they said they wanted us to do it in silence and not by talking about where to go now and what to do. I think we did that a bit too much, in our group, and as a GM I would have been more strict with this rule. This is intuition not planning, but like my post about Distance, it’s a taste thing. But it was a beautiful game both to play and to watch. I kinda want to run it now.