[Levity]: Bullets of Memory, for three players (and a board, cards and tokens)

[rgrassi]

Hi all. I think it's time to talk the new game (co-authors Francesco Zani and Davide Cavalli) I'm working on.
It is called "Bullets of memory", for 3 players, a board, cards and tokens.
The game procedure will be available here, in public draft:
[Link will be provided asap, current procedure is in italian and must be amended after a playtest and some brainstorming]

Info:
The aim of "Bullets of Memory" is to create a fictional situation with three characters:
- The Hangman, that has suffer some pain / damage / offense so great that the only way to have vengeance is to execute a "russian roulette" forcing and torturing the supposed guilties to reveal their responsibility and obtain a confession. The aim of the hangman is to kill no-one (just obtain confessions).
- Characters A & B. The aim of characters A & B is to save theirselves trying to move the guilt toward the other player.

At each bullet, the Hangman will ask for a flashback to 'remember' something (this will obtain awareness of the backstory for both players and their characters). After the flashback narration is done, the Hangman will shot toward one character's head (the Hangman shoots, the characters are tied) [That's where the game name comes from. One memory, one bullet].
If the character stays alive, than it's turn to run the second flashback (and the second bullet, and so on). If the character dies the russian roulette goes on with the other character.

At the end of the sixth bullet, no character, one or both may be alive. The Hangman will live in any case. According to the number of survivors a different way of closing the narration is foreseen.

I'm going to provide the procedure in english, the prototype board, cards and token as soon as possible.
There's actually some problem with the 'flashback narration' procedure (it needs to be more "driven" and less "green field").
Obviously I'm open to all of your questions.
Regards,
Rob

[rgrassi]

There's a mistake here. Correct statement below:

The aim of the hangman is to kill no-one (just obtain confessions), one or both characters.

[Ron Edwards]

It reminds me of the play Death and the Maiden, later made into a movie, concerning victims and agents of the Pinochet regime in Chile.

I'm a little confused about the shooting mechanic - there are six bullets, so what does it mean that the person with the gun shoots "at the head" of one of the prisoners? Surely the game isn't over in two exchanges always ending in two corpses, so I need some more explanation.

Adding some structure to the confessions is a good idea. One method which may be too structured is to impose an arbitrary order to the confessions, probably in reverse chronology. I.e., the second confession concerns events that occurred before the events described in the first, the third concerns events that occurred before the events described in the second, and so on. As I say, that might be too structured, but something like that has worked well in other games I've played.

[rgrassi]

Hi Ron, thanks for reply.

I'm a little confused about the shooting mechanic - there are six bullets, so what does it mean that the person with the gun shoots "at the head" of one of the prisoners? Surely the game isn't over in two exchanges always ending in two corpses, so I need some more explanation.

You're right. This aspect needs more info.
In the fiction, we want that the hangman stays aside the table where the two victims are (tied to the chairs). If the victim has his hands free he could try to point the gun toward the hangman while shooting.
The alternative is to have the hangman to remotely control the scene and leave the victims with free hands to perform the russian roulette but that would arise more problems with players shooting each other or trying other things with the gun trying to have a certain freedom of action... which they don't have, in that room. :)

In the game, the shooting mechanic acts like this.
The players take a certain number of cards from a "Pistol Cards" deck, according to how many "guilt points" they have. The more the guilt, the more the cards. If they reveal a "mortal bullet" their character dies.
The "Pistol Cards" deck set up by the hangman at the beginning of the game. It may have 0-1-2 'mortal bullets' and the rest are 'fake bullets'. The deck may vary in composition and it's the hangman choice how to compose it (this reproduces the loading of the gun, meaning that you may have no bullets, one or two). According to the number of mortal bullets a good choice is to have an appropriate number of fake bullets, depending on how much the hangman want their victims to suffer.
With 0 bullets, the number of cards has no influence (but the victims don't know that there are no bullets in the deck... and the pistol is not loaded). With 1 bullet the deck should range between 12 (one will die for sure) to 18 (there may be the chance that no one will die). With two bullets the deck should range up to 24.

About the 'confession' structure I'm going to consider your advice... Thanks.
Rob

[rgrassi]

A quick bump just to tell you that "Flashback Bullets" will be published on 2017.
Stay tuned!