Les petites choses oubliées

[Christoph]

Hi,

Sylvie and I are working on a new game which was originally created for this year's Game Chef: Les Petites choses oubliées (The forgotten little things, or the little forgotten things.)

The Gist
It's a game for two players, lasts about an hour, and uses photographs as the basic cues for play, each player giving the other six (no portraits, no artsy stuff, max one landscape 'cause they're boring). After creating characters, in the manner of Amélie, the players play how the characters met. You just talk and illustrate the funny, quirky, awkward, touching encounter. It's a given that they like each other at the end.
Then there's an undefined ellipsis. The couple has just broken up. They want to erase the memories of this story, because it hurts too much. Our game totally is a rip-off of Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. To do so, they each have to tell memories. The players do that in turn, each time using one of the photos as a spring board. The other play listens, and when the narrator is done, they can react in one of four ways: shut up, continue in the voice of the other's character talking about their one, tell the same event from the vantage point of their own character, or ask a question as the psychosurgeon (the guy doing the erasing). One photo per player is discarded.
After that, the two players talk about the relationship according to a number of fixed questions. They then conclude with an epilogue for their characters. Here you can do some sexy non-linear narration kind of stuff: maybe the scene played in the beginning actually happens now! Maybe they are still attracted despite having forgotten everything about each other! Maybe the erasure is just a joke, nobody would seriously contemplate that!
Download the playtest version in English! (Sorry in advance, it hasn't been proofread by a native English speaker. Also, beware, the game is shorter than this report!)

A bit of history (if you're not a boring old fart, you may skip this)
We've been debating whether S/lay w/me really should have dice or not (you can see some of that here). I was pretty convinced they where the shiz, but Sylvie has been quite reluctant. So one day, I whipped out Shades by Victor Gijsbers... I really should write up some APs... but in a nutshell, I finally understood that she probably had a point. In any event, it proved it was possible to have a game without dice that I really liked, a game where the narration is fuzzy because the narrators are multiple and unreliable (a favourite topic of hers), and a very different take on conflict resolution than everything I'd seen before (and I finally understood Victor's old blog post on the Ideology of Conflict).
Sylvie had been wanting to do a game on the story of couples after their getting together for a long time. She really enjoys two player RPGs and we've played tons, most notably for this discussion, in addition to the two already cited: Breaking the Ice by Emily Boss, Hot Guys Making Out by Ben Lehman, Prosopopée by Frédéric Sintes. We also have to toss Ben's Clover and Bliss Stage into the mix.
Then along came Game Chef 2014 and everything just gelled. The constraint about it not being a book inspired Sylvie to use photographs. It would help kick-start play, a point where Shades had been quite demanding for us, and S/lay w/me had impressed us with the little sentences to choose from.
And it actually worked quite well! We submitted our game to the French division, and managed to get into the French finals. We continued to play it, and got some encouraging feedback from friends, so we're now planning to publish it (probably as a collection of postcards, more on that later, perhaps).


Actual play!

How they met
We had already chosen six photographs each and given them to each other (we use smartphones and digital photos to exchange the photos, but others have played with paper photographs.)
We decided that the encounter would take place during a welcoming session for newcomers of a town. Sylvie played a man in his thirties who loved to wear eccentric socks, liked to align everything and hated to repeat himself. I played a woman who had the habit of writing ideas on scraps of paper and then throwing them away, who would hold her breath, open her eyes and make a decision based on the colour of the first car she'd see, and absolutely couldn't stand walking on the wrong side of a street. Hmm, at first sight, these look a bit on the obsessive side of the mental spectrum, but it has to be understood that these are quirks among otherwise really nice and ordinary people, and they don't actually enter play like explicitly. Sylvie probably didn't know the exact formulation of these quirks before I actually wrote them up for this AP, and I hadn't understood that it was when he had to repeat himself that her character would get angry...
This part works a lot like Breaking the Ice in spirit, without dice and stuff, and with a fixed ending: they necessarily fall in love and start dating, even if that may remain very implicit. The gender switching was by chance, but it can be seen as a relevant nod to the game.
So we started by presenting our characters in the chosen context, and found an excuse to talk to each other, and then they just leave the damn session and go for coffee across the street, and they talk and talk and talk... I love jasmine tea! Oh, he works for NGOs, so cool! I'd love to do that too! Stuff like that.
Hmm, actually, in regards to mechanics, this works a lot like the Gos in the opening phase of S/lay w/me. Each player contributes a significant action or description (which kinds of counts as an action since the characters are seducing each other) turn by turn, until both are satisfied that the characters fall for one another.

The erasing procedure (it's a bit long, choose a few paragraphs randomly if you want to go faster, it's not really a story anyway)
The players continue in the second phase with their character's appointments at the psycho-surgeon's office. There, each photo inspires the players a memory of the imagined couple. The listener gets a chance to react after each memory.

I chose a picture of a little notebook with a map drawn on a page.
She: « As a graphic designer, he always had a small notebook on him. He drew sketches and wrote down his ideas. Once, he even drew the itinerary we did during a walk. He marked the tree in front of which we kissed, where we brought ice-cream, etc. A romantic course. It was reassuring for me to see that it was important to him to keep trace of memories. He even wrote me a card with the plan on it. »

Sylvie accepted the memory as-is and continued with a picture of a wrecked walking boot repaired with red string.
He: « I loved that she was always positive about everything. She always tried to find solutions, to go on and not just despair about a situation. For example, once, we were hiking and the sole came off my boot. I was annoyed and just wanted to go home, but I didn't have time to complain: she just found some string, repaired the shoe and we could go on. »
I decided to add something to this memory (the rules specify that what I say, in the voice of Sylvie's character, has to be about my character): « She was really happy, because the string was red, which was for her the colour of our relationship. »

Then I chose a picture of a camera with a butterfly resting on it.
She: « He always had his camera with him. Once, when we went to this place where they have all sorts of butterflies, he absolutely wanted to take a picture of a blue butterfly. He was completely absorbed by this idea and couldn't think about anything else. We even had to come back for this. He was so obsessed by this that he didn't realise that another butterfly (but not the right one!) landed on his camera. When I showed him this picture, he was quite embarrassed. He was often like this, absent-minded because he was absorbed by something... I still wonder what would have happened if he hadn't caught the blue butterfly. »
Sylvie chose to make an alternate narration of this memory: she took the same event but told it from her character's point of view. « At the beginning of our relationship, I realised she was fascinated by colours, which, by the way, were almost dictating her life. Once, we went to this place where there were butterflies. I wanted to catch a blue one so I could later make a present for her; because blue was the colour she associated with hope, future or success, I don't recall exactly. I wanted so much to please her, but she found me irritating, and maybe I was. Then she made fun of me, because I missed another one, which was right in front of my nose. ».

Sylvie continued with a photograph of aligned paperclips.
He: « At first I liked her mischievous side, she always liked to tease me. One day I was on the phone and was unconsciously aligning paperclips. She found the array later on, and just displaced one, to break the pattern and perhaps break me out of my compulsive habits. I laughed a lot, but the thing is, she didn't always realise what topics where important to me and when she'd better cut out with the silliness. This time it wasn't serious, but... »
I pursued in his voice: « She later told me it was actually a form of therapy for her, that she had her own habits she needed to grow out of, and teasing me in this manner ritualised it. »

She: « We were travelling through China on a very fast train. When I saw we were racing along at 302 km/h, I was struck by how fast everything was passing by. I started wondering if we'd have the time to do all the important stuff in our lives or if we were completely missing the essential things. This train was like the time, flitting by. Straight ahead. »
He (alt. memory): « She was often lost in her thoughts. She'd never share what she was thinking about. Riding this Chinese train, she suddenly went quiet. It was impossible to carry on our conversation and to pull her out of her day-dreaming. Only after our break-up did I realize that on this day, she was very frightened by the pace of our life, perhaps also her youth fading away. But at the time, I didn't understand what was going on. »

He: « I told you about her teasing. But what annoyed me most, was her "patchwork" side. Her life was like this cupboard. See there are games which she plays like mad for a bit, then completely forgets about. She decides to start working out, buys some weights, and three weeks later stows them away and never uses them again. One day I got mad at her, opened the cupboard and told her all that. And I sensed that something broke at that moment. She was devastated. We had our little clashes before, but this... »
She (alt.): « The cupboard was my secret place. I was really scared once, because he started lecturing me, its doors wide open, because I had hidden a surprise for him there. I didn't listen to a word he said, I just wanted him to close the doors. »

She: « I'd placed a note-box at my place. The idea was to write little papers with kind messages and stuff. I always hoped he'd leave me a little note with a kind word or something, but not at all. I had the impression he wasn't interested in my little world, he never tried to enter it. He had his own rituals, his notebook, etc. But I don't know if he ever noticed mine, and I would have really liked for us to adopt each others cute little habits, to underline the fact we were a couple. But even with such an obvious hint... »

Sylvie then selected this photo of a trendy lighting arrangement.
He: « Later in our relation, her work started to get to her. I think she was sick and tired of working for local SMEs. It was weird, she'd come to me for answers, that I'd show her the way. But I was having the same difficulties, it was hard for me too. It made me so sad to see all her positive energy wither away. I didn't know what to do for her, I felt useless. I tried to help in little ways, but I was always off. It's really hard when someone counts on you and you feel powerless to help. »

She: « The hardest part was him not seeing me. He'd make little cute gifts, but, you know, why wouldn't he just treat me like a person? Why couldn't we talk about projects or plan our future? He'd give me presents as consolation, but he never invited me to do something together. I mention this because there was this time where we were at a beach and I lay down to take in the view. I hoped he'd come lie down by my side. He was fascinated by the aesthetics of the place. Sure, it's a nice picture, but it's also very telling. I'm in the background, hidden by withering flowers under a grey sky. »
He: « After a point, it just went downhill. I felt so useless that I'd try to avoid conversations at all costs. Sometimes I was kind of rude. This time, she sat down, it was actually quite romantic. In the beginning, I'd have joined her and cuddled her. But I was so afraid she'd ask questions to which I had no answers that I just retreated to my camera until she was bored and wanted to move on. »

He: « Since we broke up, it's been hopeless. My life is grey. I had to loose her to realize the sunshine, the happiness and hope she brought me. One day, I went to this place we we'd go together. A ladybird landed beside me, and I could hear her voice, telling me a red animal was surely a sign. My life, my days are too grey. »

And all the little things we've forgotten...

A café, some time later
There's a crucial discussion between the two players before going forward with the fiction. Actually, this is blatant textbook narrativism: we're judging the poor fuckers right there and now! « The key to Narrativist Premises is that they are moral or ethical questions that engage the players' interest. The "answer" to this Premise (Theme) is produced via play and the decisions of the participants, not by pre-planning. » Ron's Story Now article
There's a list of questions: where the characters happy? what went wrong? why did they decide to get the procedure done? should we give them a chance?
Plus some character specific thinking: did we like her/him? what do we really think about this character? does s/he remember anything at all?
Then we narrate an epilogue showing the characters some time after the procedure and how their life is like. I'll just provide the narration, but it should hint at the discussion we had.

She's sitting at a table, scribbling something on a piece of paper. She looks through the window and orders a jasmine tea. Her laptop's open and the text field of a search engine has "NGO" written inside.
He opens the door. In his hand, a birthday card; a hand-drawn city map, with a big heart showing the café's location. He looks around, doesn't know what to do, he seems distressed. He sees her. Sits down at her table, on the card it says her name. He doesn't seem to recognise her.
She glances at the card, laughs and says: « It's nice to think of me! And what's your name? »


Discussion, closing remarks

So... another couple of references to games we like and some comparisons. The reactions a player can have to his partner's narration are inspired by the Interlude judgements from Bliss Stage: your choice is meaningful, the partner is never penalized, there's never a clear-cut best choice (I guess it might happen in Bliss Stage, but I haven't actually encountered it). The questions the players have to answer before moving to the epilogue are very BtI-like, yet they're completely divorced from any gauge or point total.
The idea here is that, as Sylvie wished it, the game itself never narrows down options for us, whether strictly or by tactical incentive. I've seen the idea that role-playing games are games where we make suboptimal decisions, but I don't think it's meant to go so far as to actually mean that we should choose sub-par courses of actions, rules-wise.
This game is peculiarly adapted to this (and perhaps demands it), I hasten to add: no clear-cut conflict resolution, strictly two-player game, fuzzy narration, lots of room for interpretation, time-jumping techniques, the exact events aren't quite as interesting as what the people tell about them, etc. I'm not saying the other games should have done it differently. Also, Bliss Stage does a bit of both: missions are resolved precisely, you achieve your goal or you don't, you get hit or you don't, etc. but Interludes are not as clear cut, and there's always an evolution of some sort, none really better than another.

We're very proud of this game. I owe a lot of you potential readers quite a bit to have gotten so far, so please consider this an homage of sorts. We hope some of you will be interested and try out the playtest version and perhaps discuss some aspects of the game with us!

[Ron Edwards]

At the risk of being self-centered, is Sylvie familiar with It Was a Mutual Decision?

I promise to post something about your game soon, i.e., not mine.

[Christoph]

Hello Ron

We have it in our library, but haven't gotten to it yet (yeah, we definitely must!) What should she look out for in particular?

[Ron Edwards]

Whoops, forgot about you briefly ... I'm back. My suggestion has no direct goal and I'm mainly interested in what might come from the reading, rather than aiming at something to happen.

I think the two of you would really like Sweet Agatha, too; see [Sweet Agatha] Stars, diamonds, and death for my take on it.

[Christoph]

Hi Ron,

Yeah, we've played Sweet Agatha a couple of times. We find the book beautiful and the game conceptually very intriguing, but we haven't managed to find a very satisfying way to play it.

By the way, what's your reaction to our game, on the enthousiasm'o'meter? I know you'd play almost any game at least once given the chance, but does this project awake your interest in any particular form? Same question goes for other readers, as we'd like to figure out if there's any point in going forward with publishing (we're also putting out feelers elsewhere).