[Black Dog] Play Report from Helsinki Uni

[Nath]

report from Helsinki Uni roleplay society:

"Four players. One had played it once, two others had jeepform experience and one had never player jeeps. We used monologs and fast forwarding, both worked well again.

Our protagonist was Sara, a 25-year-old theater student, trying to finish her graduation work while working part-time. Identities were Friends, Relationships (we specified that she has had problems with commitment and trust before), Studies and Money.

Most of the ideas came from the players after a few scenes, ending the game with a few special scenes: we decided that the character is really getting depressed, jumped a month forward and played several scenes with her not present. First we had her friends asking her out for lunch and played the scene with the protagonist sitting in the middle while the other players played what the protagonist thought that her friends were talking about while she didn't get there. The control was constantly on the protagonist's hands, since the player suggested most of the topics of the discussion they were having. We repeated the same with her studies, having her teachers and a school counselor talking about her dropping out. I had them do monologues after both scenes.

Mood was set from the beginning, where I decided to specify that they were going to play serious scenes and how I was going to direct the game. Some laughs were had, but most of the time it wasn't light.

Four players was enough to play the game, but I decided to continue it after having done three scenes in all the identities - we started a bit slow and wanted to go deeper into the despair in the game rather than stop short."