Hi there!

This is the forum for Black & Green Games, bringing you Breaking the Ice as of Summer 2005 at GenCon Indy.

I'm Emily Care Boss, the brains/shadowy figure behind Black & Green. I got to meet a bunch of folks at the  Con who were excited about the game & I'm looking forward to hearing more from them & everyone here, and to answering any questions you may have about the game.

Here are some of my favorite highlights from play at the con:

Tony's goth girl with a super-secret stash of beanie-babies whom she'd made a teeny-tiny cemetary for, each carefully tucked into it's tomb.

Finding out that a small detail related by a player (a recently divorced character fingering the empty spot on his hand where the wedding ring had been) struck home for the other player, as something he'd actually done....

A character making little Chthulu-head cookies that neither character ended up being able to eat due to shared issues with food...

What a blast it was to play with you all! Hope you have lots more fun with the game.  :)

best,
Emily

Hi, Emily! I'm glad to hear that GenCon was such a good experience for you.

I showed my fiancee the playtest version of BtI, and we'll definately be ordering the print version.

*chuckle* The Cthulhu cookies (with green icing!) were excellent. Alas.

I also got to play out a budding lesbian romance (with another guy) that never quite made it off the ground, whilst across the table Jasper and his latest floozy (I'm sure she was a very nice girl =P) had a night of drug-fueled debauchery at a strip club one of them worked at. When Bacchanal came up in post-game conversation, I had to excuse myself, heh.

Good times!

D.

Hey Dave!

Good to hear from you!  Glad you had fun.  I've actually been wanting to ask you to talk about how it was for you to play.  It seems wierd & scary to a lot of folks before they try it.

bestest,
Em

Weird and scary? Nah. I already had the PDF version of BTI so there was nothing shocking about the rules by the time I played. And I play female characters about 50% of the time online, so gender swapping is no big deal for me. The thing I had the hardest time with was trying to come up with something *other* than gender to swap out. I ended up using the  fact that I don't use any recreational substances (ice cream notwithstanding), which I guess is an example of "digging deeper", as it took me a while to come up with that. I think the urge for me was to swap *similar* or linked characteristics, which we ended up not really doing, it was just "find something true about you that's not true about the other person and give it to them" independently of each other's choices. That wasn't as satisfying aesthetically for me, but  who knows how long it would have taken to find some appropriately paired characteristics.

There wasn't much flirting going on between us, as two straight guys who, I'll admit, pretty much played to prove we could do it but really would have preferred female partners. Of course Jasper and his partner across the table were practically melting in each others' mouths... damn them.

Actually, although we didn't pay too much attention to that side of the table consciously, I am kind of wondering how much affect their game had on the course of our own. Nothing overt, nothing I can put a finger on, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some subtle influence. Is that a consideration you thought of with multi-couple games at all? I can certainly envision a more flirtation-based situation that has potential for creating... shall we say "mixed" feelings among the participants?

Forgies seem to really love pushing that edge, but sometimes it's dangerous to play with real emotions... I want to say that for the most part, people who are mature enough to "grok" Forge games enough to want to play them are probably mature enough to handle whatever those games dish out (or draw out), but that's probably wishful thinking.

Mm... need food...

D.