I've started over from square zero, on my game, "Silence Keeps Me A Victim." I'm really excited as my playtest failures and some feedback have got me feeling much more solid about what I'm trying to accomplish. Let's answer some common questions.

What is your game about?
Silence Keeps Me A Victim is about finding the strength to find your own voice. It's about learning to live and to heal.

How does your game go about that?
By having the players address each others fears, and roleplay out challenging them.

What does your game reward/encourage/discourage
I don't have this all worked out yet.

What do characters do?
Characters try to make human connections and heal in their real world, and fight demons and search for their voice in their fairytale world.

What do players do?
Players play characters who exist in two worlds, the real world and a fairy tale land. (Think Henry Darger) In the real world, much like the one you and I live in they live dreary lonely lives. In the fantasy world they have to eventually face the Monster to regain their voice.

The game proceeds by having players identify things they can't face or have a hard time facing. These issues will be distributed randomly. They are then attached to the players character. To face these issues the players will need to gather connections. Connections are relationships the character makes to other people. To gather connections they will need to face some sort of difficulty/challenge with the Monster(G.M.) Both sides will set goals. The challenge is resolved by the player going into the fairy tale world and struggling to regain their voice from the Monster. There their child will face a scene created by the Monster, and the child will try to overcome what the Monster puts in the way. If the child is successful then the character wins in both worlds.

What I would like to talk about:

• Besides making meaningful contact with other humans, what else might the adult characters need to become whole?
• What does it sound like I may need to encourage or reward?

I could have sworn I posted this in First thoughts... My apologies if this is an inappropriate spot.

"Besides making meaningful contact with other humans, what else might the adult characters need to become whole?"

Meaningful work, some connection with nature that broadens them beyond themselves, and the chance to grow a soul. This might look like:
I'm a school teacher commited to my profession, I have potted plants in the classroom and I watch the trees outside my windows, and I meditate when I can.
I'm a banker because I love working with numbers, I go kayaking on weekends, and I'm reading the Bible because I might be Christian.
I make art for a living, I draw my inspiration from my 100 acre farm, and I 'm a praciting Bhuddist.
I drive a city bus that gets people where they need to go, I love my dog, and I'm a atheistic humanist.

I moved it here because the game moved into the playtesting phase a while ago. That doesn't change even if you do a full revision from the start. No big deal.

Please carry on with the discussion here.

Best, Ron

Hey Clyde:

The reimagining is sounding good. Are the characters still going to be children, or are you leaving that vague?

Hey Clyde,

Silence Keeps Me A Victim is about finding the strength to find your own voice. It's about learning to live and to heal.

Just a thought, inspired a bit by the way an occultist player makes the scene decisions for any occultist PC he's made into an Underling in Acts of Evil, perhaps it's voice in the real world that should be the core of the system. Until you find your voice, the controller/abuser speaks for your character in all scenes in the real world, mostly determining that you're closed off and silent. Your successes and failures in the fairytale world track you toward either seizing your own voice in the real world, building on your scars and capitalizing on your intensity or a disturbing and silent monstrousness.

I'm thinking now that I wish you'd been in the playtest of Galactic that Matt ran on Sunday. The way a player has to apportion dice in every conflict between plot adversity and personal adversity is brilliant, and might be just the thing for your fairytale scenes. If your fairytale world is dysfunctional, it seems to me that success in its conflicts represents the monstrous path in real life. And so then you use twisted reinterpretations of Meg's list of what people need to become whole as adversity in the fairytale world. Nature and human connections are threatening. Destroy those threats and you're on the dark path in the real world. Learn them, and you're on the path to seizing your own voice.

I haven't seen your more recent drafts of the game, so forgive me if you're already working this same idea.

Paul

Hi Meguey,

Thanks that's helped me add to the list. I think I'm calling all of that Satisfaction. More about that at the end of the post.

Hi Matt,
Yes the characters are children, and at the same time adults. Which is what I meant by; think of Henry Darger. He was a man who moved through life with few real human connections spending his life as a custodian if I remember correctly. Simultaneously he was a military leader in the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, caused by the child slave rebellion, and he was a protector of the Vivian girls. While I'm not using his world for the children, his life is definitely a model. This game would be about using that second life to find strength in the first.

Hi Paul,

That's an intriguing idea. I'll let that soak in a bit. As far as a draft, up until this point the Forge has had basically everything I've had. That's starting to change, as I'm starting to form some text.

So here's what I've come up with so far. The way I'm seeing play is the players will set up a scene and describe perhaps a path to trying to face their issue, or create support. The GM will create some opposition, and the battle will actually take place in the fairytale world. Here's an example scene I have in my head.

Player me: So my guy works in a cube farm. He spends all day working at his computer screen. He eats his lunches in his cubical. At the end of the day he walks out of the office with his head down not looking at anyone. Today he looks over at the cute girl who keeps trying to talk to him. He gathers up his courage to go talk to her...
GM: As he begins to rise he locks eyes with his boss who is standing in his office doorway drinking coffee watching everyone.

*There is some sort of conflict in the fantasy world in which Player Me's child is victorious*

Player me:As their eyes lock the boss looks at him and winks then goes back into his office. His Confidence increases as He makes his way towards the cute girl...

The characters will have Chains (the issues they recieve randomly that they all created) that they need to break. They'll break them by making Connections, gaining Confidence, and creating Satisfaction in themselves. The children need to find their Voice, Safety, and Acceptance

You'll notice in my example. The fantasy portion isn't there. I'm examining what I want from the Fantasy portion right now.

"What does it sound like I may need to encourage or reward?"

I think that you should be very careful with the reward mechanic in this game. If people sit down at the game table to address each others fears, they do not need any motivation from the mechanic to do this. Actually I think that it could derail the game if a player think more about getting the reward than working with the issues in a meaningful way.

If you just have rules that enables the players to work with these issues, the social contract, you will implicit have in such a game, will be more that enough to drive it forward. You can not commit to a game where you work with each others fears, and then just fool around.

- Anders

As a play tester, let me add this:  The reward in this game is seeing your character "find" his lost Humanity.  Having played "Vampire" for many years, just that concept, of finding, or recovering, that which seems lost is a good enough reward.  Just like in real life?  Guess I might have to much of a "hippie" view for some, lol!

:)