Last Friday I had the first playtest where I felt like I was starting to get where I want to go with Silence. Again the game has broad changes from the previous version. Each version revealed itself to not be "right" and I have been continuely stripping down to get what I want. This time I started with nothing and did some playstorming, which is basically playing sort of freestyle and building the elements from play. (Thanks Eppy and Rob Bohl) Anyway....

The game is now a two player game. Thor has been helping me by using the socratic method, and one of his questions made me realize I didn't want to try to deal with the whole group of player dynamics on top of everything else. There is a Gamemaster and a player. That's it.

The Gamemaster is the person who has crafted, or crafts scenes. I think I'm getting a handle on it, but I can't effectively explain the process yet.

The player plays the voiceless child. The player is trying to get the child to a place of safety after whatever home she has known has been destroyed. The only way for the child to get to safety is to defeat the monsters lie between, wilst not becoming a monster herself. The Monsters are not necessarily define-able. In otherwords they aren't personified in a humaniod form. Although as you'll see they can be.

The mechanics right now are very simple, and are a bit of a cross between, "Don't Rest Your Head," and "Lacuna." Which seems appropriate as both games have the kind of fluid setting that I'm trying to create.

In the game there are three statistics. I called them Hope, Fear, and Hate. Those names are likely to change as I don't think they quite capture what I'm going for but they work for now. I used three different colors of d6's. (Thanks Mechaton) Yellow for Hope, Red for Fear and Dark Blue for Hate. I gave Len four Yellow Hope dice, I put a bunch of Red dice in the middle of the table, and I took the Blue dice. I was arbitarily defining difficulties by how many of the Blue Hate dice I rolled. We were counting 1-3 as traitors, and 4-6 as successes. (Thanks Burning Wheel.) I let Len win on ties. If he lost he could pick up and roll Red Fear dice from the middle of the table. He had to keep those. If his Red Fear dice matched his Yellow dice then he had become a monster. (I do realize he could make sure that never happened, by not picking up a die that caused the tie to occur. I'm not sure if thats a feature or a flaw)

Actual Play:

We started with at a Tower. The Tower has a landing and a set of stairs that wind around the outside of the tower. There is a line that stretches from a platform on top of the tower, going down the stairs to the ground and continues off to the horizon. His character at the top of the tower with all the people behind him yelling for him to hurry up and jump so they could get on with it. Previous games have allowed Len to know that these people are waiting in line to kill themselves by leaping from the tower. This time rather than trying to stop the jumpers as he has before, he decided to try to work his way down the tower stairs getting around the people. I made him roll against four of my hate dice. He won easily so he got to the bottom with no complications.

At the bottom he looked for a door in the bottom of the tower, and I took his offer and made a door. He opened it and I described a staircase, but this one leads down. He followed it down and I described it leading to a cavern which again lead to a line, but this time of spirits waiting in line. He walked down through the cavern alongside the spirits. He eventually reached a place where there were monstrous guards, who questioned each spirit and then let them through. Len decided his character wanted to find someone who looked like his mommy. I obviously let him do that, as it was a bit of an offer. I told him that he would have to use some of his characters magic if he wanted to get her attention. I think I made this like six dice. Len won. He got her attention and she started asking him where his characters mommy was, and what was he doing alone, etc. She decided to try to help him find his mommy. (He answered questions I asked by nodding or shaking his head.) She found another spirit in line and this spirit pointed to past where the guards were when asked where the kids mommy might be. The two of them walked past the line and the guards stood at attention upon seeing Len. They eventually reach a dias where there is a woman made out of Ice sitting on a throne, and half a dozen of the demon monsters directing the spirits to travel down different paths.

The Ice Woman stands up and says, "I thought I told you not to leave your room!" to Len's character. She gives the demons a wave and they grab the helpful spirit woman over their head and begin ripping her apart. Len immediately decided to stop them. I rolled eight dice this time to his still four dice. He won again. i got no successes, it doesn't pay to be evil aparently. Len Defeats the demons and then confronts the Ice woman. I forget what he was trying to do, but I rolled eight dice again and this time had four more successes than him. So I had the Ice woman turn her finger into a sharp knife, and slowly cut the spirit woman into slices. We cut this scene there. We both saw this as two aspects of his characters mommy, and the good side losing. Sad.

Next I had his character come to in a bedroom with a loud banging on the door. A little girl looked at him and said, "It's daddy." The father was yelling things like, "dammit I told you not to lock this door unless I was in there!" Len grabbed the little girl and got them both to hide under the covers. The father kicked the door open and grabbed the covers off the bed. I told Len the father didn't seem to be able to see him. Then the father grabbed the little girl by the wrist. Len stopped me here and said that he wanted to bite the father. I said that would be difficult, because the father was powerful and Len was like a spirit to him. I rolled Eight dice again. This time I won by one die, and Len elected to take one of the Fear dice to try not to lose. He tied which I mentioned earlier means he won. I cut the scene here as I felt his unstated goal was to stop the father from hurting the girl and he won. Len explained he took a die this time as he only needed to risk a one die rather than a lot of dice before.

Please Wait for me to post the Problems and Questions I have later this morning. Break is almost over....

So here's my problems and questions. The conversation doesn't have to focus on these three, but it's what I'm thinking about.

• I need to think about ways to engage the player. The scene at the tower was really flat and listless for a bit. I really had nothing until Len gave me that "offer" of looking for a spirit that looked like his mother. It was really good after that. Can I somehow elicit offers? That's likely not dependable?
• I need to think more about the essential dilemma of each scene. The first scene was flat as it was all color, until Len's offer. I've started to think about what are some of the major things someone might have to confront on the road of recovering from sexual abuse. So far it seems scene one was about suicide, and scene two about violence, and perhaps the passive acceptance of a child to their abuse. I knew they were about something important to the process, but not why-- until this week.
• I didn't explain above but right now we are cutting scenes early. The thought is that the player can choose to revisit scenes once they regain their voice to set things right. I need to think more about when to do this. I think I got it right in these two scenes, but I can't explain why it's right.


Thanks.

Clyde,

As a two player game, I can't help but get this sort of psychologist/patient dynamic from your description here. I wonder if you could use anything from that particular dynamic to augment your game. The psychologist needs to probe and prod (delicately) and return the patient to that very horrible place (to confront it). Meanwhile, the patient who keeps the secret will lie their ass off about their experience, or will have repressed the memory deep in their subconscious.

Is the GM supposed to be neutral here?  I don't know how (s)he could be. Therefor, I think retooling your GM player as a psychologist (or benevolent spirit, whatever) might be appropriate. Maybe the GM asks questions to trigger scenes: "Tell me about your father." The patient would then have to navigate those memories, or maybe 'skip' it for now, cuz (s)he is not powerful enough yet, etc.

-Chad

Hi Clyde

One thing struck me from your report of the fiction and what you thought about it: the grabby parts where when the child confronted one of their parents. You cut before there was any resolution: the child didn't seem to get a chance to react to the cutting up of the spirit woman and you didn't report how the bitten father reacted or how that saved the girl. (BTW, is there any effect in the fiction for using Fear dice?) I can see those as functional rules: in addition to the themes you mentioned (such as suicidal thoughts) you'd need characters that are meaningful to the child's abuse to represent the themes. Apparently, the same is true for the scene's victim (which wasn't the child, but the good side of his mother and his little sister).

The revisiting mechanism seems very interesting to me. Does the child get to confront the adult characters with their deeds and somehow make them realize/own up for them? Does this happen when the child has actually grown some, or does the child remain the same all the time? I think the surrealist or metaphorical approach is quite powerful, and I'm wondering if for it to be really meaningful, it has to go back to reality when the shit hits the fan. But I'm getting way ahead of your playtest.

Hey Clyde,

Some unconstructed thoughts:

I love the Tower and Ice Woman. Are you sure you're not wanting to create a mythic iconography for the game? You could present it as Tarot-like cards maybe. And maybe as Rorschach blot like cards. Perhaps the Tarot-like cards are setting and situation, and the Rorschach-like blots are psychological solutions (some beneficial, some not).

Hypothetical play snippet #1:

"What do you see?"
"A butterfly."
"Does the butterfly represent a solution?"
"No"
So, no bonus dice.

Hypothetical play snippet #2:

"What do you see?"
"A butterfly."
"Does the butterfly represent a solution?"
"Yes."
"How so?"
"The butterfly is goes into a coccoon and emerges as a creature of confidence."
"And?"
"And she wouldn't treat me like this if I were more confident."
"Okay, roll to see if you can achieve the butterfly."

Hypothetical play snippet #3:

"What do you see?"
"A butterfly."
"Does the butterfly represent a solution?"
"Yes."
"How so?"
"The butterfly isn't concerned with what's going on at ground level."
"I'm not following."
"The butterfly is above the bullshit."
"Okay...take some madness dice."

Paul

Hi Chad,

I hear your point. I'll also admit to being absolutely afraid of pitching the game in a therapy angle. I have no type of formal education in that area. Also the way I see the game, either person could be helping the other. For instance when Len and I play, he is sometimes walking in realms filled with my demons. One might say he's helping me by fighting them. It has certainly been interesting to see him defeat some of my nightmares. I think it could work the other way where the gamemaster is helping the player see that fighting these things is possible. A third option is folks don't have issues, and are just having fun exploring a weird game. I think that level of deniability is what could make it helpful.

Also eventually when the player of the child removes their mask, and can speak, the roles will begin to flip. Essentially the player is limited to Author stance at the beginning, they can't give the child a voice (although Len struggles mightily to cheat. Ha.) After removing the mask they gain Actor stance, and then finally Director stance. Meanwhile the GM loses stances, and effectively becomes as limited as the player started. (Assuming the player doesn't become a Monster) At least that's the plan. We haven't gotten this far yet. That will likely happen next week.

I'm unsure what you mean by the G.M. being neutral, so I can't answer that question.

Hi Christoph,

You're right about where I cut. It was before the child could have a reaction in the fiction. However there was a player reaction. Len wasn't happy about the nice spirit being sliced up, and I believe he was happy when getting the bite off. Thanks for pointing out the similarities of where I cut, I'll need to give that futher consideration to see if that is where I'm going to continue to cut.

As for the Fear dice.... At the time I had just thought this up... maybe an hour before Len got here. So no they have no mechanical meaning yet. I have since been thinking that the Fear dice, or whatever they are eventually called, will inhibit how many scenes the player can go back and "fix."  Len might have to choose between expressing how his victory over the bad father worked out, or trying to defeat the bad mother. Basically I think we subtract from the number of Fear dice from the Hope dice, and what's left is how many scenes he gets to address. Possibly with a minimum of at least one scene.

To answer your question of how the fiction gets played out when we revisit these scenes. I think that will be up to the player. Are they playing an inner child, or someone who is real in the fiction? I think that's their decision.

Hi Paul,

I do want it to be kind of Rorshach like. What I'm most interested in though is trying to find a way to get the person filling the Gamemaster role to come up with their own iconic images. Like I mentioned above there is something interesting about watching someone fight your bad dreams.

I wish I had thought of your idea two iterations ago, when I was using cards. *grins* Your method of questioning is much better than the inflexible system I came up with.