A Flower for Mara AP videos (part 2)
Here are some more actual play videos for A Flower for Mara. I’ll probably draw on these for some sort of video tutorial or something.
A Flower for Mara Spring Scenes part 1
A Flower for Mara Spring Scenes part 2: this clip illustrates the use of “phone call” techniques to have two characters talking to each other on the phone. In our game, we ended up turning this conversation into two spotlight scenes, one for each side of the conversation.
A Flower for Mara Spring Scenes part 3: This clip illustrates the use of off-stage characters. Also shows the general mood of the evening, which was happy and not at all bleak. This is an important point, actually. We enjoyed playing the game. Sure, a lot of it was catharsis, but we enjoyed doing this thing together. Finally, you can see the feedback from the “audience” to the developing storyline. Cast members are perfectly free to make comments during the game, and there was a lot of talking in between scenes. This is a Good Thing; it showed me that everyone was engaged in what was going on.
A Flower for Mara Spring Scenes part 4: The exchange beginning around 2:10 shows an excellent example of Endowment in play by Whitney (portraying Ruth). (Endowment is giving another character or object an attribute of some kind.) It was fairly subtle, too. It took me a little bit to realize that, according to Whitney’s statement, Mara had stolen Ruth’s boyfriend and then married him. This wasn’t part of anything preplanned, and it is an excellent example of what makes this game work.
A Flower for Mara Easter Dinner Part 1: I was particularly pleased with a shocking explosion from Jana (starting around 8:00), set up by Jennifer as a result of the preceding soliloquy. This is a good example of how one player can use soliloquy information to help set up another player’s actions. In addition, Jennifer’s statement that that pizza was for dinner was another excellent use of Endowment.
A Flower for Mara Easter Dinner Part 2
Watching these has been pretty neat, since it reminds me of playing the game that night. Ever have a game that was especially meaningful to you? This was one of those games. Thanks again to everyone who was a part of it.
Anyways! Hopefully seeing this footage gives you an idea of how A Flower for Mara will play. I need to playtest a couple more times (and some external playtesting would be great), but I think that I will soon be ready to write this sucker.
I’m so glad you posted these! Wow. It looks as awesome as it sounded. I really, really, really want to play it now! I have a question: when someone decided to give their flower monologue, did it feel like an interruption or did it happen pretty smoothly? How did everyone get back into play after hearing someone else’s grief?
I like how the monologues enhanced the group scenes. Was it the same with the flower monologues?
Hey, Adiel!
Personally, I did not find it to be an interruption. Generally, people’s griefs generally connected with the decisions they had made in play about their characters, so the flower monologue ended up being something of an epilogue for the character. It provided resonance to the performance, I think.
As far as getting back into play, I just moved on to the next thing. You could tell when the cast had spent the necessary time absorbing what was said. Dunno. Just a feel, I guess.
Hi Adiel and Seth,
Being a part of the cast, I can honestly say that the Director (Seth in our game) has a great role in how smoothly the cast can transition from a monologue to the rest of the the game. Seth told us to be obvious and I think that also has a lot to do with how smoothly things went. We weren’t all trying to be brillant, just doing what we thought was the next step, and somehow it all just flowed together.
I would also say that it has a lot to do with the cast. As you can see by the videos everyone was very in tune to the game, and the twists that each new scence brought. Therefore we didn’t have to retrace our steps very often.
Seth, Thanks again for allowing us to help. Watching these videos reminds me just how much fun we all really had, it also was a great night to be able to get to know one another better, and that has come out in my realationships with some of the cast members since. Thanks. I hope things continue to go well with this project.