Well, here’s my new idea, which I intend on trying out at the monster playtest scheduled for Wednesday. (Seven players plus the Director, and five of the players are total n00bs. Should be a night to remember….)

Anyways, it works like this. Before you are cast as a character, you have to fill in the blank in this sentence:

“I had a ______ relationship with Mara when she was alive.”

Choose from this list:

Loving
Hateful
Respectful
Bitter
Ambivalent
Codependent

Then the Director casts you as a character.

Then you answer a question.

“Why did you have this sort of relationship with Mara?”

Then, go into play with this question in mind: “In light of all this, how might Mara’s death have affected you?”

Obviously all these need to be worded better. (In particular, I’d like better words for “Ambivalent” and “Codependent”.) But this might be enough to give players a push out of the gate. Once they get into the game, they should have enough material to work with.

I hope.

(Thanks to Jason Morningstar for a helpful email conversation today on this topic.)

(I posted this in a different form on the Forge. But, hey, I figure that my loyal blog readers might have some ideas too. I win both ways!)

I’m still working on A Flower for Mara, and I’ve run into a possible issue. While A Flower for Mara isn’t GMless, it does not have GM prep. (Again, a running theme of my design.) This worked out fine in our playtest back in December; my group is pretty skilled at locating some point of conflict and running with it. However, I don’t want to rely on “good players” to make the game work. Rather, I want to make sure that I’m giving the players the necessary tools to get things moving.

Here’s my current thought.

Each player writes down three statements about his character: one about his Work, one about his Family, one about his Faith. Then, for each of these, the player does Y-Cubed. In other words, for each statement, ask the question “Why?”. Write down this statement. Ask “Why?” about that statement. Do this until you have three additional statements under Work, Family, and Faith. (This is a brainstorming technique used for screenwriting and such.) Then someone (either the player or the Director) chooses one of these columns to be the primary area of stress for this character in the story.

Example:

Caleb, Mara’s husband

Work: I’m a photographer

Why: It’s something that I enjoy doing, and it pays the bills.
Why: I like photography because I have a good eye for pictures.
Why: I tend to withdraw myself from a situation and see it like a photograph anyways.

Family: I’m an only child

Why: My parents were too busy for a family.
Why: My father was always traveling for business, and my mother was involved with the church.
Why: Being busy was their definition of success.

Faith: I’m Episcopalian

Why: My parents were Episcopalian.
Why: It fit their social class, and that was important to them.
Why: They were brought up to “know their place”, and they passed that down to me.

Area of stress: Family

I think that there’s something here, but it needs to be refined. Or maybe the whole thing needs to be scrapped, because there’s something better out there.

My concern with it is manifold. First, I don’t want this to turn into “playing before playing”. Second, it can be hard to get that third “Why?” without setting up for it or going far afield from the character. Finally, I might end up dictating character details about another player’s character. Oddly enough, I’m okay with this happening in play, because I have procedures to work it through there, but I’m a little leery about doing that at the prep stage.

The rest of the game structure works well, as far as I can currently tell, but this needs help.

Thoughts?

For those who are interested, here (PDF) is a draft cover for A Flower for Mara.

Cover photography by my sister, Adiel Gardner.

If you’re into roleplaying, then you should really consider buying Play Unsafe by Graham Walmsley. It is chock-full of good techniques to use at the gaming table, drawn from improvisational theater. Some of them are amusingly Zen. Like, “Be obvious” or “Be boring”. Trust me, it’s good advice, especially when you see his explanations.

I’ve already found it helpful for A Flower for Mara, and I’ll probably reference it when writing the final manuscript.

For those who are interested, this is the recording of our conversation after playtesting A Flower For Mara. I haven’t listened to this yet, so I don’t know how bad the audio quality is….

http://darkomengames.com/files/ActualPlay/AFlowerForMara/MaraFeedback20071203.mp3

Last night we playtested A Flower for Mara, my new game/play/improv thing. After reading about avant garde theater, I’m seriously considering giving it a subtitle “A Play in Four Acts” to help get people in the right frame of mind for it. Also, I’m hoping to approach some dramatically-minded folk in my church to see if they are willing to give it a whirl. That sort of feedback would be helpful.

Is it a game? Well, you know, I’m not really planning on getting into those sort of semantic arguments. I think that it’s a worthwhile activity, regardless of its formal status as a “game”. It has a dramatic structure with rules to guide the players. That’s good enough for me.

So, onto the actual report.

Raquel, Gabrielle, Crystal and I gathered to play. We set up shop in my front room by moving the coffee table out of the room and then setting up a card table (with tablecloth) to be the dinner table for the various group scenes. Also, the game is intended to be thought of as a play. In other words, there’s a “front” of the stage area and an “audience” area where the Director and any off-stage players sit to observe.

We also designated a “grave site” area, which is where all monologues are given. For those of you who know our house, it was in the archway between the front room and the dining room. We put a low piano bench there to be the actual grave, which worked out pretty well.

Earlier I had purchased the necessary flowers, which symbolize the griefs that the characters and players are carrying. As part of setup, each participant writes down one grief that he is carrying. Not the character, mind you; the player. Then he attaches that paper to the flower that he carries. In order for the character to lay down his grief, the player must give a brief monologue about the grief that he wrote down. Then he lays the flower at the grave site. It’s very powerful in play.

The actual story came out well, I thought. In particular, it seemed like the players were able to use the experience of playing the characters to interact with some of their own memories and burdens, which was a good thing. There was one scene where Crystal started off just playing her character, but in the end, she was saying things that I know she has wanted to say for a while.

I think that the game procedures work so far, although we definitely need to try it with more people. Currently, for characters, I have Caleb (Mara’s husband), Zoe (Mara’s daughter), and then Mara’s parents. I’d like to have one or two more characters available for play. I was going to have Caleb’s parents, but I don’t think that’s right. Each character needs to be defined by their relationship to Mara, and “daughter-in-law” doesn’t usually have the same connection as “daughter”. I’m open to hearing otherwise, though.

Crystal is already plotting out book sizes and layout. I think that this one will be on the fast track to publication.

Uh, questions? I think that I’ll do better answering queries than trying to describe what actually happened last night.

We playtested tonight.

It worked.

I’ll have more details later.

P.S. It was also quite emotional. Why do we do this to ourselves?

So, tonight we’re going to be playtesting A Flower for Mara for the first time. And, as often happens, I ended up in a conversation with Arianna about it. She was asking about August Moon, and I told her that I was working on this. So I was explaining how the game works and all that. In particular, I explained how the game opens with everyone gathering around while the Director reads from the burial service from The Book of Common Prayer. So I started to read it to her:

Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower….

Then I blinked. “Like a flower”? I hadn’t noticed that before. But it’s perfect!

=====
For those of you who are interested, here’s the full text that we’re reading:

Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour, but of Thee, O Lord, Who for our sins art justly displeased?

Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.

Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our sister Mara, and we commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in Him shall be changed, and made like unto His own glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.

On Saturday, I bought fake flowers to use for playtesting A Flower for Mara. They are white roses, which is what I wanted. In the future, I might want to buy better “components”, but for now, these should do fine.

A term that’s wandered across the pond from the Jeepformers is “playing close to home”. This means that you use the games to interact with your own experiences and emotions and to share them with your fellow players. It’s scary and powerful and dangerous and sometimes a very, very good thing. When it doesn’t blow up, that is. It’s not the only way to make the games meaningful, but I do think that it needs to be a tool in the toolbox.

Normally this is connected to playing the game. I have this sinking suspicion that designing A Flower For Mara is going to require designing close to home. I’m not sure I’m really looking forward to that.

…because I’m finding that mocking up a book cover is important for me to embrace a design project.

Well, that, plus creating a soundtrack. But I’ve already done that for A Flower for Mara. I guess it’s official, huh?

Again, this is mostly for those who understand what this is about. If you don’t, feel free to ask, but that discussion will have to be for another time.

So, I’m thinking that, while I’m being inspired by some of the discussion of Jeepform games, I shouldn’t feel bound to do it that way. This isn’t out of any disrespect or anything; rather, I’ve never played in a Jeepform game, and, honestly, the Jeepform games read like some Forge games that I’ve read (i.e. they assume a lot on the part of the audience). I don’t necessarily have all the same assumptions of the Jeepform crowd, and I’m not going to try. Instead, I’ll read up on what they have done and be inspired to create something of my own. After I’m done, then we can debate if it’s Jeepform or a Forge LARP or something else. Honestly, I could really care less. I deliberately avoided using the term “roleplaying game” to describe Dirty Secrets, because I wasn’t interested in getting mired in that debate. Same thing here.

At this point, Flowers for Mara is a working title. That means that I’ve probably accepted it in my subconscious but haven’t come around to embracing it consciously. I say this purely because of my experience with Dirty Secrets, which was supposed to be a working title, until it stuck.

I think that, as a thought experiment, I’m going to design this game in my head as something that could be played sitting around a table. That will help me get my thought processes in order and will help me work from a place of familiarity. That being said, I would want to be able to move seamlessly from the gaming table to an open larping area, so don’t expect to see any dice or any such thing.

There will be a GM for Flowers for Mara. Actually, I envision the “fourth wall” in Flowers for Mara as functionally being the GM screen. He may or may not have objective systems to help him run the game, but I want to keep them invisible to the players, so that they can concentrate on playing out their developing story.

I have this idea that there will be actual flowers involved in Flowers for Mara. Like, each player gets a (plastic) flower to hold, with a tag or something attached to it. At the beginning of the game, each player has to write down an actual incident of loss that happened in his life. The flower becomes a symbol for that loss. Only players holding flowers are allowed to see Mara. At any time in the game, a player may call for a special scene, where he goes to the designated “grave site” area and lays the flower on the grave. This must be accompanied with a monologue about pain or loss or letting go or something like that. After this point, that player can no longer see Mara (because he doesn’t have a flower anymore).

Mara doesn’t get a flower, obviously. I’m thinking that the Pastor doesn’t, either. That makes them special characters. Again, for Mara, this is obvious, but this makes the Pastor an interesting role. Is he a metaphorical role, like Mara? Or is he a human role, like the other characters? If so, then he really should get a flower. What do the rest of you think?

I’m also thinking that these flowers should have other system ramifications, as well as being symbolic props. Like, if you need to be holding a physical item, you use the flower as the item. I’m still rolling this around in my head.

Pregens are probably a must. So far, obviously, we have Mara, the Pastor, Caleb, and Zoe. I think that we probably need to broaden the circle of family and friends to allow for a couple more characters, but not too many. I’m thinking maybe two more, plus minor roles which will simply be pooled.

I’m thinking that the first and last scenes are gravesite scenes, accompanied by a reading of the burial service from the Book of Common Prayer. At the beginning, the Pastor should read it. At the end, someone else should. Not sure who.

There should also be music involved. I’ve already compiled my personal playlists, which include the following:

“Hard to Get”, Rich Mullins
“Angel”, Sarah McLachlan
“Casimir Pulaski Day”, Sufjan Stevens
“Motion Picture Soundtrack”, Radiohead
“Come Awake”, David Crowder Band
“After The Last Tear Falls”, Andrew Peterson
“It Can’t Rain All The Time”, Jane Siberry
“A Long December”, Counting Crows

I’m thinking that, while I should probably include my personal playlists as examples, the GM really ought to assemble his own playlists. These songs are meaningful to me personally, but I doubt that they will have quite the same impact to someone else.

Hmm. More coming as I think about it. I have this nagging sense that this one will come together fairly quickly.