At the Happening, I played several games which share some features: characters at extreme risk and at least some are not expected to survive, circumstances which pit them against or with another as players decide, formal shifts in immediate content or theme, a lot of backstory content created during play, and a lot of inspiration and opportunity for excessive content. They’re designed to go wrong for any character almost constantly, with moments of triumph or success being quite precious. Their procedures are thoroughly “group,” including widely-distributed authorities most obviously for initiating scenes but for other things too. (I’ve played in this design pond, e.g. It Was a Mutual Decision, which was also played at the Happening although I wasn’t in that game.)

The fundamental question for any such rules-set is whether it provides means for expression via play, or, unfortunately, a semblance of play composed of excuses to rattle or gross-out everyone, or, even worse, instead of play, a minimally-participatory skit so we appreciate how clever or provocative or genre or deconstructive the author is. Another question concerns improv as a problem, i.e., the tendency to hurl/splat in new and irrelevant content.

Since the games at the Happening didn’t feature difficulties with these primary issues, I can focus on something that’s not really a problem, but a matter of interest: excessive content. Some of you might recall that twenty years ago, I enthusiastically practiced “hey, we play what we want” at the table across several groups, in which what we wanted could be strikingly crude and just about no-holds-barred. If role-playing was freed, to any extent, from the resolute Parental Guidance standard to which it was firmly chained from the early 1980s to the mid-2000s, then I lay claim to have contributed to this subcultural shift perhaps more than any other person. [In my defense, I maintain that I was never the most excessive person at a given table, but it’s true that I … opened doors for the people who were.]

My question or point of reflection is aesthetic: whether any of the excess was any good. This is a big deal! We have spent fifty years struggling to play at all, then struggling to emerge from bland or dishonest coping mechanisms, and then struggling to play well in the sense of enjoyment. In the midst of all this, the question of whether the content is good is typically shelved, or treated as a miraculous bonus that appear sometimes, somehow. It’s hard to get across, too, that I’m not talking about a standing pre-play obligation to be good, but a basic assessment once we’ve done whatever we did.

Zombie Cinema was played several times at the Happening. I was in the first one, with Bea, David, Claudio, and Ross, set in American suburbia. As many of you know, the game design opens up for excess pretty much about anything, but nothing is mentioned specifically. The only thing that’s predictably present due to people’s general take on zombies is gory violence, although on reflection, even that doesn’t have to be … but if it weren’t, I bet something else would be. Anyway, it was certainly there for us. In thinking back, the violent showdown at the car-crowded overpass which killed all but one character was well-framed by (1) our opening at an extremely normal supermarket at a crowded checkout counter, which provide a lot of room for characterization; and (2) the final scenes with Ross’ character trudging ever further into isolation, so that the “escape” mechanic was more like an alienated, moody, asocial portrait.

I played Bacchanal with Bea, Filip, Greg, Daniel, and Ross (I think?). You might not decipher my scribbles, so to summarize, my character Felicia was a privileged wife who was accused of cheating on her husband with Letitia’s husband, but she was completely innocent … as she was actually cheating with Lucius instead.

The game explicitly concerns excess about sex, a bit notoriously perhaps. Our session was a bit muted in this regard, perhaps a bit in content as such, but a lot in terms of specific description. he group included a younger person, not absurdly so, but I’ve been playing with him for a while so maybe I tend to think of him as less mature than he is, or play accordingly reflexively. Anyway, for example, in my first scene at the baths, I described Felicia gossiping with a friend at the baths, who become rather distracted, and then a satyr’s head emerges from the water in front of her, and the satyr turns and winks at Felicia. So that’s very explicit in terms of what was happening but not so much about its up-close details. A lot of the, um, events in play were described like that.

I think all of us ended up with dreadful fates … fellow players, help me out: did anyone manage to escape Puteoli?

I played Hell 4 Leather with Filip, Ross, Laura, Greg, and David. We were flying somewhat by the seat of our pants regarding the rules, for example, I didn’t realize that character play shifts around the players until the second round. I also don’t think we quite managed the omen mechanic correctly. Unsurprisingly, by the end, we were all more or less smeared with soot, mud, motorcycle grease, and at least three distinct bodily fluids. I rather felt for the priestly whiskey-bottle biker, who Ross kept receiving to play and who as far as I can tell was genuinely blameless for anything deserving revenge, but came to a horrible end anyway.

I played Om Natten Alla Katterna Är Grå, with Simon, Anne, and Joe. The system relies greatly on embracing a real-world city and using whatever we can find and like about it in play. In this case, it was Chongqing, primary city of Sichuan (Szechuan), currently over 30 million people if you count its outlying rural area.

The game could conceivably be played entirely “clean” if that’s the right word, but it’s rather open for excess about emotional dysfunction, unstable relationships, the unavoidable past, and, as with the title, possibly disconnecting morality and sexual contact (la nuit, tous les chats sont gris; despite the best efforts of bowdlerizers, this phrase is quite vulgar, i.e., “pussies”). All that said, my fellow was an aged journalist, no sexuality inherent to the concept or the cards, rather counter to it actually. Other characters’ backstory concerned music and murder, with only a bit of relationship and romance, and the relationship was actually the primary victim of the events as they turned out.

For all four games, my entirely personal one-person’s assessment of our excess, present to whatever extent, is that it was not good enough. Remember, I’m not talking about how much of it, nor about how well we managed it socially, both of which were fine throughout, but pure aesthetic quality. For each of the four, we certainly included “moments,” but they amounted to more of a promise that this could be good if we really did it, rather than being cathartic/expressive as experience or good as aesthetic content.

Some thoughts on bringing the excess into quality territory:

• Time: play more slowly; these games include extreme pacing mechanics so any extra forward motion simply rushes things and loses content. As a procedural note, for Zombie Cinema, I play by moving the zombie pawn with every shift in turn player, whereas Claudio plays by moving it each round, i.e., full set of turn players. Maybe I should consider that.
• Reincorporate: repeat and act upon the things said by one another inside the fiction, rather than taking your turn at the open mike for being entertaining independently of anyone else’s content so far.
• Regarding that content, employ it, don’t swerve for sudden extreme content or mysteries. These systems already trip you up and cue enough, so your job is to establish a baseline.
• Own the assigned content, bring it into personal focus: if you’re playing “macho, police/security, hot temper” in Zombie Cinema, express those things un ways which make sense for yourself, don’t merely repeat the trope.
• All of the above goes double for extra-character content, whether NPCs or any environmental features. When a god shows up in Bacchanal, and if you feel like it, give them some dialogue and directed activity, whatever enriches “Pluto” for you, for example.

Most of these points don’t address the excess at all, and that’s because people who enjoy this sort of thing among one another don’t need guidelines and guiderails, all they need is a working matrix.

That said, a couple of points about the naughty stuff anyway:

• As mentioned in many of the texts, start the excess small and personal.
• Cultivate a general state of mild disinhibition, rather than forcing yourself to author a spectacle.
• Think of Veils not as hiding things so much as sharing them for response, i.e., the point is that people know what is happening behind it, whether because it’s shared information or because it’s open for them to imagine privately; you can see this is happening when we look at one another to establish that I (for example) know that you know.

Looking over the post, I can think of one more thing, especially given my history with these types of games and related content. They need a party approach. The fun dancing kind, which doesn’t happen or work unless people arrive in the mood to do it.