This weekend I played a session of my design-in-progress game โVariations on a Quiet and Lonely Hellโ. It went quite well and there was an interesting bit of play phenomenon that provoked some thoughts Iโd share.
A brief structural overview for context: The player characters are all (separately) wandering around an abandoned town. When they enter a new area of the town they experience a fraught memory from their life. When they come out of the memory they find themselves facing some kind of horror that reflects that memory.
I want to focus on an interaction that occurred between two player characters, Isan and Talia. Isan, a craftsman with rare lens grinding knowledge, had a memory about a time they denigrated someone elseโs work only to be shown just how skilled that personโs work actually was. Talia, a Vietnamese woman, experienced a memory about the time she shoved off her motherโs homemade pho in favor of a more expensive meal out of pride.
Coming out of their memory, Isan was confronted with a lens shaped bowl that had an engraving that was eerily similar to the work of the craftsman they had denigrated. Similarly, Talia came out of her memory to be confronted with a pho bowl filled with bloody rotting meat. Both players lost the bit of card play interaction that occurs at this point and were forced to carry these items with them. Items that you are forced to carry like this are called burdens.
After a memory/horror cycle like this, characters can optionally meetup for a scene before going into another memory/horror cycle. Isanโs player pointed out that because Isan and Talia were both carrying bowls it might be interesting for them to meet.
Now, hereโs the thing, I didnโt explain to the players what the possible procedural outcome of these meetup scenes can be because I just wanted to see what they did. Near the end of the scene Isan offered Talia a handkerchief to clean the blood off her bowl. And thatโs when I stepped in and explained that meetup scenes can be used to help alleviate each otherโs sufferings (a burden in this case). I asked Isanโs player if they were trying to help relieve Talia of her burden and Isanโs player confirmed it and Taliaโs player accepted it. So Taliaโs player was able to cross the burden off their sheet.
It was nice to have that happen naturally and have the procedure kick in as a side-effect. In some ways, this is technically how youโre supposed to play Apocalypse Worldโs moves. What happens in practice though, is that as players become more familiar with these procedures, they start to intentionally angle their play toward them. You canโt really stop that, and it isnโt always bad when that happens but there does seem to be a line where artifice replaces authenticity and it is always kind of sad when that starts happening. One thing Iโll be looking for in future, longer plays of Variations on a Quiet and Lonely Hell, is whether play trends toward that with these meetup scenes or not.ย
2 responses to “A Small Act of Kindness in Hell”
Views about this will differ.
I do not credit the distinction between “playing by the numbers” (or to any strategic advantage) vs. “playing by emotions, doesn’t care about the numbers.” I don’t think it’s real and I don’t think it matters.
For what it’s worth, too, the text of Apocalypse World is clear that perfectly good play arises from either noting a Move on the sheet and therefore deciding to do it or deciding to do something and then discovering a Move to fit it. The notion that the latter is “best play” probably originated with Dungeon World.
I do think there’s such a thing as bad, inauthentic play, and I think you’re describing it, or rather, in the case of this game, describing positive play as a contrast. Bad and inauthentic play ties directly into playing rules as widgets and also designing accordingly. However, I think it arises (or is habitual) in both numerical form and thespian form – and blaming only the former based on its form is false.
I completely agree with all of that. I’ve definitely seen inauthentic thespian play as well.