thread: 2011-05-11 : The Un-frickin-welcome
On 2011-05-30, Joel wrote:
So, here's an experience of the Unwelcome I consider far more functional and rewarding:
The Dreaming Crucible: Trauma and Celebration
In this game, Lisa's character Susan had a creepy uncle living in the garage who kept making advances when the folks were away, culminating with him drunk late at night banging on her locked bedroom door while she hid in her closet. I thought play might be veering toward rape or sexual assault, but it didn't. This stage of the game is mostly free play with a couple of scene-framing constraints, so the only way for it to go there is through our verbal descriptions (with me, as the Dark Faerie, playing the uncle).
Then (as happens in Crucible) Susan was pulled by mysterious forces into a magical shadow realm, where she had to confront her worst fears and deepest pain while trying to escape. In this instance I made the Dream directly a shadow-version of Susan's own town, and when shadow-people's whispers led her to the shadow-counterpart of her own house, she ended up trapped in her bedroom with her shadow-uncle.
So far this was all just narration back and forth. But then by the Crucible rules, I framed this as a Peril, which means putting some Dark stones and Light stones in a bag, and having Lisa draw one out. If Light, she describes passing through the peril happily, if Dark, I describe it unhappily.
Lisa pulled a Dark stone. And I realized that I had just, through the game rules, engineered a situation here I had to describe a 14 year old girl getting raped.
It was unwelcome. It was SO fucking unwelcome. Nobody at the table was happy with it. e sat there looking at each other all grim. But it was what had to be. It as the only way to honor the thing we had created together up to that point. So that's what I did.
This moment turned out to be immensely rewarding later in the game when Susan stood up defiantly in the face of her trauma. Not sure if that's a necessary component of the Fruitful Unwelcome," but it sure as satisfying for us. I'd say that, even though the Unwelcome might not always turn out to be satisfying that way, perhaps it's necessary to provide for the possibility of such fulfillment?
Now, here's where my example addresses something David brought up, with the Hocus and the dead followers: Could I have described something besides child rape? Yeah, sure, the rules just say I have to describe something "traumatic or detrimental." I could have come up with some traumatic or detrimental thing that wasn't sexual assault. But the spirit-rape was the only thing that fictionally felt right, and we all knew it. One of the Dreaming Crucible's (continuous, procedural) rules is "Say what you see." So just because, frex, the MC has a whole list of moves he can bust out on a failure, doesn't mean they'll all be the fitting, right thing to happen in the moment.
Now, after writing them both out, I see one HUGE frikkin difference between my two Unwelcomes: communication of expectations up-front. I begin each dreaming crucible game by reading Meg's description "I Will Not Abandon You" play (which is in my text. Everyone knew what sort of game they were in for, what kind of dark places play might go, and embraced it. Whereas in my old game we had a whole chaotic mishmash of expectations that nobody communicated at all, or else communicated passive-aggressively "in character." So there's that.
Peace,
-Joel
