I didn’t get to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen until my thirties, and only then because I started going out with a girl who grew up in Alderley Edge, which is the setting for that and most of Alan Garner’s stories. She had in fact lived in the house he identified as the home of the Morrigan.
“What did you think?”
“Those kids are going to suffer from PTSD. It’s traumatic enough just reading it.”
The trauma wasn't caused by Garner’s prose. That’s beautiful. It was the descriptions of narrowing lightless tunnels and wobbling planks propped across sheer drops; that’s what I thought would scar those characters for life.
Alan Garner wrote a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath, but left it nearly fifty years before completing the trilogy. If only other fantasy authors showed such restraint. What I loved about Boneland was what many fans hated. Garner didn’t give us jolly japes with elves and ginger pop, he returned to the main character to find him broken, his twin sister missing if she ever even existed at all. If you’ve played any Dragon Warriors you’ll understand why that was the sort of conclusion to the story that would really appeal to me.
How about a role-playing game that digs under the surface of a children’s cosy fantasy epic to see what crawls out? It turns out Becky Annison has done exactly that with her game When the Dark is Gone. She discusses it in this episode of Fictoplasm with Ralph Lovegrove and explains the design principles here.
In brief: the players are adult survivors of such an adventure, uncovering their repressed memories with nudging by a therapist character who’s the nearest the game gets to a referee. Minimal set-up, raw character interaction, no dice, emergent stories… What are you waiting for?
I must confess that despite living next door to Cheshire, at 43 I still haven't got round to Alan Garner's books ! Perhaps in the year to come.
ReplyDeletePS are you next going to tell us that you didn't play Empire of the Petal Throne until you started dating a girl from Tekumel ?
I did have a girlfriend who roleplayed Nayari of the Silken Thighs. (Gosh, I hope my wife doesn't read this.)
DeleteThe game, "In Dark Alleys" has a supplement called "Abandoned" which deals with various odd, reality-broken areas. One of them is called Tranquil Lake, where reality shattered to a degree due to the experiments of simulated abuse and memory repression that a cult in that area was conducting on children in an attempt to create a fully-enlightened, godlike being.
ReplyDeleteI haven't played In Dark Alleys but from the online reviews it seems it would work well with a Powered By The Apocalypse system.
DeleteIt's probably a little too complex to fit well into PbtA. PtbA focuses on playing stereotypes and the better your character fits the stereotype, the better. IDA focuses a lot on individual psychological aspects, especially from the perspective of Freud. The basic system isn't too crunchy, but the setting seems a bit shallow and naive. The main "Bad Guys" are The Powers That Be (wealthy, powerful humans in league/thrall to aliens of some sort in a massive conspiracy to maintain the statue quo and "keep the People Down."). The game feels like it was written by a group of young college students who were recently "awakened" politically, and haven't come close to figuring out that the real world is far more complex (and interesting) than they understand it to be.
ReplyDeleteOne of the character types reminded me of Frazer Payne's Ghosts of London RPG, where each player has a tutelary spirit. I played a guy who was adept at finding shortcuts -- as in, just down this alley, turn left, past the pub, and here we are on the other side of the city.
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