Boy Games, Girl Games, Date Games, Supers Games

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

So, there's this game, Breaking the Ice. You role play 3 dates -- it's for 2 people plus the GM, if I recall correctly. It's by Emily Care. It sold quite well at Gen Con Indy, I believe, bearing in mind that "quite well" for means something different for a small press Forge game than for a d20 or WoD product. A lot of people like it.

And, it leaves me utterly cold.

Now, I have not read the game, merely played it, so it is possible that once I sit down and read it, I will find it charming. Nevertheless, my usual Indy Game Experience goes something like this:

I play a cool new game with the author and a couple of other people at Gen Con. I have a ball. Later, I try to figure out what I am doing wrong as I try to introduce my gamer friends to it and everything falls flat.

Here, the actual gaming experience at Gen Con left me cold. I was gaming with Emily, the author, and imogena, one of my favoritest gamers in the whole world. I love playing with imogena. Usually, she's gming, which is great, but it does mean that we're rarely playing as players together.

So, a more favorable set up is hard to imagine (though a comparably favorable one is not -- we're at Gen Con, with a lot of wonderful people). And, throughout the explanation, by the author, who is already good at figuring out how to streamline demos, I am thinking to myself, "Why on earth would I ever want to play this?"

Part of it's the dating thing. I never really did that. I don't really want to. So, maybe it's just that the premise of the game leaves me cold.

Part of it's that some of the mechanics had me thinking, "That's just silly." So, you're playing with one other person. And, each of you play the gender you aren't. Why? Because you're supposed to do this opposite thing. So, each of you play someone from the other player's home town. And so on. imogena was up for us both playing guys, but I wasn't.

Hm, another factor may have been sleep deprivation. I was in the bouncing off the walls stage when mnemex and I first arrived, having gotten a one hour nap and something similar on the plane in a period of something like 24 - 30 hours, I think. This was followed by my allergies kicking in big time. After that, I got some help from folks on the allergies (meds on loan, location of a CVS, and advice to ice the sinuses), but also a cycle of never getting enough sleep, because that's just how my schedule goes at GenCon.

So, the next step is brainstorming and idea clustering, stuff I used to teach my students about when I taught writing. And again, I'm thinking, "That's silly." Maybe it's because I never actually wrote my papers that way. Maybe it's because I was flashing back to my memories of teaching, which are full of war stories.

I wouldn't call it a bad gaming experience. No, I've had enough of those, and this wasn't one of those. But, at the end, imogena seemed delighted, and I was thinking, "But why would I ever, ever want to play this?"

There's a lot of talk about guy things and gal things that comes around in cycles. In rpg discussion, there's always the strain of thought that says that women like more soap opera and story. Well, I do like story, but if Breaking the Ice is a typical "woman" game -- if, as the author was not, I am sure, setting out to write a Game for Women -- I am not a typical woman. I was into gaming long before there was a World of Darkness, and the one that finally got me trying to run games myself was the Call of Cthulhu campaign run by Matt Steele when I was at UCLA. Give me horror and convoluted plots, but none of this normal, girly, soap opera dating!

Well, there this story would end -- this is a game that is not my type of game, and I am well aware that other people enjoy it, and I'm cool with that. Hardly a story, really.

Then, mnemex said that he knew how to make the game fun for me. Note that he has never read the game either.

How, I asked, would such a thing be possible?

One word. Well, maybe two, depending on your syntax. Super Heroes!

"Huh?" said I, with all the eloquence at my command. (Gotta hire me some more eloquence.)

Simple, he explained. Okay, so, he and I are both from New York, so the place swap thing is kind of tricky. But, if we're both playing superheroes trying to date, well, one of us is from Gotham, and one of us is from Metropolis. Or, is Metropolis supposed to be Chicago? Well, Astro City, then.

Yeah. That'd be fun.

Comments

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Your reaction to this game is rather like mine to Sudoku. I *could* do it, but *why*? And you say it's fun? Huh ...


I agree about the super heroes, though. :->

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

I enjoy sudoku as a brain excercise, but I can see why others wouldn't want it. mnemex and I talked to Emily, the author of Breaking the Ice. She liked the superhero idea. mnemex also had an angel / demon romance idea. Emily suggested looking at Leia and Han Solo, with the destruction of the Deathstar as a first date.