September Murmurs
Featuring Alice is Missing and naming games
Greetings. Last month I did less gaming than usual because I was moving (see more on that below!) but I still got to play Alice is Missing, just in time to cheer the game on as it won its multiple well-deserved ENnie Awards!
Played: Alice is Missing
Alice is Missing is a “silent roleplaying game.” It is about a group of teenage friends in the small town of Silent Falls who are trying to find the missing Alice Briarwood. Everyone has complicated feelings about Alice and about each other. The game is played entirely over text messages, and the players generate an increasingly-tense narrative based on the clues and events they draw from a deck. I got to play the game over Discord, and the facilitator used a Discord bot called “AliceBot” that has been built specifically for this game.
Highlights: This was a real standout game. Playing over Discord proved to be very immersive. We were all listening to a soundtrack that served as countdown for the 90 minutes of gameplay. There was a main channel representing the group chat where all the characters were coordinating investigations into Alice’s disappearance. Then there were side-channels where each pair of characters could message each other, conspiring, sniping, cajoling, or recriminating. Each of us had a secret, but the game encouraged us to find some reason to share it with another player before the time was up.
I played Evan Holwell, the nerdy friend with a big, obvious crush on Alice, who in our game was a cool and rebellious person. I clashed with Alice’s older brother Jack, whom I (probably unfairly) felt was neglectful of Alice because he was busy working a job to support their family. In the course of our search for Alice, the cards eventually told me that I had figured out her location by tracking her cell phone, and could choose which character to send to find her. As it happened, the location was one my character believed he had already searched: the old abandoned barn. Psyched out and perhaps contrite, I sent Jack to find Alice there.
Our ending was very dramatic. Jack confirmed Alice was at the barn, hurt but alive… then he reported that the school bully (Alice’s captor?) had turned up—with a gun?! The rest of us frantically messaged Jack with advice and questions, and assured him we were on our way (though by the rules of the game, our characters could never actually be in the same physical location). Jack gave us nothing but radio silence (we learned later he’d drawn a card telling him he was captured and couldn’t communicate anymore). The countdown ended. The game was over with us imagining our characters approaching the barn, hoping to save whomever we could.
Musings: There’s a mystery at the heart of game, but one always very loosely sketched out. It’s completely up to the players to fill in the gaps, wildly theorizing about what could “really” be going on with Alice’s disappearance and the various strange clues that turn up during the game. It’s both inspiring and frustrating to play. Inspiring to see a complicated story emerging organically from a group of people who are equally in the dark, and frustrating to know there’s no “real” story underneath it, no ultimate way to know why Alice went missing, which leads were connected with her disappearance, which leads were simply red herrings…
I have a certain story in my head after the game, but that’s based on my own suppositions about NPCs motives and what was really going on with Alice. Other players may have very different impressions. And there’s no one to say which of us is right! Plus, I only experienced the side-channel conversations that involved Evan. I have no idea what plot or character beats might have been established in other players’ private chats. I suppose this really just highlights the problem of intersubjectivity that any shared narrative can run into. But it is fascinating how this game embraces that knowledge gap to create feelings of paranoia, jealousy, or simply the bittersweet sense of how little of people we really know. What do you think about this phenomenon?
Final Thoughts: I specified that Evan was an artist with a sketchbook always in hand so I could be sketching in-character throughout the game. Check out my art from the session below:
Design Discussion: Naming Games
What’s in a name? A lot, it turns out. Naming games is a key step of the design process. But when (and how) does it happen? I asked game designers on Twitter for their stories:
The thread is full of good stuff (did you know that the working title of Fiasco was “Hat Creek”? That The Warren’s was “Lapins & Lairs”?) and a few common themes emerged:
check that your name is searchable on tools like Google
check if people can remember (and spell!) your game name after hearing it
check carefully that no one else has already used your name for a game
otherwise don’t sweat it too much!
I was particularly amused by this tweet, given that I plan to run Bite Marks next month:
Part of what prompted my question is that I am mulling whether the working title of my game Plutonian Shore is, well, working. The game is about a crew of space scoundrels working jobs amidst the shattered remains of Pluto. It’s got a Space Western feel à la Firefly and The Mandalorian, but with a more icebound environment. Emotional ties among crew members are important, with Trust and Tension taking the place of XP in the game. Plus, importantly, the Void is ever-present, a mysterious supernatural wellspring like Apocalypse World’s psychic maelstrom. Anyone can use the basic move “touch the void” to attempt to channel this power, but with potentially disastrous consequences if it goes poorly.
I wish I could evoke more of these ideas in the game’s title. Plutonian Shore is a cute reference to Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” but that doesn’t give much sense of what the game is really about.
A few of the alternatives I am considering: Scoundrels of Pluto, Shards of Pluto, Ghost Planet Scoundrels. I kind of like the last one, because it hints at the Void (is the Void the ghost of the shattered Pluto? Maybe?!) and still gets you thinking about scoundrels like Han Solo and the Serenity crew.
Have you ever had to come up with a name for a game? What factors do you consider? And what do you think about my Plutonian Shore re-naming considerations?
Elsewhere
—Cloven Pine headquarters has moved to Falls Church, VA! We have been settling into a new home here and enjoying being close to our friends in the DC area. One cool aspect of the new locale: there are multiple friendly local game stores nearby. If you happen to be in the area, shoot me a message. Maybe we can meet sometime at The Compleat Strategist or Victory Comics. Tonight I joined the indie RPG group at The Compleat Strategist to run my game The Great Soul Train Robbery. I’ll definitely be back for more Indie RPG Thursdays!
—At Doxacon, the Christian sci-fi and fantasy convention, I’ll be running a demo of our game Back Again from the Broken Land. Doxacon is virtual again this year, so you can attend from anywhere—and I encourage you to do so! Some great talks have been lined up, including Eve Tushnet on “Beyond Kicking Butt: Countercultural Representations of Strength and Victory” and Rae Grabowski on Neverwhere vs. The Hobbit. The Back Again demo will be 12:30–2:30 EST on Friday, November 5th.
—Metatopia has announced that they will also be an all-virtual convention this year. Virtual programming will run October 29th–30th. Details are still being determined, but I plan to be in attendance, and I may be speaking on some of the virtual panels. If you’re interested in learning more, ask to join the Facebook group for Metatopia fans.
That’s it for now. Till next time, may you track down what’s missing, make a name for yourself, and stay safe out there.
Gamefully Yours,
Alexi
As for renaming Plutonian Shore, something else to consider is the high stakes of the game. One player is the last hope of the solar system and that sets the stakes for everything you do both internally as a crew and externally in the game world. Ghost Planet Scoundrels sounds a bit more... horror? Not sure. I love Becky's advice of just write SOMETHING as the title, and start writing the rest of it. Good advice.