GM: Steven Drouin
Players: Karen Twelves, Adrienne Mueller, Eric Fattig, Sean Nittner
System: Torn
At KublaFall Karen played in Steven’s Bibliomancer game, which she loved. She got talking to him and learned that had another game (Torn) that he wrote and would be willing to run for us, so she organized a game session, and it was awesome.
We started playing knowing very little about the game except for ambiance. Steven told us about visiting the Point Reyes lighthouse with his wife, he had an image of it up on the screen (Steven is a pro, he came with his own monitor ready for the game) and showed us a collection of artifacts, and asked us to pick one that resonated with us.
(Bowl of pretzel chips not part of the artifacts)
We each picked an item and and then received a character sheet, where we could specify one memory attached to it reflecting What I am, What I know, What I have, What I hide, and Who I know. I took the anchor whistle and wrote that I knew a salty fisherman named Argus who taught me resilience. Through play, as we explore the lighthouse, only able to affect the physical world through great sacrifice (giving up parts of who we were), our memories were sometimes revealed (writing new ones on the sheet), lost (tearing the sheet apart), or changed (having new memories replacing others). Here’s a few versions of Who I am
The game featured an incredible amount of props that we could engage with if a memory was suited to understand them. Since there were so many themes of the lighthouse and the sea, it was only natural that we wrote memories connected to those themes as well.
Karen and I were both connected to the sea, but while her character was glad to be safe from it after retiring, I was fascinated with the endlessness and wanted to reach through it and through the void to the next life.
Adrienne’s character was the Keeper of the lighthouse, proud of their duty and responsibility, while Eric’s character was their nephew, delinquent in their duties, but fascinated with signs and secret passages.
Both as our characters explore the world and as we as players deciphered clues we learned more about what was happening and our role in all of it.
The ending was both surreal and inevitable. Not that we didn’t have choice, but it was almost as though our character has made a choice before the game ever started and we were spending the session understanding it (very Oracle from Matrix 2).
What Rocked
I loved the way Steven introduced the game with no preamble, we just started playing and learned about it as our characters did.
The props were fantastic, as was the soundscape (including fog horns, seagulls…shudder, and a soundtrack). I loved picking up all the printouts and artifacts and trying to decipher them.
The themes all built, so without compelling us down a particular path, the game still guided us to reinforce themes of loss and sacrifice, the sea and the lighthouse, duty and freedom, and liminal spaces between life and death.
Just a delight to play!
