Here’s a thought that is itching in my brain hard enough, I almost considered recording an episode of Narrative Control to talk about (who says you can’t have a nine year lull?).
Play games about solving your own problems (not other people’s problems).
I’ll dig into that idea in more depth, but first a bit of background about why this is on my mind.
Our first experience with games (D&D and it’s immediate successors) reinforced colonial themes that might makes right, othering cultures that aren’t our own, and justifying murder and plundering under the auspices of spreading law and civilization.
Some games have challenged that default by positioning the characters as heroes who help others. AGON, which I co-authored, is about Greek heroes that travel from island to island trying to find their way home, and along the way facing many trials that often put them in the position of foiling evil pots, freeing people, and averting crisis.
I love AGON (and other games of it’s ilk) but it still puts a bright spotlight on the “heroes” rather than the “people” who are facing these struggles. In these games the people who had to suffer real toils (losing homes instead of hit points) can be denied the agency to improve their lives. Meanwhile our heroes get to save they day and win their adoration.
Don’t get me wrong. If I’m trapped in a burning building, what I really want is someone to rescue me and put out the fire. But if that burning building is where I live, they I also need to rebuild it, restore my lost possessions, and try to restore a sense of home. Those aren’t things that feel heroic to do in game because they don’t have a dangerous foe to face or challenge to overcome. They have a lot of tiresome, emotionally exhausting, and possibly boring tasks that require patience and compromise instead of valor and might.
One avenue to take along this thought experiment is a game like Stewpot by Takuma Okada. Stewpot offers the opportunity to set down the sword and spellbook and pick up the ladle and apron. Let’s give up our quest for wealth and power and instead seek out community and personal growth. I like Stewpot a lot, but it doesn’t scratch the itch that I have to overcome adversity. It positions everything a bit too placid and pleasant to be my go to game.
The other direction, which is where I’m inclined to focus, is playing games where instead of solving other people’s problems, we play to solve our own. Importantly, I think this means a few other things as well:
- Problems are persistent and pervasive. They likely won’t be solved easily. They creep into our lives in strange ways. e.g. a water shortage that means some people are sick, some are fighting over hoarding, and some are just irritable because they haven’t had a decent shower in months.
- Problems affect us personally. Its our families, our jobs, our dignity, our freedoms, and our rights that are on the line. Things are bad now and if we don’t do something about it, they will get worse. e.g. the occupying forces have set up garrisons in our town and we have have become guests in our own homes. They conscripted our young, took our supplies and livestock, and limited our ability to travel. The warn us to be compliant, lets the alter the deal any further.
- Problems are entangled with people that we care about. Your aunt is in the stockades. Your sibling needs medical attention they can’t get. Your best friend from childhood has sided with the enemy. The people we protect, the people we depend on, and the people we struggle against are all people we and claim kinship to.
- Problems have no easy solutions. We can’t dig a deeper well because we don’t have the tools. We shouldn’t go picking a fight with the garrison because we don’t have the might. We don’t want to slay our foe, because they’re our best friend…or at least used to be.
I think that by centering ourselves in the middle of problems we make the stakes more personal, more dire, and more fraught. Additionally we avoid positioning ourselves as heroes or saviors mucking with other people’s history, relationships, and culture.
This isn’t a novel concept, but it’s uncommon enough that I think it’s worth mentioning a few games that make problems personal and how that affects play:
- Mosnterhearts by Avery Alder. You’re teenage monsters dealing with all the drama and sex and violence and broken hearts that entails.
- Apocalypse World by Meg Baker and Vincent Baker, specifically when playing a game with a Hardholder and the people who are part of that hold. Everything that goes wrong is on you to deal with.
- Dagger Isles by Pam Punzalan. A Blades in the Dark supplement in development about playing Daggerites trying to expunge the Imperium from your lands.
- Dialect by Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalıoğlu. A game about an isolated community, their language, and what it means for that language to be lost.
- Blades in the Dark by John Harper. Far from heroes, the scoundrels of Doskvol have plenty of their own problems, though there are enough factions and schemes happening that it’s still quite possible to stick your nose in other peoples problems if you want!
- Fiasco by Jason Morningstar. Oh boy, do you have problems of your own. And wow, are you probably not going to solve them.
- Our Haunt by Rae Nedjadi, a game about a family of ghosts who discover memories of the past and tussle with the living.
Honorable mentions:
- Dogs in the Vineyard by Vincent Baker mostly fits this criteria, but because the Dogs travel from town to town, there is an element of the wandering hero.
- Thirsty Sword Lesbians by April Kit Walsh can fit into this category if the toxic power is one that is encompasses the characters. This is nearly always true for playbooks like the Seeker or the Infamous, but the game also supports a more travel the world, see the sights, and kiss them play style as well.
And I’m sure there are ton more (already thinking of them as I close out this post).
When I play these games I feel an ownership of my place in the world. Instead of playing an outsider who trespasses their way to heroism, I feel like a person who has been slighted, injured, or wronged just like everyone else at their side…and they’ve chosen to do something about it!
What do you think about solving your own problems? Does it make the game feel personal or too real? Is it rewarding for long term play? Do you have enough agency? Are there games about solving your own problems that you particularly love? Let me know in the comments.
P.S. A corollary. I also like games that have an equal measure of agency (being able to affect the world around you) and experience (being affected by the world). I find that many heroic games are all agency and little experience. The characters themselves are never truly challenged, forced to change, or made to question their beliefs. I love being a big damn hero, but the only way we really grow as people is by letting ourselves be affected by the world we live in.
