Facilitator: Jenn Martin
Players: Ryan McNeil, John LeBoeuf-Little, Ash Cheshire, Jozy Zim, Sean Nittner
System: Regency Desperation (Desperation hack)
I really like the Desperation engine because it quickly created a compelling story with dynamic characters and situations. I struggle with it however because the existing games all navigate towards depravation, suffering, and death.
Some time ago I heard Jenn talking about using the engine for regency era drama and I was immediately hooked. The characters do suffer, but their woes are political, financial, societal, and most importantly emotional.
I was excited to play the game, and even more excited when I got to play it with such amazing friends.
The game is set in 1811 at Aldsworth, home of the Carter, Montgomery, and Haddington families, along with several other characters including the vicar, ward of the Haddington, and the farmer Mr. Oliver Fletcher.
The game starts by reading the instructions, then going around the table to:
- Draw location cards, read their prompts, add in person details, and place them on the board.
- Draw characters, read their prompts, speak their hearts (revealing what they desire even if they would never say it), and place them at their starting locations.
- Draw obligations, read their prompts, place them on characters, and give them context.
Regency varies from existing desperation games by cutting down the characters (you don’t need as many since they don’t die) and adding obligations, which are societal pressures the characters must endure or defy.
Very quickly we identified that Alexander Haddington, the eldest son, had feelings that he didn’t know how to express, that the vicar made everyone feel uncomfortable because of his lack of social graces, that Farmer Fletcher had mighty thews but was picked on by others, that Algernon just waned to study botany, and that Catherine was being pushed out of her house by her sister-in-law and spineless brother. Oh, and course Charlotte Carter who was ready to be a spinster if it meant she could marry off her younger sister Amelia, who was so very pretty.
The prompts on the cards drew the characters together (moving them around the board and changing the physical proximity of the cards to each other) and pulled them apart. Each time with a story, and strong feelings involved. Many of the cards include romantic longings, but not all of them. Some helped build friendships and rivalries.
As the seasons progressed we began to see potential pairings but the events of Aldsworth were tumultuous enough that first impressions didn’t always hold up, and unexpected pairings and divisions kept the tension of “will then or won’t them” (for various combinations of “they”) constant throughout the game.
In the end
- Algernon and Oliver spent many days and nights studying, planting, and cultivating flowers together. Very much in love.
- Alexander and Captain James Lambert (a character that appeared mid-game and rescued Alexander from the cold and rain by providing his coat) proffered their love for each other, if in secret,
- Catherine Montgomery, the revolutionary thinker, did not marry the vicar as her sister-in-law had planned, but instead her brother’s good friend Mr. Samuel St. Vincent, a painter who also entertained radical beliefs and notions.
- The vicar was not married, but he did have some personal growth as he realized that the very nature of his position (a man of god) prevented him from supporting his community as he had hoped to.
- The other characters had built friendships and connections. Perhaps romance would bloom for them in the spring of 1812, or perhaps they were quite content keeping their own company and receiving succor from their family and friends.
