Ludonarrative Resonance: The Game

 All the ganz mespuchah came to town for the office summer party, and we had narrative workshops. These were in no way silly fun games, they were Very Serious. Okay, they were silly and fun, but they were also serious.

One game we like to play I dubbed Ludonarrative Resonance. I don't claim it's original -- my friend Shelly made a similar game for movie pitches, and probably lots of people have something like it. It's a card game for breaking folks out of their familiar tropes.

What you do is you take index cards, or blank playing cards like these and separate them into four piles:  Setting, Main Character, Goal, Mechanic.

You write a mess of cards with the word Settings on their backs, for example:

• 
  Paris, in the 20's, sort of
• A city with a dark secret
• Zombie apocalypse
• The dreams of a dying scientist
• A decayed city in a faithless empire 
• A forgotten town in the Deep South
• Sparta!!!
• Renaissance Florence
• A volcano island

Then you write a bunch of cards with Main Character on the back:

• An apologetic Englishman
• Member of an arcane order of assassins
• A mysterious circus girl of unknown age
• A sly fox with poor impulse control
• The Monkey King
• A beginning witch
• A not entirely harmless lamb

Next, Goals, for example:

• Become a Real Boy
• Bring back the Old Ones
• Bring your beloved back
• Get the MacGuffin
• Survive
• Heal the monsters
• Go to there

Some of these are a bit specific; ideally the cards should be ideas you can interpret in different ways, but also evocative. By now you've probably recognized the games, movies and fairy tales I stole these from (some of which I wrote).

Finally, Mechanics:

• Social stealth: pass as one of them
• Deck builder
• Walking simulator
• Parcour
• Battle Royale
• Romance simulator
• Enter dreams and alter them
• Soulslike
• Punch them in the face
• Time loop

Now, the dealer deals three of each kind of card, and someone else picks one from each three. There shouldn't be two cards from the same source material.

Then everyone collaborates to pitch a game using the selected setting, main character, goal and mechanic.

Initially, this will seem ridiculous. But with a little thought, the ridiculous becomes plausible -- and original.

In our workshop, for example, we had:

A lamb

A volcano

Go to there

Puzzles

We ended up with the idea that The Lamb is solving puzzles to climb the volcano to get to Mary. The puzzles come from spectral lambs. Over the course of the puzzles we discover that Mary has been abusive towards the Lamb, and we're worried that we are in an allegory of someone returning to their abuser. But it turns out the Lamb is there to kill evil Mary and set the spectral lambs free.

We had:

An apologetic Englishman

A zombie apocalypse

Bring back his beloved

Social stealth

That turned into a game pitch where the apologetic Englishman has to rescue his beloved, who has become a zombie. That means he will have to infiltrate three groups:  the zombies (to get to her), the lab guys (to get the cure) and the kill teams (to prevent them from killing her before she can be turned back). Being an apologetic Englishman is a nice impediment to passing as any of these groups, and failing to pass will result in him being eaten, killed, or used as an experimental subject.

Both of those are perfectly cromulent games, right? I would at a minimum watch the trailer for these games, and probably wishlist them on Steam. 

Aside from exercising your ludonarrative muscles, which is always good, you quickly learn how many possibilities there are. When we were thinking about our next game after We Happy Few, we only seriously discussed two possibilities. We should have been discussing twenty! I mean, if you're planning to spend a couple of years making an indie game, or five or more making a AAA game, would it kill you to spend a month or two pitching crazy ideas? You don't want to be making a cookie-cutter fantasy game because that's what's at the front of your brain.

Make randomness your friend!

A Misconception or Two I Had About Escape Rooms

For some time, I avoided playing escape rooms. Being trapped in a room with a limited time to escape seemed stressful, and I'm really good with the amount of stress I already have in my life. 

I have since discovered that almost no escape rooms are about escaping. The genre is stuck with the name, though. 

I just finished playing a baker's dozen of escape rooms here in Montreal, courtesy of a tour run by the fine folks of Room Escape Artist. (They also run the excellent Reality Escape Pod.) They also run tours of escape rooms in various cities that are hubs of escape rooms. Turns out Montreal is one of the top eight cities in the world for escape rooms. I did not know that.

I've been intrigued by immersive experiences, including escape rooms, for a little while. There are a bunch of ways in which they are not like video games. They are local -- if you want to play an escape room, or experience immersive theater, you have to go to where it is. You can't download it. They are tactile:  you are physically in a space. There may be be actors who will improvise based on your responses. 

There are of course many ways in which escape rooms are like video games. You are the hero of your own adventure. There is a mission that only you can accomplish. There are characters who are there to help. There are obstacles, and sometimes antagonists. You have to solve puzzles. You often have to platform. You can theoretically win or lose, but you really only lose if you are dead set on testing yourself in hard mode. 

Some games are very heavy on the problem solving. Some make an effort to create a convincingly real environment that tells part of the story. Some are there more to tell an emotionally truthful story, and the puzzles are there more to engage you in the story than to present a difficult challenge.

Escape rooms have been flowering for only about the last ten years. Folks are still figuring out what the genre can do. 

According to Morty, the Yelp of escape rooms, there are on the order of fifty thousand escape rooms. 

In the past three days, I saved a magic forest, saved the world from vengeful Poseidon, released souls trapped by a witch, broken into my high school to get out of having to go to summer school, helped a Lego man succeed on his date, stopped a mad bomber, stopped a mad poisoner, helped an agent shut down a drug operation, saved another magic forest, rehabilitated myself after having been arrested for tampering with an android, and broken a curse.

Turns out, Montreal has the top-rated room in all the world, Magnifico, at Escaparium, itself probably the top escape room studio in the world. Magnifico is Not Cheap -- it's $200 Canadian, not $30-$40 Canadian like most other rooms. But it is a 2.5 hour masterpiece. The Cirque du Soleil of escape rooms. The Punchdrunk of escape rooms. It brings together stage magic, spectacular special effects, actors, puzzle-solving, wit, music and tragedy. It took me to another world, and got me in the feels.

Come on up to Montreal and check it out! We also have circuses.