Drink Me and Debrief
Jan. 3rd, 2023 10:58 amIn the past month or so, I played in two different one-hour Paracelsus Games LARPs. One of them was insane and hilarious. The other was brutal and intense (in a good way) and brought us both to tears by the end (in a good way, genuinely). These two games were Drink Me and Debrief.
Drink Me was played with my partner![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gogollescent and two friends in one friend's home, with the aid of a darkened room, several cups, some paper inscriptions, and a bunch of food coloring. And a lot of water. A bunch of water. We will talk about the quantity of water.
Debrief was played with just my partner, over a video call between two different rooms, as instructed.
You can check out her own writeup of our experience with Debrief too (along with her side of the game ECH0 from early 2022). Both games involve picking up pre-written character profiles--especially Debrief, where the backstories are lengthy and immersive. It's a fun challenge akin to learning a role for the theater: especially for Debrief, I found myself a tad nervous that I would remember it all, and ended up with a handwritten note on the desk in front of me while I played that contained the name of my character's kids. (He had three kids. I'm not all that confident in the names and birth order of my more distant extended family, never mind the offscreen children of an imaginary person I just became. But I managed.)
Drink Me involves 4 people and is kind of a Victoriana gothic monster mash like the TV Show Penny Dreadful or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but less shooting, more squabbling. Debrief involves 2 and is an angsty Cold War interpersonal drama--think George Smiley or The Americans, but with a ghost.
If it sounds like I'm really into comp titles, I'm not, actually, but these games are: very much by design, I should think. They're games that expect the players to step into an unfamiliar milieu, historical or pseudohistorical, and learn a backstory and a set of motivations right off--it makes plenty of sense to draw on trope at least as a starting point, give players something to work with. They definitely encourage you to go beyond that, but when I was studying up on my Debrief role, I found myself going "oh I'm Bill Haydon, basically! Great, I can do a Bill Haydon" and then getting to examine how my character differed from John le Carré's actual Bill Haydon, or Kim Philby for that matter, and think about what I wanted to extemporize on. I'm pretty ambivalent on the popularity of trope as a widely known fandom thing, but I think this kind of activity is a great use of it.
Because they both rely on secrets and ask that the players read only their own role in full and not the others before playing, I'm going to put my descriptions behind two spoiler cuts. Just in case anyone's interested in setting up a game of either of these: they're both really fun, and I'm not sure they're replayable.
( DRINK ME )
( DEBRIEF )
Drink Me was played with my partner
gogollescent and two friends in one friend's home, with the aid of a darkened room, several cups, some paper inscriptions, and a bunch of food coloring. And a lot of water. A bunch of water. We will talk about the quantity of water.Debrief was played with just my partner, over a video call between two different rooms, as instructed.
You can check out her own writeup of our experience with Debrief too (along with her side of the game ECH0 from early 2022). Both games involve picking up pre-written character profiles--especially Debrief, where the backstories are lengthy and immersive. It's a fun challenge akin to learning a role for the theater: especially for Debrief, I found myself a tad nervous that I would remember it all, and ended up with a handwritten note on the desk in front of me while I played that contained the name of my character's kids. (He had three kids. I'm not all that confident in the names and birth order of my more distant extended family, never mind the offscreen children of an imaginary person I just became. But I managed.)
Drink Me involves 4 people and is kind of a Victoriana gothic monster mash like the TV Show Penny Dreadful or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but less shooting, more squabbling. Debrief involves 2 and is an angsty Cold War interpersonal drama--think George Smiley or The Americans, but with a ghost.
If it sounds like I'm really into comp titles, I'm not, actually, but these games are: very much by design, I should think. They're games that expect the players to step into an unfamiliar milieu, historical or pseudohistorical, and learn a backstory and a set of motivations right off--it makes plenty of sense to draw on trope at least as a starting point, give players something to work with. They definitely encourage you to go beyond that, but when I was studying up on my Debrief role, I found myself going "oh I'm Bill Haydon, basically! Great, I can do a Bill Haydon" and then getting to examine how my character differed from John le Carré's actual Bill Haydon, or Kim Philby for that matter, and think about what I wanted to extemporize on. I'm pretty ambivalent on the popularity of trope as a widely known fandom thing, but I think this kind of activity is a great use of it.
Because they both rely on secrets and ask that the players read only their own role in full and not the others before playing, I'm going to put my descriptions behind two spoiler cuts. Just in case anyone's interested in setting up a game of either of these: they're both really fun, and I'm not sure they're replayable.
( DRINK ME )
( DEBRIEF )
