Debrief

[cahn]

skygiants wrote a post about a one-hour two-person role-playing game called Debrief. The idea is that the two players play two MI6 colleagues and best friends, George Russell and Robert Alderidge, in a 1960 where ghosts and spirit mediums exist. Alderidge has just been found dead in a way that makes it clear that he was a double agent passing information to the Soviet Union. Spirit medium Russell gets one hour to debrief ghost!Alderidge -- or, conversely, Alderidge gets one hour to debrief himself to Russell. The game is played over video chat, with Alderidge's character in a dark room to somewhat-simulate his ghostly nature.

skygiants' excellent post gives you all the information you need to a) want to play this game and b) play this game -- although I see courtesy of the comments to that post that there is now a direct link to Debrief from Paracelsus Games!

The game is about “loyalty, ideology, memory, obligation, and the difficulty of interpersonal knowledge” (Russell and Alderidge do NOT read each other's character sheets before playing, so they only know what they know, not what the other character knows) which, when I read this in skygiants' post, was where I immediately chatted up ase and said, we have to do this! Ase, being a much more rational actor than I am, pointed out that neither of us were what you might call good with not breaking the fourth wall. And then we both promptly got quite busy. But the stars (or at least our schedules) aligned this weekend and we did give it a try!

Unfortunately, I am sad to confess that we were not very good at it at all and turned out to be wildly unsuccessful -- by which I don't mean that the characters failed, but rather that we failed in maintaining suspension of disbelief/fourth-wall during the time of the game. We had several gameplay problems, which I set down here in case it's useful to others who might play in the future:
-we did both turn out to be pretty bad at not breaking the fourth wall
-we also, I think, are both rational actors enough that we did not enter into the proper spirit of emotionally compromising ourselves as much as the game demands. Which is probably good for our mental health but did mean that we didn't succeed in seeing it through
-I was Alderidge and ase was Russell, and this was not ideal:
-the person of the pair who has significantly more difficulty putting together coherent verbal narratives should probably not be Alderidge, which seems obvious now (he's the one who is getting debriefed!) but wasn't then
-the person of the pair who has more difficulty initiating role-playing should probably not be Russell, which also seems obvious now but wasn't then
-as ase pointed out, we could have role-played the characters at least somewhat better if switched. My advice would be that if there happens to be a personality delta along traditional/progressive lines, the more traditional personality should play Russell and the more progressive personality should play Alderidge, unless you are much better at role-playing than we are (which is to be honest probably the case).
-I can see why it is mandatory for this to be played over video; however, for our particular case, given the above restrictions, I think it would have actually been easier for us to maintain an in-character through-line if we had done it over text chat instead

I'm rot-13ing what actually happened; as skygiants says, it's better to read after actually having played if you have any wish to play this at all.

(rot-13): Bhe tnzr encvqyl fcvenyrq vagb Nyqrevqtr rnearfgyl gelvat gb whfgvsl uvzfrys gb Ehffryy, naq Ehffryy, bhgjneqyl pnyz ohg vajneqyl uheg naq gurersber pbzongvir, abg ohlvat gur whfgvsvpngvba ng nyy. Naq sebz gurer vg qribyirq vagb n cbyvgvpny nethzrag bs gur xvaq gung V guvax jr unir nyy rkcrevraprq ng fbzr cbvag: gur xvaq jurer lbh svaq lbhefrys hanoyr gb rkgevpngr lbhefrys sebz vg orpnhfr bs evfvat rzbgvbany vairfgzrag, nf zhpu nf lbhe engvbany oenva xabjf gung vg vfa'g n tbbq vqrn gb xrrc nethvat. Guvf jnf jurer nfr naq V jrer hanoyr gb xrrc tbvat va-punenpgre, cebonoyl cnegvnyyl orpnhfr va snpg jr JRER noyr gb rkgevpngr bhefryirf. Vs jr unq xrcg tbvat va-punenpgre, V nz n yvggyr fhfcvpvbhf gung Nyqrevqtr naq Ehffryy jbhyq unir whfg eha bhg gur ubhe pybpx gelvat gb pbaivapr gur bgure naq jbhyq unir snvyrq zvfrenoyl, naq ab bar jbhyq unir tbggra jung gurl jnagrq. V qba'g xabj jung gur raqtnzr bs guvf jbhyq unir orra, gubhtu. V guvax cebonoyl Ehffryy jbhyq unir fubg Nyqrevqtr, cnegvnyyl bhg bs zrepl naq cnegvnyyl bhg bs rzbgvba.

However, despite our incompetence at role-playing, it was really interesting and I'm glad we tried it (and we had a nice video chat afterwards, haha), and I now have Feelings about Russell and Alderidge. In conclusion, you all should play this game (unless you already have) and tell me (and skygiants) about it!

Comments

[cahn]

I found it super interesting to play this even not getting the full play experience, because of the difference between Alderidge's viewpoint, my best guess as to what Alderidge's viewpoint ought to be during play, my own viewpoint as a third party who read Alderidge's POV but who obviously has ideas of my own as to what Russell might have thought about all this but which is of course moderated by only having Alderidge's viewpoint to go off of, and then finding out what Russell's viewpoint was really like aaaaaah

V guvax V cnavpxrq va n qvssrerag jnl? Yvxr, V tbg fbeg bs aneebj-zvaqrqyl sbphfrq ba gur vqrbybtl orpnhfr vs Nyqrevqtr pbhyq whfg rkcynva jul, vs ur pbhyq whfg trg Ehffryy gb haqrefgnaq, gura ur jbhyq haqrefgnaq jul Nyqrevqtr unq qbar gur guvatf ur unq qbar rzbgvbanyyl fcrnxvat NAQ ur jbhyq frr jul Nyqrevqtr fgvyy unq gb pbaivapr uvz nobhg gur qvfehcgbe... Ohg bs pbhefr gung jnf arire tbvat gb or gur evtug jnl gb tb nobhg vg! Npx! Ernqvat Ehffryy'f oevrs jnf ernyyl whfg urnegoernxvat gb zr, orpnhfr V pna gbgnyyl frr ubj tbvat nobhg vg gung jnl jbhyq whfg pbasvez Ehffryy va nyy gur greevoyr guvatf ur gubhtug.

Fb V unir n ybg bs srryvatf nobhg Nyqrevqtr naq Ehffryy nf ybpxrq va gurve bja oenvaf naq ernpuvat bhg naq ybpxvat onpx va rknpgyl gur jebat jnlf gb pbzcbhaq gur jnlf gung gurl'ir orra ernpuvat bhg naq ybpxvat onpx va gur jebat jnlf gurve jubyr yvirf! Gung ynfg fragrapr bs Nyqrevqtr'f oevrs, "Znlor abj, ng gur raq bs guvatf, ur'yy or noyr gb haqrefgnaq," naq lrg gur irel npg bs univat gung gubhtug zrnag gung ur pbhyq arire haqrefgnaq!

GAH! Basically I want this for Yuletide (or ToT) now and what I want is for people to basically describe their gameplay in excruciating detail with actual conversations and facial expressions and character thoughts when possible and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

(naq nyfb V jnag svkvg gb gur yvzvg cbffvoyr, jurer gurl trg FBZR xvaq bs pybfher ba gurve srryvatf!)

(naq nyfb V jnag svkvg jurer fbzrubj sbe fbzr ernfba Ehffryy naq Nyqrevqtr ner noyr gb ernq zvaqf ng gur irel raq)