INC 2012 report
Love in the Time of War , a game by Mario and Lucca.
Ok wow. I had no idea what this was going to be, just that some Italians had made a game so I wanted to play it! Claudia arranged for that to happen, and she also played in the game with me.
Set-up:
It's a one-shot 3-player game. You need some cards and some dice and some scrap paper - we used sticky notes and they were perfect.
The characters are lovers, a man and a woman, and he is away at the front. She is at home, where the effects of war still reach her. And she is pregnant. And they are not yet married, though very much in love. So, one person plays the man (in this case Mario played Abe), one person plays the woman (in this case I played Mary-Ellen), and one person plays the forces of War (in this case Claudia. I suspect it's possible to split War into two players, and have one play the forces of War that the man encounters and the other play the forces of War the woman encounters.
We set our game in the American Civil War, in Virginia. Abe was fighting for the Confederacy. I happen to know quite a lot about this time and place of American history, and so was able to help set the characters in the right place and add details. Even though I suspect Mario and Claudia are less familiar with the American Civil War, they got the feeling of it just perfect. I was really thrilled to play with both of them.
Details:
The couple figure out between them four memories they share that have deep meaning for their relationship and positive qualities they see in each other, one for each season. War gets to attack these qualities and memories. Some examples from our game: the winter Mary-Ellen was so sick and Abe nursed her back to health with such tenderness and care -> Abe is caring and tender. The time that Abe drank too much at the summer social and Mary-Ellen forgave him -> Mary-Ellen can find forgiveness in her heart.
There are a stack of cards for the man (hearts) and the woman (spades), each tied to a different horror of war. A turn of play goes like this: I turn over a card that reveals, for example, that Abe will now witness the death of a comrade, who dies in his arms. War then describes the scene, attacking one of the qualities we have set out for Abe (tenderness, perhaps). If it gets too risky for my liking, I have a mechanical way to stop War from continuing, but it costs me. If I don't interfere, that has consequences too. THEN Abe has to dictate the letter he writes home to me about this event, and it matters how truthful he is, and there's a dice mechanic where Abe receives a die for later. We go back and forth until all our cards are spent, and how many dice we have at the end determines how good or tragic the ending is. Sometimes the soldier lives, but never gets home!
Highlights:
The game started out with a bang (I think the first card I drew for Abe had him witness a murder, or the like) and didn't let up one bit. I watched War target Abe's strength in one scene, where he could have stayed hidden in the ditch and I was pleading for him to get up and keep going. In the very next scene, War targeted his tenderness, with medicine only enough ease his pain or the dying man's pain,and I was sitting there pleading for him to just be a coward for once and accept the medicine! Sooo emotionally engaging!
Mary-Ellen fought off an attack by drunken soldiers, watched her house burn, had her baby (a girl, named Sarah after Abe's mother), led her neighbors through the woods to a refugee camp, and refused the polite but intent attentions of a Union camp doctor who thought she could find a better life away from the front as a war nurse. Abe held a comrade as he died, saw a crazy officer with no regard for his men take over the company and proceed to commit various atrocities, saw civilians mistreated, and was wounded in battle.
What I loved about this game:
The scenes make a whole story gel in unexpected ways, because each apparently random event builds emotionally on the one before it. we started late, so it was a little intense, I think perhaps especially for Claudia, who had to keep bringing in the horrors of War.
On that note, though, I loved how War was not the enemy, it was just a force. Maybe there's a way to play War in which you intentionally mess with the players, but it's great played pure, where horrible things just happen by the dumb luck of the card flip.
The dictating letters part is really cool. I made a practice of holding the card I had laid for Mario while he dictated the letter. This made it feel more real in my body that I was Mary-Ellen, reading a letter from my beloved Abe.
And yes, Abe managed to make it home to Mary-Ellen, their baby daughter, and a young boy orphaned by the war that Mary-Ellen brought with her from the refugee camps. They took over a neighbor's abandoned farm-house and re-built their life together. Abe was changed by the war, but not so much as to break the bonds between them. Their terrible and horrific war story ended well.
To wrap up - find this game and play it. It is great.
