Last weekend I did a second run of my tabletop roleplaying game The City. It took some effort to make a face-to-face game happen but it worked out and we had a great session. I have updated the game text based on my reflections and the game is available for free under a Creative Commons license.
The City
The City is a steampunk drama about what we do to fit in. While I this time decided to design with a game master, it’s not hack-n-slash or mystery solving but an ensemble drama. Each player takes the role of two persons in the fictive steampunk city of Agonia, a city somewhat like Ancient Athens. One character is your main. For this character at some point during the story, you make a choice either to do as the city expects you to do. Or to break with norms and tradition and do things your own way. The other character is your secondary character, a friend of the main of another player.
No right or wrong choices
As you make your choice for your main character, you return one of two stones into a bag. If you do as the city demands, you keep the black stone. If you break with tradition, you keep the white. As the story unfolds, we draw stones from the bag to colour the narration. A ship return from foreign shores. Young men fight in the arena to become the new city champion. The priestess reads the words from the goddess in the guts of a goat. A white stone is a better outcome for the city. A black stone means blood, tears, and bad news.
There are no right or wrong choices, only consequences. By playing the game, we create stories of how this plays out. A father whose wife has not yet given him a son. A mother whose sons the city will send to war with neighbouring city Antigonia. A young man who trains in the arena as a fighter but fears to be maimed for life. A young woman who found love in a man outside her social class.
At the end we learn the fate of the city by revealing the remaining two stones in the bag. Two black stones and the city succumbs to chaos. Two white stones and the city goes stagnant. Caught in the past, the city fails to respond to changes in the world outside. Finally, if we reveal one black and one white stone, life in the city scrambles on from crisis to crisis. Always at the brink of disaster, somehow it manages to come up with solutions and adapt as the world around it changes. Like cogs in a machine, life in the city goes tic, tic, tic.
Second play through
First time I ran The City was at Slay Beyond Slay in December. I changed only few things for the second run. Mostly I beefed up the visuals with name tags and handouts in colour. We had a great session and I’m happy with how the game plays. This time we finished in about 4 hours including a break in the middle.
The game offer scenes that calls for laughter as well as scenes that sting. The funniest scene was when the two young women talk about sex, marriage, and having babies while the two mature women share their much more informed opinions on the same topics at the same time elsewhere. Excellent practice for my scene editing skills. The most poignant scene was when the sailor lost at sea returned to the city and met the young woman that had sacrificed so much waiting for him. At that moment I ask the player to pull a stone from the bag. The player then reveals a black stone and the scene went to a dark place.
As for the first play, both of the male characters chose to do as the city expects, while both female characters broke with tradition. I’ve reflected on the second play through and have updated the game text. Next play will be at LinCon 2025 in May.