#unscene

🌠 A game with a mechanic I love.

I really love the Unscene and Echoes in the Night mechanic from The Between by Jason Cordova (a game about Victorian monster hunters in London, inspired by Penny Dreadful).

The Unscene describes a different scene in the same night that is completely unrelated to the main plot and unseen (get it?) by any of the PCs or NPCs. Each Unscene takes place at a different location and is guided by prompts (answered by the players taking turns) and intends to show that a lot more than the PCs plot is going on in London. (It's also a timer for the Night phase but I'm not a huge fan of the strict separation of the Day and Night phases of the game, so we'll ignore that here.)

It ties in with the Echoes in the Night mechanic, which grants you XP when you manage to nevertheless tie the Unscene together with the main plot by echoing an element from one in the other (either way around).

For example, if you first mention the blood-red gloves your character is wearing and then, a little later, describe a theatrical performance that ends with a murderer having blood all over their hands, that's an Echo in the Night.

It incentivizes you to connect images and vibes and not just plotlines, and I think that's a fantastic and very effective idea that I'm just waiting to use in one of my own games eventually.

📖 My favorite class or playbook from a game.

I recently played Dream Apart (a Jewish fantasy of the shtetl) by Benjamin Rosenbaum for the first time, so let's talk about The Midwife.

The Midwife is, well, a midwife. You get to choose a name, a type of hands, an outlook, two advantages, a thing you've seen, someone who you've angered, and 2 shtetl relationships. (Each playbook has different categories in this game.) And that's your Midwife.

You can play Tovah, for example, with stubborn hands and a pantheist outlook (because of course everything is alive in its own way), who has a remarkable sense of smell and the advantage of humility. She may have seen a cottage deep in the forest and have angered the market women by defending the prostitutes (using the game's term her). She may be a young bride's only hope and her lover may have broken her heart.

(Do you see her? Finely attuned to smell the slightest scent of death and disease? Working tirelessly to save as many lives as she can? Being the one the shtetl women go to for contraceptive or abortifacient or soothing herbs and brews? The one who knows about the horse urine and wild licorice? Heart-broken by the woman who left her for a marriage to a man? And always feeling responsible for fixing everyone else's problems and guilty if she can't.)

You can also play Binyamin, for another example, with gentle hands and an idealist outlook, who has perfect memory, and an unflappable sense of humor, despite everything. He may have seen the abbey's catacombs and angered the rabbinical council by defying a ban. He may be resented by the city-educated doctor and suspected by the goyish priest.

(Do you see him? Ever-curious and willing to defy any authority trying to keep him from learning more? Never speaking about what haunts him except in jest? And yet hopeful, steadfast in his belief that a more just world is possible? And lonely, probably a lot more lonely than you'd think.)

The Midwife is blood and birth and death and earthy magic. They're justice and sacrifice and the constant search for balance, within and without themself. Melancholic hope, caring anger, and an awareness of monstrosity, both human and otherwise.

The Midwife makes me think of Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching, of duty and severity, of a plain, practical shell with a core of fiery-soft anger necessary to Do The Work.

Hi guys,

I just entered a short film into a competition and would really appreciate it if you could give it a Facebook like (this is how the films will be voted) Just click this link https://unscenefilms.com.au/films/view/escape it should only take a few seconds. But also feel free to check it out and share it with others if you have the time! This would mean a lot to me!

where my heart won't hurt.