A day late but I’m here!
#RPGaDay2024
The prompt brings images of Indiana Jones in a mine car or Ethan Hunt jumping from one helicopter to another. I will answer with something slightly different: one of the more meaningful sessions of an RPG I’ve played.
A few years ago, it was the fall Camping for Gamers trip. Twice a year, I and 10-20 friends meet in the woods with tents, meat, adult beverages, and games. It is a week where nothing must be done. There are no kids to take to dance, no emails that need to go out, and no Zoom meetings to join. It is a week of friends and games. Did I mention games?
Luckily, we had enough cell service to play Alice is Missing; an RPG played with only text messages—the characters are never in the same place at the same time. We play as our characters on our real phones, texting and group chatting with the other characters on their phones. I remember thinking this was an interesting gimmick, but a gimmick, nonetheless.
The game is about Alice’s disappearance, a high school junior in the small town of Silent Falls. It is timed, so play should take precisely 90 minutes. Card prompts move things along as we all search for Alice while slowly exposing who we are and what our relationship to her means.
We started slow. It is an odd way to play a game. In a second, it all came together. We are very comfortable communicating by text. It worked as well as playing with our voices because our characters are separated and communicating with text in the game.
The came culminates in us finding Alice. The last 10 minutes of the game was intense. Nobody was talking; everyone was frantically mashing thumbs on keyboards. The half-hour or so after the game was also quiet. The game punched above its weight and hit us squarely in the gut. The game had meaning and pulled up genuine emotions. We cared about each other and Alice.
I’ve since played it a few more times. I am stunned at its replay ability. I cannot wait to play it again with the new expansion that was just fulfilled from Kickstarter.
