Experimental text-based horror RPG

Okay.  So my friend Andrew and I were discussing the possibility of some sort of online role-playing gaming.  We toyed around with the idea of skype, then Andrew suggested text-based.  So we had the following impromptu gaming session.  There’s a strong emphasis on horror.  As Andrew points out in line 14, it’s hard to achieve that in a role-playing game.  But I did my best by keeping him in the dark both literally (lines 15-34) and figuratively, by concealing the monster as long as possible (even at the moment of attack, see “a terrible something” at line 103).  In the post-game debrief (lines 140-162) Andrew commented on having felt genuine fear and suspense.

 

I did my best to convey an immersive world in text, using scent (line 3), sound (line 21), and physical sensations (94, 127).  With the absence of a visual medium (assuming it’s purely text-based, which needn’t be the case, but certainly there are limits on props) these things are important.  The limitations of the medium became especially apparent around lines 68-80.  While my opening description of the cellar at line 2 was quite precise, by that stage Andrew was obviously spatially disoriented.  Apart from the logistical problems posed, this interrupts the immersion of the experience, so it’s something to think about.  And of course there are the technological problems (line 102… you have no idea).  Finally, we were playing diceless, leading to the inevitable player-GM power-struggles, though in this case I like to think they worked out as negotiations.  See Andrew taking the initiative at lines 96 and 113.

 

Anyway, hope this is of interest to somebody out there in internetland.

 

 

1. James:
2. By the flickering light of your torch, you appear to be in a wine cellar. Casks line the east and west walls of the narrow corridor. Behind you, to the south, are the stairs leading up. To the north the corridor disappears in darkness.
3. Your nostrils fill with the scent of old wine, wood, soil, and something else which might be mould.
4. What do you do?
5. Dm makes all spot and listen checks in secret too.
6. Andrew:
7. I brace myself, take a small sip of holy bourbon from the thask in my overcoat, and plunge sword first into the darkness ahead.
8. I think txt based is the win
9. James:
10. Maybe, yeah.
11. Torch aloft, you march down the corridor. After taking a few steps you’re startled by the sound of high-pitched laughter.
12. Andrew:
13. I scream, half in terror, half because i stub…
14. ok this already turning into a standard game; the standard of nothing being taken seriously
15. James:
16. Oh yeah? You drop your torch. It goes out.
17. Andrew:
18. haha
19. I reach for my flint and oil
20. James:
21. You are in utter darkness. You hear a scratching noise behind you.
22. Andrew:
23. I swing my blade back towards the noise with the fury that only fear can muster
24. James:
25. Your fingers fumble with the flint and steel. You hear something grunting and getting closer…
26. Your blade touches nothing.
27. Andrew:
28. fuck
29. James:
30. The sound stops. Silence.
31. Andrew:
32. I soak a rag in oil, wrap it around the end of my blade and light it
33. James:
34. The flame licks eagerly to life!
35. You appear to be in a wine cellar.
36. Andrew:
37. how big?
38. James:
39. The ceiling’s about ten feet tall. There are about ten feet between the rows of casks. The rows disappear in darkness.
40. Andrew:
41. I walk, in any direction, looking for an exit
42. James:
43. You can see your footprints in the earth floor, so you retrace them.
44. You reach the base of the stone staircase and start hurrying upward.
45. You reach the heavy oak door which leads back to the main hall of the castle. Thank goodness!
46. You lean against the door… But it doesn’t budge.
47. Andrew:
48. open
49. I coat the door in oil and set it alight
50. James:
51. After your hurried improvisation below, you have little oil left, but you manage to ignite a small flame.
52. Andrew:
53. I wait
54. I scratch my itchy nose and try to pull my underwear out of my asscrackJames:
55. The door is thick and the wood is dense and damp. The flame is slow to spread, climbing excruciatingly slowly up the heavy timbers.
56. You hear a high-pitched cackle resounding up the stairway.
57. Andrew:
58. I kick the door
59. James:
60. The door is incredible thick, your foot screams in pain.
61. Andrew:
62. I tell it to shutup
63. James:
64. …but it seems to budge a fraction of an inch.
65. Andrew:
66. hrmph
67. I look for a heavy thing to bash into the door
68. James:
69. The laughter seems to be drawing nearer.
70. Andrew:
71. wait, where is it coming from?
72. James:
73. You’re in a bare stone corridor.
74. Below.
75. Staircase, rather.
76. Andrew:
77. through the door?
78. or behind me?
79. James:
80. No. Door at the top of the staircase you just climbed. It’s coming from behind, down in the dark.
81. Andrew:
82. I call out, who goes there?
83. (dumbest adventurer ever)
84. James:
85. It seems to be picking up speed as it draws closer…
86. Andrew:
87. I draw my sword back ready to strike
88. James:
89. HEE HEE HEE HEE
90. HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE
91. Andrew:
92. “come at me, beast!”
93. James:
94. The flames have spread over roughly half the door. You feel the heat on your back.
95. Andrew:
96. I turn and kick the structurally weakened door
97. James:
98. OKAAAAY HEE HEE!
99. Andrew:
100. …and leap through the embers as it shatters under my mighty boot
101. James:
102. Ugh, losing so many messages. Fucking phone.
103. As you tumble into the great hall of the castle, a terrible something leaps out of the darkness and latches onto your back.
104. Andrew:
105. I grab the dagger off my belt and stab repeatedly over my shoulder
106. James:
107. It’s suprisingly light, but the force is like a shot from a crossbow, and it catches you off balance. You roll onto the cold stone floor, the thing riding you down with claws it sinks into your shoulders.
108. You fumble to gain an angle of attack, slashing wildly.
109. You roll about on the floor, taking flailing attacks, when suddenly you meet it face-to-face. It’s huge bat-like face grins comically at you. It’s huge eyes seem to bore into your brain…
110. Your limbs grow weak, relaxed… The dagger slides from your grasp…
111. Andrew:
112. “when i bury you, im coming back once a year to piss on your grave!”
113. i sink my dagger into its eyeball
114.  James:
115. …
116. My phone… [eds yes, my phone was dropping many messages, but the ellipses also indicate my annoyance and Andrew's pre-emption of my GM right to conflict resolution.  Whatever.  I get my revenge.]
117. With a sudden blaze of anger, you seize your blade and thrust. The thing rears back, your dagger protruding from its eye socket, great gouts of blood splashing over you.
118. Then its maw stretches incredibly wide, and engulfs your face!
119. Andrew:
120. I reach up and grab the dagger, stabbing again and again into its face
121. James:
122. Fangs pierce your cheek, your chin… The pain shoots through your face.
123. You fumble for the dagger as the blood pours from multiple puncture wounds…
124. The thing bites you repeatedly. You see red.
125. Time seems to stop.
126. …
127. You are lying on a cold stone floor. It’s freezing. You can’t see.
128. Your face is a throbbing mass of pain, not shooting like before.
129. Andrew:
130. I take out the milk of poppy from my coat and take a generous swig
131. James:
132. The pain numbs somewhat.
133. Andrew:
134. I curse feebly
135. James:
136. Some of the liquid spills down your face. Your lips sting, and aren’t apparently fully functional.
137. The sound is garbled. It hurts to talk.
138. Andrew:
139. I take a moment to remember why im in this dungeon…
140. James:
141. Suddenly you realise this is all merely a hypothetical example. Your face is intact, though no more attractive, and your sight is restored!
142. Andrew:
143. hahahaha
144. James:
145. It could work?
146. Andrew:
147. I really liked that
148. I felt genuine suspense waiting for the beast to attack
149. James:
150. How about when the light went out?
151. Andrew:
152. Fear!
153. James:
154. Yeah. I was like “fuck you not taking my dungeon seriously.”
155. Andrew:
156. haha
157. James:
158. Smell and sound and feel seemed quite handy.
159. Andrew:
160. yah
161. James:
162. So text-based maybe.

Most conversations are like this to me

You’d be surprised how often this works.

Where was I going?  Fuck.  I forgot.  I had something to do…  Maybe if I…

“James!”

Ah!  Did I do something wrong?  What did I forget?

“…and on the Tuesday or maybe the Friday…”

Oh shit, it’s a question?  What’s he asking me?

“…because they need a table to fit their things, you know, what are they called?”

What ARE they called?  Shit, I can’t remember.  Oh, it was a rhetorical question.

“…around two-thirty, or else they said they’d drop it off the next morning…”

There’s someone drying their hands in the bathroom.  I can hear the dryer.

“…if that’s okay with you?”

Oh my goodness.  Facial expression demands response.  Look pensive.

“Yep, that sounds about right.  Just send me an e-mail with the details.”

“Thanks James!  Appreciate it!”

What did I just agree to?

Notes on a hangover

My friend called this my ‘vomit blog’ in passing the other day.  I didn’t intend it.  I’ve just got interested in writing about embodied experience, and as a severely anxious person who drinks too much coffee (among other things) I get nauseous a lot.  Oh well.  I wrote this like a week ago.

The remains of last night’s whiskey and the morning’s coffee form a heavy molten sludge in my gut. It weighs me down, alternatively contracting into a small, hard stone and expanding into rivers of nausea. My eyes are swimming in the river as they grasp towards objects shifting and blurred. I move sluggishly beneath a film of sweat, my mind wading through the chemical languor. Held down by this body, this body that eats and drinks and pisses and shits, my thoughts struggle to ascend into abstraction.

My mind runs down a list of stimuli which might break these corporeal chains; coffee, masturbation, cigarettes. Stimulants, orgasms, depressants. But this body, this wet and sticky mass, this heavy and cumbersome thing, disgusts me too much to risk manipulating it. At any moment it could become a volcanic explosion of effluents, or it could cave in upon itself. The mind could race faster than thought can follow, or it could wander into the dark recesses of depression. It’s safer to accept one’s current infirmities, to work through them rather than against them.

I want to slide beneath the muck, into a stupor, into sleep. Tiredness is crushing me down and down. My thoughts have gone astray.

Concerning words that spoil

I started doing some googling about ableism today, just to see what’s out there, and I came across this excellent article.  It inspired what follows.

There’s a pressure in my chest and a lump in my throat.  I feel a bit dizzy.  It needs to come out.  I can almost taste the words, savoury and warm.  I can almost feel their flow.  But the conversation has moved on.  People are talking about something.  I don’t know what.  Something.  It sounds like a buzzing because all I can hear is the speech that wants to be free.  I wait until I can wait no longer and suddenly…

Five-minute monologue about the Shakespeare’s politics, as exemplified by Tudor bias, worship of the monarchy, and the ambiguous anti-semitism of A Merchant of Venice.

I want to go on, maybe to the history of the English longbow from its adoption by Edward I, a.k.a. Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, in his wars against the Welsh principalities.  I want to feel that warm flow of words ascending from my gullet and spilling out into the world.  But already I can recognise the classification of my speech.

Their strained smiles or gaping mouths, their eyes which twitch about (can you believe this guy?) or gaze with brows raised, say that this is awkward, cute (like a child is cute, so cute, so innocent), annoying, weird.  It’s an interruption, an interjection, an irrelevancy.  The pleasure of speech is soured by an anxious knot in my stomach.  I feel nauseous.

Apologise, be silent.  Let people have their conversation.  Your invitation is conditional on the suppression of the sublime pleasure of speech.  The rhythms of words, their taste and texture, come secondary to give-and-take, to the rituals of dialogue.  They didn’t come here to hear you talk to no one.  And you’re talking to no one, because no one is listening.  It just sounds like a buzzing.

Not Enough: Reflections on squatting

We dumpstered, squatted and shoplifted our lives back. Everything fell into place when we decided our lives were to be lived.

Via a friend on Facebook

…if only things had stayed in place.  But they continued to fall.  The serendipity of their arrangement was all too brief, and though there is an eternity which can be said to exist outside of time, which crystalises into our common inheritance, that is not the reality in which one lives.  One lives in a reality of bodies which stubbornly continue to ingest and shit, to desire, to freeze or overheat.  Our bodies are in motion.  Until they’re not.

Stewed apples from the dumpster spiced with pilferred cinnamon and a mug of homebrewed… well… moonshine, really.  Such things will warm you for a while, and when you curl up in your sleeping bag the crumbling graffitid walls around you are as good as any palace.  But one morning you wake up smelling of puke.  It’s ice cold.  Your stomach and your belly are crying out in pain.  Shuffling across the floorboards, desperate for coffee, you discover that no one’s fetched more drinking water.  So you curl up in the corner and try to make the scraps of your tobacco last for one more cigarette while you decide what to do.

Feed me, your body insists.  Feed me now.  You look around for a friend who might help you feed your ailing body, but the house is silent.  You curse them, you curse the happiness they seem to hoard in spite of you.  You can’t face the idea of crawling into a dumpster at 10 in the morning in the bitter cold, by yourself.  You can’t work up the necessary reckless courage to fill your bags with groceries and walk boldly out of the shop.  Not in your filthy, hungover, state, with a pounding head.  And there’s the problem of cigarettes.

Cigarettes will always remind us of our enslavement.  They’re never in the dumpsters.  They’re never within reach of pilfering hands.  They’re never given quite so freely as zines on how to grow potatoes in old tires or the patches commemorating the band which existed for two gigs until that guy slept with that guy’s girlfriend.  Your body demands you feed it cigarettes, and you remember you need money.  Maybe you’ve got some, maybe you haven’t.  But no matter how many other treasures you pile up, you still need money.

Fifteen minutes out of safety, shuffling hungover through the wealthy suburb, is all your feeble mind will take.  Get to the 7-11.  Cigarettes.  Doritos.  Coke.  A chicken caesar wrap.  Porn.  Everything the body needs to endure this existence.  Go home as quickly as you can.  Feast.  Fuck it’s cold.  Where is everyone?

Isolation causes vertigo.  Dizzily, you no longer care from who you steal.  You’re ready to turn on your friends now.  They’ve left the drugs out.  They’ve left the drugs out.  They’ve left the drugs out.  They’re your drugs now.  Drugs and cigarettes, everything the body needs.  Chomping on a disgusting handful of mushrooms, you reach for the $10 box of wine (now nearly empty; you bought it yesterday) and replace the taste of dirt with one of vinegar.  You catch sight of yourself in a mirror, and it’s enough to have you running to the toilet to vomit.  Again.  But no one’s remembered to flush the toilet (it takes considerable effort when you have to use rainwater) so you vomit on a pile of shit.  You’re praying you haven’t vomited too much, and eat more mushrooms just to be on the safe side.  But you’ve gone to the limit too many times; no amount of psychadelics will help you escape today.  Why is it so cold?  Where is everyone?

It’s two in the morning now.  You managed to secure more wine (you stopped caring about your own stench after finishing the last box).  You can’t remember how many times you’ve vomited.  They still haven’t woken up, or else they’ve stayed in their room all day screwing while you freeze in the corridor, barking at hallucinations.  You set out lurching into the streets.  There’s no amount of property damage that will extinguish your rage now, but you manage to exhaust yourself enough to curl up for another night, cold, alone, and sick.

The knock on the door, the knock that says you have to leave, ruins everything that is left to be ruined.  Before you know it you’re catching a ride in your friend’s car with all your scavanged possessions in a pile behind you.  No one speaks.  It’s raining.  You’re tired and emaciated and have forgotten what hot water feels like.  Someone says that this time will be even better, and you force a smile, but no one believes it any more.  You’re too tired.  Too mad.  Someone slept with someone’s girlfriend, the tired refrain.  Someone never pitched in.  Someone steals all the drugs (yeah, you; did you take this for a commune?!).  Someone is a total bitch.  Someone is a total junkie.  Someone got beat up.  It’s not going to work.  You run.

You start running and you don’t stop.  You run to the friends you haven’t fucked over yet, to the family you’re still speaking to, to anyone who will let you bathe and sleep and not talk about it.  If anyone gets too close, you fight them, no matter how well-meaning they are.  You’re on the run and everyone’s a threat.  Then you run to landlords and employers and button-up shirts from savers.  You run to doctors and therapists and synthesised wellbeing at much cheaper prices than your old dealer’s.  You run like an animal because that’s how you feel: you’ve become more in touch with your body, with how it stinks and craves and freezes and breaks down, than you ever wanted to be.

You’re trying to put yourself back together, as best the world will let you.  You’re trying not to run so hard, but they never let you stop.  If we quit smoking, that wouldn’t be a revolution.  We’d still be cold and the shit would still be overflowing.  You ride the train to work now, mostly sober, better-dressed but still muttering incessantly, this is not enough.  This is not enough.  This is not enough.