5. Gaming

Michael_S_Miller

What aspects of this book could you bring to your gaming table?

RichardAbbott

Commenting so I see replies

NeilNjae

I'm not sure. It's a very personal story. We spend a lot of time inside characters' heads, especially Tenar's. It's about how people come to terms with change. Because it's so intropective, it fits the form of the novel. I'm not sure how to translate that into the more outwards-directed portrayal of (radio) plays and RPGs.

Apocryphal

I think the personal scope is the big one, here, and the idea of using role play to explore Power and how it’s used or not used, gained or lost, and to even question what ‘power’ means make for some very interesting gaming themes.

Michael_S_Miller

This story is so well-done as a novel, I have trouble imagining adapting it to any other medium. Adapting pieces to gaming might be possible, but everything would suffer in the translation.

I'm not very familiar with the game, but perhaps Sagas of the Icelanders, with its separate moves for male and female characters, could explore some similar themes.

But so much of gaming is about agency in the world, about doing things. And this book is about what happens after all that is past.

Apocryphal

There’s a discussion by game designer Ben Dutter about making a setting that revolves around the use True Names over at RPG.net:
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/worldbuilding-a-world-about-true-names.869413/