I totally agree with Joel, brilliant changes. I look forward to playing soon, complete with vividly enlivened characters from several rounds of “I see You”. Yay!

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Yes, “I See You” and the terrible downer of the Gong-show style “I don’t see it!”. I never liked that either. I had always hoped to come up with something different, but had no leads. Thanks again to the genius of Matthijs Holter!

Yes, regarding your comments on “Help”, exactly! My struggles too.

“Secondary players”: I had a problem, and as you know, when I have a problem, I try to make lemonade. I had too many interested players, some who actually had puppy dog “gosh, I can’t play too?” looks on their face. I had no problem keeping them engaged, they wanted badly to participate. I more needed to figure out “how do I catch this energy they’re offering and respect it?”.

Now, I don’t know exactly what information you need about facilitating these secondary players. If you wanted to know how I provided them with ways to contribute, during one player’s scene all the other players essentially fill “secondary player” roles. So secondary players, for the whole game, always had company, and essentially participated the same as everyone else, except for the single active player-character.

Think of it much like Polaris and the role of the Moons - same exact thing.

One step up from this in terms of commitment, came the paired players for one character. This seems another way to heighten engagement without heightening commitment too much.

Thanks for your questions, Joel!

I’m very excited about the techniques you’ve developed. It sounds like you’ve found solutions to some of the difficulties we’ve both wrestled with in pursuit of Fluency Play. Hand signs for Archipelago’s phrases is obvious but inspired. And I’ve always loved running “I see you” at the outset of any story game to bring the characters to life. I’m intrigued by your idea to change “I don’t see it” to “try something different.” I’ve always felt that running until someone “fails” to see it “right” was a bit of a downer in an otherwise beautiful exercise.

Also, changing the destiny statements into questions sounds delightful. I too have been inspired by Love in the Time of Seið’s use of questions, and for that matter Montsegur 1244. I’m more about questions than answers, these days.

But I’m especially excited about the “Help” and “secondary players” techniques! These are both things I’ve struggled with in playing story games, especially when introducing them to new players. I’ve never known how to give a new player support when they falter or freeze–I don’t want to take over or rob the of their opportunity, so I generally just wait it out and try to look encouraging. “Help” sounds like it gives players a means of soliciting aid without embarrassing themselves or breaking flow. Brilliant!

I’d be interested in hearing more about how you handled “secondary players” in a way that keeps everyone engaged. When I’ve tried similar experiments in the past I found it difficult to give the players on the fringe enough to do so that they’d be invested and involved. Can you give a snapshot of what a “secondary player” moment looks like?

Peace,
-Joel