I'm really glad I read this. I played in a game of Alice is Missing online through Discord a few weeks ago (there's a bot available, which makes for an impressively seamless experience).
I found it unexpectedly stressful, and I think that's because I was never sure how much I should be inventing.
Even as I came to realise that it was more about improv than gameplay, I still couldn't quite get a handle on how robust the fiction was, in terms of inventing details that might be contradicted or shown to be incompatible with the final narrative, especially as all the other players were busily inventing other details in private chats.
As a result, I held on to my secret a bit too long, then felt I had to squeeze it into the existing narrative, but some parts of that developing narrative were hidden from me, so I couldn't tell if I was contradicting the evolving story.
I'm certain that many people have had very positive emotional experiences with the game, but I can't help wondering - do other groups manage to create more consistent and satisfying narratives around the game's structure?
Or is the game's management of emotional involvement so masterful that players find it easy to ignore the gaps and inconsistencies in the story they've just told?
Thanks for your comment! Gosh, it really can feel like you're the only one. "What's wrong with me? Did I miss something in the rules? Did I play it WRONG?"
> I found it unexpectedly stressful, and I think that's because I was never sure how much I should be inventing.
Yes, one of the best things a real roleplay/story-heavy game can do, I think, is let you know which parts you're responsible for sustaining. Am I supposed to be "solving" the mystery? If my secret is never brought up, did I withhold a vital piece of the narrative?
> I'm certain that many people have had very positive emotional experiences with the game, but I can't help wondering - do other groups manage to create more consistent and satisfying narratives around the game's structure?
There might be an alchemy here involving chance, player preference, intuition, expectations, etc. My group plays very trad games, in which players have to generate the central action (if you don't work meticulously solve the mystery, there will be no solved mystery). Other groups without those expectations might understand more intuitively that like, their job is to have largely-speculative character interactions.
> Or is the game's management of emotional involvement so masterful that players find it easy to ignore the gaps and inconsistencies in the story they've just told?
I'm going to be more frank about the comparisons to my experiences in religious community: There are people who grow up in religious communities that are more traditional, buttoned-up, maybe Catholic or Mainline Protestant. You sit in pews, you recite a certain liturgical form, you sing old traditional songs. Every once in a while, a person from this background wanders into a more "contemporary" worship service, where people dress casually, there's intense music, people raise their hands and sing, etc. These people have very INTENSE emotional feelings, and think "Man, this is what I've been MISSING."
While I have, in my life, visited and enjoyed these latter, contemporary forms of expression -- this is where shit gets dodgy, so I hope I don't offend -- a part of me is very skeptical when it comes to 1. the sustainability and consistency of these experiences and 2. the ability to form generative communities around in this context.
Either way, I think this phenomenon -- the traditionalist experiencing all that modern production values have on hand to excite and inspire -- has strong parallels with what many people get out of Alice Is Missing. And I want to be clear: There is nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with this.
I just prefer to let the inspiration and emotion merge is a way that is more organic, and more natural, and to seek those feelings -- I'm just going to outright say that they are feelings of transcendence -- in a way that feels like it came from a totally un-coerced place.
Our group is extremely familiar with roleplay heavy and narrative first games and there was no confusion as to the kind of game we were getting into when starting Alice is Missing.
That said, this game was a complete miss for us, there was no sense of stakes or played agency, no reason to engage with the very limited name mechanics and it felt like we were essentially do 95% of the heavy lifting for a game that more often than not was getting in its own way narratively speaking.
It became obvious very quickly to my player than everything other than the later clue cards are essentially red herrings, the locations and item cards are not actually changing anything other than roleplaying prompts we didn't really need.
This is a game that suffers from its own random less and would benefit extremely well from having some self contained actual thought out overarching narrative for Alice's journey and fate instead of random clues that make no sense spread over a variety of locations.
Our group is extremely familiar with roleplay heavy and narrative first games and there was no confusion as to the kind of game we were getting into when starting Alice is Missing.
That said, this game was a complete miss for us, there was no sense of stakes or played agency, no reason to engage with the very limited name mechanics and it felt like we were essentially do 95% of the heavy lifting for a game that more often than not was getting in its own way narratively speaking.
It became obvious very quickly to my player than everything other than the later clue cards are essentially red herrings, the locations and item cards are not actually changing anything other than roleplaying prompts we didn't really need.
This is a game that suffers from its own random less and would benefit extremely well from having some self contained actual thought out overarching narrative for Alice's journey and fate instead of random clues that make no sense spread over a variety of locations.
I'm really glad I read this. I played in a game of Alice is Missing online through Discord a few weeks ago (there's a bot available, which makes for an impressively seamless experience).
I found it unexpectedly stressful, and I think that's because I was never sure how much I should be inventing.
Even as I came to realise that it was more about improv than gameplay, I still couldn't quite get a handle on how robust the fiction was, in terms of inventing details that might be contradicted or shown to be incompatible with the final narrative, especially as all the other players were busily inventing other details in private chats.
As a result, I held on to my secret a bit too long, then felt I had to squeeze it into the existing narrative, but some parts of that developing narrative were hidden from me, so I couldn't tell if I was contradicting the evolving story.
I'm certain that many people have had very positive emotional experiences with the game, but I can't help wondering - do other groups manage to create more consistent and satisfying narratives around the game's structure?
Or is the game's management of emotional involvement so masterful that players find it easy to ignore the gaps and inconsistencies in the story they've just told?
Thanks for your comment! Gosh, it really can feel like you're the only one. "What's wrong with me? Did I miss something in the rules? Did I play it WRONG?"
> I found it unexpectedly stressful, and I think that's because I was never sure how much I should be inventing.
Yes, one of the best things a real roleplay/story-heavy game can do, I think, is let you know which parts you're responsible for sustaining. Am I supposed to be "solving" the mystery? If my secret is never brought up, did I withhold a vital piece of the narrative?
> I'm certain that many people have had very positive emotional experiences with the game, but I can't help wondering - do other groups manage to create more consistent and satisfying narratives around the game's structure?
There might be an alchemy here involving chance, player preference, intuition, expectations, etc. My group plays very trad games, in which players have to generate the central action (if you don't work meticulously solve the mystery, there will be no solved mystery). Other groups without those expectations might understand more intuitively that like, their job is to have largely-speculative character interactions.
> Or is the game's management of emotional involvement so masterful that players find it easy to ignore the gaps and inconsistencies in the story they've just told?
I'm going to be more frank about the comparisons to my experiences in religious community: There are people who grow up in religious communities that are more traditional, buttoned-up, maybe Catholic or Mainline Protestant. You sit in pews, you recite a certain liturgical form, you sing old traditional songs. Every once in a while, a person from this background wanders into a more "contemporary" worship service, where people dress casually, there's intense music, people raise their hands and sing, etc. These people have very INTENSE emotional feelings, and think "Man, this is what I've been MISSING."
While I have, in my life, visited and enjoyed these latter, contemporary forms of expression -- this is where shit gets dodgy, so I hope I don't offend -- a part of me is very skeptical when it comes to 1. the sustainability and consistency of these experiences and 2. the ability to form generative communities around in this context.
Either way, I think this phenomenon -- the traditionalist experiencing all that modern production values have on hand to excite and inspire -- has strong parallels with what many people get out of Alice Is Missing. And I want to be clear: There is nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with this.
I just prefer to let the inspiration and emotion merge is a way that is more organic, and more natural, and to seek those feelings -- I'm just going to outright say that they are feelings of transcendence -- in a way that feels like it came from a totally un-coerced place.
Man, I hope that wasn't too loaded.
Our group is extremely familiar with roleplay heavy and narrative first games and there was no confusion as to the kind of game we were getting into when starting Alice is Missing.
That said, this game was a complete miss for us, there was no sense of stakes or played agency, no reason to engage with the very limited name mechanics and it felt like we were essentially do 95% of the heavy lifting for a game that more often than not was getting in its own way narratively speaking.
It became obvious very quickly to my player than everything other than the later clue cards are essentially red herrings, the locations and item cards are not actually changing anything other than roleplaying prompts we didn't really need.
This is a game that suffers from its own random less and would benefit extremely well from having some self contained actual thought out overarching narrative for Alice's journey and fate instead of random clues that make no sense spread over a variety of locations.
Our group is extremely familiar with roleplay heavy and narrative first games and there was no confusion as to the kind of game we were getting into when starting Alice is Missing.
That said, this game was a complete miss for us, there was no sense of stakes or played agency, no reason to engage with the very limited name mechanics and it felt like we were essentially do 95% of the heavy lifting for a game that more often than not was getting in its own way narratively speaking.
It became obvious very quickly to my player than everything other than the later clue cards are essentially red herrings, the locations and item cards are not actually changing anything other than roleplaying prompts we didn't really need.
This is a game that suffers from its own random less and would benefit extremely well from having some self contained actual thought out overarching narrative for Alice's journey and fate instead of random clues that make no sense spread over a variety of locations.