It’s deja vu all over again
I’m reviving another game.
Do other people do this? Do you? It isn’t something I hear much about, with the occasional exception of college-age D&D groups getting back together as adults to fight some bugbears again. I do revivals, though. Not just for games - it’s a bit of a thing, in fact, the same stubborn streak that means the comic I’m working is an idea from a decade ago, and the play I drafted last year was first written even further back than that. I don’t let go of things easy.
My last big game revival was Slayers East, a stakes-and-babysitters game I ran in 2000-2002 and again in 2006-2007. Slayers East is in my big three, the best games I ever ran. This revival is also from that top three, this time it’s small dreams, a Changeling: The Dreaming game I ran in 1998-1999, and again in 2001-2002.
To me, this revival has different goals to the Slayers East revival. Slayers East was pretty much finished when I left NZ in ‘02 - we’d come to a climactic resolution, answered the key questions about what all the characters would be doing with the next few years of their lives, and even brought back players who’d moved away for cameo appearances in the final game. To find an engine for the revival we had to move the story on a bunch of years, and explore a different set of questions with the characters - in the process layering meaning backwards on to the earlier game. Most importantly, we went back to Slayers East because I was confident we could handle it better the second time out. And I think it’s undeniable that we did. The revival season of Slayers East was incredible.
small dreams is a different kettle of fish. This game didn’t reach the natural end of its storyline. I had three rough phases of the game in my head when it was alive, and we reached the end of phase two. There was a lot of plot waiting in the wings, ready to unfold. This revival will not advance the timeline at all; we’ll be rejoining the characters shortly after we last saw them (i.e. early 1999; amusingly, the setting of the game has become retro while we’ve been away).
But it isn’t the plot that is driving this revival. The small dreams plotline was endlessly sprawling, almost fractal, every plot point we took a focus on in the game seemed to explode into a whole new set of new plot points without anything ever being resolved. No-one had a handle on the whole plot - not even me, which might be a bit of a problem in a trad-style game if it didn’t seem to work out so well.
Nor is this revival coming from a Slayers-East-style belief that we can handle it better this time out. I mean, I’m sure we will, both because we’re more experienced at gaming, and because my game design chops have increased sufficiently that I have hacked the rules for Changeling into something that actually feels like it will support our play instead of being a weird ritualistic adjunct to it.
I think this revival is coming from a shared desire to recapture the feeling we had when small dreams was running really well. The game didn’t always do this; there were times I almost chucked it in completely, so frustrated was I at some aspect or other. But it’s undeniable there was something special about that game. It kept getting talked about. Players would ask me if, or when, it would be coming back. My wedding in January was something of a turning point, bringing most of the players together under the same roof for the first time since the game was folded away.
I’ve tried to figure out why this game was so fiercely loved. As noted above, the play wasn’t always great. I don’t think I ever really did justice to any player’s or character’s potential. The plot and setting were fun to wander around in but I can’t see much in either of them that would really be worth fighting for. The goals of the players varied wildly and were not all compatible. When I try and nail down why this game was great, I falter. It isn’t anything I can easily point at. But it was great.
More than that - and it feels incredibly pretentious to say this but goddammit it was true, to me at least - it was a game that felt important. It felt like we were doing good work. That when we got together and riffed some narrative about these oddball characters and their strange lives, we were doing something worthwhile. It felt like we were making what you could almost call art, rough and unpolished and many-flawed but somehow tapping into that essential stuff that makes it count for something.
This game mattered to me.
I kept my plans to bring it back quiet - I didn’t want to get anyone excited until I knew I had the tools and time to make the game happen. The day after I decided it was a go, I got an email from Brad, who had played in the very first session of small dreams and then never again. He said he’d been talking about the game at the wedding; that it was a touchstone. That he was going to be in town soon and wondered if I’d be interested in bringing the game back so he could step into it again and we could all revisit whatever it was that made the game matter so much. He talked, in particular, about how another player had ever after identified him with a key aspect of his in-game character: the ability to turn up at the right place and the right time.
I told him he was at the right place at the right time.
Embedded below is the pdf I sent to the players to announce the revival. There’ll be more about this game, no doubt.
Anyone out there ever revived a game after years of hiatus?
And perhaps more important: anyone ever wished they hadn’t?
Open publication - Free publishing
Do other people do this? Do you? It isn’t something I hear much about, with the occasional exception of college-age D&D groups getting back together as adults to fight some bugbears again. I do revivals, though. Not just for games - it’s a bit of a thing, in fact, the same stubborn streak that means the comic I’m working is an idea from a decade ago, and the play I drafted last year was first written even further back than that. I don’t let go of things easy.
My last big game revival was Slayers East, a stakes-and-babysitters game I ran in 2000-2002 and again in 2006-2007. Slayers East is in my big three, the best games I ever ran. This revival is also from that top three, this time it’s small dreams, a Changeling: The Dreaming game I ran in 1998-1999, and again in 2001-2002.
To me, this revival has different goals to the Slayers East revival. Slayers East was pretty much finished when I left NZ in ‘02 - we’d come to a climactic resolution, answered the key questions about what all the characters would be doing with the next few years of their lives, and even brought back players who’d moved away for cameo appearances in the final game. To find an engine for the revival we had to move the story on a bunch of years, and explore a different set of questions with the characters - in the process layering meaning backwards on to the earlier game. Most importantly, we went back to Slayers East because I was confident we could handle it better the second time out. And I think it’s undeniable that we did. The revival season of Slayers East was incredible.
small dreams is a different kettle of fish. This game didn’t reach the natural end of its storyline. I had three rough phases of the game in my head when it was alive, and we reached the end of phase two. There was a lot of plot waiting in the wings, ready to unfold. This revival will not advance the timeline at all; we’ll be rejoining the characters shortly after we last saw them (i.e. early 1999; amusingly, the setting of the game has become retro while we’ve been away).
But it isn’t the plot that is driving this revival. The small dreams plotline was endlessly sprawling, almost fractal, every plot point we took a focus on in the game seemed to explode into a whole new set of new plot points without anything ever being resolved. No-one had a handle on the whole plot - not even me, which might be a bit of a problem in a trad-style game if it didn’t seem to work out so well.
Nor is this revival coming from a Slayers-East-style belief that we can handle it better this time out. I mean, I’m sure we will, both because we’re more experienced at gaming, and because my game design chops have increased sufficiently that I have hacked the rules for Changeling into something that actually feels like it will support our play instead of being a weird ritualistic adjunct to it.
I think this revival is coming from a shared desire to recapture the feeling we had when small dreams was running really well. The game didn’t always do this; there were times I almost chucked it in completely, so frustrated was I at some aspect or other. But it’s undeniable there was something special about that game. It kept getting talked about. Players would ask me if, or when, it would be coming back. My wedding in January was something of a turning point, bringing most of the players together under the same roof for the first time since the game was folded away.
I’ve tried to figure out why this game was so fiercely loved. As noted above, the play wasn’t always great. I don’t think I ever really did justice to any player’s or character’s potential. The plot and setting were fun to wander around in but I can’t see much in either of them that would really be worth fighting for. The goals of the players varied wildly and were not all compatible. When I try and nail down why this game was great, I falter. It isn’t anything I can easily point at. But it was great.
More than that - and it feels incredibly pretentious to say this but goddammit it was true, to me at least - it was a game that felt important. It felt like we were doing good work. That when we got together and riffed some narrative about these oddball characters and their strange lives, we were doing something worthwhile. It felt like we were making what you could almost call art, rough and unpolished and many-flawed but somehow tapping into that essential stuff that makes it count for something.
This game mattered to me.
I kept my plans to bring it back quiet - I didn’t want to get anyone excited until I knew I had the tools and time to make the game happen. The day after I decided it was a go, I got an email from Brad, who had played in the very first session of small dreams and then never again. He said he’d been talking about the game at the wedding; that it was a touchstone. That he was going to be in town soon and wondered if I’d be interested in bringing the game back so he could step into it again and we could all revisit whatever it was that made the game matter so much. He talked, in particular, about how another player had ever after identified him with a key aspect of his in-game character: the ability to turn up at the right place and the right time.
I told him he was at the right place at the right time.
Embedded below is the pdf I sent to the players to announce the revival. There’ll be more about this game, no doubt.
Anyone out there ever revived a game after years of hiatus?
And perhaps more important: anyone ever wished they hadn’t?
Open publication - Free publishing