Caffeinated alien Absurd Encounters: Running the Game

Running the Game

Running Absurd Encounters might at first seem an abstract and difficult task, given some of the narrative systems underlying the game. It's true that players will have a direct hand in solving mysteries (primarily due to the Connect the Dots Move) leaving you potentially out of the loop for where the Clues are pointing.

But that's a good thing: having players inject their own abstractions will make the entire game come alive in unique and surprising ways. This means that you can (1) not be burdened with tying every single detail together, and (2) spend your effort on dropping compelling Clues in response to the players' actions.

Inevitably, you as the GM are steering the story just as much as the players are, each reacting and intuiting next steps to define a creative flow of gameplay.

Themes

Keep these themes in mind while you run the game.

  1. Go with your gut.
  2. Embrace the surreal.
  3. Keep players curious.

Go With Your Gut

Your instincts should drive the narrative as much as the players' actions and choices. Surprises and chaos should be met likewise. Don't overthink your responses to situations. If an idea feels right to introduce, do it. Remember that you represent the Other, including its innate strangeness. This should naturally lead you to...

Embrace the Surreal

Surreality is the backbone of Lynchian worlds, and should be present in every scene. That can be as small as a quirky NPC that only exists to draw attention, or as large as a location that makes no logical sense but is a critical set piece. Don't overthink what you fill scenes with. Players have been warned that these realities will be strange, off-putting, and illogical—follow through with the weirdness whenever you get the chance. Always remember that it's not your job to make sense—that's up to the players. Therefore...

Keep Players Curious

Characters are tasked with solving mysteries, answering questions, and closing narrative loops. Their players will naturally gravitate towards the mechanics necessary to accomplish these things. Your main task should be to fuel this loop with ever deeper mysteries. You should aim to roughly introduce as many questions as are being answered, whether they are related to in-progress investigations or not. Layering curiosities and weaving narratives will make the setting feel that much more "lived in", so don't overthink adding questions. The players will chase down answers to the ones they care about, letting you respond as the Other in unexpected ways.

GM Tasks

So with the Themes laid out to keep in mind passively, what should you be doing actively?

  1. Breathe life into the setting.
  2. Complicate situations.
  3. Embody the Other.

Breathe Life Into the Setting

Make players feel part of a lived-in world. Place yourself in locations, standing next to characters, and describe raw sensory details viscerally. Start broad, and hone in on details to transport the players. Fill the gaps slowly and strangely, like a camera scanning a scene only able to capture certain minutiae. Show the players what are at the edges of the shadows.

Leave space for player characters. The NPCs should inhabit the lived-in world: they have tasks, jobs, conversations, meals, etc. that unfold as events. But their lives should feel incomplete without the player characters being a part of it. Make them reach out to the PCs, bump into them in dire circumstances, and occasionally get in the way of other narratives.

Ask probing questions when they come to mind. Inspire the players to fill in weird details as well, by asking for follow-up information that you wonder about. If it's an interesting question to you, it's probably also interesting to others, and very likely has a compelling answer.

Complicate Situations

Push players' buttons. Lynchian characters don't have easy lives. They struggle, they fret, they bicker, they worry. Make their players feel that.

Reward effective investigations with intriguing Clues. As a caveat to making the characters' lives harder, they should be granted comparable rewards when they successfully do a good job. Clues should always complicate the situation, either as elements of unexpected chaos, or as bizarre questions themselves.

Embody the Other

Use Clues to focus on the strange nature of reality. The Other is everywhere, and its tendrils reach into all realms. Clues should highlight the strange interconnected nature of the world, and should link known entities with unknown ones. Think of each Clue as a thread, extending the Other's web further into the unknown.

Keep it weird. The Other is an utterly untameable mystery, reacting in surprising ways. Take chances by describing scenes with odd details: unnerving, gross, counterintuitive, seemingly impossible, etc.

GM Moves

With these things in mind, here are the set of reactions you should use to reinforce the movement of the game narrative.

Foreshadow

When characters fail or partially succeed an action with some cost, introduce or emphasize a latent threat.

Give a Clue

When a character uncovers something of interest, and it exudes a thought, detail, or tidbit to you, describe it as a Clue.

Split Decisions

When a discussion starts—whether a trigger to Connect the Dots or not—pressure the characters to act or come to a conclusion, using a threat.

Scenarios

A scenario can be considered a group of narrative devices, and typically takes the form of a Season, consisting of around five to ten sessions that revolve around a specific Mystery. This Mystery is the overarching question that players are driven to get to the bottom of.

To create a Mystery, you'll want to consider a checklist with these items:

Consider these things, and come up with a list of Clues that tie some of the pieces together. Leave plenty of blanks so that the players can do their job. Follow your own logic for the core conflict, and only connect concepts that feel obvious to you—don't worry, they won't be as obvious to the players once they're immersed in events. Spend your energy pre-game to flesh out the parts of the setting that interest you, and you'll find that gets you surprisingly far.

Plots

In addition to a Season's core Mystery, there should ideally be at least two NPC-centric Plots unraveling in the background. These Plots should be linked in some way (subtle or obvious) to the Mystery, and Clues should always serve as a tie between characters, events, and locations. Plots consist of two parts:

  1. Rising: Protagonist(s) with some Desire trigger an Inciting Event.
  2. Falling: Conflict with an Obstacle leads to an Outcome.

Every session, there is a Rising Plot and a Falling Plot. Between sessions, you'll progress the timeline of these, so that the Falling Plot is completed, the Rising Plot progresses to Falling, and a new Rising Plot begins.

You can either come up with these pieces yourself, or roll on the following tables:

Rising Details

Roll 1d6 for Protagonist(s):

  1. One character, unknown to the PCs
  2. One character, known to the PCs
  3. Two characters, both unknown to the PCs
  4. Two characters, one known and one unknown to the PCs
  5. Two characters, both known to the PCs
  6. A group, crew, gang, etc.

Roll 2d6 for their Desire:

Roll 1d6 for the nature of the Inciting Event:

  1. Crisis
  2. Discovery
  3. Opportunity
  4. Purpose
  5. Revelation
  6. Threat

Falling Details

Roll 1d6 for the type of Conflict:

  1. vs. Nature
  2. vs. Person
  3. vs. Self
  4. vs. Society
  5. vs. Unknown
  6. vs. Technology

Roll 1d6 for the nature of the Obstacle:

  1. Betrayal
  2. Complication
  3. Constraint
  4. Failure
  5. Interference
  6. Misunderstanding

Roll 1d6 for the Outcome:

  1. Failure, and... (extremely negative)
  2. Failure, so... (clearly negative)
  3. Failure, but... (slightly negative)
  4. Success, but... (slightly positive)
  5. Success, so... (clearly positive)
  6. Success, and... (extremely positive)