I GM a lot of games, and regardless of system, one of the common threads of my GM’ing style is what I call “accessorizing”: stuff that I do, or ask my players to do, outside of the actual playing of the game to enhance the experience or sell the setting.
For my Legend of the Five Rings campaign, for example, I very frequently cooked a traditional or semi-traditional Japanese meal to open the session which related to the setting they were in (a hunter’s feast of game meats in the wilderness, a simple vegetarian meal while guests of a monastery, etc.). For nearly all of my games, including that one, I give my players homework assignments- engage with your character, their concept, and their current state of mind in some way away from the table (write a diary entry, write an imaginary letter home, make a haiku, draw something, etc.).
One such homework assignment that my players consistently enjoy is one that I stole from Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black fame, who came up with “mix tapes” for each of her many roles on the show to listen to when she needs to get in the frame of mind of that character for a scene. For my current Apocalypse World game, which focuses very heavily on the theme of the road trip, the beat generation and Americana culture of books like On The Road, I task my players with bringing a song to each session to add to a growing collective mix tape that epitomizes something their character or the party as a whole thought or felt last game session: a musical travelogue of their in-character feelings and experiences. I compile these into a Spotify playlist, which we then play in the background during our sessions. My players really enjoy this, and often find themselves hunting for the perfect track to bring to the table each Friday.
I played a fantastic long game of The Watch at Dreamation, which not only introduced me to The Watch but also its creators and a number of you fine folks, as well as this community. The character I played, Cal, was a challenging concept for me and the folks at my table(s): a product of a hardened, ruthlessly pragmatic culture, a criminal background, an abusive marriage, a professional success left behind by cultural shifts, and a psychological profile that made emotional expression and receptivity very difficult. Cal had a chip on her shoulder, literally and metaphorically never took her armor off, and had a very limited toolbox of ways to demonstrate her feelings of love, regard, respect, and affinity for her squadmates.
I patterned a lot of Cal’s idiosyncrasies on my experience in clinical work and the research and reading I do on trauma, conflict, and the roles of women in the framework of war and the warrior culture of military and paramilitary professions and societies. Being such a person, a lot of Cal’s internal experience and process went unsaid (or expressed in the worst or most obtuse way possible for a listener not versed in the language).
After seeing so many people writing up their Dreamation experiences, particularly those that played The Watch, I wanted to challenge myself to likewise create an “artifact” of the campaign for my fellow players, GMs, and community members.
The link below (or above?) is to the Spotify playlist I compiled after an hour or so of brainstorming about Cal’s internal life and emotional landscape. Unlike a lot of my friends, I’m very lyrics-centered in finding songs that I like- as a language teacher, it’s hard for me not to hear and process words whether I want to or not.Plenty of it might be interesting to illustrate some of the experiences of PCs in general in this kind of story. For those of you who don’t have Spotify or just want to read, I’ve included an actual list here with a summary of each track’s relevance:
1. Emilie Autumn, “One Foot In Front of the Other.” Aside from the nice marchy chorus, this song discusses two of the eternal dramas of war and conflict: accepting that participation (and achieving objectives) always includes a personal cost, and the difficult emotional challenge of establishing an identity outside of the landscape of the battlefield.
2. Leonard Cohen, “Joan of Arc.” I had tried to assemble a playlist of all-female artists, but I couldn’t leave this one out. A very simple folk track about how women in positions of strength or power find themselves needing to “submit to being conquered” or otherwise perform femininity to find intimacy or love- and, conversely, how they experience the pressure of presenting a cold and dispassionate persona to keep that authority.
3. Dresden Dolls, “Thirty Whacks.” A heart-wrenching soliloquy about accepting and coming to terms with the bad, “evil,” unlovable things inside yourself, and society’s strange inability to see women as capable of violence and darkness.
4. Meiko Kaji, “The Flower of Carnage.” I knew this song as an enka classic and was surprised to see it end up on the Kill Bill soundtrack because, apart from being Japanese, it seemed a weird fit (you can look up English translations). Interesting, confessional statements about how “the folks back home” share the experience of foreign war by performing righteous anger and hate, and how the stated identity of partners and family members become distorted by the emotional pressures of patriotism and warrior identity.
5. Metric, “Blindness.” About how the hero complex becomes addictive, and the burden of performing dutiful and brave personae becomes increasingly self-imposed even as it becomes heavier.
6. Bjork, “Army of Me.” I’ve always loved the defiant tone of this song as the narrator decides she is absolutely done doing other people’s emotional labor for them.
7. The Birthday Massacre, “Shallow Grave.” Another one about performance, especially doing gender, while coming apart inside from anger and regret, including the line, “she wears a dress like a body bag.”
8. Katzenjammer, “Soviet Trumpeter.” Regret, regret, regret, in a cute breathless voice about loss of idealism, prestige, and what to do with yourself after the war is over (and lost).
9. Collection d’Arnell Andrea, “Deafening Breath.” The whole album, loosely WW1 themed, is fantastic (though most of it is in French), but this one in particular captures a desperate sense of clinging to identity or hope in the face of prolonged trauma- finding little victories in terrible places.
I feel like there should be a #10. Any ideas?
https://open.spotify.com/user/oleander2323/playlist/3MXFHZX4ePo1LuLHHEhU9L
