Dream Askew A Game About Queer Strife Amid the Apocalypse by Avery Alder
What to Expect? Dream Askew is a Table-top Role-Playing Game (RPG). You play as a character following a simple and loose set of rules. You play a character you create. You interact and act like the person you are imagining. We cooperatively improv to tell a good story. We Do this By: 1. Reviewing the Rules 2. Deciding When We Will Play Until 3. Creating Our Characters 4. Creating the Queer Enclave Our Characters Live In 5. Having fun RPG-ing!
Pages 28-30 Overview of the Rules: Making a Scene Scenes: The plot moves forward by us deciding on and you requesting a scene. Ask yourself what scenarios you will play out, involve your other players when possible and create minor characters your friends can play out too. The plot moves forward in scenes until the time we choose to end. Process: The Facilitator will decide a scene is happening, or you will request it. E.g. Facilitator: The Queer Apocalypse started at Bishop Allen, Drazana and Ms. McGlade, your characters are in the library debating who gets the remaining copies of Romeo and Juliet. Attendance Lady *pipes in*: I want a scene after this in the lunchroom. Facilitator: Sure, until then your playing the closeted Catholic chaplain who just burst into the library after catching two students being gal-pals in the women’s locker room
Pages 31-33 Moves Like Jagger: Moves: abilities your character has that change the story Regular Moves: Listed on all character sheets. Your character can make a regular move at any time. Tokens: Work like Energy points. You get tokens by doing weak moves or activating a character’s lure. Everyone starts with zero tokens. Weak Move: Vulnerable act that gets you a token. Strong Moves: You spend a token to shine with one of your strong moves. Lures: Every character has a lure. You can use it to seduce a fellow player to enter the described relationship/interaction with your character. They will get a token.
Example:
Pages 16-25 Character Roles You choose a character archetype. The Archetype sets the abilities and powers, but you create the individuality, skills, relationships and story. Roughly: 1. The Iris = The Oracle 2. The Hawker = The Merchant 3. Stitcher = The Fixer 4. The Tiger = The Fighter 5. Torch = The Disciple/Prophet 6. Arrival = The Refugee
Pages 36-39 Setting Elements: How We Tell a Story Together Dream Askew Does Not Depend on Dice. We decide the outcomes of your choices through your interaction with Setting Elements. Players can pick up, trade and give away control over setting elements by following the rules described on their setting elements. Those rules are: ● Pick-Up When: How a Rule is Triggered ● Trade Away When: When You Trade Away Control over a setting element ● Moves: What you can describe or decide happens as that setting element’s author. Broadly, the 6 Setting Elements and how you play them are: 1. The Varied Scarcities: You tell the story of which resources are limited and how this shapes peoples’ interactions 2. The Psychic Maelstrom: You tell the story of the psychic collapse wrecking the old world its affects on those attuned to it 3. The Digital Realm: You tell the story of how technologies are breaking or hobbled together 4. Society Intact: You tell the story of the bigger society that survived outside the queer enclave 5. The Outlying Gangs: You tell the story of the gangs that sprung up in the fall and what they do to the survivors 6. The World Itself: You tell the story of what the brave new environment the story happens in does or does not.
House Rule: Ask the Dice Goddesses to Choose House-Rule: When you want to leave the consequences of your character’s choices up to chance, I am recommending a system called Powered By The Apocalypse. It’s simple: 1. Roll 2 Dice, before rolling, you can spend a token to gain a +2. 2. Decide Result: a. <6 = Your Attempt was unsuccessful b. 7-9 = Complicated, Mixed Success c. 10-12 = Success 3. Creatively Interpret: Could be done by setting element, minor character, facilitator or yourself.
How to make this fun 1. Make trouble (safely): tension and fun happen as the world goes to shit. Play a fallible character who doesn’t always fix things successfully as the world breaks. 2. Tell a good story: this isn’t about winning, it’s about telling a story we can relate to to survive the apocalypse 3. Engage other characters: Step-Up if you’re quiet, step back if you take up a lot of space 4. Take Risks: If you’re new to Table-top RPGs, push yourself and get uncomfortable! 5. Safety: If you want or need something to happen, you can say pause and express your want. We ask all players to respect the needs of their co-players. E.g. I need this betrayal to be known by the time the scene ends, I don’t want to tell a story about doggos gone bad. Etc. 6. Communicate Your Needs: Don’t be shy of expressing what you need and want to happens in order to have fun! Suffering is optional! 7. The X Card: You don’t have to justify your needs. There is a card with an X. If you don’t want something to happen, you just need to point at the X card.
Pages 46-51 Overview: Dream Askew gives us ruined buildings and wet tarps, nervous faces in the campire glow, strange new psychic powers, fierce queer love, and turbulent skies above a fledgling community, asking “What do you do next?” Imagine that the collapse of civilization didn’t happen everywhere at the same time. Instead, it’s happening in waves. Every day, more people fall out of the society intact. We queers were always living in the margins of that society, finding solidarity, love, and meaning in the strangest of places. Apocalypse didn’t come for us first, but it did come for us. Gangs roam the apocalyptic wasteland, and scarcity is becoming the norm. The world is getting scarier, and just beyond our everyday perception, howling and hungry, there exists a psychic maelstrom. We banded together to form a queer enclave – a place to live, sleep, and hopefully heal. More than ever before, each of us is responsible for the survival and fate of our community. What lies in the rubble? For this close-knit group of queers, could it be utopia?
Pages 46-51 Dream Askew feels more timely and relevant every day. These are the stories I want to be telling with my friends. And it’s because they’re stories about the collapse of civilization that don’t wallow in suffering, terror, and militarization. They’re about figuring out what comes next if we work together. About making community even when we’re all sick, crazy, and afraid of each other. About finding abundance in the rubble. About playing to find out what happens next, in a fictional world but also in our own. -- Avery Alder
Pages 16-25 Creating a Character 1. Take a Character Sheet and Begin Filling it Out. You will now Decide your character’s name, gender, look, wardrobe style, key relationships and backstory/powers. 2. When everyone is ready, share who you will play by reading your character description choices and sharing your Lure. (You don’t have to read your moves). 3. As we go around sharing our characters, you will all ask the person to your left something important about your character (questions listed on sheets).
Pages 21-25 Creating the Enclave Now we create the Queer Enclave all of our characters have found refuge in. We will use the Creating the Enclave sheet to decide truths about the queer enclave and begin mapping it out. As soon as you feel enough of the map is mapped out, you can launch into scenes and/or start requesting them.
Resources 1. Google Drive Folder! 2. 1-Pager Overview 3. Full Game Rule Book 4. Game Play Sheets (if you want to choose a character or read about setting elements) 5. Mind-Map Overview
Recommend
More recommend
