The Inside Game – Buying Into a Bad Idea

Last week: The Magnetic Rose Scenario – Running Two RPGs at Once

Magnetic Rose follows horror movie logic. Not long after the characters enter the derelict spaceship, looking for the source of the distress signal, it’s obvious to the audience that This Is a Bad Idea and Will End Badly. The characters continue to go deeper, even as the audience says “no, run away!” This is an intentional choice in a horror movie (or book, or whatever). The audience knows (or reasonably expects) something that the characters do not, and that gap in knowledge creates tension. When the characters “sync up” with the audience in terms of their knowledge of the situation, it creates a pleasing release of tension. That’s not as easy to do in an RPG, because the characters and the audience are one and the same, not separate.

So the players need to be on board with the conceit that their characters get into this situation even though they should know better. I’m not certain what system works best for the inside game. It should not be a science fiction game; a different genre will help create the separation and different feeling we want. I have not yet played Trophy Gold (or its related games), but based on session reports and reviews I have read, I suspect it might be a good fit, because the players know more about the characters’ circumstances than in other systems, and have buy-in and input on their fates. I would need to try the game myself to say for sure.

It’s important that the PCs buy into the idea that the hallucinations are a beguiling lie. Their characters want to believe. The players need to be OK with controlling characters who are deceived, and in great danger because of it. This can be a challenge for players accustomed to a high degree of autonomy and a close alignment of their perspective as players with their character’s perspectives as, well, pieces on a figurative game board.

The inside game kicks in whenever a PC falls to the deceptions of the hallucinatory environment. That PC begins playing the new game. Other PCs continue playing the outside game until they too fall into the inside game. Those playing the outside game are in danger of entering the inside game as long as they stay in or near the shipwreck.

Successfully resisting the hallucination can “kick” a PC back up to the outside game, as happens in Magnetic Rose when Heintz, one of the salvage crew members, sees through the illusions. More on that in a moment.

Exploring the Details 

Incorporate all five senses. The salvage crew in Magnetic Rose don’t just see the station’s deceptions. They smell, taste, hear, and eventually touch the phenomena they hallucinate. A GM running this scenario should create a short list of objects, sensations, and phenomena that can trigger at least one (and preferably two or more) of the five senses. The chosen themes should appear in both the outside and inside games, but in different states.

Personal and foreign memories mingled together. Magnetic Rose was written by Satoshi Kon, who would go on to perfect the permeability of memory and perception in Paranoia Agent and Paprika. Throughout these works, deception often takes the form of mingling internal memories and desires with external stimuli. 

Particularly if run as a one-shot, each PC involved in the Magnetic Rose scenario should have something that anchors them to the real world. It doesn’t need to be a full backstory; just a few attachments in the real world. Family is the obvious one, and the focus of Heintz’s story in Magnetic Rose, but it could also be an occupation, art, religion, or something else entirely.

Attachments or connections are both a blessing and a curse. Heintz’s love for his family gives him a compelling reason to resist the hallucinations and survive the scenario, but his desire to see them again (and more subtly, his guilt over leaving them for so long to work) is also the hook the hallucinations use to tempt him.

Challenges and obstacles. They can be drawn from the standard selection of dangers and hazards in both the game’s or inside game’s system, or inspired by the following:

The outside game:

• Wayfinding challenge
• Physical obstruction
• Gravity/power/environmental control change
• “Split up so you can cover more ground!”
• Communication interruption
• Totally lost
• Automated defenses 
• The station computer intervenes
• Structural collapse
• Countdown to escape

The inside game:

• The most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen
• Releasing your burdens 
• “I never thought I would see you again…”
• Undoing a past mistake
• A chance to be the hero or the star
• Reliving your happiest day
• “Of course it’s a lie, but does that make it any less wonderful?”

Bringing Down the House

Broadly speaking, there are four possible outcomes for the scenario. 

Lose the internal game, lose the external game. Crew dead or missing, ship lost. That’s a TPK.

Lose the internal game, win the external game. One or more crew members lost to the hallucinations, but some crew members escape on the salvage ship.

Win the internal game, lose the external game. The salvage ship is lost, but some or all of the crew have survived, either by embracing the hallucinations or by escaping into space, hoping that someone hears their own distress call before their air runs out.

Win the internal game, win at the external game. The crew overcomes the hallucinations and destroys or disarms the derelict spacecraft, ensuring no one else will meet the fate they escaped.