Talking about the past In The Between, players are strongly encouraged to avoid talking about their character’s past, both in-character and out-of-character. Players are expressly forbidden from discussing certain aspects of their past, principally the elements of their Janus Mask (discussed more below). Players can expect characters to question their character about their past, but their character must always avoid the conversation, either by tensing up, acting awkwardly, or simply excusing themselves from the scene. In addition to conforming to my personal preferences regarding character backstory, the restrictions on talking about your character’s past also happen to fit the game’s setting. The player characters are privileged individuals who each have a dark, troubled past that is trying to catch up to them. Members of their social class in Victorian London simply would not discuss such matters openly. Having run a few dozen playtests, I can tell you this particular aspect of the game always requires a short period of adjustment for the players. As role players, we are accustomed to jumping straight into our character’s backstory, chatting back and forth about what it all means, how the player characters fit together, how they got involved in the adventure, and so forth. But in The Between, you don’t do any of that. After a very short round of character introductions, during which we learn next to nothing about the characters, the D.I. (what the GM is called in The Between) presents the first Threat and the characters begin the investigation in medias res. But here’s the thing: once you get past the initial awkwardness of not being able to talk about your character’s past, you start to become aware of something this game does constantly, which is it deftly manages your cognitive load. I’m going to talk about this effect more in future Design Diary posts, because I think it is the ultimate triumph of this game, but in the context of this particular aspect of the rules, what it means is that you can focus on the investigation–the here and now–without worrying about whether you are conforming to some concept you have expressed aloud about your character. The Janus Mask Of course, the above doesn’t mean players shouldn’t think about their character’s past. Quite the contrary: they should think about it a lot, because they’re going to be revealing that past, piece by piece, in a grand, entertaining fashion. Every playbook has a section called The Mask of the Past and a section called The Mask of the Future. Together, these sections are referred to as the Janus Mask. At specific points during the game (discussed more in a future post), players may invoke their character’s Janus Mask to alter events that are happening in the fiction. When they do so, they make a mark in either the Mask of the Past or the Mask of the Future. If they mark the Mask of the Past, they are called upon to narrate a particular kind of flashback at some point during the session. These flashbacks are how we, as audience members, begin to learn about these characters’ origins. In order for you to have some context, below are the elements that comprise the Mask of the Past for the Vessel playbook. The Vessel is a character who has been surrounded by dark, shadowy entities their whole life.
Once these elements have been revealed by the Janus Mask, the player is free to discuss them both in and out-of-character, so long as they continue to keep the unrevealed elements behind a veil. Note, however, that there is still a great deal of mystery surrounding the character even after all these elements are revealed. Also note the cognitive load effect I alluded to earlier: yes, you should be thinking about your character’s past, but in order to narrate an entertaining series of flashbacks, you only need to think about these highly specific aspects of the character’s past. The Between, above all, wants to constantly reinforce its themes and does everything it can to keep players on task in this regard.
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