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A Plague Among Us
Participants: 1 GM, 2-4 players
By
| ✏️ | Moyra Turkington |
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Scenario [English] | (0.7 MB) |
Description
A quiet, uncomfortable exploration of the lives of essential workers during the Great Plague of London. Unending isolation will make us ache. Uncertainty will erode our ability to dream. Our very survival will be thrown into question.
Preview
1665 London’s population swells uncontrolled. Houses jetty over the streets, blocking out the sky over the laneways of the poor. From the Thames to the city walls, rats from merchant ships introduce The Great Plague. Spreading hungrily, it will devour a quarter of the city’s souls.
You play poor, elderly women: pensioners living off the charity of the church. You have been pressed to serve as a Searcher of the Dead, assessing the living sick and the decaying dead to identify plague and invoke quarantine. Your life is isolated under constant threat of death, punishment and retribution.
This gritty kitchen sink drama helps us explore how pandemics diminish us: withholding joy, reducing our dreams, and revealing how labour defines our whole lives. You will unwind the ever-reducing story of your Searcher, and help construct scenes for others to do the same.
A Plague Among Us is set in pre-modern London, but it’s also about us, right now – about how everything has changed, but nothing has.
Participant type:
You:
* Can sit in a character’s slowly increasing vulnerability without needing relief
* Enjoy helping other players find their story by setting uncomfortable scenes and playing support characters to make them come alive
* Are secure playing a scenario that might be uncomfortably close to the skin
Gamemaster type:
You:
* Like to teach games to people, and support them in making a game sing.
* Like to play along with them, and bring your own story to the table.
* Have a screen that you can bring to show the players a video before play
* Can read and run in English
Participants: 3-5 including a GM
Time: 3-4 hours
Language: English
Age: 15+
Reading amount: 3 pages plus reference lists
Online: Yes
Keywords:
Women In History
Pandemics
Grim
Played at
| Fastaval - Føniks' genopstandelse (2022) |
Awards
Fastaval - Føniks' genopstandelse (2022)
Winner, Juryens Specialpris
1600-tallets pest. Man mærker gennem hele teksten forfatterens isolation og
bliver mindet om de savn, vi alle har lidt under pandemien.
Det går lige i hjertekulen.
The strong voice of the scenario bridges the gap between the covid-19
pandemic and the Great Plague of the 17th century. The author’s isolation
permeates the text, and we are reminded of all the things we’ve lost during
the pandemic. It really tugs the heartstrings.
Nominated, Bedste Roller
i London under pesten. Kvinderne er realistiske, og deres ensomhed relaterbar.
Med livet som indsats nedbrydes deres drømme langsomt af spillerne, mens
man inderligt håber, de overlever og kan gå mod en lysere fremtid.
A heartfelt array of women with dreams for the future lets us focus on
London during the Great Plague. The women are realistic and their
loneliness relatable. With their lives at stake their dreams slowly erode, while
you desperately hope they survive and move towards brighter futures.
Nominated, Bedste Fortælling
1665 og den menneskelige isolering, jobbet medførte. En knivskarp
iscenesættelse af en glemt tid med særlove, der ved hvert brud knækker
kvindernes drømme og efterlader dem mere ensomme, end da de startede.
This is the story of the women plague seekers during the Great Plague of
London in 1665, and about the isolation the job led to. It is a razor-sharp
vision of a forgotten part of world history and the plague laws that could
break the seekers and leave them even more lonely than when they began
their work.
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