Life is a constant struggle to meet your mortgage obligations at the same time as you are helping your parents with Windows, and in the middle of it all your expected to find time for "living."

Lives, Births, Deaths is about "life". From a kind of dramaturgic perspective, life is the ultimate story — inherently conflicted (mortgages/Windows/living), but it is also impossible to see this when you are in the middle of it. And maybe it is a little bit too all over the place. So as a story, life generally sucks. At least from a first-person perspective.

Lives, Births, Deaths is in its own way a continuation or extension of Doubt, which was a game about relationsships. We want to keep using similar models for collaborative storytelling, and experiment with other ways of creating a story than having a very narrow theme.

The game is also a feeble attempt at cross-breeding Jeepform with The Sims — an attempt at everyday drama and kitchen sink realism with minimalist methods and outsourcing the kreative process on the players. We are setting up a few entry parameters and the basic premises. But other than that, the players are calling the shots on this one.

We expect about 1 hour of preparation, and 2-5 hours of playing time, totally depending on the group and the "story" they are going for.

Duration:
3–6 hours, depending on the players
Capsule definition:
Content created by players, about lives, births and deats. Can be about whatever basically. Needs some fixing.

Hun kommer forbi mit arbejde. Jeg forsøger ikke at engagere mig i hendes nærvær, arbejder videre som altid. Hun kommer hen til mig, siger ”får man et kram?” Jeg krammer hende. Vi holder hinanden lidt ekstra længe, lidt ekstra nært. Det føles godt. Hun bliver lidt længere (end nødvendigt). Jeg vil sige ”bestem dig for hvad du vil, så er jeg her” men tænker det kun. Hun går, og jeg fortsætter med at arbejde.

Han går og ruger på det. Har bestemt sig, men tør ikke sige det højt. Fordi hun vil blive ked af det, men også fordi, at det er først når han siger det, at det bliver virkeligt. ”Jeg tager jobbet i USA. Du flytter vel med?” Han ved, at hun ikke vil flytte, men på den måde er skylden næsten lige så meget hendes som hans. Er det ikke et fælles ansvar at sørge for at man er sammen?

Engström observerer dem i vinduet, skjult bag gardinet. En dag går han måske derover og ringer på.

”Nogle bliver født, nogle dør” er en fortsættelse eller videreudvikling af scenariet ”Tvivl”. Et forsøg at krydse Jeepform med ”The Sims”. Et forsøg at lave hverdagsdramatik og kitchensink-realisme med minimalistiske metoder, og at lægge den kreative proces ud til spillerne. 6 spillere. 2 spilledere. 16 roller. Scenariet er på dansk.