The Ocean Game

Close your eyes.

Listen to the sound of your breathing, in and out, like waves breaking on the shore. Listen to the rush of blood in your ears. Did you know that the plasma in your blood is chemically very similar to the composition of the primordial oceans where we evolved. We’re part of the ocean, still. Little bits of ocean crawling around where we don’t belong, refusing to return to our primal origin.

Breathe.

This is the Ocean Game. The blood game, the human game. Salt and water, spirals of DNA. Where does the soul come in? That’s the mystery, the spirit and the meaning and the capability to sin. Was the soul always there, when it was just little nets of cells bobbing around in the primal soup? Or did we get our souls later on? Did we earn our souls by some heroic act before recorded history? Were they given to us, and if so, by who?

Ocean Game. In and out. Waves wash in, bringing new revelations; backwash drags away sanity, drags away surety, leaves more answers. Sit here in the surf for a moment. Become comfortable with ambiguity. Accept you’ll never know anything for sure.

Keep your eyes closed. Just breathe.

Ocean Game. A search for answers writ in sand.

Keep your eyes closed. Breathe. Hear the waves on the shore.

Ocean Game. We’re all potential players. All of us, little fragments of ocean wandering around thinking we’re people. We’re not – we’re rock pools, bone pools, habitats for hard-shelled things from the deep. Everyone on Earth has an Ocean Game inside them, but they don’t play past the opening moves. Birth and sex and death, they’re just table stakes. They’re pushing your middle pawns forward.

You, though, you’ve started playing properly. You’ve got your ticket to the deeper game. The Mystery Man told you you’d been chosen.

Play the game, and find meaning.

Win the game, and find redemption.

Now, open your eyes.

See the blood flowing from the shattered body at your feet. Feel the warmth on your hands.

You did this. You broke this man. This rival player.

Blood gushing, breaking in waves. The heartbeat a slowing tide.

Breathe. Taste the salt in the air.

Quick, now! Take your knife, and start digging. There’ll be a stone somewhere inside him – a calcified organ, maybe. A bezoar in the stomach. A stone in the guts. Cut until you find it. Make your move.

This is your Ocean Game.

A campaign framework for Fear Itself. 4 scenarios, new creatures and conspiracies of unremitting horror, and the realms beyond the Membrane.

The Ocean Game.

For 1 or more Players