Page Turners Actual Play

If you’re curious to see Page Turners, the upcoming game of dramatic interaction for one player and one GM, in action, Guy and Jag of Unconventional GMs are here for you. In this video they tackle “The Beacon,” my F. Scott Fitzgerald pastiche. Of the many scenarios offered in the book, I steered Guy toward this one. I wrote it before the others, and ran it for fellow project designers Wade Rockett, Sarah “Sam” Saltiel, and Ruth Tillman to prepare them to create their own scenarios. It stands as the clearest default representation of a Page Turners experience, in part because the narrative it inspires, and even its subgenre of drama, varies so widely from one player to the next.

In “The Beacon” you play either the wife or husband in a restless, ambitious couple as they move next to a party-throwing millionaire of mysterious provenance and are drawn into his circle. The possible PCs, Steve and Delia Stark, are stand-ins for a pre-success Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda.

I was curious to see how a player and GM from the UK would tackle this story of that most classic American type, the striver.

I’ve mostly run this for players who chose to portray Delia. Her story unfolded much differently each time:

• as a tale of calculating empowerment, featuring a Delia who flew a little close to the sun and then recovered.

• as a wry, satirical noir, leaving a grasping, backstabbing Delia stuck in a sour, sad life worse than the one she had with Steve.

• as a historical epic in which Delia sidled her way to the brass ring and seized herself a central role in the American 20^th century.

When I ran for Wade as Steve, a full-on noir developed, leaving Steve dead in Huck’s ballroom, felled by a hail of bullets.

Here Jag’s choice of dramatic poles for Steve, pitting ambition against integrity, results in an unusual, strange Steve who nonetheless seems quite real–a sort of person we meet in reality but rarely see depicted in fiction. His combination of self-righteousness and blinkered denial lead to fates for Steve and Huck I didn’t see coming.

Since I wrote this scenario, that speaks to its flexibility and capacity for surprise. When you run it you’re not driving the protagonist to a likely conclusion, as you are in GUMSHOE One-2-One. Because GM is onstage the whole time in Page Turners, as opposed to a scene or two per hour with its multiplayer equivalent, Hillfolk, scenarios provide plenty of material to grab improvised moments from. Though Page Turners represents a meeting point between key concepts of One-2-One and Hillfolk, the actual results feel not like a mash-up but their own distinct, third thing. “The Beacon” is always going to follow the impulses of player and GM in unique directions and to markedly variant conclusions.

I look forward to hearing what happens to your Steves and your Delias when you get your hands on the published game.

As of this writing, Page Turners is in the final stages of layout. It will head to the printers this fall.