Grace

Introduction

You’re thirteen years old. You have a lot on your mind. Until now, you’ve never felt very close to anyone outside your family. Intimacy and affection are about to become very important to you. On top of everything else.

Character Creation

Answer these questions;

• What’s your name?
• What’s your gender?
• What do you worry about the most? Choose Love, Death, Sex, or God
• What makes you feel the best? Choose:

  • Acting (when? in what?)

  • Playing a sport (which?)

  • Reading a book (which or what sort?)

  • Playing an instrument (which? where?)

  • Making something (what?)

  • Being someplace (where? when?)

  • Something else (but not a person)

Make a table tent, write your name and gender on the side facing the group, write your worry and your refuge on the side facing you. Until right now, you’ve been a private person.


Responsibilities

You say what your character does and says. You don’t decide anything anybody else’s character does or says; you can prompt, but they can say no to or walk back your idea. Everybody fills in small details of the setting and scenery as needed. Avoid NPCs.

Scenes

The game takes place over seven scenes:

• Today
• Tomorrow
• This weekend
• Next weekend
• Next month
• Next year (14 years old)
• Five years from now (18 years old)

Play the scenes in order. (Advanced variant: play the scenes out of order.) (Very advanced variant: play in real time.)

Each scene has a setting. Choose one when establishing each scene, as a group or in turns, then cross it off the list:

• School or Camp
• Outside
• Online (or On the Phone if you must)
• Mall or Movies or Museum
• Dawn
• Invent or Repeat a setting (but not inside someone’s home)
• Alone (special)

In each scene (except Alone), all the characters are someplace together, at least to begin with. You might well be trying to get some time alone with someone, even if it’s just a few seconds. A scene ends when a character has to go home or to bed.

During the Alone scene, each player narrates their character’s thoughts on the situation, in the form of a diary entry or a LiveJournal post or a sonnet or something. (Variant: Write down your Alone scene and don’t share it till after the last scene.)


Tips

Play to test your worry. Chase closeness. Your characters will want to avoid hard conversations; push them to take risks you never did. If you want your character to fall in love, do it fast. Online scenes are important when it is the safest place the characters share. Even public spaces have private space.