AP: Winterhorn

(Note: This is a half-written play report from sometime in 2018. It’s less thoughtful than I’d like, but here it is.)

The Game: Winterhorn, by Jason Morningstar at Bully Pulpit Games

WINTERHORN is a live action game for 5–8 players about how governments degrade and destroy activist groups. By playing law enforcement and intelligence operatives working diligently to demoralize and derail, you’ll learn about the techniques used in the real world in pursuit of these goals. By playing WINTERHORN you’ll have a chance to reflect on weak points in your own activism, and think about ways to harden organizations you care about against government intrusion.

Players: Chris Casey, Marc Majcher, Nichole Bennett, Peter Rogers, Scott Peterson, Tyler Lane

WINTERHORN

We set up in a conference room at Galvanize (where I teach full-stack web development) with a table and a whiteboard and all that. (We left our crazy murder wall up for the next person to find in the morning. 😁)

The game runs like this: you get the cards (or print them up yourself) and print out some info sheets and simple rules, and get going. The host sets up a few things like setting stuff out and getting player roles doled out, and then each player role has some stuff they do—reading the setup, briefing players from documentation, doing debriefs, making sure the game is running smoothly, managing the crazy murder wall, etc. The step-by-step nature of stuff makes it go super nice, and there’s not a lot of explanation up front about “how to play”, so we just went and did what it said.

Basically, you spend the first half hour leaning about the world of Winterhorn — the activist group, its members, what we know about them and what they think they know about us, and the tools that we have to fuck with them. Then after thirty minutes, we pick seven things to do to them, and flip over the associated cards to see how those worked out. We update the murder wall, and talk about how that worked out, make some speculations and plans, and pick seven things again after another thirty minutes. One more round of flipping cards to find out what happens, updating the board, discussion, and making the final calls, and we’re done. We read the results of the last set of actions, do the debrief where we found out where we were overall, roleplay a couple of tense phone calls, and then roll out after decompressing and talking about the game some. Two hours flat, as advertised.

Some things that I love:

1. The ease of setup and intro. There is literally no preparation beyond printing a couple of things. I was worried that it would be hard to get the info to everyone without being boring, but that briefing turned out to be a great part of the first bit. (Maybe doling that out a bit more in rounds two and three?)
2. The distribution of the “GM” role into the six role cards. Both as a functional piece, and as a demonstration of exactly what GM roles tend to encompass, and how they actually work when distributed.
3. The safety stuff, duh. Nicely put, and unobtrusive, but there. Door is Always Open, Cut, Largo.
4. The admonition to “hold the characters loosely”, playing close to yourself takes so much pressure off.
5. I love the endgame narrations. I might like those to be distributed among the players, but they worked great, and sounded very reminiscent of the Fiasco aftermath table entries.

Some things about the game:

1. The setup was super nice, and getting into it was very easy. I need to go back and see what exactly the opening ritual is, but it was simple to slide into.
2. I was a little anxious about how things would run, because besides “go ahead and start playing”, I had no idea how the mechanics worked, or if they would, or if the players would dig them. Fortunately, Jason knows his shit, and it worked really well. Super simple, and kept us busy and driving things forward.
3. I played Dynamics, and had a good time making sure everyone got to say their bit, and pumped it a little by throwing in some trouble when it seemed that things were going too smoothly. It seems that, without explicit conflict, it’s easy to just pick seven things to do, agree on them pretty quickly, and then sit around thumb twiddling for twenty minutes. Getting people to discuss the pros and cons of each job, what would happen if they went wrong, and so on gave us some fill-out.
4. I worry a little about replay value — it’s a great experience, and there are extra cards to throw in there, but I’d like to see how it goes with multiple groups going forward. Also, wondering how much knowing the game’s “secrets” help or hurt things.

A couple of things I’d look at tweaking next time:

1. More formalized hangout time beforehand to get the characters knowing each other a bit. Maybe when you break to leave and come back into the space, find another space to have a snack or a coffee and talk to each other in character (kind of a Reservoir Dogs diner scene for spooks) before going back to the big board room. (It also felt a little awkward to leave the room and just come back in, but, shrug.)
2. It was also noted that it’d be nice for the characters to have stronger or sharper characterizations and relationships and objectives. The diner scene might help with some of that, but even more, moving from dyad pairings to a more distributed map (harder with just six, but maybe it’s have an X relationship with the person on your left or whatever) to mix it up—it felt like we kind of coalesced into our pairs and that’s where the interpersonal action went. Also making it more explicit where your sympathies lie—my guy had a soft spot for dummies, but even if it just said “like GOLDRUSH”, that’d make it clear that I want to avoid actions that impact them, giving the decision making a bit more grit.
3. Making the timer a bit more clear. We weren’t sure whether we were supposed to restart the timer after we made decisions, or if it was 90 minutes straight up, etc.
4. I’d like to see more stuff pushing players to the more extreme or violent actions, but I’m not sure how that would work.

Overall, a super important game, and still wonderful messy, awful time in the best way. Jason talks about a lot of his inspirations and philosophy here:

http://www.briecs.com/2017/12/five-or-so-questions-on-winterhorn.html