I just got back from a 5 day trip to visit Short Mountain Sanctuary with my partner and fellow game designer Casey O’Donnell. Short Mountain Sanctuary is a queer anarchist radical faerie intentional community existing for decades, hidden away in the Appalachian mountains. Yes, places like this exist.
It was a rainy and cool fall visit to their Fall Gathering, perfect for spending time inside getting to know the residents and other visitors to the Mountain and introducing our game Fellowship of Fools to a new audience.
We were delighted by the enthusiasm we received for the game with this audience, people were particularly excited that it is a Tarot Game. We’ve encountered some confusion, ignorance, and even repulsion from some folks in other places when they are told it’s a Tarot Game, some people even encouraged me to not emphasize or even mention that aspect of the game until later in the “pitch.” But everyone we encountered at SMS was enthusiastic about this aspect in particular. Then, when we started to explain the various ways to play the game, facilitating getting to know others, but especially for opening up difficult topics in groups and our planned expansions for community building and sex and romance relationships, we saw some real wide eyes and major interest.
We left a complimentary copy with one of the Short Mountain Sanctuary residents to play and share and pass to other residents on the mountain. Amazingly, there are 3 other intentional communities in walking or short driving distance away! We hope our game makes its way to them as well.
On our last day on the mountain before we left to make the long drive back to Michigan, we met someone who was visiting from Twin Oaks Community in Virginia. Twin Oaks is probably the oldest and largest intentional community in the United States, and one I’ve been eager to visit for some time. We talked for some time, and shared our game with the visitor, who was intensely interested in it. We’ve promised to send a copy to the Twin Oaks community as well and I hope to play it with them next Spring and visit their community and the nearby community Acorn!
Fellowship of Fools is intended not only to foster friendship, but also cooperation. We have prompts such as: “How could we collaborate on a project together?” and “What do you like to teach people?” “What do you like to do with your hands?” and “What is a skill you would like to learn?” Certain gameplay modes in the game are meant to help players practice communication skills such as giving and receiving feedback, active listening and dialogic (rather than dialectic or assertive) conversation.
It is our hope that putting this game in the hands of communities that are intentionally shaping their lives and learning these and other skills, that we can help facilitate that process and make it a more playful and natural one. I know that when Casey and I first met each other, our conversation as we were getting to know each other included some of the very prompts we would later use in the game, such as “what do you want to learn?” “what are you passionate about?”
The experience made me eager to play with a community that already knows each other well, but may have some conflict it’s struggling to resolve. Or with a community/group that is just starting to get to know each other and is trying to self-organize based on preferences. My hope is to visit Twin Oaks and Acorn and revisit Short Mountain in April of 2019. Until then, we have to present Fellowship of Fools at Meaningful Play at MSU in mid October, AND find a publisher for the game, AND make the expansions!
