[Passion Fruit] Play report

[Nath]

Played by three players at Fastaval, in April 2010.

Play account written by one of the players:

"A live-action role-playing game with peeling a piece of fruit as a game mechanic? Well, more like a ritual, really, which also describes the game itself. Passionfruit is a structured freeform game that exposes the hard choices at the center of a love triangle in an intuitive fashion. Two partners encounter a third interloper, with one partner seduced away from the other, at which point they must decide whether or not they end their prior relationship for this new one. The fruit is a mere signifier - the temptation that you eat as a prop. Like I said: a ritual, in which the major suspense element is that of any real love triangle - should I stay or should I go? What has become of "us?" Where did all the time go?

The scenario we tried troubled some of the love triangle clichés: an unmarried, live-in hippie couple on a goat farm one day encounters a religious Hispanic cop who reintroduces religiosity into the female partner's life. Not expecting this sudden change of events, the male partner turns mildly jealous and eventually drives her away into devout Catholicism. Our odd little tale felt very theatrical, with recurrent motifs (i.e., the goat farm, having coffee at a certain time) that came to symbolize larger aspects of the relationships at stake. And this was without using the game's so-called "hyperfocus technique" - a way of role-playing "love" by way of the player obsessing over some aspect of the other player - which seemed to cross a few boundaries of comfort, at least for the two American players. Nevertheless, I still remember vividly not only the character I played (I was the goat farmer), but also his mannerisms and emotional state within each improvised scene. This for a 1.5 hour game can already be seen as a commendable accomplishment on the part of the designer.

Passionfruit is a game that would be excellently deployed in writers' workshops, theater groups, and social psychology seminars, providing otherwise limited appeal outside of settings such as InterCon, Fastaval or other conventions in which intimate LARPs such as these are the norm. We can only hope that other spaces for serious play like that of Passionfruit will offer themselves shortly."

[Callan S.]

Hi Nath,

How do you think a group who'd never roleplayed before would go in trying to engage it? I often think that rather than there being one guy who is teaching the game amongst the group, usually they are instead teaching years, sometimes decades of roleplaying experiences (and their conclusions after all those years). So it's interesting to consider if you had all non gamers, what would happen? How much would they find engageable in some way and engage the texts rules and fruit prop?

[Nath]

The material is written to be picked up and understood by non-roleplayers. However the expectation is the players have some background is roleplay or drama.  It's not really intended to be a 'first time roleplay game,' given how powerful it can be. 

I not sure I really predict how completely new players would take to it; I think it would depend on their life experience, whether they want to have a powerful emotive experience or not, and what their existing relationships to each other are like.

As an aside, I will add that the game does not require an organiser at all, just two or three players. It's all recommended that all players read the whole scenario before playing.