Going Home - A Power Fantasy Playtest

For some reason I can't seem to get the Game Chef site to recognize that I am a person, and not a spam bot, which means that I'm going to post here saying that a group of us ended up playing Going Home, A Power Fantasy by Mikael Andersson.

Now, this was the first time the game had been played. Which is always nice because you know that you're gonna run into speed bumps, but that the person who designed the game is more than willing to sit down and try to tackle them.

First of all, I will say that I love this game. I love the fact that all you start out with is a name and the question, what did you just abandon. I think it's prefect and I loved how it just set you up for a lot of uncertainty.

I was playing a character who had just abandoned their phone. Amber was playing a character who had just abandoned an office job. Angela was playing someone who had just abandoned a suitcase and Mikael had abandoned ... I can't for the life of me remember but even just with that you can see the narrative possibilities that can show up.

I liked the fact that each player had different narrative roles that they got to play. The Enemy, the World and Karma (the Camera wasn't used since we were playing with only 4 players). The Enemy was straightforward, where you go to play the reactions of what was currently The Enemy of the scene. The World had the narrative responsibility to provide a detailed world in which the Enemy and the Traveler (the player in question) work in. Karma was a little more difficult, but basically it was what was supposed to keep you to your previous actions and also be the voice on your shoulder.

We managed to get once around, each player got to pick a question on the map, and the questions were great. My question was so integral to what happened that I almost screamed out the answer when I was done my moment, but it wasn't so much the same for the other players. We ended up talking about it, and I think the conclusion that we came to was that the other players needed to remember that the game is a Power Fantasy, which means that there needs to be far more Power and Fantasy in the moments that are provided. For instance, if someone searches a glove compartment, they will find something like a gun which will cause havoc (that's what happened to Mikael).

Power = weapon
Fantasy = Finding it easily

I want to play it again. I'd like to get further along the map and answer more than a single question.