A toy game from the 2016 game design advent calendar.

People are really interesting. And they're people! How cool is that. This game is about people watching, and people understanding, and people being.

Requires:

• Two players
• A train station
• Perhaps some paper to note down names

Rules:

Sit with your partner in a train or subway station, somewhere you can clearly see the people coming and going.

There are three acts: in Act 1, we learn about people and discover them, and what they want. In Act 2, we find out how these people are more closely related than we expected, and why they aren't getting what they want. In Act 3, we find out whether they get it, from whom, and discover their deepest connections to one another.

The game begins when the first train arrives.

• Act 1: In the first scene, each player chooses someone getting off the train and makes a character of them. Try to play them exactly as you see them, at the beginning. Just play your first, honest impression. Be true to the person you see, and try to really understand who they are.

  Make a scene of these people meeting at the train station, accidentally or purposefully, strangers or new acquaintances. The scene takes place in the train station, and is singularly about their interaction. Your goal is to find out what each person wants most.

  The scene is over when one of the people leaves the train station, out the door or on another train. When the scene ends, one player chooses another person to play in the same manner as before. Then another scene begins between this new person, and the person left in the station from the first scene. Continue with these scenes, going in turn to change out who participates in the scene. Each person played should participate in two scenes, except for one of the participants in the first and last scenes.

  Continue playing out scenes for 30 minutes or so.

• Act 2: Your scenes here happen between pairs of the people played in Act 1. They may not have been connected before, but they are now. Each of these pairs know one another, or if not will soon understand how closely connected they are. These scenes, too, take place in the train station.

  Each pair is fresh every scene, so there should be about half as many scenes in Act 2 as in Act 1. Your goal is to find out why each person isn't getting what they want.

  Each scene is over when you find out why. End it as soon as it is reasonably satisfying to do so.

• Act 3: Your goal is find out whether each person actually gets what they want, what they give up for it, and from whom they get it. Create scenes in pairs, as was done in Act 2, a new pair every scene. These should not be the same pairs as made in Act 2, and these pairs need not be directly connected; they should still be connected, but perhaps just through a mutual acquaintance.

  One of the people played may be a brand new person, if necessary, or one played previously in another Act. If you play a new person, play someone you see in the train station.

  These scenes take place in the station, as do all. They end as soon as you find out whether the participants from Act 1 get what they want.

Notes:

The idea of this game is to step into another person's shoes and, surprise, role-play. It's exploiting the players' shared locality with the people they emulate to create an empathic response, and using the common trope of "meeting in a train station" to boost the effect.

Players are playing characters they're actually watching, right there in front of them. They can (and I suspect will) physically imitate the person's little movements, their mannerisms and patterns. The experience this game attempts to create is one of embodied cognition, taking up the physicality of another to understand their mind.

I know of no better way to inhabit the mind of another than to act as them, to play their role out yourself in your own body; there is no better way to empathize with and understand the mind of another than to inhabit it and earnestly seek out their experience.

--Karaktakus the Dramatic

Prompt/cover photo: Wikimedia Commons