I was going to keep the demands on their time minimal-once a month- and we found a fine place to meet for long enough to get a game in. Wrangling five adults to do something seemed feasible...
It is fair to say that things didn't go as I planned, or even hoped.
One player dropped, deciding the game wasn't for them. I recruited another! The place we were playing at closed down. We moved locations!
And in February of 2020, we played our penultimate game of Betrayal: Legacy. We were so close! Next month was to be the final showdown.
It is fair to say that things didn't go as I planned, or even hoped.
The pandemic prevented gatherings. Life went on, in the way that it did. One friend moved out of the state, another out of the city, a third just to the outskirts. Still the box of Betrayal sat in my room, a book unfinished. I was in a bummer of a position: there were no ordinary games to play of Betrayal-there were no games at all, really, but we were near the end of a campaign!
There's no good way to invite up to four people who've never seen the movie, just to watch the last 10 minutes of Jaws with you, is there?
That felt weird, but I was tired of waiting for the movie to end, and knowing there really wasn't a way to do it unless I knuckled down and did it alone.
I can't say I did it well. Betrayal has a lot of moving parts and when there were five of us, we weren't always keeping track of them. Still, I did my best and I had dice to keep me honest: nothing says "you have to accept random bullshit" like the dice in Betrayal, which have been described "the most dickheaded dice in gaming". I undoubtedly flubbed rules or forgot triggers.
Fortunately, none of the characters turned traitor, so I didn't have to engage in the mental exercise of playing against myself.
Unfortunately, I lost one of my biggest benefits early, and hadn't explored much of the environment. My characters were underpowered, a little unprepared and frankly, Betrayal Legacy kinda wants all its characters to die...which it damn near did.
In the end though-literally the last roll of the last character before what would be certain death at the hands of thralls-I was able to persevere.
Five went in. One came out.
Not unlike my experience.
But as I read the last entry in the Bleak Journal, the last card in the Purgatory deck and realized that the game was asking me to destroy its final, undiscovered pieces...I felt weird.
Lonely, really. I won, but there wasn't anyone to share that with. If I'd lost, that would've been OK, too-at least there's still a story to tell. Hell, if I'd lost at least feeling bad would've made more sense.
But I didn't exactly do either of those things. I just finished. As though I'd completed a test. There wasn't a sense of anything but solitude.
At the same time: the things that brought this game into my circle have moved on and the world has definitely tilted since I started it. To hold onto this artifact and never let it go or change would be its own kind of madness.
The last instruction that Betrayal: Legacy gives is to destroy the Bleak Journal itself, and while it is against my nature to destroy a book, perhaps the only way I can accept the transient nature of this experience is to commit to it. Anyone else who played this game had a different experience and that's the point. To go rooting around to find out all the things that coulda, woulda, shoulda is just an exercise in stalling the acceptance of what is.
That isn't to say there wouldn't be a benefit to studying the journal to see how gameplay mechanics worked! However, that isn't what my motive would be.
So it's done now, and the secrets it holds stay with it. I'll put the game is put into the closet and remember that it was pretty neat, while it lasted.
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