Thoughts on Jason Morningstar's Deep Love

​I’ve recently decided to support Bully Pulpit’s Drip project.  Their most recent game released to Drip supporters is a “semi-larp, structured freeform” game called “Deep Love.”  The game is now available on DriveThru at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/266580/Deep-Love?term=deep+love.
 
I haven’t played in any larps and have read only a few larp texts, so this is something new for me, but after reading “Deep Love,” I’m excited to read more.
 
The game is designed for exactly four participants.  Here’s the setup:

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In Deep Love you’ll play the four principals in the 1934 New York Zoological Society/National Geographic Society expedition to explore the deep waters off Bermuda, descending far deeper than anyone in history.  The four characters form a complicated web of love, loyalty, and affection, and amid the stress and excitement of the four dives in the bathysphere you will sort out your feelings for one another and – hopefully – leave the expedition happier than you arrived.

​You need two spaces to play the game, one to represent the deck of the Ready, the ship carrying the bathysphere, and a cramped space (a closet or bathtub is recommended) to represent the bathysphere itself.  Play consists of four 20-minute dives of two players in the bathysphere with the remaining players on the Ready, with five-minutes scenes back on deck between dives.  During the dives, players in each space communicate with the players in the other space via walkie talkies or cell phone for two specific reasons: 1) to give instrument readings in the bathysphere, which are recorded in a logbook by the players on deck, and 2) to describe the mysterious underwater sea life they are witnessing, which the players on deck are encouraged to draw.  Here’s what the rules say about the sketches: 

Of course it is hard to separate their friends and lovers from the wonderful animals they are describing from so far away.  They should keep the divers in mind as they sketch – perhaps each fish is less scientific illustration and more emotional metaphor, or even a representation of that diver from the point of view of the sketcher!  Great art is not the goal, but rather a sense of intimacy and perhaps wonder.

​Like so many of Jason Morningstar’s games, “Deep Love” is anchored in a specific setting and a specific timeframe that requires a lot of knowledge from the players in order to bring those things to life.  Thankfully, one of Jason Morningstar’s many talents is providing such information deftly and succinctly in a way that doesn’t place much cognitive load on the players.  Each player gets a sheet that summarizes who your character is and what your relationships with each of the other characters are.  On the back of that character sheet is a unique list of descriptors for describing the imagined underwater sea life that they see out the bathysphere.  The player just grabs a few descriptors from each category to describe some fantastic underwater creature.  In addition, the game comes with a set of checklists for each dive so that the players understand the physical demands and dangers of the diving machinery.  And not only is there a logbook for recording all the instrumental readings from the bathysphere, there is a set of graphics for the six instruments at various underwater depths, tracking oxygen, sea temp, sea pressure, as well as humidity and temperature and pressure in the cabin.  The players on the deck have a list that tells correlates the time into the dive with the depth the bathysphere should be at, so they can report the depth and ask the divers to report the instrument readings.  It’s all such a clever way to create the “realistic” details needed to bring the setting to life without requiring the players to know anything about diving, 1934, or these people when play begins.
 
What strikes me most about the game as I imagine it being played is the gentle mix of freeform conversation and required tasks.  Characters have motivation to talk to each other, to discuss their relationship and their friends and to figure out what they want from both.  At the same time, there is stuff for the players to be doing while they talk.  Not only can the activities provide refuge for the players if they need a moment to think or process, but the activities shape the conversation and constantly provide new input and circumstances.  In any 20-minute dive, the players in the two spaces will talk to each other eight separate times: four times to discuss instrument readings, and four times (twice for each diver) to describe the sea life out the window.  On average then, each pair needs to interrupt their conversation every 2.5 minutes to converse with the other pair.  And you don’t know when that interruption is going to come, which makes the conversation that much more charged and potentially fraught.  And of course, if you want to break the conversation you’re currently in, you can instigate the next call to the other team.  It’s organic and simple and beautiful.  It’s what screenwriters do all the time, putting conversations in the context of activities so that each interrupts and colors the other.
 
Complicating matters more, and putting in a bit of the uncontrollable, there is a deck of eight “Trouble” cards.  At some point during the dive, the diving players draw a card from the Trouble Deck to symbolize some complication that occurs at that time.  Nothing is life-threatening, so players don’t need to worry about dying in the depths, but each one can affect the conversation and the length of the dive.  Cables can break, sending the bathysphere spinning; electrical failure can occur, leaving the divers in utter darkness except for the bioluminescent life out the window; communication can fail between the bathysphere and the Ready.  It’s a neat little jolt that affects play without disrupting it.
 
The other thing I love about this game is the nature of everyone’s relationships.  Everyone here loves and likes everyone else.  And while everyone is sorting out their feelings, they’re concerned for everyone else’s feelings.  The result is a dramatic but loving game.  This will not produce a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf story (though I’d love to see that game too!). 
 
You want to play the game after reading the text in order to know how the events and relationships could play out.  The game sets up an interesting situation with interesting dynamics, and no matter what happens, it’s bound to be a neat tale.  I would like to see this movie, and I would like to play this game.