Expect Three Visitors

By Alex White

- 2 minutes read - 249 words
In Development. A game inspired by Scrooge and It's a wonderful life. A story game for 3 to 6 players, and over the course of four hours you investigate of the possibility of redemption, no matter how bad someone is.

Expect Three Visitors was inspired by a good friend asking me whether it might be possible to use similar mechanics to the ones which I use in A Cool and Lonely Courage to power a game inspired by the story of A Christmas Carol. This uses a variant of my Retrospective SRD as the basis for the rules.

Each person plays a spirit who is charged with attempting to rescue a client who is plagued by one of the seven deadly sins - envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, or wrath. The client is played by the person to your left, and you play the client of the person to your right.

After an introduction to show how each clients deadly sin makes life horrible for other people, there are three visions - of the past, the present, and the future. The emotional tenor of the scenes is set by a hand of playing cards which the spirit draws from when they frame each scene.

In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is taken to the past where he sees visions of happier times. In the present he sees a heartwarming scene at Bob Cratchit's home. In the future he sees a scene where Tiny Tim has died.

At the final judgement, the spirits together discover who, if any, is worthy of redemption.

It is currently in beta testing, I'll make an ashcan version of the rules available soon, and it will be coming to kickstarter -- probably in Autumn 2023.