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I was chatting with folks on the HDF Discord over the weekend and - I think we worked out what I don't like about lyric games, or game poems, or games that are primarily designed to be read rather than actually played, whatever you want to call 'em
It comes from going to SLEEP NO MORE, Punchdrunk's immersive Macbeth/Hitchcock mashup, in NYC. I'd just come out of the artsy Australian LARP scene; we'd just put on a show where players walked around Melbourne CBD at night and summoned the lost gods of the city
And I'd heard so much about SLEEP NO MORE! I was revved up for it. But what I was revved up for was Interactive Theatre, not Immersive Theatre. I'd got my wires crossed somewhere along the way. The audience participation was broadly limited to choosing what to look at
And: I get it. Different thing from LARP entirely. But with SNM, and with other high-end immersive stuff, I've felt like an intruder into the space. The performers don't want you there; the show goes on with or without you. Often you're actively *in the way.*
("But what about the one-on-one intimate sections?" I hear you ask. I never saw hide nor bloody hair of one, let alone took part. The audience numbers involved ensure that a lot of people don't. All I experienced was a load of ballet I couldn't see properly.)
And that, I think, is my issue with lyric games. Not that they're avant-garde, but that they're often not designed to be played. They happen (or... don't happen) with or without you. They don't want your involvement in the process.
That goes against the nature of the medium for me - and what makes RPGs so intoxicating as a designer, because they're toolkits for other people to tell stories and built experiences together. They're these bundles of *stuff* that don't work unless someone else gives them life.
I've written game some myself; jokes, often, that use the medium of games to poke fun. Art pieces. But something about them didn't sit right with me and I'm glad that I could start to puzzle it out rather than convincing myself that I was out of touch and I ought to just like 'em
