Picking Up The Pieces is an 11 page, two-player, intense relationship-rpg that might act as a sort of coda to Knowing You.
In Picking Up, you meet back up with someone you had a bad falling out with. Piece by piece, you revisit the traumas of that falling out, and ultimately you make a decision about whether to repair the bond or leave it broken.
There are rigorous safety tools, but the game still feels really raw. Play this if you like intensity. Don't if you don't.
The actual mechanics of gameplay involve framing and diving into scenes surrounding the ways in which both characters were hurt, and there's no mechanical crunch (unless you opt in to adding dice at the end)---everything is ultimately up to your conversation with each other.
The design here feels really solid, and the cover art is gorgeous. There's also some neat intimacy techniques you can add to game play if somehow the game isn't already hitting your emotions hard.
Overall, I would recommend Picking Up to anyone who likes games that deals with romance and hurt and especially with trauma. If your skin is tough or you like to feel emotions regardless of whether they're happy ones, I think this system will make memories that stay with people.
Picked this up in the bundle, printed it out and have started a game with my partner - rather than doing a whole run of picking up pieces in one day, we went over a single piece until we felt good and done for the day, and will be resuming again later. This is an amazing game for generating deep and interesting conflict between characters and figuring out next steps of their characters' arcs - I really recommend it, but only to be played with someone you trust deeply as a storyteller and as a person.
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Picking Up The Pieces is an 11 page, two-player, intense relationship-rpg that might act as a sort of coda to Knowing You.
In Picking Up, you meet back up with someone you had a bad falling out with. Piece by piece, you revisit the traumas of that falling out, and ultimately you make a decision about whether to repair the bond or leave it broken.
There are rigorous safety tools, but the game still feels really raw. Play this if you like intensity. Don't if you don't.
The actual mechanics of gameplay involve framing and diving into scenes surrounding the ways in which both characters were hurt, and there's no mechanical crunch (unless you opt in to adding dice at the end)---everything is ultimately up to your conversation with each other.
The design here feels really solid, and the cover art is gorgeous. There's also some neat intimacy techniques you can add to game play if somehow the game isn't already hitting your emotions hard.
Overall, I would recommend Picking Up to anyone who likes games that deals with romance and hurt and especially with trauma. If your skin is tough or you like to feel emotions regardless of whether they're happy ones, I think this system will make memories that stay with people.
Minor Issues:
-Page 7, Step Three, "on it's repair" its
Picked this up in the bundle, printed it out and have started a game with my partner - rather than doing a whole run of picking up pieces in one day, we went over a single piece until we felt good and done for the day, and will be resuming again later. This is an amazing game for generating deep and interesting conflict between characters and figuring out next steps of their characters' arcs - I really recommend it, but only to be played with someone you trust deeply as a storyteller and as a person.