players: Phil, Ben

I was just apologizing to Jackson that, because it was a two player game, we'd never get a chance to play The Hydra at a meetup and then -boom- the stars align.

Should I explain the concept of the The Hydra? That seems too easy.

We picked "years" time span so we could explore the complicated lives of two friends from post college to their late middle age. We never surfaced names, so for easy reference I'm going to call them A (Phil's character) and B (my character). There was clearly a lot of tension and disapproval between the two of them about each other's life choices. Were they really friends or reluctant co-prisoners in this thing we call life?





We had two sets of juxtaposed scenes. One set were two weddings. In one timeline it was B getting married, but in the alternate it was A's would-be wedding crumbling at the altar with B being unsympathetic.

The other juxtaposition was the hospital. In one scene B's wife gives birth (with a lot of mysterious tensions between the two friends, and B not really looking happy about it), but in an alternate future it was B finding out his wife couldn't have children. In an entirely different timeline, we saw A's wife die in the ER. There wasn't actually a wedding scene in that timeline, but A must have gotten married successfully. Oh, and in that one B was the doctor who failed to save her. Awkward.

We wrapped up with the funeral of A's old flame, the would-be bride he never got. She had married another man years ago, so A's appearance at the funeral was uncomfortable to say the least, but A had never loved anyone else. Which sounds noble, but in a particularly scathing ending B labeled it cowardice, that it was easier for A to just safely love her from a distance rather than do anything or get on with his life.

Phil said he never played games like this before, but I don't believe him.

I only played Hydra "solo" - pretending to be two people - but think that it begs to have its AP written down word-for-word ... It's like a Susan Minot / Raymond Carver / Amy Hempel short story generator ...

There's an alarming rise of split personality role-playing, like this entire Microscope game played with imaginary friends on an airplane. He does you one better though, because he actually makes up the other players and gives them names and personalities.

Otherwise: yes, verbatim summary would totally work, but we did a lot of separate nickel + penny moves, so it would be a bit long.