Players: Kevin, Nick

I tried setting up a game of Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) for last weekend (11/19), but when it became pretty clear that no one was going to show up besides Nick and me, we decided to try out the new 2-person story game, Reflections, by Talking Tabletop's Jim McClure.

Reflections is inspired to Tobie Abad's A Single Moment (ASM) which in turn takes some inspiration from Ben Woerner's World of Dew, which is a sequel to John Wick's Blood & Honor...John Wick of course being one of the original designers of Legend of the Five Rings...man the game design industry is incestuous.

Anyway, while Reflections' setup is the same as Abad's ASM - you and your partner play samurai facing each other down for their final duel and then through a series of flashback scenes follow the relationship of these two samurai and how they came to this final moment - mechanically they're extremely different. Reflections is far simpler, more focused, and much easier to pick-up.

Here's how Reflections works in a nutshell:

• You and your partner go through a series of declarations to set the stage and the motivation for the feud,
  
• You then take turns framing a total of 5 scenes that explore the relationship between your characters. You each have a secret objective you're trying to accomplish each scene, and you earn either Dice or Hatred Dice depending on whether or not you succeed.
  
• After your last scene, you repeat the declarations and you roll dice.
  
• The winner of the duel describes one moment as they go in for the final blow, but not the final blow itself...
  

...and that's it. No final scene. No epilogue. If your samurai is killed you rip up your character sheet and that's the end.

Fun little game, and it's good to have in your back pocket in case a bunch of folks bail on you for a gaming night. I'm not sure if we'll ever find a chance to run it at Story Games Seattle since it's a 2-person game, but still good to have just in case.

Reflections on Kickstarter
Reflections on One Shot Podcast