Stefano Buonocore
Today we are pleased to offer you the review of Twice Upon a Time, a narrative role-playing game for two people. First of all, we want to thank Claudio Serena and Mari Gallo, authors of the game, for sending us a digital copy. Thanks also go to Fumble GDR, which promoted crowdfunding for the creation of the game.
Anyone interested in Twice Upon a Time can find a copy on the page of crowdfunding on Itch.io. The fee to support the project is 9.90 euros, with the volume available exclusively in PDF format and in Italian.
On the Fumble GDR website, however, you can find support materials such as the player card, both in PDF and to be used for online play.
Review of the Handbook of Twice Upon a Time
Twice Upon a Time, was made with great care. This is a digital volume of 70 pages in A5 format, packaged to replicate the effect of an old storybook. The best word for it is “graceful”. In fact the cover recalls the effect of canvas tomes, the pages recall the texture of paper slightly yellowed over time.
The artistic direction is by Claudio himself, while the illustrations are by Davide Gerardi. The latter must be recognized, in addition to the trait, the ability to have fully centred the spirit of Twice Upon a Time. Every single image is able to convey the feeling of leafing through a book of fairy tales, in perfect harmony with the layout of the volume.
An Inclusive Writing
Unfortunately there is a choice that complicates the reading experience of Twice Upon a Time. This is a problem about the italian text, the only one you can found. Claudio and Mari decided to address the topic of inclusive writing using the schwa. It is a strong choice, certainly to be appreciated in spirit. But it must be remembered that the use of the schwa to solve the problem of the overextended masculine is not a consolidated expedient. It can certainly be fine for a technical text or a poster; in a role-playing game it is not practical for a reading that must be able to wink at narration and technical explanation together.
If you don’t know what the overextended masculine is, you have to know that in Italian masculine and feminine have different declination. So when you are including both of them, Italian grammar just prescribes the masculine plural.
Furthermore, it should be underlined that in Twice Upon a Time schwa is not used entirely correctly. Always if we can speak of correctness for an expedient that does not have a standard, but certainly has conventions. The protagonists of the game are defined as “Eroi” (Heroes): we are therefore faced with the use of the generic masculine term. To avoid this, the word-final schwa was applied. But it is easy to understand the problem: the feminine of “eroe” is “eroina”; therefore the articles “gli” and “le” are used in the plural.
Review of Twice Upon a Time: Problems
To use the schwa, the authors of Twice Upon a Time completely rewrote the word. In fact, it is as if the chosen form included “lo eroo” and “la eroa” (or “li ero” and “le eroe”, in the plural). A jumble that makes reading more difficult; Although the writing is fluent, it is difficult to follow. The use of schwa is already not an immediate solution. Adopting it in this way is to the complete detriment of the usability of the text.
It should also be noted that accessibility has been undermined to promote inclusiveness. If it is true that this use of schwa can be helpful on the gender issue, difficult reading becomes problematic for those suffering from disorders such as dyslexia or similar. It’s not a blanket that’s too short, it’s a choice that simply didn’t take it into account, despite the clear good intentions of the authors. I realize that a simple solution does not exist, but in this case I did not find the final result suitable for the type of product. And I’m only referring to this aspect of the text, as otherwise, Fumble confirms the usual high quality.
Game Experience
The game experience of Twice Upon a Time it is very clear and one of a kind. This game is designed for two people who alternate in the roles of the protagonist (precisely the Heroes) and the Narrator. The goal is to complete the narrative model of the hero’s journey. The aim of the game is to analyze how this path changes the two characters, then leading them to a final confrontation.
Twice Upon a Time, as expected, turns out to be a deeply narrative game. The mechanics are reduced to the bare bones, in favour of great attention to managing the various phases of the game. Both the players are required to carry out a rather light worldbuilding operation, which serves to outline the context in which the heroes will take their first steps. “The only limit is your imagination” is not a cliché, it is the spirit of the game.
Review of the Phases of Twice Upon a Time
The Heroes will have to go through who they are the three Phases of the monomyth.
- A First Step, breaking the status quo.
- The Journey, a comparison with the outside world.
- And finally, the Return, where we are confronted with internal change.
The manual reports three different options for each Phase, called Stages: each of these gives the possibility to choose one of three different Feelings, which will dominate the scene, and three different questions to answer in its resolution.
For example, a Stage of the First Step could be the meeting with the Innocent. The Feelings it makes available are Protection, Abandonment and Loneliness. One of these will be chosen and will be fundamental in answering the Innocent’s three questions.
- What drives you to accept the Innocent’s request for help?
- You are the only one who can or wants to help the Innocent: why?
- What did you gain from helping the Innocent?
Game Mechanics
The Phases are played in an almost exclusively narrative manner. This is a dialogue between Heroes and Narrator, a conversation that leads to answering the three questions of the chosen Stage. Only at the climax of the scene are the dice rolled: one Selfish six-sided die, one Altruistic and one linked to the Descriptor called into play.
Descriptors are three characterizations that are assigned to Heroes and Heroines during creation. These can be classified precisely as Selfish or Altruistic, and are the only mechanical element of the card. During the resolution of the scene, players will choose which Descriptor to use, adding a related Selfish or Altruistic die.
It’s important to note that the Descriptors are not a static element: they will change at each Phase because the outcome of each Stage pushes the Heroes to support the Selfish or Altruistic characterizations that have proven successful, or to abandon forever those that did not help him succeed in the test. It is worth underlining that, pending the final confrontation, it will be impossible for the two protagonists of the game to meet. They will be able to go through the same Stages if they want but never live the same story. Their vicissitudes can only intersect in the epilogue.
Twice Upon a Time: Review of a Journey
The charm of Twice Upon a Time lies precisely in this. A game with ultra-light mechanics, with a very fast setup that places no limits on your imagination. An homemade setting that evolves with each stage, influenced by the choices of the protagonists who in turn remain even more profoundly affected.
Twice Upon a Time offers a game alive and pulsating, which is resolved in one or a maximum of two sessions, bringing the pair of Heroes to a final confrontation. A meeting that becomes a comparison between the respective scores of Selfishness and Altruism, allowing us to understand how distant the positions they have reached during their journey are. Here the game returns to express all its narrative potential: the Narrator disappears completely and you confront yourself in the role of the Hero/Heroine to agree on the end of the story.
A “Rigid” Choice
Perhaps there is a limit precisely in the perfectly functional linearity of the game mechanics Twice Upon a Time. Reducing everything to the choice between Selfishness and Altruism, in a context so pushed towards the narrative side of the game, risks flattening the choice a bit. Of course, the authors themselves point out that this axis does not correspond in any way to that between good and evil, encouraging us to make more detailed evaluations; they must take into account the desires and intentions of the characters, not just the outcome of the final confrontation.
However, selfishness and altruism are not inclinations with a clear cut. They follow a progressive path, and all too often the boundary between the two is a large, indistinguishable gray area. Sometimes they end up overlapping in more and more layers, making it equally impossible to separate them. Let’s be clear, this dichotomy certainly holds up well to the game, but its narrative nature would perhaps have deserved something capable of better conveying the complexity of a choice. It must also be specified that this however stimulates constructive discussion and this can only be a good thing.
Conclusions of the Review of Twice Upon a Time
Twice Upon a Time is a very interesting experiment. It is an intimate game, which through a lot of dialogue and very few dice rolls sees a world grow around two Heroes, who in turn grow. Its dynamics are very interesting, and having only a skeleton reference on how to set the Stages on the structure of the story par excellence makes the possibility of replaying it practically endless.
It is a shame that the choice to use the schwa makes its reading difficult, especially since it is a choice based on a significant social commitment; the idea is certainly to be appreciated and valorised, but it cannot be denied that the application is not the best. The text itself is not demanding, so it is an annoying but surmountable obstacle. Net of this and the constraint of the Selfishness – Altruism axis which is a little too rigid for such a narrative game, Twice Upon a Time offers a must-try experience for anyone wanting to explore the theme of the hero’s journey, seeing how these and the world influence each other, evolving together.
