Games that make you stop and think, and maybe even go "hmmm..."

[elliott20]

About a year ago, I played a game called "Hot Guys Making Out". Yes, that's the actual name of the game. No, I'm not gay. Yes, we picked this to play on purpose. No, I did not lose a bet.

The game is an small press indie game where each player assumes the role of a pre-written character within a narrative, and the character's available ranged from the older, wiser, but ultimately very tired and worn bishonen, the younger, inexperienced, super shy, and very sheltered bishonen, to the woman who crushes on the older bishonen, etc, etc, etc. Just pretend you're reading some crappy yaoi manga and you're 90% there at what kind of characters are present.

We initially played this game just to get a good laugh but then something really cool happened. We actually started to empathize with the characters we played, and some of us started to question our own attitudes towards homosexuality, age gap in relationships, relationships that is predicated on authority, and a myriad of other factors that would never show up in our normal games.

In the beginning, we were making a lot of cracks about homosexuality. Being the immature men that we were, we used this as a way to diffuse our own discomforts about the game. But as it progressed, the jokes stopped as we started to genuinely care about the character's relationships and one of us asked a very poignant question after the game, "huh, I wonder why our default emotional reaction to this in the beginning was to be uncomfortable."

It was actually a very surprising response from a game that sounds like a bad yaoi fanfic waiting to happen.

And so I wonder, how often do you guys experience that kind of contemplative pause where you suddenly feel the need to reflect upon the game you just played?

[Grinner]

Unknown Armies - Everyone gets a vote.

[Lorsa]

Those are the best kind of games I believe.

[BayardSPSR]

I'm with Lorsa - I feel like 'making you think' is RPGs at their best. At the very least, it reminds us that there's more to roleplay than plain-old gaming.

That particular example sounds awesome, too.

[Das Platyvark]

My friend and I found this little gem a while back. (the link itself is sfw and curse-free, if crude; the rest of the site less so).

[elliott20]

My friend and I found this little gem a while back. (the link itself is sfw and curse-free, if crude; the rest of the site less so).

I need to print this out and bring it to my group one of these nights, that sounds awesome.