When a creator you love puts something new out, it's hard not to get caught up in the freshness. Im excited by what Realis and Austin Walker are promising me, but I'm not swept up by it like other games make me feel after my first read-through. I was worried the game wasn't for me, and maybe it isn't, but I also think maybe that's the point of Realis. That's the magic: It's not real until you play it.

Realis (Ashcan edition) by Austin Walker was released on January 23rd, just a few days after the game's itch.io page went live and articles about the game were released on Rascal News in a two-part interview/article Part 1 and Part 2. I did a full read-through and am excited by the design choices made, but I'm cautious about if the game is right for me. 

Realis is a game and a world that forces absolute statements against each other to decide which one is true. All characters, both player and non, have sentences that set the truth of the world until it is contested or avoided. A player character saying "I always hit my mark" and a non- saying "I always avoid trouble" are opposed when the first character shoots the later character. The game is about narrowing those absolute statements to make them mechanically stronger, chiselling down their narrative use cases but by doing, so defining them. You start to fill in the blank page, little by little. As a game runner, it informs you on what is important for the world, in the eyes of the player character. The page is woefully blank until you meet the characters and their group. Through play, you fill it out. 

The reality of the game is that it's hard for me to imagine because there are so many avenues and opportunities for a game to go down, the page is too big and blank for me to fill it right now and that goes against my game-running instincts to do a bunch of legwork and come in with a glut of material that makes up an orchestra of cause and effect. How am I supposed to plan for Realis when it can be anything?

It's a lot like my hesitancy for Troika! which promises everything and anything between the many spheres, with seemingly no threads between them to tie their identities together. Troika! is a series of Monty Python sketches that each ends with "... and now, for something completely different." Chaos theory made game. 

Realis does have an answer for my fears, and while yes it does have a variety of world-building materials to pull from to count against my prep needs, I'm referring to the small section on Pg. 16 titled "A Pause Before Play". The game calls out the need for a little time between character creation, band creation, and the start of play for the game runner to organize their thoughts. Austin is smart enough to know that this game defies prep before the characters and their goal are created. The stage isn't set until the players take to it, dressing and props be damned. The world is real through those who perceive it, and you can't make Realis real before its time.  

Maybe this is a long way to say I don't do well with low-prep games, but I'm more willing to dive in unprepared than I've ever been before.