A Night of Legacy

Last night Joe and Charlotte joined Sally and I to crack open the box of Game of Legacy, the farewell game of Bernie De Koven, whose background (and the nature of this project) is actually best described by Martin on this BGG page.

+++++MASSIVE SPOILERS ALERT+++++++

Martin has this game, and should stop reading right now (assuming it's still unplayed).

As should anyone who finds the idea of an exploratory, one-play-only game intriguing enough to order it themselves, which you can do here. Or if you don't mind a slightly less-mysterious version, you can have mine. If so - stop reading now too!

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For others, read on to hear all about What's In The Box and What We Did.

The reason Charlotte was coaxed out into a chilly evening with the promise of a game at its heart was that it was also my birthday, and I shamelessly used this leverage to get her there. Once through the door that was irrelevant though. Sally cooked a lovely meal and then I ceremoniously plonked the unopened Game of Legacy on the table, and we ripped into it.

The first thing we found was packaging - scrunched up newspapers to be precise. Although we realised they weren't any old newspaper. Each sheet was identical and appeared to be a mix of bona fide ancient journalism (all centred around Battersea) and newly-created content, with intriguing, not to say tantalising words about say, how it gets on one's nerves that they have spent their lifetime irritating people.

Beneath this curious beginning were three envelopes, labelled numerically. The first contained postcards that contained the rules of a simple game: split into teams and each member of each team write down a three word phrase on (supplied) black cardboard that described a time they remembered as fun, by whatever definition. Then the teams had to identify whose definition came from whom.

Sally and I went into the front room and came up with remembrances from our recent holiday in Devon - Tiptoe Over Rocks (Sally) and Cream on Face from me, recalling the crazed idiocy of Pie Face. I didn't realise its smutty undertones until Joe's expression alerted me back in the kitchen.

Joe and Charlotte had come up with Venetian Insider and Dorset Team Play, which I knew related to their recent holiday. Everyone successfully nailed the creators though, and we moved on to envelope number 2.

I was expecting it to be a development of Game 1, but everything was new. We were told to delve into the box and get out all the contents - bar the Surprise Envelope - and create a play-space for the (supplied) marbles in the box. These contents came in the form of card with 90º angled edges, lengths of piping, wire, blue-tac, drawing pins, straws, balloons... The instructions also made mention of a Hummingbird, with no explanation or apparent logic as to why.

We set about this task with a mix of enthusiasm and baffled curiosity, not sure where the game was taking us. Told to leave a space in the middle, we ended up with a kind of fruit arena with marbles rolling in either side, and a vague idea of scoring for which fruit they rolled into. Looking back, it seems an oddly formal thing to impose on the play, but we were searching for some kind of order to things. And it was fun.

After messing about for twenty minutes and proving that, architecturally-speaking, we were still in the novice phase, we moved on to the final envelope. Again, a new game with no direct relation to what has gone before, beyond the mysterious mention of hummingbirds. 

This time we had to give each other blessings until the recipient felt 'sufficiently blessed'. From the little I know of Bernie De Koven, this felt the most De Koven-esque of everything thus far. The English are terrible at receiving compliments and with blessings it's even worse, as it implies the blesser is somehow validated to bless others - making both blesser and blessee uncomfortable at the same time. Everyone felt sufficiently blessed very quickly!

We finally opened the Surprise Envelope, unsure if it was too late and/or it would have made sense of everything that had gone before. Inside was a tea-light candle, a crisp brown leaf and a few tiny bits of wood. Although we were relived that it wasn't a body part or a dead hummingbird, it shed no light on the three phases of Bernie's legacy for us. 

Sally thought that as mentions of balloons were made in the newspaper, we were supposed to make a hot air balloon. Which we actually tried to do, even though we knew it was doomed to failure.

Or perhaps we were meant to make a hummingbird? She used the elastic bands and bits of wood to construct a rudimentary engine, that then pinged itself across the room. Whether down to my day-job or societal conditioning, I couldn't help looking for a link or a story, an explanation of some kind. I thought perhaps we'd missed something, somewhere. 

But Charlotte became convinced that the point of it all was that life didn't have an over-arching sense to it, and the experience was like the play we had just had - changing direction and apparent meaning,  illogical, unstructured. This did seem convincing, albeit the hummingbird still niggled at me.

Joe, meanwhile, was just having fun with all the bits.

It wasn't what I expected. I mean, I don't know what I expected really, but I guess the idea that we would go on some kind of journey together, maybe learn some shit, come out the other end. It was far more open than that, and in retrospect as Bernie's thing is play, my expectations were bound to be off in that regard.

It was baffling, at times bordering on odd, but throughout there was a sense of exploration to it - even though we ended with a sense of head-scratching rather than overt satisfaction, it was the kind of playful experience that will stay with you long after the latest Euro has faded from your brain. And in that sense, a legacy - of fun!

Thank you Cha and Joe!