Dance to Death
To chase and the hunt are fundamental to many creatures on the planet. Although we think of our species as more evolved, we humans are not immune from such instincts. We can take this literally, hunting animals for food. It can also be taken more metaphorically to mean pursuing a goal, a love, a lost moment in time. What if the case was both though? What if you could hunt a metaphor? This is the question that RPG Glatisant asks of us.
Over the last few years the idea that RPGs have to be 4 hour long sessions with 5-6 players has been vigorously challenged. You can easily argue that this trend began with Apocalypse World, a game that the designers, Vincent and Meguey Baker, have said was created to be playable around their childcare commitments. The trend for shorter, more focused sessions has continued into the progeny of Apocalypse World like Blades in the Dark.
I was sent a copy of Glatisant by the publisher for a fair and honest review.
Glatisant is a 1-2 player game playable in around 30 mins to 1 hour. I’ve only played the two player version of the game. In this mode one player takes on the role of a questing knight, the other the Beast Glatisant, otherwise known as the Questing Beast. It’s a beautifully produced book with layout and design from Emily Entner, art by Fran Morton, and editing from Ally Morcom. The game is designed by Lucas Zellers and uses the Carta system from Peach and Garden Games. It is published by Graftbound Press.
You’ll begin your tale by creating the two rivals. This begins with drawing an ace out of the four in a standard deck of playing cards. It gives the Knight the blazon on their shield: the animal they are most associated with. It also defines the central nature of the Beast, the creature it most closely resembles.
We then round out the beast by getting some details about its appearance: wings of an eagle, striped like a tiger etc. There are no stats here, just some prompts to answer.
Why do you guide the Knight Errant?
Why is each part of you dangerous?
In what physical and magical ways do you survive in the wild?
The Knight is similarly stateless, at least initially. THey are defined by a Virtue and a Vice: courage and hubris, justice and apathy etc. They too answer 3 questions:
Why do you seek the Beast Glatisant?
What does your heraldic beast meant to you?
What code do you follow to uphold your virtue, or break to indulge your vice?
With these simple set of questions we set our adventure in motion. I find the order of creation interesting here. The implication is that the Beast has chosen to make itself known to the Knight. The focus isn’t that of a big game hunter pursuing its quarry, but that of a curious creature with its own motivations in calling out its rival. Finally the Knight puts seven points into resources called Mind, Body, and Spirit.
What of the hunt itself? How does our dance between Beast and Knight play out? Taking our Ace from earlier, we deal out 24 cards from the remaining deck. These are shuffled together with the Ace and dealt out facedown in a 5 x 5 grid. The two Jokers give us a starting point for the Knight and the Beast. Then our tale begins.
As in character creation, the Beast moves first. It leads the Knight on a merry chase, daring them to capture it. The Beast chooses an objective in secret. These can range from something like ‘meet on an Ace’, ‘when you meet, the Knight must have more Body/Mind/ Spirit than any other resource’, or ‘when you meet the Knight they must have no resources in Body/Mind/Spirit’. These are examples of Easy, Medium, and Hard objectives. This will lead to short – long game but I’ve only tried the shorter objectives myself.
This objective is known to the Beast but not the Knight. The Beast can also look at any facedown card they wish, allowing them to choreograph our dance. As the Beast moves any direction they choose the cards remain facedown. The Knight pursues more rigidly, unable to move diagonally, only orthogonally. As the Knight moves over the cards, they get flipped face-up and our story emerges.
Each card is a prompt. It comes with a description of the event, some potential adjustments to the Knights pool of resources, and some questions for both participants. This could be The Steed, asking the Beast ‘Do you and the horse get along?’, and the Knight ‘What is your horse’s name?’. It might be an encounter with The Green Knight, SIr Lancelot, or Morgan le Fay. Storms will rise up, betrayals revealed, and leaps of faith taken.
Each prompt drips with potential story and possible answers. They give players just enough ideas to discuss the situation and come up with a story that is uniquely their own. It’s a game where your improvisation skills will be put to the test, and some familiarity with the source material will put you in a good position. The characters you encounter are described in broad strokes, so your own interpretation of this legends can shine should you want it to.
As you construct your tale, how you do so is up to you. Maybe you’ll inhabit the characters, role-playing scenes out. You could of course just narrate the tale, as if seeing it in retrospect, writing it down in the annals of your family history. I found myself slipping between the two a bit, with a preference for the latter.
As the hunt goes on The Beast tries to draw The Knight to the finale. As certain events take place the Beast gains a resource called Track. They can drop this on cards to hint at the direction the Knight should travel in. There is a game length timer in the Knight’s resources. If these all hit zero, the game is over, both players losing and the tale coming to an abrupt end.
Let me give you an example of play so you can get an idea of the story possibilities. Playing The Knight, where my Virtue was Purpose and Vice was Avarice. We decided this latter aspect was my family’s history as big game hunters. My Blazon was the Bear Sejant.
Our tale began with a Dragon. The Questing Beast saved me from the Dragon after it broke my arm. Over the course of our tale I betrayed my father’s atheism by entertaining the existence of the fantastical. The Beast brought kills to the door of Camelot and I was tasked with its death by none other than King Arthur himself. Tracking it to an Abbey, through woods, and beyond I caught glimpses of my quarry. I witnessed it spare a Monk, bring food to my door, and eventually I came face to face with it. We acknowledged our different abilities and realised we were better off as companions, not enemies. I change my Blazon to be The Beast and it came to live peacefully in my estate. It was a fun and dramatic tale to participate in.
I haven’t had much experience with duet play in RPGs and I found Glatisant to be an excellent introduction to the form. In surrounding its play in the familiar blanket of Arthurian myth, it gives you the familiar while encouraging the improvisational. While it may be on the surface a game about a legendary Beast hunted by a fame hungry Knight, it is more than that. This is a game about two individuals revealing their vulnerabilities, being open and honest with each other about their motivations, and in the end deciding to come together or fall apart. It is a game about relationships, love, and the hurt and healing that can come from being truly commited to someone else. It is an elegant and beautiful piece of design.
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