This is the two hundred thirty-sixth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.
Our two hundred thirty-sixth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality has accused us of terrible things. It’s Dreaming the Devil, by dymphna, and its tagline in the bundle reads:
Someone must be to blame.
I will leave a friendly reminder here that randomness not only exists, but is an intrinsic aspect of the physics that govern our universe. Sometimes, no one is to blame. Dreaming the Devil offers an unfriendly reminder that no one wants to believe that.
Dreaming the Devil is a live-action role-playing game, or LARP, for three players plus one facilitator. As usual, I lack the time or inclination to organize a group to actually play it, and in this case especially so due to the subject matter. The game involves playing out a witch trial in Renaissance Italy. One player is an inquisitor, sent from Florence to pass judgment upon the witch. Another player is the accuser. The third player is the accused, unable to move from their chair. It should go without saying that this is intended as an intense experience and comes with many content warnings, and — to the game’s credit — multiple rules to ensure player safety. Still, it is not something I would want to play myself.
There are, however, several interesting bits of design here. The trial takes place across three days, abstracted as three 15-minute sessions. Before each, the facilitator arranges 30-60 seconds of silence, just to create the appropriate tension. Then the actual trial sessions are defined by limitations. The accused cannot leave their chair nor touch another player, and must respond to questions when asked. The accuser can get up from their chair and move around, but cannot touch the accused, and cannot ask questions. They can only lodge their accusations. The inquisitor has the most freedom, able to move freely and ask questions (of both the accused and the accuser) and end the trial at any time by pronouncing a verdict. Yet even the inquisitor has their limitations. Despite what you might expect, they cannot administer torture. Only the accuser can do that.
Yes, there is torture in this game, but no, it is not explicit. In fact, any references to the torture itself are strictly forbidden. Players are not allowed to act out or describe the torture in any way. Instead, it is indicated by another interesting design choice: before the game, the facilitator collects five sticks from somewhere nearby (a yard, a street, a local park) and puts them in a bundle on the floor. During the trial, the accuser may take a stick from the bundle and break it, while looking directly at the accused. This indicates that torture has been applied, and forces the accused to answer the next question the inquisitor asks in the affirmative, and in florid detail. And they must tell the inquisitor what they think the inquisitor wants to hear. Even if they’re not sure what that is.
The most interesting aspect of Dreaming the Devil is something I can’t really explain without ruining the game for any potential players. You see, only the facilitator will have read the entire book of rules. The other players are simply given their appropriate character sheets, which detail what their characters know, and what they want; the desires of the other players are a mystery. These secret desires guide the game, and they mean that any player — even the accused — has a chance of winning the game. The accused can win even if they die. The inquisitor, who seems to have the most power during the trial, may have the hardest time winning, because his desires are… complicated.
Dreaming the Devil wants to explore how and why the historical witch trials came about, by delving into the motivations of all parties involved. In an afterword, dymphna criticizes most depictions of witch trials in popular media as either overly sensationalized, or as metaphors for a different form of persecution entirely. They posit that the real trials arose from a crisis of faith, as the Age of Reason dawned and challenged much that had been held as common belief in the Christian world. Shaken, some lost their grip on reality and fell upon each other with accusations of witchcraft. The three players explore this dynamic during the game.
But I admit, I struggled to relate while reading. To be clear, Dreaming the Devil in no way condones the motivations or actions of its characters, and it does not shy away from the horrors of the witch trials. But in having players embody these people it invites sympathy for them, even as they commit atrocities. And when I read dymphna’s afterword, arguing that those atrocities came about because it was becoming harder to believe in God, my first thought was: apparently not as hard as believing the truth. One of the characters is a midwife (the other option is a priest, for a different scenario), who stands accused of murdering a neighbor’s infant child for some unholy rite. The accuser cannot accept that the infant’s death was a tragic accident. The accuser would rather believe that the midwife — someone they have known for years — committed heinous murder. The child did not deserve that fate; someone must be to blame.
Perhaps it was becoming harder to believe in God, and yet the characters in Dreaming the Devil cling to that belief. And while I can understand, on a conceptual level, the difficulty of keeping faith in the face of tragedies and challenges to one’s worldview, I find it difficult to sympathize. It’s not stated anywhere in Dreaming the Devil, but I suspect that dymphna shares the Christian faith; I do not. So when I see characters struggling with it, and falling into persecution, torture and murder as a result, all I see is the harm done by their faith. The hardest thing of all, for them, is to accept that sometimes tragic things happen, and no one is to blame. In failing to do so, they inflicted equal atrocities upon others. The blame for that is solely their own.
My condemnation of these characters is not necessarily a condemnation of Dreaming the Devil, however. It offers an unusual exploration of the power dynamics and psychology of witch trials, one that will be even more intriguing to those interested in questions of faith. There are countless Christians who have found a way to keep their faith despite the tragedies and atrocities of our world, and who do not fall into bigotry and persecution. Yet there are others who still do, who try to strip human rights away from queer and transgender people, who start unprovoked wars on an absurd religious premise. The psychology that Dreaming the Devil explores is still relevant today. Just be warned that actually playing it promises to be an intense and uncomfortable experience. If you missed it in the bundle, Dreaming the Devil is sold for a minimum price of $3.75.
That’s 236 down, and only 1505 to go!
Mike Russo
Does the game cite any historians or specific analyses to support its idea that with panics were about the difficulty of holding onto belief in a changing world (and/or maybe the problem of theodicy, since it seems like that’s in the mix too)? I’m by no means an expert on the subject, but I’ve read a fair amount about both the Reformation/Counter-Reformation eras, and the settlement of the early New England colonies, and when witch trials have come up I don’t recall seeing that line of argument, which honestly seems like it has a lot more to do with the 20th and 21st centuries than the 15th and 16th.
(Also, one historical tidbit that’s kind of amusing is that despite the stereotype the Inquisition was not a big witchcraft-persecution institution – they cared about heresy and lay accusations of witchcraft could sometimes indicate heretical beliefs, so they did get dragged in. But the official position of the Catholic Church and Inquisition was that witchcraft wasn’t real, so stuff like the Malleus Maleficarum was typically the work of over-their-skis freelancers which created headaches for the Vatican).
Waltorious
It does not; perhaps I should have called that out, but I’m hardly an expert in this history myself. I guess I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Thanks for providing that extra context!