Crow

by Moyra Turkington

Crow is a game where two participants work collaboratively to create poetry together. Unlike many traditional games, Crow has no winners, losers, or competitive engagement.; it does not use playing pieces, dice or game paraphernalia. Poets in Crow do not seek to tell a whole story, nor do they look to become the characters in Crow mythology. Instead, they work together exploring ideas and emotions through extemporaneous thematic exploration and linguistic experimentation to uncover a common sense of meaning

This game is inspired by Ted Hughes’s Crow, and its brutal, bloody, railing, sardonic, eponymous hero. The poems I have included, as well as the mythology of Hughes’s Crow remain under copyright of his estate. In designing this game I make no claim to them but just to honour the guts, bile and gruesome humour/anguish that they contain. 

This game was written for the 2008 game jam Murderland, where it was a finalist.

Design notes: This game is an experiment to slice gaming a different way and in so doing, to get a different view of it. It’s designed (experimentally) for a roleplayer with an aesthetic socket, or maybe an improv poet that hasn’t roleplayed before. 

Application: Crow would make a terrific game for literary-type folks to play on a date, for friends to play around a campfire, as an exercise in a drama class or as a warm up to get a group connected and expressive before an emotionally intensive roleplaying game.