Pandemic Polycule Pandemonium
Pandemic Polycule Pandemonium, Poly-ana, 2022
If somehow in the distant future this article is unearthed in someone's software archaeology project, and you actually take the time to read it, here's the deal. The COVID-19 pandemic killed over a million people in the USA alone. A lot of people stayed home as much as possible to try to avoid it. This led both to people getting cooped up together and to everyone having a limited number of folks they could interact with without becoming a statistic. Pandemic Polycule Pandemonium (PPP) links Close Quarters Syndrome and Comedy/Tragedy Theory to create a dark comedy about "dating the people you can date without dying."
You make your character by picking from a set of lists, some poly-oriented, some not. They have random-roll numbers if you're interested in randomizing. The game encourages you to "Randomize within your comfort zone." The lists are things like how many people you're currently dating, how many you'd like to be dating, how often you're getting laid, how often you want to get laid, plus the usual special interests, dislikes, etc. Any paramours outside of the immediate pod are required to be randomized or the game police will come get you.
Play is mostly freeform. The rules assign probabilities to your odds of getting along with others, the odds of you suddenly becoming attracted to someone you weren't attracted to before, and the odds of someone in the group or the extended polycule dying of covid. Look, I said it was a dark comedy.
The game's "safety rules" section is a single paragraph that I'm going to quote in full: "If you're playing this game with your friends, you need to state going into it who you're comfortable making out with. If you're not comfortable with that for any reason, this is the wrong group for you to play this game with. If you're playing it with people who aren't your friends, get out."
The art is of the "photos of my friends" variety, but they're well-posed and hilarious. One of my favorites involves five people. Two are in mismatched chairs (recliner and camp chair). They're in the zone, playing Mario Kart. One is leaning sideways with their tongue partway out in concentration, the other clearly yelling profanity at them. Hidden behind the chairs, there's a couch with three pairs of feet at one end of it and someone holding up a bra to hang it on a coat rack. Whomever was cooped up with the author, one of them was clearly a photographer.
I feel like this is probably another one of those games that was never really meant to be played. It's game-as-art, game as commentary on a difficult and painful situation. It's 12 pages long, with 6 photos and an extensive diagram on the cover.
Naturally, the author and the photographer are now married and not producing any further games.
