Unexplained On August 3rd, 2013, some college students went camping in the wilderness near Wayne National Forest in Ohio. Something weird happened out there in the woods. Possibly something supernatural. Each abductee has a story to tell about their experience, but their stories are jumbled, contradictory. Each one seems to have different memories of the events in the woods. These stories seem to overlap but never entirely agree. Several federal agents are in town now, trying to sort out what happened. Each of you will play one of the abductees while they are being interviewed in separate rooms. The story will freely intercut between them to get different versions of events. You’ll also play the federal agents, trying to make sense of this mess. The facts were these: 1 - At 12:34 PM EDT, local resident Jesenia Gardner called the Athens County sheriff’s office to report strange lights in the sky near the campsite. “Aliens”, she said. Upon investigation, sheriff’s deputy Elmer Newman and park ranger Whitney Lopez found no UFOs. 2 - They did find the campsite abandoned, with no sign where the campers had gone. Their 1997 Dodge van was nonfunctional, though there was no apparent cause of malfunction. Camping equipment was strewn about the campsite, damaged as if by lightning strike. 3 - Four days later at 1:13, the abducted students were located in Vienna, WV, approximately fifty miles away, walking on foot in an Olive Garden parking lot. None of them knew where they were or how they had gotten there. 4- Their clothing was covered in a grey-black powder, like soot or ash. Each had unexplained scars running down their backs, which had not been present before. All their watches, phones, electronic devices, identification, socks and underwear were missing. Setup To begin play, you will modify the basic facts of the case based on your card draws. Shuffle a deck of playing cards (with no Jokers). Draw four cards. Each suit relates to one possible answer: Yes And... , Yes But…, No But... , or No And…. Hearts: Yes, And… Confirm the basic fact and expand on it in greater detail Diamonds: Yes, But… Confirm the general idea of the fact, but modify one detail Clubs: No, But… Deny the general idea of the fact, but keep one detail Spades: No, And.... Deny the fact as a whole and expand in greater detail on the denial As a group, assign one card to each of the four basic facts of the case. (You’ll have one extra to discard.) Narrate in additional details to modify the facts in the direction suggested by the card. So confirm the fact and augment it if you put a Heart there, or confirm but partially negate if you play a Diamond. Negate the fact and invent a new one if you play a Spade, or negate the fact but retain one similar aspect if you play a Club. Once you know the general background of the encounter, you can create your Player Characters (PCs) in detail. PCs: -I am an American college student between the ages of 17 and 23 -I care deeply for the PC played by the player sitting to my right -I never believed in anything paranormal before this camping trip -I was doing something at the campsite that I am would prefer to hide from the authorities Draw five cards. Assign one card to each basic fact about your character, confirming or denying the basic fact and adding some details of your own. (Discard your extra card.) Decide for yourself an explanation for what happened in the woods that you are advocating for. Was it short, grey aliens? Tall blond, racist Nordic aliens? Time travelers? Insane dwarfs from beneath the hollow earth? Swamp gas? Illegal military experiments? Demons? Tell the other players your theory. No two players are allowed to share the same theory as to what happened. Negotiate with other players with similar theories until it is clear each theory is distinct. Name your character. I always forget this step. Each player draws a hand of five cards. In play: Select a player at random to be the initial focus character. The focus character is in an interrogation room, trying to tell their story. While you’re the focus character, narrate what you saw, heard, felt and did that night in the woods. Try to advance your agenda by introducing elements that match your theory. All the other players play federal agents asking questions about what happened. Federal agents should ask for additional details about the story: “What did you do then?” “What did you see?” “Where did they take you?” “How did that make you feel?” etc. Any federal agent can cast doubt on a story as one of their questions, pointing out a flaw or contradiction or impossible event in the story. When a federal agent casts doubt on the story, they draw one card from the deck into their hand. When a federal agent doubts your story, you turn to another player for corroboration. (You cannot call on a player with no cards in their hand.) You say something about how that other PC will back up your detail. That PC now becomes the focus character. The federal agent asks them about the questionable detail in the other player’s story. The new focus player plays a card from their hand, either confirming the other player’s detail (Yes cards) or denying them (No cards). And they add additional details, based on the And or But part of the card and the numerical value of the card they played, according to this chart: 1 Two impossible things at the same time 2 Missing time, déjà vu or other temporal weirdness 3 Uncomfortably intimate details 4 Impossible phenomena 5 Abducted / being taken against your will 6 Strange or ambiguous messages 7 Technological malfunctions 8 Insectoid or alien features 9 Strange lights or energy 10 Dreamlike imagery J Men in Black Q Secret government activity K Military intervention Play until you run out of cards or you feel like the story is complete. Each player decides for themselves what really happened. Notes: I’m trying to make a game of weird and ambiguous stories that don’t quite fit together, which is pretty much what UFO encounter folklore is like when you examine it closely. If I had more space, I’d include other encounter scenarios. This game could have little scenarios, like Fiasco playsets or Microscope prompts. All you would need is a few paragraphs of background, which the players modify, and a few statements about the player characters.