The game is It's Complicated (also available on IPR). For Dreamation, I made a scenario called "Hipster Massacre" that has been rattling around my head ever since I got that "From Here To Infirmary" album by Alkaline Trio.

Oh no! Your favorite band sold out! Also, some serial killer is killing off hipsters, like you. Don't worry: your and the fellow bandmates will get to bottom of this. Of course, that means you'll actually have to talk to each other... This is a game about messy lives and messy relationships, like if Pitchfork hired Joss Whedon to rewrite Twin Peaks while listening to Bjork.

The game itself: we told a story of six Brooklyn hipsters who were nominally in a band together and the result was Really Damn Funny. Hopefully the other players can remember some choice quotes, but here's some key moments:

- Certain group tics / repeated themes emerged organically, such as Cor looking oppressed and everyone criticising Esme's romantic standards.

- The game constraint of "demonstrate a one-sided relationship" worked great. There was plenty of passive-aggressive criticism of each other, plenty of unrequited triangles, plenty of "frenemy" behavior.

- It was fun to kill off random hipster NPCs in new ways. Four extras were killed under a stack of Chuck Palahniuk books (my suggestion); the players took the cue and rushed to the scene, but started quibbling about which books were most ironic when used as a deadly weapon (and who actually read books).

- Portland (a character) avoided getting close to people (Dysfunction) because he was embarassed about living at home (Oddity). Of course, the characters later needed a place to organize and ended up at his home (bumping into his mom and creating much awkwardness).

- When asked why someone no longer found them cute enough to hook up with: "I was drunk and you were thinner." We had to look to the "oh snap" chart from the book.

I was only facilitating (as we had 6 players), but my role evolved to kick in random fictional suggestions (i.e. killing off random extras to remind people about the serial killer), and sometimes indicating my snarky side-comments by holding up various index cards. (I think "DUN DUN DUN" really came in handy.)

The rules of "It's Complicated" are light, but helped focus on some basic points of interconnectedness to encourage players to start entwining their stories. There's plenty of things it didn't cover (for example: you can't kill off players, so only extras could be killed by the serial killer), but the real meat of the game was relationships rather than investigation, and that just blossomed. To some extent, the earlier, more constrained choices in the game let you warm up until you're more naturally letting your relationships evolve in the game.

I think this was also a victory for playing with the right people (such an awesome group) and with a tight scenario (to focus the group up front, to attract the right people, and to get everyone on the same page). Scenario writing matters for con games, perhaps even for games where scenario-setup is ostensibly part of the game itself.

The end result was a dark satirical comedy with heart. A+ WOULD DREAMATION AGAIN and honestly it's not like they actually caught the serial killer so maybe there's a sequel

The index cards were improvised outside of our given rules, but they're a good idea. Many games benefit from having some "backchannel" to comment on the game at hand. (I mean, this can just be table-talk, too. But cards = lol.)