VOID 1680 AM: Just You and the Airwaves

A write-up of a very cool solo RPG.

Get VOID 1680 AM here.

Find their Youtube channel (where they broadcast) here. My playthrough will be going up on Nov. 12th!

I’m starting this write up after my first play through. These are my first thoughts, born out of an examination of the game while playing, I hope, as intended.

First off: Play this game! Do it! If you haven’t done solo games before, this is a great place to start. Second: I always need to disclose with journaling games that I’m a fiction writer, and have been for over a decade. I’ve been writing since even before then, but I went to an arts high school for writing and started honing my craft starting there. Why disclose this? Because, your process probably won’t look like mine.

I have a cultivated style and process for writing that means I write fast and with little revision. My writing does not understand perfectionism and I am blessed by that fact. If I describe doing something in this examination and you’re thinking, “I can’t do that!” Don’t get discouraged. This game is about moving at (somewhat) your own pace, and doing what feels good within the confines (and the beautiful whitespace) of the mechanics.

Play

Approaching this game, I had heard one Actual Play of it, although sadly it’s not available on Youtube. I would recommend listening to at least one of the Actual Plays, but also, you could go in blind. When listening to the AP, I didn’t know anything about the game, or that it was even a game. I thought it was like, a fiction podcast/broadcast thing that was prewritten. And it sort of is! But there are prompts, and you are guided by a structure, which I think makes it even cooler, because you get to see what everyone does with those things.

To play this game, you record your voice and, in my case, if you have the gear, the music. I wanted it to feel like a real DJ set, so I also chose backing tracks for when I talked, although that’s not necessary and honestly just added some stress, although I will definitely do it again, I think it helped really pull me into the vibe overall and made me less afraid to just speak into the microphone. Some background info: I used to stream, and when I did, I almost always had music on when I was Just Chatting, etc., it was important that my brain not get bogged down with the fact that I’m speaking into a microphone and people are listening! I think having backing tracks with this helped with that same sort of nerves.

An Aside: I am lucky enough to have a great college radio station where I live, KDVS 90.3, and I heard an amazing intro the other day. They played this mish mash of a speech about the horrors of communism and a woman singing a mournful song about the red scare and the call sign came on as, “KDVS, 90.3, Davis, California, Communist Radio for the Modern Era,” which I think should tell you everything you need to know about that particular show on KDVS, the Folk Hour. It was a big inspiration for my call sign, which you can see in my transcript of the first play through, but, in brief, it was, “You’re listening to The Whisper of the Leaves on The Crossroads, 97.8, Vander, Mississippi, and I’m your Oracle of the Airwaves, Elaine.” End of aside, sort of. It’s a segue.

I chose that call sign in part because it was fun to me, but also because I imagined a young woman, in her early twenties who did this 10pm-11pm slot in this small town that probably reaches only a few hundred people. She gets to be however she wants, because she doesn’t care about the folks who would care that she’s weird, she cares about the folks who might connect with her. And that was really cool to me. As her character emerged, I dropped one of my original themes of “High Strangeness,” to a much quieter, Southern version of the fairly well known Southern Gothic variety, which I had written down already.

I wanted her to embody the magical realism of Mississippi small towns, specifically the ones in upper to middle Mississippi, North of Jackson but South of, say, Tennessee. There’s a certain feel there, when the evening is rolling in during the fall months, the cicadas, as I mention, are only husks after a summer of screaming and mating and dying. There’s a magic to that sudden peace, when the chorus of crickets starts to become your backing track for nightly wanderings down streets, or, better, driving on the Natchez Trace with dusk settling between the pines and in the dark corners of turns. Your windows are open, your radio is singing to you, everything feels like it is waiting to die in the coming cold, giving you one last farewell as you stick your hand out the window and fly your hand on the air waves like a child again. Sure is something, isn’t it?

Getting to not just write about that character, but write as that character in a very new setting for me (as a radio show host), was a magical experience. I’ve written lots of first person stuff, but that has a narration quality to it, not a speaking quality, and while I write a lot of dialogue, that’s usually in the context of structured fiction. This was just plain cool to give a try, and it’s a type of writing I don’t get to do because it’s not usually something that I read or that people read in general because it’s not really written. This type of writing can only really be captured in this format, that of recording a radio show, and like, when have I ever been given permission and direction to do that before now? Never!

I’m gonna have a “that’s why I love table top games” moment and just say: thank you so much to Ken for making this and giving me the permission to live out my secret, inner dream of being a radio DJ.

Mechanics

As far as the mechanics of the game, you are supposed to build the playlist set by set using cards, and then come up with the caller story also using cards and a d6. I liked both parts of this, although I kind of went off track on the prompts for songs because for me, I was super concerned with the Vibes of the playlist staying consistent as well as maintaining the narrative focus. Some of the prompts just didn’t fit my theme or my character, so I modified them a little and threw in things that I was inspired to think of instead. So, they still worked—I was inspired—but I didn’t feel the urge to follow them to a T, which I think is good! I really encourage you to try and follow the prompts, but also, if you, like me, find yourself going “this really wouldn’t work,” then ditch it! Or don’t, and make a weird set, both are great options!

As a note: I played this without pausing the recording (except once, for about two-three minutes because I got a little overwhelmed (which is my own fault for doing it this way, haha)) and I think that added a lot to the experience in terms of keeping me on a time-scale, and making me write exactly what came to mind and to also pick songs without too much thought about it except the theme and the prompt. The time I did stop was because I was unhappy with the selections I’d made, and thought they would really kill the vibe of the set and my own experience, so I took the time to change that and I didn’t feel bad about it or anything, just noted it as something that had happened. I think it really helped, only having this very short window (sometimes shorter than others, my first set was about twenty minutes and let me settle in) to write the fiction using the caller creation prompts.

Also, you don’t have to write down what you’re going to say. I don’t even know if that’s intended to be the way you play it—I’m guessing not—but I also don’t think it’s wrong. You can play it however you want, but as someone who writes about how I play games, thinking about that is important to me. I would like to try one play through, maybe my third, without writing down the fiction, but also, I would want to play a more loose and fast character who talks with much more energy, as I think it would just be more fun to do that off the dome than playing/writing as Elaine, who speaks in a sort of semi-poetry.

Moving forward, I love the caller mechanics, and it’s what really creates the meat of the fiction. I think it’s so fun to explore these quick, tiny prompts and build something out of it. I feel like I got a lot of inspiration from it. It led me to the themes of the fiction: love and ghosts. And it created a very distinct tone that went along with the theme of the show itself, that of Magical Realism and Southern Gothic-ness (?). We met people who were falling in love with women who wore past lives like perfume, ghosts that told idiosyncrasies like secrets, football games, and finally, friendship at a crossroads of love, platonic and romantic. The fiction revealed itself in the confines of the show and character, and it tied itself neatly by calling back to the name of the show in being about liminality, this “being in a space of constant flux, of travel,” being about intersections and the possibilities they bring.

Sure, I wrote the fiction, and I do think that has a lot to do with my style of telling stories through relations. I love connecting parts of one story to another, recalling images and metaphors from previous parts of poetry and prose, even one piece to another. There are references in this from other things I’d written that day or week. I am always producing, and always recycling that. But VOID gave me a gentle push toward integrating those things together, toward creating parts of the fiction I may not have otherwise. It is a fantastic story telling tool, and one that, for some, might prove extremely eye opening and cathartic. I’m excited to bite into it again soon.

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Transcript of the first play through:

Find the playlist here:

Theme: Southern Gothic, Esoteric, High Strangeness, Big Fish vibes?

When: When the cicadas start to quiet down, the air begins to remind you less of a wet blanket and more of silk drawn across tired skin, and the smell of dinner wafts around the neighborhood, coating everything in a hungry malaise, you can join us then, here at The Crossroads, 97.8

Where: Vander, Mississippi

To be imagined in the voice of someone who lived in Mississippi for over 20 years, did not retain their accent, and is trying to imitate their mother’s strong southern lilt, at like, 60%.

Intro:

Hi, glad to have you here. I’m your Oracle of the Airwaves, Elaine with the Whisper of the Leaves on the Crossroads, 97.8, broadcasting from Vander, Mississippi.

Before we get started, I want us all to just take a minute and just listen. Do you hear that? Ain’t a sound out there. All the kids are off to college, or worn out from school, and it’s just us, some tunes, and the cicada husks.

I’m excited to get into the sets tonight, folks, lots of good stuff in the line up. We’re going to be starting with some fun, upbeat songs that make me think of this time of year, when things have started to get quiet and you fill that space with something special, something new or something familiar. We’re starting with “Junker’s Blues” by King Curtis and Jack Dupree. Let’s get into it.

Block 1 End:

Welcome back folks, if you’re just tuning in, this is your Oracle of the Airwaves, Elaine with the Whisper of the Leaves on Crossroads, 97.8, Vander, Mississippi and we just finished a set with “Junker’s Blues” by King Curtis with Jack Dupree, “Could Heaven Ever Be Like This” by Idris Muhammed, and “The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie” by Colter Wall. Every time I play Could Heaven Ever Be Like This I think of my best friend, bless his heart, now off and gone to the wildlands of California, I sure do miss him.

Just had a caller I got to speak to, a joy you all know I hold dear, telling me about the woman he just met at a bar, her hair was long and smelled of jasmine and the past lives she lived, he tells me. She had eyes that told him things he couldn’t understand, and he longs to know her more, to see into her eyes and feel the touch of her ghosts, know her secrets.

He sounded like a man possessed by love and whiskey, a deadly combination for some, a lively combination for others. Which one do you think it’ll be for him? Me, I’m predicting heartbreak beneath a willow tree, still waters where ducks send ripples in their wake like the echoes of his lost hope. But that’s just me, folks. Maybe you can think of a happier ending for him.

Time to get into our next set, which starts with “the fruits” by Paris Paloma

Block 2 End:

Good to have y’all back with me. We just finished a set with “the fruits” by Paris Paloma, “Hell’s Coming With Me” by Poor Mans Poison, and “Red Room” by Hiatus Kaiyote.

It looks like our last caller sparked another, an older woman who shared the new fruits of love she, too, has experienced recently. Tells me she is falling in love not with the ghosts of someone else, but with her own ghosts. Tells me she’s been haunted for months, but that ghost has started to warm up to her, started telling her things about herself that she didn’t even know, how she pours her wine with a delicacy reserved for kings, how she walks with the grace and poise of a trained fencer, how she sings as sweetly as any mockingbird.

Now, isn’t that just something? To find love so sweet and pure as that of someone who can’t leave, who must find their home in yours, too.

We’re starting our next set with a bit of a kicker, “Black River Killer” by Blitzen Trapper, but we’ll find our way to eventually to “Mario, Pt. II” by Chassol with the help of Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling in, “The Water”

Block 3 End:

We are starting our last set of the night, kicking things off with “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan, then “Home” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, and ending on one of my favorite songs of all times, a strange, but wonderful song about love, and why it’s needed.

As y’all know, the seasons are starting to change, and that means a lot for all of us, a lot of this and that and the other, especially with football. Got to speak with a lovely gentleman, I presume a dad, he sure did sound like one, about the game that happened this past Sunday. Who won? I do not remember. But I do remember what he said to me about the other team, coming in in all green, like the clouds rolling in before a tornado in the delta, sunsetting behind them, cleats on warm terf, isn’t that such a beautiful image?

Ripping each other apart in the name of God and Guts and Glory sure is something. Makes me think of my summers in the sun as a kid, running around without an idea of how to play wrong, or really do wrong, just go, go, go. And how the Summer sun scooped me up in its arms, nestled in the humidity, the heat, there’s something magical about the quality of the summers here in Mississippi, something magical in the sunsets and the way the clouds retreat at night.

I think I’ll leave y’all with that as we start our next set, as I said, with “Stick Season.”

Block 4 End:

And that’s it for the music tonight, folks, thanks for listening to my set. Before we go, we did have one, final caller. Who told me about his love, too, for someone he shares a special connection with, his best friend. Said that she’d been there for him through thick and thin and then some, fought beasts in the both of them and come out the other side closer than they ever thought they could be.

I find such beauty in our themes tonight, as much I curate, these things just emerge. We’ve seen love, energy, and light. We’ve seen darkness, ghosts, and pasts that haunt. We are finding ourselves, constantly, at the crossroads between these things, aren’t we? I hope that you find yourself taking the path that leads to your highest destiny, finding energy and light amid the darkness and ghosts. Who knows, maybe you’ll fall in love with them, if you let them.

Thank you for tuning in tonight to the Whisper of the Leaves on Crossroads, 97.8, Vander, Mississippi. I’ve been your spiritual and musical guide tonight, the Oracle of the Airwaves, Elaine. Catch y’all the next time the cicadas go quiet, and perhaps somewhere in between. Goodnight.