THE GOD OF EXCESS (by Chant Evans)
Hello! Grant here. Friend and co-worker Chant Evans, who runs Ex Stasis games in his spare time when he's not marshalling spreadsheets and making books appear at Rowan Rook and Decard, told me he's not busy enough at work. And seeing as I'm responsible for making sure he's busy enough at work, I suggested that he write a one-page game as a guest post on this here Patreon.
And he did! He's fast, I'll give him that. Please enjoy this entirely free game about taking drugs and getting into trouble for the sake of your soul. Over to Chant for the design notes:
Hey. Have you ever felt stifled? Constricted? Ground down by the brutal forces of SOCIETY? Did you know there’s a GOD FOR THAT?
Dionysos is the best Greek god. (I will fight you. Don’t make me fight you.) He’s the god of recognising that while society is a necessary evil, it needs a safety valve. That if you can’t release some of the pressure of existing within a structure, it will crush you, and possibly destroy itself in the process. The escape can be intoxication, theatre (a space where you can imagine and act out really transgressive shit), or running feral across the mountainside, tearing apart any fool who crosses your path. Dionysos is permission to scream and scream and dance and scream until you feel better.
And really, isn’t that the best thing a god has ever promised? Permission to fuck around, get wild, and get outside your head. (That’s where “ecstasy” comes from: “to stand outside”.) Role-playing does all this too. Draw your own conclusions about whether playing Honey Heist is actually a modern form of an ancient and sacred ritual.
The God of Excess takes all these things I love about Dionysos and turns them into something you could loosely describe as a game. It’s a proof of concept. I’m endlessly fascinated by gods – why we want them to exist, what we do with them, what they allow us to do and say about the world. God-shaped holes. There’s a game in that, possibly quite a big one, and The God of Excess is the first step in figuring out what it is.
One- or two-page games are really good for that. If you can express an idea, albeit in a simple form, in a page or two, it’s got something solid at its core. There’s something clear and communicable, and you’ve found the drama and the fun. A one-page game has to be about something, or it falls apart. The constraints of the format leave you nowhere to hide. That’s terrifying: if I’d written The God of Excess as a 200-page book, or even a 24-page zine, I would have had room to bury some of its earnestness under more layers of fancy, and worldbuilding. I would have diluted it until it didn’t really say anything anymore. Instead I have been forced to write something so earnest it makes me cringe and want to hide behind the sofa.
The God of Excess is about how powerful it is to give yourself permission to fuck up. Even coping mechanisms that are unhealthy and imperfect are still coping, and letting go (of expectations, of self-censoring) and doing something is almost always better than doing nothing. You’re not gods or heroes in this game, you’re silly little guys who take a lot of drugs and ride that borrowed sense of power to doing things you’re otherwise incapable of. Of course, that sense of power is partly illusory and if you go too far you’ll tumble off the edge of power and into the abyss of making a complete fool of yourself.
It’s also very much about how many friends I’ve made while smoking cigarettes outside nightclubs, and how seeing Alan Cumming in The Bacchae was just about the sexiest thing that ever happened to me. Oh, and about how Natasha Pulley’s novel Cult of Dionysos spoke to a primal little part of me I thought was dead. But none of that has to matter: hopefully the game says what it’s supposed to, all on its own.
Anyway - play the game, look at how it pins down an idea and turns it into a wisp of a setting and a couple of flexible mechanics, and if you like it, stick around and see what happens when it turns into a zine in a couple of months. (Maybe. No promises. I’ve got books to make for Grant.)
Oh – for legal reasons: don’t do drugs, kids.
– Chant