On December 7, I had the immense pleasure of interviewing Jared A. Sorensen, creator of Parsely. Debra gave her thoughts on Parsely some time ago, and I talked about the Spooky Manor adventure a few months ago. After that brief conversation, we were joined by Andrew Looney of Looney Labs and our own Kaitlin Samuel to play Kringle Krisis.
Kringle Krisis can be played as a standalone adventure, or as an extension of the Pumpkin Town adventure in the main Parsely book. Since this came out well after Pumpkin Town the connecting information is only in Kringle Krisis. I haven’t played Pumpkin Town (yet) but I really do want to down the road. So I’ve only read as deeply into it as that specific scene. I won’t spoil where that is, beyond saying it’s a pretty obvious place for it to go.
Just to get anyone new up to speed, Parsely is an analog text parser game, like Zork, Oregon Trail, and Wizardry. The difference is that instead of a computer, the game is run by a human. I gave this same description in my Spooky Manor review, but like in the computer versions, the player will give prompts like GO [DIRECTION], LOOK AT [THING], GET or USE [THING]. The Parser will then reply by describing the results. For example:
>GO NORTH
“You are on a gravel path surrounded by trees.”
>LOOK TREE
“You see a tree”
>CUT DOWN TREE
“You don’t have an axe”
>GO NORTH
“You are on a gravel path surrounded by trees. On the ground, you see a rusty axe.”
>GET AXE
“You now have a rusty axe. It doesn’t look very safe.”
>CUT DOWN TREE
“You try chopping when the axe breaks and hits you in the face. You are dead.”
Over the course of our time chatting with Jared, he mentioned that playing Parsely isn’t necessarily all about the players themselves. In a way, the game is more about the Parser, and the players are really more like the dice. I had never really thought about it that way, but he’s not wrong. In most typical TTRPGs the enjoyment for the Game Master is guiding their players through the story. But the biggest stress as a GM, for me at least, is when players do something that totally derails your best-laid plans. The text parsing format makes that impossible, so that source of stress becomes excitement as the players try to figure out the puzzle that advances the story.
Parsely adventures, like the text parsers that inspire them, don’t have much art beyond the covers and an absolutely GORGEOUS map that players never get to see. The game doesn’t need it, and it would just make a minimalistic product more expensive to pay the artist and to print the extra pages. Kringle Krisis is far from the shortest published adventure for Parsely, but at under 20 pages, it’s on the shorter end. On the stream, it took us about an hour to complete. I will concede that it may have taken longer without Mr. Looney’s vast experience with the system (but not actually this adventure) because I’m not really all that good at these games. I think it says a lot that I can suck this bad, and still keep coming back for more.
I don’t know what it is about Parsely. But I think there is a universal human need for people to figure out answers. Jigsaw puzzles, escape rooms, mystery novels, wrapped Christmas presents. We need to know. That primal need is what Kringle Krisis brings to the table, so go ahead and indulge.
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Don’t forget you can read all of our current and past holiday reviews at TheRatHole.ca/Christmas!
It’s a tradition in The Rat Hole to end these holiday reviews with a song. So below is the aforementioned interview and actual play video. Followed by an appropriately 8-bit edition of Let it Snow.