Designed by Jared A. Sorenson and published by Memento Mori Theatriks, Parsely (yes, spelled like P A R S E LY, as in parsing text) requires one person to act as the Parser or the computer analog (maybe that should be analog computer… whatever) and any number of other players taking the role of the character. When I say ANY number, I mean that. You can run it with one player or one thousand. It’s not uncommon to see it run as a convention panel where attendees just pass a microphone around giving a single command. I’ve even played several games over social media hosted by Andrew Looney and other members of the Looney Labs community.
A couple of months ago I had the immense pleasure of wandering down to SaltCON End of Summer, in Layton UT. One of the games I played was Spooky Manor, one of the original Parsley adventures. We only had three players, which can make for an interesting dynamic. When you have a smaller group, there is often a lot of table talk about what to do and people giving the Parser commands in whatever order they feel like. A large-scale game ends up running very much like a single player because the game can’t stall out for a conversation.
Just 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.”
Spooky Manor begins as you, a humble delivery person, ride your bicycle in the rain to deliver a package to Lord Spooky, at his home: Spooky Manor. That’s almost all I can say about the plot without spoilers, but I will say that if you go into the Manor it would be polite to hang your dripping-wet rain jacket up on the coat hook. Yes, even little things like that matter. The most basic advice I can give for any Parsely game is that you should look at and touch everything. In fact, this isn’t a 1990s Canadian anti-drug commercial, go ahead and put it in your mouth.
One of the first things I did when I got back to Alberta, was pull out my Parsely book, at take a look at the Pumpkin Town adventure with the idea that I’d maybe I’ll run it online somewhere. Spoiler: I did not have the time to do that. HOWEVER, Memento Mori Theatriks also has a separate Christmas adventure called Kringle Krisis and we are all about the Christmas goodness in The Rat Hole. So on Dec 7, I’ll be hosting Jared A. Sorenson to play Kringle Krisis LIVE on YouTube and Facebook with some friends and taking command prompts from the audience in the comments section.
Subscribe to our YouTube to watch for that and you can read Debra’s review of Parsely at TheRatHole.ca/parsely.
You can find Memento Mori Theatricks online at www.memento-mori.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/mementomoritheatricks.