The Rescue Game

[Meteor Man]

From the April 13th Archdruid Report:

Here's how it works. Each group of players is assigned one of three roles: Victim, Persecutor or Rescuer. The first two roles are allowed one move each: the Victim's move is to suffer and the Persecuter's move is to make the Victim suffer. The Rescuer is allowed two moves: to sympathize with the victim and punish the Persecuter. No other moves are allowed and no player is allowed to make a move that belongs to a different role.

That may seem unduly limited. It's not . . . In the Rescue Game, in other words, whatever a Victim does must be interpreted as a cru of pain. Whatever the Persecuter does is treated as something that's intended to cause pain to the Victim and whatever Rescuer does, by definition, either expresses sympathy for the victim or inflicts well deserved punishment on the Persecuter . . .

In a well played Rescue Game, quite a bit of ingenuity can go into assigning every action it's proper meaning as a move.

The Rescue Game is based on Transactional Analysis. The pop psychology book "I'm OK You're OK" is based on Transactional Analysis. One of the popularized images that emerged from "I'm OK You're OK" was the description of two distinct personality types: Warm Fuzzy and Cold Prickly.

Check out the whole post at The Archdruid Report.