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Sonder • 2017 rpg

Will Patterson • no link 

Go on a walk with some fellow players to a crowded place. Take photos of your group and the surroundings and then gather around a table.

Each player chooses a person from one of their photos (your “Stranger”).  Take turns inventing details about your Stranger, one detail at a time, such as:

Name
Favors
Partners
Children
Hometown
Kindest act
Favorite movie
Medical condition
Dream occupation
Losses and heartaches
Relationship with another Stranger
What they wanted to be when they grew up
Friend they’ve had a falling out with
Proudest achievement
Current occupation
Last vacation spot
Favorite book
Cruelest act
Aspirations
Hobbies
Siblings
Debts
Age

Anything else you can imagine.

When you are all satisfied, show everyone the photo of your Stranger.

Take a moment to talk about how each of you is but a Stranger to the hundreds of people you interact with or pass by each day.

Each person you see has a life and dreams as rich and vibrant as your own. How does this make you feel? Do you know these kinds of details about the other players? If not, are they just Strangers too? Share details about yourselves.

Author Comments

This game was inspired by a reddit post about this:

SONDER: The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

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