af Gitte Velling
What does it take for the victim of bullying to become a bully themselves? Four teenagers go through a year marked by bullying. They drag each other down into the darkness but are also finding moments of light together.
Participants: 4
Game Facilitators: 1
Total time: 4 hours
Language: Danish/English
Age limit: 15+
How much to read: 1 page
Martin, Nicklas, Camilla and Anne are in 8th–10th grade at a provincial public school in the 2000s. They are all victims of constant, ever-present bullying, each in their own way pushed to the margins of the school’s social world. What they share is access to a back room in the school library. It’s a space that can be locked from the inside. Here, they have a refuge without adult supervision, a place where they can be alone together. A place for honesty, intimacy and friendship, but also for bullying and boundary-crossing behaviour among them.
Alone Together is an intense feel-bad experience for the immersion role-player, combining classic real-time roleplay, emotional reflection and explicit scenes.
Everyday teenage problems turn into conflicts and triggers for reproducing bullying, because the teenagers are both each other’s only support and each other’s raw, exposed nerves. Their relationships with one another are central to the bullying they experience, and over the course of the scenario they place the blame for their loneliness, self-loathing, violence and vulnerability on each other.
- Bullying
- Teenage Emotions
- Immersion
Content notes
Bullying is central to the game, and derogatory language will be used about women, sexual minorities, and people with disabilities. All players will encounter all of the game’s bullying themes: appearance, disability, sexuality, and isolation, either as victims or as bullies. The sexual violence does not need to be “worse” than an unbuttoned bra or an uncomfortable hand in the wrong place. The violence is unpleasant. There are also absent parents, substance abuse, and a romantic relationship between a 17-year-old and a 14-year-old.
Type of participant:
You enjoy social realism, big teenage emotions, and immersing yourself in the pain, the loneliness, and the small moments of light. But you must also describe and portray the worst aspects of the bullying together with your fellow players.
Type of game facilitator:
You enjoy facilitating a safe space for the players to explore the darker sides of their characters. You want to create an intense atmosphere of powerlessness that pushes both characters and players to react. There are no supporting characters. Instead, your role as game master is to frame and cut scenes and to interview the characters using predefined questions.
