Linear narrative experiences in tabletop are hit and miss for me. Even though Dwelling is exceptionally well-crafted in its narrative design, beyond the character crafting and granular worldbuilding in the character's head, there isn't a lot to the choice space. I went through 65+ pages of the book and didn't feel like what happened was particularly meaningful beyond scaffolding a new character for a new story.
What Dwells in the Heart is More Interesting Than What Dwells in the Home
Dwelling uses a particularly elegant system of three verbs: summon/conjure (discover new spectres in the home), remember (write about a memory), and mark (using a washable marker or simulated in a notebook). None of this has to be in a separate notebook or journal. In fact, Dwelling encourages players to treat the book as a "legacy" style gameplay experience where you write and draw directly inside of it.
(I... can't do that. Writing in books is blasphemous... for me.)
What I determined is that the actual game itself, where I was supposed to be scared and freaked out by ghosts, isn't particularly good at evoking the feelings that it set out to do.
Whatever I was encountering in the house wasn't as interesting as what I was encountering in the memories that I was surfacing for my character, Genevieve. Her background became so rich and deep with trauma and death and pain that what scared her was more about what was in the past rather than what was in the present. (Even though the book was telling me different.)
Why Do We Dwell at All?
I found myself asking this question fairly frequently throughout my playthrough: why am I here? The only thing that kept pulling me ahead was, well, this project. Beyond that, it was very difficult to keep myself moving towards the end of the story. It just... didn't grab me in the same way that All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl did.
There are a ton of great ideas here and the safety tools that Dwelling provides is beyond anything I've ever seen in a solo RPG, but the lack of a choice space is what turned me off of the rest of the experience. I want what I make to be what I authored, guided by the constraints of the game, rather than just existing in someone else's story.
I'll be passing this off to a new player who might have more fun with it than I did.
On paper, I'm the perfect audience for this game. In actuality, it just wasn't for me.
Onwards.
Amanda Farough
Amanda Farough