Review of A Single Moment

A Single Moment by Tobie Abad is a two-player, GM-less roleplaying game. The game starts at the end, where two opponents hung frozen in the breathless moment before they begin a duel to the death.

The rest of the game is then played primarily through a series of flashbacks, with players taking turns leading each other through poignant scenes. The players weave a story together, awarding each other Choice Tokens that help decide who the outcome of a given scene will favor. These add up, eventually turning into each player earning Edges, Hatred, and Scars that will determine who emerges victorious in the final battle. And at what cost. And the whole game only runs a couple of hours.

The short version? We absolutely loved this game and can’t wait to play more!

What excited us most about this game?

Intense Storytelling

I’m personally someone who gets emotionally involved with the roleplaying characters I play. I live for moments that leave my heart pounding or me gritting my teeth in anger. Usually, though, building that sort of intensity take many sessions of getting to know a character and creating emotional tension.

In our first time playing this game, with a character I didn’t even know until after the game started, I was in tears at the end.

That emotional intensity is a testament to the game. The rules are designed to allow the players to play flashback scenes that are incredibly poignant and deeply meaningful. The use of the different types of cards encouraged us to find scenes of high tension and drama that focused on important characters such as a Victim or a Coveted person. These cards provided us with inspiration, but by their very nature are concepts that carry a lot of emotional weight and so lend themselves to building out a deeply meaningful story.

A Single Moment is a system designed to bring out the best combination of collective storytelling with roleplaying.

GM-Less Play

For two players who’ve largely only played in GM-driven games, this was a fun experience in sharing that responsibility. We both got to be player characters and help drive the narrative when it was our turn to take the lead.

What one feature really stood out that made this system unique?

Cooperative-Competitive Feel

We generally don’t allow competitive games in my house, primarily because I’m incredibly competitive and hate losing. A Single Moment has a competitive element to it. Through good roleplaying, you can build up a dice pool that can help you “succeed” in individual scenes and in the final showdown (no guarantees, though—I “lost” despite having way more dice available to me!). There is an inherent tension as you begin the game knowing one of our characters is going to be badly or mortally wounded at the end. That competitive play is a fun edge throughout the scenes.

And yet, because of the game’s strong focus on storytelling, there is no losing or winning. You are playing through a story together, collaborating in that telling, and in the end, regardless of how it turns out, it has the potential to have been a great and moving story. For instance, as I noted my character was, despite being the better fighter (as established narratively) and having a better dice pool, killed in the final battle. As she lay dying in the arms of the friend who had just landed the killing blow, he made a promise to raise her sister’s child, though that child was the daughter of his mortal enemy. I “lost,” but the story won. And had that blow gone the other way…the ending would have been no less of a tear-jerker.

What challenged us about this game?

Getting Started

For two roleplayers who are both very Type A personalities and prone to doing expansive worldbuilding and character development in advance of games, the biggest challenge of this game was to start with nothing. Even coming up with a name, much less a concept, for your character happens as part of the game play. You build an entire setting, NPCs, and your PCs mid-narrative. If you’re not used to or comfortable with that much improv, it can be a bit of a hurdle to get into at first. The cards and prompts in the game do help, but be prepared from some long pauses and generally a slow start if that’s not something you’re used to.

Who would we recommend this game for?

Couples/Housemates/Etc.

If you happen to live with someone who shares your passion for roleplaying, but find that the adult world of scheduling with your friends can be a nightmare, A Single Moment can be an excellent way to get your gaming fix with someone who’s already on hand. The fact that it doesn’t require prep and only takes a couple hours to play makes it a great option for an evening in.

Worldbuilders

After playing the game, we realized that this game could have some amazing potential as a worldbuilding prompt. In particular, we think this has real potential as a way to build legends and myths in a world. It would eliminate the need to come up with a setting on the fly (if, like us, you find yourself challenged by creating entirely impromptu settings). You could just set the timeline to several hundred years before any campaigns in your world, then make up some characters and play the game. A few of those sessions over a series of times and locations, and now you have a whole host of highly emotional and evocative legends to add depth to your world.

Questions for the Author: Meet Tobie Abad

Our players for A Single Moment are both big planners, who love to do complex worldbuilding in advance. Doing it in the moment was a challenge (though a good kind of challenge). Do you have any tips on how to do scene-setting or worldbuilding on the fly?

I wrote some thoughts on this in the upcoming, A Second Moment (tentative title) which was supposed to be an expansion book with a few new content for the game. But here's a brief gist of it:

a) See your story as a story being told in a cinematic way. The "camera" is what you and your co-player have chosen to focus on. Those are the only things you need to think of as you improv in the scene. Until a certain factor is brought up in the narrative, it is okay to not focus on the details too much. The game is not meant to be a documentary simulation or an Oscar-worthy story. It just has to be a fun one you both feel great in telling together.

b) Set up seeds for each other. Let's say, you want to later have a scene where you were riding through the fields in an action-packed chase sequence. Then be sure to mention horses or the fields in earlier moments. They don't have to be the focus of the scene, but they can be elements you slip in as seeds for later. Maybe when the other character talks to you, you were there tending to your horse at that time. Or maybe when you meet up for a conversation, it happens at an area where you are overlooking the fields, which you can mention as a view you love to look at. Give each other details that they can hook onto and use to further the story.

c) Trust in each other to help bridge the gap if there are any parts unclear or undefined. You don't have to answer everything alone.

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m a game designer in the Philippines. Working also in the mobile development area. Been gaming since the late 90s and mostly keeps to myself, save for a thing my partner and I do called Baduy Pride where we livestream about stuff we love.

How did you get started in gaming?

Older schoolmates when I was young used to play D&D in the back of the bus. My first foray into gaming was them. It wasn't a "good" game, but it did open my mind to how this type of gaming can be super fun. And that was the start of a long love for tabletop rpgs.
I wrote it up here in an old blog:
http://garapata.blogspot.com/2003/12/since-two-people-asked-this-same-day.html

What inspired you to create this game?

A large part of what inspired A Single Moment was a friend, Urim, asking me if there was some way we could play even if it were just two of us - real life had its way of causing game cancellations with the group. Back when I first started writing the game I was not aware there already were two player games. So I decided to write one up. I large part of the inspiration was from an anime show, Rurouni Kenshin, which had a lot of flashbacks/cut aways in a fight sequence. And I realized those moments can be moments to explain why the fight happened.

What is your next big goal?

I think I just want to realize games. I'm admittedly keeping a lower profile now for personal reasons. I have an upcoming superspy supermodel game inspired by Zoolander and Nobody Lives Forever, a drawing rpg game inspired by Steven Universe, and a few more. I just like making gaming experiences and I hope more people find joy in them.

What's one fun fact people should know about you?

I'm terrible with name and faces. So it is not uncommon for me to need help recalling people I have met before.