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How We Learned to Fill Our Lungs With Salt: A Game I'd Love to Play

 How We Learned to Fill Our Lungs With Salt is a two page game designed by Quinn B. Rodriguez. The main premise is simple: some kind of tragedy befell (at the very least) a group of people, if not the world. You are the remaining group, or at least a surviving group, and are beholden to the water that has come in its wake. Everyone goes around the table and states an expectation and something they are not comfortable talking about. The game (and I) recommend safety tools for how to navigate this game.

Character creation is simple: you decide your name and pronouns, then determine what you lost to the water when it came and pass that along privately to your hydromancer (or your GM). The job of the hydromancer is to make sure that the players do not forget what they lost to the water.

The cycle of play is also simple. You start having been on the water for three days; the hydromancer picks a player to wake up first and asks them to remember what they've lost, holding space while they think about it before waking up the next player and repeating the process. Once all the players are awake, they may check in with one another and talk and get to know each other. At any point the hydromancer can ask them to remember what they lost, and they may share the memory or sit in silence for a full minute while they think about it.

You are meant to hold space for any player that chooses to share, and allow them to feel whatever emotions come with remembering. The game asks how you manage to keep yourselves occupied on the open water, and eventually, whether or not you dream as you drift to sleep. Once you describe these things, you wake up on day four and repeat the process. You play for as many days as everyone at the table can take it, before finally concluding the game, likely succumbing to the water yourself, or to finally getting rescued.

The game implicitly promises some level of sadness and grief. I think the game works well within a structured world, or as you play closer to real world experiences. With the right players and GM, the game would be compelling regardless, so long as everyone buys into the keyfabe of it and takes it as seriously as it begs to be taken.

My ideal version of this game is with everyone having handed over their memories before everyone climbs into a pool and floats together and goes around discussing each memory and how they pass the time. If the game gets too heavy, people can stand up and take a moment to breathe before going back to floating. If I every manage to run or play in the game, I will definitely update y'all with how it went.

If you want a more "liveblog" experience, you can follow me over on Bluesky where I will be posting more often about my TTRPG experiences while on hiatus from actually streaming.

Thank you for reading!

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