A Review of Under the Autumn Strangely

“Here and there, gone in the hazy echoes of antiquity, sits a land scarcely glimpsed— an uncanny interland named the Never Was, in which unremembered whispers are shown to passengers lost through the wilds beyond…”

An Overview

Under the Autumn Strangely by Graham Gentz is a GMless storytelling game of pastoral horror, full of anachronistic Americana, in a land that Never Was. Players take on one of three roles to facilitate a story together. The gameplay consists of chapters that don’t necessarily need to follow the natural flow of time. Within these chapters players use the guidelines of their role and the minimal yet impactful supporting mechanics to help them create and navigate this world within the autumn strange. There is also a looming horror that grows over time creating a sense of exquisite urgency and emphasizing the core of the game: the push and pull of the three roles.

The roles are The Traveler, The Arcadian, and The Terror. The Traveler is a regular person who begins the game having just stumbled into the Never Was, confused and curious. They have only few questions to answer about their identity, since it’s all they arrive with. The player answers those questions and they’re ready to begin. In game, The Traveler can describe the world around them, but are limited to their own perspective. They are closest to a traditional player character. The Arcadian plays the world, describes and acts as NPCs, and often pushes the story forward when things start to stagnate. They must answer only two prompts. One asks for an autumnal pastoral image such as harvest festivals, dusty roads, or red barns, and the other asks for a surreal agrarian image such as giant vegetables, talking animals, and trees blooming anatomical hearts. These prompts guide their storytelling and help them establish a theme for the surreal world. The Arcadian can describe anything and their perspective is limitless. They are closest to a traditional Storyteller. The Terror lurks unseen gaining narrative power over time. They need only write a single theme to guide their narration; examples include blood, breath, reflection, and memory, but the book provides more. The Terror can narrate any aspect of the world, but must do so from the perspective of an unseen observer. If the Terror has a form, it isn’t revealed until later in the game. Under the Autumn Strangely is a game for 3-6 players with the roles being divided relatively evenly ensuring each is represented by at least one player. If players double up on a role, they answer their prompts individually but are encouraged to conspire.

The game is played in chapters. There are three kinds of chapters, each belonging to one of the roles, giving them a bit more power and narrative control. A chapter can contain any number of scenes and is comprised of the collective narration of the three roles. A chapter starts with a song being played off the official game soundtrack, allowing the players to take inspiration from the tone and energy of the song. After that, the role who the chapter belongs to comes up with a question that they wish to see answered this chapter. The book doesn’t include listed examples but some questions from the game I ran include: “Who’s in charge here?” “What did we forget?” and “How do we get home?”. The role who owns the chapter provides opening narration to set the scene and ends their narration with their decided question. Then the chapter begins.

Under the Autumn Strangely’s only mechanic is called confirmations and contradictions and is represented by change tokens. The three roles have a symbiotic relationship with one another. Each able to confirm and contradict one other role. Confirming comes in the form of a “yes, and…” statement to augment and build upon that role’s narrative choice. Contradictions come in the form of a “no, but…” statement to retract or change that role’s narrative choice. Contradictions can only occur if the sufferer is given a change token by the offending player. The number of change tokens for each role is determined by the chapter, with more tokens often going to the chapter’s owner giving them more power to control the narrative. Beyond this single mechanic, the game relies on communal storytelling with players building on each other’s ideas based on their prompts and individual role perspectives.

My Thoughts

Under the Autumn Strangely is designed to tell a story about a regular person wandering into a strange and scary place. I think it mostly succeeds in the game design. Breaking down the traditional Storyteller-Player structure to rebuild something familiar but not quite is a strong move for a game like this. It forces players to actively engage with their role more intentionally rather than falling into usual patterns of a storyteller describing something, then a player reacting ad infinitum. This adjustment in structure can be a huge challenge for newer players especially, but it could also be a welcome one, like roleplay yoga. I also love the creativity of the mechanical contradictions. “No, but…” is typically so strongly discouraged in roleplaying, but I think the game wields it well. Limiting the uses with tokens so it won’t be overused, the effect is nobody can fully trust their perception in the land of Never Was. Something is there one moment and gone the next, redacted and paid for. It’s the type of disorientation I can get behind.

The game does have some weaknesses, namely layout. Despite it being only 37 pages long, the book was surprisingly hard to parse. It starts with an introduction and discussion of safety before diving into a nearly twelve page example of play that describes invented players moving through setup, to character creation, to gameplay before ever formally introducing setup, character creation, and gameplay. This extended example section ends with an entire spread devoted to showing confirmation and contradiction layout between roles before the mechanic or the roles are ever introduced. Then the roles are introduced, but following there is a (somehow shorter) detailed description of the three roles which creates two distinct sets of sections titled with the role’s name that each have different pieces of necessary information. After all of this we reach the section about setup. Things don’t improve as it covers gameplay in a rather convoluted way with additional gameplay examples beyond the initial twelve pages interspersed throughout, sometimes in little formatted boxes and sometimes in the main text. In fact, the formatted boxes are used for a number of purposes and it’s unclear what they represent. The book ends with a quick reference summary page that appears only after a full blank spread with artwork of a skeleton that looks as confused as I felt and just the words “Embrace Serendipity”. I’m normally a bit more forgiving on my criticisms, but I ran this game for the first time yesterday (at the time of writing this), and I was getting frustrated to the point of wanting to tear pages out of my book and reorder them.

I have nothing against the content, it’s a really good game, but proper formatting will make this game great. It just needs a little reorganizing.

Any GMless storytelling game needs the proper group as well. This game needs eager storytellers who aren’t afraid to make bold choices, ideally seasoned players with some storytelling experience. A group who has played together before helps too, the mechanics require a lot of trust and having existing friendship experience will help players settle into a rhythm quicker.

I do wish to end this review with an extra bit of positivity. The artwork is amazing! It’s the perfect vintage, cozy, haunted vibe, and it delights me. It’s cohesive with the right amount of surreal nonsense. The soundtrack, a bespoke spotify playlist created by the author is also utterly inspiring. The book contains a QR Code link, but you could also just click here to immerse yourself in vintage autumnal heaven. I listen to this soundtrack while I work and it’s improved the vibes of my office immeasurably. With a more cohesive layout, this game could be a work of art. 🍁

Download the game here or purchase it at your friendly local game store.