An edited version of our recorded session can be found by clicking here.
Our Last Best Hope is a curious mix of a role-playing game and a resource-management strategy game. Moreover, in its default incarnation, it is designed to be played on a large table with 30+ 3x5 cards and sets of white and black dice which you use to keep track of relationships, assets, threats, story points, and other vital stockpiles. Since we were playing the game virtually, I spent a couple hours in advance of our session building these elements on a Google Drawing file. That set-up worked remarkably well, but if you try it, build the cards in advance! I did so, and it facilitated a quick entry into game play. Had I started with a blank Google Drawing, it would have been a laborious start for the group.
The opening of the session involves choosing character types, building connections with other characters, establishing secrets and fears, and developing the setting. I have deleted this section in the video. So, after introductions to the game and to the players, you will see us move right into game play.
Our Last Best Hope alternates between spotlight scenes, which are driven by role-playing, and threats, where you work to build up dice pools in order to win against the game. The mechanics reward your role-playing: You earn story points by incorporating character relationships, painful secrets, and guarded fears into the scenes. For example, on a card, you write down the name of another character who drives your character crazy. If, during a scene, you are able to demonstrate that relationship quality, you can turn in the card for two story points.
Afterward, when dealing with a threat, you can spend story points in order to activate assets or engage the situation. These types of proactive measures earn your group added dice to roll, which increases your odds of dealing with the threat.
The game is set up to make the situation more dire as it progresses. Threats continue to appear, and they become more difficult to overcome in Act 2. Eventually, some of the heroes will have to make the ultimate sacrifice. When a character dies, the remaining members of the group receive a significant boost which makes it more likely that the core mission will be accomplished.
We found the game stimulating, and if you move to the end of the recording, you will catch some of our initial reactions in the debrief. The idea of sacrifice is at the core of the game, and the mechanics are set up to incentivize the players to consider taking one for the team as they zero in on their goal. The game also incentives role-playing in the opening scenes: You are looking at opportunities to play your story cards as you interact with the other characters. The threat resolution system is suitably strategic and dramatic.
We encountered problems with the time estimate. The book suggests 2-3 hours for game play, and even with the virtual table and cards set up in advance, we only made it about ⅔ of the way through the opening act in our committed 3-hour session . Part of this was a result of the way we leaned into the role-playing, but we also were quite efficient at working through the opening threats. If I had to play the game again, I would plan for two 3-hour sessions.
We ran into a similar time problem with Ben Robbins' Follow. In both cases, there may be a fundamental design problem at issue. On the one hand, there is something very appealing about a one-shot game which can be pulled out and played in a short session with minimal preparation. At the same time, the designer wants to deliver an experience that has a level of richness and complexity. These two goals, however, start to work at cross purposes. I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that there are games which should be considered two-shots or three-shots. I realize that billing them as such would not work from a marketing perspective. In my experience, games that most comfortably fit the one-shot mold—The Quiet Year, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Microscope—are ones that do not require a high degree of individual character engagement or relationship mapping.
Our Last Best Hope is game with many moving parts. It is smartly designed, but you have to be on top of the game to remember and keep track of all the rules and triggering effects. As an experience, it has much to offer both in terms of its interwoven mechanics and in terms of its core messaging. But this is a game that would require careful thought and planning if you were inclined to bring it into the classroom.
What especially intrigues me about Our Last Best Hope is that it gives the group a fighting chance for success but only if individual members can find it in themselves to sacrifice their characters. There is actually a death card that you play when your character meets their demise.
Our Last Best Hope is built on the idea of tragedy in its profound, classical sense. I can’t think of another contemporary rpg that is so perfectly designed to deliver the experience of heroic sacrifice to its players. That factor alone makes me as an educator interested in bringing it in front of my students. They often have difficulty seeing how a character like Oedipus is heroic, and are inclined to favor the more shallow triumphant victories of characters like Odysseus. A game like Our Last Best Hope might help to open their eyes to the emotional human core that resides in the tragic heroes—people who give of themselves so that others may flourish. It says something about the selfishness and shallowness of our culture that we don’t encounter those tragic models more often.
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