Deep Love (2019)

Publisher's blurb:

The Pitch

You’ve come to this paradise to drop a two-and-a-half ton iron ball off the side of a ship and lower it almost a kilometer into the abyss. You’ve come to crawl inside that iron ball and go down with it, to see what there is to see down there.

You’ve come with three other brilliant adventurers, friends, and lovers, and you’ll all get a chance to descend and risk your lives in exchange for seeing things no human being has ever seen.

And maybe, in the inky darkness and cold silence, you’ll find a measure of happiness and fulfillment.

Deep Love

Deep Love is a feel-good game about the complexity of love and sea monsters. You play real people doing real stuff, exploring the deep ocean off Bermuda in the thirties. You get to see things no one has ever seen before, and you do it in awkward pairs in a sweaty bathysphere as part of an odd love quadrangle.

All based on a true story.

You need four players, two hours, and two play spaces. One represents the deck of the Ready and only needs a place to draw and keep notes. The other represents the bathysphere and should be cramped, dark, and claustrophobic. A closet will work, or a bathroom tub. These spaces need not be adjacent and, in fact, are better if separated.

Deep Love is built around two modular parts, and can be played in three ways. If you enjoy the creative, arts and crafts aspect of going on deep ocean dives, describing wonderful creatures, and illustrating them, you can omit the characters and their drama entirely. If you enjoy the dramatic arcs of the characters but don’t have any interest in the minutia of deep ocean diving or sketching sea creatures, you can just roleplay and omit the arts and crafts stuff entirely. You can combine both parts into one exciting, crafty game full of pathos and love.