A Loud Noise in a Quiet Place

A Loud Noise in a Quiet Place is a tabletop story game inspired by games about the lived experiences of real people, like Hannah Schaffer's 14 Days, and by games for small groups, like Shawn Tomkin's Ironsworn.

Temporary hearing loss changes how you perceive the world around you in profound ways, because we rely on the subtle balance of our senses. The sudden shift in this balance is a powerful source of introspective drama: the condition is always inconvenient, usually difficult, and sometimes painful. This is true both for me and the people around me.

Through short scenes, they play out seven days in the life and relationships of their character, with each vignette culminating in a defining sound, heard or misheard, and a single die roll which resolves the scene.

The other player takes up the mantle of these heard or misheard sounds, but throughout the main part of the game, they avoid speaking. Instead, they listen carefully, responding to the other player's narrative by setting the difficulty of the dice roll.

The consequences of failure or success are immediate and lasting, showing the randomness and difficulty of adjusting to a radically different sensory experience of the world.