Rules

note

You are not here by mistake.

You recently became residents of a specialised asylum. Your loved ones, your family or society recognised the signs of Unmind syndrome. You accepted your placement because you believe — or believed when you arrived — that this place could help you.

Premise

Unmind is a short, closed and demanding Resonance game for one GM and 2 to 4 players, with 3 players as the target configuration.

Unmind syndrome progressively unravels the mind. When a deeply constitutive truth is used to interpret the world, it may detach permanently and reveal what it had still been holding back.

Treatment administered in the asylum can slow this unraveling. It does not necessarily cure it. Its immediate price is silence.

Speaking lets you exist, act and reveal yourself, but consumes the character. Silence preserves the character for a moment, but leaves them exposed to the truths of others and to the influence of the closed world.

The game ends when a character has lost everything they could still reveal and is entirely enclosed within their Inner World.

Unmind syndrome

The syndrome is an entirely fictional condition.

It establishes four truths of play:

1. the unraveling is real;
2. using certain personal truths can make them disappear;
3. every loss exposes a new depth;
4. treatment can slow the descent by temporarily preventing that use.

The syndrome explains why fragments are lost. It never explains why a person watches, serves, pleases, fades, orders or resists. It determines neither their history, nor their worth, nor the meaning of their Inner World.

The illness is shared. What it reveals is singular.

The content of an Inner World is not automatically false. The game establishes the reality of the syndrome and the unraveling, but leaves the objective truth of perceptions, memories and private cosmologies undecidable.

The asylum

The asylum is both refuge and closed place.

The characters accepted being placed there. Their loved ones may sincerely care about them. The staff may genuinely want to help. Treatment may have a real effect.

That does not make the institution innocent:

• accepting admission does not mean consenting to every later decision;
• protection can become prevention from acting;
• slowing the illness can mean reducing a person's voice;
• care can become coercive without ceasing to be motivated by sincere intent;
• the institution can confuse a person with their file or with the protocol meant to save them.

The GM should not decide by default that the asylum is secretly malicious. Its most interesting violence grows from the tension between helping, preserving, listening and controlling.

Precautions and safety

Unmind deals in particular with:

• psychiatric confinement;
• psychological unraveling and loss of bearings;
• medication and therapeutic coercion;
• isolation;
• private or delusional perceptions;
• guilt, abandonment and grief;
• the progressive loss of the possibility of being reached.

Unmind syndrome represents no real condition. The way treatment functions in the game makes no claim about real psychiatric medication.

Before play:

• establish the group's lines and veils;
• choose an immediate interruption tool;
• remind everyone that anyone may suspend or leave a scene without justification;
• never ask a player to draw on personal experience;
• distinguish a safety interruption from silence chosen in the fiction;
• plan a debrief that explicitly exits the fiction.

Pill token

Use only a non-ingestible token shaped like a pill or capsule. Never use real medication or anything intended to be swallowed.

Materials

• The six Booklets.
• A hidden booklet or personal screen for each player.
• Two stacks of five fragments per player.
• Five shared colours, one for each depth.
• One pill token per player.
• Something with which to rewrite fragments in secret.
• A central place for the Traces.

The five depths always use the same colours at the table:

Depth	Function
Mask	What lets others live with me.
Protection	What I learned to do so that certain things can no longer reach me.
Attachment	What or whom I still care about.
Wound	What a part of me has organised itself around.
Inner World	The private reality that now gives meaning to what happens.

The exact colours are free, but their correspondence must be the same for every player.

The character

Choose a booklet

Each player chooses a different booklet:

• Watch;
• Serve;
• Please;
• Fade;
• Order;
• Resist.

The booklet names a human gesture through which the character is still trying to live with others. That gesture can protect, connect or save. It can also become the only way left for them to answer the world.

The chosen booklet remains secret, including its title.

Build two threads

Each player creates two personal threads.

For each thread, choose:

1. one Mask;
2. one Protection;
3. one Attachment;
4. one Wound;
5. one Inner World.

The same fragment offered by the booklet cannot be chosen twice.

A player may secretly connect two neighbouring depths with because, but or therefore. These links give a thread intimate coherence without imposing a compulsory psychological explanation.

Form the stacks

Each thread becomes a stack of five fragments:

1. Mask on top;
2. Protection;
3. Attachment;
4. Wound;
5. Inner World at the bottom.

Both stacks and their contents remain hidden. Only their owner knows the two fragments currently exposed.

Vocabulary

• Weave — the character as a whole.
• Thread — a sequence Mask → Protection → Attachment → Wound → Inner World.
• Depth — a fragment's position on a thread.
• Exposed fragment — the fragment currently on top of a thread.
• Play / lay down — reveal and interpret a fragment, then lose it.
• Integrate — let a fragment played by someone else transform one of your own exposed fragments.
• Traces — played fragments that the place, other people and the institution may cause to return.
• Unminding — the process of loss, revelation and descent caused by the syndrome.
• Loss — the moment both threads are empty and the character can no longer be reached through play.

The character's truth

A player may freely establish:

• what their character does;
• what they say;
• what they feel;
• what they remember;
• what they perceive;
• what they believe they understand.

Any claim about the external world is true as the character's speech, memory, perception or certainty. It never automatically establishes an objective fact.

If Jeanne says, “Transfers always happen before seven,” the fiction establishes that she says it and may be convinced of it. It does not establish that transfers objectively always occur before seven.

Directly observable actions normally happen: if Jeanne moves a chair, she moves that chair.

The GM decides what the external world confirms, contradicts or leaves ambiguous. The GM is never required to decide the truth of an Inner World.

The GM's role

The GM:

• announces the premise and Unmind syndrome;
• reminds everyone that the characters recently accepted their placement;
• presents ordinary but charged situations;
• plays staff, other residents, loved ones and the external world;
• describes visible consequences of actions;
• does not turn situations into tests;
• never diagnoses the characters beyond the shared fictional syndrome;
• does not make staff monsters by default;
• maintains ambiguity when it feeds play;
• shows how care, fear and control can become inseparable.

Example situations: a new resident arrives, an empty place at dinner, a first family visit, a room change, a missing object, a crisis in the corridor, a proposed outing, a change of treatment, news of a transfer, or another patient's deterioration.

Running a situation

1. Present the situation

The GM describes what is happening, then asks:

“What do you do?”

2. The Dose

Each player secretly decides whether their character takes the treatment or keeps it.

Everyone opens their right hand at the same time:

• the pill is visible — the character did not take it; they will express themselves;
• the hand is empty — the character took it; they remain silent.

A pill that was taken is placed or hidden behind the booklet. It is never brought to the mouth.

The choice is irreversible for that situation.

The Dose condenses the effect of treatment over the period represented by the situation. It does not claim to reproduce real pharmacology.

3. Play a fragment

Each player who showed their pill chooses one of their two exposed fragments.

They:

1. reveal its text and colour;
2. briefly interpret the situation through that fragment using speech, gestures or short narration;
3. place the fragment in the centre;
4. secretly reveal the next fragment on that thread.

The played fragment no longer belongs to the character. It enabled action, but using it detached it from the Weave.

If several players act, they intervene freely. If anyone hesitates, follow table order.

A player who showed an empty hand plays no fragment and does not intervene as their character during this situation.

4. Integrate a fragment

After everyone who speaks has done so, each silent player may integrate at most one fragment played by someone else.

To integrate:

1. choose a played fragment whose colour matches one of your own exposed fragments;
2. choose that exposed fragment of the same colour;
3. secretly rewrite it so that it retains something from both formulations;
4. keep its colour, depth and belonging to your own booklet.

The transformed fragment stays on top of the same thread. The player does not reveal the next depth.

The transformation is subject to no vote or arbitration. The integrating player is its author.

The same played fragment may be integrated by several silent players. A player can never integrate their own fragment.

Integration remains secret. The group discovers the contamination only if the transformed fragment is played later.

Integration is not an automatic medical effect of treatment. It represents how, in a closed world, silence, repetition and exposure to the same voices can let another person's words enter one's own Weave.

Example

Gabriel plays a Mask:

“I know the name of everyone who comes through this door.”

Jeanne stayed silent. Her exposed Mask is:

“I know the schedules better than the staff.”

Jeanne may secretly transform it into:

“I know what time each name is supposed to cross this doorway.”

The new fragment remains an Order Mask.

5. The Traces

At the end of the situation, every fragment placed in the centre joins the Traces face down.

• An integrated fragment survives through the fragments it transformed.
• A fragment no one integrated may still remain in the memory of the place or institution.

Players cannot inspect the Traces.

They represent what the characters left in others, ward routines, moved objects, rumours or files that reduce and recombine their words.

Each player then retrieves their pill for the next situation.

Using the Traces

When the fiction calls for it, the GM may:

• follow a Trace — secretly reuse an old fragment to feed a situation;
• blur the Traces — confuse people, objects or memories;
• put a Trace in the file — turn intimate speech into an inevitably partial institutional observation;
• assign a Trace — bring back an action or statement as though it belonged to someone else.

Traces create no bonus, penalty or count. A lost truth simply becomes relevant in the world again without returning to its owner.

Special cases

• Everyone speaks — all chosen fragments are played; no one can integrate.
• Only one person speaks — several silent players may integrate the same fragment if their colour matches.
• Everyone is silent — no fragment is played or integrated; the situation ends in silence.
• No colour matches — the silent player cannot integrate anything.

The nurse did not come

If several situations end without anyone speaking, the GM may announce:

The nurse who was supposed to give you your medication did not come.

For this situation only:

• pill tokens are not distributed;
• there is no Dose;
• every player must play an exposed fragment;
• no one can integrate.

The absence of treatment breaks the cycle of silence while accelerating every character's Unminding.

End of the game

warning

The end is triggered when the same player has played the Inner World fragment from both of their threads.

An Inner World transformed by Integration remains the Inner World of its thread and counts when played.

Sinking

A player can bring the end closer by frequently refusing treatment and moving quickly through both threads.

That choice has a price:

• it consumes every mediation the character still has;
• because the character speaks, the player gives up opportunities to integrate others;
• the player chooses to exist and reveal themselves now rather than slow the descent.

When the second Inner World is played, both threads are empty. There is no exposed fragment left through which other people, treatment or the institution could still reach the character. They are entirely lost in their Inner World.

Finish the situation

The situation in which a second Inner World is played ends normally:

1. other players who chose to speak play their fragment;
2. silent players may integrate;
3. fragments join the Traces.

Any character who played their second Inner World then closes their booklet, removes their pill and no longer plays.

The Loss

The GM announces:

“We lost the character.”

Every player whose character is not lost plays one final reaction:

1. choose any fragment still present in either thread;
2. reveal it and interpret the Loss through it;
3. place it among the Traces.

There is no Dose. Normal depth order is suspended. These reactions cannot be integrated.

If all characters are lost during the same situation, there is no final reaction.

The game then ends.

Situation summary

Step	Operation
Situation	The GM describes what happens, then asks what the characters do.
Dose	Everyone opens their right hand simultaneously.
Pill visible	Speak, play an exposed fragment, lose it and expose the next one.
Empty hand	Stay silent; after everyone has spoken, you may integrate at most one compatible fragment.
Integration	Secretly rewrite an exposed fragment of matching depth/colour using another player's words.
Traces	All played fragments join the Traces face down; everyone retrieves their pill.