#i feel a lot happier writing now that im happy with those establishing scenes

[f-imaginings]

I have finally FINALLY got up to the dream scene at the start of the last mabelcorn in kmky and everything is flowing nicely finally, and the scenes and characterisation all are smooth and make sense and I am no longer going over the same establishing scenes like a pedant trying to make them perfect. SUCCESS!

Just have to knock out these next few bits then it's onto unicorn beatdowns, funny hats, pizza parties and loophole heists!

[savevsfacemelt]

The Armitage Files - Signal to Noise (part 5)

Our Lovecraftian saga continues - well, semi-Lovecraftian, anyway. It involves emotions, people of colour and women with agency, so you know ol’ HPL would be puking blood right about now.

On the other hand, it has dimensional shamblers and murder cults, so we can still find some common ground with Howard the Hater. I guess.

Okay, enough self-congratulatory wokeness - on with the story. Session write-up in the usual place; GM notes about the scary signal below the photo of, um, the scary signal.

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One of the things I’m enjoying most about running this campaign is how organic things feel. Each mystery starts with something contrived - the mysterious pages of clues - but from that point, each thing feels like it leads naturally into the next. Part of that is the system; like any PtbA game, tremulus pushes GMs to anchor their moves and reactions in the established fiction. And part of it is the group, as my players enjoy building on what’s come already. This session, Amelia’s player couldn’t make it (traitor was off playing in someone else’s game but oh no I’m not bitter), so the other players made that absence part of the story rather than something to be worked around. Now we have a whole new raising of the stakes - not just a PC in danger, but the possibility that a PC may be contributing to the danger. I didn’t expect that, but it feels natural and I love it.

Another thing that felt natural was the emotional flow of the session. A lot of NPC interactions to date have been pretty dry, focusing on plot and backstory. But the scenes with Madame Claudia were more about her as a person - what she’d endured, how she’d survived and what brought her back to Arkham. Rather than rush these, we just worked our way through them honestly, and the end result was scenes I found personally pretty moving - not least because I was the one coming up with all of Claudia’s emotional responses. I don’t think these scenes will become the norm - there’s still so much info and plot to work through in order to save the world - but it made for a strong, engaging session, and I’d be happy for a few similar scenes with other key NPCs before the end.

A new complication appeared this session, with the head of the Sanatorium revealed as a cultist. That wasn’t my idea - that came from Erin’s player, during the brief period where she was also playing the evil consciousness that took over her (original) body. We’re in this slightly weird space right now; we not only have two Erins on the scene, but the player knows behind-the-scene truths that she can’t express in or out of character. That gives me even more reason to get those truths out in the open for all to see - and there’s still the chance that she’ll have to play two characters and co-GM a little before the end of the arc. That takes some control away from me, and honestly I couldn’t be happier. GMing is a blast when it surprises you.

After some soul-searching, I’ve decided not to push the pace on this arc, or the game in general. I don’t see it going for more than one more storyline, sure, but I’ll let things unfold at their own speed. That means a delay in starting my next campaign - an over-the-top 13th Age game called Big Dungeon Energy - but this game deserves its full turn in the spotlight. 

The dungeons will still be there, long after the signal has gone quiet again.