#play report

[s-che]

a game where we hurt each other

Last month, I played perhaps the most intense TTRPG session of my life as part of the Dream Library’s discussion of Bluebeard’s Bride, a game of “feminist horror” (more on this later) published by Magpie in a gorgeous print edition. Over the course of the month of October my guest lecturer/collaborator @marvelousmsmolly I collectively hosted three sessions of what was by far the most challenging game the Dream Library has ever discussed. 

We came to Bluebeard as the second part of our fall semester covering games of intimacy and monstrosity — a unit which began in September with Avery Alder’s Monsterhearts 2 and is continuing this month with Vampire: The Masquerade (If you want to get in on the VTM discussion and future semesters, please, come join). Both Molly and I suspected that Bluebeard was going to be both a quieter month and a riskier text — but opted to play through it anyway, albeit with some tools in place to make sure everyone knew what they were getting into with a book that doesn’t pull many punches. And with all that, the first two sessions went... fine? We had some lumpy pacing, some conflicting styles of play, some questions about how a game that really seems to encourage player bleed can possibly be played online, but for the most part things were fine. Not great, not bad — not worth the anxiety we’d had about them.

And “fine,” of course, doesn’t make for interesting conversations, so Molly and I took a step back. We talked about what was going wrong: a sense that neither of us quite felt comfortable hitting hard enough, even though we asked players ahead of time and at the start of sessions to tell us what was off the table. A frustration that player choice had trended towards the Bride as a detective/hero and not someone embodied in a world of horror. A confusion — once again — over what it means to “shiver with terror” in a discord call with some friends online. Out of that conversation came a new idea: rather than two more one-shots, Molly took some time to charge up a spirit bomb and put together some more formal prep, then recruited a group she felt could get together for a more curated experience. She wrote up her own excellent thoughts on what went down — along with a lot of session details — but you’ll have to join the Dream Library for that. 

The result of all that curation and preparation was that on October 23rd a group of four trans women — Molly, @jdragsky, our friend Mars, and I — sat down to play Bluebeard’s Bride knowing exactly what we were in for. We would be playing a transfem Bride, Bluebeard would be cis, and we would be hitting transfem-specific horror as hard as we possibly could. 

I’m going to quote from Molly’s reflection, where she wrote:

“Another really great aspect of running this game for this table is there was such a clear feeling that we all understood, wordlessly, what was going on... There are some moments in Allison Rumfitt’s gothic horror novel ‘Tell Me I’m Worthless’ where it felt like the author, a trans woman, was dropping phrases knowing exactly how her transfem audience would react... This had a twofold effect of both giving the players a chilling moment but also, a very brief but appropriate separation between fiction and player where could all grimace and be together in that discomfort before pushing on. People knew what I was doing. The problem with the original game is it doesn’t really want to discuss the politics of what “feminine horror” means. Because of this you’re really lacking some focus. I think a table of cis women could actually play bluebeard’s bride in the way we did last night and have it hit hard for them if they approached it correctly, I don’t think our experience was uniquely elevated by our trans reading, however that was one of several tools we used for that elevation.”

Setting aside the strengths and weaknesses of the original text, that sense of shared experience was key to our game and key to allowing us to hit — and get hit — really hard and trust that our coplayers were there with us. Compared to our earlier efforts (prioritizing safety by taking things off the table via lines/veils) tightening the topical scope from an ambiguous “feminist horror” to a specific transfeminist horror in the context of a chaser bf, in the context of an economic disparity, in the context of the medical pressures of transition in the contemporary U.K. allowed Molly, our lovely host, to hurt us knowing that we were all in it together and choosing to play this game. It transformed the horror from an obstacle in an adventure game into a thing we were seeking out: a pleasure/pain we asked to feel. 

In a games discourse that is — understandably — interested in protections which might be implemented anywhere, including at cons and home tables with much less of an art-and-politics interest, safety tools are often thought about as a negative thing, a preemptive cutting away of all the things which might end up hurting us. I think that’s part of why people can have a hard time filling out a lines/veils list in advance of a session. What are all the things in the world I’m sensitive to? What are all the contexts in which I’m sensitive to them? Good sensitive or bad sensitive? Sensitive enough to cause a scene? Sensitive enough to make it off the table? 

In place of that — and in a table with a really remarkable amount of trust — this final Bluebeard session leaned in, hard, to the things that hurt us. That was the game. Molly wrote a lot about kink in her reflection, and I think she was right to do that. The point of the game was to hurt each other and to feel, and it was a better game for keeping that in mind. It was an actual horror game, and not just a game with horror aesthetics. I agree with Molly that there was nothing essential about having an all-transfem table — I think what we did could be done by anyone, even with the base Bluebeard’s Bride. What was essential was having a table where we all trusted each other enough to play a hurting game and to know that we were there on purpose. It elevated Bluebeard’s Bride into a really fascinating, messy experience — one I can’t wait to play again.

[christiansorrell]

Play Report: Tacticians of Ahm #2

Tonight, I ran the second session of an ongoing playtest of an upcoming starter Tacticians of Ahm adventure I'm hoping to get out in the February update (the game is itchfunding now). So, here's a play report (and here's a link to the first play report)!

After the chaos of the griffin attack on the Academy's field day, everyone went back inside the Academy walls for safety. Both griffins, including the one carrying Von Lopesbane, flew off to the northeast, after getting hit by enough attacks from the professors and student tacticians below to be thoroughly annoyed.

Inside the walls, the party saw a number of scouts coming in from the north, west, and eastern roads, all with the same news: sightings and reports of imperial soldiers (even several skyriders - the empress's griffin rider legion) attacking Ahmian citizens - all while proclaiming to be fighting back against the corrupt1on!

Groups of Tacticians and their advisors began to form parties to go out and address these various reports - after all what's a better final exam than the real thing? Professor Dana Turr, an elderly naga woman and the Senior Term headmaster, gave the group an option (since their advisor, Von Lopesbane, was missing): Find Von Lopesbane on their own and it will earn them a guaranteed early graduation and exemption from the remaining weeks of exercises. The other Tacticians on site at the Academy are spread too thin with more violent reports nearby, but she can't abandon Von Lopesbane and if the imperial army is involved, this could be serious enough to actually mean he's in serious risk.

The group agreed and were sent off to Quartermaster Bormos to get field equipment before heading out: 5 rations, a healing potion, and a piece of equipment (under 25g) of their choice. Both Tacticians took Leather Armor. Quablin bought both of them backpacks for the road.

The group headed out, into the region northeast of the academy in search of Von Lopesbane.

The party was somewhat familiar with this region from their time at the Academy. To the north was Four Families, a collection of four family farms all housed very close to one another - the road eerily quiet. To the east, the village of Dodona - smoke rising up from that direction in the distance. To the far north, ruins of an old war watchtower, formally abandoned for centuries.

Helios pushed for the group to head to Four Families and then east towards Dodona. The road was strangely quiet on the way (no random encounters were rolled).

They arrived at the farmhouses and found it, again, strangely quiet. They approached the nearest house and a halfling farmer whispered at them out of the shrubs - There are soldiers in the house! They attacked the other houses and his family only just made it out in time.

Helios approached the house and tried to convince the soldiers inside that she was a higher ranking officer, but the soldiers were assured in their mission, claiming Helios to likely be an agent of the corrupti0n. Frustrated, Helios kicked down the door and rushed in!

Over a 4 round fight, the Tacticians faced 1 Lietenant (EL2) and 2 Spearman (EL1). Through a clever use of Stupor to stun two of the enemies followed by a perfect backstab from Helios the group took the fight but both were just a strike away from falling. The gained 1 XP, 1 RP for their combo and leveled their Relationship to Level 1.

They questioned the defeated troops, you seemed out of sorts, babbling about corrupt1on, being far from home, and the vile nature of the White Walled City - almost as if the concepts of D4RKW3LL and Ahm were swapped in their mind.

Next time, the party travels onward!

[Design notes: We were testing some changes/expansions here to overland travel as it is currently written in the published rulebook. It's more of a node-based pointcrawl than a traditional hexcrawl (like the FF Tactics overworld map). The other thing I'm focusing on going forward in playtests in holding myself better to the digital nature of the world and highlighting those aspects (and providing guidance in the rulebook for GMs to know how to do the same).](edited)

Tacticians of Ahm is itchfunding now and it currently at it's lowest price (just $15 USD) with monthly updates coming from February to September of this year (and hopefully beyond)!

[thryth-gaming]

Apex vs Alpha and the Parental Units

I believe I've mentioned this game before on this blog, I know I've mentioned the RPG based on it, but just in case. Here's a summary.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a co-op/solo card game where you pit 3-5 superheroes against a particular villain deck.

Each character has their own themed deck with a different gimmick, as do major locations in the world setting. And decks are very well designed such that their deck very well represents their themes and narratives. Within the last 5 years a new edition of the game has streamlined mechanics, adjusted some decks that were a little clutzy in the past, and introduced some new characters.

In this case I decided I wanted to try out one of the new villains from the Rook City Renegades expansion: Apex.

Apex is a werewolf lord, a self-styled king, and he seeks to create a world where werewolves dominate the world and are free to hunt whoever they choose.

His deck focuses around getting werewolf followers into play who have high hit point totals. Typically follower cards have around 3 to 8 HP with some occasionally having as high as 14 or 15. It is rare to see follower HP totals higher than that. With an intergalactic battleship in one deck having around 25.

There are 6 sub-villains in Apex's deck, one of them has 13 HP (she's a vampire) the other 5 range between 21 and 25 HP. And they suffer less damage from enemies that have less hit points than they do. Most of his cards summon werewolves from his deck, empower his werewolves, or give him or other werewolves attacks.

As villains go, Apex's HP is on the low side, only Baron Blade shows at less max Health at 40, and that's deceptive since when you get Blade to 0 the first time, his card flips and he gains 30 more HP. But Apex also has a lot of healing cards in his deck and if he can keep his health above the heroes, is harder to damage.

That said, HP in this game is more narrative than physical health. With Spite, it represents the difficulty of tracking him down and stopping his serial killing rather than a full out battle. With Baron Blade, his first 40 HP represent destroying his doomsday machine and the next 30 represents him in his power armor. So on and so forth.

And he puts out a lot of damage.

When I first scanned his cards, I was a bit intimidated to be honest, but then again, I have an understanding how to build a team to cover each other's weaknesses. Apex has a chance of overwhelming a player with his aggressive styles, and there are a few twists in his deck, but his basic mode is easily handled by a player familiar with the game. Unless luck is really against them.

Now, let's get on to the team.

First up is Tabitha Taft, aka Alpha.

She is a new hero introduced into this edition and is a, obviously, a werewolf. Her deck focuses around putting her six "Aspects" into play to access pieces of her lycanthropic nature without going full wolf and hurting people she doesn't want to hurt.

As you can see, each of her Aspects gives her abilities or bonuses that let her do things without spending one of her normal card plays or power uses, but comes at a risk. When she has 3 or more aspects in play, she will attack whoever on the board has the least HP once for each Aspect.

This can get dangerous especially when there are effects boosting the damage of heroes. Also, she gets affected by Apex's cards that boost the damage of werewolves because she has the tag Werewolf. So, usually when I've played her, I tried to keep the number of aspects in play low, only taking a risk when I was confident of being able to engineer villains having the lowest HP on the board.

But in this case... I had a plan... and it worked gloriously.

I've previously played both her base version and her "Reporter Alpha" version, which was when I was playing her more for scrying and deck control than for damage. In this case, I wanted to focus on her basic version since I think the Reporter version comes from early in her career when her lycanthropy was first starting to show itself.

As a note, the flip side of each hero shows their defeated side. A defeated hero doesn't get their full turn but instead gets a choice out of three options that they can do to help the team.

The above are Tabitha's flip sides for her base and reporter version and part of why I'm showing you this is because the flip side of her base version shows Apex. See, turns out most werewolves are cursed and sterile... Tabitha is the first werewolf to ever be born.

In fact there is a quote on one of Apex's cards that has Nightmist (we'll see her later) talking to Alpha about this:

"They act as though they are far greater than humanity when truly, they exist as a corruption. You, however, are something different."

So, Tabitha, as a natural born werewolf, is key to Apex's plans for world domination. I'm not sure, but I think it's also implied that Apex may be her father (see "A Horrible Truth" as the title of the defeat side of her base form) somehow. Apex has alliances with vampires and other mages so he may have engineered her birth somehow.

So, this is a personal fight for Alpha. A fight for her independence and escaping the oppression of a pack of hyper-violent predators who would rather give-in to their curse than transcend it. This is not her first rodeo, she took the name "Alpha" as her hero name because she fought to become the Alpha of her old pack and then said she was done with the nonsense and walked away from it. Basically exposing the whole artificial hyper-violence that the alpha concept was by just not caring save wanting to be done with it.

However, Apex and his group are far stronger than her prior pack.

And now the Parental Units

You may be wondering why I called this "Alpha and the Parental Units" because the rest of her team are:

Nightmist, premier sorceress who transcended her own curse to become a creature of magic.

Legacy, basically the good dad of the superhero community.

Mister Fixer, old gruff martial artist and sifu who's been around the supernatural block a few times.

Expatriette, the tactical team leader of Dark Watch, take Nick Fury and the Punisher, mix them up as a Magneto's daughter.

And let's get to those characters.

This is the last character that's going to be shown two versions of themselves.

This is Nightmist, at one time she was a private investigator, the grand-daughter of Joe Diamond (the character in the Arkham Horror board games). While her father apparently tried to keep her away from such things, the back of her cards implies she was Joe's sidekick for a while. Also a line on one of the Relics in her Estate's deck (an environment not being played here) says he gave her his collected journal of monsters for her to continue the fight.

In any case, she at some point was investigating a cult or infiltrating a cult, I'm unsure of which, and came across an arcane tome that blasted her with a terrible curse. In essence, she became infused with the essence of the Mists of R'lyeh, yeah Cthulhu stuff. She started to learn sorcery to deal with her curse and was initially a cursed human woman able to resolve into mist form (that's her base form on the left).

Later on, she was exposed to a drug invented by an evil scientist (Baron Blade) to remove superpowers from people and it at least suppressed her curse, leaving her a basic human again. She began to find that she was no longer happy as a human being, it didn't feel like her true self anymore. And then a threat came and the magic she was capable of without the curse wasn't enough, so she retreated into a demiplane to meditate for what was to her centuries though little more than a week passed in the outside world. When she returned, she was no longer a cursed human but a creature of arcane and eldritch nature.

As regards Nightmist, I already noted there's a quote of her telling Alpha that she's different from other werewolves. Initially she advised Alpha to get the curse lifted, though follows it up by asking why she holds to it. So eventually it feels like Nightmist realized Alpha is a bit like her, someone who is more naturally not human.

And also, Alpha's curse being her nature rather than a corruption of her nature the way normal lycanthropy is in this setting.

Nightmist has acted as the mentor to a former villain trying to become a hero (the Villain Matriarch who later becomes the Hero Harpy) and find control over her chaotic magic and the artifact bound to her and manipulated her into her villainous behavior as a teen.

Now, Nightmist is a deck that is fueled by discard cards. All of her spells and many of her powers require Nightmist to discard cards in order to accomplish things or control her magic. So there are a few cards that give her the opportunity to draw more cards to make sure her hand is filled. Normally, Nightmist will empty and reshuffle her deck fairly quickly. In a long game, it can happen multiple times. Nightmist's base version has an innate power that involves drawing cards to help deal with this.

Mentor Nightmist does not have card draw innately.

This heavily effects her ability to keep her hand filled and thus limits the options she has on her turn or to react to incoming issues.

However, what Mentor Nightmist does give me is the ability to safely unleash Alpha. Because when Nightmist uses her innate power she chooses a hero and until the start of Nightmist's next turn, any time that hero does damage, Nightmist decides whether to give it +1 or -3. I've used this for Nightmist's own spells as she has some spells that hit her or her allies for damage. But in this case, it neatly covers Alpha's 1 melee damage on each Aspect attack... heck it even covers that if there's effects boosting Alpha's damage twice.

What this means is that while Alpha is attacking who I want her to attack, we can make that attack stronger. When Alpha attacks someone else, we can reduce the damage to 0 in most cases. I tend to view this as Nightmist teaching control techniques to the other heroes or using them herself. As someone familiar with dangerous powers and how to make sure they are safely controlled.

So, far and away from my normal worry about having too many Aspects. Now I can just get all the Aspects I want.

Legacy is a very famous and beloved American superhero. He has the classic blonde-hair, square jaw Midwestern charm going on that calls back to comics in the Golden and Silver Age. A blend of Captain America and Superman. He has a very interesting power origin.

See, way back in the Revolutionary War, one of his ancestors worked with Paul Revere and developed an uncanny sense for when danger was coming. According to the in-game lore, this person was the man who lit the lanterns that set Paul Revere on his ride. Ever since then, the first child of each new generation would gain a new power... and the power of their predecessors. So each new Legacy was stronger than the last in some ways. (or at least had more versatility).

According to the lore podcasts by the creators this is the list of powers:

Joseph Parsons - Revolutionary War - Danger Sense

Paul Parsons - War of 1812 - Very Athletic. Not superhumanly so, but very Peak Humanity Athletic

Paul Parsons II - No war, Lucky Paul - Superhuman fast. Not Tachyon level but still faster than any human CAN run.

Paul Parsons III - Mexican American War - Superhuman strength, like 'Lift and throw carriages/cars'

Paul Parsons IV - Civil War - Single Attack Negation (can take a cannonball to the chest, but it has to cooldown)

Paul Parsons V - Spanish-American War (Also was the first Parsons to move to Chicago) - Vitality. VERY high-grade general stamina. Walks off sickness, ages slower, heals faster.

Paul Parsons VI - Legacy I - World War I - Flight

Paul Parsons VII - Legacy II - World War II and Korean War - Super Eyesight

Paul Parsons VIII - Legacy III/Heritage - No War until OblivAeon - Bulletproof skin. Unlike PP4, he can tank a lot of weaker attacks with no cooldown

Pauline Felicia Parsons - Beacon/Legacy IV - LASER EYES

This game has insanely deep lore... it's all unnecessary to playing and loving the game, but man... the depths the devs went to in detailing not only the in-game universe but also a fictitious publication history for the comics is amazing. Legacy is very much a call-back to the uber-patriotic, sometimes outright propagandist age of comics. Unlike characters like Omni-Man or Homelander, however, Paul is more in the line of Superman and Captain America as I said in that he represents a more hopeful ideal of what we wish America could be rather than what it is in truth.

It is refreshing to see a "Superman-clone" that isn't a deconstructed asshole. (though there is an evil Legacy from an alternate timeline that exists in the old edition as a villain and given the next expansion deals with the multiverse, I'm expecting we'll see him again) Though the issue of an idealistic USA existing on Indigneous land is troublesome. I need to ask around and see if there's some lore on this. The devs are usually self-aware on these issues so I wonder if this is a blind spot or if I'm just missing something here.

Anyway, enough of me addressing the cognitive dissonance here, and back to the game.

So, Legacy's deck does have some impressive damage cards in it, but it also has a lot of support abilities. His innate power increases the damage of his allies and he has a card that essentially doubles that effect. He also has ways to heal allies, give card draw, give card plays, and also he has quite a few ways to tank damage. Which was my original plan for him here. However, while I got some of his tanking cards in hand (and even played one) the support cards were almost always the best play at hand in this game.

Okay, so here's where we get back into the insane amount of in-universe Lore. In the fictitious publication history, he came out of the 60s and 70s and a mixture of Blaxploitation and Kung-fu stuff (and apparently vampires too) and started as a side character that began to get increasingly popular and they even talk about how he started to get more detailed in mid-70s around "the time comics started to get better". As the Blaxpoitation craze started to end he just... stopped being popular and people forgot him.

Move forward a few decades in the 90s (still fictitious publication history) when they introduce a villainous martial artist known as The Operative, they introduce an auto-mechanic called "Slim" as her original mentor. And this "Slim" is the original "Black Fist". And now he comes out of retirement as "Mister Fixer" using his tools as weapons. Now that he's in the hands of writers ready to do some interesting stories beyond "I know Kung-fu" and start to get into his position as a mentor who has seen a lot of tragedy through his life and knows about hubris. (and apparently he's blind... I just learned that.)

Yeah, the completely optional lore of this fun co-op/solo card game includes lots of commentary on the highs and lows of comic book history.

See the podcast episode here:

Anyway, Fixer's deck is mostly about pairing a Tool and a Style to modify his attacks. These do things like change the targets he gets or add an extra effect when he does damage, etc. He has a lot of ways to switch out his cards, attack multiple times, switch styles between attacks, and so on. I found it very easy to add cards into his hand (this game does NOT have a maximum hand size. I have had games where my deck and discard had 0 cards in them on some characters) so he always has a lot of options of what to do in a game.

In this game, I was trying to handle multiple high-HP followers, so after finding the Jack Handle I stuck to that and only switched styles once... though I was considering switching to a third style near the end.

Also, I was today year's old when I realized "Mister Fixer" acronym's to MF... as in obvious Samuel L Jackson quote. Yup, Fits.

Expatriette is one of my gals (the other two main ones being Fanatic and Harpy). So, take The Punisher, Deadshot, and Nick Fury, roll them up into a bundle shaped like a Canadian woman whose mother is basically "what if Magneto was actually evil and not just very rightfully angry".

That's Expatriette.

She starts out as a hired killer and apparently was contracted by villains to kill Mister Fixer. However, she seems to quickly switch over to the good guy side and is even one of Mister Fixer's teammates on Dark Watch alongside Nightmist, her boyfriend Setback (a golden retriever man with weird luck), and Nightmist's apprentice, The Harpy.

(To be honest I haven't listened to a lot of the lore podcasts. I love the bits I learn from fandom pages, but also, the game is just fun, you know? And the podcast competes with Kikoskia, Storyteller Squad, Monster's Playbook, Knights of the Night, AltHaven, The Writer's Room, Insym, and Critical Role.)

Her deck in the original edition was kinda meh. It gave you guns, lots of guns, but it was a bit slow to get everything into play and get her going. And in general she was a one-trick pony. She had some control options and the ability to remove Ongoing effects, but mostly she shot things.

The new version of her is so... so much more versatile and also builds much smoother. Giving her innate power the ability to do damage and play an item was amazing. And the Ammo is far more fluid to use (you used to have to attach it to specific guns each of which could have a single ammo attached, except shotgun, which could have two).

I do miss Pride and Prejudice being separate cards though... they were designed to make a single picture when you set them next to each other (which unfortunately order them as "Prejudice" and "Pride", which was irksome). But putting them as a single card just works better.

However, the biggest change that Expat got was that she got a lot of team support cards. She now has a lot of options to give other players actions outside of their turn and it is amazing. She's always been described as a tactical genius but her deck in the original edition never reflected that, only show casing her shooting skills.

The above guns, ammo, and other cards are ones that got played in this game. If the game hadn't ended when it did, I would have played a card another such card called "Comprehensive Plan"

Dark Watch doesn't have a leader per se. They sort of just go with things. Eldritch stuff they turn to Nightmist, martial arts and weird supernatural stuff they turn to Mister Fixer, everything else and general battle plans they turn to Expat. Harpy and Setback are the least leadery of the five.

So, this is the environment deck I went with. Megalopolis which is the typical shining idealistic "what we wish reality was" city like Metropolis from DC comics. Now, it may have made more sense to choose Rook City given that every character I put on the team is a Rook City resident except for Legacy. Heck, Nightmist, Mister Fixer, and Expatriette are three members of the signature Rook City supergroup: Dark Watch. But I liked the idea of werewolves fighting it out on the streets of the shining city rather than the grim one where supernatural nonsense usually happens. Also, this makes Legacy's presence more probable.

What I figure is that Alpha was in town for some reporter thing as Apex tracked her down. They came through Rook City which picked up the attention of Dark Watch, though Harpy and Setback were unavailable for some reason. Then when the first attack happened, Legacy was on hand and the brawl started.

Environments in this game are on nobody's side. Some are more friendly to villains, some are more friendly to heroes, most are rather neutral and mess with everybody. Megalopolis features a lot of citizens in peril, making it mostly a headache for the players. That said, there are a couple of cards that help heroes out and as this is the shiny "we wish it were so" city, this includes "Police Back-up" (the corrupt cops are all in Rook City, don't you know?). There's also a lawyer friend. But mostly, the city makes it hard for players to use their powers or gives them a count down to worry about.

The environment is the last deck to play in any round which is why it is the last deck I talked about. (and also, you now know how long this game lasted)

So, let's get on to the actual game.

Round One - (werewolf) FIGHT!

Apex

Apex started out with three werewolves in play:

Timber - attacks multiple of the highest HP

Rowan - attacks the lowest HP

Flint - attacks the highest HP

He didn't need to heal and there was no werewolf with more HP than him, so he didn't flip. He moves to play phase and plays The Pack Hungers. This gives all werewolves more damage and causes them to suffer toxic damage.

They're HUNGRY!

At the start of his next round it would heal him and check to see if any werewolves were low on health and destroy those. I guess the implication is they eat their own if that person is weak.

Then all the werewolves attack, dealing damage across the board. Apex hits the highest HP hero and then all werewolves. Timber, Rowan, and Flint do their attacks after him. Then Pack Hungers hits all werewolves including Apex.

Nightmist

Nightmist is at 18 HP out of 28... she got hit pretty hard.

She plays Call Forth to summon the Amulet of the Elder Gods which she immediately uses to redirect the infernal damage from Call Forth away from her to strike Rowan because enemies that target the lowest HP targets are scary and can wear down vulnerable heroes fast.

She then uses her Magical Mentor power to boost Alpha and Draws Master of Magic... which is the other main set-up card I look for when playing Nightmist.

Alpha

Alpha is at 26 of 32 HP.

She plays Fatal Feast which discovers Insatiable Hunger. I didn't note it down, but I think the target was Rowan (again, villains that stalk low HP heroes are scary)

Alpha then uses her Prowl power to discover another aspect and gets Lupine Senses. Neither Insatiable Hunger nor Lupine Senses were may first choice in this case, but in retrospect they probably should have been. They worked out pretty well.

She draws Hamstring, which is what I call a "Shut Down" card because you can use it to shut down the Villain partially for a round.

At her end phase she only has 2 Aspects, so no attacks happen.

Mister Fixer

Mister Fixer is at 27 HP out of 29

He plays Zen Maintenance to collect Hoist Chain and Harmony.

Note on the difference between "Collect", "Discover", "Salvage", and "Summon".

Collect means you can name a particular card of the named type and put it in your hand.

Discover means you reveal cards off the top of the deck until you find the number the card asks for and then you put them into play.

Salvage means look through the trash and grab a card of the desired type to put in your hand.

Summon means you name a particular card of the named type and put it directly into play.

Mister Fixer has some Discover, but he has a lot more Collect and Salvage, giving him more control. He has options in his hand rather than depending on the random chance of Discover.

I was thinking I might need the Hoist Chain's ability to reduce the damage output of villains hit by it. I then used the card play granted by Zen to play The Manifold Path and that brought out the Jack Handle (perfect for this situation and I immediately realized that) and Alternating Tiger Claw, also excellent for this situation given it made his damage irreducible which got around Apex's protection.

Then I used his Strike power which he used to attack Apex, Timber, Rowan, and Flint. Usually he'd only get one attack, but Jack Handle let him hit up to five targets and there were only four.

Then he draws Dual Crowbars.

Expatriette

Expat is at 23 of 28 HP. She got hit pretty hard as well.

She plays Arsenal Access which discovers her Modified SMG and some Liquid Nitrogen Ammo. She then draws another Arsenal Access and plays her Double-Barreled Shotgun off that card.

She shotguns Rowan and decides not to use ammo right now. Again, stalker enemies are scary.

Then she draws hollow point

Legacy

Legacy is at 22 out of 32 HP. He got hit as hard as Nightmist.

Legacy plays Bolster Allies which gives everybody a card draw including himself.

Legacy draws the Ol' One Two

Nightmist draws Essence Transfer

Alpha draws Silver Bindings

Mister Fixer draws Overdrive

Expatriette draws Backup Plan

He then gives Nightmist a card play. Nightmist chooses to play Starshield Invocation. The discarded card shows a "4" on the Infernal number. Her Amulet of the Elder Gods upgrades that to 5. And now all damage to heroes is reduced by 5 until Nightmist's turn.

Legacy then uses his Galvanize power to boost Hero damage.

He draws Dauntless Durability, one of his tanker powers.

Megalopolis

Plays "Persistent Paparazzi" meaning heroes will now take 1 fixed damage whenever they use a power. "Fixed" means it can neither be increased or reduced, though it is still blocked by immunity to damage.

Round Two

Apex

Not much damage was dealt to Apex, so he heals completely. He gets 5 healing from himself and 5 from The Pack Hungers, though he can't go over his Maximum of 50. There are no werewolves at 3 or less HP so no one gets destroyed. But The Pack Hungers destroys itself.

As a note "Destroyed" only means "not in the scene/available for use anymore" it could mean knocked unconscious, trapped, or forced to flee for living creatures or disarmed, stolen, or otherwise unavailable for items. Fanatic (not in this game) has multiple cards of her signature sword representing her ability to recover it quickly if it is lost, not that she has actual multiple copies of Absolution.

Apex plays his top card and gets "On the Blood Trail" which brings Gumbo into play. Gumbo immediately attacks the lowest HP Hero target because of the card but this is reduced to 0 by Nightmist's Starshield.

Now, the werewolves throw themselves ineffectually at Nightmist's Starshield. In frustation, Apex damages all his pack (I mean he does this every round, I'm just imagining it's because of frustration with being blocked by Nightmist here). Then Gumbo snaps back at Apex because Apex has the most hit points here.

Nightmist

Still at 18.

Starshield tries to deal damage to Nightmist at the start of the round, but she discards a card to redirect the damage to Rowan causing Rowan to be defeated and go to Apex's trash.

No more stalking for you.

She plays Master of Magic. She uses Magical Mentor to Boost Alpha again (she does this every round) and takes 1 psychic damage from Persistent Paparazzi asking her questions.

The paparazzi makes me think this is not one fight but an ongoing situation across the city over several days. I'm also aware that Alpha's day job is that she's a reporter.

She draws Scouring Mists and then Master of Magic allows her to draw up to a hand of 4 getting her Essence Transfer and a second copy of Master of Magic.

Alpha

Still at 26.

Insatiable Hunger can't destroy any target so she discovers an Ongoing and finds Rip and Tear.

Lupine Senses reveals "On the Blood Hunt" for Apex and she decides to trash it instead of draw cards.

That ends her Start Phase and she then plays Hamstring targeting Apex. This prevents Apex from doing any damage until Alpha's next round. It's also some significant damage since she's boosted by both Nightmist and Legacy as well as the bonus damage she gets on Apex for being his Nemesis.

She decides to use her Prowl power instead Rip and Tear in order to discover a new Aspect and gets Powerful Frame so attacks coming in on her deal -1 damage unless irreducible or fixed. Under normal circumstances, I'd probably stop at two Aspects, but hey, Nightmist is teaching Tabitha how to better control herself... and Nightmist admits that Tabitha already has a lot of control.

She takes 1 damage from paparazzi. Oh the stress you must feel during shop talk with other reporters, Tabitha, trying to keep your secret.

She draws Furious Slash.

Now End Phase happens and she has 3 Aspects. Timber has the lowest HP on the board so she goes to town on him attacking him once for each Aspect in play.

Mister Fixer

Still at 27.

He plays Harmony. He has both a Style and a Tool so he now deals +1 damage with his attacks.

He uses strike with Jack Handle and Alternating Tiger Claw style to attack all four werewolves with irreducible damage.

I opted not to collect another tool.

He now draws a second copy of Harmony

Expatriette

Still at 23

Plays Lock and Load.

First she summons Pride and Prejudice... just for the flavor of having her signature handguns in play.

There are now 3 guns in play so the next step of Lock and Load discovers three Ammo: Thermite Rounds, Shock Rounds, and Hollow Point Rounds.

Finally, she chooses Legacy for the last step of the card and he plays the top of his deck: A True Hero. Legacy Draws Bulletproof Skin and Thokk. Everybody else heals 1, neatly canceling the Paparazzi damage.

She decides to fire her SMG with Hollow Point rounds to hit all the werewolves. This defeats Timber as Timber was weakened severally by Alpha and Mister Fixer. So he goes to Apex's trash.

She takes 1 point of Paparazzi psychic damage, neatly canceling the healing from Legacy.

Draws Assault Rifle.

Legacy

Still at 22.

Simple round, he plays the Ol'One Two and hits Flint for 2 damage. Then he uses the extra card play to play Bulletproof Skin so that he is now also reducing incoming damage. (remember HP is narratively covering lots of things... he always had Bulletproof Skin, but now it becomes narratively relevant)

He Galvanizes and draws Inspiring Presence

Megalopolis

In the start phase all the Heroes choose to discard a card to get rid of the Paparazzi. When a card demands that I discard cards to remove it, I always imagine the discarded cards are the method the characters used to solve the problem

So, I imagine that Legacy reassured people that he was involved in the situation, the man doesn't have a huge ego, but he has that perfect amount of lovable confidence. Nightmist probably started talking magic and perhaps some reporters got a little lost in the terms and also the fact that they were speaking to someone who had mist for hair. Expat just ducked the whole scene and vanished into one of her caches until the reporters lost her. Mister Fixer parkoured well past their ability to follow. And Alpha dealt with the stress of being around her colleagues by locking herself up for the night.

"Arg, I can't stand Lisa and Tom one more minute, I've got to go chain myself up."

"I know, right, Tabitha? Sometimes I feel like I'm just going to go beasty you know?"

"...." staaaaare "I'm going now. Khalil."

And now Megalopolis played "Bank Heist in Progress"

Round Three

Apex

Apex Heals 4 because there's only four werewolves in play: himself, Alpha, Gumbo, and Flint. This isn't enough to heal all his wounds but he also still has the most HP of all the werewolves. So he doesn't switch.

He plays Making of an Alpha to force Alpha and Fixer to fight as they are the two highest HP heroes. Mentor Nightmist had boosted Alpha so reduces the damage she deals by 3 causing Fixer to only take 1 damage. I should have used Fixer's reaction here to use his Jack Handle to hit all the villains, but I forgot about it.

Making of an Alpha then plays the top card of Apex's deck and puts into Play "Hunting Party". This brings back Rowan and pulls out Blood Magic's Boon. This is actually good in some ways since now all the werewolves are dealing Infernal damage so when Rowan stalks and attacks Nightmist, Nightmist can use her Amulet to redirect it.

Apex deals 0 damage because Alpha still has Hamstring in play (it was conceivable something could have destroyed it before it got to his time to do damage).

Such a great Apex predator unable to do any damage at all for two whole rounds. Not even able to snap at his bulli- I mean oppres- I mean loyal pack mates.

Flint hits Mister Fixer. Gumbo hits Expat and Apex, Rowan attacks Nightmist and here I decide to stop focusing on minions and redirect that damage to Apex.

As a note, I DID end up using Fixer's Tiger Claw Reaction here and attacked all the villains with the Jack Handle. Since you can only use each Reaction once in a turn and he only had one Reaction in play, it became a non-issue gameplay.

Just would have been funnier to use it at Making of an Alpha.

Nightmist

Still at 18

Plays Essence Transfer, chooses to use Master of Magic's option to discard from hand if the top-card discard isn't something she likes. Drains Apex and uses that to heal Legacy.

Magical Mentor to Alpha as last round.

Master of Magic lets her draw up to four cards and she gets Scouring Mists, Droplet of Lethe, Essence Transfer, and Mistform. The last is not useful right now because it only protects against non-Infernal damage and the Blood Magic's Boon makes all the werewolves deal infernal. In the past edition it was just general damage immunity and far more powerful, allowing Nightmist to effectively tank at the cost of having no actions except drawing cards. The new version is much more limited.

But to be honest, Mistform in the old edition was mostly boring unless you were playing solo and controlling every hero. Even then... it's not great. Having it for one round is fine for me.

Alpha

Still at 23.

Insatiable Hunger discovers Badger the Bloodied which immediately allows her to defeat Flint. (yeah, I decided not to focus minions, but I'm going to take advantage of vulnerable ones) And now she has a reaction for when she takes damage.

Lupine Senses reveals Chel and I decide putting a new werewolf in play isn't the worst thing this deck can do to me, so I put her back on top and draw 2 cards but didn't note down what the draws were.

Now... that's Alpha's Start Phase.

At this point I choose to skip her Play and Power Phases to jump straight to Draw Phase in order to deal with the Bank Heist.

I'm thinking that was some terrified bank robbers.

"What the fuck?! A werewolf? This is Megalopolis, aren't all the weird and crazy heroes in Rook City?"

She Draws Lycanthropic Frenzy

Now, her turn's not over.

End Phase comes AFTER Draw Phase and she has Three Aspects in play.

Flint is the lowest HP on the board so Alpha goes to town on him and he's defeated and sent to Apex's trash.

What was it you said again Flint? "We'll fight, you'll die?" well... I can see how that worked for you.

Mister Fixer

Mister Fixer is now at 22 out of 29.

In Start Phase he opts to use Harmony to play a style and replaces Alternating Tiger Claw with Driving Mantis.

He loses the irreducible damage, but that's not much impact with Galvanize going on and Inspiring Presence on the horizon, and thus means he draws cards whenever he uses a power. The Reaction change now means he uses a power instead of just hitting a target. Which sounds like the same, but now he's dealing damage AND drawing cards. So it's a boost.

I considered changing tools but since I know we have another werewolf coming up due to Alpha's Lupine Senses, I figure it's more important to keep the AoE damage going with Jack Handle.

Interestingly... it looks like I accidentally skipped Fixer's Play Phase here... or I just forgot to note it down. Whoops.

Anyway, he Strikes and hits the three present werewolves and then draws Manifold Path and Riveting Crane style... which has an even more appealing reaction on it.

So, I have ALL these cards, plenty of discard fuel. And with Galvanize, Harmony, AND Inspiring Presence, that would be 4 damage instead one. And with the Jack Handle that would be hitting pretty much every enemy.

Yup... that's good stuff.

So at this point I'm already thinking of going Full Throttle which I drew at some point on the next round and just tearing the villains apart.

His Draw Phase produces another extra Harmony. Yeah, Riveting is looking pretty good.

Expatriette

Expat is at 20 out of 28 HP.

She plays Backup Plan

First she discovers Liquid Nitrogen Rounds

Then she lets Alpha hit Apex. In retrospect having Fixer do this would have been more efficient as his Jack Handle would make it AoE, but the flavor of directing Alpha at Apex. The juicy juicy flavor of it.

Then she lets Legacy heal 2.

Then she chooses to Salvage her Hollow Points back into her hand.

On to Power Phase and some quick math says that both Double-Barreled Shotgun with Thermite and Hollow Point and Pride and Prejudice with Thermite and Hollow Point will do the same damage (if Inspiring Presence was up, Pride and Prejudice would do more damage since the Galvanize and Inspiring boosts would each happen twice for 4 extra damage instead of 2 on the shotgun's one hit.)

So, again, I opt for the flavor of Expat using her signature weapons and just unleash both guns on Apex.

She then draws Comprehensive Plan.

Legacy

Legacy is at 24 out of 32 HP.

He has a simple round. He plays Inspiring Presence, everybody heals except him and then he Galvanizes. All his allies are now dealing +2 damage.

I have to say most of Legacy's tank build ended up in my hand for this game. Of the cards below, only Heroic Interception never appeared.

However, between Nightmist's turn one Starshield and Alpha's turn two Hamstring, I was already handling damage fairly well. Apex wasn't hitting me with cards to destroy my set up (destroy Items or Ongoings) and Megalopolis was being annoying but wasn't throwing anything I couldn't handle at me.

I also had some decent damage in hand.

But seriously, it was just way more effective to boost Legacy's allies than to do the actual damage.

Narratively speaking, he would still have been in the fight, getting his punches and going toe to toe with werewolves, but the main effect of this would be to open the path for his allies to effectively shut things down and keep the morale of the heroes and public up.

Speaking of Megalopolis

Megalopolis

Plays Hostage Situation.

Now, at the end phase, we're given a chance to discard cards to solve the situation without having to divert actions to hitting him. But you know what? This is a 6 HP target. Rowan is still in the field and she's going to attack the lowest HP target, and Chel is going to play now too and she'll do damage too.

You know what? Yeah, I'm good, you can be werewolf bait, hostage taker.

Round Four

Apex is at 30 HP. He heals 4 because there's just him, Alpha, Rowan, and Gumbo in play. Then Blood Magic's Boon causes him to suffer 3.

He plays Chel. Leaving Chel on top was the right play. A nasty One-Shot or Ongoing could have made things come out different. As it is, he only gets a new minion.

Apex finally gets to do damage! ^_^

He hits Legacy and has his damage reduced by Bulletproof. Then he attacks all the werewolves. His damaged is reduced against Alpha, but also increased as he's her nemesis.

Rowan hits Hostage Situation, Gumbo hits Legacy for 3 and Apex for 2, Chel hits every non-villain including the Hostage Situation. Since Sequencing matters this is the order I did Chel's hits:

Chel hits Hostage Situation for 2.

Chel Hits Fixer for 2,

Fixer's reaction hits Chel for 5

Fixer's reaction hits Rowan for 5.

Fixer's reaction hits Apex for 5

Fixer's reaction hits Hostage Situation for 5. Hostage Situation is defeated. Ending it with a Hero instead of Werewolf villains means I think Fixer saved the hostage and hostage taker from the werewolves.

Chel hits Nightmist for 2.

Nightmist redirects the infernal damage to hit Apex for 1

Chel hits Alpha for 1 (Powerful Frame)

Alpha's reaction hits Chel for 5.

Chel hits Expatriette for 2.

Chel hits Legacy for 1 (Bulletproof Skin)

Nightmist

Nightmist is at 19 out of 28 HP.

She plays Essence Transfer and hits Apex for 6 she then heals Alpha for 5.

She boosts Alpha and draws Coalescing Spirit (Which has a picture of her aiding Alpha, so wish I could have played that for the flavor).

Oh well.

In any case, this was where I realized Alpha could finish it as Apex was at 17 health and she had a LOT of damage available via Galvanize, Inspiring Presence, and Magical Mentor.

Alpha

Alpha is at 25 out of 32 (my notes say 28, I think I misread my ticker, some of the wheels are put together wrong and I may have seen an upside down 5 as an 8)

Going to her Start Phase before skipping to the end.

Insatiable Hungry can't destroy any target and I want to Discover anyway. And it Discovers Hamstring that's where "Bwuahahahaha" got scribbled in my notes.

Anyway. That's 6 damage to Apex. I would say he can't do damage until Alpha's Start Phase, but it IS Alpha's Start Phase so Hamstring gets destroyed as soon as her other Start Phase events finish.

Not that it matters. It just made me laugh because it was just such a thumbing the nose at him.

From here, Lupine Senses reveals "Making of an Alpha" and I replace it to draw two cards: Rip and Tear (already in play) and Fatal Feast.

I look over my options and reason that Lycanthropic Frenzy has her attack all targets and has a quote from Apex praising her for giving in to her nature. So I'm avoiding that one. I had a couple of other options, but ultimately I go for Fatal Feast again.

Fatal Feast discovers Eye for the Hunt... and now she's doing +4 damage each attack (Magical Mentor, Galvanize, Inspiring, and Eye for the Hunt). Now, this would be dangerous if the game were taking longer because her Aspects could now do enough damage to get around Magical Mentor taking 3 off, but... it doesn't matter.

That takes Apex to 6.

Then we come to Power Phase and I use Rip and Tear.

Apex doesn't even survive the first of Rip and Tear's two hits.

Wrap-Up

Apex is aggressive and has some potential for being tricky, but is a fairly simple and straight-forward Villain. Handling his pack is important and having the ability to prevent or reduce incoming damage is essential.

Mentor Nightmist works exceptionally well with Alpha. Even though I only ever had to reduce her damage once, the simple confidence I could handle it if I didn't control her targeting well enough gave me the confidence to lean hard into her being a full-on werewolf. Even though I only got 4 out of 6 aspects into play.

And it was such a flavor win for Alpha to land the final blow.

I had some math errors and missed plays but nothing that impacted the final result. At one point Rowan just vanishes from my notes in the end of Round three, no indication she was defeated. So I had to extrapolate what happened.

[gooberpg]

Play Report: Lorn Song of the Bachelor x Mangayaw (Session 2)

The Binmanwa Party

Malakas, a shamanistic healer

Bantok, a bow hunter

Euminung-gud, an aswang (?)

Dumalapdap, a ratfolk musketeer

Alon, a textile weaver

Vartu Si Vartu

The party waited outside the Chief’s longhouse for his return, not wanting to insult him a second time. Vartu Si Vartu returns a few hours later.

Conversation with Vartu Si Vartu is sensitive business. He is a proud warrior, thinks every gesture is a challenge to his authority.

He tells the party of how he lost his left arm. The Bachelor claimed it after a great battle, one that Vartu Si Vartu lost.

If he was such a great warrior, how could he have lost to a crocodile? He wants the party to look for proof of the Bachelor’s divinity. If the Bachelor was a god, then there is no shame in his loss.

Bavu Si Bavu

The party heads back to the princess’ lover, to inform him of their mistake and that he is still loved. He bounced back from his heartbreak quickly.

They also informed him of their plan to raise his prestige by questing with them. He is delighted by the opportunity to prove Niti Si Niti wrong.

Hummu Si Hummu

Before the day ended, the party passed by Oppu Wa Oppu’s again. They are hoping see if one of her more annoying suitors was there, so they could earn their keep.

Sure enough, the village’s prestige singer, Hummu Si Hummu, was there.

Hummu Si Hummu shows off his tattoos: open maws and curling tusks. Identifies him as a singer of the village’s songs and histories. He has a tic, blinking uncontrollably. His loincloth has a weird movement to it, like something is flopping about inside it.

Alon chanted the Mentala sewed into his katana’s tassels. The words granted him a sight able to see beneath the loincloth. A ferocity weighed on his heart, but he also saw a catfish stuck to Hummu Si Hummu’s groin. Absurd.

Under the guise of concern, the party tries to uncover Hummu Si Hummu’s secret. He tried to run, but he was unable to. When his secret was uncovered, he was in panic. The catfish seemed to share his emotions.

The party sent him to Auntie Sati, hoping she would know how to remove it. They still have no idea what to make of this. Is it a parasite? A performance enhancer? A controller of the mind? A kink?

Re Wa Re’s Pepper Farm

The next morning, the party went aboard a boat, piloted by Bavu Si Bavu. They set out for the Old Ruin via the river.

They spotted a Skelephant fording the river. They let it pass.

They passed by some pepper farms along the river, spotted a group of men in Company uniform harassing an old farmer. She’s on her knees, begging.

The party decided to help diffuse the tension. As they land the boat, the situation changed. The farmer was shouting and swearing now.

A Company goon forbade the party from getting closer and the farmer bit his hand. The goons pulled out their pistols, but the party stood between the two parties.

The Company goons explained that they’re here to take Re Wa Re’s farm as payment for her gambling debt. She protested with expletives.

The party decided to be on Re Wa Re’s side on this matter. Alon loudly boasted about his swordsmanship, touting his colorfully tasseled katana as proof, both to discourage the goons and to relieve the ferocity in his heart. The goons are outnumbered and are not inclined to call Alon’s bluff.

In the middle of all this, Dumalapdap nicked a pistol from one of the goons, who was none the wiser.

The Company goons decide to leave, but not without threats of their return.

The party hired Re Wa Re to come with them to the Old Ruin. She brought a knife and some peppery jerky.

The Old Ruin

It was almost dusk when the party reached the Old Ruin. The opening to the cave was clearly not natural. It’s adorned with simian statues, posd as if diving in water.

They felt the murmur of waves, from inside. They felt a breeze, like breath.

The party felt a mixture of curiosity and a bit of fear. And with that, they entered the Old Ruin.

[sam-seer]

Play Report: The Warren

I ran a one-shot of The Warren this weekend for my Dad and two of my sisters. It was my first time playing (or running the game) and, overall, it was a success. Here's the two big takeaways:

The Worst Thing: Presenting the Mission

These days, I think one-shots are best when there's a clear goal. So I presented a mission right away. Here's what I said:

"Dusk is coming on when you hear a voice over the hill. 'Tu-lip! Ja-ack!' It's the Widow Opal, looking for her two lost rabbit kits. What do you do?"

Immediately, I felt the misstep. I presented it like a choice, but for the Players, it didn't feel like a choice. They felt they could either (A) accept the quest, or (B) derail the session I had planned.

In an effort to course-correct, I told them it really was a choice and—because the map was robust and the Players were generous— they immediately chose a different action (steal cabbage from the garden). It turned out OK, but it was a valuable lesson. If I could do it again, I'd say this instead:

"Real quick before we begin, you've heard three rumors around the warren lately: (1) The Widow Opal's two kits have gone missing. (2) The cabbages are ripe in the Farmer's raised beds. (3) Strange sounds have been coming from the woods beyond the highway."

Why is this better? First, presenting multiple rumors keep the Players from feeling railroaded down a particular path. Second, presenting the information as exposition ("Before we begin...") instead of fiction ("The NPC says...") feels way more authentic. Less like a quest seed in dialogue's clothing.

(Note: To marry exposition and fiction, place a job board in the town square. Classic way to concisely present quest seeds within the fiction.)

The Best Thing: Making a Map Together

We started the session by making a map of the farm. I put a big paper bag on the table and drew three locations (The Warren, The Farmhouse, The Highway) then passed the pencil around the table.

The Players added more locations (The Henhouse, The Briar Patch, The Compost Heap, The Stone Wall, The Collapsed Barn, The Old Windmill). Immediately the world was original, rich, and surprising (even to me, the GM— which is really important!).

[wizard-laundry]

QUICK REMINDER

In the US: threatening government officials is a felony under federal law (the president in particular is protected under 18 U.S.C. § 871). Even memes.

be careful with your jokes if they spill over to active officials.

[giorgis9745]

Session 2 is complete.

[bluerosefox]

Her Astrophel and Sterling

hmmm

Hmmmmmmmm

You know what.

You know those AU's where the Batfam finds or learns about either hidden or thought to be dead Al Ghul Danny! with a deaged/daughter Dani (Ellie) (I should know, I created a few of those storylines) but what if, now hear me out, what if instead of them finding Danny first its Talia.

Do I want Talia discovering her thought to be dead son to be alive? Yes. Do I want her to find him while investigating Amity Park when the League gets reports of 'Lazarus creatures/water'? Yes.

DO I WANT HER TO KNOCK ON THE FENTON'S DOOR, fully ready to pretend/honey talk her way into the house to uncover what the Fenton's know, ONLY TO MEET A LITTLE ELLIE?!

YES.

Ellie whose eyes and hair look like a copy of her Beloved but she can see bits and pieces of herself as well. Talia knows the child in front of her was not fully her's though but everything makes sense when she hears a voice, a voice she hasn't heard in ages but as a mother just knows, speak out.

"Ellie! I thought I said do not answer the door my Sterling."

"But Daddy, yous was busy fighting the hotdoggys!"

Talia's eyes widen when she finally catches sight of familiar black hair and blue eyes.

and she could only lightly whisper a old nickname she hasn't dared uttered in ages, a name she secretly gave her son due to his love of the stars "Astrophel..."

[vesperosy]

*hands you an ace attorney sketch dump*

[s-che]

Monsterhearts 2: Plotting Anti-Plot

Last week I had the fortune to MC (and play) Monsterhearts 2 for the first time as the Dream Library begins a unit on monsters, monstrosity, and monsterfucking which will carry us through November, and boy howdy am I glad we managed to do it. 

For those who (somehow) don’t know, Monsterhearts is a game that bills itself as being about “the messy lives of teenage monsters.” It cites Twilight, Buffy, Ginger Snaps, The Vampire Diaries, and The Craft as media touchstones, it’s not joking when it says that these monsters are 1. messy and 2. teenagers. Monsterhearts is angsty, horny, frightening and, above all else, extremely fun to play. On top of that, Monsterhearts is also one of those games that, if you’re in a certain sector of the indie RPG scene, people will remind you is extremely fun to play all the fucking time. It feels sometimes like every designer I know has a good Monsterhearts story, and as much as Avery Alder’s reputation on a larger stage has been defined by The Quiet Year, I get the sense that for people who like what Monsterhearts is doing it’s an extremely hard game to beat. 

So to be totally honest, I was more than a little anxious MCing for my first time actually playing the game. There’s a sense in which hosting a game which you know is great can be way harder than hosting games you think might be bad — after all, if the session goes poorly, there’s nobody to blame but yourself. On top of that, Monsterhearts moves through some tricky territory: underage sex is a core element of the game, and the eight “Small Towns” (short, pre-prepped settings for quick starting the game) all deal more or less explicitly with histories of racism and colonialism in communities across North America. While these are interesting places to go in play, the idea of taking them on myself as host made me shy away a little bit (and I’m excited in the next session to look at things from a player’s perspective). 

All in all, though, I think the session was a resounding success. I went in with basically no prep and as much familiarity with the book as I could get (not enough to realize the quick reference sheet we were using for the first half of the session was from Monsterhearts 1, but so it goes), relying on the game itself — which leans away from strictly organized plots and encourages you, in true PBTA fashion, to let characters and their needs bounce off each other until the conversation goes somewhere interesting — to get us smoothly into play. I would call my efforts there a mixed success: while Avery has a real skill for writing pedagogically, giving you the explicit frameworks you need to get into play (if you’ve never begun a session of The Quiet Year by reading the rules book aloud to each other, you should go fix that now), the session was hampered a little by some awkward pacing and uncertainty: partially driven by my chronic tendency to waste time on slowly establishing things in one-shots rather than swinging as hard as I can in the first five minutes and letting the players lead from there and partially by player character relationships that lead to clear, decisive actions... which left one of our players bored at work while the other two went off adventuring. We ended up taking a moment, after returning from the normal mid-session bio-break, to chat and refocus ourselves, figuring out where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see in the last hour or so of the session, and then jumping back in and — thankfully — playing hard to reach a strong conclusion. In the end, I’m not interested in tracking down exactly where the first half of our session lost its footing (although I have some ideas for how I could have hit harder as an MC). I’m more interested in celebrating the way the table was able to come together, talk explicitly about what we wanted, and get the game somewhere satisfying for everyone involved. We closed on, among other things: an underwater fight between the Fairy (Mermaid?) Queen and a Kraken-Leviathan-Hellmonster, a throuple sneaking off from a beach party to hook up, and the messy end of a South Jersey summer (complete with a tsunami and a beached whale front of the boardwalk). It was a good time. 

Most striking to me in this moment, however, is the way thinking about Monsterhearts as a plotless game positions both me as MC and the other players. It really speaks to the way that capital-T The capital-C Conversation works in Powered by the Apocalypse games (good ones, anyway) to let play flow not according to the rules of a paced narrative, but along lines of player interest and highly-charged emotional incident. It is, I think, part of what makes all the PBTA games we’ve played in the Dream Library sing (in no small part because we pruned the last unit and didn’t play any PBTA games I think are bad, but that’s a different conversation) and it suits this game — with it’s emphasis on sex and messy desire — extremely well. It also fits in nicely with a point I’ve heard a couple of people make recently: that thinking of RPGs as first and foremost collective narrative engines is, at the very least, a narrow view. 

Anyway, this week I’m fortunate enough to be joined by a new host (hi @jdragsky) so I can check out MH as a player, then we’ve got a couple of two-shots planned for the end of the month before we move on to our next monstrously intimate game: Bluebeard’s Bride. You want in on an upcoming game? Have a link. You want to hear more about Monsterhearts? One of my players wrote up some of her thoughts as well.

Otherwise, well, get out of here. Scram.

[righthandarm-man]

tasteful underboob for those interested

[eugeniedanglars]

the way i see it, colin has three options for handling the repercussions of kissing michael on the pitch in front of everyone:

gatekeep: by some miracle no one caught the kiss on camera so colin's sexuality is kept between him and any fans who happened to be on the pitch near him. the safest option.

girlboss: keeley gets the pr challenge of a lifetime handling the story of the first active premier league player to come out as gay. rebecca is tall and powerful and intimidating in the press room making it clear that richmond stands behind colin one thousand percent. the most realistic option.

gaslight: straight-up blatantly lying. not because he's ashamed or because he thinks he can actually convince anyone that the kiss didn't happen, but just because he refuses to let it be a big deal. acts like he has no idea what anyone is talking about if asked anything related to his sexuality. he doesn't claim to be straight, mind you, he just pretends to be extremely confused about why they're asking because he never kissed anyone in the middle of a football pitch at the end of an internationally-televised game? when presented with photo and video proof of the kiss he says that was some other richmond player named hughes who wears a number 12 jersey. you don't know him, he goes to another school. the funniest option.

[gooberpg]

Play Report: Lorn Song of the Bachelor x Mangayaw (Session 1)

The Binmanwa Party:

Kilala, a ratfolk cook

Malakas, a shamanistic healer

Bantok, a bow hunter

Euminung-gud, an aswang (?)

Dumalapdap, a ratfolk musketeer

Alon, a textile weaver

They are in debt to Oppu Wa Oppu, a veiled princess, because they were responsible for a feast that has gone wrong. The group was dubbed the Party Crashers.

They are in the village of the Gleaming Fins to pay back their debt.

Oppu Wa Oppu

The party asked what they can do for her to pay back their Debt.

Her eyes are unseeing ivory. She glows like faint moonlight. She is the niece of the village chief and a shaman and keeper of village rites, with tattoos of stars and crescent moons.

Aside from driving away her more annoying suitors, she doesn’t care how they get their hands on wealth. She also referred them to Auntie Sati Wa Sati, who is in need of capable Binmanwa for a Labor.

Auntie Sati

Sati Wa Sati is a witchy grandma. Fireflies encircle her.

She tells the party she wants to end the Bachelor’s curse. She tells them of Vung Si Vung’s song.

The Song of Vung Si Vung Once there lived a man called Vung Si Vung, said to be invulnerable—not spear nor shot pierced his bronzed skin. Such was his fame, the chief of that time grew envious, seeing in him a rival. One day, returning home, he found his wife taken. The chief and his soldiers, having subjected her to tortures, wrested from her her husband’s secrets: That he had won his strength from the spirits of the land. But he had failed to appease the spirits of the river. So Vung Si Vung found his wife murdered upon a spike, on a muddy bank, and the chief’s soldiers waiting. Filled with grief, he fought them there. Though he was mighty, they were too many—and, being near running water, near the river, he had no special protection. So he died. The chief, filled with spite, defiled the bodies of husband and wife, leaving them as carrion in red mud, conducting no funerary rites. This, over everything, was a breach of propriety, and greatly offended the spirits. Claiming Vung Si Vung with the tide, taking pity on him, they said: “O warrior, in death you have our blessing, go you now in a terrible form, as an amphibious predator, to visit fear and justice onto your enemies! Let it be so, from this very day!”

Aunti Sati could not give them anything of significant monetary value, but she offers her medical services.

Mahivir Sanna Krau

The party visited the The-Isles-Like-Precious-Ivory Company Office, to hear what they have to offer. The lead merchant Mahivir Sanna Krau offered to pay for most of their Debt in exchange for dealing with the Bachelor.

Mahivir wants him gone. He’s bad for business.

The party took the deal. It is in line with Auntie Sati’s quest. They requested a boat and some rations for this quest, to which Mahivir agreed to give. Dumalapdap tried to borrow a pistol, but Mahivir didn’t allow for it.

Niti Si Niti and Bavu Si Bavu

The party came upon a curious scene while walking through the village. A burly, peg-legged man was chasing a younger man with a machete. “Touch my daughter again, I’ll kill you!“

The peg-legged man is Niti Si Niti. He is a dreaming agaru sniffer, with tattoos of twelve-winged eagles. He is the father of Oppu Wa Oppu.

The party chased after the younger man. He is Bavu Si Bavu, hunter of forest beasts, tattoos of rhinoceroses. He reeked like roadkill. He claims he is in a relationship with Oppu Wa Oppu. The party was inclined to not believe him.

They lightly threatened him not to meet with the princess again, and he went home dejected.

Back to Oppu Wa Oppu

The party returned to the veiled princess’ hut to report on what information they gathered and to tell her about Bavu si Bavu.

The Oppu Wa Oppu let out a disappointed sigh. Bavu Si Bavu was saying truth. The two of them are in love. Her father does not approve of it because of Bavu Si Bavu’s status.

Rather than Bavu Si Bavu, it was Hummu Si Hummu, the village’s most prominent singer who the princess wanted to shoo away.

Realizing their mistake, the party hatched up a plan. What if Bavu Si Bavu accompanied them on their Labor to end the curse of the the Bachelor. If they were successful, surely such a feat would be enough to change Niti Si Niti’s mind?

Vartu Si Vartu

As the party was leaving the princess’ hut, someone else was heading inside.

Vartu Si Vartu, chief of the Gleaming Fins. His body is covered in silver paint. A servant follows him to touch up his makeup.

He is offended, insulted even, that the party met up with so many people in the village, and yet has not paid him a visit. He sternly expects them to be waiting in his longhouse once he has finished his visit with his niece.

AFTERTHOUGHTS

I’m thrilled to finally run this gem of an adventure. The session was really more about meeting the characters and gathering information, but it was still fun.

The whole thing with Oppu Wa Oppu’s romance is not part of the “main quest”. I wanted to tie Mangayaw’s starting Debt to the adventure, so I used the random Gleaming Fins tables to create characters for that. It’s a testament to Zedeck’s writing that I was able to flesh out a small web of relationships with the tables.

[phierecycled]

i just read an article and apparently jonathan kaplan (who played jason in the falsettos obc and was 11 at the time), watched his voice teacher who helped him through the show's auditions decline and eventually die from aids related illness during the show's previews.

in this same article michael rupert mentioned how there would be patients who came and saw the show and would go to the stage door just to be near the performers and tell them how much the story meant to them.

one day, heather macrae (charlotte) attended the funeral of her friend paul jabra and immediately after went straight to the theatre to perform in the evening show.

stephen bogardus recalls leaving the theatre and walking through the audience (about 15 minutes after the show had finished) and people would still be there holding each other.

[fannyyann]

"Just thinking, like, maybe a rib was out, or maybe popped my shoulder. I didn't think anything crazy. That's when I went and did all my CT scans, my MRIs and they're like 'Matthew, this is bad.' Fractured sternum, dislocated SC joint, spasming muscles up to my head, through my neck. " | Faceoff Inside the NHL | Cup or Bust Part 2

[mamaclownhunter]

100% know it has been said before-

Peerless Cucumber and Airplane-bro are terrifying at among us