HGMO: Sherlock

Hot Guys Making Out (HGMO) is a roleplaying game by Ben Lehman, and is set in a remote village in the Pyrenees during the Spanish Civil War (1930s). You play one of two main male protagonists (or ancillary other folks), and it's a game of passion. I haven't played it.

A hack of this game called HGMO: Sherlock was written by my friend Lauren McManamon (a fellow Gauntleteer) and is instead about those Baker Street detectives, Sherlock Holmes, and Watson, and the steamy relationship that simmers right under the covers of daily mysteries.

River was running this game, and I got to play it along with Agatha, Asher, and Larry. And I got to be Sherlock Holmes, himself. As is usual during Gauntlet games, the character keepers stored in Google documents was excellent, and really lent to immediately getting to get into the gaming, and having an easy-to-use reference:

The rules splayed out in a Google doc, true to form for The Gauntlet

Fortunately River led all us newbies through the process of the game, and bless her heart because she was sick at the time, but suffered through it to give us this joy. 

This is one of those interesting games where you take turns framing scenelets (I use that made up word, because they are less scenes, and more little vignettes). It helped when River said that we should imagine framing little pieces of story in a comic book, in the order of a few frames. In the actual play you'll hear us start to get into that flow a little bit into the game.

The story starts with choosing a framework for the story, but everything is very, very loose, and you end up doing lots of improvisation. The mechanics are all based around a set of cards you hold in your hand, with some giving you special narrative rights, and others just allowing you to describe setting details, and allow for some uncomfortable silences and looks. All in all, it seems to support the mood its going for pretty well.

Interested in hearing our actual play? Here's an MP3 of the thing, after I edited the hell out of it. The original game was in the order of about 3 hours, but here it is chopped down to about an hour. I left in a little of the setup, some initial mechanics (but quickly throw most of that away as we continue with the game), and took out all the white space. Enjoy!

The Gauntlet - HGMO Sherlock - 20180326

You can find HGMO: Sherlock in The Gauntlet's Codex - Lies zine (Jan 2018), and it can be purchased off of DriveThruRPG. Interested in an ongoing Codex subscription? Check out the Gauntlet Patreon.

The actual play video of this game is also available on Youtube here:

Dialect online and in person

Dialect with The Gauntlet: The Heart of the River

My friend Gerrit posted to run Dialect for The Gauntlet online gaming community, probably back in January or February (they normally schedule 1-2 months out), and I jumped on that. Fortunately I was still able to play by the time the game rolled around in mid March.

Dialect is a game about an isolated community, their language, and what it means for that language to be lost. In this game, you’ll tell the story of the Isolation by building their language. New words will come from the fundamental aspects of the community: who they are, what they believe in, and how they respond to a changing world.

I had backed the Kickstarter based on the premise, but also having heard some great stories about the two authors' (Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalıoğlu) prior game, Sign. Otherwise, I hadn't looked into it at all, and went into the game knowing little about the rules. Fortunately The Gauntlet uses a very "open table" style of play, which allows anyone into a table, and has no expectations on you knowing the rules ahead of time (and plays games that lean into those needs).

I already expected a great caliber of players (thank you Gauntlet), but I was impressed with the game itself.  The setup is simple, but meaty and fostered some good collaboration. You start by choosing a Backdrop, one of four settings that the game comes with: A mars colony cut off from communication with Earth. Or a bunch of scoundrels hiding in plain sight.

We chose The Compound: We’re 200 strong, not interested in where the world is going, and have built a compound, and are now completely independent from the world. 20 years have gone by. We started back in the '80s. The US started to wage its drug war. We are in Columbia, locals, mostly indigenous, but disconnected from the land (possibly for generations), we now live in the city, and are fed up with those in power that deal in drugs and violence. We've fled to the jungle, and colonized a small island floating in the middle of a large, flowing river.

The game play revolves around Aspects, of which you will have three. A set of two leading questions provides us with the means to define two of the Aspects, but one Aspect is completely free choice. All of these are answered collaboratively by the group. We ended with these three Aspects:

1. What about who we are made the Compound a necessity?  We freed ourselves from the terror of the drug war.
2. What special property about the Compound keeps us secure?  The river runs around us.
3. Free aspect?  The return to our ancestral homelands.

Character generation is a choice from archetype character cards. What's fascinating is that your character card also is tied to the Aspects in some manner, for example I chose the Artist:

A Dialect character card

I shunned #1 (the past), and identified with the river, but especially with my "muse", returning to our homelands. I was Jaji, a singer, and somewhat charismatic, providing home when needed, and giving us a narrative as a people. But I also was a bit of a layabout, not really helping when it comes to the real day-to-day needs, and had gained a strong reputation for this over the years.

We had Aziza (she/her, Gerrit) our gardener and spice and color maker, Primitivo (he/him, Paul) our scrounger of resources, with an antagonistic relationship with the river that takes away much of what we need, and Ani'bal (he/him, Brian) our healer of bodies and minds, with occasionally outbursts and a tendency to drink, and who occasionally misses the world.

The game then goes into Age 1. In our game, we just had a huge pile of cards, and chose what we wanted out of it. I'd learn later that if you play rules as written (RAW), then in fact you should draw a hand of three cards each, and select one from your hand. But our method worked perfectly fine here.

The cards are words to be created. For example, creating an expletive, or a word that means "worry". Although we take turns choosing the word to create, the creation is a collaborative process as well, which was excellent. Sometimes you have a good thought on the sound, or a concept, but your teammates are there to help flesh out the other details, or help guide the process. In the end, if it's your turn, you have final authority, but collaboration is the name of the game.

After talking about and formalizing the word (which takes about 5 minutes or more), then you create a scene, where the characters get to use that word. A little scene prompt at the bottom of the card helps if you need an idea of where to start. My favorite part of this process is seeing the evolution over a number of scenes, as there is a cascade effect, where you start to use earlier words more and more in later scenes, just as a side effect of the building of this language.

If this sounds a little intimidating, I'd say building language sounds bigger than you are responsible for here. You are building words, but most of your language is entirely the same as normal, so there is no need to feel pressure, but with all the advantages of getting to see the wonder and creativity.

We got to play far enough so as to finish the first Age, so that everyone created a word. However we had to tie up the session there. My compatriots continued a later session, but I had to miss that, unfortunately.

(I'm going to start stealing from my friend Sid and occasionally using "Stars and Wishes"; things that were highlights, and things I would like to change.)

Stars: 

• Gerrit's setup using Google documents with image of the cards was really well done and made the game run with ease online.
• The chemistry between our characters was really fun to see unfold.
• We took some care to make a real-life situation not feel silly or trope-filled.
• Paul's word choice was for Death, and it was my favorite segment of the game, as we worked together to create Tzon, and the scene was magical and intense. I sometimes still get teary eyed thinking about it.

Wishes: 

• I wish I could've play the second session.
• I would want the game to run as a one-shot. (As I found out later, it can fit in a 4-hour slot, but that's in person. I wouldn't try to speed it up for online play, as the slow intentionality is important. My recommendation: If you run online, break it up into two sessions, but try to do so with as short a break as possible in between).

The game was recorded, so here's a recording of the first session:

Sacramento

Before moving on to another session of Dialect, in which I ran the thing, first, a little of Sacramento. Visiting the family, taking the daughter to an afternoon of retro video game action (two arcade cabinets in one restaurant that each had about 60+ retro games on them!!), and finding an old puzzle for $2 at a thrift store.

Hitting the arcade! She played lots of Donkey Kong Junior and Donkey Kong. I showed her 1942, 1943, and a spattering of others...

Busy puzzling with the brothers and nephews

Only 3 missing pieces, not bad! None of those were even vital.

Dialect in person: The Iron Reign's Lastride

So then, I'm up in Sacramento visiting the family (who'll play board games, but RPGs not so much). That means I also gotta get out and gaming, and so got in touch with a few of my Sacramento peeps. Matthew and I met when I tried running a "story games" type meetup up there the prior year, and was down to play. We ended up meeting at his place, and he invited his friend Yuri (who'd played some RPGs, but story games not much).

Now, normally I lean more towards fantasy and sci-fi, even when playing serious games, because I feel like there's less restriction on being able to create or play in the setting. However, in talking with Matthew and Yuri, we went more historical fiction. In the past I was a bit averse to this (and still have an internal reaction as such!) but I've had so many good RPG experiences that are set as historical fiction recently, that I didn't say anything to the contrary. And I'm glad we played in the setting we did.

We chose the Thieves' Cant Background: The most important tools for the dozen members of our crew are not our weapons but our language. We speak in code, disguised as pleasantries and idle chatter as we move among our targets.

In creating our setting, we settled on Germany, early 1800's, the early budding of the industrial era. Germany is still a bunch of kingdoms, with some consolidation going on. We decided on the made-up city of Salzberg, on the Baltic sea, north Germany. It has a strong ship-building industry.

We are The Iron Reign, a few places away from a royal seat in a kingdom which has been engulfed by another kingdom. We are horse "thieves", trading in only the purest of German pure-bred horse breeds, whereas our rivals, the "Open Hand", believe a horse is a horse. Heathens.

Our Aspects:

1. Our job: Procure horses, by any means
2. Eyes on us (what provides us cover): The fairgrounds, a mix of cultures and trade, dominated at times by the Roma.
3. Free aspect: Preserve the line; we are from a noble line, and need to regain our seat of power.

We had "Lady Iron Reign" (a royal title, or a stage name?) Isolda, the closest in line to a royal seat that is no more, an adrenaline junkie. Richard von Eisenhuf "Ritterhard", a true knight, and protector of the line and honor. And Adolar, known as "Books", who is a bastard of the royal line, a mix of the royal house and Roma blood, who is self-educated and smart, and also swims in the sea of knowledge that is the fairgrounds.

I played this game closer to RAW (rules as written), and we drew a hand of cards for character choices, and then later each a hand of cards for words (3 from the first age). After you play a first age card, you draw a new card from the second age. This means in the next round of play, you'll have 2 first age cards, and 1 second age card to chose from and play. It was very interesting to see how second and third age cards differ. In the first age it's mostly about making words. In the later ages it's also about more complex word concepts, or situations around words, such as the government mandating their use, or deprecation.

One example word we defined was Prox, which we decided originally came from a longer chemical word, which was part of our mix that subdues horses. Now it's comes to mean "an important resource" or an "important part of the plan"; and eventually we found ourselves using it as "cool" or "good".

Another great one was Lastride. Our knight had gotten old, and was on his death bed, and decided to bring back an older tradition that was no longer being kept. He was held up on his horse (he couldn't ride on his own anymore), and placed in a fake field of battle with friends. And they stabbed him, so that he could die honorably in battle, in his "lastride".

We played almost a 4 hour session. I'm finding that it seems to fall into 3 equal sized chunks: game setup, the first age, and the rest of the game. The second and third age sort of snowball a little bit, and that may be due to getting familiar with the game by that point, or maybe we just rushed some of those scenes more than expected.

Stars:

• Although it's important to stand up for what you want to see in a game as a GM, just as a player, I'm very happy I let Matthew and Yuri guide the basic premise for the setting, because I again enjoyed a historical fiction game!
• The scene after Ritterhard was killed in his Lastride, had the Lady Iron Reign lead a charge in a war that was brewing, and all the soldiers stood up and chanted "to the lastride!" despite the fact that they had no horses and were just foot soldiers. I loved how the word really felt like it came to it's own, and no longer needed to be true to its original meaning. It felt like what the game is meant to do!
• About 2/3 through the game, and I did some checkins to make sure everyone was still in for the long haul (~ 4 hours), and I was feeling a little worn down, but thanks to Matthew and Yuri for carrying it to the end! I felt really satisfied with the game when it ended.
• I was really happy to get the game to conclusion, both because it felt complete, but also because I now know that it belongs in a 4 hour con slot (don't try a 3 hour slot unless you set expectations that it's only to show how it works, or rush some aspects, which I wouldn't recommend).

Wishes:

• I don't think I've read all the rules, but I definitely recommend being a little lose with some of the scene framing (such as not necessarily having only our characters be a main protagonist in the scene, if it feels forces). We had one scene were it made more sense to see children on the street say the word as our older main character watched. We had scenes after one of the characters, Ritterhard, had already died.
• Although games are probably quite variable in timeframe, it'd be interesting to know what the expected times for the different phases of the game are (and it'd be cool if the rules mention this).

The table with concentric circles heading towards the center.

Our story, with Matthew, Yuri and myself

CONlorado 2018: Sunday (Deep Forest, Scum and Villainy, Underwater People)

The Deep Forest, with Lego (morning)

I woke up as late as I could, took a Lyft to the YWCA, and met up with Paul, Madjay, and Michael, for a game of The Deep Forest. Michael had played before, Madjay had played The Quiet Year, and Paul hadn't played any of that jazz. The Deep Forest is a hack of the original map-making game about a post-apocalyptic community, and is instead about a bunch of monsters trying to rebuild after the humans have trashed their lands.

Our scenario was an island, where human super-wizards had come and started to colonize with their magics and sorcery, got part-way done, and then left. We had a little abandoned magic metropolis. We had a magic portal that leads to another world. We had a few outposts they had scattered around.

We created some monsters: A giant sea kraken that was hanging out near the city port. A group of wraiths who lived in the Well of Souls. A group of gnomes under the big mountain (with one of them "corrupted" by the outside, and therefore our emissary). Judy, a gelatinous cube clear-cutting a patch of forest.

Part of the game involves creating Taboos (things the humans left behind that we avoid), but also Adopted things that we've taken on for use. We Adopted the human food: a pen in the city center that magically generates flora and fauna of various types. We try to avoid the Eyes of Loving Safety (which float around all over the island, watching), Common Language (we don't know how to read their stuff), and Wands of Arcane Energy (like dangerous landmines! there's still an eternally burning chunk of forest from the last one we tried to use; the remains of a prior monster included).

From there, we started drawing cards and playing. Before long we had a tribe of bugbears invading through the magic portal. We established a small tribe of goblins, who were helping them build a road into the metropolis. That is, until they started eating some of the goblins. The gnomes and goblins didn't get along (as we found through various "discussions") but then suddenly an alliance was made, as the bugbears became more territorial. A giant scorpion thing came out of the ground at one point. Another failed attempt to use a wand resulting in a skyscraper burning. A discovery that the Kraken was eating 90% of our food. The gnomes working on an aqueduct of sorts. The Kraken sabotaging that project by making a dam. A wall around the gnomes as they all "corrupt" themselves with the outside, in an attempt to stave the bugbear invasion. And then the ominous bone golems appearing from the old ruins... as it turns out: our doom as the humans were remotely watching and then taking back control of our world (with the bugbears as their helpers).

Normally the game is played with a map, but we played with my Lego Creationary set (an idea I've written about before, and executed a number of times). It doesn't come out too great in pictures, but man is it nice in person... colorful, 3-D map, and so tactile.

Now, we played "the fleeting year", which is to say we removed some cards to ensure we had a faster game... but I still never find we finish in the established timeframe. Maybe I'm not keeping the pace fast enough, but  still. One thing that Michael suggested during gameplay, as we reached towards the end of session, was a tweak I'm going to incorporate from now on: Instead of ending abruptly somewhere in the middle of the game (if we run out of time), doing a fast forward and taking some cards from Autumn and Winter, to give a more satisfying ending. In our case we chose one card from Autumn and one from Winter, and then ended the game with the King of Spades.

I think it would be nice to explore the change in mood a little more significantly. Thing is, it's also important to really establish the setting with the first season as well. Maybe some spread of a nearly full Spring, 1-2 rounds of Summer, and then 1 round of Autumn and Winter for each player. This might provide a more rounded out experience, that you can fit into a 3 hour session more easily.

A scene from our game

I really dug Michael's tweak of rushing those final seasons!

Players of a monster island.

Lunch at The Post

From there we were joined by Kit (another one I didn't get to game with, but at least we shared some chatty lovin'), and some of us headed to The Post Brewing Co, and the food was delicious; I ordered a very big breakfast for lunch (which worked, as I only had a weak bowl of cereal earlier). Additionally, at this point I was smart enough to order a flight of beers, which I shared with Paul, so we were able to try a bunch of different flavors. And there was some DJ spinning great funky beats while we were there, so bonus!

Scum and Villainy (afternoon)

Ok. Seriously running on fumes here. But... need... more... gaming. I didn't get to play with John yet, and he was running this beauty, also a game I have never played but have heard good things about. Scum and Villainy is a game about a crew of a spaceship trying to keep flying and make ends meet while bending the iron fisted rule of the Galactic Hegemony. 

Again, we're talking another game that is "Forged in the Dark", so the complexities of the game system (which aren't that huge, but definitely the next level up from PbtA games), had me at a disadvantage. I took the easy route... I wouldn't try to really grok the system too hard. And fortunately the table and the GM made that easy for me.

But what happened next took me by surprise: I got to play a fucken Dralasite! Turns out you can play a "Xeno", an alien. So I made a Dralasite mechanic. I can't convey how happy this made me. I barely ever got to play Star Frontiers as a kid, as I was mostly running it for others. I loved the game so much that I've made a whole scenario about it in recent years, just so I could relive that magic, but even then, that's me as a GM. But now I got to play a Dralasite. Seriously. So happy.

We had Lito Thorn, "Zenith", our Speaker (played by Paul), Ratan Levanchy, "Vandal", our Scoundrel (played by Morgan), Orrin Bartok, "Karma", our Stitch / Medic (played by Jeff?), and Aria Gyle, "Elbows", our Muscle (played by Michael).

We started by creating a shared ship, which was the glue that held this team together, but then immediately found ourselves in a scenario (in media res) where we were in a prison! The first step: breaking the hell out. I got to use my slow shapeshifting powers, which obviously gave me some serious joy. We quickly acquired some decent Stress among the crew throughout our escapades, and then perform some downtime scenes. I would almost say that I was starting to get the mechanics of the game, but that would mostly be a lie. I was brain-friend by this point in the weekend. 

Also, if you know Paul Beakley on the G+, he has a thread about the con, and there's little bits about these last two games in there (among many other writeups). Go check it out!

Dinner at West Flanders Brewing

Headed out to get grub, and we (Cate, John, and many others) ended up at West Flanders Brewing Company. I was trying to be good to my body at this point, and ordered a beet-arugula salad. But that wouldn't exactly be accurate, as we were all sharing so many fried and delicious appetizers, that I really had quite a large and heavy meal. Fortunately I didn't force myself to also eat an entree, as I'd been overeating most of the weekend.

LARPs! (evening)

The last sessions were fortunately ones which required me to move around. I don't think I would've lasted sitting down at a table at this point. I didn't get much sleep the night before I left for the con, so by now it was 4 days in a row with minuscule sleep.

Underwater People

The first game I played was a playtest brought over by Alex for Bully Pulpit, called Underwater People. Basically we were all related to the water (in some way, mer-people, or weird sea creaturs, or even an ocean, itself), and we were going to a support group for sea-things. I was the secretary of the group, a sea slug that used to date Elon Musk, but was dumped after he stole my magic moon pelt, and launched it in a car that's circling the earth. That's OK, I've moved on and was dating someone new.

Our president was Sean, playing a human that was pretending to be a sea creature (without any of us knowing it). We had some strange characters, such as the Pacific Ocean (Jerry), and a siren (Krin). Venn and Cate were also in it, and everyone was so... baffling? We didn't really know who each other were, until you started talking. Just like at a real support group. We had hidden cards which described what people needed or wanted (to be listened to, to be pitied, etc.) and if it wanted to emulate some of the possibly strange and tentatively emotional interactions of a support group, well it certainly succeeded!

You play until someone leaves, and just over an hour in, that's what happened as our (human) president and the siren went off to, well, hang out, as it were. I don't play many LARP-type things, but have been doing more since last year, and it's definitely a nice mix at a con. I'm currently happy with about 1-2 of these for each large set of RPGs I play.

There was one other fantastic piece, which if you are good, I may tell you about one day. Yes, I tease you!

All night boat ride to Valhalla

Back to the Big House, and the slow process of saying goodbyes to so many beautiful people. And then packing. And then realizing that I had to leave to the airport at about 4am, and sleeping before then was a loosing battle. So I just stayed up all night, and we hung out on the love couch, or around the kitchen table. I got to spend the most time I had thus far with Stras, with I didn't even get to game with the entire weekend! (what!?)

Towards the end Andy (who was also my roommate through this process) went off, and came back with a bunch of Shaktilove books, which will be the titles for the games we'll be pitching and playing the next time: The Polarity Process, The Cosmic Serpent, Fierce Medicine, Champions for Peace, The Higher Taste, and of course Psycho-Cybernetics 2000. Stay turned for these marvelous games in coming years.

To all the lovely people I got to hang out with this weekend, much much love, and thanks for making such a welcoming and pleasant and superior-fun experience. Peace!

Jumping ship...

Until next time...

CONlorado 2018: Saturday (Urban Shadows, The Final Wife, Girl By Moonlight)

But... there was a "game" post up on the whiteboard by Krin, for Thrift Store shopping! I really wanted to go with them, but... but... Urban Shadows. And Madjay. My RPG side won this battle, this day. There is still part of me that is sad about missing thrift store shopping with another lover of the genre.

Urban Shadows (morning slot)

I've heard good things about this particular game, Urban Shadows being: an urban fantasy roleplaying game where you’ll play characters struggling to survive in a dark urban environment drowning in supernatural politics. I'd never played. And I've heard good things about Madjay as a GM, so had to jump into this opportunity. Also, this was the elevator pitch on the sign up sheet: "Buffy meets the Wire set in New Orleans". I mean, come on.

Players included Dylan, Michael, and Morgan. We created an interesting set of characters, all humans. The game revolves around factions, groups that represent communities of mortal and supernatural creatures: Mortality, Power, Night and Wild.  Our group? Two of us were Power (an Oracle and a Wizard), two of us Mortality (the Hunter - or was it the Veteran? - and the Aware).

I played the Oracle, her name Kami, a half-Japanese half-Filipino street rat punk, been around for a few years, smoking lots of weed to deal with the visions and bad dreams. My powers: foretelling, psychometry (reading objects), reading surface thoughts of people, and so on. My first step was to upgrade my gear from "crappy car" to an "awesome bicycle".

We had Cole our Aware (played by Michael), who didn't know the powerful lineage he was from. We had Vivian our Wizard (played by Dylan) casting spells with magic scrawlings burning on cigarettes. And we had Bianca our badass Hunter (played by Morgan), also somewhat Filipino (and we got to exchange quips and throw some very elementary Tagalog around during the session).

Madjay started by introducing a character by the name of The Owl, someone we may be associated with who runs trade in magics and the like. We all created some bonds with each other and with The Owl. We rock up to home base of the mortals trying to take back this town from the supernaturals (a home base and an organization that many of us have worked for, to some extent or another), and find the front door busted open. Dead bodies. A possessed operative. Some violence.

We had some interludes and "downtime" type scenes, some attempts to investigate the goings on, and then the session ended with a good confrontation at the base of The Owl, an old cathedral of sorts.

Madjay kept this session tight and moving. We had 3 hours, and I've heard - since this time - that running Urban Shadows in a one shot is difficult to pull off. But it felt seamless. 

Thanks for photo, Madjay!

Ramen

Stras was around to take us to yet another local joint. This time we headed to a ramen place called Sushi Zanmai (normally a sushi joint, but only serves ramen at certain days and hours). Good eats and good times. I love that almost every meal I got to meet some new folks, or hang out with the old homies I don't get to see often enough.

Werebear: The Final Wife (afternoon)

So, a bunch of us found ourselves gameless in the afternoon. There were the seven of us: myself and Alex and Nadja and Andi and Andy and Andrew and Morgan. We pitched a few things, but 7 doesn't lend itself to just any game. I mentioned The Final Girl, and it turned out no one had played before. There was some trepidation, and I mentioned that the game could go gonzo, but I'd love to see it played in a thoughtful or more serious way, if people were up for it.

We went for it. We grabbed a room, and ended up: The wives in a polygamous family are heading up to a resort in the Canadian Rockies to meet up with their husband, who they don't know has been killed by a Were-bear (like, a person who could turn into a large grizzly monster). My favorite part of this process however was not the result, but how we got there. There were discussions about what tropes would be disrespectful, or just silly, and we tended towards avoiding some of that. The most important part though was that everyone was listened to, and therefore was bought into the story.

We had everyone create 2 characters a piece, and ended up with:

The wives:

• Nicole, the first wife and a true believer
• Constance, the innocent wife
• Tyreen, the wife who solves everything with food
• Bernice, the eldest wife
• See-yung (aka Sally), the wife with quiet intensity, new to North America

The folks working at the resort and lodge:

• Roger, the friendly resort manager
• Marsha McClean, the butch groundskeeper
• Kathy, mother of two, owns the general store
• Piper, the sanguine resort maintenance person
• Sarah, the housekeeper with dark circles under her eyes
• Jack [she/her], the resigned cook
• Jean-Paul, the old hermit of the woods
• Hank, the bro-y ski instructor

During the three introduction scenes I already felt we had something really good brewing. Nicole (the first wife) was already set up as a matriarch that everyone else seemed averse to. See-yung started as quirky, maybe, but with a little bit of attitude. And the first scene between the resort staff - taking and dealing with a phone call about the missing husband - set a good mix of incompetence and apathy, and with Jean-Paul quitting and storming off into the woods. 

We decided each scene would have 3-4 players in it, which left the rest of us few folks to be the audience in the cheap seats in the theater. Even this added some good punch occasionally.

First blood was at the grocery store, Constance and Tyreen (both wives) going down, as did Kathy and Sarah. Kathy grabbed her shotgun, and to be fair, Sarah did a bad-ass move of snapping a broom in half against a shelf to face the werebear, but all for naught. What really drove the scene was the Jaws and Alien effect... we would only get little teasing views of the beast: the reflection in the refrigerator glass door; a quick shot of a claw; a split-second view of large silhouette. And of course a pineapple can rolling on the floor.

The scenes progressed one-by-one as we took turns playing the killer. We lost various people, with survivors occasionally running into the dark woods. Morgan played the werebear in such an amazing way as it crawled, sniffing, around the wives' cabin. We had a great scene with Hank pissing off the second story balcony of the lodge, as the trees went down one by one, and then a vicious and sad encounter as Marsha falls, saving her love Jack from death. See-yung runs through the woods and finds a cabin, banging on the door, to find Bernice and a shirtless Jean-Paul; after which we had an amazing moment of guns and armaments and a chase with a pickup truck and subsequent crash. And Bernice sacrificing herself to allow See-yung an escape.

A the final moments we see a return of the resort manager Roger, clueless, on his little gold cart, as he runs into both Jack and See-yung. At one point the werebear, chasing Jack and Roger, has See-yung in its large maw. There is a river and a rope bridge that the two try to run across, but it becomes their doom as the werebear gets up on both feet, and rips the bridge out from under them. And that's when See-yung gets up from the ground, swaying, silhouette showing in the moonlight. And little pin falls to the ground as she throws a grenade rolling towards the creature. Like a pineapple can. A huge explosion blasting in See-yung's face. And darkness.

Honestly, it was the best game of The Final Girl I've ever played. There was something about how everyone was tentative at first, but became trusting based on our conversations, and just brought it. We had a few ideas that were nixed based on X-card style "nays", even someone nixing their own idea. And the intentionality was just excellent. When people felt low or winded, we didn't force them to play in the scene or play as a the director/killer, we just found the next person in line who wanted to be in the scene. It just really felt like we were all taking care of each other in many ways, and the result was fabulous. In retrospect, it was probably the highlight of my weekend.

The writers room for Werebear: The Final Wife

Side note: Post-game, due to prior discussions, Andi had brought some crafts... in this case a coloring book and crayons! I really needed to unwind a bit and go into a quite mode for a few, and so flipped open the book to the first page. Starting back at me: a vicious bear. And hence, below...

The Final Wife - unofficial movie poster

Girl by Moonlight (evening)

After a relatively large meal, the blood rushing away from my head, with too little sleep over many nights, it was on to the next game. I mention this, because we were about to dive into some very cerebral territory, for two reasons: 1. This game is "Forged in the Dark"; which is to say, based on the relatively crunchy Blades in the Dark system. 2. Led by Nadja, we needed to process the overly hippie-weirdness that is plastered all over our AirBnB, and we ended up with a theme that required some amount of brain work. Both of these together ended up leading to an amazingly good session (especially after we struggled past our tiredness and into giddiness).

Girl by Moonlight is written by Andrew Gillis (who was also our GM), and is about magic girls (a la Sailor Moon). We ran with a specific playtest Series Playbook called In Darkest Night, which had a somewhat dark theme. We lived on a world where the rotting body of an ancient god was slowly covering the surface. It's agenda? Madness. How has our city-society survived? Partly by encapsulating Shaktilove (lowercase) by focusing only on the positive and "yes", and disallowing the expression of negative emotion. We ended up being the avatars of these perceived "profane" actions, like expressing fury, envy, despair and self-doubt. Oh yah, and our "daytime" personas worked in an internment camp for those affected by negative feelings, which we were there to suppress. Yep, somewhat dark.

We had Vantablack (codename Opal), avatar of despair, played by Nadja. There was Sunrise Starbeam (codename Fury), avatar of anger, played by April. Veridian (codename Seafoam... or maybe vice versa?), avatar of envy, played by Eric. And Nora (codename Sanguine), avatar of self-doubt, played by me. The playbooks also had some interesting dynamics. For example I was also a time traveler, and had come from the distant past, when our society and world were in a much better place. And it turns out I had known Opal's distant ancestor, who was my sister's lover.

The scenes we played were strange, and intense, and there was so much conflict between our characters... it was really enticing. But I think all of our brains were working at a slower pace than normal, and we ended up not get to do what would normally be a full session. I think Andrew was a little down by that, but honestly, the session was still soooo good. I have no regrets. And we got to work through some shaktihate.

A happy bunch. Like shaktilove happy. (Note: per prior game, you can see the start of the werebear poster on the table)

From there it was back to The Big House, more coloring and hanging out. More love boat. And me eeking out as much sleep as I could, but still getting to the YWCA in time for Sunday's morning game.

CONlorado 2018: Friday (Inheritance, Love Each Other)

Inheritance (morning)

Paul Beakley wanted to run some Inheritance. We barely squeaked in the right number of players. (It's a LARP that plays with 9. Only 9. No more. No less.) The premise: 

Ten years ago, Daxo murdered his beloved older brother, Baldr. Exiled by his father for his crime, he’s spent a long decade wandering. But now he’s heard that his dear grandfather has died, and he’s returned home to claim his inheritance.

We played the hodge podge of people involved in the funeral and drama. We grabbed the YWCA's bigger board room, and went to it. The game is LARP which has us act out all sorts of scenes, occasionally with most of characters there, but often between 2 or 3 people alone. In theory this could happen in tandem, without all of us seeing each others scenes, but the facilitator (in this case Paul), could get everyone to stop and pay attention if something important was going on. 

As it turned out, there was lots of important things going on all the time, and I'm super happy that our focus was often on each other. It was like watching a play, most of the time. Well, when you weren't in the play itself. There were scenes both hilarious, and scheming, and heart-wrenching.

I played Gefjon, the seer. Honestly, I was a little lost at times, not knowing much about Viking things, but the game mostly leads you into knowing what you need to know, but there was a lot to digest in a short time (and keeping in mind that the morning was a 3 hour slot, so we had to play tight).

After the game was over, you get to know a bunch of spoilers around many of the characters and their goals and backgrounds. It made me think that the game might not have replay-ability, but in fact the majority of the players had played at least once, if not a number of times, so I may be totally wrong there.

Once again Sean did a AP report, so I don't have to write much! Freedom!

Everyone preparing by reading their little playbooks

Final scenes... a priest and a mother, dead. A brother, poisoned. A father negotiating with a prospective daughter-in-law (or more?)

Lunch

Lunch was at the Lazy Dog Sports Bar & Grill with Alex, Andy and others. It was a chilled out affair, as were many of the outings. Lots of gluten free options for some of our members, and pretty decent grub. Because of the crazy elevation at Boulder, we were recommended not to drink alcohol to quickly. Kind of sucks when they serve full sized pints. We'd learn... eventually I'd split beer flights, or beer pints, or glasses of wine with my various compatriots.

Love Each Other (afternoon)

The next game was a playtest written by Venn Sage Wylde, including players Sean, Nadja, and April:

Queer apocalyptic story game about love and community formation in a world that reflects the vulnerable, broken, and breaking worlds of the characters we create. Will they love each other, overcome their fears, and connect? Will the community survive while the whole world falls apart? How will these characters be remembered?

Once again we have a Sean AP report! He concentrates mostly on the games mechanics and does some roses and thorns. I agree on some counts, such as the mechanics being much to mentally grasp as the tech trees started to open up. A simplified cheat sheet may assist, or something which pared down some of the rules perhaps. A way to get into the meat of the story without as much restrictions in movement?

But either way, instead I'll mention a little of the beautiful narrative that came out of this beautiful game. All characters use a they/them pronoun by default, and we created a few genders at the beginning. We had pooka and goblin, anemone, and noodle, among others. These would become a deck that would be shuffled and drawn, each time a recurring character would appear in the story (and thereby define their gender). Each had a simple definition, such as "navigating through and around other genders, watching", or "create and leave gifts for other, not looking for thanks or recognition".

We had a world of rising waters, and a grey goo that was threatening to overwhelm us all. Big Pink, which was the last dry space before the floods. Hodge Podge, the island of junk and debris floating in the ocean, where safety is now in short supply. Bly's Hall, and Chevron Skeleton where Ram's Raiders - our unfriendly neighbors - hail from, and where they're all out of food. There was Nono and Jaji, two refugees from the Floaters of Hodge Podge; Penny our little scientist with the weary face and shaky hands; Zin with the wiry frame and darting eyes.

The game had both world building, map making, and character generation all spread through in little bite sized pieces as we went round and round, and then scenes of various types of desperation. But as we wrapped up, we ended on a happy note. Penny and Jaji ended up bonded by skills, working together to prevent the grey goo from spreading. Nono found inspiration from Jaji, and reclaimed their name, once a series of words said to make them go away, to words used to prevent others from bashfully refusing help.

But my absolute favorite scenes were those with Zin (played by Nadja) pestering Penny (played by April) out on the Hodge Podge. I was in tears of joy.

Our little water world...

Yes, we loved each other.

Indian dinner at Tiffins

Stras, Andy, Nadja and I headed to an Indian joint that was around the corner from Stras' place, Tiffins, and it was lovely. Got to check out Stras' place afterwards, and got to meet some cats and bunnies.

Delicioso... we ordered way too much, which worked out really well for breakfast the next day.

The man next to the seminal poster. 

Scotch party

Then it was off to be dropped back at the Big House, for a little scotch tasting party. We also at some point moved the couches together and created a sort of love boat.

That's possibly when the overwhelming feelings of dread started to sink in, in the house of Shaktilove (lowercase). You can see an innocent looking chalkboard in the background, which proclaims Love and Trust, and never say No, and other words that start to nefariously sink into your soul.

But other than that, all good fun!

My stalwart companion on a maiden love boat journey... one of many.

Gracious scotch hosts, John and Cate!

CONlorado 2018: Thursday (Star Crossed, The Queen's Receipts)

House con

I was invited to CONlo (abbreviation approved), run by some friends in Boulder. Stras and John have been running this show for a few years with extremely small numbers, but this year Andi was invited to take some reigns, and it got just a wee bit bigger. (And that includes me, yay!)

Plane Tension

I took a direct flight out of Burbank. Fortunately my friend Sean also thought he was taking a direct flight (incorrectly), and grabbed me on the way. Props for getting all those dirty looks saving me an exit aisle seat during boarding. Well worth it, as we got to chit-chat, but more importantly, eventually got to the work at hand: a game of Star Crossed (Alex Robert's 2-player game of forbidden love, and Jenga).

Because of Andi's excellent organizational work, we were able to converse about the idea of playing this game on the plane. It started as a bit of a joke, and also some talk about how smart it would be to play a scenario with a sky marshal and a terrorist on a plane. (Answer: not smart.) But because of this planning, I specifically brought a miniature "block tower" that I'd found for $0.79 at a thrift store.

Here is Sean's actual play report, which does a good job in giving you the low down. So good, I'm gonna do a straight-up rip, and quote him directly (just in case the link breaks at a later point):

We played Jaime, the idealistic son of a dictator of a small island, and Marco, the house butler that served in the war with the now-dictator and took a bullet for him. Knowing that we were about to wage yet another war, in the middle of the night Jaime convinced Marco to steal his father’s greatest weapon (works left unsaid we because we were flying, but the implication was that it was a WMD) and fly away in the night.

Marco had been the man to see Jaime’s education and his upbringing. While most of the people on the island, including and especially the dictator were expressive and rash, Marco was patient (that’s one of the things that made him so attractive) and reserved. His attention to detail, especially his perfectly trimmed beard were all signs of his control and thoughtfulness. In fact, many years ago Jaime learned to shave from Marco and tried to model the perfect precision that he used when drawing the razor across his skin. Marco was Jaime’s godfather. He was also totally hot for him.

Jaime, in his mid thirties, was erudite, privileged, and idealistic. Though he often argued with his father, he had know idea the extent to which the despot oppressed both the people of his island and threatened his neighbors. Brash like his father, when he learned of the dictators plans, he found the only man he could trust not to betray him (and that could fly the small plane they escaped in) and set off with him to deliver the dangerous cargo to his father’s enemies. He needed to prove this was a mission about political ideas. He needed to prove he wasn’t just flying away to be with Marco!

Pilot and Co-Pilot sat side by side (as Tomes and I did on the plane) and flew from the dictator’s island. They wanted each other but their beliefs and the need to safely pilot the plane trough a deadly course held them apart!

That summarizes it pretty well. He forgot to mention things like how the word "crash" and "WMD" would come up, and how we'd have to quickly tweak all that to ensure we made the rest of our journey unscathed. We joked about passing X-cards around to our neighbors. Honestly, having to be that cognizant of what words we were using added a second level of intensity and tension to the game.

Airport shuttles to Italy-food

We met at the Super Shuttle desk as Andy did us the solid of organizing one shuttle for the 6 of us that landed roughly the same time. We headed on to the YWCA, after passing the evil incarnate which is Blucifer, on the way in.

From there is was on to Pearl St, which is 2 blocks away from the YWCA, and houses the majority of food that was consumed on this journey. We hit Sforno, an Italian joint which was completely devoid of people at that early afternoon hour, and had a delicious family style feast.

Edit: I forgot that Nadja was debuting her show (she is the Talent Manager!) called "Stream On", a reality show that's pretty much the Twitch version of Survivor. So we got to actively see parts of it during our din-din.

The YWCA

Our gaming home for the next days would be the YWCA in Boulder. It's amazing what a great location this turned out to be: custom keycode so we could get in anytime, a couple of conference rooms, miniature kitchenette, proximity to tons of food options, and supporting a great organization. Everything was so seamless that it just makes me want to run a house con like this around my home.

The Whiteboard Schedule

Being such a small convention, of about 25 people, I got to see yet another way that games on demand and scheduling can happen. We'd just fill these out little game signup sheets, and tape them to the game time slots they'd created on the white board (three slots a day: 3 hour morning slot, 4 hour afternoon slot, 4 hour evening slot). The only oversight was leaving a spot for players to sign up, but that was quickly rectified.

An example of a signup sheet.

The Big House

Andi and crew planned accommodations for the majority of us foreigners around two AirBnBs, colloquially called The Big House, and The Little House. I was in the former with about a dozen or more of us. It worked out surprisingly well. It wasn't too close to the YWCA, but was a quick $6+ Lyft ride, or a 20+ minute walk (which I did at least 4 times).

Atrocities: The Queen's Receipts

Back to the Y for gaming. First thing I signed up for was Alex Robert's pitch for "Unnamed Game Playtest". The description: "You are a Queen's retinue on a perilous journey. Answer a deck of question cards to find out who you are and how you really feel about the Queen." I'm in. Players included Sean, Eric, Nadja, Andy, myself, and Alex.

The premise was that the Queen chose us because she knows we love her. Who are we? Why are we doing this? What's our relationship to the queen and each other? This is a game where your character gets formed in the journey, much like Fall of Magic or Protocol, however there you at least start with a name and a title or something... here you start with an empty canvas.

A deck of cards. That's it. They get drawn, one by one, one person taking a turn at a time, and you just answer the question. That's all. But holy shit was that game intensely good.

Again, Sean does one of his Actual Play reports. (Which just makes me wonder if I should always play with Sean not just because he's amazingly good fun to play with and a generous co-player, but because then I no longer have to blog about my games, he just does it for me!)

I was the bodyguard. The Queen had cut out my tongue, or more accurately: she'd had her last bodyguard do it, before that bodyguard slit her own throat. I took on the role. I was from a foreign land, brought over as an emissary, but also a spy. The Queen was onto me. And she had my sister in the jail beneath the castle. (There's a word for that, right, Andy?) And she'd let my sister live, as long as I served. If I betrayed her? Well, I had no choice.

One of the fantastic mechanics was the ability to "pass", if you didn't want to answer a question. Or if you wanted to possibly see the next character do so. Of course they could pass too. Everyone could. And if the question got around the table? You just discard and move on. Worked really well for various reasons (safety, narrative flow, and more).

Seriously though, you can just play this game for an hour, or more, depending on how many cards you want to play. Standing in line? Play an RPG. Driving for an hour in traffic with a few friends? Play an RPG. I want this.

Some of the various Queen's Receipts

Late night ramblings: Part one of many

And then it became the first of many, many nights, of late night hanging out and talking, and staying up way too late. The first of 4 days of too little sleep, and too much adrenaline. Can't complain, so much love.