Game Day Microscope

So I got another chance to play in a game of Microscope yesterday at the October Game Day.  Once again I had a ton of fun and we managed to produce an amazing setting with tons of potential and great stories.

We had four players for the game, though they changed slightly over the course of it, and we had John facilitating the game for most of it.  The players starting out were myself, Tristan, Chris, and Bobby.  Tristan dropped out late in the game, so John stepped in and actually played for the last little bit.

We decided to focus on telling the story of humanity coming into a Golden Age through technology.  We ended up going alternate history really quick.  I started things off and framed a scene at the United African People's secret Extraterrestrial Research Facility hidden deep in the jungles of the Congo.  The U.A.P. were preparing for the first manned mission to Mars.  Oh and this was in the 1920s.  Doesn't sound much like our normal timeline does it?  Of course it was the Secret History of the Space Race, so it could all be happening in the shadows, but things went quickly into left field.

We had solar system exploration, psychic murders, the Psychic Wars, and humanity expanding out beyond our system into the stars.  There were tons of cool stories that we looked at and that we did not.  One of the more interesting ones was the first psychic murder, very old school detective story.  Could be a very fun story to flesh out and write up.

I love this game.  It definitely scratches a different itch than most other roleplaying games, and that is fine.  It speaks to the writer and worldbuilder in me, and is an incredible tool for creating fun and interesting stories.  I look forward to even more games in the future.

Here are all the details of our game:

Seed:  Technology brings humanity into a Golden Age

Bookend 1:  Secret History of the Space Race (dark)
- Event:  First Manned Mission to Mars (dark)
- - Scene:  Why Do The World Superpowers Want to Stop the Mission?  (Setting:  1920s, the United African People's secret Extraterrestrial Research Facility, hidden in the Congo jungles.) (Resolution:  Because the mission will give the U.A.P. favored status with an alien race) (bright)
- - Scene:  How did Issac Karazamov die?  (Setting:  U.A.P. Extraterrestrial Resarch Facility at the launch of the Mars mission) (Resolution:  Elijah activates the Omega Contingency) (dark)
- - Scene:  Why did the first Mars mission fail?  (Setting:  Mars lander before landing) (Resolution:  Sabotage of Ship) (dark)
- - Scene:  Does Victor Karazamov take revenge?  (Resolution:  Using his position Viktor avenges his son by crushing Africa's economic standing) (dark)
- Event:  Sheva's Research Arrives on Mars (bright)
- - Scene:  How doe Sheva's research help humans to make colony ships great?  (Setting:  Mars after knowledge of Sheva's research is examined) (Resolution:  Mars starts growing vegetation that is clear) (bright)

Era:  The Singularity (bright)
- Event:  The First Psychic Murder (dark)
- - Scene:  How Did They Discover That the Murder Was Done by a Psychic? (Setting:  The murder scene in a hotel above a speakeasy) (Resolution:  G-man rules the murderer was a psychic) (bright)
- - Scene:  How Did the Psychic Community React to the Murder?  (Setting:  Psychic Secret Hideout) (Resolution:  First the outrage, then the War) (dark)
- Event:  The FBI Psy-Division is Founded (bright)
- Event:  Veluxia, the first A.I., is created in response to the "Psychic Problem" (bright)
- - Scene:  What causes the Psychic Wars?  (Setting:  Veluxia's Command Room) (Resolution:  Veluxia advises "control" of the psychics)
- - Scene:  What does Veluxia suggest as an idea to Control Pyschics?  (Setting:  Veluxia's command room) (Resolution:  Effect of Sheva's research vegetation produces "null" psychics offspring from people that consume it.  Veluxia based off of Sheva's mind after she died) (bright)

Era:  Humanity Settles the Solar System (bright)
- Event:  Alien Contact (bright)
- Event:  Mars becomes the breadbasket of the Solar System (bright)
- Event:  The first "null" psychic is born (bright)

Era:  The Psychic Wars (dark)
- Event:  The First Null Psychic Regiment Enters the War (bright)
- Event:  The Last Psychic is Executed (dark)
- - Scene:  Are "null" psychics included in the last psychic executed?  (Setting:  Execution) (Resolution:  Yes, the nulls purpose has been served) (dark)

Era:  Mankind Expands to the Stars (dark)
- Event:  The HMS Excalibur, Earth's first colony ship, launches; commanded by a descendant of the first manned mission to Mars (bright)
- Event:  The original Commander of the Excalibur passes of Old Age in the 50th year of the ship's journey (dark)
- - Scene:  Who was the next Commander of the Excalibur? (Setting:  The Bridge of the Excalibur) (Resolution:  Veluxia becomes the co-pilot, guiding the commander's son to New Avalon) (bright)

Bookend 2:  End of the Earth (bright)
- Event:  Humanity's Colony Fleet Harnesses Sol's Supernova to Follow the Excalibur to New Avalon (bright)
- Event:  The Human Colony Fleet reaches New Avalon only to find it deserted (dark)


Focus 1:  First Manned Mission to Mars
- Legacy:  Effect of Sheva's Research (Legacy Event:  Sheva's Research arrives on Mars) (bright)
Focus 2:  The First Psychic Murder
- Legacy:  Veluxia, the first A.I. (Legacy Scene:  What causes the Psychic War?)
Focus 3:  Life Aboard the Colony Ship Excalibur
- Legacy:  New Avalon (Legacy Event:  Mars becomes the breadbasket of the Solar System (tied into Sheva's Research))
Focus 4:  Null Psychics
- Legacy:  Martian Beefsteak (Legacy Scene:  Who was the next Commander of the Excalibur? (tied to Veluxia))

Microscope RPG: Review and Actual Play

This last Friday at Magpie we changed things up for the first time in quite a few weeks, and instead of Warhammer Fantasy we played a new indie RPG called Microscope.  Josh couldn't make it, so it was just me, John, Armaghn, and Emily.  This apparently worked out well because the game is meant to be played with 2-4 players (which btw is my only complaint so far, because that is just a little too limited for an RPG in my opinion).  This is an interesting game that is very very indie in style and execution.  The game is both GM-less and dice-less.  It is heavily narrative in play, with the actual roleplaying in it being done via either one person narrating or the group dividing up roles and playing out a scene in total storytelling mode.

As you play the game you are building a world and a timeline and telling stories all along it.  Here is how things basically work.  You start off by deciding on a theme for the game (We decided to do:  Magic re-enters the world as mankind leaves it).  The next step is to decide on the beginning and ending of the timeline you are going to explore with the game (We started with Magic reappears as the Mayan calendar ends, and the end was Mankind joins the Galactic Republic).  Then you define a "palette" for the game, which is a list of stuff that definitely will be allowed in and stuff that will definitely NOT be allowed (I won't list all the stuff we came up with here, but we did stuff like Yes to Orcs and Gods, and No to Elves and Steampunk).  The final part of the "setup" portion of the game has everyone going around the table adding in new "periods" (defining large periods of time) and "events" (specific events within a given period).  There was some sort of system for how many of these you do before you dive in to the play portion, but I can not remember what it was.

At this point you have a bit of a framework put together and you dive into the action.  One person starts as the active player and chooses a focus.  The focus will define and shape the current go around the table and all the stuff that gets added.  For instance in ours we had a period where Mankind meets alien-kind.  John was the first active player so he chose to focus on First Contact initially.  Therefore all of the stuff that the rest of us added had to deal with that subject either directly or tangentially.  We could add periods, events, or a new thing called "scenes", which are exactly what they sound like and are were the actual roleplaying takes place, as long as they dealt with the focus.  You go around the table with each person adding an element and then once it comes back to the active player, who has one more chance to add something, the active player title will pass to the next person and the pick a new focus.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Oh, something I just remembered is that the active player can add two elements as long as they are nested, i.e. a period and an event, or an event and a scene.

To be even more scatterbrained I should point out that when you are adding periods and events to the timeline you also will be defining an overall tone for them, either bright or dark.  Might have mentioned that earlier.  For scenes you do this as well, but there are also some more steps beyond just writing out a description and picking the tone.  You start by asking a question that you want to answer via the roleplay of the scene.  Then you set the scene, where are you at and are there any limits.  Next up each person chooses a character to play, starting with the player to the right of the person who defined the scene.  Then just dive right in, play the characters, enjoy the scene, and explore the question until it is answered.  As soon as it is you stop and move on.

That seems to be pretty much it.  There are probably some more elements to the whole thing, but that is all we encountered as we played.  You keep choosing new foci and adding periods, events, and scenes until you feel that you've explored the setting and the game enough.  There is no chronological order enforced, you can jump back and forth in the timeline.  There are no limits on how many elements you can add under a given higher tier, you can explore a single period for the whole game and neglect the rest if that is what you find interesting.

Overall I found the whole thing to be very interesting and extremely enjoyable.  I had a little bit of my usual problems that I always have in narrative games, in that I take a bit to get comfortable just jumping into character and roleplaying off the cuff, but I got over it.  That is entirely a personal issue and is in now way a problem with the game.  I absolutely LOVED the setting we came up with and will more than likely either run some future games in it or right some stories or both.  I'll give a full summary of it down below.  Everything was easy to comprehend and to execute.  The game flowed well, with only a minor hang up here and there caused by someone having a little trouble thinking up an idea.  I don't know if there is an ability to pass when you are having a brain fart, but that might be a nice house rule.

For the most part, whatever you say goes.  This seems kinda scary, and rife with chance for people to cock things up and "ruin" the game for you.  But I think the game can handle people's diverse visions and creative decisions quite well.  Also, this can easily be overcome by playing with good folks and not sabotaging bastards.  LOL.  There was some sort of system for pushing back against something that you do not like or agree with, but it was rather specific in execution, and I do not at all remember the details because it never came up with us.

I found some great links to other reviews and the like, including one talking about doing the game solo.  I think that would be a really interesting way to guide yourself in worldbuilding.  Here they are:

Review on RPG.net

Blogger's review

Solo review

Here is all the information that I recorded in the word file, which is basically all the stuff that was written out on index cards and introduced to the game as we played.  Later when I have some more time I might type up details of the scenes, we'll see.

Overall Theme:  Magic re-enters the world as mankind leaves it

Yes List:

Orcs

Insectoid Demons

Mecha

Deities

Psionics

Bionics

Aliens

No List:

Elves

Steampunk

Good Magic

Hyperspace

Bookend 1:

Era:  Magic reappears as the Mayan calander ends (dark)

- Event:  A portion of humanity mutates into orks (dark)

- Event:  The first Mage Lord comes to power (dark)

- Event:  A tenth of the world population wiped out due to magic fallout (dark)

- Event:  The first trans-planet gateway is opened to Pluto (bright)

- Event:  Humans discovers the ruins of a spacecraft on the other side of the gate (bright)

Era:  The Reign of the Incarnate Ones (dark)

- Event:  The first human harnesses magic in order to ascend to godhood (bright)

Era:  Mankind meets alien kind (bright)

- Event:  The human ship Hermes discovers a damaged alien trader (dark)

- - Scene:  Why does the Captain of the Hermes fire on the alien trader? (dark)  (Set on Bridge of the Hermes) Resolution:  Captain believes that increased energy readings indicate imminent attack by the 

trader.

- - - Scene details:  Navigator, ship's Oracle, ork security officer, and communications psychic.

- Event:  News of an alien race makes it to Zeus, the leader of the incarnate ones (dark)

- - Scene:  How do the other incarnates convince Zeus to let his humans join the Republic? (bright)  (Set on the planet Olympus)  Resolution:  Ra convinces Zeus to go along with the tides of destiny and 

control it.

- - - Scene details:  Hoplite Mecha on planet (insert name) rebelling in light of discovery of beings not governed by the gods.  Ra and Hades convincing Zeus to allow humans to join with the aliens

Era:  The War of Talaran Aggression (dark) 

- Event:  Talaran strike fleet wipes out human colony in revenge (dark)

- - Scene:  Does the Olympus escape the Talaran fleet or stay to defend the colony  (Set on sensor station, Olympus ship, colony, planetary government)  Resolution:  Olympus & its fighters sacrifice 

themselves to allow some people to evacuate (bright)

- - - Scene details:  CAG of the Olympus Commander Tobias Gemini, sensor station Oracle Damalis, planetary governor , ground control Plebb Johnson

- Event:  The Oracles are wiped out by an alien virus (dark)

- Event:  Hades is killed in the invasion of Tartarus (bright)

- Event:  Aztec gods, led by Tezcatlipoca, offer their power to the Talarans in a planet-wide sacrifice (dark)

- Event:  Aliens show humans how to kill gods (bright)

Bookend 2:

Era:  Mankind joins the Galactic Republic (bright)

Focus 1:  First Contact

Focus 2:  Magic Reappears

Focus 3:  The War of Talaran Aggression

Sentinels of the Multiverse

I am currently in a card game obsession phase.  Absolutely in love with a lot of well designed card games.  My two current favorites are Netrunner and Sentinels of the Multiverse.  Of the two I feel there is a small preference for Sentinels because of the fact that it can be played with more than two-players, and it is even more fun and engaging with the increased player count.  So lets dive in and examine this absolutely wonderful game, the greatest cooperative, fixed deck, comic book themed game in the multiverse.

The game takes place in a series of turns, each one has three distinct components:  The Villain Turn, the Hero Turns, and the Environment Turn.  Each of these distinct types of turns can be further broken down in a few stages.  Each one has a specific "Start of.." and "End of.." turn phase, that really only matters for triggering various effects and abilities.  The Villain Turn also involves drawing and playing a card from the Villain deck.  You will also most likely be dealing with Villain specific powers that relate to either the beginning or end of the Villain Turn.  This type of triggered ability seems to be common across all the Villains in one form or another.

After you've resolved the Villain Turn you then proceed to the Hero Turns.  These also each have the "Start" and "End" phases, as well as the following in order sequence:  Play a Card, Use a Power, Draw a Card.  This can be a simple and straight forward sequence of events, or a complex interplay of abilities and triggers depending on the hero.

The third turn, the Environment Turn, is quite similar to the Villain Turn.  You trigger and "Start" and abilities, then draw and play an Environment card, then trigger any "End" abilities.  After that you head back to the beginning and do it all over again.  This repeats until you've either lost, by all the heroes being incapacitated, or you've won, by reducing the villain's hit points to 0 or less.  The basic rules and framework of the whole thing are quite simple and elegant.  All the complexity comes from the variety of cards and abilities associated with each of the heroes, villains, and environments.

The variety of all of these different decks is perhaps my favorite element of this game.  When you count the expansions and the couple of promo decks you have 15 heroes, 13 villains, and 8 environments.  While all of them operate similarly enough to not require any extra learning curve when switching between them; they also all feel very distinct and flavorful.  You have heroes that are just plain damage dealers, heroes that build up to complicated combos, and heroes that help other heroes shine.  You have villains ranging from criminal masterminds with armies of underbosses and thugs, to deadly mercenaries with impressive arsenals of devices and weapons.  The environments range from the Ruins of Atlantis to a Mars Base.  Each one is fun and interesting in its own right, which is quite impressive.

So far I have played in I believe 6 games of Sentinels, with two of those being solo play throughs to just test out new decks.  The game does not have formal single player rules, so I was basically playing the roles of two actual players, but it was still somewhat enjoyable.  The game really shines in the teamwork and interaction with other players though.  You really feel like a band of valiant superheroes, all working together to take on the big and bad evil villains that threaten the peace and safety of the world.  The game definitely gets easier with more players, and the more the merrier is always true in the majority of board games IMO.  But I can still see it being fun with 2 or 3.

Now let me see if I can remember the participants in each of the games I've played in.

Game 1:  Me, John, Emily, and Armaghn.  We faced the "easy" villain Baron Blade, a sort of mad scientist type.  The heroes that we fielded were the Wraith (kind of a female Batman), Ra (Egyptian themed fire god),  Expatriate (chick with lots of guns), and Fanatic (holy/angel themed hero).  We won, but it was kinda tough.

Game 2:  Same players.  The bad guy this time was Akash'Bhuta (or Osh-Kosh Bagosh as we nicknamed him), a giant tree creature.  Wraith and Ra were played again, but this time they were joined by Nightmist (spellcasting supernatural private eye chick) and Legacy (kind of a Superman type).  We won again, this time a little easier.

Game 3:  Me, John, Emily, Armaghn, and Gabe.  We faced Grand Warlord Voss (Thanos/Darkseid type).  We had Bunker (Iron Man-esque), Ardent Adept (hippie bard music powered type), Ra, Tachyon (combo between the Flash's powers and Reed Richards intellect), and Unity (Gadgeteer chick).  Another tough battle but we won.

Game 4:  Just me.  I faced off against the Deadpool-like Ambuscade.  I used Haka (maori warrior brute type) and Mr. Fixer (Luke Cage/Ninja).  I barely won, and I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have, I probably forgot to do quite a few things by not paying attention.

Game 5:  Me again.  I faced off against the giant evil robot Omnitron.  I had Absolute Zero (kinda a tech using Iceman) and Tempest (Storm-like powers in an alien form).  Stopped at about halfway through in order to start up a game with actual other people, but it wasn't looking great for me.

Game 6:  Me, Emily, Armaghn, and Ron.  We had to face the infectious Plague Rat.  We fielded Haka, Legacy, Visionary (psychic hero), and Mr. Fixer.  We won pretty handily.

As you can see, I'm not the only one who really enjoyed playing and was willing to do so multiple times.  I'm definitely looking forward to more games, and I really think I could do an interesting spin off or two using similar ideas.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2nd Edition: A Review

So for the past few weeks at out weekly Magpie game we have been playing a little campaign of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2nd Edition.  It has been a fun and interesting little endeavour.

For those that don't know about the game I will provide a bit of background.  First off the world that it takes place in is a fairly standard fantasy, low-magic type setting at its core.  It is one of the older worlds in this hobby and genre, and a lot of the tropes present in modern stuff can be seen in this.  Here is a bit from the Warhammer Fantasy setting wiki:

"Warhammer Fantasy is a fantasy setting, created by Games Workshop, which is used by many of the company's games. Some of the best-known games set in this world are: the table top wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay pen-and-paper role-playing game, and the MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Another game, Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, is a free-to-play release. Warhammer is notable for its "dark and gritty" background world, which features a culture similar in appearance to Early Modern Germany crossed with Tolkien's Middle-earth. "Chaos" is central to the setting, as the forces of Chaos are attempting unceasingly to tear the mortal world asunder. The world itself is populated with a variety of races such as humans, high elves, dark elves, wood elves, dwarfs, undead, orcs, lizardmen, ogres, and other creatures familiar to many fantasy/role-playing settings."

 The game itself uses one of my least favorite systems, a percentile based system.  The system has you roll a pair of ten-sided dice that allow you to generate a range of numbers from 01-100.  You have skills and abilities that also are rated on a range from 01 to 100.  When you roll you are trying to get a result that is under the rating of the skill.  So if you have a 50 Weapon Skill, then when you attack with a weapon you have to roll a 50 or less in order to hit.  My main problem with this style of system is that the range you are having to deal with is so large, and in most iterations of the percentile system you never have anywhere near enough points to spend in order to make yourself reliably good at anything, or at most you can get reliably good at one thing but at the cost of being terrible at lots of other stuff.  Another problem with them is that a lot of them make it very hard for you to raise a skill once you get good at it, which is somewhat realistic, but not in a way that I find enjoyable to simulate.

This particular game actually does a decent job of reducing these annoying tendencies.  For one you have a small spread of attributes that all start at a fairly decent number (around 30-40) and the rating of the attribute translates into a rating for all the related skills.  I.E. if you have a 45 Willpower, then all Willpower based skills will be at a 45.  This is nice since you do not have to spend points on each individual skill.  The method for raising skills is also much more reliable.  Instead of having to roll for it and hope that you get lucky enough to raise it, you just spend XP points in order to raise them at a set rate.  While this is still rather slow, it is set and regular, so that is nice.

 The combat in the system has some really interesting stuff in it.  Probably my favorite aspect of the game so far has been the critical hits tables.  Well, really the whole damage system is pretty cool.  First off you have an amount of Wounds (Hit Points).  When you take damage it gets taken away from this pool of Wounds, with Armor reducing the amount from each hit.  Once you are down to 0 or less wounds, each point of damage below 0 wounds translate into a point of critical damage.  So if you knock someone down to -4 Wounds, then that is a 4 point critical.  You roll percentile dice again on a critical table and cross reference the result with the critical rating.  This gives you a number between 1-10.  You then take that number and consult the specific hit location table and use the entry assigned to that number.  The specific hit location is determined by reversing the digits on the dice that you rolled to hit btw. Here is an example to try and clarify all of that.  Lets say you have a Weapon Skill 55.  You roll the dice and get a 41.  Hurrah you hit!.  So take those numbers and reverse them to get 14, which gives you the hit location, with 14 I believe being the head.  So that is a hit to the head.  Let us assume that you have already removed all the Wounds from this target, so all damage is going to be counting towards that critical rating.  Lets say you do 7 damage, so thats a +7 critical ratings.  Then you roll percentile dice again.  Lets say you get a 31  That means your result is an 10.  You consult the Head Critical result table and you see this result:  "Killed in whatever spectacular and gore-drenched fashion the player or the GM cares to describe."  Huzzah!  We are actually using an even more elaborate critical hits chart than the one in the book that was written by an actual M.D., so its very interesting and detailed.

The rest of the game is fairly straight forward.  If you have any experience with things like D&D you will be familiar with how most of this stuff works on a basic level.  Nothing too complicated.

 As far as the story and campaign have been going, we are playing through a module in the back of the rulebook; and it has been pretty fun.  Its a bit of a mystery investigation type of thing so far.  The party is composed of a Human Thief, a Dwarven Troll Slayer, a Dwarven Shield Breaker, and a Human Initiate of Sigmar (my character).  We have fled a huge enemy invasion, fought Beastmen, Skaven, Ghouls, and other beasties.  We got a Relic of Sigmar, but after it was turned in it was stolen.  We pursued it but have not been able to find it yet.  We've helped out some blind priest, and delved into sewers one too many times.  The play has been quite enjoyable.    I look forward to even more sessions.

Dresden Files Session 3

This session began with a trip to the Seattle Underground.  Cyphus was not entirely certain about this little side trip, what with the dirt and such that is usually associated with underground things.  I mean these clothes might be only a glamour, but they are sure patterned after some very expensive items!  But the exciting stuff was going to be happening down there, and Selise was depending on him for some more entertainment.

Thankfully the whole thing turned out to be a fun journey in wardrobe variation!  Cyphus got to play fashionably challenged tourist, fashionable Victorian era train passenger, and appropriately backwards farm person!  So many glamours, so much fun.  The magical train thing that we rode on was very nice as well, Cyphus may have to get one at the Menagerie.

We met an interesting guy named Crafter.  He specializes in creating magical weapons and items.  Cyphus was a bit suspicious of the fact that this guy was making a whole bunch of weaponized magical spells that could be used by just anyone.  But he didn't really stay all that worried, because he met someone even more interesting...Jerry!  He is such an interesting fellow.  Super fun to talk to, and with the most amazing talent for finding things.  Oh!  There was also a gate to the Peach Spring place!  Crafter had made it for something, but Cyphus can't remember who.  Doesn't really matter though, this is how he can get his egg hatched.

Apparently the thing needs five coins to open it up.  Jerry has one, but it was meant for someone or something like that.  Cyphus told Jerry that he would be very interested in any other coins that Jerry might find.  Oh and there was a girl in the mirror.  The dead one.  Apparently she had been spying on all of us.  Thankfully it was only the magically significant stuff or something like that, so most of Cyphus' escapades are probably not on record.

For some reason we decided to go plant a fake ring at George's place.  Finally something Cyphus was good at.  Of course it was super easy to sneak in and plant it, with a veil to hide himself from sight, and his finely honed skills at breaking and entering.  There was also a nice lucky break that the security system was having some maintenance done.  Cyphus was still really impressive though, no doubt about that.  He managed to quickly switch out the ring for a shiny coin, which just happened to be one of the ones for that gate!  Now he only had to locate three more.  There was some sort of altercation with George's folks, but nothing really came of it.  Oh, Steven signed some sort of deal with George; but Cyphus didn't pay much attention to that.

After that we went to a little get together at Blue Jazz.  There were some interesting people there, but by Oberon they were all shown up by the presence of the Summer Lady!  She was glorious.  Cyphus could not help but being awestruck.  He did his best to contain his excitement and stick by Selise.  She was after all his connection to the higher Sidhe society.  The silly white court vampire was talking about peace or cooperation or something like that.  Cyphus made it clear that his loyalty was with the Summer Court.  Then some lady came in and threatened a bunch of people.  How drool.

After that Chin Xi talked to the group, telling us how she was trying to get to Peach Blossom Spring.  What luck, that was where Cyphus wanted to go as well.  Cyphus agreed to help her if she let him hatch the egg in the spring.  After that everyone left the bar, and walked into a war zone.  Cyphus was worried about the other Summer fae, so he rushed quickly home to the Zoo to check on things.  When he got there he discovered that Kaelyn had been killed (no big loss), the Summer Lady and her Knight were at the Zoo recuperating (OMG OMG OMG), and Selise was missing (OH NO!!).  

Cyphus rushed off to try and find her.  He got Akina to help him sniff out her location, and found her trapped in a small old-fashioned glass bottle.  Cyphus began to panic when he was unable to pull out the cork or break the bottle despite his best efforts.  He quickly got a hold of the magic users he knew, namely Chong and Jacob, asking for assistance.  Thankfully Jacob was able to set Selise free.  Cyphus and Selise were both very grateful, and very interested in seeking revenge against the one who had imprisoned her in the first place, Rebecca Black.

Dresden Files: Seven Sins of Seattle

So I'm giving the Dresden Files RPG another try.  I have to say that almost every time I try out a FATE based game I'm both reminded of how I hate the swinginess of FATE dice, and how I love all the other parts of the system.  Plus I love the Dresden Files setting, and we have a great group of folks participating.

The setting we decided to build for this campaign was Seattle.  A few of the players are from that area, and in general it is a very interesting city that has a ton of possibility for magic and mayhem.  We're dealing with a new power from the East gathering in the old Chinatown, with all the big players in town having left to fight the Vampire War, and with some sort of Old Power stirring underneath everything.

We have some amazingly cool locations.  The Blue Jazz Nightclub is both the Accorded Neutral Grounds, and the den of a White Court vampire named Sven who holds items of great import to people and allows them to visit and see them in order to feed on their lust for the item.  Pike's Place Market is a hub of all sorts of crazy powers and important shops.  My character's stomping grounds are at the Woodland Park Zoo, a Summer Court bastion that houses a menagerie of mystical beasts.  Lakeview Cemetery is watched over by Bruce Lee's ghost and Denny Park is watched over by the denizens of the mysterious and dangerous Denny family.  There are Were-Rats in the Underground, Triads in Chinatown, a Biomancer at the hospital, and something mysterious going on at the Space Needle.

Our cast of character includes:

Cyphus(me) - the Summer Court Changeling who is a Keeper of the Menagerie for the Sidhe
Ellethwen (Elle) McFadden - a Summer Changeling Hairdresser
Akina - the Pack less Werewolf with the occult bookstore
Chong Xi - the Emerging Kung Fu Master with a vigilantism habit
Molly Brennan - the mortal Detective in the Know with a loose vision on ethics
Steven Williams - the "not-Zombie" Social Manipulator with a penchant for instigating trouble
Jacob Morkraven - the Wizard of Redemption with haunting family issues

As you can see quite a collection of big personalities and interesting folks.  So far we've had a very good time in our two sessions.

In our first session all of us experienced a similar dream/vision which turned out to be the final magical act of a dying wizard named Jenny Denny.  Yes she is connected to the mysterious Denny family and yes her name is really Jenny Denny.  All the players were able to identify where the vision was set (Denny Park) and headed there quickly for various reasons.  Cyphus was just annoyed that someone got into his head uninvited and wanted to find out what was going on.  He traveled through the Nevernever (magical, Fae realm) and after exiting back into the real world outside the park he hid himself with a Veil and went to find the body.

Some of the others were already there and were inspecting the fallen girl, so Cyphus quickly snuck over to her purse and palmed the $4000 it contained.  After that he moved over by the body and when he discovered traces of ectoplasm he dropped the Veil, appearing in the middle of everyone, and pointed this fact out.  After folks recovered from the surprise much discussion about what had happened began.  No real conclusions were reached, but a clue pointing to the Blue Jazz Nightclub showed up, and when it was discovered there was some sort of event happening there that weekend, we decided to check it out.

It ended up being some sort of formal party, so nice clothes and dates were required.  Cyphus had the clothes covered (he's Fae after all!) but needed a date.  Luckily a Sidhe lady was visiting town after donating a new beastie to the menagerie, and the Lady Selise was more than willing to accompany him to the event.  So with a gorgeous Fae woman on his arm and his own personal charisma (Cyphus' glamour appearance looks like Eric Northmen from True Blood BTW for those that know the show) Cyphus made one hell of an entrance at the party.

The normal niceties and chit chat happened for a bit, with everyone dancing around the two non-PC pairs; a couple of Triad folks and the local Red Court vamp with arm candy.  After a bit the owner, Sven, came out and invited everyone back into the inner sanctum to view his collection.  There were quite a few interesting items there, but Cyphus had eyes for only one thing, an actual DRAGON EGG!

Lots of talking, coveting, and skulduggery were going on all over the room, but Cyphus did not pay much attention to anything but the egg.  When his attention finally got pulled back to the world around him his date Lady Selise was having a bit of a verbal cat fight with the Red Court vamp Scarlet and things were about to escalate.  And boy did it ever escalate!  By the end of the proceeding fight Akina had torn the vampire's throat out!

Cyphus would have left it all well enough alone if Selise had not been on one side of it.  He ended up palming a liquor bottle off Akina and glamouring it to seem like holy water in order to distract and scare the vampire; which worked.  In the end every PC survived and walked away mostly free.  Oh and some of the final wheeling and dealing managed to get me the Dragon Egg!  As well as Jacob getting some special magical sword; which led to an invitation to a meeting with the Triad folks (which was a good thing since the big Triad bruiser at the party was the main suspect for the killing of Jenny Denny).

The second session primarily featured the aforementioned meeting and a some follow up action.  Cyphus did not do much this time around (mostly because his player was exhausted).  He facilitated a meeting between Jacob, Chong Xi, and Selise, in which Selise got them to promise to bring along a spy butterfly creature to the meeting in exchange for some information.  Then the group met up at Akina's bookstore before proceeding to a meeting with the Triad representative.  Cyphus basically just trailed along because he was curious, but not actively interested, until they reached the Triad stronghold at the Egg Long restaurant and saw a full fledged dragon skull.  Once again lots of talking and such happened in the background, but Cyphus did not pay much attention because, dragon skull! Something was decided about going to seek out a warlock in the Underground.

So on the way to the Underground the group decided to take out Selise's butterfly.  Cyphus' attention was drawn by this, but he decided to see what would happen.  If the initial assault on it had somehow failed to do anything I would have probably had Cyphus speak up and play like he was destroying it, but instead take the power into himself so he would continue to serve as Selise's spy.  But lo and behold, when you attack a butterfly belonging to a Sidhe, it turns into an ogre.  A group of purple monkey demons and Triad looking enforcers also decided to join the party in the alleyway and crazy times happened.  Cyphus did not want to attack the ogre in case Selise was still able to see through its eyes, so he focused his actions on the demons; using his power to manipulate a targets mind to make it feel the effects of extreme drunkenness.

The battle was big and epic, but this post is getting really long and I don't want to type it all out.  Besides Cyphus doesn't really care about the violence, just the results.  He was pissed by the flaming poop attacks of the crazy monkey demons though!  Fortunately due to his inhuman toughness and recovery abilities, as well as some good dodging he walked away from the whole thing totally unscathed.  Everyone else came off much the worse for wear with lots of consequences.  Oh well, not his problem.  The toughs were killed or driven off, the ogre slaughtered, and the demon beat down to size and captured.  The party decided to head to a nearby cheap hotel in order to interrogate the demon and decide on what to do next.

On the way Cyphus decided to be nice with some of his recently acquired money and buy some replacement clothes for Akina, since she keeps destroying hers when she "wolfs out".  Unfortunately the only clothes quickly available were some touristy type sweat pants/shirts.  Cyphus apologized for the crude garb, but still felt bad and promised Akina that he owed her one for such a terrible fashion insult.

Cyphus left the group still talking (because I had to leave to get ready for work) and headed back to have an interesting conversation with Selise, where much flirtation and plotting happened.  It looks like I'll be having to try and get a hold of that magic sword for my own ends.  There will also be some down time between session so I'm going to hang around Akina's bookstore to do some more research on my dragon egg.

How I Learn to Stop Worrying and Love to LARP

LARP.

It stands for Live Action RolePlaying.  It is a special type of roleplaying game where you do more than sit around a table and roll dice.  You get up, you move around, you act in character, and heck you might even dress up in costume.

Among nerds and gamers of all types there are various hierarchies.  Some level of nerdom are considered better or worse than others.  Which has always struck me as pretty silly, but that's the way it is.  LARPing has always been one of those forms of gaming that has been looked down on and derided.  Mostly because of a large number of bad examples of the hobby.  All the Dark Lords of Dennys have given this type of gaming a bad reputation.  I shared this opinion to a degree, making fun of LARPing in the past.  Thankfully I have now had the chance to experience what LARPing can be when done with skill and awesomeness, and my opinion has made a total 180.  I am completely in love with this form of RP and I am super excited to do more of it.

At Glitch Con this weekend I got to play two LARPs, a Legend of the Five Rings one on Friday night and a Houses of the Blooded one on Saturday night.  Both of them were run using the Blood and Tears system, the  system that John Wick came up with for LARPing in Shan'ri, the world of HotB.  The system is really easy to learn, and is beautiful in its simplicity.

First off, the L5R LARP.  Like I said this one was on Friday night and lasted about 3-4 hours.  This was my absolute first ever LARP experience, so I went into it fairly nervous, but also excited and ready to try out something new.  For those not familiar with the L5R game and universe, John described it as "Rokugan is to Japan as Middle Earth is to Europe."  It is a fantasy world based on feudal Japan, filled with samurai, magic, honor, and swords.  The players all belonged to one of the major clans that form the political and social scene in Rokugan.

For this specific LARP we had folks play members of the Phoenix, Crab, Scorpion, and Unicorn clans.  There were also a few members of the Lion Clan present, at first only the in character host of the game was a Lion Clan member (played by Chris Colbath) and then a couple more got added in when people joined the game as it went on.  Each of the Clans has a very distinct theme and flavor, and is fanatically devoted to the Emperor in their own way.  This feeling of being "turned up to 11" really makes the world feel awesome, and makes folks love their Clans.  I chose to be on the Phoenix Clan for this game, and played a courtier named Mugen Isawa.

In the system your entire character sheet is composed of a Name, a Profession, four Advantages, and a Secret  That is it.  The thing was barely bigger than a Post-It Note, and it is really all you need.  The Profession and the Advantages both provide color for your RP and character, and give a simple mechanical benefit during the few times you actually need to engage any sort of mechanics.  For instance, I had the advantage of Making Friends.  If a situation had come up where I was not able to make friends by spending Style Points, which I will explain in a second, I could use this Advantage to force the issue and Insist on my agenda.  This did not happen during either LARP, and according to John barely ever happens in general.

Style Points.  Probably should have explained them first, but it is late and my brain is crazy.  This is the main currency and mechanic of the game.  You get a supply of them at the beginning of the game and can earn them throughout play by other people giving them to you or by doing awesome things and getting recognized by the Narrator (GM) for it.  Why would other people give you style points you ask?  Well because that is how they get you to do things and how they make things true about the world.  Want to say that you and the lady from the Crab clan are having an affair?  Walk up to her, hold out a style, and say "Isn't true that you and I are having an affair?"  If she thinks that is a good idea for developing your characters she can say yes, and she gets the style to add to her own supply.  If she says no you can try and give her more style to sweeten the deal.  If she refuses three times, that is when you can Insist and use the mechanics, but people don't refuse all that often.  And when they do it is usually more enjoyable to try coming at things from another direction or renegotiating terms instead of insisting.

That is pretty much 90% of the game.  There were a few mechanics for things like duels and the like, but I won't go into much detail on them, both because they can be summed up really easily and because they may have just been worked out on the spot and may not be the exact ways you do things under the rules.  It all comes down to this idea though, one player chooses to win, the other chooses to be awesome.  Not that both can't be awesome, but it is more about making losing awesome and enjoyable instead of crappy.  Oh and it usually seemed to be the case that the "loser" was the first role chose, someone spoke up and said "I will let my opponent win."

So back to the specifics of the L5R game.  I enjoyed the game, though I enjoyed the HotB one a lot better.  This was both because of my nervousness and because I just did not latch on to the character or the setting as strongly.  I ended up making it true that an evil spirt had possessed me.  I lost the spirit over the course of the game, but ended up getting a book that allowed one to switch souls with another person, and getting it delivered to the Emperor.  Not a very in character move, and not the best LARP plot.  It was too solo focused and kind of a bit of wankery.  But it was my first time.

The next night was the Houses of the Blooded LARP.  This one also lasted about 3-4 hours, and was awesome.  Both because I was more comfortable and because I am in love with the world of Houses, with House Fox, and the Ven (the powerful nobles who are portrayed by the player characters).

The plot of the game was basically a big party, an opera performance.  The Ven consider Opera to be the height of art.  In this game I played Baron Pando Yvarai, a noble of House Fox.  My character valued Beauty and Cunning, though he was woefully blind in the area of Wisdom.  He was a Courtier and a Rake who was as the opera with the goal of breaking a heart by the end of the night.  I only asked for a Fox character, and when I was handed this specific one it felt like fate, I loved this guy already.

I was much more proactive in engaging the other players and pushing my own story into the spotlight this time around.  I was largely inspired by a Rumour I saw on the two hosts backs.  Awesome new mechanic that, Rumours.  Basically you pay one of the Narrator's to create a rumour and they put a name badge sticker with it on the target's back.  That way they can't see it, but everyone else can, and they must depend on others to find out what it says.  I LOVE this mechanic.

I saw a rumour on the hosts' backs that said that they were both secretly in love with the same person.  So I decided that the person whose heart I would break would be theirs, by killing the target of their love.  I talked it over with Chris and Rob who were playing the hosts and got them in on it.  I decided my character thought that Emily's character was the target of their affection, and that I needed to get rid of her to break their hearts, in order that I might pursue them because I was in love with them.  Chris suggested that it would be more interesting if I was certain of that but that I was wrong.  Which was a great addition.  We got Emily in on it and she thought it was a great idea as well.  So the machinations began.

I got a rumour started about the target of the hosts' affection being Emily.  Then I went up to one of the more militant, warrior type characters, played by a great guy named Mike Curry, and asked him to kill Emily for me.  I was trying to be a bit clever with my words and stumbled around, but he was thankfully patient enough to help me get to the heart of what I was saying.  He said that if I could retrieve proof that another Ven was responsible for killing his Lord then he would kill her.  I accepted and was able to very quickly acquire the proof.  He then told me we had a deal.  After it was all said and done I was informed by him that he immediately double crossed me by going and telling Emily someone had just hired him to kill her.  Well played sir, loved it.

I felt like my plan was well set at the time, so I relaxed a bit and just mingled.  I was also serving as a Herald for Emily's nephew Gabe, since he was ed having small and soft-spoken, so I helped him out a for a bit, announcing his desire to duel with Chris' character.  It was during this time that I noticed quite a few people had created Romances between their characters.  I was once again inspired and decided to loudly and publicly announce a Romance with Emily's character in order to deceive anyone who looked at me as a possible source of her death.  She agreed and so at the next break in the action I loudly called everyone's attention to myself and announced that in light of all the crazy stuff going on at the opera that night, I had to proclaim something immediately.  I pulled Emily over, knelt down, took her hand, and professed my love for her character.

We were immediately interrupted by one of the other Fox player whom I had told about my character's true love interest.  She loudly proclaimed our love to be false, and a wonderful argument broke out between her and Emily.  Apparently their characters' were enemies, lucky chance there.  I had to step up to defend Emily's honor after they had argued for a bit, and called for a swordsman to represent me.  None answered. I was luckily saved by the Narrator at this point when he decided that spirit of Talia Yavari, the patron of House Fox, descended upon the room and proclaimed that there must be a Court of Love to decide the truth of mine and Emily's characters' feelings for each other.

The Court of Love had a jury of five members that would decide our fate.  None of the jurors were people that I had any alliance with or trust in, so I was pretty much doomed.  I got first argument, and used it to say my character dipped Emily's character into a long passionate kiss, and then looked at the jury saying, "For love need there be any other argument."  Got a few "ahhhhhs" and  wistful sighs out of that one.  Emily also made an impassioned plea.  I should stop here and state that the mechanic for the jury was that there would be two piles of Style Points, one for yes and one for no.  The jurors would split the Style in the pile that corresponded to the way they voted.  So folks could hope to sway the vote by adding more and more Style to one pile or the other.  Me and Emily added quite a bit with our pleas backed up by our character traits and advantages.

Then the parade of negativity followed.  Everyone who spoke up spoke up against us, saying such awful things.  Mike was awesome when he walked up and loudly proclaimed that I had hired him to kill Emily.  Great moment.  Gabe had some amazing moments where he just walked up and threw a bunch of Style into the No pile.  It was dramatically wonderful and brought me to my knees in laughter.  As all this was going on Bobby walked up to Emily and handed her a glass with some Style in it and a card underneath it.  She turned to me and asked "Did you really hire that man to kill me?"  I looked her right in the eyes and said "Would you really trust the word of that Bear over one of your own House?"  Apparently since her enemy was another Fox as well, that gave her her answer and she handed me the glass.  The card underneath it said Posion.  AWESOME!!

So the Court of Love voted against us.  I was not surprised.  I stepped forward after the decision, proclaimed that the spirit of Talia had been insulted and dishonoured, and that I must drink to drown my sorrows.  I showed the crowd the Poison card, upended the glass, "drank" the "poisoned draught" and then began to pantomime not being able to breath.  Whirling around I gave Emily my best betrayed look and then collapsed to the floor.  She verbally spat on my corpse with some awesome cutting remark that I wish I could remember, and Chris commented "I do so love the Opera."  With that John called the game, the LARP was over.  I got quite a few congrats and kudos for the performance, and was on Cloud Nine.  Hell I was on Cloud 11.

This post is already really long, and I'm going to do another one on lessons I learned from Glitch Con, so I will just wrap up quickly.  Like I have said over and over I loved this experience.  I now respect and enjoy LARP.  I am in love with Houses of the Blooded, and I can't wait to play more.  It looks like we are going to be starting our own HotB LARP here in the area, and I am super excited.  This was the most in depth and character filled RP I have done in years.

Finally, remember that you can always trust a Fox, we love you too much to lie to you.

Monsterhearts Part 3

The MGG played through our third, and for now final, Monsterhearts session last night.  I had fun, but I definitely think it is a good thing we are rotating games for a little bit because I really felt the momentum was winding down.  Of course I fully admit that could be completely just my perspective, because I was so close to achieving the overall character arc goal for Silas; and therefore didn't have much more to drive towards in general.

The session started out with some recap and a little "Well what are you guys up to now?"  Silas went off and tried to apologize to Rosa for his earlier behavior.  Caroline went and found the girl she hooked up with at the party and used her ability to get some healing via closeness and intimacy.  Dominique continued her weird three-way date with the other selkie Ann and Mr. Samwell (this caused a slight disconnect because it seemed both me and Emily said things that happened in the following day or two after our next session; but then Josh picked right back at the minute of leaving off.  I had a little bit of "Well this didn't actually happen yet but we're referring to it as if it had.....huh.") by going to Baskin Robbins.

Dominique apparently got it into her head to try and steal Ann's pelt for some reason.  She didn't know where it was though so she called Caroline, who Dominique knew was good at finding out secrets.  Dominique described the situation to Caroline and piqued her interest (though the whole time during that conversation I was thinking "Wait, I didn't think Caroline knew you were a selkie.....huh") and Caroline called Silas, so she could use him for his car.  :p

Silas and Caroline arrived at Baskin Robbins and joined the other three inside.  Caroline squeezed in to the actual table the rest of them were at, Silas just perched on a counter stool nearby and kind of hovered.  Silas also got an orange sherbet cone because orange sherbet is awesome.  There was some awkward and ineffectual conversation at the table, and Caroline tried to find out the secret location of the pelt by asking her demon the Poisoner, but she backed off of following through on asking because the price the Poisoner demanded didn't appeal to her.  Apparently Caroline cares whether or not Rosa ends up as a possible human sacrifice.  Silas just made comments from the peanut gallery.

After a bit Ann and Mr. Samwell decided to leave.  Dominique and Caroline decided to follow them, and Silas went along with it cause he was bored.  They got outside and looked around, not seeing their quarry until, in a classic camera shot style, they turned and found her RIGHT THERE.  She warned them to stay out of her business, using some sort of magical fear ability that Silas and Caroline resisted but Dominique failed her roll against and succumbed to.  Silas being a smart ass told her off and blew smoke in her face.  This caused her to lean in and whisper something in his ear, which resulted in an immediate unleashing of Silas' Darkest Self.  Then things go fun *evil grin*

Silas immediately punched Ann right in the gut, causing 2 harm with a good roll.  He then tried to hit her again but found that he couldn't do it, some sort of mental block was keeping him from swinging at her.  So he turned and backhanded Dominique.  Dominique turned and ran away from Silas, crying in terror.  Silas then jumped on Caroline, bodily pinning her against the wall and biting into her neck like a drunk, sloppy vampire.  He took a little bit of damage while attacking her (from my poor-ish roll) but held on and started lapping up her delicious hot blood.  She tried to retaliate and failed, but her fighting back broke Silas' concentration on her neck and blood and caused him to switch the focus of his hunger by forcibly kissing her with his blood covered mouth and getting way too handsy.  Silas was still a little pissed at being denied by her earlier.  Caroline was even more freaked out by the fact that she was getting turned on by all this (huzzah successful Turn On roll meaning you get turned on whether you think you would or not).

While all this was happening Dominique made it over to Mr. Samwell's car and fought down her fear of Ann long enough to seek refuge and escape with them.  Silas because aware of this peripherally and dropped Caroline in order to sprint over and leap on the hood of Mr. Samwell's car; punching his windshield and cause large spider-webbing cracks to spread across it.  Silas continued to pound on the windshield until Samwell managed to get the car going and threw him off.  Silas glanced over towards Caroline again; but was done with her for now as she fled into the Baskin Robbins.  He decided to steal a car and go find more chaos to cause.

Meanwhile Caroline got Steve, the guy working the Baskin Robbins, to help her staunch the blood flow and call 911.  While this was happening she used some of her blood to draw on a table and Gaze Into The Abyss to try and understand what was going on with Silas.  She saw visions that revealed a lot about him, and found out that this was like what happened with the witches and that Silas' family had stopped him and calmed him down that time.  So she quickly called Silas' house and talked to his grandfather, who was dismissive at first but then immediately took action when she told him Silas was out of control.  She then got patched up and taken to the hospital.

Dominique escaped with the other two and they let her off at her place, though Ann tormented her the whole way apparently.  Silas took his stolen car and crashed it into a liquor store; stealing some high proof bottles and making molotov cocktails out of them.  He then proceeded to fire bomb a few things and run off to cause a bit more random chaos before his family caught up to him and brought him to heel once again.

That brought things to a close for the most part.  Because of all the rolling and the craziness though I managed to get just enough out of the short session to get an advancement and chose a new Ghoul one that allowed me to choose a new Hunger.  So I added the Hunger for Flesh and completed my desired character arc for Silas.  At that point there was time for maybe one more scene; but no one really had a strong idea for what to do from there, except maybe fast forward to a climactic confrontation with Ann; which would have been more than one scene.  So we stopped and just discussed things for awhile.

We all could see more game play happening at some point, but a break needed to be taken.  The opinions on the game in general were quite varied.  Josh was a fan of the setting and such but didn't really like the system, mostly because skills were more generic instead of specifically designed.  Emily liked parts of the system a whole lot, but was slightly less taken with the theme.  John really liked the system overall, but also wasn't as taken with the theme.  Me I love them both.  The system works real well for being improv and narrative, and really letting you drive towards a goal.  The theme is just guilty pleasure fun.

Overall I had a TON of fun playing this game.  I enjoyed my character and loved being able to just see something I want and go for it with no regard for consequences or other's perceptions.  This is something I totally can not make myself do it real life; so the escapism was nice.  I enjoy the directed flow and drive of the Apocalypse World engine behind the game.  Also the fact that I got to tie in Lovecraftian mythos was a nice bonus.

Next week we'll be tackling Smallville character creation.  We are basically coming into it with the thought that we'll see whether or not we actually play a session or two, based on how character creation goes; but we are leaning towards playing.  I can't wait.

Freedom Sunday XVIII (July 15, 2012)

Had a good time playing board games yesterday up at Bear's by the Maul.  Managed get in three rounds of gaming before my exhaustion kicked in and I had to head home and get some sleep.

First off me and a couple other folks got to play a couple of rounds of a new game called D-Day Dice.  I found it to be an interesting, but apparently rather difficult game.  We were playing without actually having the rules on hand though, so we may have been doing it all wrong.  I blame John.

The game works very like Roll Through the Ages if you are familiar with that one.  You roll a handful of custom dice and you are looking to build pools of resources by getting the die face results that give them to you.  The dice can yield Troops, Courage, Stars, Tools, or Skulls.  You have six dice to start and have to lock two down immediately after your first roll; but then you get two more rolls to try and manipulate the other four dice into the combinations you want.  The dice are red, white, and blue; two of each color.  If you get the same type of die face on each of the three colors you can get some nice bonuses out of that, or if you get a "straight" of one of each die face you can also get another reward.

You are building up these resources in order to try and accomplish a thematic World War II combat mission.  The one we tried to do was the landing on and taking of Omaha Beach.  The method for accomplishing the mission was to basically move up the beach, through various zones to the bunker, and then take out the bunker.  This is made challenging by various elements.  There are minefields and zones in the path of machine gun fire.  There are some zones that require certain Specialists (that you recruit with the Stars you roll) in order to go into and pass through them.  Also, every zone has a troop cost that you have to pay each turn you spend in that zone, and the cost rises quickly the further up the beach you get.  Making everything worse is the fact that you can only stay in a given zone three turns max, and some of them even less.

The various resources help you overcome these obstacles.  Troops gives you warm bodies to soak up the various forms of damage and attrition that come flying at you.  Tools give you a currency to buy various items that give you bonuses and reduce penalties.  Courage is spent to be able to move over zone thresholds as you go further up the beach.  As stated above Stars let you buy specialists that give you some cool abilities.  Skulls are just evil, the cancel out one other die that you have rolled; unless you can get lucky and get the one of each color trio.

It was a very quick playing game, we went through the scenario twice in a short amount of time.  The speed was helped out by the fact that John is apparently terrible at the game ;).  We died before we got past the second set of zones on the beach both times.  It feels like one of those games that will be very difficult and just require sheer perfect luck until you figure out the best combinations and strategies; and then it will be fun and challenging, but doable.  I look forward to playing some more, this time with actual rules.

This was followed up by a game of Core Worlds, a deck building game of space conquest.  The game has a really cool theme in my opinion, each of the players plays a periphery bandit/barbarian kingdom that is fighting its way towards the center of the old and waning Galactic Realm; trying to reach and take the core worlds.  Mechanically the game reminds me a lot of both Barbarossa and Eminent Domain; because of the combination of deck building and combat, but if you know about Dominion, you'll at least know the basics.  Your aim is to get the most Empire Points, you do this by adding cards to your deck, and then using the cards you draw each turn to conquer worlds and gain resources; which you then use to do the same thing on bigger and bigger scales.

The game has ten turns and each turn has five phases.  First you draw cards.  Then you build up energy.  Energy is your main resource for the game, it is how you buy cards into your deck, play cards onto the table, and activate special abilities on some cards.  Each of your planets generates a set amount listed on the card, so the more you conquer the greater your energy production.  You also have a couple of Energy Surge cards that you can spend when you have them to get some more energy.  These cards normally give you +1 but you can get +2 if anyone else at the table produces more energy than you from their planets, which is a nice little catch the leader mechanic.  You also have the ability to discard two cards to get +1 energy.  In the two games I have played we have been allowing people to do that last bit as many times at they want.  After the last game I was looking at the rules and realized you can only do it once.  Oops.  The interesting thing with energy generation is that you are doing it before you get to see what cards are available to purchase/conquer this turn.  So you have to make decisions about whether to keep more troops or to discard a couple for more buying power, stuff like that.

Next you deal out the cards that are available for this turn.  As you progress through the game you will draw from a new deck for these cards every other turn, so you are constantly introducing newer and cooler cards; which is nice.  Also cards only stay on the table for two turns max.  If they aren't taken the first turn they are out they get a +1 energy token as an incentive on the next turn, and then the turn after that they are discarded.  You draw up to a certain number of cards based on the number of players, and if necessary you keep drawing until you have both planets and non planet cards equal to the number of players.  This makes sure everyone at least has some chance of getting stuff they want.

Then you start going around the table and spending actions and energy to accomplish stuff.  You'll be conquering planets, deploying troops and starships, and drafting (buying) new cards out of the middle into your deck.  You can conquer or buy only once each time if comes around to you; but you can deploy as many units as you want each time as long as you have the resources to do so.  Conquering planets requires some combination of Fleet and Ground strength.  You basically declare you are attacking a given planet, then discard cards from your warzone (the area on the table where you have played down units) that have Fleet and Ground strength equal to or greater than the defense strengths of the planet.  Then you take it and put it on your warzone, hurrah a new planet has joined your growing empire.  After everyone has used up all their actions/energy or passed there is a quick cleanup and discard phase and then a new turn begins.

Overall I like the game.  I'm a fan of deck building and I love sci-fi and spaceships type themes.  The thing I didn't like about the two-player game was that there felt like there were a ton of cards that I was never going to see or use because of how few cards were drawn each turn; but that was fixed in the larger game.  The rising costs to buy and conquer things can be a bit unforgiving if you don't manage to keep up with the momentum; but I don't think that it is in any way impossible to catch up, just sometimes difficult.  There is definitely plenty of room in various places for analysis paralysis, and you need to go in turn order at those specific places since you are all competing for a common pool of resources.

The five player game took quite a while, but I think the time would be cut in half once everyone knew the game and knew what they were doing.  I went into the five player game with a distinct strategy, get robots and vehicles and then get the world at the end that gave bonuses for robots and vehicles.  I accomplished this, and won by one point, but I felt like I didn't do it as well as I could, and that dumb luck had its fair share of my accomplishment.  Looking forward to getting more plays in and seeing if I can get better at it.

Finally we played a four player game of Last Will.  I've reviewed that already over here, so not going into much detail on it.  I played a terrible game, making stupid choices and having a lot of incidents of "What the crap am I doing being this stupid?".  Despite my own advice against properties, I decided to give them a try, and failed horribly at using them.  I was doing things a turn or two before I should have, or picking sub-optimal choices all over the place.  In my defense I had been up for about 20-21 hours straight at that time.  But I still enjoyed the game, and tried to make clear that my anger was only at myself not at anyone else or the game.  Anders played a really good game and totally kicked my butt, and he deserved to do so.

Looking forward to next week.  I think I saw an expansion to Tanto Cuore there, and if I did then I ABSOLUTELY want to play that soon.  I <3 that game.

Remember Tomorrow Review Part 2

In the vein of trying to get more updates out, here is a quick second look at Remember Tomorrow with my opinions after having played a second time.

We played a second session of the game last Monday.  Josh was unable to make it because of some sort of pandemic that was localized to his house.  Therefore it was just me, John, and Emily.  Luckily Josh's character had achieved his goal and been written out at the end of the last session; so it all worked out.

The session ended up being fairly short.  I wrote myself out pretty quickly and managed to get my character's mind transferred into an android body.  John also wrote his character out after a few more scenes and ended the session with a cool scene where his character found his long lost brother.  Emily I believe did not get very close to achieving her goal; but she most likely would have very quickly in a third session; or if that session had gone one a few more scenes.

After I wrote my character out I made a new character that was basically a crazy loose cannon that was aimed directly at the other two characters.  I did not get to play him for very long; I think only 2 or 3 scenes. But in the short time I had I think I managed to really GET how this game can be done correctly.  It is very much as I and John said in the last post; a game where you are playing a GM first and mostly just reacting as a PC.  Coming into it with that mindset totally made things click and my opinion on the game pretty much did a 180.

I really think that the game could heavily benefit from instructions or at least a heavy suggestion that when you make your initial characters you should be looking to create interesting points of antagonism with the other PCs.  At the very least you should have to make your Faction be set up to go against and interact with someone else's character; and not make it be about your own.  I think that that would really help you come to the first play session with a correct mindset and a better setup for making the game work the way it was intended to work.

Overall when I look at the game and the play experience with a more objective point of view; I think it was really fun and a very well designed game.  The problems I had the first time around where with me; not really with the game itself.  There are some really cool ideas that I may be stealing or modifying for my own projects in the future, and I think I would enjoy doing another round of it at a Game Day or something.  So I'd say definitely give it a shot if you get the opportunity, it is worth your time and effort.

Remember Tomorrow Review Part 1

Remember Tomorrow Session 1 Review

Last night me and the MGG played our first session of the new cyberpunk "GM-less" game called Remember Tomorrow.  The game is created by Gregor Hutton, who is a fairly well known indie RPG designer and previously known to me for his really fun space bug killing(like the Starship Troopers movie) RPG called 3:16.  I enjoyed 3:16 when I played it way back at the start of MGG, would actually enjoy playing it again sometime.

As I said Remember Tomorrow is a cyberpunk game.  If that doesn't mean anything to you then think of the movie Blade Runner.  If that doesn't mean anything to you then I'm sorry, your life must suck.  Go watch that movie right now.  Stop reading and go watch it.

Have you corrected that sin against your own humanity?  Good.

Remember Tomorrow is also a "Gm-less" game, as in there is no set gamemaster, everyone gets to play.  That is a little bit of a misnomer in this one, because it really comes across as almost more of a "player-less" game (that observation was made by John, and after considering it I agree) because what you really end up doing with the bulk of your effort in this game is trading off the GM chair.

The basic structure of the game involves going around the table and taking turns framing and narrating scenes.  When your turn comes up you have three options for scene type:  Introduction, Deal, Face Off.  The only time you don't have access to all three options is during the first two rounds of scenes, when each player introduces the PC and the Faction that they created during setup, using, you guessed it, Introduction Scenes.

Character and Faction creation are simple and quick.  They have to be, because you can and will be creating more of each on the fly as you play the game.  You pick or roll randomly for various components of your character, and quickly assemble them all into a short but succinct picture of a PC.  To create a PC you do the following steps:
1.  Pick a Name/Handle (lists are provided and they are in sets of 10 if you just want to roll.)
2.  Roll/Pick an Identity:  You're looking at things like Activist, Dealer, Tech, Hacker, etc.  Purely color and fluff here.
3.  Roll/Pick a Motivation:  Envy, Greed, Freedom, Respect and the like.  No mechanical weight to these, but they do have a large fictional weight.  Your goal and drive in the game will be heavily tied to it.
4.  Gear:  Roll or pick 3 pieces of fun cyberpunk gear, like flying cars, needler guns, artificial limbs, etc.  Once again this is going to be fluff and color.
5.  Parameters Ready/Willing/Able:  These are your "stats" for this game, they describe how Ready, Willing, and Able you are to pursue and accomplish your goal.  They will be rated on a scale of 1-9 and you basically roll d10s and try to get at or under these scores to get successes.  You get 12 points to split between the three, none can start higher than 8 and lower than 2 is probably dangerous.
6.  Conditions:  You get one Positive Condition (Angry, Connected, Prepared, etc) and one Negative (Confused, Dying, Lost, Hunted, etc).  These flavor your RP and end up being a currency that both you and your opponents spend to affect outcomes.
7.  Goal:  Finally pick a goal.  No option to roll randomly for this sadly :)  Look at your Identity, Motivation, Conditions, all that and let it influence your decision when coming up with a goal.

Making a Faction is pretty much the same sort of thing.  You pick a Type(like Identity), Conditions, Motivation, and Influence (like Parameters but just one and starts at 4).

I rolled randomly for pretty much everything I possibly could, except Parameters, Goal, and first name.  I ended up with the following character:

Elias Yamamoto, Activist.  Motivation: Survival, Ready 5, Willing 4, Able 3, PCondition: Angry, NCondition: Dying, Gear: VTOL, Flechette Gun, Knowledge Skillsoft, Goal:  Get my consciousness transferred into a synth body.

And Faction:  Orange Micro, Pharma Corp.  Motivation: Revenge, Influence: 4, PCondition: Enthused, NConditon: Coerced

John created an Arms Dealer named Connor Wu and the Green Dragon Triad faction.  Emily made Vitoria Chen, a VR entertainment cube dealer and the Doki Doki Gang(a professional group of contract killers), and Josh came up with Leonard Spencer, an antiques dealer, and the Kleinen Pharmaceuticals faction.

We all started off in various places across the world, me and Josh somewhere in Europe, Emily and John over in Asia around Hong Kong.  I had a bit of trouble keeping together track of all the details of the four different stories that were all happening at once; so I'm not going to go into much detail as to what happened in the actual play.

Connor Wu spent time trying to track down his estranged brother, while dealing with the Green Dragon Triad trying to pull him back in.  Vitoria Chen was dealing having been financially cuckolded by her ex and trying to get out from under her dad's influence; though the forceful offer from the GD Triad was not the way she wanted to do it.  Leonard Spencer was constantly going out the fire escape to get away from IRS agents, Triad thugs, and the like; while working for Kleinen to acquire some sort of giant Faberge egg that supposedly had a deadly virus sample hidden within it.  Oh and Elias hired the Doki Doki Gang to try and take out the leader of the anti-android Church of One Life, as well as spending time looking for a place with the equipment for the consciousness transfer.

Back to looking at the framework of the game.  As I said before when your turn comes up you are basically stepping into the GM chair to one degree or another, its called being the Controller in game terms.  Your three options if you remember were Introduction, Deal, and Face-Off scenes.  An Introduction scene is exactly what it sounds like, you introduce a new character or faction.

Your first two rounds of scenes will all be these, introducing each players initial PC and Faction.  Then as you play if you want to bring a new PC or Faction into play, just whip one up real quick (nice to have a good stack of blank sheets available for this) and then run an Intro scene for it.  After narrating the intro, you make an unopposed roll (all rolls are 3d10 by default) and then compare the die results to your Parameters or Influence to see how many successes you get.  You then spend the successes 1 for 1 to get various improvements like increasing a Parameter, adding a PCon or removing a NCon.

A Deal scene lets your Held PC make a deal with a Faction.  I just realized I didn't address Held PCs yet.  Basically each player gets to hold on to a single PC as their exclusive character that only they can use, but one can change the PC you have Held with other PCs that are out in the middle if one wants to.  All non-Held PCs are in the middle and usable by anyone.  In a Deal scene you pick 1 Faction in the middle and narrate a scene where you negotiate a deal that advantages both your PC and the Faction.  The Faction gets an automatic +1 Influence bump, and the PC gets an unopposed roll to try and get successes to spend on improvements.

The main meat of the game are going to be Face-Off scenes, at least that is the intention.  In a Face Off scene you pick either your Held PC or one of the common PCs or Factions and then go after someone else's Held PC.  You narrate the scene, and then when you come to a point of conflict you each state a scene goal and make an opposed roll.  The side with the most successes wins and gets their scene goal for free, and then gets to spend their margin of success (difference in successes between the Winner and Loser) on improvements, similar to the other two scenes.  The big difference is that here in a Face Off is the only place you can spend a success to get a Tick or check on one of your Parameters.  Accomplishing your goal requires a Tick on each of your Parameters btw, showing that your totally Ready, Willing, and Able to carry out your goal.  Also, if you lose this roll off, and want to still hamper your opponent, you have the option of removing one of their NCons to reduce their margin of success by one.

The other side of the currency in the game are the PCons, which can be spent before a roll to add an auto-success, or after for a re-roll.

Now I know there has been a lot here, and the post is long already, but I'm going to finish off with a few of my thoughts and impressions about the game so far:

Pros:
- Love the ability to have random character creation
- The wording and language of the game really seems to work well for it and its genre and theme
- It is a tight, clean well designed game
- You feel like your almost always improving your character and driving forward
- Core mechanics are easy to figure out and prepping is a simple process
- Seems to do a good job of handling the disparate stories that end up connecting later style

Cons:
- Not a big fan of the Cross mechanic.  Which I forgot to mention, but its basically if you roll a double or triple on the dice then the next person's scene has to incorporate something from yours.  Its meant to integrate the stories, but it comes across forced and can be annoying
- Keeping track of four different stories, or three other peoples stories while planning my own, was very difficult.  And driving someone else's story via Face-Off scenes is very important, so you HAVE to know what is going on.
- I feel a strong disparity between the natural desire to drive your goal forward, and the place where your power is vested in the mechanics.  Basically you have the ability to drive other's stories forward, but your own mostly has to wait on others to drive it.  This was very hard for me to get totally.
- Standard issue with highly narrative games, if you take full control of a scene things can get a bit masturbatory, but if you hand off control of NPCs the other people may feel self-conscious that they don't know the NPC or know where you want to go, or may just "mess things up" if your view.  Another hard thing for me to deal with.
- It can be hard to frame scenes in other's stories without stopping game flow for a meta-explanation of where they see their story going, and what they are doing with it so far.

Overall you have to really pay attention to the other stories, get invested in the other characters, be thinking of what you can do to drive their story home; and pretty much just be reactive with your own story and character.  All of that is very counter intuitive to me.  It definitely feels more like what one would be doing in the GM chair instead of the player chair, and getting into that mind set was a bit beyond me for the first session.  But I really like the design and aesthetic here, and we will be playing again next week.  So hopefully I can grok it this time and come at it with a better attitude and understanding.

Remember Tomorrow Review Part 2

Monsterhearts AP Session 2

The MGG tackled another round of Monsterhearts tonight. Large amounts of craziness ensued, lots of fun was had, and my ghoul Silas accomplished the session goal I had.

We started out with a little recap of what happened last time, talking through a few details, and then a tiny bit of description of what a couple of us did over the weekend between the party (which was on a Thursday) and the first scene of this session on the following Monday.

Monday found all of the PCs back in home room, finding out that Marty had been found dead over the weekend. He apparently drowned in his pool at home. This was quite an interesting turn of events considering the fact that Dominique (the Selkie PC) had mostly drowned him in the apartment's pool at the party. The class was told that grief counseling from Mr. Samwell was available for anyone that needed it. Caroline and Dominique both went to seek counseling; though neither seemed to be taking it all that seriously; they just wanted an excuse to do something different than be in homeroom. Silas used the opportunity to convince Rosa to sneak away to some hidden place in the school and help him pursue his new hunger of “have sex with Rosa”. Things happened ;).

Back at the counselor's office Dominique was getting an opportunity to talk to Mr. Samwell. She basically threw herself upon him, saying she was so distraught over Marty's death, that she had had sex with him at the party, that she was afraid that anyone she got close to might die, and that she really needed to be comforted. In a surprising display of self control Mr. Samwell did not take advantage of the situation; but instead rushed away on some sort of urgent business that he was alerted to via a text message. And there really did seem to be urgent business; not just a pretext here.

Caroline reacted violently to being denied the opportunity for counseling and being told to go back to her normal scheduled classes. She flung the contents of the secretary's desk on the ground and Lashed Out Physically at the poor woman. She did not roll to well on the attempt and ended up suffering Harm as well; fictionally because campus security showed up and she got knocked around a bit in being restrained. This basically takes up the rest of her school day, while she spends time in ISS.

Silas skipped his next class, stupid old Math, and went to the roof of the school to smoke and Gaze Into the Abyss. He was looking for inspiration of some sort concerning a way to satiate the new hunger for delicious, hot, sticky blood that he had felt awaken in himself during the 24 hours he had been stuck in the Dreamlands last Friday. The Abyss gave him an answer, the Happy Sunshine Club, a totally ironic bar and club that was not really all that happy or sunshiny and was a favorite hangout of the goth/emo crowd. Where better to find some cutters? Getting this answered took a good amount out of him though; so he gained the Drained condition.

The police decided to take some time and talk to Dominique after school that day; since she had been connected by eyewitnesses to an “altercation” with Marty at the party last week. Dominique was a bit too flirty and forward with her responses to the officers, and this made the suspicious. Marty's death moved from a probable accident to a possible homicide. OOPS! Fortunately for her Dominique managed to Hold Steady under further interrogation and she was allowed to leave without any charges or anything being brought up. Not that she actually killed him or anything.

Caroline apparently felt good and morbid; so she went to the scene of Marty's death; the pool in his backyard. She used the waters of the pool to Gaze Into the Abyss, and because her roll was not great again (a common theme for the night for both Caroline and Silas btw, bad rolls) her visions were vague and confusing. She saw the scene from the party with Dominique pulling Marty under, then she saw the pool in his yard, and the exact same pulling under scene happening there. Since Silas had expressed a possible suspicion of Dominique earlier, Caroline texted him, asking if he really did think that she might have killed Marty. Silas was like, “Not sure, but what could we do about it even if she did?”

Oh and somewhere in there Silas returned Dominique selkie pelt to her; like he'd promised he would but had been unable to do last Friday.

Later that week, close enough to the weekend that there might actually be people at the HS Club, Silas got a hold of Rosa and Caroline and convinced them both to go out to the club with him. Dominique was out at the ocean at this time; questioning the local sea life and discovering that another selkie was operating in her area. Gazing Into the Abyss she discovered that the other one was at, surprise surprise, the HS Club.

Silas, Rosa, and Caroline managed to get in fairly easily with fake Ids, though in a fun twist on a consequence for a bad roll they were allowed to do what they wanted but were noticed and noted by Mr. Samwell when they came in. Dominique managed to sneak her way in somehow. The trio headed out on the dance floor, Silas and Rosa getting hot and heavy, Silas and Caroline not so much. (I failed a Turn On roll with Emily's character and she failed a Shut Someone Down roll with mine here; it was a bit of a weird wash mechanically. We were all a bit confused as to how best to handle it; so we kinda just hand waved it.)

Dominique is fairly quickly confronted by her fellow Selkie. The two share some verbal sparring filled with subtext, the other Selkie (Ann I think) was a bit more feral than Dominique, and Dominique was trying to convince her that there were good and interesting things in the human's world. Mr. Samwell joins the two, seeming to be somehow connected to Ann (at least that is how it looked to me), and Dominique tries to turn the two of them on to each other (I'm not really certain as to why).

Meanwhile Silas and gang are trying to get some booze. Another terrible roll on my part led to being denied there; though the bartender did hint in a completely non-subtle manner that he would trade other things besides money for booze if Rosa and Caroline came to the back with him. Caroline was not really interested in doing anything with the bartender; but she was more than willing to put on a show with Rosa for his benefit. Sadly this roll was horrible as well and she didn't turn Rosa on. Nor did Silas succeed at manipulating Rosa into it, and in fact after both these botched rolls Rosa was done with this BS for the night and left. This pissed Silas off; so enraged he turned and used his only string on Caroline to convince her to help him seduce and manipulate some kinky goth girl and get her out of there for booze and fun times somewhere else. You can spend a string on a PC to offer them a reward of one experience if they do what you want. Pretty cool mechanic. Caroline agreed and they managed to hook not one, but four emo kids in their little plan. The group left the club and headed to good old Aunt Becky's house.

Ann apparently agreed to go out and show Mr. Samwell a good time; but only if Dominique would come along with them. I apologize to Josh for not really remembering what else happened with his character after that; I was planning desperately how to accomplish my goal and was selfishly focused on my own story. I remember something about them going out for some food or something like that. Sadly that is about all I remember. I sent Josh a link to this blog; so if he reads this and feels like telling me about what else happens, maybe he'll comment.

Back with the story I was paying attention to. (Negative side of splitting the party in this game I guess). Silas, Caroline, 3 emo chicks, and one emo dude are all at Aunt Becky's empty house. Silas cranks up some tunes, Caroline breaks into the liquor cabinet, and folks start having a good old time. Each of the PCs narrows in on a target individual to pursue, Silas finds the one that comes off as the kinky and crazy one (tell tale cuts on the arms there) and Caroline picks out the one innocent one in the bunch. They each hone in on their target and began working towards their respective goals with each. Once again horrible rolls abound!

Caroline is trying to get the innocent girl to separate and go be alone with her. This fails, and the girl they initially approached back at the club comes over and yells at her, insisting that little miss innocent was “one of them”. She then does some sort of hand motion with some sort of mystical mumbo jumbo and Caroline is wracked with pain, crying out. Silas hears this, looks up from his target (who he had used the tell them about your death, give them the morbid condition, and then roll to turn them on special ghoul move on; gaining him a soon to be useful string) and sees this happening. He moves to Lash Out Physically at the girl; but is stopped by his girl and magically wracked with pain as well. This infuriates him and causes him to turn back on her. Mr. Emo Boy also steps up and starts hexing Caroline as well.

Meanwhile Caroline has taken quite a bit of Harm and is freaking out. Desperately she calls upon her demon, the Poisoner, and begs him to save her. The Poisoner agrees to get rid of the three threats, but she must give him the innocent in sacrifice as a payment for his help. Caroline agrees.

Silas lashes out at the girl hexing him, and manages to get a partial success, so I chose to have him harm her but lose control to his Darkest Self (which was a win in my book anyway!) He flies into a rage and begins to pursue his closest Hunger (fresh, hot blood at the moment) with total abandon. He rips into the girl hexing him, knifing her in the side and tearing into her throat with his teeth; spending his string to cause 3 harm total (I rolled a friggin 12 finally) killing her and feasting on her blood.

The Poisoner makes his move and saves Caroline by turning the hexes of the two enemies back on themselves. This leaves emo girl and boy wracked with pain and unable to defend themselves when an enraged ghoul turns on them. Caroline grabs the remaining innocent girl and flees the scene with her. Silas moves up behind the guy, breaks his arm, yanks him backwards, sticks the knife in is gut, and bites deep into his throat as well; continuing to feast.

Then he moves on to the last girl, calmly lifting her face up to his; smiling ghoulishly and telling her “Don't worry, it will all be over soon.” before her slaughters and feasts upon her. A short while later, Silas' parents track him down, having through some mystical familial connection known that he was in need of their help, and restrain him from feeding until he can get back under control (they are ghouls too btw). Back from the brink he heads off in pursuit of Caroline, for one more thing must be done in order to fulfill his plans.

He catches up to her on the beach, where she has just sacrificed the poor young girl to the demon in payment for his help. Staring at her with a calm but hungry purpose he stalks forward, and she retreats. Moving quickly he catches her before she can flee and grabs her by the throat. Staring deep into her eyes, back behind them in fact he addresses her demon and yells “Whatever the f*#* is in there, I want that power!” Caroline's eyes begin to glow and the world around them fades away; revealing a deep, empty black void, and the demonic mollusk like body of the Poisoner, it's evil tendrils fused deeply into Caroline. With a voice that speaks directly into his head Silas hears it accept his Soul Pact, and feels himself flood with new power.

Wonder what wonderfully horrible things will happen next time? :)