My long term roleplaying group has been playing a campaign that was billed as "brightly coloured fantasy reminiscent of Narnia and Castle Waiting". We started off as a bunch of refugees sent to deepest darkest Devon going through a portal to a fantasy world called Carinthia, had a bunch of adventures, skipped forward in time 25 years to have a look at What Happened After, and have now picked up a set of alternate characters who were slaves in a factory on the fairies' side of the river (Bessie the Changeling, Aster the Cat, Bludo the Troll, and Greengage the Griffin (Greengage was named after his father's favourite kind of jam. He has five siblings, and they're all named after their father's favourite kind of jam.))
Last week, we were a gang of desperadoes staging a jailbreak, creating vast amounts of mayhem, and discovering that Bludo has an oral fixation (quite good for intimidating hobgoblins, we found. Particularly when he spits them out.) This week, we ended up deep in enemy territory with the goal of assassinating the enemy queen. First steps: go to school, and set Bludo up with a date.
Showing posts with label Roleplaying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roleplaying. Show all posts
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Thursday, August 05, 2010
The start of a new campaign
My long term roleplaying group got together tonight to do character creation and the opening session of our new campaign, described by our GM as 'brightly coloured portal fantasy kind of like Thieves & Kings, Castle Waiting and Narnia.' (Our previous campaign was truly made of The Awesome, and included the most heroic character I've ever played, a severely delusional 10 year old girl. It made sense in context.)
We started off playing evacuees climbing on to the train to leave London and after a very long day realised that we'd been forgotten about in a siding - or had we? And then we went looking for our teacher, found a man with no shirt, a helmet with horns on and very furry trousers (clearly a gypsy), another man in a dress, a talking cat, and some nice people who took us in for the night. Devon is a very strange place, but it's much more interesting where the cats aren't as stupid as they are in London.
There are however some warning signs:
- we defaulted to an angsty backstory for at least two characters
- our backstory is the Evacuation and our first encounter includes a satyr (I kept expecting the Secret Police to turn up and arrest everybody for being humans)
- the final scene showed NishaTalitha switching awareness back to Mundane World, then flicking back to Fantasy World when she got scared by a rat. In our last game, the delusions of our children characters turned out to be very scary and very important to the overall plot. Eep.
We started off playing evacuees climbing on to the train to leave London and after a very long day realised that we'd been forgotten about in a siding - or had we? And then we went looking for our teacher, found a man with no shirt, a helmet with horns on and very furry trousers (clearly a gypsy), another man in a dress, a talking cat, and some nice people who took us in for the night. Devon is a very strange place, but it's much more interesting where the cats aren't as stupid as they are in London.
There are however some warning signs:
- we defaulted to an angsty backstory for at least two characters
- our backstory is the Evacuation and our first encounter includes a satyr (I kept expecting the Secret Police to turn up and arrest everybody for being humans)
- the final scene showed NishaTalitha switching awareness back to Mundane World, then flicking back to Fantasy World when she got scared by a rat. In our last game, the delusions of our children characters turned out to be very scary and very important to the overall plot. Eep.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Going Out With A Bang
My regular campaign game just ended, after running almost every week for well over a year (nearly a year and a half maybe?) It really does feel like the end of an era.
It was huge. Ivan originally billed it as a 'troupe-style' game, not quite in the pure Ars Magica sense where people take turns GMing, but we all had multiple characters, and the storylines spread out over many worlds and, through the art of flashbacks and time skipping, an extended period of time. As you can see from the character map below, the phrase 'a cast of thousands' isn't far from it:*
It was a pretty big rollercoaster in terms of play style, too - we went through silly comedy, intense character drama, political machinating, with every now and then a mountain blowing up.** In the end, though, it turned out to be a horror game, which given that the plot had done a lot of meandering surprised us a lot. We realised that the turning point had been when we invented some fun child characters, one of whom was our imaginary pirate friend (with a Sinister Background), who was both totally evil and wanted to eat everyone on the ship, starting with our friends and family, but also really liked us and wanted to be our friends - resolving Cap'n Pi's plotline made for some complete WTF moments. (I hadn't realised that ransoming our family back from the completely real military coup with an imaginary hat could be topped, until today, when we rescued the Guys Who Could Save The World from an armed base by means of a song and dance routine, and a flower.) I think, by the end of the game at least, Cap'n Pi really loved us, and it was us who had to kill him in order to save humanity, by fighting our way to his centre of power and giving him a 'gift', an infophage antivirus that manifested as a treasure chest overflowing with gold. I still feel really sad about this, two hours later. Thank heavens we get to debrief with liquor tomorrow.
Great game, Ivan!
(*) This is actually still incomplete - I realised earlier today that we were still missing some characters like The Bruces, the dirty lawyer, and most of the imaginary characters.
(**) Later in the game this included 30,000 crew spaceships and entire planets. By the end it got big.
It was huge. Ivan originally billed it as a 'troupe-style' game, not quite in the pure Ars Magica sense where people take turns GMing, but we all had multiple characters, and the storylines spread out over many worlds and, through the art of flashbacks and time skipping, an extended period of time. As you can see from the character map below, the phrase 'a cast of thousands' isn't far from it:*
It was a pretty big rollercoaster in terms of play style, too - we went through silly comedy, intense character drama, political machinating, with every now and then a mountain blowing up.** In the end, though, it turned out to be a horror game, which given that the plot had done a lot of meandering surprised us a lot. We realised that the turning point had been when we invented some fun child characters, one of whom was our imaginary pirate friend (with a Sinister Background), who was both totally evil and wanted to eat everyone on the ship, starting with our friends and family, but also really liked us and wanted to be our friends - resolving Cap'n Pi's plotline made for some complete WTF moments. (I hadn't realised that ransoming our family back from the completely real military coup with an imaginary hat could be topped, until today, when we rescued the Guys Who Could Save The World from an armed base by means of a song and dance routine, and a flower.) I think, by the end of the game at least, Cap'n Pi really loved us, and it was us who had to kill him in order to save humanity, by fighting our way to his centre of power and giving him a 'gift', an infophage antivirus that manifested as a treasure chest overflowing with gold. I still feel really sad about this, two hours later. Thank heavens we get to debrief with liquor tomorrow.
Great game, Ivan!
(*) This is actually still incomplete - I realised earlier today that we were still missing some characters like The Bruces, the dirty lawyer, and most of the imaginary characters.
(**) Later in the game this included 30,000 crew spaceships and entire planets. By the end it got big.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Back From KapCon
Have just staggered back from KapCon, had a really good time, but Very Tired.
In brief:
- ran a game called Sitting Shiva which didn't suck. Actually, I got very positive comments from the players, along with helpful comments about things to tinker with on reruns. Am really glad that I got a strong set of roleplayers who threw themselves into the concept, even the new guy who had hardly any gaming experience. Will do a proper writeup in a bit, post to Gametime for them that are interested.
- had a jolly good time at the Mafia larp. Set dressing was awesome. Costuming was awesome. My character was awesome. Spent a lot of my time running around scheming on behalf of friends and/or faction members, with occasional business deals on my own account. Helped save my true love from self-inflicted death, and arranged appropriate revenge on the conniving former friend who'd told him I was dead, thus triggering the self-infliction bit. (It got very Romeo & Julietish for a bit, there.) Good times.
- Won something! I got one of the spot prizes at the prize giving. Some kind of miniatures game. I shall treasure it as the First Time I Won Something At Kapcon.
- General happiness of hanging out with people I hadn't seen in ages. Met some new people I like. Found out that a friend of mine has started going out with the cousin of another friend of mine, think this is excellent, everyone should look that happy.
In brief:
- ran a game called Sitting Shiva which didn't suck. Actually, I got very positive comments from the players, along with helpful comments about things to tinker with on reruns. Am really glad that I got a strong set of roleplayers who threw themselves into the concept, even the new guy who had hardly any gaming experience. Will do a proper writeup in a bit, post to Gametime for them that are interested.
- had a jolly good time at the Mafia larp. Set dressing was awesome. Costuming was awesome. My character was awesome. Spent a lot of my time running around scheming on behalf of friends and/or faction members, with occasional business deals on my own account. Helped save my true love from self-inflicted death, and arranged appropriate revenge on the conniving former friend who'd told him I was dead, thus triggering the self-infliction bit. (It got very Romeo & Julietish for a bit, there.) Good times.
- Won something! I got one of the spot prizes at the prize giving. Some kind of miniatures game. I shall treasure it as the First Time I Won Something At Kapcon.
- General happiness of hanging out with people I hadn't seen in ages. Met some new people I like. Found out that a friend of mine has started going out with the cousin of another friend of mine, think this is excellent, everyone should look that happy.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Eavesdropping On My Flatmate's Roleplaying Game...
Currently my former flatmate and landlord is auditioning for a BollyPorn movie.
The other players are looking pretty boggled by it all.
The other players are looking pretty boggled by it all.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Cerise Magazine
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