Bleed: Chapter 1

With my day job and freelance work keeping me busy, and with Dreamation just a week away, I'm taking a break from my writing. However, I want to keep plugging my work. I have a Patreon, I've mentioned that a few times here. I have a few projects going on at any given point, with the main one being Bleed. Bleed is the story of role-players and their characters and how their lives intersect with one another. It isn't based on any real people, but on several experiences. I wanted to share the first chapters with you all, free of charge. If you like what you see, please consider following and supporting my Patreon.




Curve woke to darkness. That alone was nothing new to him. The cold pain in his chest and the inability to open his eyes, while not common, was also not new to him. For a vampire as old as him, being staked is what one would call ‘an occupational hazard’


The stories and movies had gotten a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong in trying to describe the mechanics of the common Vampire. Homanus Noctphagia were essentially walking corpses made animate through the magic inherent in the blood of the living. With the lifesblood of another coursing through their veins, Vampires were smarter, faster, able to fuel the dark perversions of magic. They were also supernaturally tough. Curve had once seen a friend of his—Margarete, he remembered—survive having a building collapse on her. In Venice. She survived the crush without a single blemish to her body, though she had spent the better part of the next month smelling of canal water.


The legends say that a stake through the heart will kill a Vampire. They are half right. A stake through the heart—preferably wood—would block the flow of lifesblood. The blood lay still in his veins, barely keeping him conscious. He could not tap in to his blood to make himself stronger, he could not tap in to his blood to send his thoughts out to his allies. He could not do anything but stay there and watch, and as the lifesblood began to cool in his veins, he would not be able to do that either.


All together it sucked.


Vichy, Curve thought aloud. His mouth could not move, but his ability to send his thoughts out still availed him. 1942. I was helping the underground ferry families out of the reach of the Nazis. There was another vampire there, who’d gained the rank of Standartenführer. We’d fought. It was genial at first. We talked for a bit. But, he was a swastika-fucking meathead with no graces, so the conversations grew boring in short order. I staked him and beheaded him with little fuss. What little I didn’t know was that one of the other members of the Underground was a defector. I was staked before I knew it and left to rot in the tunnels. No one found me until 1944, when the Americans came. I hadn’t tasted American for almost thirty years, and I was famished.


Curve let out a mental sigh. It was a woman who betrayed me that night as well. Someone I also loved at the time. You can come out now.


The vampire felt a presence near him, cold and beautiful as the pre-dawn. He focused on that feeling of cold perfection, and an image formed in his mind. He could not see her with his eyes, but his mind was all he ever needed.


For as much good as it did him.


Hello, Lianne. He thought to his new companion.


“Hello, Curve.” The woman said back, aloud. She stood in his mind at barely 5 foot tall, hair a sheet of jet that went down to her shapely hips Diamonds and jewels scattered about her hair and equally black dress. Her skin was soft and pale, giving the only contrast to her midnight garb. Slightly long and pointed ears poked out of her hair. She was lovely.


“Thank you,” she said with a warm burr.


Damn telepathy. Lia, Curve thought. Why?


“I think you know why?” Curve became dimly aware of someone touching his chest. It was a dim point of information, a small weight to him like someone laying a coin idly on their skin. But he knew the spot. There, in raised lines, was a scar he bore ever since he came to this desert cesspool of a town. It was in the shape of a crown, five pointed. A queen’s crown, in pale raised lines.


Oh, Lia. Curve thought, not hiding any of the exhaustion, and the disappointment and pain for the both of them.


“I know,” she replied. In his mind he could see her raise her arms in capitulation, a petty little gesture she did whenever she was caught in a plot. It never changed anything though. She still went through with it if worth it. “I know, Curve, I know we both promised that we’d keep the game out of our lives. But I’m tired, as I know you’re tired of this. I’m tired of taking orders from the powers that be and stuck in this hell. I know you’re tired of it too, I remember that night.”


And so did he. It was the night Lianne, Sidhe Changeling had taken on the role of the Red Queen. He saw the tattoo, a raw and garish five pointed crown, carved in to her chest. He had known her for five years, had loved her for three, had given himself freely to her for more than one. In that time, he never once cried. Warm tears blood leeched out his eyes, ruining his shirt and the rug besides. He knew it would come to this, and he knew they could not escape. Being a part of the game was a lifetime commitment, and the Queen’s lives were shorter than most.


It wasn’t fair.


“No it isn’t,” Lianne said, his thoughts bleeding out. Her hand was still on him, and then transitioned to around his back. She was resting herself against his chest. “None of this, any of this, is fair. I’m tired of playing the game. But I know that there is only one way for this to end.”


No.


“Please,” she said, the heat of urgency entering her words. “Tell me. Who is the White King. Where are they? We must attain Checkmate. Please, Curve. For all of us. For us, Curve. Please.”


No.


And then she said the words that broke him. The words that three centuries of backstabbing, debauchery, and lies should have exorcised from relevancy. Eight words that hurt the hardest.


“If you love me, you would tell me.”


And he does love her. If there were any doubt in his mind before then, it is gone. He loves her, body and what little soul he has left. He loves her.


But, he cannot tell her.


“Why?” Lianne says.


I don’t know, Curve thinks. I never knew. The thought hits him. And you don’t know who the Red King is either.


He feels her bristle against him, like a frighten animal hearing a loud noise. This entire night, this entire gesture, was all for nothing. She has failed, and now she must pay in a way they will both regret.


Lianne, he says to her. No answer. He realizes then that she must be crying, and his body is too far gone to see her.


“I don’t know what to do,” she says. Her voice is hurried, heaving. She’s sobbing now. “I-I can’t let you—“


Lianne, he says to her again. I love you, I love you with all my heart. And you know what will happen because of this. You know that the moment you remove the stake, I will come for you and I will not stop until the insult is paid or I die in the process. You know that.


“I do,” she says between sobs. “It’s why I love you.”


His heart, that dried walnut that barely beats, heaves in his chest. I love you too, Lia.


“Where do we go from here?” she says.


He says nothing at first, the thoughts too distant and hazy for him to grasp. Then he makes his mind up. Lia, there’s something I’ve always wanted to do with you. This…is the only time I’d ever get to have it with you.


He feels her presence close, and for in that second he feels her. He feels her ambition, her fear, her exhaustion, and yes, her love. He feels it and he curses it, himself, and the game they are trapped in. It is not the first time, it is, however, the last time.


Watch the sunrise with me?


She says nothing, merely hold him tighter. He knows that, after tonight, many things will change. Someone will be crowned the White Queen in his place, soon, and the game will continue. Somewhere, a part of him wishes that he could wish that person the best of luck. But it doesn’t matter at this point, his part of the game is over.


And, quietly. He feels the warmth of dawn approach. He pushes himself in to her mind, seeing with her eyes. She feels him, and does not resist. He sees his body, a lean figure with disheveled brown hair, black tank top and black jeans. He realizes she staked him and tied him to the Dawnstone, the great promontory rock on the edge of Moonlight, where many of the others would still be caught in their plots and attempts to defend the town from the other monsters and each other.


He feels the dawn rise, and the first burst of light breach the horizon. It is the first time he has seen it in nearly three hundred years. The light hurts, the numbness leaves and all that is left is pain. The sun is for the living, and the dead will pain in the dawn of a new day. He can feel his body crack like burnt clay, crisping at the edges. Parts of him darken and flake away, until he is nothing but embers and ash.


And next to him, the entire time, is Lianne. The woman he loved, the woman who loved him, the woman who betrayed him.


As the last of him dissolves away, and his mind vanishes from this world. He decides that this is a good death.






CJ looked at his watch. “Okay, Callie needs me in the other room for the final fight. You two going to be okay?”


Tom opened his eyes, after having them closed for the last ten minutes, the bright lights of the dance studio burned in to the. He looked down, seeing Lisa curled up against him, a splash of blue and black against his solid black attire. “Yeah,” Tom said. “I think I’m done for the night.”


He found himself regretting saying anything. The moment he spoke, Lisa jerked up right and took a step away. She started fixing herself up a little, “I’ll be back in for the closing.”


“Cool,” CJ said. He went to grab a bottle of water from a side table and took a swig, then took a little water in the hand and splashed it against his face. “Here we go. Tom, it was a great scene. If you want to talk afterwards, I’ll be around.”


“Appreciate it,” he said. “I demand a big funeral.”


CJ smiled at that, but it was a weak one. Exhaustion setting in around his eyes. “That’s the next game. You want somber or ‘Nawlins?”


“Surprise me,” Tom said with a shrug.


“Famous last words,” CJ said. “Later.”


Their storyteller closed the door, and Tom became aware of being alone in the room with Lisa. She shifted a little when he saw her, clearly realizing the same thing. Five years of playing games together and they still didn’t know how to talk to each other out of game.


“I guess I owe you a beer,” Lisa said, finally breaking the tension.


“Yeah, that’ll be a soda. Thanks.”


Lisa quirked an eyebrow at that. Lisa was five-five, and built for the roller derby. Bits of blue poked through her hair underneath the black wig. The damn thing always made Tom itch uncomfortably when he saw it. It must have been hot and heavy for her with that long rag on, more so since she added the fake jewels to it. Her mascara, Tom noticed, was smudged. She had been crying.


“You cool?” He asked her.


“What? Oh yeah,” she waved to her make-up. “I think this hit me a little hard. I’m going to miss Curve.”


“Yeah,” Tom said. “He was fun, but if it was going to end, this made the most sense.”


Lisa nodded, bejeweled wig bobbing up and down with her. She adjusted it. “Still, you going to be okay?”


“Probably. It’ll take some time. But I think I’m going to go down and get some air.”


She blinked at that. “Oh, oh okay. I’ll see you at Afters, right?”


“Well, someone owes me a soda. So yes.”


They both smiled. Tom felt that there was more to be said in the room. Tom felt like it would have ruined the moment. He nodded to her and stepped out of the studio.


The studio in which they played had two rooms, one larger than the other. The smaller room was used for private scenes, or for meetings for smaller groups than the entire cacophony of players around. Tom could hear raised voices from the larger room, snarling and shouting and panicked cries.


Now is that in or out of character? He asked himself. The question, he felt, wasn’t his to explore. He was dead, afterall, and that deserved some sort of break.


Manhattan in the summer is a merciless swamp of humidity. That’s the price of living on an island in a temperate zone. Tom walked around the corner to the convenience store, the blaring noise and teeming life of midtown all around him. The noise, humidity, and movement gave the City a sense of life, of being.


It also made it unbearably warm. He grabbed a bottle of water and a can of coke, one for health and the other for flavor. He sat at the stores counter to drink his water and coke in peace, and wish he had brought his headphones down, drown out some of the noise.


“Hey, Tommy!”


Tom turned to see Mara and Sam. His housemates were like those Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp, though their creepiness was more whimsical than sinister. Mara was decked in black, a bracelet of small bones at left wrist and right ankle. The rook’s skull rested right on the spot where the collarbone met the breast plate.


Sam stood next to her, the Gomez to her Morticia. They managed to make purple tweed work. Their disheveled mop of black hair giving the impression of some out of time academic or low-status noble trying to make good.


Tom cheered them with the hand. “Combat end already?”


Mara snorted, “Simon.”


“Ah.” It was all the answer he needed. “What now?”


“Tried to pull something out of the Markets. CJ wasn’t sure when or where the hell he got it and asked for clarification. Simon said he agreed to it in a phone call.”


“Siege doesn’t do phone calls,” Tom intoned as Mara hopped up in the seat next to him. Sam in the seat next to her.


“Right,” Sam said. So they got in to it, and CJ asked for a ten minute break while they unfuck the situation. I think most people are just ready to pack it in and call it a night.


“They’re getting worse.” Sam said. It was a declaration, not a conjecture. Sam didn’t really say anything they weren’t willing to believe in. “I think CJ’s going to quit.”


No one said anything after that. “Hell of an end,” Tom said as he took a sip of his soda.


“Why are you down here?” Mara asked.


Tom reached for in to his vest pocket, an older Asian lady stopping to gawk at the androgynous goth couple and their soft-goth housemate. Tom smiled at her. Her stint as a voyeur found out, the lady sped in to the busy streets. He pulled out his character sheet. It was the third sheet of his, after the previous two had crumbled from five years of folding and being stuck in pockets and held in sweaty hands. This one was showing its wear, and was ready to be put to retirement as well.


He placed the sheet on the counter, took another sip, and placed it on top of the folded character sheet. All that curve was, and signs that he had been, now a coaster.


“Oh fuck,” Mara breathed. Sam said nothing, but Tom could feel them thinking. Mara continued. “You okay?”


It took Tom a moment to find the words. “I think I’m still processing,” he said. “Curve’s been in my head for a while. It’s going to be tough to let go.”


“Who did it?” Mara asked.


Sam raised their hand, “I’d like to find out in game.”


Tom and Mara nodded, that was only fair and proper. They’d commiserate later at afters and at home.


The next minute was spent in silence. It was the kind of silence only people who have lived with each other a while understand. It was comfortable, things weren’t left unsaid, because things didn’t always need saying.


“Oh,” Tom said. “Just remembered. Jake should be stopping by next weekend to look at the place. That okay?”


“Sure,” Mara said. Sam nodded. “I’m looking forward to meeting him. You don’t normally talk about college.”


“It wasn’t fun,” Tom said. “Jake made it bearable. I think we both made it bearable. He got me in to tabletop, and once he moves in I’ll start getting him in to larping. He’s been wanting to do it for a while, but Albany’s larp scene is kinda dead.”


“Sounds like fun, maybe you can tie your new character to his? Tag team.”


Tom made a noise, “between you two and the Hewleys, I think this game has enough power pairs. Last thing the world needs is the supernatural bash brothers.”


“Besides, It’d form the trifecta. The Hewleys do the fighting, we’re the social creatures, you’re an amazing intel character.”


“Yeah,” Tom said, conceding the point. “But Jake and I…we could give the Hewleys a run for their money.


“Hey,” Mara said. “Maybe the Hewleys could use a run for their money. Grandpa Chopper is getting complacent in being alpha badass.”


Tom shrugged. “You guys should go back up, time’s almost up.”


They agreed, and made their way up stairs. Tom was less in a rush, but he tried not to slow down his friends. The night security man of the office building their studio was located in let the three of them back in, keeping a wary eye on the gothicly clad group. He was new. Most of the Saturday night crew learned quickly about the monthly goings on of their group. People dressed in weird costumes going back and forth. Carts of props that many street cops would consider suspect. Random discussions of various topics, from illicit trysts to the werewolf attacks in Central Park or Hunts Point. Many of the guards, Tom suspected, believed that many of the people who came to the studio every third Saturday of the month was on some form of watchlist as some sort of cult.


But this was New York City, so long as you were a mostly harmless cult, you got left alone.


Tom could hear the others as the elevator made its stop on the twelfth floor. Those voices were not happy. They exited the elevator, where the voices grew only louder and more angry.


“You said I could—


“I said when!? When, Simon. Show me the email, show me the note. Where the hell is it? When did we do the scene in the markets for you to get the Wispveil? If I didn’t, who said you could have it?”


“I told you I wanted any of the low level approval items from the market.”


“And I said ‘Okay, let’s do the scene’. We didn’t do the scene, so I don’t approve, so you don’t have jack shit, Simon.”


“I can get it by making a pull on my sheet.”


“And by roleplaying. This is Live Action Role Play. If you want to talk stats, Simon, Peter is doing a sign up for Fantasy Football.”


The three stopped to find the two voices. Simon was dressed in a crushed velvet jacket and looked like something out of a magazine. His features were sharp enough to cut paper and his blonde hair was disheveled to just be this shade of stylish. His green eyes had an acid edge as he glared at CJ in rage.


CJ was built like a cement wall. Thick dark hair with streaks of grey that looked like the inside of a silver mine. His eyes were a marshy hazel, and were rheumy with exhaustion. His normal pallor was tinged with scarlet. Tom had seen Siege lose his temper before. It didn’t happen often, but only when someone decided to find a nerve and press on it. Simon, if he was as smart as he claimed, should have been able to see the level of danger he was in at that moment.


“We’ve missed nothing,” Mara muttered, just loud enough for her voice to carry down the hall.


The two arguing players turned to the approaching group. Simon’s tanned cheeks darkened and he walked away. CJ deflated, the color seeping out of him. He closed his eyes.


“Thank you,” he said weakly.


Sam pulled a spare bottle of water out of their leather messenger bag. “You okay?”


CJ took the bottle, opened it, and took a hard swig. “No,” he said finally. “I’m tired.” He looked at the three of them: Mara, Sam and Tom. His eyes brightened a little and a tired smile crept on his face. Tom knew the smile was forced, but not disingenuous. The four of them had known each other a long time. “Let’s finish this, shall we?”


Mara and Sam nodded, Tom spoke up. “Mind if I watch? Do you need a hand with pulls?”


“Nah, you can watch,” CJ said. “I’d love the help but with Simon’s tantrum of the night over, we can get on with this monster mash smoothly.”


CJ lead Mara and Sam in, and Tom followed them idly. The studio had its own kitchenette and lounge. Tom fixed himself a glass of water, letting the handful of players around a poker table to talk amongst themselves. He found a chair, and propped himself near the door. Lisa walked by, looking a little wiped out herself. Her pack of cigarettes and a lighter palmed in her hand as she made her own way outside.


Tom pulled himself from any trains of thought there as a loud roar rolled through the next room. He looked in to see a group of a dozen people, each of them in smaller groups of four, surrounded a man sweeping across the floor in a black sheet that could easily be measured in yards. At the head of the sheet was what looked like as an antlered skull. The blocky build of CJ underneath thrash back and forth like a fish out of water.


“The monster is trapped by the spell!” CJ narrates under the cloak.


“Lore Four,” Sam said. “What class is it?”


“Assisting,” Mara said.

“Assisting!” two more said. Tom itched to say it. Normally Curve would be right there. Sam’s character, Ryder Penbroke, was an academic. Curve was a monster hunter. They both loved exploring the lore of the things that go bump in the night, but always differed as to counting the monster’s teeth during or after the hunt.


CJ pulled a deck of cards out, shuffled and pulled, a ‘-3’ on the card in blue marker. “Lore 5!” He answered back. “The monster is like a Wisp but clearly on a different level as previously seen. It’s covered in bones and the area is colder than most shades provide.”


Tom imagined Penbroke, a dark prince in threadbare garb, flipping his notes while keeping cover as a ghoulish phantom of shadow and bones loomed about, trapped by a magic circle.


“Well,” a grizzled man from one of the other groups cried. He was dressed in jeans and a western shirt and it looked like it wasn’t a costume. “Looks like we gotta get are arms in to this one and find out more. Hunters!”


His entire group made a hoot and entered positions. The older man called. “Fight 5, with three assist.”


CJ shuffled his deck and pulled again, moving still in his thrashing motion. He showed a ‘+4’ on the deck. “Several of the rib-like bones shatter. You each feel a wave of cold. Take a stress.”


Tom saw Peter as Chopper Hewley, cowboy warewolf, lead his troupe of hunters hack at the monster with bats, swords, claws and guns.


“It’s got a rough aura,” the short red-head woman in his group said. Tom saw her as another wolf, stocky and with tawny wire fur. “Watch yourselves. Healers ready.”


“Magic team attacking,” said one woman’s voice beind CJ. “Summer fire. Magic 5 with assist. I’m also invoking my Summer Court magic.”


Shuffle and pull, CJ answered. “Your summer magic cuts through the aura like a hot knife. You all get the smell of frozen marsh water thawing.”


“It’s a Wisp?” One voice said.


“Class 4 Wisp,” Sam said. “First recorded.”


“The monster’s turn now. Wounded, you see the dark cloak draw in to its bones and.” He pulled out a card. “Magic 12 against Physique to cold.”


Several of the players dropped to the floor, clutching themselves in pain. Mara was one of them.


Peter cried out. “Bind and Burn!”


The academics, lead by Sam/Penbroke, moved over to the surviving fighters or knelt to the wounded players.


The magic team went first. They called for more summer fire, not as bright as before but enough to cut the aura. All that was left was the skull on the ground. Peter approached the skull and made the call.

“Fight 5,” CJ pulled and then nodded. “Killing blow!”


CJ shook off the cloak, he was sweating profusely under the thick fabric and bones. “The skull breaks, sending out a wave of dark and cold. It’s too diffuse to be painful, but you all feel it. You feel the malice in it, and you can feel it’s aware.”


Tom quirked an eye at that. Wisps weren’t usually aware. He shook the thought away. That was information that wasn’t for him. Curve was dead and his next character, whatever that might be, may or may not know that. Some people liked to know the meta about the world. Tom did too, but he didn’t want to spoil all the surprises.


He pulled himself away back to the lounge for a few minutes. By now they would be headed back to heal the wounded. The academics would be trying to piece together clues from other sources and from what they’ve seen. The fighters would be patting each other on the back. The social players, who had filed back in to the room, would report on the deals that had been making with one another (minus the gossip about other players and their characters, Tom noted).


Lisa walked back in around there. Her cellphone in her hand. “CJ just texted me, wants to come in for the closing scene. I think I should go in dramatic. Got any ideas?” Tom looked around the lounge. The lounge had a small ash tray in it. Lisa saw his eyes and made a pleased noise. “Oh,” she said. “That’s harsh.”


“We should share the pain.” Tom said.


A quick dab of ashes on the hands and Lisa was ready. CJ popped his head out. The smile on his face this time was just as tired, but less forced. He saw Tom and Lisa, and then Lisa’s hands. “You two are evil.”


“He did it!” Lisa said, pointing to Tom.


Tom shook his head. “Clearly, the grief has caused this woman denial.”


CJ laughed. “Cool. I’m going to make the last narration. Wait for the fireworks, and come in on the high note.”


Lisa nodded.


CJ ran in. Lisa prepared herself, idly smudging ashes on her dark blue dress. She looked down, realizing it, and then shrugged. She then dabbed some on her right cheek.


“Cute.” Tom said.


“Yeah, I’m not nice.”


Tom hugged the wall as CJ began his narration. “All those of the White. Pawns, Rooks, Knights and Bishops. You all feel your brands burn in intense pain.”


Several anguished cries rang through the room. Tom suppressed a smile, Lisa was less contained in her amusement, but stamped it back down.


Peter/Chopper’s voice cried out. “Check! What’s happened?” A pause, realization. “Curve? Curve!?”


That was Lisa’s cue. Tom realized that her mascara was still runny. Tears on command, always impressive. She walked in with her hands outstretched, Lady MacBeth wondering if the perfumes of Arabia will wash those hands clean.


She walked in, fear and sorrow in her eyes. Tom wondered if it was Lisa acting Lianne’s grief, or if this was Lisa acting as Lianne who was acting in grief.


There was a hushed silence. Someone saw her, someone saw the ashes. “I’m sorry,” Lisa/Lianne’s voice wavered. “He’s gone.”


CJ’s voice called a beat later. “That’s game, folks!”


A chorus of voices called out, questions clamoring. Some applause. Tom poked his head in. Peter, Mara, and Sam both saw him. Dinah’ the red-head from before, also saw him. “You!” She cried. “What happened to you!?”


She grabbed Tom and, playful rough, dragged him in to the room. Another cheer of calls came from the few dozen players. Questions to him, about Curve and his fate. Voices. A lot of voices.

“Everybody please!” CJ called. “Tom has been through enough tonight.”


Several people looked to him for confirmation. Tom nodded.


“Tonight,” CJ continued, “We lost one of the first characters made for the game. I wrote Curve as one of the first Vampires in game, and then Tommy Flint came in and made him alive.”


“So to speak,” Mara said, to the laugh of a few others.


CJ was one of them. But then his face grew serious again. “To continue on this—“ he stammered, and Tom could see him struggling with the words.


Oh no, he thought. He’s going to do it.


“To continue on this theme of endings. I’d like to make a few announcements. This year we have been asked to put on In Pale Moonlight at ImperialCon. Most of us have played before, and it is where Moonlight originally began. That game will mark the end of this chronicle.”


Everyone stood stunned, with a few brief murmurs. Tom was one of them. The end of the five year story. But that wasn’t what made CJ stumble with his words. The storyteller’s hands tumbled with the air, and Tom always felt like there should have been a pen or a coin flipping between the knuckles as he did it.


“I’m also here to announce that…” He stopped himself again, and the tears in his eyes formed. His voice became stronger, and threatened to break. “After ImperialCon, I am stepping down as Storyteller.”


And that was it. Dinah, Peter, and a fair few others all cried out in shock. Tom, Mara, Sam and even Lisa nodded. They had known CJ long enough to know this was coming.

The game was ending.

-----

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My GM Style

Things have gone quiet here on this blog. A lot of Life happened. A sick housemate (and one of my players), a new 9-to-5 job, a new Freelance Job (which I'll announce when/if I can) and the general holidays. In short, the past fall season has been a Bear and I'm now just finally catching up to my notes and my work. 

Part of my New Years Goals is to run more games. I want to get better at running games, and I want to share stories with people. A lot of the past few years of Storytelling have given me an idea of what I'm good at and what I like, so I wanted to lay out on the line what it is I mean when I decide to run again. So I decided to write this Social Contract as a GM. 

Gaming is a Social Contract between all the people at the table. These are the things they are comfortable in playing, all the things they expect of one another when playing. People mention the contract a lot, but I rarely if ever see anyone writing it or saying it out loud. I'm trying to fix that for myself. There's no rhyme and reason behind any of this, but I'll try to summarize at the end.

I guess we'll start off with the obvious. I have a personality that some people have referred to as 'intense'. I have strong feelings and I am often bursting at the seams to share. A lot of my stops and starts happen when I'm trying to undercrank it to a) give myself some air and b) let someone else have the floor. My job isn't to lead, my job is to facilitate and create a space for players. I want to say that first because a lot of talks a lot about me, and truth be told I really don't like making things about me. I don't care if my name is in lights, so long as people enjoy my work. I think that's important to differentiate. 

I like setting, story, and characters. I'm not particularly fond of mechanics or systems and frankly prefer lighter systems that either help a story or  otherwise don't get in the way of it. I like Fate Core and the system being used for 7th Sea, still trying to wrap my head around Apocalypse World, and Nerdy City's Omni System. I tried the FFG system, and there are a lot of good parts to it. Unfortunately, I don't dig on systems that get too quantitative. Anything that involves tables and percentages make me lose interest. I'm borderline dyscalculic. So for me, when telling a story, I don't like math getting in the way. I'm sorry to all my D and D friends.

Since we're on the subject of mechanics and rules, I should probably get the rough stuff out of the way. I have had a bad history of people trying to use, abuse, and disuse the systems in place to get cookies for no discernible reason than to a) show off b)make themselves less likely to be fucked with and c)because they could. I'm going to say this now, clearly: Don't do this. Not only will you not get anything, but I'm more likely to refuse the next request and the one after that and so on until you learn the lesson or leave. 

That being said, I am always up to friendly negotiations with players. If you want your character to get a thing, or do a thing, great! I'm down to help with that always. But it isn't going to be as simple as "I roll a few dice and this happens". Be prepared to do a few scenes (depending on the scope of the request) and we'll get you to where you need to be. Part of this is because I want to imbue on this a cool story to go with how you got the thing, as well as seeing if you know what you're gunning for, especially if it has a mechanic attached. This is a holdover from the old MES approval system, and it's one of the few things I took with me when I left. 

A favorite example that I've mentioned before. A player had spent the better part of six months prepping, and planning, for their assault on the main antagonist. Through working out the problems and the information, the character had enough of a plan to eliminate the enemy in one swoop. They did, it succeeded. Their work was clearly shown over the months and they understood what they were doing. I'll be coming back to this example in a minute.

One of the things I try to do with my players is always be open with discussions, questions and feedback. If you have a question about something in game, message me. If you need help on a thing on your sheet or in the book, let me know. If I don't know the answer, I'll work with you to figure it out together. 

But this comes with a drawback. If I don't receive feedback, I don't always know where to bring your characters. Your characters are the focal point, otherwise you'd be random stormtroopers doing a thing (which now that I think on it...) I like it when players add their own details, come up with side characters that can be used or reference. I once built an entire hotel and my GM used it for the duration of our game together. I love it when players add details in the world that benefit the world and the other characters around them. 

It should come as no surprise to people that I love open sand box games. I like building a world that has an interesting cast and exciting locations that people can discover. While there is plot going on, there are also these other elements that may or may not be connected at all that can be discovered as they see fit. I once had a player whose character received visions, she misinterpreted them and it ended up with her in a rundown house in Staten Island discovering the ghost of a recently deceased antagonist protecting her old cult. Ultimately, it had nothing to do with the story, but it was a fun scene that added something to the setting and gave the character some new information, if not the information she was looking for. 

This isn't to say there isn't plot going on during these games. Oh, there is. I like plots with a lot of moving pieces, conspiracies and Westeros levels of intrigue between parties and the like. If one moves, another moves, and so on and so forth. I like to play with a constant state of 'with consequences'. This doesn't mean 'you don't get to win' it just means 'just because you won, doesn't mean this is over'. Pieces move in response, and consequences happen. 

Going back to the previous example, the player's character caught my antagonist's blindspot. This was a mage who had a pretty acceptable understanding of all schools of magic...except for Death, and the one Mage on his team who could have helped him was on the outs with him. So the PC, who was a Master of Death at this point, raised the armies of those the antagonist had killed for some thirty years (he was the tyrant mage-lord of manhattan since the 80's) and decided to reenact the end scene of the battle of minas tirith on him. 

This went off without a hitch, but it also had consequence. First of all, this was done relatively by himself, but done with research. This left a bad taste in the other characters (and their player's to be honest) mouths and the character got a lot of flak. They also got called by the Guardians of the Veil and were pretty much set up to be their next golden boy...or sacrificial lion. I ended my tenure before we could get there. 

Which leads me to something: I will close up shop if I don't feel like people are invested in the game.  I've been in several situations where it felt like people were at game just to be there, because it was expected. I don't want that. I like it when players are invested, or are looking to invest. I like it when players have issues they want to address, questions about the lore or about their characters, if they want to add details. I want to run games for people who want to play them. And I have, in the past, made my polite resignations when it has become clear that the games I'm running are just 'that thing we do on this day'. Your hype gives me hype. Your feedback tells me that I'm not doing this for my own entertainment. 

So to Summarize, I'm a story and character driven GM who likes to build a sandbox for his players if they are willing to bring their toys to the share. I appreciate open negotiations geared towards telling the best story possible, even if it isn't as mechanically pleasing. This can make me come off as railroading, but  I can work in a wide range of topics and subjects, as the group sees fit. However, I expect my players to also be open with any questions or concepts, or directions they want to go in and my players can expect me to have all comm channels open to hear ideas they have in their characters and what they want to do. 

I promise as the GM to be there, to make the space open and safe. As the GM, I promise to build something with my players. 

I hope people enjoyed. If people have questions, I'm always willing to talk about it. I'd also love to see people talk more about their GMing style. 

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The Seven Masters (Episode II)

This is the continuation of the Star Wars Force and Destiny Campaign I've undergone for my housemates and friends. To see previous episodes, please click Here.

The summer is a rough time, especially for those of us in the gaming business, or trying like hell to break in to the gaming business. I ran three Live Action games at DexCon, then went to Indianapolis to run a tabletop and larp at GenCon. After GenCon in September, most of the time was spent trying to find a return to normality. I'd also opened up a Patreon account for all of my fiction writing, including a novel about roleplayers and the characters they create in game. More on that later on.

I'll be honest, I was about to write this campaign off by the Septembers. Games are like boulders, if they aren't moving, then it isn't doing anything at all really. With scheduling and life being what it was, I was willing to move on to other projects. But people in my house brought up the game, and that got me back in to it.

So here we go again, to a galaxy Far Far Away.

Opening Crawl

Episode II: Kote Darassuum (Glory Eternal)

Having escaped the the Sith prison ship Vectivus, the Jedi Padawans find themselves in orbit over the desolate world of Mandalore.

The Mandalorians have a long and bloodied history with the Jedi. It will not be easy to sway them.

But, with little more than life support and several ships along the way, they must try...

Game Report

When last we saw our Jedi, they had made the jump in to hyperspace, using random coordinates. Those coordinates lead them to Mandalore, homeworld of the Mandalorian culture. Realizing what awaits them, the Jedi (and their pilot, Donalbain) make some very fast decisions. 

They inform the other ships that they are a crew seeking repairs, and are working on minimal lifesupport. They give their ship ID and pray for the best. The ships allow them in to orbit and tow them in to dock in the capital city of Sundari.

The planet of Mandalore is a desolate place, with most of the terrain turned to glass and sand after countless conflicts with the Jedi, Sith, elements of the rest of the Galaxy, and even their own people. They are greeted by several Mandalorian soldiers, all bearing the distinctive T-shaped visor of their helmets. Kal, the one they have been talking to, talks to them about their ship and leads them in to a waiting area while they analyze and assess the damage. Most of the Padawans expect a trap, and have to correct themselves at times to keep themselves under suspicion. 

One of the soldiers, an eight foot tall figure in heavy mandalorian metal plate and wielding a laser gatling gun, enters the waiting room and leads them to a turbolift. They are immediately greeted by Sabrina Krysze, head of intelligence. She identifies herself as an ally by reciting the opening line of the Jedi Code. Having been informed of their presence, and their potential incoming, Krysze offers them a job that could benefit each other. 

Taking them through Sundari and to the Ducal Palace, Sabrina explains that Mandalore is currently split between a pro-Republic movement, lead by Duchess Wren, and the Kote Durassuum movement, lead ostensibly by Senator Miltos Var. Mandalore tries pascifism before, to disastrous efforts. While the current model maintains the military might and pride of Mandalore, they are decidedly pro-Republic and pro-Senate. The Kote Darassuum movement seeks to secede from the Republic and begin again as its own power. 

What is troubling is that this far right movement may have backing and ties from the Sith Empire. Fearing the presence of a Sith Lord on the planet, Krysze tasks the Jedi with acquiring evidence of a meeting between Var and the Sith that is suspected of happening that night. 

Fed, rested, and prepped, the Padawans are greeted by a message on the viewscreen in their quarters. It is believed to be the same voiceless friend who had helped them previously. Their text is overlayed on a field with blue butterflies flying about (an image alien to Mandalore). They change to the Holonet, where they cut to the announcement of an alliance between the Republic and the Sith Empire. The Jedi are depicted as being insurgents against the alliance and the few remaining Jedi are branded as fugitives. 

Meanwhile, the mining colony (and black market hub) Kafrene is in a state of riot while the senators of Naboo give their total support (and sizeable political standing) to the new Alliance. 

The Padawans realize quickly that by helping the Mandalorians may mean more than just a repaired ship, it may mean survival in a now hostile world. They set out to the meetup, with the large Mandalorian joining them. The Mando reveals themselves as Kara, a 5'5'' blonde woman, resting in the massive power armor and wielding a gatling gun. She'll be providing cover fire. 

The group set themselves up around the industrial park the meeting is taking place by disguising themselves as a prison work crew, as it is the only way to justify two Twi'leks and a Zabrak on an otherwise near-human planet. 

The Senator arrives, and then the Imperial Ship arrives, with a representative and what is believed to be a Sith. This Sith is dressed in a long skirt and bears a metallic mask resembling the beak of a bird of prey. The group has several holorecorders placed, and it is agreed that they will be extracting the senator once the meeting is over. 

The Imperial representative appeals to the Senator, wishing for him to bring the Mandalore back to the way they were. As a token of support, and a sign of their skills, they produce what looks like a lightsaber from their robes. However, it is far too box like and rectangular, though the Padawans recognize it from several paintings in the Palace. 

The Darksaber, the legendary lightsaber designed by a Mandalorian Jedi centuries before, used as a symbol of Mandalorian might against the Jedi ever since. Feigning compliance, the Senator in the end refuses alliance, and draws the saber on the representative. The saber, however, does not activate. 

The Sith in the meeting, identified as Dante, draws her saber (a curved hilt with a white blade) and seriously injures the Senator. The team moves on them, binding Dante in place, restraining the Sith Representative, and seeing to the Senators wounds. By the end of it, Dante escaped on the shuttle while the Senator and Rep are brought in to custody. 

The Padawans return the darksaber to Melani Wren, the Duchess of Mandalore, who bore the crystal that immediately made it work. The Jedi were granted a boon: the thanks of Mandalore. With the information gathered, no mandalorian bounty hunter will seek the Jedi out. Later, in their quarters, the Jedi are informed by their mysterious benefactor that with allies, they now must begin their real mission: Find the Seven Masters.

Review

I'm going to be honest, I wasn't as prepared for this one as I'd have liked to have been. Part of that was that I'm still learning the FFG system, and much of what got in the way of this game was working with the system. There is a narrativist element to interpreting the symbol-based dice that I appreciate, and I enjoy the ability to succeed with threat and fail with advantage that the dice allow. However, what is ultimately a qualitative concept is often mired by quantitative measures. In short, the crunch hurts a little during growing pains. 

The concept of having the game at Mandalore was a one-in-three chance. The other two worlds were shown to have negative reactions due to the lack of the presence of the Jedi. This lead to a moment where the characters second guessed their arrival. Could they have helped those worlds, would they have been helpful. Could those worlds helped in return? This is one of the themes of Choice that I want in this game. 

Unfortunately, I felt the rails very hard in this game. I had mentioned at the beginning that this game was very much mission based, but this one was locked very much in step. Now that we're out of what I feel is the 'tutorial' levels, I think I can trust myself to let more stuff go. 

I will say that I was super thrilled with how Dante and Kara were received. Dante was revealed as a credible and mysterious threat. No one is sure who she is and what she serves. Kara was created wholecloth on site, and I would love to see her appear more during games. 

Up next, we're going to see what happens when we kick the training wheels off of the proverbial bike, as we meet one of the Seven Masters. Thank you.

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Memoriam: ReMemorex 'The Clearfield Cycle'

I know it's been a while since I've posted. I have an article about Character vs Character combat in the pipes and going through some edits, but July and August were rough months between Conventions and life. I promise to have it out to you this month. But first, I wanted to share this.

At the beginning of summer I had written about the game ReMemorex, which was just entering it's Kickstarter campaign. It succeeded. A game about 1980's horror and the powers of manipulating the game like old VHS has an appeal. 

In that post, I had also written about being a player in the playtest, about the level of detail that Sean Jaffe had put in to this town.  He knew where people lived according to street crosswalks. He had populated a town that only he could see and from him the rest of us could glean. A lot of campaigns have NPCs and sometimes only populate them with enough people as needed. Sean gave these characters a sense of life, that they weren't just there for the players. It made the situation seem more real. 

Last night was the finale of the game. Where the town of Clearfield, DE was threatened by numerous forces: by the megalomaniacal doctor with delusions of maintaining purity and american dignity against commie threat, by an Eldritch Force looking to free itself of neverending iterations of the same drama, and by at least one oncoming nuclear warhead meant to wipe all problems out of existence. 

As the teens and preteens of Clearfield, it was us as the players to stop it. 

One of the key things to understand about ReMemorex, and really the playstyle of the group, is that there is a lot of information and all of it is subject to misinterpretation and conjecture. It's very easy for players to take information for granted. This is a freer game, where the data is never complete because even the sources of information don't have all the data clearly lined up. While I appreciate and love this style of play, it also means that I as a player don't have all the details or context to talk about what was going on, especially since I came in at a later point than most. But I'll try to explain. 

We began the game by the original ritual: Sean would play the old HBO presentation video and followed by Gold Earring's Twilight Zone. But midway through we got...something different. With the Emerfency Broadcast blaring, we realized that a nuke had been launched to town to clean up any evidence of the Eldritch Forces and their influence on the town. This had been done before in the 50's by drowning one of the local towns, turning it into a lake, and wiping its existence from the records. A nuke was a little extreme, but needs must when psychopaths drive. 

I was part of a team that included myself as Tommy Johnson, resident precocious hacker, Shoshana as Cricket the town ingenue, Gia as Julie the chainsmoking school reporter, and Sean as Steven the high school horror film director. We headed to confront the above mentioned megalomaniacal doctor. He had already consumed one Eldritch Force, a benevolent one by the name of PALADIN, which had upgraded several of the teens and children with powers (Tommy being one of them, able to turn himself or others invisible). 

In a previous game, Tommy, Cricket and Julie had agreed to unleash Indrid Cold, the malevolent opposite of PALADIN, to fight the doctor who. Unfortunately, Cold had also been consumed. As the doctor began to monologue, with Julie and Steven arguing against its entirely convoluted and psychotic notions of letting the world burn while Clearfield remained 'pure' in his image. Cricket, who had been linked to Cold, and I who had been upgraded by Paladin, took advantage of Steven and Julie catching the doctor in his rant to activate both forces. Their power's transferred to someone else (it involved a hospital blowing up) and left the doctor mortal again. He died of shock. Okay, he died of a a gaping shotgun wound in his chest, and a bullet above his eye. The shock was just the part we all enjoyed.

The rest of the game was spent with the other players and their arcs. If it sounds like I'm glossing over their contributions, it's because there was 15 players at this game. For space reasons many of us were playing in shifts, going downstairs or outside to get some air and quiet, and then coming back as our scenes were up. In many ways it felt like a play, and waiting for your cues to come back on or off stage.  

We came back on for the finale, the lining up of all the plots. With minutes until the nuke was the hit the town, we caught a look at the town and its residents. These were NPCs who we had all engaged with. Again, this shows that these were more than just NPCs. These were the residents of Clearfield, these were people who had their own lives and desires and fears. They all prepared for the perceived end.

And then we went to work. Tommy was sat down to work on the signals of the nuke while coordinating with the others. Steven and company had taken over a intercept signal while the pre-teens, powered by the same force that Created Paladin and Cold, flew a spaceship(!) to intercept the missiles while taking down Indrid Cold once and for all. All the while, Sean played We Don't Need Another Hero on the speakers. 

At that point, it was implied that we wouldn't make it out. This was an Eldritch Horror game. At best we could save everyone. But through combined efforts, we not only managed to defeat the forces looking to subdue the town, but also saved the town from the nuke. There had been casualties, there had been deaths and trauma, but we won. What comes next is being left up to a last Epilogue game

Part of the charm of ReMemorex is that, even when you're not in the scene, you still have the chance to affect the scene through the use of Tracking Errors. We didn't see a lot of them, because by the end we were transfixed on what would be the final performances of these characters. As I said before, it was like watching the series finale of a tv series, or reading the final installment of a book. All of the payoffs come off. I'm not a fan of the Campaign Unending. Eventually, things must end, because then you get resolutions and payoffs like what I saw last night.

For my part, again, I didn't get a payoff as such as the others. I had joined late in the game and spent most of it chasing the plot. For me, this was my character's origin story, and what happens next for him would be something to explore later on. He already took on a comsic horror and played WarGames (while saying SHALL WE PLAY A GAME while playing Rush's Tom Sawyer, no less) god knows what he'll do when he's old enough to smoke and drive. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this game, both as a player and as someone who got to watch the performances of others. I look forward to what happens next, now that ReMemorex is coming out to the public. There will be a thousand different Clearfields with their own horrors. I also look forward to what Nerdy City has coming up.

But for now, all the children sing.

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Memoriam: Tales of the Rising Star

2013 was the start of my career in running larps. It was the start of my first DexCon, the first time I had ever been to a gaming convention that did not have the letters M. E. or S attached to them. I was there primarily for the Dresden Files larp being run by Phoenix Outlaw productions. The outlaws, I realized, don't do anything by halves. They were also responsible for part of the BattleStar Galactica Larp alongside Eleventh Hour Productions.

I didn't realize that until maybe five minutes between Dresden and BSG. I made a rookie mistake of not saving any fuel for the trip back, so I was running that game on fumes. I acted mostly as a runner between the STs, and adjudicator for a few challenges. Most of my job was spent in the operations room making sure the STs had what they needed.

So to describe what Rising Star is like. We suborned the Hyatt's learning center and with a lot of garbage bags, pvc and electronic, we made it feel like the deck of a ship. Computer monitors showed an interactive DRADIS system reporting damage, energy loss and incoming ships. We had an engine that the engineers could fix and tweak. We had a crew that knew what they were doing or could make it up on the fly. 

We were ready for business.

That night, we reenacted the "33", the first official episode of the BSG reboot series after the miniseries. Every 33 minutes after jumping, Cylons would appear to attack the fleet. after days of this, people were raw, the ships were being overworked, and somewhere something bad was going to drop. Walls had clocks with tape to denote the 33 minute mark from jumps, and prayed that the DRADIS didn't go off during that time. We also had them in the Operations room, outside of game, and I remember Shoshana and I sitting in there waiting for the inevitable panic, and then hush as the speakers blasted the sounds of the ship jumping to faster than light travel, and then the panic again as everyone needed to check to see how frakked the ship was. Meanwhile the officers and civillian government were ready to pop off at each other. Their last jump lead them off the radar of the rest of the fleet, and in to uncharted territory.

Four years and five games (I came in at the second) later, and we have just held our final BSG game at DexCon 2017. We went in with a plan. Not the Cylon's plan, because boy did that go nowhere. What happened was something that I find to be nothing short of the next best thing to primetime television. 

We saw a coup d'etat in the early minutes of the game. The pregnant former president thrown in to the airlock with the two Cylons she was accused of collaborating with. I saw the confusion and outrage descend as Martial Law was declared on the ship. I saw the Cylons beg the humans to remove the president from the airlock, if nothing than to save the child. I saw them offer to space themselves to do this. The guilt and frustration on the faces of the guards and the engineers preparing for a rough landing on a planet's surface visible. 

I saw the crew crash land on the surface, and then have to decide what systems they could cannibalize to maintain the other systems. I saw guards running around, officers trying to maintain some semblance of order. I saw the civilian government politick and deal with the new regime, ultimately getting the former president reinstated. I saw the crew encounter captured humans and the resistance, and linking up with both of them. I saw one crew member realize what she truly was, and excepted her status as one of the Sharon Cylons as she hooked herself to a machine that would send a repulse signal to the rest of the Cylon fleet. I saw her crew salute her as she died in sacrifice and carry her back on the ship. I saw the president be reinstated and resign in the same breath in order to find what might be Earth. I saw her successor be shot by the same man who usurped her. I saw the crew settle down with the notion of living forever on this planet, and then I saw the attempt to jump one more time averted by blowing up the engine, forever making their stand where they were.

I'm very honored to have been a part of the storytelling staff of this game, because I got one of the best seats for a show that's been off the air for years. The players knew their work, and went to work doing it. It had the air of desperation and hope in everything, all the tension in the air unsure of whose agendas would fly. That's the players putting the work in to it, investing themselves in it. This could have been a chuckle fest filled with tongue in cheek references, but the players kept the tone and beat and I am forever thankful to see such dedication.

I am also honored to work with a crew that made this whole thing possible. There was a lot of planning involved in this process, and then game happens and we run with it. The amount of backstage stuff to coordinate between groups was tremendous and if not for the love they had for the game and the group, this would not be possible. 

Before game, I had heard people asking why the need to end the campaign. I don't have the information or the authority to speak in an official capacity, but I am of the mind that this is not a game that could go on indefinitely.  BSG is always been about surviving the odds and rolling the hard six when you needed to. Eventually, that builds up, eventually, you start running out of lucky streaks and all of the little things you miss catch up. And the stakes keep getting higher and higher that eventually, you just wouldn't win. So we gave it the ending it deserves, a clusterfrak that ended in cliffhangers, tragedy, comedy, and a bittersweet sense of hope in the future. 

So when I hear 'All Along The Watchtower', I think more about the Rising Star than I do the Galactica. And I thank you all for that. And maybe this isn't the end. As the woman in red said: All of this has happened before, but will it happen again? 

Take care, so say we all.

Star Wars: The Seven Masters (Episode I)

This is a continuation of the series of games I'm running for my housemates and friends using Fantasy Flight Games Force and Destiny Star Wars Campaign. To see our previous installment, click here

After our first game, the first question I was asked by my players was "When is the next one?"

Unfortunately, June is a busy month for us all. Between convention preparations (I will be at DexCon working Battlestar Galactica: Tales of the Rising Star; Bright Story; and The Dresden Files Empire Stat Chronicles, all with Phoenix Outlaw Productions) and two of our players are also preparing for conventions and running a successful Kickstarter for their game ReMemorex. I also had two job interviews and a bad case of TMJ that really made wanting to do games a pain in my ass.

As someone who has only done tabletop a handful of times (I've been larping for nearly ten years now, tabletop experiences are in the dozens of sessions) and as a first time GM, I knew that if we lost momentum, the game would never get picked back up. So I decided on a day and prayed people showed up. My housemates did, and the Nerdy City folks were in the last stretch of their Kickstarter. That's a full time gig. Since they were also playing non-Jedi while the other four were, I didn't see that as much of a problem. There will probably be a side game at some point to catch them all up.

So, without further ado, here we go.

Episode I: The Breakout

Cast members:
Shoshana as Sanoia, Zabrak Jedi Aggressor
Nico as Kothalas, aka "Ko". Twi'lek Makashi Duelist.
Abigail as Zara Dawnwheel, Human Mystic
Josh as Shalya Fortuna, Twi'lek Gaurdian

We began our episode with an opening crawl. I found an online site that allows you to create your own Star Wars opening crawl, music and all. I had been planning this for months, since we first agreed to the campaign. If you're going to do Star Wars, you might as well go for the gusto.

The Crawl:,

The Jedi Temple Has Fallen! 

Elements of the SITH EMPIRE have invaded the headquarters of their Aeons long Nemesis and captured or killed those inside. 

You find yourselves in the brig of an Imperial Destroyer. Bound, Gagged, and Blindfolded, you feel yourselves adrift in space, headed towards darkness...

When we last left our cast, they were knocked out by something resembling a Jedi Holocron. Each of the characters awakens in a dreamlike room full of mirrors, alone. I'll go through each one:

Sanoia: Each reflection showed a different version of Sanoia, a different facet. Jedi Robes and Broad tattoos on her red skin to mark some different paths. Darker robes and more gnarly tattoos to show she had gone to the dark side. Swirling tattoos in a muddy blue woad that could only signify the Nightsisters of Dathomir. A voice, dispassionate and as controlled a central air conditioning, asks a question. "Whom will you be?" Sanoia walks away from the Nightsister versions of her, and from the Sith iterations. She comes closer to the Jedi. It is there she sees a younger Zabrak girl, whose features are pale. She points to her frame where she stands. Sanoia touches it, and she wakes up.

Kothalas: Ko is bound, this is not anything new. The mirrors around him show their family bound in service in a dusty Tattoine Den with the massive shadow of a Hutt looming above them. The same disembodied voice speaks to Ko. "You can free them. But do you free just your family, or do you stop the one who holds them and many others?" After some rationalization, Kothalas chooses their family. And then wake up.

Zara: Zara's mirrors show people, countless people, countless people in the reflections behind them. Countless people talking, and talking, and talking and talking.  The disembodied voice cuts through the noise. "You can silence them" it says. "Do you want that?" Overwhelmed, Zara nods in assent. Each of the reflections drops down dead. Zara looks on in horror, this was not what she had wanted. Repentant, she sees one person hasn't fallen: a human girl in white, with pale hair. She walks out of the  mirror and hugs her close. There are other ways, the girl says, to silence the voices. And then Zara wakes up.

Shalya: Shalya has only one reflection, a figure in a dark cloak. The figure walks out of their mirror, scarlet lightsaber drawn. Shalya holds their hands up, and claims that they are not their enemy and no harm comes. The dark figure attacks. Shalya grabs the saber, restraining the Dark Sider. Shalya has no conflict with this person. The Dark Figure draws their hood up, revealing a severely scarred Shalya. Shalya expected this, acknowledges this, and wakes up. 

Each Jedi awoke in a Jail Cell on board the SIS Vectivus, restrained and with their sight and speech taken from them. Force Users are a pain to deal with, and whomever had them was trying like hell not to give them any advantages.  Zara tries to use the Force to sense for anyone nearby. She hears the other padawans around her, plus one other in a cell and two guards down the hall. Kothalas meditates. Shalya does not resist, seeing themselves as a political prisoner. 

Sanoia is the one who struggles. After several failed attempts, she manages to break herself free using the Force. Shaken, but free, Sanoia sees Kothalas in the cell across from her. The Zabrak attempts to use the force to remove some of their bonds. They do, removing gag and blindfold, and then immediately drops them hard on the floor. Kothalas saw blinding lights at first, then briefly saw Sanoia, and then saw the ceiling of their cell in rapid succession. 

As they begin to right themselves, a security droid passes down the hall. It looks at Kothalas, and then to Sanoia. Standing there. Sanoia immediately tries to do Force Push the droid in to Kothalas' door controls to free him. It doesn't work. The droid looks to Sanoia, and closes its eye shutter quickly.

The droid just winked at her.

It activates a projector through her cell. The message is short, but clear:

There is no emotion, there is peace.

It moves to the door controls and begins unlocking them for the four padawan. They all reconvene as their droid friend approaches. It projects more of a message in a blue crawl. It has arranged for the ship they are on to be lax in their procedures. Their main priority is to get off the ship, but they also have two options: Retrieve the data core using a data spike the droid possesses, or sabotage the ship. They can't do one or the other. The padawans choose espionage over sabotage and retrieve the spike. 

The padawan become aware of the other person in the detention cell with him. He is a human, unbound and not restrained at all. He's banging on the clear plasteel door frame, trying to get them to free him. The padawans debate briefly, then ask the droid. The droid doesn't answer. They decide to free the prisoner. They quickly learn that the prisoner, Donalbain, is a pilot of a ship and was pulled in by the Imperials. With a ride and a pilot, the group begins to prepare for the Breakout.The droid gives them one final message before frying its circuits: 

May the Force Be With You.

Bereft of their traditional lightsabers, the group resorts to procure on site procedures. The first weapon has been given to them. As the doors to outside the prison cell opens, Kothalas Binds the two guards at the door while Sanoia Force Pushes the husk of basketball sized security droid at the two guards at the other end of the hallway. One of those guards is knocked completely out while the other is dazed. The droid breaks apart. Zara and (I think) Ko grab the blasters from the two bound. Zara blasts the disoriented guard. One of the bound guards is dispatched (I forget how) leaving one guard for them to question. The padawans lightsabers were destroyed when the were brought on board days before. 

The interrogation is cut short when Donalbain shoots the stormtrooper with one of the other guards blasters. Zara fumes at Donalbain, declaring the Stormtrooper helpless. The pilot doesn't seem nearly as concerned by that as she is. He says he knows the way through these Imperial Ships, and can get them to the data core. They follow, some clearly ill at ease by their trigger happy compatriot and by the desolate nature of this Imperial Star Destroyer. These ships are massive, with the largest ones being the size of Manhattan Island. To have no troopers, officers, or even droids moving about freely is unheard of. Clearly, their mysterious ally is pulling some strings. 

They make it to the main lift. At this point, Donalbain and Zara are having clear differences of opinion on how things should be done. As the awkward tension in the group builds, several riot troopers break in through the ceiling of the elevator. Zara's perceptions allow for them to move and move quickly. Sanoia moves to get the lift door open while Zara, Kothalas, Shalya and Donalbain handle the guards. Sanoia makes quick work of the door, while Zara slides out of the room. The human padawan takes the controls and makes the elevator lurch up and down fast. Everyone in the lift is floored. 

One of the guards makes their way up and hits Sanoia with a stun baton. Shalya and Ko deal with them as Kothalas grabs one of the guards frag grenades. Everyone in the room panics and stays still while the Jedi and their ally file out. They force the controls to take the guards down to the lower levels, buying them time. 

The group makes their way to the Data Center, where two squadrons of riot troopers are ready for them. Coordinating distractions, the team groups the troopers together and throws the frag grenade between all of them. The explosion takes out all of the squadron. Zara has the idea of masquerading as the troopers, using as much of the non-damaged armor as possible. However, storm troopers are still human centric: meaning the Twi'lek brain tails and the Zabraks horns make wearing the uniforms impractical. Zara and Donalbain, the only two humans, make the effort. Zara shifts them to pretending to be unconscious. 

Kothalas and the others grab some of the gear. Grenades. Kothalas grabs a stun baton. It may not be a lightsaber, but it will do in a pinch if needed. He inputs the data spike, and things go under way. The lift they took begins to rise again, the riot troopers are on their way back up. Shalya, manning the computers, halts the lift on a lower level. The troopers are now clearly climbing up the shaft itself. As the lift doors open, one of the group throws in a stun grenade. The troopers screams are heard, as well as distinctive thunks against the elevator. Then they hear the release on the already jostled elevator   come apart, and the lift crashes down to the lower levels. The guards, they realize, are definitely not coming back from that one. 

The data spike finishes its upload (and possible download) and the rest of them gain access to the safest route between the data core and Donalbain's ship, the Velciter. Zara has a vision during this. She sees before her a large mass in space blotting out the stars, and the inner timer declaring it will approach in five minutes. They make their way through the city wide ship easily enough, using lifts and smaller corridors to make it to the hangar without further conflict. They make it to the hangar, where the Velciter is stationed. 

The Velciter is a very old VT-49 Decimator, a ship that was designed to rival the YT series Corellian Freighters. It looked like it was built with scrap and prayer. The group approaches it when a woman's voice comes over the comms, ordering them to stand down. A viewscreen the size of a building turns on in the hangar, revealing the woman. She is wearing the white uniform and cape of an Imperial Admiral. Her hair is braided, mixing in her mostly black coils with a single silver one. She introduces herself as Rear Admiral Lucrezia Camorra of the Sith Imperial Fleet, commander of the SIS Vader. Zara's vision comes true as a massive Jet Black Super Star Destroyer comes out of Hyperspace. The stars around them are eclipsed as an Imperial War Machine comes in.

The group begins to run towards the ship, when Camorra gives the code: Imperial Command Line: Falls the Shadow. Darth Vicious: Rise.

Heavy machinery can be heard from the distance, and a hangar door opens near the landing ramp of the Velciter. This is the first time for many of the padawans to be this close to such a potent source of the Dark Side. It feels numbing and electric at the same time, like they were thrown in to a frozen lake and a generator was thrown in with them. The make to the landing ramp, knowing that they'll have to face the dark sider along the way.

The thing they see is massive, 8 feet tall and half that around. The sith black and muddy red tattoos on his skin peppered with what look like rocks and bones protruding from parts of his cheek, arms, and legs. His eyes burn orange with hatred.

The terrifying presence of this Sith makes Kothalas drop his weaponry. Donalbain drops his weapons as well and runs to the ship, Zara behind him to try and keep him from doing anything stupid (like abandon them). Sanoia decides to make a stand, at least to slow down the Sith. Shalya, terrified, takes up Ko's fallen stun baton and assumes a ready position to attack the Sith. Lightsaber drawn, the Sith lord stares down his prey.  Sanoia uses the force to try to slow down Vicious, it doesn't make a dent in the massive Sith. The dark sider unleashes a massive blast of Dark Side energy at the two. Sanoia, already wounded, puts Shalya behind her, taking the hit. Kothalas and Zara provide cover fire while the two of them get aboard the ship. Donalbain, calmed by Zara, begins to take off. 

To keep the Sith from jumping aboard, Kothalas uses the fear instilled in him to bind Vicious to the ground. The dark side flows through him as the massive Sith watches their ship take off. Without any weapons, a damaged navcomputer, and a Super Star Destroyer barreling towards them, the group on the Velciter need to make some decisions. The NavComputer has three coordinates still in its data banks: The Ring of Kafrene, Naboo, or Mandalore. The group, desperate to make a decision, decide that anything is better and tell Donalbain to punch it. 

The ship goes in to hyperspace, the stars dragging to streaks, and the streaks dragging in to cosmic energy. Days pass, healing begins. Donalbain is all of his crew to survive, but there are droids on the ship. They start coming out of hyperspace to find the desert terrain pocked by domed cities. Several bulk freighters prepared for combat approach the ship, asking why they have enter Mandalorian Space.

And that was game. 

Post Mortem:

I wanted to make this game an easy tutorial for the players. It's a new system for everyone and the level of Star Wars knowledge between players varies. So a good old 'you find yourself in the dungeon' opener was as good a place as any (worked for Leia). 

One of the things that I noticed was that the entire room was full of game developers. So a lot of this game was spent trying to wrap our heads around the system. There was some dissonance based on the use of visual instead of the usual numerical. People did eventually get there. 

One of the themes of this game is going to be choice. The players have options, and those options have consequences. The hall of mirrors was as much way to show character as well as to get them to make a starting decision on where they stand. Also, the decision to free Donalbain (who was not intended to be a pilot, but our pilot PC was out of this game. Needs must.) was completely at the discretion of the players. Finally, the decision as to their last destination will have consequences.  This is a  BioWare inspired game. 

During the game, I ran in to an old friend: power spamming. It's something you run in to a lot in Mage games, because everyone is trying to find the best utilization of their powers/see what they do . The rules for Force Powers aren't as developed as I would like, so I've established using powers in rapid order causes strain. Overtrying hurts. 

This was also a combat heavy game, and not a lot of people got to shine throughout it. That will hopefully change once everyone sets foot on Terra Firma (or Mando'a Firma).

The Sith Lord, Darth Vicious, has a story that will most likely be revealed through this campaign. I'd like to thank Dave Harold for permission of using his characters from the old days of Lightsaber Stage Combat. For those of you from those days and are reading this, yes, I am a bastard. 

And for my next trick, getting the remaining players to Mandalore for the next game. We'll get there, and then we'll see what trouble we can cook up.

I hope you enjoyed. May the Force be With you.

ReMemorex: a Review

It's Tuesday night, a dozen people are in a Jersey City living room. There is dice on the table. A lot of dice on the table, there's also the possibility of a few old kenner Star Wars toys, or a Gen One transformer or two. These mostly aren't retro reissues, mind you, these are the real deals. The GM stands from behind his custom GM screen, with photos of every cool thing from the '80's on it. He doesn't make a speech, not until the video plays.

He turns on his TV, and a clip plays. It's the late 80's opening of HBO feature presentations. If you were a kid around then, you'd know the one. It's the one that opens up over a miniature set of a city and then turns in to a space-opera anthem that makes you want to kick some ass. Then it changes over to a title crawl that the GM and some of the other players editted from scratch to give the impression that the players are cast members of some Early Era HBO drama. Golden Earring's 'Twilight Zone' plays in the background, reminding you that it's 2am and the fear is gone.

This is the opening ritual (and a really good crash summation) for 'ReMemorex', a tabletop game developed by Sean Jaffe of Nerdy City productions. It is an RPG about 'suburban 80's terror' as they would put it. They site the creation of the game on the hit show, Stranger Things, and it shows in that you can play adults, teenagers, or middle schoolers. But it also takes its cues from ET, the Last Starfighter and many others cinematic gems of the 1980's. You are a normal person in a seemingly normal town. And then weird shit happens and now some or all of you have to deal. 

As of the writing of this post (June 1st), Nerdy City has launched the Kickstarter for ReMemorex.

I've been part of the playtest for ReMemorex since February of this year. It helps that most of your house also plays and the developer is a fifteen minute walk from you. So reader beware, I admit to bias. I also think that the game is good without the need to blow smoke at my friends.

As said before, you play a middle schoolar, high school, and/or (our playtest allowed one in each range bracket) adult. Each one of these characters follows the highest form of personality archetypes of the 1980's: John Hughes Breakfast Club. You play a Brain, a Jock, a Princess, A Basket Case or a Burnout

The game's system is in a stripped down style focusing primarily on Roleplay and Narrative over statting it out. Your stats denote who you are, what you do, and a line or phrase attached to them. For example, my character Tommy Johnson is a fourteen year old High School Freshman and one of the earliest computer hackers. His three stats are:

Computer Science Brain

Fledgling Hacker

'I'm In'

Each trait has an active and a passive rating behind it. So the difference between reprogramming an arcade machine (Tommy is a major gamer and actually helps run The Centauri Arcade fun complex, more on that in a second) and knowing that the machine has been tampered with will be different. While this may seem limited, the fun is to justify how to use your skills. For example, Tommy's "I'm In" is a line many hackers have used (or been portrayed using) while cracking a system. I can also use that trait when Tommy needs to sneak in to a place. If you can justify it, chances are good it will fly.

The major mechanic that sets the tone of the entire game are the Tracking Errors. Tracking errors are things you can do when your PC isn't in the scene. These skills are highly Meta in terms of use. The tracking errors I've encountered (though subject to change in the book) are as follows:

- Helping Hand: Adding an element to the scene to directly help the characters present. An example used in a game was a character was being chased by a nasty video tape demon thing (Yeah, it's kinda like that). I, who was not in the scene, rolled a tracking error to add a shovel to the scene to give her a leg up. 

- Monkey Wrench: Adding an element that hinders the characters present. This one is to make a game challenging, but I don't recommend spamming this one. RPGs are about collaborative storytelling, and I will keep repeating that throughout my career until the overall morale improves. Rolling for Monkey Wrenches enough times-especially since you're not in the scene-is a good way to take an RPG to Monopoly levels of anger and frustration.

- Guest Star: I may be making up the title on that one, mea culpa Sean. But the gist is the same. You roll a tracking error that inserts yourself in to the scene. Not your character, but you. You take on the role of an NPC in the room. If a scene is happening in the local dive bar, you can roll a tracking error to play the bartender, so long as the GM doesn't need to use it. 

- Jump Cut: This adds a single detail in to the scene. It doesn't necessarily add anything to the scene, but it's something that adds to the flavor. John Woo throws tracking errors all the time to get those damn doves to appear in his movie. No one mentions them, they are just there for effect...or some times they aren't. When you're being harangued by a paranoid agent of a vague, yet menacing government agency in the video arcade (Such is my character's life) and someone rolls to have the arcade cabinets flicker, it doesn't go well. 

I say "roll for a tracking error", this is a euphemism. It does not mean that there is a stat being rolled or anything. But there is a ritual to the tracking error, of staking your claim by rolling the dice on the table. It signifies the intent, because damn near every gamer will pause at the sound of dice rolls. It's nearly pavlovian. 

I want to point out these tracking errors for a simple reason. While everyone is going to be focused on the Stranger Things bent of the game, the tracking errors give you an understand of how to view this game, at least in my opinion. ReMemorex gives you permission to be Meta about the things that go on in this game. You can do things in reference to movies, shows, books and other pieces of trivia. Hell, you may end up interacting with them. Which, thinking about it, makes it almost a Creepypasta game when you consider it. Think Candle Cove....then maybe stop before too long.

All of this can be best spelled out in the setting designed by Sean Jaffe. Clearfield, Delaware (and it's equally fictional surrounding towns) is a fully fleshed out area with locations ripped straight from the 80's. My character all but lives out of the Centauri arcade complex, where one of his rivals got picked up in a eldritch horror version of The Last Starfighter. He can then go outside to the Wing Cong Chinese Restaurant for a plate of crap spare ribs (the egg rolls are okay, though). There are a million other references laid out.

And my god, has Jaffe laid them out. During one scene, someone asked the distance between two characters houses. He knew them by the cross streets. While I have not read the book yet, I know that most of Clearfield will be laid out for any and all who wish to play in it. Also, several other locations will be supplied by other writers (as yet unannounced) focusing on different areas such as New Mexico, Florida, and more. I'd be interested in doing a Pennsylvania themed game, as I have family in the small towns in the hills that could easily have been Centralia if they weren't careful. 

Having played the game, I find it a refreshing take on storytelling. While it isn't a GMless game, there is a higher degree of collaboration involved. And while it does some times split up the party (a usually no-no in most RPGs) it doesn't remove player agency. If anything, and to paraphrase the developers, you almost have more agency when you aren't in the scene.

Some people may shy away from the game because it swivels so strongly to 80's nostalgia. I was one of them. I was born in '86, and only barely remember the tail end of the decade. It's a little daunting when the year of the setting is several months after you were born! But honestly a little research and a cursory binge of some classic movies and TV shows will clear you up. Seriously, for my gamer/hacker I watched WarGames, Last Starfighter, Tron and even that Nintendo shill movie, The Wizard. 

Also, you're not as married to the era. I know of at least one Memorex game being run in the mid 90's, a full decade later.  I'll be interested to see campaigns of potential "Modern Era" games being played. Although I somehow imagine them to run like an episode of the new Twin Peaks. You recognize a lot of the faces, but things have changes and have gotten even weirder. 

To close, ReMemorex is a game for those who want to feel nostalgic while also dealing with the Eldritch Forces beyond your ken, of taking the mundanity of suburbia and give it a good old shake up in a way that would make Lovecraft and Cronenberg proud. It's high on roleplay and storytelling, without the mess or fuss of heavy stats. 

You may check out their Kickstarter project HERE