#RPGaDay2018: Day23 - Which game do you hope to play again?

This is a tough one, because a lot of the games I've played before and loved were very specific to the group and the way we played. For instance, I'm told the way my Awesome Uni WoD game went, we played Werewolf far more and Vampire far less politically than they're "meant" to be played, but I enjoyed both. I've played (and enjoyed) political Vampire since, but most people I know who are interested in playing Werewolf want to play fighty-smashy games with little interest in inter-player pack dynamics or how that pack fits into wider Garou society and how all of that impacts on the fight against the Wyrm.

I'd like to play Hunter again - or even run it. Of the 3 World of Darkness systems that made up the Awesome Uni WoD game, that was the one I ended with the least emotional attachment to, which meant I spent years not especially interested in it, but now feel more free to shape it to my will than the others because I feel like I have slightly less to live up to.

I want to play Shadowrun again. There's a very good Shadowrun GM locally, currently running other games, who'd like to run Shadowrun again. Problem is, he doesn't have as much time as he did, what with having a new baby and all, and I don't think I'd want to play with several members of his normal groups, and I'm told he can fall into the trap of only seeing one way out of a scenario and penalising players who try to take a different route (though I think his side of it was rather different). Also, Shadowrun's another game where I've got a fairly specific idea what I want, which makes it much harder on the GM (and I've tried running it, disasterously, which means I'm not prepared to try again until I have some real GM experience).

Heading back to my uni days again, my uni had an unusually high proportion of women in the Wargames and RolePlay Society, which meant someone organised a huge, female-only game of 7th Sea. It unfortunately only lasted one session and the only thing I remember is that my character was called "Crow's-Nest Jen". I'd like to try the system/setting again, as it sounds fun. 

The question specifically says "hope", which makes me a little reluctant to include my next pick: Dockyards, a setting created by my friend Monty and which I talked about for Day 11 of the very first #RPGaDay (here). I like interesting dystopian settings, and this fits the bill! The action taking place on a floating island enhances the sense of place, to me, and I can picture areas vividly. However, the chances of me actually getting to play again are so slim it's a wish rather than a hope. Still, if Monty does decide to do more with it, I'd love to write some accompanying fiction...

What about you? How did you answer today's question? What games have you loved and now miss? Tell me or add a link below!

#RPGaDAY2017: Day 29 - Which RPGs facilitate running very large groups enjoyably?

The official topic for today - best run RPG KS backed - doesn't work for me because I've only backed 2 and both using Husbit's KS account rather than mine and I haven't paid any attention to how they were run and to be honest, kinda like with the writing, I'm more likely to notice if they were badly done than done well. Silly human nature.

Looking at the alternate questions, the only one that stands out to me is "Have you learned a skill because of events in a game? Tell us about it!". I sat there thinking for a bit about whether I actually had an answer, realised part of why I started circus was becaus eI enjoy playing rogues in D&D-style settings, then realised I liked this because it meant I could talk about circus, and this is RPGaDAY, not AerialADay (... ummm... I may have to use that...), so I'd rather talk about RPG's (and I talked about aerial + RPG last year). I don't really have anything to add to previous day 29's, so I've selected another alternate question that stood out less because I feel like I'm going to repeat things I've already said this year, but never mind.

Which RPGs facilitate running very large groups enjoyably?

Ok. I've talked a few times about the huge games that uni friends run when we visit, usually some kind of horror. A spaceship is not an unusual setting, nor a variation on the town itself (one where they didn't close Y Bae. We generally feel that having The Bay open makes up for the horror events), and the first or second I played in (while I was still at uni) was set in an ancient Celtic settlement.

Why do these games work well for large groups? Partly it's the group: we like playing together. Most of the group are used to playing in the large group, and the rest of us are just excited to see everyone else. The party constantly splits, so the little groups work together and chat in or out of character while the focus is on another - we all seem to be pretty good at tuning out what we don't need to be hearing.

The other benefit is that they're very rules-light. At the start, whoever's running (usually Rowan but sometimes John) will give us the rules to create our characters. Pick a name. Pick an occupation from a list or appropriate to the brief outline setting we've been given. Here's a set of stats (5 or 6): you have a few points to split between them. We're going to use this type of die/dice today. Quick introduction to establish who's who and whether anyone knows anyone else. These steps may not all happen. The way dice and stats are used are usually inititally a little fluid, settling into something that works as the game goes on.

The GM's, then. They have a concept. They know what's happening around us, but let us add to the world through our conversations and actions (though they aren't afraid of the word "no" when appropriate). They have great imaginations and are great communicators, so we can all swim together. The concept has had more consideration than any 'rules'.

And the dynamic of the group as a whole. The comfortable atmosphere that makes it ok to fail or do something stupid, and it doesn't matter if your character dies.

These combine to make an easy, fluid gaming experience.

So which RPG's facilitate large groups? As usually with "which RPG..." questions, the group is probably more important than the system, but rules-light, make-it-up-on-the-fly systems are the best!

~~~

RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.

#RPGaDAY2017: Day 20 - Favourite Horror Game

Today's question is another of those closed questions I find uninspiring, but still none of the alts appeal to me (sorry if I sound grumpy about this - under a lot of stress in my personal life and it's starting to overspill). Best source of out-of-print roleplay games? For me, probably ebay.

Being fed up with short answers, I looked back to 2016, and my favourite horror game. I talked then about a homebrew uni game, Celts vs zombies! 

I'm really enjoying Deadlands, which is Weird West with a good dose of horror, and Husbit's keen to play on that aspect. 

There was a moment in ShadowRun, in the Renraku Archology, when a shopful of dolls turned their heads to me and spoke my name "Kamaya..." in that creepy, lilting child voice we all know from horror films. That whole scenario is pretty terrifying and I'd love to play it again! We didn't 'complete' it because we were pretty damn immersed and all just wanted to survive and get out.

But the best horror games have all been homebrew games in my uni town - the New Year's Cyber Doggies, this year's New Year Alien game and last summer's creepy game set in an alt version of the town (neither of which I've written up yet, which the Alien game is particularly a shame because I had some fantastic dreams that night).

It's the people, of course! Rowan usually GM's, but it was John last summer, and they run for a large group so I get to see loads of my friends and that's great, and it's always fun and silly usually a little scary, with minimal rules and maximum interaction.

 

~~~

RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.

#RPGaDAY2017: Day 7 - What was your most impactful session

I need to give honourable mentions to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ShadowRun campaigns that were the first I played in, because they had sufficient impact on me to keep me playing. However, both were long enough ago that, while I remember scenes and snippets (for ShadowRun, particularly inside the Renraku Archology, that I'd love to revisit and actually explore one day - we mostly focused on hiding and staying alive, so I didn't learn any of the secrets), I can't bring to mind any one session that would be sufficiently impactful to discuss here (well, maybe that episode of Buffy where a badly worded spell turned all me (and all the female npcs) into boys ("Make all girls like me" said the lonely boy)).

If you've been reading for a while, you'll know I'm very fond of Svetlana, my main Pathfinder character, and I worry about her future and love her relationship with King Noleski and when she died and found peace in her deity's realm, then was brought back to life and realised one day she would lose Noleski - and not even care she had - that really scared her and I loved it! (Even if no one in the rest of the party did anything. Sigh.)

And there have been some really intense moments in both Aberrant and Exalted. Anything where Bells and I get to have deep character interaction with each other or the NPCs (must be exhausting for the GM...)

I think the most impactful session would be one that took place in a game I talked about back in 2015, for the longest session I'd played in. This was the Final Fantasy Nori homebreew game my housemate, Sith, created and ran for his girlfriend Penny and our friends Owen & Rowan, and there was some real emotional intensity in the game. I'm thinking of a particular scene nearish the end, as we decided to approach Mount Gagazet and I got a load of visions trying to put me off - my parents crying and begging for help, and then my younger sister. She was called Elin and was sporty and fit, but I didn't think much of it until my GM invoked her in that scene - and played her so close to my really world younger sister, Erin (a fitness fanatic and all round amazing person) that I was in real world floods of tears and it was amazing. When he met her for the first time a few weeks later, he did freak out a little, as he saw why he'd managed to get such a response from me!

~~~

RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.

Cyber-Doggies!

Hope you all had lovely New Year's! Husbit & I went back to my uni town to see friends I don't get to see often enough. Rowan & Gem kindly put us and other people up, and their daughters did everyone's hair. We drank beautiful purple swirly liquid provided by another friend called Gems and had a lovely time.

 

On the Saturday evening, Rowan ran a game for 8 of us - a 9th player arriving late. Made me smile because I'd recently read Mark Knight's thoughts on running large games, which had made me think of Rowan's games. This was a bit of a "GM v Players" game, a race for survival. We started by picking a name and a career path out of Military, Engineer, Medical or "something similar" (police and scientist were the only two that came up). What came next follows, with usual embellishment liberties taken where I forget things.

My name's Jenny Blake. I'm an engineer. I'm also a fictional device telling a story, which means I sometimes know things, like what someone else is thinking or doing when I shouldn't be able to. I know it can be really irritating, but it's going to make telling this story a lot easier to tell so you'll just have to forgive me.

I awoke as I was travelling down some tube, carried along by this weird goo that I could breath. When the tube ended, I somehow kept my feet and in the faint red light I became aware of two other people, though I couldn't focus on them or hear properly or even move to begin with. Other tubes flushed and more people arrived in the room, until there were seven. The light by an eighth tube lit, but a second red light appeared instead of the green that had preceeded the others arriving. I could hear muffled banging from the tube, and someone found the handle that released the man inside. 4 men, 4 women. We all stood there shakily for a bit, until one person called out for lights and we could see each other properly: vests and underpants and covered in goo.  

The friendliest of the people who'd landed was as clueless as me, but said her name was Sally. We could see other tubes, most empty but around 10 with corpses floating in. Made me shiver. Someone suggested spacing them, which led to an argument about where we were. A tough looking guy said he could feel motion, like we were in some kind of vehicle. Sally commented that the tubes were "long range... long range..." "Stasis pods" I finished for her. That would definitely suggest we were on a spaceship.

I followed the man who walked to where I started to remember were showers: none of us knew much, but getting clean helped. When we were done showering, I instinctively went to my locker for my clothes and gear, finding a bag with a blow torch, a mini screwdriver and other tools of that kind: Sally had similar, as did Robert. The stern faced woman - Chun Lee - and the tough-looking guy - Johnny Steel - had fully charged energy weapons and their uniforms revealed him to be a private and her a corporal. Roberto Mackenzie was a policeman, with a solid-round gun. The last woman had a medkit, Robbie some kind of handheld assistance computer. As he struggled to get it to bring up the "grammatics" of the ship, I tried to hurry everyone to the canteen: stasis had made me hungry. 

The canteen was exactly where my feet led me. As we entered, a conveyor belt started up, with bowls holding blocks of jelly travelling along. Steel took a bite of it and a few followed suit. I raised an eyebrow and took my bowl to the tap: the hot water turned it into a filling soup. Eating made me feel a lot better.

It was decided we should head to the bridge. The computer had limited ability to communicate with us and seemingly had taken damage. The primary core was accessible from the bridge, so that's where we'd start. As we walked, someone heard a thumping noise. We froze and listened: footfall, but one leg was a lot heavier than the other.

The military pair and the policeman had their guns out - I guess the quiet of the ship must have spooked them, because this must be deep space and who else could be here? Sally evidently agreed with me.

"Hellooo!" She called, "hello?" 

The footsteps stopped.

"Identify yourself" demanded Lee: a figure rounded the corner, a large man with a nasty gash on his head. His military uniform was ragged, revealing a metallic leg. She lowered her gun. "Dave?!"

He had no better clue than us what was going on so we carried on to the bridge. From the corner of his eye, Robert thought he saw movement, but no one could identify the source. The blast shields were down and the computer was completely on the fritz now: we could see several small holes and one larger (some kind of meteor bombardment?) that had pierced the ship through into the mainframe. Investigating inside revealed the charred remains of the duty officer who'd been awake at the time. Sally, Robert and I realised the damage had been too sudden for the computer to kick to the secondary core, so Sally and I prepared to manually boot it while Robert was to stay on bridge to fix what he could here and to be ready for when we got the other online. Corporal Lee offfered to come with us for protection. The medic caught Dave and made him sit still while she ministered to his headwound, while the others prowled the bridge.

The three of us made our way through the ship, hearing strange clangs and bangs at intervals. As we neared engineering and the secondary core, the banging got louder. Sweet, cheerful Sally called out, assuming (as I did) more survivors. Lee rolled her eyes as she raised her gun.

"Is that your first response to any situation?"

"Of course!" She seemed surprised by my question, and returned to shushing Sally. Telling us to get behind her, she opened the door. I peered over her shoulder, looking for damage, trusting her to spot any danger. She did. A blur whizzed past us - she shoved me backwards as she threw herself out of the way. Poor, naive, sweet Sally stayed in the thing's path. With a scream, she fell. Lee fired a shot at the thing as it ran away, but the stun setting of her energy weapon did nothing. I ran to Sally as Lee whirled to check there were no more in the room.

Whatever the frig that thing was, it'd clawed Sally up pretty badly. I screamed for a medic, but the computer hadn't quite got comms online: up on the bridge, Robert was in the process of rebooting various systems, and it didn't take long for comms to arrive, but mine didn't seem to be working (I thought I'd brought it online when I shouted, but turns out I hadn't remembered exactly how to use it). It wasn't long, at least, before the medic was on her way with Mackenzie and Steel as support.

As we waited, I did my best to keep the blood and guts in Sally with my gaffer tape while Lee filled in the others on the beast, warning that it didn't respond to stun - and there might be others.

There seemed to be others. Halfway to us, Mackenzie stumbled. Steel and Ffion continued on, but he'd twisted his ankle and needed a moment to recover. Which is when he saw a dog sized creature with a  rough, metallic skin. Realising this must be what had inflicted so much damage to Sally, he reacted instinctively: "BAD DOG!"

To his surprise, rather than advancing the creature sat, cocked its head and whined slightly. He watched as it crept forward towards him, body language akin to a scolded dog. It licked the back of his hand and sat again. Over the comms, he let the rest of us know what was happening as the bright blue eyes glowed brighter and brighter and it emitted a whirring noise grow louder and louder, and its mouth opened to reveal, not the row of teeth of a normal dog, but instead a perfectly circular opening. It took his hand within and we heard his screams as the sharp edges took his hand off. The pain shook him back to sense: he raised his gun and fired into it until it fell back and stopped moving. He used the heated gun barrel to cauterise his bleeding stump. 

The medic continued to Sally as Steel swung back to help Mackenzie, arriving at the same time as a cyber-puppy. It sniffed sadly at the corpse of the larger creature, then turned to Mackenzie as he slumped against the wall. Steel shot it as it approached him, but the beam of his weapon (on the setting above stun) reflected back off the creature's shiny, metallic hide and hit Steel, who fell peeing and convulsing to the floor. Mackenzie shot the puppy and warned to use solid rounds only as the medic reached us.

Sally's breathing had been getting more laboured. She'd ripped away a length of the gaffer tape: I'd tried to restrain her, thinking she must be delirious, but her breathing was marginally better afterwards. Something about punctured lungs needing air. I don't know; I fix engines, not people. I know she coughed a lot of blood and gore over me. When the medic arrived I was still hovering, trying to help, so Lee slapped me round the face and reminded me why we were down here. I cleared the gore from me as best I could and turned to the engine, but even as I turned away Sally died with a whimpering death rattle. The medic turned on us, demanding to know how she'd been hit - had she been her usual naive, irritable, friendly self? Once she'd calmed, I finally had a chance to learn her name: Ffion. Lee handed us both assault rifles, including a spare for the medic to take back to Steel as she made to return to Mackenzie while I made a start on rebooting the secondary core.

Things weren't going too well on the bridge. The three there - Dave, Robert and Robby - could hear more impacts on the blast shields. Something finally penetrated and all three found themselves in danger of being sucked into space. Robby grabbed Robert and tried pulling him to safety, but when he reached the doors (which the ship had sealed when the breach was detected) and opened them, the new rush of air brought with it a fire extinguisher which knocked him unconscious. Robert managed to grab hold and secure them both, but couldn't move forward: Dave, with his greater strength, soon reached them but knew he could only help one, so let Robby go: he was speared on buckling bulkheads before being ripped through the side as Dave and Robert sealed the doors behind them.

The ship was screaming warnings at us now: hull breaches on several decks, unknown status on all others. Time to get to the escape pods...

They weren't too far from engineering, slightly further from Steel and Ffion, who'd just met up. Steel and I arrived first, maybe 100 yards ahead of Lee with Ffion further behind her. The pods only held three, so I'd have liked the medic to have reached mine rather than ending up with 2 gun bunnies, but at least I got away safely, calling good luck to Ffion as we left.

What I didn't know was that Lee had dodged one of the doggies as she raced down that last corrider - she'd spotted it in a side passage. Just after we departed, it jumped out and dragged Ffion across into the opposite passage, where it licked her face before opening its mouth to eat her.

Dave and Robert armed themselves and found Mackenzie on their way to the pods - he was struggling a bit with the pain, but being pretty badass nonetheless. Dave acted as rear guard while Robert and Mackenzie headed to the next pod - Robert spotted the dog as it turned its attention to them. He hit the door seal button, locking it and its puppies in the side passage and joined Mackenzie in prepping the pod. Dave reached them as they spotted a dog waiting on a chair. He removed his artificial leg and threw it. The dog jumped after it, but was only briefly distracted. Long enough for Mackenzie and Robert to get away, leaving Dave to fight it alone... it pinned him down, licked the hand holding his gun. One chance, he figured, and steeled himself to lose that limb. The perfect hole closed around his arm and he pulled the trigger... and nothing happened. He'd mistimed it: the arm was severed too soon. It howled, and a pair of cyber puppies came slinking to it.

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 26, Favourite Inspiration for your Game

I'm really not sure how to answer this, but let's have a go.

It feels like a question to ask a GM, and I very rarely run games (not a whole lot of confidence, love playing, have a lot of friends who really enjoy GM'ing). That's not to say there aren't plenty of things I come across that spark off the desire to create in a role play sense - either to enhance my playing or in a setting creation sense for a game I'll never run. Then again, I could think about the things that have inspired other people to run my favourite games.

Let's start with the latter.

I'm going to go back to the Final Fantasy Noir homebrew game. I've never played a Final Fantasy game to completion. I got a fair way through FF7 on a friend's PS1 before the memory card got wiped and her family got rid of FF7 because they'd nearly finished and couldn't face working through it again and I've watched other people play chunks of 8, 9, 10 and I think 12, but I've never played one all the way through.

But they are beautiful, detailed games, crafted with love.

I love this bit of music and think this is a fantastic cover.

So that might be my favourite inspiration for a game I've played in. The guy running 'Final Fantasy Noir' is a huge fan and did his best to recreate the vastness of the worlds, managing to create a very engaging game in the process. I don't think it would have been my inspiration, but I'm grateful to it.

What about things that inspire me as a player? It depends, but I like using games to try out things I'd not dare to do - to test my own morality, I suppose. I played a Ravnos in a Vampire game once. Her name was lost in the mists of time, but she went by Mathilde at the point the game started. She was a bully and a trickster - she revelled in causing emotional pain to other people. I am not that kind of person but I wanted to understand it, wanted to play with the concept. I was inspired by the idea that vampires don't feel emotion and slowly (or otherwise) lose their connection with humanity, and I wondered how one might deal with that. I guess I was inspired as much by the setting as the desire to explore what could have been a part of me if I'd been a different person.

And if I were running games... I'd love to run something set in Genevieve Cogman's The Invisible Library. I think Lords of Gossamer and Shadow would work really well: the similarities between the settings and the freedom offered by the LoG&S system mean I wouldn't have to make many changes. But I've got a couple of ideas for games set in the world(s) of LoG&S I'd want to use it for first, so that will have to wait.

I've talked about the book before. Parallel worlds with a Library connecting them (very L-space!), with the librarians of the Library trying to track down copies of all the books in existence. The universe is divided between Law (represented by the Library and dragons, although the two have their own agendas and don't work together) and Chaos (represented by the fey races). Librarians don't age whilst in the Library, need to be smart and athletic to retrieve the books, and have access to certain magics by calling on the Library. Parallel Earth's mean a setting players can recognise but which can be twisted to the GM's control.

Reckon a lot of fun could be had with that.

But mostly it's characters I'm inspired to create, as evidenced by the Character Concepts tab above. I've got several to add when I have time to write up properly, and it's all sorts of things that can inspire. Sometimes I just want to create my own version of an archetype; often something I read will send sparks flying; sometimes I'll pinch an idea from a friend or someone or Twitter (I try to get consent when I notice I'm doing it!) - and as with 'Mathilde' above and several of the cyberpunk characters, sometimes I want to explore something opposite to me.

 

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 25, Favourite Revolutionary Game Mechanic

I'm not sure of any 'revolutionary game mechanics', so I saved a favourite house rule from yesterday, because I think it's clever and adds and interesting element of chance to a game - and because it stemmed from an attempt to circumvent an attempt at "play to win".

It started in a D100 homebrew system (not sure of the setting: I wasn't in the game itself) where one player's dice were suspiciously good: rather than use a proepr percentile, he'd roll different coloured D10's, but declare which was 10's and which units after the roll had landed. To get past this, the GM decided to mix things up by sometimes seeking a high number, and sometimes a low number. And he wouldn't tell you which he was after until all results were in. It got more complicated: he split it into 4 quarters and you needed to land in (or pass) the right one, with your stat assisting your die roll. To increase the randomness, the GM would also roll a D100. Ostensibly, I believe, this was to determine which quarter the target was in, but there were added side effects that were fun and leaked into games I did play in.

If your D100 roll matched the GM, something very bad was about to happen. If, however, your roll was his inverted (eg he rolled 38 and you rolled 83), something very good would happen. If the GM's number was a double (eg 22) and you matched it, something very good and something very bad would happen.

Then certain numbers took on meanings - if the GM or a player rolled it (and we are strictly talking about the die roll, never the stat-manipulated result), then something would happen. I forget all of them, although one number resulted in something completely off-the-wall, 69 usually caused something unexpectedly, ahem, lustful, and 66 (as in Star Wars's 'Order 66') meant something very bad.

I think it's clear that can add fun to a silly game, but it was surprisingly effective in more serious games too.

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 20, Favourite Horror RPG

Hmmm....

I'm not sure if White Wolf's World of Darkness games are horror or not. I mean, they have end of world scenarios and werewolfs and vampires and ghosts and zombies in them, but that's not enough for horror and to me they feel more like arching fantasy epics. Maybe just the games I've played, but they suit that well.

I love the idea of Ravenloft. Husbit adores it, I've read most of the fiction and the campaign played by friends at home whilst I was at uni is still spoken of by ref & players. It sounds amazing - full of gothic themes of hubris and betrayal. But I've never played it.

So the game I'm going to pick is a homebrew game from uni. It was a one-off session set in a fantasy Celtic Britain. I was the Chieftain's daughter, which meant I had a gold torque and woad paint for armour and wielded a claymore with minor magic. Another player was the weird hermit from the hills - lots of magic! Other warriors and townsfolk. No dice, as far as I recall. Not that many rules at all, really, but rather a feeling of communal story-telling: the GM told the story and we provided the detail - we got attacked by zombies in the night and had to fight them off. It was great fun.

 

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 16, Longest Game Session Played

I know my current (Pathfinder, Aberrant/Exalted) GM is doing his best to take the record, but I remember playing weekend-long sessions when I was a student, so the longest session would be part of Kella's story.

As mentioned on Day 12, she's one of my favourite characters of all time and a large part of that was down to how immersed we as players became in the game, which was assisted by being able to play for extended periods: I shared a house with the GM (Sith) and his girlfriend (Penny), who played Kyann, and our friend Owen (Rax) was the other main player and practically lived there too - and when Rowan (Reisha) joined he was just around the corner too. I know we needed to cram a lot in to make sure we finished the game before I finished uni, so I suspect the final session was the longest.

I've never played Final Fantasy X, the inspiration for this game, so I don't exactly know how it deviates. Our game was set 1,000 years or more before the computer game. The world has a strange mix of magic and and technology-esque items - leaning more towards magic than the world I remember from my foray into Final Fantasy VII, although that is a different place. Kella was Besaid born and bred, golden-brown skin, long hair thick and dark, and a love of Blitzball - the sport that unites the world and is particularly popular in her corner of it. She has a stocky, athletic build and plays passionately, but it's her younger sister Elin who has a real talent for the game. By the end of the game, she'd progressed from white mage to summoner.

Rax (short for Sycorax) was a chocobo breeder, as I recall. He became convinced he'd died and wanted Kella to send him on - I remember the GM saying he was a bit worried because Rax hadn't died but he was so convinced of it, the GM half expected if I tried a sending it would work!

Reisha was a man out of time. When the party was attempting to convince Phoenix to join them as part of Kella's available summons, they found him or Phoenix returned him to the world and left him to their care - I was never entirely sure which, or if something else entirely was going on. I think this was the first time he muttered "I could get used to waking up next to you" on seeing Kella - and then blushing bright red on realising he'd spoken out loud.

Whilst Reisha was the oldest player character in terms of time since birthed, Kyann was oldest in time lived and in maturity. She was a strong, steely woman - good in a fight, but her strength was predominantly that of will. A bit of a loner, she accepted the company thrust on her by fate and circumstance before realising she was fond of the others - close enough to call them friends.

It was her strength of character that meant Kella could survive her final encounter.

It's sadly hazy now, but I do remember avoiding an intended boss battle with the Behemoth King. I'd picked up a ring that enabled me to talk to animals and we ended up recruiting him as part of the party. We climbed Mount Gagazet where Reisha and Kella finally admitted to their mutual attraction. Kella had just enough time to realise she was pregnant before Reisha was killed (?) to save the party - by this time, everyone knew they had to get Kella to the top of the mountain, had to keep her alive so she could sacrifice herself...

It was revealed to them - a vision from the future (characters in the computer game) - that Kella didn't need to die. She chose Kyann to be her final summoned creature - the one destined to kill her. Kyann was taken over and indeed went to fight - but she was fighting within herself because she was determined not to kill her friend - and she won, staying the sin growing within her.

The Behemoth King returned to his herd and the surviving party - Kella, Rax and an NPC, Natasha (daughter of another NPC who'd died along the way) - returned to Besaid for the epilogue: Rax, who'd accepted his life during the final battles and who'd fallen in love with Elin before that, was married to Kella's younger sister and they had twins - Rain and Sky. Rax was on the beach with Kella, watching Elin play Blitzball and watching his twins and Kella's son, Zet, when something fell from the sky, and Kella knew it was Reisha coming home to her - and of course it was. And that's what the picture I chose for Day 12 illustrates. I wrote the scene as a fan-fiction after, and it still makes me cry to read it.

 

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 12, Favourite RPG Illustration

This seemed insanely difficult to me - there's a lot of fantastic art out there and a lot of utter dross. But then I thought, I love some of the illustrations friends have done of my characters, and it'd be nice to share them again here.

1. Kella and Reisha (Homebrew: Final Fantasy Noir)

 

Drawn by my friend Rowan who played Reisha, this depicts the 'epilogue' scene of our game. If you've played Final Fantasy X then you'll know more than me about the long history of summoners who believed they had to sacrifice themselves for the planet. Kella, my character, was a summoner around 1,000 years before the computer game and had become so accepting of her inevitable fate that Reisha was introduced deliberately as a love interest to shake things up a bit. He was a character out of time, found in a chamber when visiting a lost Faythe (Phoenix). He ended up sacrificing himself completely for her just after she'd discovered she was pregnant (which she didn't tell him as she was still set on dying and didn't want him to lose two people); they never found his body.

Of course, there was a way out of the situation that didn't involve Kella's death (just that of another of her closest allies, in another incredibly intense roleplay moment). She went back home to Besaid and a year or so later Reisha fell out of the sky and, in true fairy tale fashion, they lived happily ever after.

I pictured Kella as being somewhat stockier and her hair in thicker twists, but this picture is beautiful to me and summons up strong memories of a deeply immersive game.

2. Jvala (Pathfinder - interlude)

This is my current Pathfinder character as drawn by my friend Abi. It's a great likeness considering how little info she had to go on when I asked for the picture - what I particularly love is the dress, which is pretty much exactly what I picture her wearing to a ball or some such, and I gave Abi no clues in that direction! From the way her hair and skin are shifting slightly in colour, it's clear she's excited about something. Her swords are close by but not in her hands, so she's unlikely to be angry or afraid - I think she's probably trying to hide the fact that she's thrilled to be going to the party she's off too, but she can't control the way her inner flame flickers behind her skin and through her hair!

3. Svetlana (Pathfinder - main)

Again drawn by Abi from very basic info. I love the way she's captured Svetlana's joy and innocence. The dark leaf armour is much nicer and more imaginative than what I'd pictured and I love the plait! 

Svetlana sits jointly with Kella as being my very favourite character, possibly because they share this innocence that they wear almost as a shield against the harsher side of the world. Kella's was ultimately rewarded: she didn't have to die and her beloved was returned to her. Svetlana's is gradually being stripped from her - wrenched from her desperate grasp. Her death and time in Erastil's realm has hurt her badly because it's shown her how little time she will actually with her love and she finds it very difficult to know that once she's dead that won't matter to her: it makes how she feels matter more now. The political circles she is expected to navigate when not fighting demons are also teaching her not all people are as good as she wishes to believe...

Another thing the two share is a sense of duty to a cause bigger than themselves. For Kella, she grew up knowing about summoners and their sacrifice and I think that made it easier for her to accept the mantle when it was passed to her: she knew what she was doing was necessary for the good of everyone and, although I don't think it mattered consciously, she also knew that as long as she succeeded she would never be forgotten and would always be honoured. Svetlana has more internal conflict. For a start, she now has two duties: to Brevoy and to Golarion. For the good of Brevoy, she must try to tame her chaotic nature and learn to play the political game, but that seems irrelevant when placed next to the threats to Golarion she has discovered whilst fighting in the Worldwound and whilst off in another dimension. Here, her life and her love are in danger but she must fight on and not give up for the sake of her world. She does this with more reluctance than Kella, perhaps because this is all newer to her. She's also, unlike Kella, an only child, so I think there is a little more selfishness in her. But she fights on nonetheless.

As always, with thanks to Autocratik.

 

RPGaDay - Days 27 and 28

#RPGaDay

Day Twenty Seven – Game you’d like to see a new/improved version of

I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking and still don’t have an answer. I’m going to borrow Husbit’s answer and go with Cyberpunk because it is clunky and heavy, but I like some of the detail gone into helping build a character background. It feels a bit of a cheat because there is a new version coming and because I prefer ShadowRun and you can run a straight cyberpunk-style game using that.

Day Twenty Eight – Scariest game

Husbit’s rendition of the Coffin Rock scenario in Deadlands, which I’ve mentioned previously, certainly had moments that freaked me out, and there were scenes in the Final Fantasy based Homebrew that gave me more shivers than anticipated, but for scariest game I’m torn between two.

The first is the Renraku Arcology Shutdown campaign in ShadowRun, which our GM was very keen to run and which some of the players regretted letting him do (although I enjoyed it immensely). The scene that particularly springs to mind is when my character, Kamaya, had managed to get herself separated from the rest of the group and fell into a toy shop – at which point, all the dolls’ heads turned to look at her and spoke to her by name. With the music he’d chosen and the expression on his face, it was one of those chilling moments that sticks with you.

The second has come up on my blog before. “A Town Called Crossfire” (first section of link), being run by my friend Pete.

We spent the first part of the game goofing around and roleplaying as students on summer break having fun and basically avoiding the plot hooks and hammers until he railroaded us into the game he wanted to run, which involved entering an abandoned mine labelled as “dangerous” and “no entry” (we were being all obedient and listening to the signs). The mine lead to another city, one eerily akin to the one above, but shadowy and darker. I don’t remember much about the game except I think the idea was to seek out the ruler of this city and the overwhelming level of creepy eeriness that Pete managed to create.

It seems to me the trick to a good creepy game is all down to the GM’s ability to act.

With thanks again to Autocratik.