February 2024 RPGs
Feb. 18th, 2024 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stdesjardinsI played two RPG sessions online this weekend, as part of the Games on Demand Online event. (I have played in non-virtual Games on Demand at Origins in pre-pandemic times.)
The first game was Beak, Feather, and Bone, a map-labeling game where players choose factions among a city of crows and take turns labeling and describing buildings on a map of the city. I chose the Strangers faction (other options included Farmers, Miners, Thieves, Elders, Mages, etc.) on the grounds that I had the least idea who they were or what they might want. My initial vague thought was that they might be a party of adventurers who had come to the city hunting for a treasure, and the buildings I established in the first few rounds were consistent with that, establishing an interest in archaeology and magical detritus, but by the final round I pivoted, and had them open a tea house where they performed divinations by casting gems and shiny stones and reading patterns in how they fell, and in the epilogue I described the wave of gray-feathered immigrants that followed, and described that section of the city becoming home to restaurants, jewelers, and artisans.
Then I was one of three GMs this afternoon for a game of The Barbarian's Bloody Quest (by Vince Baker), in which the barbarian Hildax faced obstacles on a quest to slay Kendivan of the Tower of Tach, the wizard who slaughtered his village. (It's a one-player, multiple GM setup, with the facilitator playing the barbarian.) So much fun. Practically the first thing I established was that Kendivan was also a gourmet chef. When Hildax arrived at the wizard's island one of my fellow GMs described the wizard's extensive herb garden and orchard, the other suggested that he might also grow various poisonous plants, and I pointed out that he would naturally separate the poisonous plants from the culinary ones to avoid cross-pollination, so on one side of the path was a very tidy herb garden and on the other side a more wild, overgrown garden that provided excellent cover for approaching the tower. As we approached the end of the session, Hildax had been immobilized by the wizard's spectral servant, and Kendivan, angry that he'd insulted his cooking, was forcing him to taste the sea kraken soufflé that had just come out of the oven. He had made the soufflé from the bone that the barbarian had been using as a rudder, which he'd sold to a fishmonger earlier in the session, so to wrap things up I explained that if the person who killed a sea kraken ate its flesh they gained a temporary immunity to magic. We finished just in time.
I haven't found a consistent home for playing RPG's since I quit the Gauntlet. I should maybe make the effort. I think The Barbarian's Bloody Quest and its companion games would be easy to facilitate, and maybe I will make an effort to recruit a couple of players and run a session or two sometime.
The first game was Beak, Feather, and Bone, a map-labeling game where players choose factions among a city of crows and take turns labeling and describing buildings on a map of the city. I chose the Strangers faction (other options included Farmers, Miners, Thieves, Elders, Mages, etc.) on the grounds that I had the least idea who they were or what they might want. My initial vague thought was that they might be a party of adventurers who had come to the city hunting for a treasure, and the buildings I established in the first few rounds were consistent with that, establishing an interest in archaeology and magical detritus, but by the final round I pivoted, and had them open a tea house where they performed divinations by casting gems and shiny stones and reading patterns in how they fell, and in the epilogue I described the wave of gray-feathered immigrants that followed, and described that section of the city becoming home to restaurants, jewelers, and artisans.
Then I was one of three GMs this afternoon for a game of The Barbarian's Bloody Quest (by Vince Baker), in which the barbarian Hildax faced obstacles on a quest to slay Kendivan of the Tower of Tach, the wizard who slaughtered his village. (It's a one-player, multiple GM setup, with the facilitator playing the barbarian.) So much fun. Practically the first thing I established was that Kendivan was also a gourmet chef. When Hildax arrived at the wizard's island one of my fellow GMs described the wizard's extensive herb garden and orchard, the other suggested that he might also grow various poisonous plants, and I pointed out that he would naturally separate the poisonous plants from the culinary ones to avoid cross-pollination, so on one side of the path was a very tidy herb garden and on the other side a more wild, overgrown garden that provided excellent cover for approaching the tower. As we approached the end of the session, Hildax had been immobilized by the wizard's spectral servant, and Kendivan, angry that he'd insulted his cooking, was forcing him to taste the sea kraken soufflé that had just come out of the oven. He had made the soufflé from the bone that the barbarian had been using as a rudder, which he'd sold to a fishmonger earlier in the session, so to wrap things up I explained that if the person who killed a sea kraken ate its flesh they gained a temporary immunity to magic. We finished just in time.
I haven't found a consistent home for playing RPG's since I quit the Gauntlet. I should maybe make the effort. I think The Barbarian's Bloody Quest and its companion games would be easy to facilitate, and maybe I will make an effort to recruit a couple of players and run a session or two sometime.
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