Short post, just came upon a neat little description at GnomeStew that I felt I should share:
"My enjoyment had shifted from crafting stories and being the director, to one more like a drummer in a jazz band. My job was to lay down an interesting beat and let the players come in and do their thing." - DNAphil
This is actually a very good description of what GMing is like when you're going for an open-ended story with lots of player input. The beat is crucial to the music: Without beat, there is no music. At the same time, the beat is rarely at the foreground. While the occasional drum solo is nice, that's rarely the most impressive part - what you really want to hear is someone going crazy on the saxophone.
fredag 28 januari 2011
fredag 21 januari 2011
Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm - from Greek enthousiasmos "divine inspiration," from enthousiazein "be inspired or possessed by a god, be rapt, be in ecstasy."
This is pretty much what I feel like when I really get into something. When I dedicate myself enough to doing something, when I start to lose myself and completely sink into what I'm doing at the time - when I'm truly enthusiastic: To be inspired or possessed by a god. In fact, this is probably how I would define divinity. Enthusiasm is to be in touch with God. Enthusiasm, to me, is to submit to Allah, to become the hand of God, to move with the Tao, to have Buddha-nature, to be one with the Universe. Geeking out, and I mean this absolutely seriously - geeking out is, to me, the most profound religious experience possible.
Perhaps it's different for different people. Perhaps some people find rapture in the stillness of meditation, or the rush of adrenaline through their blood as they run, or the embrace of a lover. There are a multitude of ways to God. A little while ago, me and Drake and Luke had a discussion about religions - about whether it really makes any difference whether or not you slavishly follow the teachings of Jesus or slavishly follow the teachings of Donald Duck; both seem pretty stupid when you get down to it. Well, perhaps the argument can be turned around - it may be stupid to slavishly follow any text, but really: If someone has a profound religious experience from reading Donald Duck, is that not a wonderful thing?
It sounds silly, but really - why should the Divine be constrained or limited? If one can see the World in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wild flower, surely one can see the World in a workout pass, and Heaven in a comic strip?
This is pretty much what I feel like when I really get into something. When I dedicate myself enough to doing something, when I start to lose myself and completely sink into what I'm doing at the time - when I'm truly enthusiastic: To be inspired or possessed by a god. In fact, this is probably how I would define divinity. Enthusiasm is to be in touch with God. Enthusiasm, to me, is to submit to Allah, to become the hand of God, to move with the Tao, to have Buddha-nature, to be one with the Universe. Geeking out, and I mean this absolutely seriously - geeking out is, to me, the most profound religious experience possible.
Perhaps it's different for different people. Perhaps some people find rapture in the stillness of meditation, or the rush of adrenaline through their blood as they run, or the embrace of a lover. There are a multitude of ways to God. A little while ago, me and Drake and Luke had a discussion about religions - about whether it really makes any difference whether or not you slavishly follow the teachings of Jesus or slavishly follow the teachings of Donald Duck; both seem pretty stupid when you get down to it. Well, perhaps the argument can be turned around - it may be stupid to slavishly follow any text, but really: If someone has a profound religious experience from reading Donald Duck, is that not a wonderful thing?
It sounds silly, but really - why should the Divine be constrained or limited? If one can see the World in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wild flower, surely one can see the World in a workout pass, and Heaven in a comic strip?
lördag 15 januari 2011
The Predator
This is going to seem silly to most of you, rather than frightening. But I'm narrating from my own point of view, so you're going to have to use your imagination. I was on my way home. At night. In darkness. There are no people anywhere in sight, in any direction. And then, as I'm getting pretty close to home, there's a dog. A pretty big one. First I didn't react – I'm not really terrified of dogs any longer, just slightly uncomfortable around them. Usually.
Except, as I looked around, there really wasn't anyone nearby. For as far as I could see in every direction, there are no humans. The dog isn't on a leash, it's just kind of wandering around poking at things. I couldn't see if there was a collar, it was too dark – but it was definitely a dog, probably a German shepherd, I'm not sure. Vaguely wolf-shaped, kind of big, unleashed. At this point I'm starting to feel more than a little bit uncomfortable, but I keep walking, hoping it'll ignore me. I guess I must have noticed it before it noticed me, though, because at the moment I start moving, it darts up and looks at me – and I almost completely fucking freeze up. Fight-or-flight kicks in, mind starts to race; I can't outrun it, I don't have a chance, there's snow and ice everywhere. I'm going to have to fight, except it's pretty damn huge and it'll probably drag me down. For a split second there, it felt like I was staring into the eyes of Death itself. The Wolf has come for me. I'm fucked.
Then, of course, the dog sauntered off, more interested in a random stick on the roadside. I stood stone still until I was absolutely sure I couldn't see it any longer, and then I very, very carefully went inside, thankful that it's the modern age, that there aren't actually any wolves stalking in the shadow. Not here, not any longer. Right?
...
Right?
Except, as I looked around, there really wasn't anyone nearby. For as far as I could see in every direction, there are no humans. The dog isn't on a leash, it's just kind of wandering around poking at things. I couldn't see if there was a collar, it was too dark – but it was definitely a dog, probably a German shepherd, I'm not sure. Vaguely wolf-shaped, kind of big, unleashed. At this point I'm starting to feel more than a little bit uncomfortable, but I keep walking, hoping it'll ignore me. I guess I must have noticed it before it noticed me, though, because at the moment I start moving, it darts up and looks at me – and I almost completely fucking freeze up. Fight-or-flight kicks in, mind starts to race; I can't outrun it, I don't have a chance, there's snow and ice everywhere. I'm going to have to fight, except it's pretty damn huge and it'll probably drag me down. For a split second there, it felt like I was staring into the eyes of Death itself. The Wolf has come for me. I'm fucked.
Then, of course, the dog sauntered off, more interested in a random stick on the roadside. I stood stone still until I was absolutely sure I couldn't see it any longer, and then I very, very carefully went inside, thankful that it's the modern age, that there aren't actually any wolves stalking in the shadow. Not here, not any longer. Right?
...
Right?
fredag 14 januari 2011
Reinventing Roleplaying
I've been doing this roleplaying game thing for quite a long while now. Those of you who have been reading my blogs about earlier posts know about the many epiphanies I've had, the many times my consciousness has expanded, the many times I've learned something entirely new, and seen this beautiful hobby in a new light.
Well, it's happened again. And it's happened through the medium of Big Eyes Small Mouth, which comes as somewhat of a surprise as I'm not that great an anime fan. I've ran anime-themed games before – Parallel Fandango, primarily, and I've participated in Aki, which had the same feeling. Yet, this particular Big Eyes Small Mouth game is truly something new, and it's new in a lot of ways.
For one, it's a lot more interactive than most other games I've ran. And no, I'm not making this up – the game really allows the players more freedom than many of my most sandboxy of sandboxes thus far, because the players are actively expanding on the story, during the game, outside the scope of their own characters. They're adding new countries and continents as needed, they're expanding on the history of the world and of the NPCs, and they're even adding new NPCs on the fly, mid-game. This is a very new experience for me, and rather challenging, but usually well worth the extra effort as it pretty much guarantees player involvement. I don't mean suggestions, either – I mean stuff like flat-out saying to an NPC “Of course, you have heard of the play involving star-crossed lovers, one from Britannia and one from Teutonia...” or in extreme cases like talking to an NPC that has never been mentioned before, but suddenly springs into existence because the player wanted it. I don't know why this hasn't resulted in any horrible trainwrecks – intuition suggests it rather should, and it probably will eventually – but it hasn't.
Second, which may seem counterintuitive given the above point, the game has taught me a lot about structure. If a game can be properly structured, it will almost automatically present a good narrative. This game follows a simple central metaplot that is advancing quite slowly, with one metaplot-related event occurring per session. The actual meat of the story is made up from NPC-driven subplots, though, chiefly fueled by the characters' interaction with them as the metaplot progresses. This gives the game a very TV-series feel, similar to Star Trek: Voyager, in which the ship's progress is combined with intra-crew conflict. This meshes well with the freedom, because the subplots are unimportant and can be cut short, added, or edited on the fly as needed, without impacting the metaplot. With such a structure, the story continues on ahead while simultaneously allowing the players to do pretty much whatever they want. As long as the story goals of the session are fulfilled, the story is still going somewhere despite very little time actually being devoted to it.
Third, there is the anime aspect. Anime, for all its other faults, does have one chief defining artistic quality which is hard to find elsewhere – its unique blend of comedy, drama, romance and tragedy, which allows for deeply serious stories about abuse and abandonment to run parallel with silly rom-com elements such as spilled love potions, misinterpreted flirting, and overacted reactions. Channeling this feeling in a roleplaying game is surprisingly easy, but it requires players to take a step back from their characters and switch between immersion and collective storytelling, as the players will often have their characters behave in obviously idiotic fashions for the sake of the story, but will have to immerse deeply in their character for the drama and tragedy elements to really hit home.
Overall, it's a new experience to me because it breaks the classical definition of role-playing game and starts to blur more into the territory of improvisational theater. It's almost entirely intrigue-driven, with perhaps 10-20 die rolls taking place during an entire session. The key, the thing that makes this sort of game unique, is – I think – the switch between immersion and storytelling on everyones' behalf. On the one hand, you want to think like your character. On the other hand, you want to consciously make sure that your character commits mistakes where appropriate, to drive the story onwards.
Even though I've been playing for over a decade, and I have played similar games as this before, I have to say that it's an entirely new experience – it's like the intrigue-driven plots of Aki meet the wild-card player-driven solutions of Mage: The Awakening, and fuse together into a coherent whole where players shape the world to fuel the intrigues surrounding them, yet are still beholden to a single, central story. If D&D-style RPGs are like water flowing through a pipe, and improvisational theater is like water flowing freely all over the floor, this style of play is more like water flowing in a stream on the floor – there aren't really any constraints on it, yet it keeps moving on ahead, and doesn't run out all over the place. It requires a lot of consensus between players and GM, obviously – if everyone isn't on the same page, you risk just winding up with a wet floor.
Of course, just because I've discovered a new way of playing doesn't mean it's the best way. It's not even necessarily better than more classical approaches. But it's something I've never done before, and I'm talking about it because, even after over ten years of doing this RPG thing, I keep getting surprised. It's stuff like this which makes me wanna never give up on gaming. Just when you think you've got it all figured out, that strange magic strikes again, and suddenly it's just like that first realization that hey, NPCs can have personalities, and that is awesome.
Well, it's happened again. And it's happened through the medium of Big Eyes Small Mouth, which comes as somewhat of a surprise as I'm not that great an anime fan. I've ran anime-themed games before – Parallel Fandango, primarily, and I've participated in Aki, which had the same feeling. Yet, this particular Big Eyes Small Mouth game is truly something new, and it's new in a lot of ways.
For one, it's a lot more interactive than most other games I've ran. And no, I'm not making this up – the game really allows the players more freedom than many of my most sandboxy of sandboxes thus far, because the players are actively expanding on the story, during the game, outside the scope of their own characters. They're adding new countries and continents as needed, they're expanding on the history of the world and of the NPCs, and they're even adding new NPCs on the fly, mid-game. This is a very new experience for me, and rather challenging, but usually well worth the extra effort as it pretty much guarantees player involvement. I don't mean suggestions, either – I mean stuff like flat-out saying to an NPC “Of course, you have heard of the play involving star-crossed lovers, one from Britannia and one from Teutonia...” or in extreme cases like talking to an NPC that has never been mentioned before, but suddenly springs into existence because the player wanted it. I don't know why this hasn't resulted in any horrible trainwrecks – intuition suggests it rather should, and it probably will eventually – but it hasn't.
Second, which may seem counterintuitive given the above point, the game has taught me a lot about structure. If a game can be properly structured, it will almost automatically present a good narrative. This game follows a simple central metaplot that is advancing quite slowly, with one metaplot-related event occurring per session. The actual meat of the story is made up from NPC-driven subplots, though, chiefly fueled by the characters' interaction with them as the metaplot progresses. This gives the game a very TV-series feel, similar to Star Trek: Voyager, in which the ship's progress is combined with intra-crew conflict. This meshes well with the freedom, because the subplots are unimportant and can be cut short, added, or edited on the fly as needed, without impacting the metaplot. With such a structure, the story continues on ahead while simultaneously allowing the players to do pretty much whatever they want. As long as the story goals of the session are fulfilled, the story is still going somewhere despite very little time actually being devoted to it.
Third, there is the anime aspect. Anime, for all its other faults, does have one chief defining artistic quality which is hard to find elsewhere – its unique blend of comedy, drama, romance and tragedy, which allows for deeply serious stories about abuse and abandonment to run parallel with silly rom-com elements such as spilled love potions, misinterpreted flirting, and overacted reactions. Channeling this feeling in a roleplaying game is surprisingly easy, but it requires players to take a step back from their characters and switch between immersion and collective storytelling, as the players will often have their characters behave in obviously idiotic fashions for the sake of the story, but will have to immerse deeply in their character for the drama and tragedy elements to really hit home.
Overall, it's a new experience to me because it breaks the classical definition of role-playing game and starts to blur more into the territory of improvisational theater. It's almost entirely intrigue-driven, with perhaps 10-20 die rolls taking place during an entire session. The key, the thing that makes this sort of game unique, is – I think – the switch between immersion and storytelling on everyones' behalf. On the one hand, you want to think like your character. On the other hand, you want to consciously make sure that your character commits mistakes where appropriate, to drive the story onwards.
Even though I've been playing for over a decade, and I have played similar games as this before, I have to say that it's an entirely new experience – it's like the intrigue-driven plots of Aki meet the wild-card player-driven solutions of Mage: The Awakening, and fuse together into a coherent whole where players shape the world to fuel the intrigues surrounding them, yet are still beholden to a single, central story. If D&D-style RPGs are like water flowing through a pipe, and improvisational theater is like water flowing freely all over the floor, this style of play is more like water flowing in a stream on the floor – there aren't really any constraints on it, yet it keeps moving on ahead, and doesn't run out all over the place. It requires a lot of consensus between players and GM, obviously – if everyone isn't on the same page, you risk just winding up with a wet floor.
Of course, just because I've discovered a new way of playing doesn't mean it's the best way. It's not even necessarily better than more classical approaches. But it's something I've never done before, and I'm talking about it because, even after over ten years of doing this RPG thing, I keep getting surprised. It's stuff like this which makes me wanna never give up on gaming. Just when you think you've got it all figured out, that strange magic strikes again, and suddenly it's just like that first realization that hey, NPCs can have personalities, and that is awesome.
onsdag 5 januari 2011
2006: Arcana Evolved
Since I've already explained much of the set-up for this game in an earlier post, I'm pretty much going to dive straight into the action of the story of Arcana Evolved. Before I do so, though, I should explain who actually participated in this game, and who their characters were.
The Arcana Unearthed game ended with the group splitting up, each going their separate ways. Arcana Evolved begins five years later (one year later in real-time) when three of the heroes from the last story re-unite on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, joined by two more extraordinary adventurers. The actual configuration of the group included Bob, Drake, Kennedy, Luke, and Jason. Bob and Drake still had essentially the same characters as before – Beo and Ree – whereas Nasef had over time developed into a ghost, driven by the power of the Requiem, a mysterious evil sword. Luke and Jason made new characters, each with suitably epic backstories; Luke re-created Aust, making him a priest from an ancient civilization who had slept through the ages, and Jason created the Cat Lords' Chosen, an avatar of cats who literally possessed nine lives, but is stalked by a strange demon for inexplicable reasons. Jasons character didn't actually have a name for much of the game, until he was randomly named Freddy because we needed a way to refer to him.
The story itself was very long, and rather complicated. It was initially divided up into ten chapters, each named in some meaningful fashion. I have since lost the complete list of chapters, unfortunately, so I can only write about those I remember. I'm also not entirely clear on the chronology; some of the details below may contradict each other. I really should have taken better notes about the game, but I was a little pressed for time, as it was played during my final year at the IB.
Here be Dragons was the first chapter, an introductory story of a sort. The five characters met on a tiny island, and learned of ancient sorcery from a lost civilization called Praetur, which had once been destroyed by the Dragons. It was here Freddy accidentally poisoned Beo, and it was here Beo learned of the ancient civilizations' hatred for Xethar Ar'Nuade, the dragon whose soul he carried inside him. The ruins of the island were thoroughly explored, but they needed a password to delve to the heart of the strange fortress, and had to seek out an akashic who supposedly knew the answer.
The next two chapters have names I can't recall. The akashic needed by the heroes was trapped in an Imperial Fortress, protected by a young man called the Mirror Master, who could prevent all sorts of magic being worked within the fortress. Aust and Freddy insisted on killing him, and so they did, drawing the ire of the Inquisition after them. Beo also met with a woman who wanted to become a mojh, and Ree briefly met with his apprentice, a young Litorian mathematician. There was some running around on the ocean involved, among other things a magical island on which Nasef tried to kill himself by separating himself from the Requiem, the introduction of Sojiro Naraku – Kennedy's replacement character, a sorcerer with some ties to the Demons of the setting – and the characters also returned to the island with the ruins to confront a lich, who managed to hurt Aust badly enough to seemingly kill him. It's all a bit of a blur what happened here, though. I know that in the same scene that Aust “died”, Nasef returned. These two chapters spanned quite a lot of playing time, I know that much.
A Pirate is Free was a chapter which gave Freddy the spotlight. He had once sailed the seas as a feared pirate captain, and was now re-united with his old crew. A Pirate is Free dealt with questions of responsibility, and was rife with moral choices. Do you condone revenge, even if it's carried out as rape? Will you stop a righteous crusade to indulge in your own selfish need for vengeance? Ultimately, it asked this question: Even if you are free from all authority, mortal and divine, does that mean you're also free of responsibility? Or is it perhaps the reverse? A Pirate is Free also introduced Timothy Luvenhay, Luke's replacement character instead of Aust.
Searching For Demons was a strange chapter, perhaps the most muddled and unclear one. I can't recall the details of it very well, but it was during this chapter that the entire group got lost in the desert for no good reason, and also pulled off a joint-stunt impersonating a giant. It included one of the few recurring NPCs, Tirek Fleshripper, and revolved around the demons who had once broken into the Netherworld to come upon the Tree of Life. The heroes learned that they must search for the Key to Hell, which was later revealed to be Beo – the Key to Free Will, which is Hell from the point of view of those in favor of Destiny.
Chapter Six: Consequences (the only chapter whose name and numbering I have actually written down) was the chapter dealing with past sins, and dealt particularly with the question of how our past defines us. It was the chapter in which Freddy learned that the Cat Lord had chosen him to be a scapegoat, not an avatar – the demon stalking Freddy was collecting a debt from the Cat Lord, which Freddy had unwittingly agreed to pay in his stead. It was also the chapter that explored the past of Ban-Lam, Austs' homeland – which they arrived in to find his entire civilization has been gone for hundreds of years, lost despite the great sacrifice he made for their sake. The chapter was named Consequences because it asked not only how our past defines us, but also how the consequences of our choices define us. While at least two characters were brought to utter despair, they managed to find new hope – of a sort. Freddy freed himself from the Cat Lord, and Aust abandoned his old ways to begin seeking a path to true divinity.
The Key to Hell featured the invasion of the Land of the Tiger, where in the past Ban-Lam had been located, to free it from the demons currently controlling it and to learn of the nature of the Key to Hell. Aust returned after having “died” earlier on, and alongside him the heroes would plunge into the Netherworld, after having driven back the demonic hordes possessing the Land of the Tiger. Freddy, also, became the new King of the Tigers, and rose to a kind of divinity himself, after having (probably) destroyed the Cat Lord.
Reedeemer took place in the Netherworld, a strange world-between-worlds, the labyrinth that connects all places to another. It's the place of everything that is lost, and also the location of the Tree of Life, the strange focal point of Destiny that held the answer to Rees mysterious equation. Reedeemer was the most thoroughly bizarre and otherwordly chapter, which started out with the characters losing their memories entirely, and moved on to reveal that Ree solving the equation would make him literally become Destiny. It was the chapter in which Ree truly ascended to godhood, and also the chapter in which Nasef restored his lost humanity.
Requiem for a God revolved around Nasef putting a stop to the Mad God-King of Galdersrike, the wizard responsible for the creation of the Requiem and also the one who held the key to its undoing. The spirit of death trapped in the evil weapon was meant for the King, and only after his death could the weapon be destroyed. A memorable, if short, chapter, that involved a crazy chess-match between two super-geniuses who could both predict the future – Aust vs. the King.
Breath of the Ancestors ended the story, confronting the heroes with the Dragons, and finally ended with Ree resolving their debate by killing himself, choosing freedom for the world, because of how inspired he had been by Beo. The death of Ree marked the end of Destiny, and the end of an era – no longer was humanity shackled by the divine. Freedom reigned in the world, but at a price, as the spiteful Eternals among the dragons had already begun the process of destroying the world. Our four remaining heroes would have to set out and stop them – particularly Beo, whose fault it was that the Dragon Scions were once more unleashed upon the world. Thus begins a story not yet told, a story where divinity and heroism are synonymous, a story of a world where Destiny no longer holds sway. Thus begins a new story, and thus ends the Gods' Tale.
Arcana Unearthed Gaiden:
Rather than talk about specific characters or specific moments in the chronicle-at-large, I'm here going to mention the Gaiden, the small story that took place in the same world but was otherwise entirely unrelated. It was played right before Arcana Evolved, and circled around a crazy runethane seeking immortality. The set-up of the game was interesting, as each player was instructed to write a detailed backstory for their character, and then tell that story around the campfire as the heroes made camp on their journey. Thus, the actual chronicle became a sort of Canterbury Tales, a frame-story for the Dead Mans' Tale, the Sorcerers' Tale, the Soldiers' Tale, the Merchants' Tale and so forth. It featured Honest Sid, a minor character from Arcana Unearthed, as a central protagonist NPC, and a few other NPCs who also told their tales.
Most of the story took place in a jungle, but the final bit was a confrontation in one of the largest cities of the world – a conscious decision, as cities were largely avoided in the other two chronicles. It was an interesting story, much shorter than the chronicle at large and played only over three long sessions – the first two in a jungle colony, the last one in the capitol leading up to the showdown with the runethane.
Next Up:
2007: Berlin, the most MMO-like RPG I have ever ran, in which players come and go without any real pattern, and the setting grows ridiculously contrived and complicated, growing by leaps and bounds into the most rich setting I have designed to date. Some earth-shattering changes in my life occur, and my gaming life also becomes radically different, with the d20 system becoming almost entirely absent, not to return until 2010.
The Arcana Unearthed game ended with the group splitting up, each going their separate ways. Arcana Evolved begins five years later (one year later in real-time) when three of the heroes from the last story re-unite on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, joined by two more extraordinary adventurers. The actual configuration of the group included Bob, Drake, Kennedy, Luke, and Jason. Bob and Drake still had essentially the same characters as before – Beo and Ree – whereas Nasef had over time developed into a ghost, driven by the power of the Requiem, a mysterious evil sword. Luke and Jason made new characters, each with suitably epic backstories; Luke re-created Aust, making him a priest from an ancient civilization who had slept through the ages, and Jason created the Cat Lords' Chosen, an avatar of cats who literally possessed nine lives, but is stalked by a strange demon for inexplicable reasons. Jasons character didn't actually have a name for much of the game, until he was randomly named Freddy because we needed a way to refer to him.
The story itself was very long, and rather complicated. It was initially divided up into ten chapters, each named in some meaningful fashion. I have since lost the complete list of chapters, unfortunately, so I can only write about those I remember. I'm also not entirely clear on the chronology; some of the details below may contradict each other. I really should have taken better notes about the game, but I was a little pressed for time, as it was played during my final year at the IB.
Here be Dragons was the first chapter, an introductory story of a sort. The five characters met on a tiny island, and learned of ancient sorcery from a lost civilization called Praetur, which had once been destroyed by the Dragons. It was here Freddy accidentally poisoned Beo, and it was here Beo learned of the ancient civilizations' hatred for Xethar Ar'Nuade, the dragon whose soul he carried inside him. The ruins of the island were thoroughly explored, but they needed a password to delve to the heart of the strange fortress, and had to seek out an akashic who supposedly knew the answer.
The next two chapters have names I can't recall. The akashic needed by the heroes was trapped in an Imperial Fortress, protected by a young man called the Mirror Master, who could prevent all sorts of magic being worked within the fortress. Aust and Freddy insisted on killing him, and so they did, drawing the ire of the Inquisition after them. Beo also met with a woman who wanted to become a mojh, and Ree briefly met with his apprentice, a young Litorian mathematician. There was some running around on the ocean involved, among other things a magical island on which Nasef tried to kill himself by separating himself from the Requiem, the introduction of Sojiro Naraku – Kennedy's replacement character, a sorcerer with some ties to the Demons of the setting – and the characters also returned to the island with the ruins to confront a lich, who managed to hurt Aust badly enough to seemingly kill him. It's all a bit of a blur what happened here, though. I know that in the same scene that Aust “died”, Nasef returned. These two chapters spanned quite a lot of playing time, I know that much.
A Pirate is Free was a chapter which gave Freddy the spotlight. He had once sailed the seas as a feared pirate captain, and was now re-united with his old crew. A Pirate is Free dealt with questions of responsibility, and was rife with moral choices. Do you condone revenge, even if it's carried out as rape? Will you stop a righteous crusade to indulge in your own selfish need for vengeance? Ultimately, it asked this question: Even if you are free from all authority, mortal and divine, does that mean you're also free of responsibility? Or is it perhaps the reverse? A Pirate is Free also introduced Timothy Luvenhay, Luke's replacement character instead of Aust.
Searching For Demons was a strange chapter, perhaps the most muddled and unclear one. I can't recall the details of it very well, but it was during this chapter that the entire group got lost in the desert for no good reason, and also pulled off a joint-stunt impersonating a giant. It included one of the few recurring NPCs, Tirek Fleshripper, and revolved around the demons who had once broken into the Netherworld to come upon the Tree of Life. The heroes learned that they must search for the Key to Hell, which was later revealed to be Beo – the Key to Free Will, which is Hell from the point of view of those in favor of Destiny.
Chapter Six: Consequences (the only chapter whose name and numbering I have actually written down) was the chapter dealing with past sins, and dealt particularly with the question of how our past defines us. It was the chapter in which Freddy learned that the Cat Lord had chosen him to be a scapegoat, not an avatar – the demon stalking Freddy was collecting a debt from the Cat Lord, which Freddy had unwittingly agreed to pay in his stead. It was also the chapter that explored the past of Ban-Lam, Austs' homeland – which they arrived in to find his entire civilization has been gone for hundreds of years, lost despite the great sacrifice he made for their sake. The chapter was named Consequences because it asked not only how our past defines us, but also how the consequences of our choices define us. While at least two characters were brought to utter despair, they managed to find new hope – of a sort. Freddy freed himself from the Cat Lord, and Aust abandoned his old ways to begin seeking a path to true divinity.
The Key to Hell featured the invasion of the Land of the Tiger, where in the past Ban-Lam had been located, to free it from the demons currently controlling it and to learn of the nature of the Key to Hell. Aust returned after having “died” earlier on, and alongside him the heroes would plunge into the Netherworld, after having driven back the demonic hordes possessing the Land of the Tiger. Freddy, also, became the new King of the Tigers, and rose to a kind of divinity himself, after having (probably) destroyed the Cat Lord.
Reedeemer took place in the Netherworld, a strange world-between-worlds, the labyrinth that connects all places to another. It's the place of everything that is lost, and also the location of the Tree of Life, the strange focal point of Destiny that held the answer to Rees mysterious equation. Reedeemer was the most thoroughly bizarre and otherwordly chapter, which started out with the characters losing their memories entirely, and moved on to reveal that Ree solving the equation would make him literally become Destiny. It was the chapter in which Ree truly ascended to godhood, and also the chapter in which Nasef restored his lost humanity.
Requiem for a God revolved around Nasef putting a stop to the Mad God-King of Galdersrike, the wizard responsible for the creation of the Requiem and also the one who held the key to its undoing. The spirit of death trapped in the evil weapon was meant for the King, and only after his death could the weapon be destroyed. A memorable, if short, chapter, that involved a crazy chess-match between two super-geniuses who could both predict the future – Aust vs. the King.
Breath of the Ancestors ended the story, confronting the heroes with the Dragons, and finally ended with Ree resolving their debate by killing himself, choosing freedom for the world, because of how inspired he had been by Beo. The death of Ree marked the end of Destiny, and the end of an era – no longer was humanity shackled by the divine. Freedom reigned in the world, but at a price, as the spiteful Eternals among the dragons had already begun the process of destroying the world. Our four remaining heroes would have to set out and stop them – particularly Beo, whose fault it was that the Dragon Scions were once more unleashed upon the world. Thus begins a story not yet told, a story where divinity and heroism are synonymous, a story of a world where Destiny no longer holds sway. Thus begins a new story, and thus ends the Gods' Tale.
Arcana Unearthed Gaiden:
Rather than talk about specific characters or specific moments in the chronicle-at-large, I'm here going to mention the Gaiden, the small story that took place in the same world but was otherwise entirely unrelated. It was played right before Arcana Evolved, and circled around a crazy runethane seeking immortality. The set-up of the game was interesting, as each player was instructed to write a detailed backstory for their character, and then tell that story around the campfire as the heroes made camp on their journey. Thus, the actual chronicle became a sort of Canterbury Tales, a frame-story for the Dead Mans' Tale, the Sorcerers' Tale, the Soldiers' Tale, the Merchants' Tale and so forth. It featured Honest Sid, a minor character from Arcana Unearthed, as a central protagonist NPC, and a few other NPCs who also told their tales.
Most of the story took place in a jungle, but the final bit was a confrontation in one of the largest cities of the world – a conscious decision, as cities were largely avoided in the other two chronicles. It was an interesting story, much shorter than the chronicle at large and played only over three long sessions – the first two in a jungle colony, the last one in the capitol leading up to the showdown with the runethane.
Next Up:
2007: Berlin, the most MMO-like RPG I have ever ran, in which players come and go without any real pattern, and the setting grows ridiculously contrived and complicated, growing by leaps and bounds into the most rich setting I have designed to date. Some earth-shattering changes in my life occur, and my gaming life also becomes radically different, with the d20 system becoming almost entirely absent, not to return until 2010.
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