We had another one-shot. Playbooks used: grandmother, shield maid, seiđkona, and child. I looked at fronts and decided to have the influence of Hel color the session. A grey winter day, visions of blood seeping up from the ground, dead friends calling you from beyond the fence, ghosts trying to lure people out into the snow storm… Sadly, the session wasn’t very good.
The player of the child felt he had ended up with a playbook unsuited to the situation. What use was there to hiding and sneaking? I guess it might have played like Newt in Aliens: Bonding, and spending those bonds to grant benefits to those braving the storm.
Also, the tension between violence being always available to solve problems but being basically the wrong tool because people will get hurt and die – the tension between men and women, where women goad men into action, where men are mute and violent – all of that was missing because of our all-female cast.
My takeaway:
1. Don’t play a ghost story where you can’t use violence to solve a problem.
2. Don’t have all player characters play the same gender.
3. When presenting a problem such as a ghost story, have at least two or three “secrets” to “solve” the problem because that’s how it often goes at my table:
1. People try to ask the ghost what they should do (something I didn’t know the answer to myself).
2. People were looking for suitable exorcism moves and did not find them in their playbooks (something I had not considered when introducing the malign influence of spirits and curses).
3. Be ready to introduce others people such as priests, neighbors, wanderers (to talk to, to have violent encounters with).
#RPG #Indie #Sagas of the Icelanders