Author: Donogh McCarthy

We just finished the second (Charlie) sector of 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars on Saturday, and I think this last session was a real stand-out.

Nice to see that we can have feels and breakneck action at the same time!

3:16 really helps bringing new players in quickly. Every week is a completely new planet as I’ve been running it and so every session is a discrete unit. Also character generation is super quick! At this stage we’ve had 9 players over 6 planets, with one on 5 missions, four on 3, and four on just 1.

Some highlights for me:

Ary Ramsey as MT Murken, who we discover on Whistler doesn’t really want to be a trooper at all! He just joined up to find his lost brother. The choices he has to make between the troopers under his command, his platoon and his brother are riveting.

Christine Maunsell as Cable, who’s just angry that their coveted position as best killer with the biggest gun is under threat!

David Jay as “Professor”, figuring out a technical solution to an imaginary foe, only to save the day with it at the end! Also, racking up serious kills for someone with the lowest FA

Funny moment when after closing the mission on Michelangelo, the players realised that those walking reptiles with hard-shells, red sashes tied to their limbs and ninja-like abilities were all too TMNT-like!

Links to the videos:

S1 Michelangelo

https://youtu.be/qJRJOrcBNTE

S2 Caravaggio

https://youtu.be/xfNPHjYha_o

S3 Whistler

https://youtu.be/9vCMQ1a2kgM

https://youtu.be/qJRJOrcBNTE

We just finished our Monsterhearts 2 series using Lauren McManamon’s Ballhir small town from Codex: Cold.

First off, big ups to a tremendous group of players: Asher Silberman Jesse Ross , Lauren McManamon , Mark Causey & Vincent Eaton all made life very easy for me as MC. I think it’s fair to say everyone brought their A-game.

Some highlights for me:

Vincent’s turn as Robbie the Fae – renouncing his summons home to Tír na nÓg, despite his fecklessness at home

Mark as Malachi the Serpentine – his fraught relationship with his mother, culminating in the grisly funeral rite over his dead sister

Lauren as Eoghan the Queen – the pressure, fear and grief from his execution of Saoirse spilling over into sex with Regan, who manipulated him into murdering her

Jesse as Regan the Infernal – coldly hypnotizing Roisín into the lake, and then we see her swallow water in the vain struggle with ever-increasing guilt and isolation

Asher as Aisling the Glamour – deftly making this side character their own and adding depth to the relationship with Malachi I couldn’t hope to match as well as hinting to Robbie’s Fae world as her own origin as a living spell!

As MC I was pretty happy with this outing, especially with managing spotlight and cuts. Also I purposefully left the fate of the town to the players’ reads of important side characters in the end.

I’m in awe of MCs who integrate new players well into an established group in a short-run campaign – this is the challenge of the Gauntlet’s open table play culture and I’m sure I can work on this skill.

Links to the videos:

S1 https://youtu.be/ewnLKUuAi_g

S2 https://youtu.be/wRUfDm9Lk9w

S3 https://youtu.be/RPfADdSRB44

Also, this is the first time I toyed with Twitter/GIF APs of each session

S1 https://twitter.com/donoghmc/status/1009150192426287104?s=21

S2 https://twitter.com/donoghmc/status/1013329957928538112?s=21

S3 https://twitter.com/donoghmc/status/1018478669793243137?s=21

https://youtu.be/ewnLKUuAi_g

Another heist by The Noose – plus some great free-play at the start as a good opportunity to roleplay outside of the score-downtime structure

The Noose raid their compatriots in the Skovlan consulate to discover the whereabouts of the missing war hero Skannon

The crew of savvy Shadows takes on the Iruvian Consulate, stealing a new consul’s property and then selling it back to him in a fraught, but violence-free meeting.

We have a classic anime 1-2 of the (crafty, dangerous) old man and (exceedingly dangerous) young girl squaring off against their enemies (if they were genre-savvy they would get on the train and never come back!)

A big thanks to the players in this Blades in the Dark campaign: Sam Richardson (Locust), Andrew Shields (Paving), Robert Ruthven (Shrike) & Pawel Solowczuk (Hammer).

The crew will return in November I hope, maybe with some new members…

A complex and ambitious heist sees our Shadows take on a Spirit Warden, conspire with an Inspector and abduct a magistrate!

Final session of the current run tomorrow – really looking forward to seeing where my players take me this week!

Great second heist of our Blades in the Dark campaign – all the blades working well together. Subterfuge, and shenanigans, and grenades (oh my!)

The 1st session of our Gauntlet game of Blades in the Dark; despite some audio/video issue, we got a full score+downtime sequence done after character and crew generation. Looking forward to our second session on Saturday!

Originally shared by Donogh McCarthy

A new crew, these Shadows begin by targeting a batch of documents being sent to court by a local Bluecoat station house – a prime source of blackmail and extortion ammunition!