Category: The Gauntlet: Hall of Legends

The Hall of Legends #004 – A Family in Disarray

Date: October 13th, 2013

Game: Ribbon Drive

Players: Daniel Lewis Rob Ferguson Shea Herlihy-Abba James Wilder and myself

One of the most frustrating things about our hobby is that most players equate roleplaying games with fantasy and science fiction–and nothing else. Perhaps this is because the earliest and most successful games were in those genres. Or perhaps it’s a natural outcome in a hobby about escapism. Whatever the reason, the vast majority of players don’t want to hear about your game if there isn’t some combination of magic, androids, or superheroes in it. Further, they only want stories about heroism and adventure; any theme going outside that scope is deemed pretentious. Some of them (I’m looking at you, OSR crowd) go one step further and say if your game doesn’t contain those traditional elements, it’s not a roleplaying game at all.

Storygamers know this is ridiculous; that, in fact, roleplaying games can be about anything, even (seemingly) mundane things, so long as the rules and gameplay support the story being told. Some examples: the brutality of colonialism (Dog Eat Dog); the power dynamics in abusive relationships (My Life With Master); teen slasher flicks (The Final Girl); crime capers (Fiasco); Prohibition-era gangsters (Bootleggers); drug addiction (Annalise); the inanities in academia (The Shab Al-Hiri Roach); and the horrors of the Civil War (Carolina Death Crawl). Story games often go one step further and introduce mechanics that are also non-traditional, but that serve and reinforce the narrative, such as: pulls from a Jenga tower to replicate tension and fear (Dread); poker-style raises and sees in a game about the pioneer west (Dogs in the Vineyard); and restrictions on talking at the table to represent the miscommunications inherent in a community under stress (The Quiet Year). 

But even someone like me, a strident booster of story games, is sometimes faced with something that seems just a little too avant-garde for its own good. Ribbon Drive was one such game. In a nutshell, Ribbon Drive is about people on a road trip. The players prepare playlists (or mix tapes) beforehand, the songs from which are used to inspire character creation, and are played in the background during the game to set the tone for a given scene. The players explore the lives of these characters, their interpersonal conflicts and, ultimately, whether they reach some sort of catharsis or transformation. 

Our story, which was kicked-off by Peggy Lee’s classic “Is That All There Is?”, was about a family trying to pick up the pieces after they lost everything in a fire, including their golden-child son. The characters were a weak, sad-sack father; a domineering, perfectionist mother; the two leftover sons, one of whom was a drug dealer, and the other an aimless young artist; and a foul-mouthed grandfather who butted heads with everyone. 

It was a family in extreme disarray. The mother cruelly (and constantly) compared her disappointing, living children with her beloved, dead son. The grandfather spent his time doing battle with the mother, his daughter-in-law, who he viewed as a poisonous bitch (never mind that he, too, was a jerk who delighted in reminding the youngest boy he was adopted). The father was a gormless loser, constantly belittled by his wife and father, and incapable of protecting his sons from their excesses. As for the boys, the oldest was a lost cause; a broken creature who could never live up to the ideal of his deceased brother, and who turned to drugs and crime to find meaning in his life. The youngest was an innocent bystander; his own hopes and dreams constantly squelched by the other family members as they wrestled for control of what direction his life would take. The family’s dysfunction reached its zenith when they pulled into a Denny’s to have a “family meeting,” the result of which was one of the most emotional scenes I have ever played out in a roleplaying game. Deep-seated poisons rose to the surface; accusations were levied in all directions; and the sad, pathetic heart of the family was exposed for all of us to see as it was revealed that the deceased, golden-child son may not have been so perfect after all.

It was not all strife and conflict, though. There was a lot of humor throughout, and sometimes the playlists dictated a scene that was introspective or playful. The family was even brought-together briefly near the end, when they had to defend themselves from outside forces (a biker gang that harassed them on the highway). This moment of unity gave the impression  that, while they may never truly understand each other, they were at least a family, and that had to count for something. 

This session was, and will always be, one of my favorites, which is why it goes in the Hall of Legends. It was both comic and depressing; unsettling and, for a moment at least, uplifting. It was a combination of Little Miss Sunshine and American Beauty, and it was amazing. There were no wizards or robots or superheroes, but the characters still managed to be intensely fascinating. There were no monsters or cursed artifacts, but there was a difficult journey to be had nonetheless. And the lesson was crystal clear: if you’re only interested in sci-fi or fantasy, you are missing out on a lot this hobby has to offer. 

The Hall of Legends #003 – The Hand Massage

Date: September 27th, 2013

Game: Lady Blackbird

Players: Lynn Byrd Derek Grimm Shadow Byrd Rob Ferguson James Wilder Myself

Sometimes roleplaying can get a little awkward. If we’re doing it right, I think it’s practically unavoidable. After all, we’re sitting around a table, pretending to be fictional characters. Sometimes we speak in funny voices; sometimes we engage in behavior that challenges us or makes us cringe. 

The attached video was shot last year during a game of Lady Blackbird. It has never been shown to anyone. The scene captured contains no great feats of acting or characterization, but it does show one man’s “all-in” attempt to get a bonus die for his character.

As I recall, Cyrus Vance (played by Lynn) wanted to get his bonus for wooing Lady Blackbird (played by Derek). As the GM, I insisted Lynn do a scene in which Cyrus expressed his hidden longing for the Lady. This is what he came up with. Also, stay until the very end to catch a funny parapraxis by Lynn. 

The Hall of Legends #002 – Professor Oliver Threefell

Date: June 2nd, 2013

Game: The Shab-al-Hiri Roach

Players: Daniel Lewis Rob Ferguson Len Pokryfke Myself

The Shab-al-Hiri Roach has a lot of issues, mechanically-speaking. The author, Jason Morningstar, has said on several occasions he would like to revisit the game and tweak its rules, given it was one of his first efforts and he has learned a lot about game design in the ensuing years. Still, the game is very compelling due to its premise, which is one of the most exhilerating out there. In short, it’s a game about college professors engaging in petty rivalries with one another in an attempt to acquire the most prestige on campus. Oh, there’s also an ancient Sumerian god-king in the form of a cockroach who occasionally crawls into a professor’s mouth, digs into his or her brain meat, and enslaves them to do his bidding. 

The tone is dark and comedic (and perfect). You won’t find a more poisonous love letter to academia anywhere else. Initially, the professors attempt to get what they want by leveraging their area of academic expertise. They brag about their latest paper at the wine and cheese social, hector and schmooze the school’s administrators for project funding, and use gossip and innuendo to tear down the work of their rivals. Eventually, though, one or more of them becomes thrall to the Roach. These professors, in their singled-minded quest for power at the college, present an opportunity to the Roach, who (incorrectly) believes he can use them as vessels for world domination. The result is that roach-enslaved professors still only seek their petty, low-stakes goals, but now they do so with the fanaticism and vigor of an ancient king who is accustomed to being worshipped, and who uses violence to achieve his ends. 

This particular brand of gonzo villainy was perfectly represented in Dan’s character, Professor Oliver Threefell. Professor Threefell was an expert in Mayan languages, and his principle goal was to receive funding for a massive, cross-disciplinary project with the anthropology department. After he took the Roach, however, his knowledge of ancient Mayan cultures informed a shift to a goal of recreating that civilization right on campus, with himself in the center of it all as god and king.  

Professor Threefell’s descent into madness began when, after being enslaved by the Roach, a card draw forced him to claim the school’s auditorium as a sacred space from which he could never leave. Initially, this was a pretty humorous situation, as he had to come-up with all manner of excuses for why he was not only working in the auditorium, but also living there. The school accepted his reasoning, but things only descended from there. In planning the annual Follies musical production, for example, Professor Threefell convinced the director to go with an ancient Mayan theme. During the actual show, at which point Professor Threefell was in full god-complex mode, he was the star of the final number, which saw him costumed in the feathered headdress of an ancient king, standing over an altar with a ceremonial dagger, which he plunged into the heart of the lovely young co-ed who was his co-star. The audience, believing this to be a brilliant bit of stagecraft, leapt to their feet and gave a thunderous ovation. Professor Threefell, of course, interpreted this applause as worship, which only added fuel to his delusional fire. In the end, Professor Threefell lived out his days in the auditorium, at the center of a papier-mâché ziggurat his minions from the football team helped him build. The school, wishing to avoid a scandal, covered-up his various crimes and explained away the ziggurat as a performance art project, which received no small amount of attention from the fine arts press. 

That particular session was one of our first Story Game Sundays, and Dan set the bar high for good characterization. Professor Threefell was an outstanding villain by almost any measure, but particularly so in how he represented the wicked spirit of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach. He was a great character, and probably one of my personal favorites of all time, and so he is our second inductee into the Gauntlet Hall of Legends.  

The Hall of Legends #001 – Lair of the Ankheg Queen

Date: January 30th, 2014

Game: Dungeon World

Players: Sean Smith Derek Grimm Eddy Gonzalez Ferrell Riley 

One of the things that makes Dungeon World so compelling is its freeform nature. The results of a die roll are not necessarily predetermined by the rules, particularly when a move calls for the GM to add a complication or to make moves of his own. Indeed, so long as everyone is being true to the established fiction, the story can go in all sorts of different directions.

Nothing demonstrates this aspect of Dungeon World better than the Mage. Instead of having lists of spells from which to choose, the Mage chooses a focus (such as The Forest or The Dragon or The Abyss). Within that focus, he can cast spells that do virtually anything. The player need only provide some descriptive narration for what his spell does. But the player must also select a number of limitations for his spell, depending on the result of his roll. Those limitations can include (among other things): 

“Your spell won’t last long – you must hurry to take advantage of it.”

“Your spell affects either much more or much less than you wanted it to.”

“Your spell has unforeseen side effects, and might draw unwanted attention.”

Each of these limitations can lead to varied and exciting outcomes in the fiction. They reinforce the idea that magic is wild and, ultimately, not entirely within the control of the caster. If the player misses his roll, the move says “Something has gone horribly wrong. Your spell may well have worked, but you will regret casting it.” This leads to even more deliciously unpredictable and amazing results, as evidenced in a game of Dungeon World from early in 2014. 

We were in the middle of my conversion of the Temple of Elemental Evil for Dungeon World. It was the fourth session, with the group having just successfully raided a pre-Hommlett dungeon. They were on their way back to civilization, bearing grave news: a contingent of 5,000 orcs had amassed in the catacombs beneath the moat house near Hommlett. 

During their journey home, they encountered an ankheg, which is kind of a giant, acid-spitting centipede (and a favorite monster of mine). Derek’s clock mage, Halwyr, attempted to cast a spell that would reverse time around the ankheg and return it to a larval or egg form. Unfortunately, Derek rolled a miss, and the party found itself suddenly in a dark, underground chamber. When they lit a torch, they were horrified to see a mass of ankheg eggs in the center of the chamber, and the grotesque, pulsating body of an ankheg queen all around them!

The remainder of the session involved the party trying to escape the ankheg lair, battling her drones and, eventually, the queen herself. When they escaped, they took their bearings and realized that, indeed, the original ankheg had been returned to egg form, as per the intent of the spell, but that the entire party was whisked back in time and teleported to the nest from which the egg originated. 

The adventurers had been well and truly hosed by Halwyr ‘s blown spell, but the players LOVED it! And in the end, it was a blessing in disguise: now that the party had been transported back in time, they had the ability to stop the orcs from amassing at the moat house. 

The session was amazing. It reinforced why Dungeon World is a house favorite. It took our adventure into a direction no one saw coming (even me). And it was something we continued to talk about for months afterwards. It was, in short, a legendary moment at the Gauntlet table, and it deserves to be remembered.