GM: Sean Nittner
Players: My kids
System: Cat
The continued saga of Leaf and Rosie…
I started the game saying, now that you cats have moved to Santa Rosa, maybe one of your humans will take you to the park. This seemed amenable to the cats so we opened up with breakfast at the home of Leaf, Rosie, Dottie and Pickle.
Rosie was busy napping and with a successful coat roll prevented Dottie from realizing she was awake even after the human did some pretty vigorous petting to get her to move.
Leaf was up early, in the pantry looking for boggins. And she found one, or at least could smell one, something foul and noxious. She slipped past picked who was making hash-browns and went searching for it. Unfortunately, she knocked over a jar of peanut butter and drew some attention. Rosie woke up (for realizes this time) and Pickles came in to see what happened. When he came in, the Boggin breathed his noxious gas on him, which got him confused and disoriented, almost causing him to drop a jar of flour on his foot. Luckily Rosie and Leaf were there to protect him. Rosie guarded his foot and Leaf jumped on him to push the jar onto a shelf rather than let it drop.
After Pickle left, the hunt was on, but they still couldn’t find the Boggin, till they realized that the jar of molasses betwixt the sugar and salt was actually an evil Frog Boggin, better known as a Froggin. Rosie’s magic knowledge told her that its breath was poisonous and that they couldn’t breathe while they fought it. She also, revealed that in cat-space she has a cat sword that goes over her claw, earning her the Reputation Sword Kitten.
Rosie chopped off its tongue (which it was using to wrap up Leaf) and the Leaf bit into it and knocked it off the ledge. When they came crashing down the Boggin was dead, but Leaf was found by Dottie, over the broken remains of a jar of molasses. What a mess!
This particular point perhaps touched too close to home as my own kids have gotten in trouble for things that they didn’t think were wrong to do. Sometimes that was a case of me getting upset before I knew the details and sometimes it was just poor judgment on their part. This game however, isn’t a tool I am trying to use to teach them about taking responsibility, it’s a game, so I just reminded them that they were protecting their humans, but that the humans didn’t know about boggins, so they often misunderstood why the cats did what they did.
After that, they went to the Rainbow City House Part and spied a kid tree house with a cat tree-house above it. And in that tree house was Top Hat (and all black cat that wore a small hat), Thomas (a good natured tabby) and Margaritte (a white cat with black spots who could walk on only her back legs). The cats invited them into the Kitty Cat Club and asked if they wanted to compete in the balancing contest, to which of course all the cats but Top Hat (who would be the judge) earnestly wanted to.
The balancing contest was a simple task of walking the playground balancing beam while showing off your style and grace. Easily done except for the problem that a few dogs were playing next to it.
Rosie had the idea of getting the dogs to chase her down the slide then running through a gate and having Leaf slam the gate behind her trapping the dogs outside. It worked well and the dogs swore vengeance on them.
After that each cat showed off. Thomas walked the beam backwards, Margaritte did it on two paws, Leaf did it on two paws sideways and Rosie somersaulted across it circus style. Top hat was so impressed that he called them all the winners (they all got 2 successes on their legs roll), and shared his smoke salmon with all of them.
And that is how Rosie and Leaf joined the Klub.
What rocked
We did a lot in only an hour and a half
Even though I could tell some of the issues hit close to home, the kids were very good sports and kept wanting to play even after failing rolls or getting in trouble.
Ooh, I forgot to mention that after the pantry fight Dottie tried to give them a bath, watching them use magic to disappear (which also earned Leaf the Disappearing reputation) and run around the house was very fun.
My littlest is learning things like counting evens and successes, which is still a challenge for her sometimes, so a little development is happening there.
What could have improved
I really should read the rest of the rules. I’ve been winging it with the kids because they really don’t care, but I’d like to know how magic is supposed to work, and what scars do, and how you spend lives, etc.
