GM: Justin Evans
Players: Shaun Hayworth, Kirstin Sullivan, Greg Mathieson
System: Schauermärchen
Original Post: https://seannittner.com/kubla-2009-sunday-5242009/
After some confusion about who would play, when they could make it, and where we would play, Shaun, Kirstin, Justin, Greg (Skippy) and I ended up back in our room to play test Justin’s Schauermärchen game.
What rocked
The game was creepy. We’re playing parents with missing children in a fairytale nightmare. It touched a chord with me for sure.
The opening warm ups were very smooth. He managed to integrate them all into the theme of a nightmare.
Character creation and setup was great. Stickers for the win!
Justin’s narratives are always top notch. He has a powerful vocabulary that serves him very well when describing creepy scenes and his expressions really deliver the mood well. Whereas I’m usually very excited and therefore my energy doesn’t stand out, Justin has a lot of flexibility between his usual laid back attitude to pulse pounding action or creepy suspense.
The hounds! The hounds were awesome. If you play, definitely confront one of them. You’re character will be sad, but you’ll trip out on em.
What could have been improved
The game would have been much better served with a system like Don’t Rest Your Head, Trail of Cthuhlu, Dread, or even Wushu. One thing we lacked was fear of our surrounding. It’s horror it should be creepy and it just wasn’t. The mechanics never really lead us to believe our characters were in danger until the final fight. I voluntarily got wounded just to see how the game would play out if I was loose more conflicts than winning. The fear and hope mechanics were novel but not compelling. Also the narration (done in blocks) was awkward for all of us (players and GM).
My character was a straight up jerk. So much so that I didn’t like playing him. He didn’t have to be that way, I just made some bad choices and could ever really recover from them. Note to self: Don’t play a womanizing bastard if you want to feel good about yourself. The players, rightfully so, did not lament in my character’s loss.
My constant distractions of phone calls and trips to the car and delivering swag really took me away from the game too much. I worsened my experience and probably that of the others. I was actually happy in the end that I didn’t get in Mouse Guard as it let me participate in the feedback session which I think is really important.
