Actual Play – Pax Star Crossed (11/18/2017)

Players: New Pax Friends
Facilitator: Sean Nittner
System: Star Crossed

My first time facilitating Star Crossed. I was a bit daunted having never facilitated it before, but I was so confident in the system I wanted to give it a shot. After the games (note, we played two of them!) Alex met with the players and got their feedback.

The stories were of a old west sheriff bringing an outlaw back to town, through a long and dangerous trip back. The other was a fantasy dwarf and elf separated from their party in the dungeon and trying to make it back to them… or not.

Our Star Crossed players

 

Actual Play – Star Crossed with Kitty (11/17/2018)

Players: Kitty Stoholski and Sean Nittner
System: Star Crossed

Kitty and I told a delightfully claustrophobic story of two people trapped in an escape pod running out of air, hoping to they will be found and still trying to uphold their social structures (former co-workers that had an affair and were reprimanded by a military structure that forbade fraternization).

This game…as I expected…was sooooo good!

Pictures!

I forgot to take a pic of our game, so thank you to my friends at Pax for sharing their tower toppling win me:

Steve’s Thumb!

Actual Play – Unworthy Meat – Episode 04 (11/15/2017)

GM: Eric “Vulgaris” Levanduski
Players: Sage La Torra, Epidiah Ravachol, Virgil Levinger, and Sean Nittner
System: Torchbearer

Yay, I’m so excited that I get to play Torchbearer. Not only that but I get to play in Keep of the Borderlands, a classic D&D adventure that I’ve never had the chance to play before. Not only that, but I get to play with this rad, rad folks. I’ve never gamed with any of them and I’m very, very excited to!

Torchbearer on Air

Actual Play – Let’s Go Get Ring, but later (11/14/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes as I have them

Months later, these don’t quite make sense to me, but I’m transcribing them!

Let’s go get ring!

Path of Echoes includes: Penderyn, Vond/Cricket, Skinner, Ring.

Visit the Leaky Bucket

  • Cross is there, eager to see them.
  • He’s lost a day (while a Spirit Warden cloud covered Crow’s Foot)
  • Picket is deathly sick (remnants of being possessed by the ghost dragon). Elke begins research to recover from harmful possession.
  • Wester is not happy to see them and madder still when he found out Ring had rejoined the Path of Echoes. He set off to find her (and was not seen again).
  • Bazso there negotiating with Lyssa but from them listening in, she was inscrutable (constantly changing her mind).

 

 

Actual Play – Unworthy Meat – Episode 03 (11/8/2017)

GM: Eric “Vulgaris” Levanduski
Players: Sage La Torra, Epidiah Ravachol, Virgil Levinger, and Sean Nittner
System: Torchbearer

Yay, I’m so excited that I get to play Torchbearer. Not only that but I get to play in Keep of the Borderlands, a classic D&D adventure that I’ve never had the chance to play before. Not only that, but I get to play with this rad, rad folks. I’ve never gamed with any of them and I’m very, very excited to!

Torchbearer on Air

Actual Play – A job for Skurlock (11/7/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes as I have them. The Offer

Elke and crew paid a surprise visit to Scurlock, were terrified of the ghosts trapped in the waters outside below his manor.

Scurlock shows concern (genuine?) for Elke, and disdain or indifference for her servants (the other PCs)

He presents them a small but increcibly intricate lighting cage (carried by Bastion), which he wants them to put in the furnace of Bellweather. (note, not a coincidence. He told Elke he wanted her to get something into Bellweather a long time ago, the society just decided as long as they were going in there, they might as well get two jobs done at once. No sweat!)

Hix recognizes the cage as something crafted by Una Farros (Sparkwright).

Let’s think on this

Back in the Devil Hunter’s Hall the cage is studied and found to have not one or two, but many many more. Soldiers, housekeepers, goat herders, midwives, adepts, chimney sweeps, factory workers. 144 in all.

Harland (erm professor Harland) summons Una to look at the box, but she arrives with Argus and Beaumont, who have been wanting to see the Hall now that it’s back in use (mixed result).

Yadvyga distracted the other two professors with a tour of the building while Elke took Una down to the lab to ask about the cage. Una was surprised to see it still existed! It was a theoretical marvel but once created, her research was stopped because of the potential that a critical mass inside could form a spirit well once they were released. She never got to see what happened.

Other affairs

Hix meetings Needle (who she pissed off by asking about Master Slane’s books?) and took the job (and found out about Master Slane).

Yadvyga finished he ritual to trap a the demon Setarra, which requires removing her from her element, but that also required Yadvyga to remember back to her own demonic heritage. She saw a dying demon passing on their power into a human and knows that she opened a conduit her demon ancestor. And with this connection open she will never be able to return to Tycheros.

 

Actual Play – After the Demon Disaster (11/5/2017)

GM: Judd Karlman
Players: Pete Cornell, Jason Bowell, and Sean Nittner
System: Blades in the Dark
Crew: The Wobbegong Crew

In which the team deals with the fallout from failing the Coalridge Demon job…starting in the stark white cells of the Spirit Wardens. Judd made a great write up here: https://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2017/11/06/wobbengong-crew-downtime-after-the-coalridge-demon-disaster/.

Judd’s Write up

It was fun starting the game off with Maude and Charming being held by the Spirit Wardens while Skannon was at the HQ, having entirely missed the Coalridge Demon job. Cutting between these 3 different points of view for the first hour was satisfying.

I liked how those opening minutes colored the downtime – from Charming adopting a demonic persona in his fight career, taking on the name Atreus (the demon they failed to kill in last session’s job), how Maude is suspected of being a snitch because she was caught by the Spirit Wardens and Skannon getting invited to the Doskvol University to hear Professor “Bakoros” speak.

We only got to some downtime but it was great to be back in Duskwall with these scoundrels.

The Mechanics in White

I’m getting a better and better grasp on the way limited success and failures work and how to best deal with them in a given situation.

Something I love about the Blades in the Dark book is whenever I look at it I come away inspired. I had to glance at it today when I wanted the Spirit Wardens to knock on the Wobbegong Crew’s door. Would it be a masked Spirit Warden? Do they have a mouth-piece, someone who is seen without a mask? Professor “Bakoros” was there waiting for me.

Right there in the NPC’s section on page 296 was Bakoros, the pseudonym of their academic face. I loved the idea of this kindly old professor knocking on the door of this Imperial SWAT Ghostbusters. Skannon, with his noble family background, suave air and scientific curiosity was the perfect scoundrel to meet him. When Pete told me that he almost stabbed the professor and sacrificed him to the Witch Matron on her altar, I was in shock. He decided not to do that but what a shockingly different game that would’ve been.

Duskwall again We saw the inside of the Doskvol Academy, a Spirit Warden safehouse/interrogation chamber and the manor of a group of rich cultists whose members include the prestigious Rowan family (and who knows how many others?).

We know that the Hive are at war with the Unseen, who are trying to infiltrate the Spirit Wardens. We’re getting embroiled in rivalries way above the Crows, Lampblacks, Red Sashes and Billhooks. Good stuff!

There is an odd, almost grudging respect towards the Spirit Wardens from the crew that I found fascinating.

Quess, the maid in service to the Witch Matron’s Brightstone Temple.

I picture Quess as being played by Lydia Night, lead singer of the Regrettes, shown below in their video for Seashore.

Quess

Timoth Rowan, the teacher’s assistant Skannon took out for drinks to get more information about why ghosts attach themselves to a certain place from their lives, gaining 5 ticks on that long-term project.

Timoth is going to be a blend of every beleaguered grad student Pete and I knew from our days in Ithaca, N.Y.

Atreus, up and coming Pankration heavyweight who moves like a middle-weight and is drawing strange uptown high society folk to his fights. He wears a demon mask and totally isn’t Thaddeus “Charming” Thimbleford, Cutter for the Wobbegong Crew. That idea is just preposterous!

Art

Leon F. Czolgosz, the assassin. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/90707285/>;.
The Corliss Bevel-Gear-Cutting Machine. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/2004678678/>;.
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Wm. Hawes in front of jewelry store with intricate clock.” The New York Public Library Digital Collectionshttp://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-69ca-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Grand View, City and Canal, Syracuse, N.Y.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1880. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-5eee-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “The transportation problem. The Baxter boat “City of New York,” the fastest steamer tried on the Erie Canal” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1825. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-7e54-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Actual Play – Unworthy Meat – Episode 02 (11/1/2017)

GM: Eric “Vulgaris” Levanduski
Players: Sage La Torra, Epidiah Ravachol, Virgil Levinger, and Sean Nittner
System: Torchbearer

Yay, I’m so excited that I get to play Torchbearer. Not only that but I get to play in Keep of the Borderlands, a classic D&D adventure that I’ve never had the chance to play before. Not only that, but I get to play with this rad, rad folks. I’ve never gamed with any of them and I’m very, very excited to!

Torchbearer on Air

Actual Play – Buzz on Canal Street (10/31)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Last Time

Paid of Sergeant Lochlan (shrewd, tough, commanding) to look the other way.

Convinced Corran not to fully trust Eren (aunt, dead)

Elke made enemies with both of them.

Buzz on the Street

Spirit Wardens called form all the districts to investigate demonic presence in the Docks. People on dry land are drowning spontaneously.

Nightbreaker still at sea (won’t dock) despite orders from the Ministry. Electroplasm in the city is running low.

Lord Sukur [who we know is possessed by Roric] returns from the Lost District!

Entanglement and other fallout

Eren trying to breaking into the Devil Hunter’s Lodge but is foiled by the wards Elke placed.

Rosslyn (aka Lady Drake) asks Jadvyga if she knows anything about the death of Captain Lannock (they are trying to pin it on a city council member)

Needle finds out Elke was arrested and had been in Bellweather.

Downtime

Hix gathers info! Rysus (longshoreman, tired, worried) set up a meeting with Needle (a Bluecoat agent of Lord Strangford), who has a job for her. The DSS is to bring an artifact (that looks like a dream catcher) to Naria Strangfold, currently a captive in Bellweather Crematorium. He also tells Hix that Strangford is planning a coup of the city council [Sean, why the heck did he spill these beans?]. Rysus is rewarded for setting up the meeting with a night of free drinking…and the attention of Needle.

Harland went to recruit new members to the True Path. Wisdom of the Ages (From the ghosts by the way of the Hand of Kotar?). Finds potential recruits: isolated and socially awkward new students at Charterhall. [Indulging Vice]

Elke talks to Nyryx about how to hold onto four ghosts at a time [Indulging Vice]

Hix visits professor Montgomery Beaumont who tends to her wound and has theories about the divine presence enshrined in the Rail Jack’s arm [Recovery]

After game thougths

Scurlock wants to bring his son to life. Bastion can only stay in the hull for short periods of time. Every time he goes in he looses some of his free will. Bastion is the creation of Skurlock and Elke’s grandmother?

 

Actual Play – Unworthy Meat – Episode 01 (10/25/2017)

GM: Eric “Vulgaris” Levanduski
Players: Sage La Torra, Epidiah Ravachol, Virgil Levinger, and Sean Nittner
System: Torchbearer

Yay, I’m so excited that I get to play Torchbearer. Not only that but I get to play in Keep of the Borderlands, a classic D&D adventure that I’ve never had the chance to play before. Not only that, but I get to play with this rad, rad folks. I’ve never gamed with any of them and I’m very, very excited to!

Torchbearer on Air

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