Jason Morningstar I'm washing some filth out of my brain.
I'm looking for specific moments of translatable joy. Whether that's "On the way out of dodge, we hit a ram and there was cocaine everywhere!", or "and that's how Elk learned the true meaning of Christmas" -- I'm looking for remembrances.
Oh man, last night mid-session we suddenly realized in unison that this was definitely, definitely, going to be our last session of Cartel, as the stars aligned in a Coen-brothers-like way in the parking lot of a shabby waterpark outside Durango. It was such a delight to see the fiction form unbidden, totally out of control. El Narco had ordered our Sicario to kill the Sinaloa representative, a wonderful guy named Chewbacca, effectively sealing his own drug lord flavor of doom, and my Esposa wannabe gangster was there fucking everything up by telling his wife, the Polizeta who had just had her ear shot off by El Narco's bag men, who called in the cavalry, and it was glorious. We'd been getting intel for weeks that the Zetas were moving in, and while this shootout was going down they made their move. El Narco got a call from his wife asking if she should be worried about a black SUV parked outside their gate. "Yes," he said, "you should be worried." It was all in la familia - she is La Esposa's sister, and Manny, the crusty retired cop who is La Polizeta's father (her brother-in-law sort of) was there, too as the kill squad moved in. So it fell to the idiot Esposa and the drugged-out, bandaged up Polizeta to save the day while El Narco ran for the hills with $75,000 and his one remaining bodyguard.
This one time, in a convention Apocalypse World game, I was playing a Battlebabe. There was a warlord who owned the holding the group was at who was bad. Near the finale, she held a gun to his head and told him to abdicate power to her or she'd blow his head off.
Attempting the Seize by Force move marked experience for Hard, which gave me an advance, which I immediately spent on a holding. So, win or lose, I had a holding. It was pretty sweet.
Any game I play/GM with my friend Marc Benson in it. The man is God's gift to every GM who has him. He is an ardent fan of the game, the other players, the characters, his character, when you do horrible shit to his character, when horrible shit happens to everyone (this is mostly in Monsterhearts). He is an absolute delight to GM for and has a Max Headroom-esque mania that is infectious.
All of my Monsterhearts players are rockstars, but Marc is off the hook.
Currently, we're playing Monsterhearts and Marc's playing The Neighbor, which is you're clueless, bumbling, only miss death by happenstance, and sort of overall hapless. I'm playing the Wyrm, as basically the Queen on steroids. And every time I am absolutely horrid to Marc's character, he plays it in character, then the minute we cut scene, he's all, "That was AMAZING!!!!! SO GOOD!!!" Watching other players doing their scenes, he practically vibrates with the need to tell them how awesome they are.
He's also played in several playtests of my game Guns and Glamour, which is a World hack. And he's just so enthusiastic, and he has a gift for comedic timing. He's played both Pixies and Goblins with equal aplomb. And he really is just so enthusiastic about everyone and everything. He definitely elevates the mood of a game.
He was one of three pixies in the last G&G playtest who were hitmen (and woman), and their front was they ran a kennel, because they often rode the dogs as warbeasts (this was all them). He and the other two players just came up with all this. But they got business cards. Pixies in this game are roughly Barbie Doll sized, maybe a little bigger. So the "leader" would say, "Give 'im a card." and Marc would mime pulling something the size of his torso off of a sling on his back where he carried the cards.
I could go on, to his delightfully creepy German nobleman, Reinhardt in the Weimar Era Berlin Monsterhearts game I ran at Ambercon, to his goofy Goblin driver.
The quality if the gamers I run with is pretty stellar, honestly half the time I feel like I hold them back, but when Marc's in a game everyone rises to the occasion because he's such a fan of everyone and everything.
The Paladin was tasked with retrieving a forbidden book from the Tower of Sorcery. He brought a Thief and an elf Wizard along as subject matter experts. Total Conan type stuff. They each hated the Tower for their own reasons -- most notably, the elf had a lot of wizard nerd rage going on, he thought the Tower sorcerers were just stupid humans, phony enchanters who did magic crudely and without properly appreciating it.
So the first thing the party did was improvise a massive tower-destroying bomb out of all the eldritch oily rags and gas cans and such that they found in the basement. And of course they triggered it with about four minutes left to go when they were cornered by some evil dream warriors.
I asked them how they survived the explosion. The elf had the best answer:
"I reincarnate," he said.
And I was like "oh man I am so gonna make you come back as a dirty human, you pointy-eared bigot." But the player boxcarred his defy danger! He opened his eyes centuries later, safe in the arms of an elven midwife.
The Druid and the Fighter are fighting the titan Cronus on the Moon.
Taking advantage of the light lunar gravity, the Druid changes to a great eagle and carries the Fighter up five miles into Cronus' ear. Inside, they find a vast Inside Out metropolis of tiny beings who form Cronus' gestalt. They set to slaying them. All of them. Cronus is unprepared for this assault and the adventurers easily dispatch the antibody slimes sent to destroy them. It takes days, but they triumph!
Elsewhere, the tether binding the Moon to the Earth is cut, and the Moon flies off into the darkness of space! When the adventurers emerge from Cronus they see the Earth receding behind them. The Blue Oyster Cult soundtrack kicks in as the Druid changes into a great condor and flies them back towards Earth.
"But, how do you survive re-entry?" I ask.
The Druid changes to a vole and crawls into the Fighter's pouches. The Fighter, whose 4 Armor has made him basically invulnerable thus far, curls up into a ball, shield-down, and serves as the ablative heat shield for the re-entry. He boxcars his Defy Danger and they land back on Earth, scorched but intact.
So yeah, basically anytime I ask someone "how do you survive this?"magical things happen.
Can you be more specific? Pretty much all my gaming experiences are positive. That's why I continue to have them.
ReplyDeleteWith Jason Morningstar here.
ReplyDeleteJason Morningstar I'm washing some filth out of my brain.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking for specific moments of translatable joy. Whether that's "On the way out of dodge, we hit a ram and there was cocaine everywhere!", or "and that's how Elk learned the true meaning of Christmas" -- I'm looking for remembrances.
Oh man, last night mid-session we suddenly realized in unison that this was definitely, definitely, going to be our last session of Cartel, as the stars aligned in a Coen-brothers-like way in the parking lot of a shabby waterpark outside Durango. It was such a delight to see the fiction form unbidden, totally out of control. El Narco had ordered our Sicario to kill the Sinaloa representative, a wonderful guy named Chewbacca, effectively sealing his own drug lord flavor of doom, and my Esposa wannabe gangster was there fucking everything up by telling his wife, the Polizeta who had just had her ear shot off by El Narco's bag men, who called in the cavalry, and it was glorious. We'd been getting intel for weeks that the Zetas were moving in, and while this shootout was going down they made their move. El Narco got a call from his wife asking if she should be worried about a black SUV parked outside their gate. "Yes," he said, "you should be worried." It was all in la familia - she is La Esposa's sister, and Manny, the crusty retired cop who is La Polizeta's father (her brother-in-law sort of) was there, too as the kill squad moved in. So it fell to the idiot Esposa and the drugged-out, bandaged up Polizeta to save the day while El Narco ran for the hills with $75,000 and his one remaining bodyguard.
ReplyDeleteIt did not go well.
Thanks, Jason Morningstar . That is exactly the sort of thing I needed!
ReplyDeleteThis one time, in a convention Apocalypse World game, I was playing a Battlebabe. There was a warlord who owned the holding the group was at who was bad. Near the finale, she held a gun to his head and told him to abdicate power to her or she'd blow his head off.
ReplyDeleteAttempting the Seize by Force move marked experience for Hard, which gave me an advance, which I immediately spent on a holding. So, win or lose, I had a holding. It was pretty sweet.
There's this one time at band camp..
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl I think I've heard that story before. It is very nice when mechanics and fiction intertwine!
ReplyDeleteAny game I play/GM with my friend Marc Benson in it. The man is God's gift to every GM who has him. He is an ardent fan of the game, the other players, the characters, his character, when you do horrible shit to his character, when horrible shit happens to everyone (this is mostly in Monsterhearts). He is an absolute delight to GM for and has a Max Headroom-esque mania that is infectious.
ReplyDeleteAll of my Monsterhearts players are rockstars, but Marc is off the hook.
Mickey Schulz Can you tell me about some specifics?
ReplyDeleteCurrently, we're playing Monsterhearts and Marc's playing The Neighbor, which is you're clueless, bumbling, only miss death by happenstance, and sort of overall hapless. I'm playing the Wyrm, as basically the Queen on steroids. And every time I am absolutely horrid to Marc's character, he plays it in character, then the minute we cut scene, he's all, "That was AMAZING!!!!! SO GOOD!!!" Watching other players doing their scenes, he practically vibrates with the need to tell them how awesome they are.
ReplyDeleteHe's also played in several playtests of my game Guns and Glamour, which is a World hack. And he's just so enthusiastic, and he has a gift for comedic timing. He's played both Pixies and Goblins with equal aplomb. And he really is just so enthusiastic about everyone and everything. He definitely elevates the mood of a game.
He was one of three pixies in the last G&G playtest who were hitmen (and woman), and their front was they ran a kennel, because they often rode the dogs as warbeasts (this was all them). He and the other two players just came up with all this. But they got business cards. Pixies in this game are roughly Barbie Doll sized, maybe a little bigger. So the "leader" would say, "Give 'im a card." and Marc would mime pulling something the size of his torso off of a sling on his back where he carried the cards.
I could go on, to his delightfully creepy German nobleman, Reinhardt in the Weimar Era Berlin Monsterhearts game I ran at Ambercon, to his goofy Goblin driver.
The quality if the gamers I run with is pretty stellar, honestly half the time I feel like I hold them back, but when Marc's in a game everyone rises to the occasion because he's such a fan of everyone and everything.
Thanks, Mickey Schulz ! These are the stories I need, to get a certain sort of filth off me. Keep 'em coming!
ReplyDeleteDrunkenly introducing you to fiasco. 😀
ReplyDeleteDungeon World two-hour Games on Demand game:
ReplyDeleteThe Paladin was tasked with retrieving a forbidden book from the Tower of Sorcery. He brought a Thief and an elf Wizard along as subject matter experts. Total Conan type stuff. They each hated the Tower for their own reasons -- most notably, the elf had a lot of wizard nerd rage going on, he thought the Tower sorcerers were just stupid humans, phony enchanters who did magic crudely and without properly appreciating it.
So the first thing the party did was improvise a massive tower-destroying bomb out of all the eldritch oily rags and gas cans and such that they found in the basement. And of course they triggered it with about four minutes left to go when they were cornered by some evil dream warriors.
I asked them how they survived the explosion. The elf had the best answer:
"I reincarnate," he said.
And I was like "oh man I am so gonna make you come back as a dirty human, you pointy-eared bigot." But the player boxcarred his defy danger! He opened his eyes centuries later, safe in the arms of an elven midwife.
Another DW two-hour GoD game I ran:
ReplyDeleteThe Druid and the Fighter are fighting the titan Cronus on the Moon.
Taking advantage of the light lunar gravity, the Druid changes to a great eagle and carries the Fighter up five miles into Cronus' ear. Inside, they find a vast Inside Out metropolis of tiny beings who form Cronus' gestalt. They set to slaying them. All of them. Cronus is unprepared for this assault and the adventurers easily dispatch the antibody slimes sent to destroy them. It takes days, but they triumph!
Elsewhere, the tether binding the Moon to the Earth is cut, and the Moon flies off into the darkness of space! When the adventurers emerge from Cronus they see the Earth receding behind them. The Blue Oyster Cult soundtrack kicks in as the Druid changes into a great condor and flies them back towards Earth.
"But, how do you survive re-entry?" I ask.
The Druid changes to a vole and crawls into the Fighter's pouches. The Fighter, whose 4 Armor has made him basically invulnerable thus far, curls up into a ball, shield-down, and serves as the ablative heat shield for the re-entry. He boxcars his Defy Danger and they land back on Earth, scorched but intact.
So yeah, basically anytime I ask someone "how do you survive this?"magical things happen.
John Aegard Those are gorgeous and fantastic. Will you be at Dreamation?
ReplyDeleteTed Cabeen That remains the best wedding story ever.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Alas, no Dreamation for me, I'm on the wrong coast for that.
ReplyDeleteok, the taint is sufficiently removed from my soul. Thank you all.
ReplyDelete