Actual Play: The Severed Bridge (Conclusion)

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

Last night we played our final session in The Severed Bridge. Last time, the characters were on Dwight’s boat headed out into Lake Erie. They figured they’d go to Kelly’s Island, not far from Cedar Point, and see if anyone was there. As they headed out, Ichiro was in the cabin, seasick (his player got held up at the hospital getting insulin). As they got closer to the island, they got a radio contact. Someone on Kelly’s Island asked if someone named “Ee-Chy-Ro” was on board. Dwight said there was, and the man said that this guy had shot his friend.

Dwight asked Ichiro about this, but Ichiro claimed the only one he’d ever shot was Jack (last session). Dwight said that maybe there had been a mistake, but then the guy on the radio said that he’d heard Ichiro was shipping out with someone called Dwight…and Trey heard a motor. And then they saw the helicopter coming in.

Cherie went into the cabin (her player had to go pick Ichiro’s player up, and she didn’t have enough cards in her bank to be part of a Removal Challenge anyway). One guy was leaning out of the chopper with a gun. Dwight took a shot at the rotor and missed (which gave him enough cards in his bank to be part of the Removal Challenge).

Trey and Dwight both took shots at the rotor, while Darla (who had experience hunting with her father) shot at the guy with the gun. All three of these actions were lighting a candle. Darla’s player drew Fail/Stay, meaning she missed and I would normally get three Between Points. But seeing as how I already had two, her player didn’t want that to happen, so she decided to curse the darkness, making her essential choice. That means her character can’t light a candle in subsequent Removal Challenges, but I don’t get my Between Points.

Meanwhile, though, both Trey and Dwight drew Succeed/Stay, meaning they immediately gain a section of Wick. That was three for both of them, which allowed them both to make the essential choice and light a candle.

The rotors shredded themselves and the chopper went down. And here we paused and played Rock Band while the other players returned.

OK, then, they got back. Everyone made Stamina Challenges to avoid flying shrapnel. Dwight and Ichiro were hit and wounded (card-capped in Stamina). Trye patched them up and Exhausted himself in both Stamina and Focus, so he sat down for a while to rest. Darla saw that the pilot of the chopper was trapped and beating on the glass. Not wishing to let the guy drown, she turned the boat around and pulled up next to him. The characters broke the glass and hauled him to safety.

His name was Bert, and he claimed that he wasn’t told anything about what he was meant to do, only to fly out to the boat. Dwight took his gun and had a little powwow with the others. Ichiro favored throwing him in the drink, maybe with a plank of wood, since the folks from Kelly’s would likely be here soon. Cherie didn’t disagree, but Dwight and Darla weren’t comfortable with that. Darla said: “Meredith would have let him stay,” which sparked a nice Memory Conversation about Meredith that resulted in some Memory Points getting tossed around, which was welcome.

In the end, they put the choice to Bert: Float here and wait for rescue or come with us. Bert said that he didn’t figure he’d be in demand on Kelly’s now that the chopper was gone, so he came with the characters.

They decided to head to North Bass Island, skipping by Kelly’s Island. They could see the rides from Cedar Point in the distance (and Dwight mentioned that he’d gone through there, just to see an abandoned amusement park). As they headed north, a speedboat zipped up. A man in it asked if they were heading toward North Bass. Dwight said they were, and the man said they were welcome – there were about 100 people there, they had electricity and so on, and were happy to have other people around. Just one thing – no guns.

This sparked some conflict with the characters, because they’d already seen that folks were still quite willing to shoot each other. But the man was adamant – they’d had gunplay before and it had called down Them, so they instituted a no-gun rule. The characters eventually agreed to lock their guns in a lock-box on the boat and leave it moored here for the time being, and the man was amenable to that. Ichiro tried to conceal a gun, but Dwight noticed and relieved him of it before they got on the raft, left the boat moored, and the speedboat towed them in.

When they got there, though (and by now everyone had three cards in the bank again), there was smoke in the distance. They ran into the island and found a house burning…which started our last Removal Challenge. They also saw hulking shapes in the trees…Them.

Cherie grabbed for a stick to use as a weapon. Ichiro raced into the building to find anyone still alive. Trey joined the bucket brigade, and Dwight grabbed a fire extinguisher to use on Them (all of these actions light a candle). Darla, who had to curse the darkness, just waited for instructions.

Darla drew Succeed/Stay, Dwight and Ichiro drew Succeed/Leave, Trey and Cherie drew Fail/Stay. Cherie and Dwight decided to swap, as did Darla and Ichiro.

So Ichiro ran into the house and found a woman under a table, yelling for help. He picked her up and headed for the door, but his leg wounded, he yelled for Darla. Darla ran in and helped them get out, but then the house collapsed, killing her.

Dwight fumbled with his extinguisher as one of The loomed over him. Cherie grabbed a stick and smacked the monster, and It simply turned, grabbed her, and retreated into the Between. Dwight never had a chance to react.

Trey, and the rest of the bucket brigade, did their best but simply weren’t successful. The house burned.

Now, at this point, Ichiro lit a candle because he filled in his last section of Wick. Succeed/Leave strips me of five Between Points, while Fail/Stay gives me three, so I net -4, or zero. So Cherie’s player is the only one who hadn’t made the essential choice. It was late, and we didn’t feel like doing a whole other session for that, so we took the ensuing Memory Conversations as read and let her light a candle so we could resolve the game. She did write Bert into memory, though, so she would have someone to play during the last scene.

The man they talked to earlier said that he wasn’t sure what had called down Them (something else we’d have explored with more time), but that the characters were welcome to stay. Trey, the only character left who’d seen the bridge fall in Cleveland, said he was tired of running anyway, and Dwight agreed that this would be a fine place to hang around. They went back out to the boat to collect their supplies, achieving their goal – to find a place to stay that’s safe, or as safe as possible.

And that’s it for that story! I’m hoping to get to run a few more stories (or maybe even play!), but I’m going to start the actual words-on-screen writing process on Monday. It’s all comin’ together! Watch this space!

New Scenario: Fire is Dying

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

A bit of background: A few years ago, I started a little project to make a character for every RPG I own. At the time, I owned a lot of RPGs, but a manageable number. Since then, though, I’ve bought bundles from Drive-Thru RPG, bought new games on the cheap from bargain bins, and traded for RPGs from folks online, not to mention that I often contribute to Kickstarters for new games (currently backing these three: Flatpack, Killshot and Improbable Tales – so check ‘em out! But if anyone other game folks have Kickstarters that I should know about, please, comment here and tell me).

Anyway, the point is, the list of characters I have made and have yet to make is really freaking long. A few folks I know from Livejournal (and now Dreamwidth, since a lot of us have switched over) took up the challenge with me, and Stew Wilson, a fellow game writer, White Wolf freelancer and author of Æternal Legends is still doing it.

Well, today, he did a character for curse the darkness, along with a scenario to go with it. So I cheerfully link you to that scenario, and invite you to check out Stew’s other projects (I’m especially excited about Through).

The scenario, and the accompany character, is here.

Death in RPGs

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

Tell me about a time your character died, and it was either awesome or it sucked. And tell me why.

Why am I asking? Mostly because character death is a frequent and necessary part of curse the darkness, and I want to get some other gamers’ perspectives. For me, it’s happened so very infrequently that I don’t have much to say about it. On the occasions that my characters have died, it’s generally one of two situations.

First is one-shot games. Obviously if I’m not going to play this character more than once, I’m less invested in seeing the character survive. Best example: I played in a Spirit of the Century game at Origins a few years back in which my four-armed green Martian crushed the evil king in the gears of a giant machine, but got pulled in himself, too. That machine, now treated with the blood of a green Martian, started a chain reaction that turned the Sea of Tranquility in a literal sea and revitalized the planet. Pretty awesome!

Second is characters that have tragedy as part of their character arc. That’s not always handled well; I played a sidhe in a Changeling: The Dreaming game who was supposed to be tragically Undone at the end of the chronicle, and the Storyteller pulled some really convoluted shenanigans to give me a “happy” ending. That totally wasn’t what I wanted, and I think I communicated that to him, but I suppose that might have exceeded his tragedy threshold.

The term “tragedy threshold” was one that another GM asked me about in an Exalted game. He had a nasty plotline planned for my character, but wanted to make sure I would be OK with basically getting screwed in the end (not dying, just being horribly betrayed). And for that character, I wasn’t OK with it – that’s just not how I saw the character’s story going. curse the darkness is, I’m sure you’ve noticed, a game with a high tragedy threshold. Everyone stands a roughly equal chance of dying in every Removal Challenge, and that’s deliberate and in-theme. And, I’m finding as I run multi-session games, it means that characters that stick around longer (like Trey in the Severed Bridge game) take on “lead character” roles, just because we know the most about them.

Anyway, tell me about your character’s death. I’m interested in how it happened, and why you liked it…or didn’t.

What are your experiences?

curse the darkness scenario: Soldiers

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

I said before that I wanted to put up a few scenarios for curse the darkness games (and actually, if anyone playtests the game and wants to send in your scenarios, I’d be happy to post them). So here’s another one.

I started thinking about this scenario a while ago, when it occurred to me that a lot of the curse the darkness games I’ve run have focused, or at least prominently featured, resource accrual and management. I think it’s appropriate and natural in a post-apocalyptic setting – money is useless as a currency even if currency were allowed. What’s of value is stuff you can use: food, medicine, luxuries like coffee, and so on.

But I think that, as focused as it is, curse the darkness is more versatile than that. And I think the key to unlocking that versatility is to divorce yourself from the larger setting (that is, the world as we know has collapsed) and to think in terms of what’s happening right now. What scenes can you imagine that are exciting, or that make you want to sit up and watch more closely? Here’s one attempt at such a scenario.

Where are you? We’re in Baghdad. The characters are soldiers, either Americans still left from the occupation (remember, as curse the darkness begins it’s 2012, but in the setting as written a lot of the initial destruction happened in the Middle East, so it’s reasonable to assume a troop presence), local military or whatever the players want. I personally think it would be interesting to play members of the same unit, just because it would make for interesting Memory Conversations later when folks die.

One question that would be important for this kind of scenario is how long after “the end” this is happening. Remember that, in curse the darkness, you have three broad options for the setting. I personally think this one works best as mid-apocalypse.

What just happened? A radio that hasn’t worked in weeks burst to life and ordered the unit to “fall back to the Monument to the Unknown Soldier and provide assistance-”, at which point it cuts off and won’t work again.

How are you following the rules? If we’re playing mid-apocalypse, the rules may not have been codified as such, but that doesn’t mean we can’t answer this question. I figure we’re following the rules by providing help to people that we see in immediate peril. See someone trapped by rubble, you save them, for instance. There’s no overall plan to follow the rules, since the characters don’t know them yet.

How are you breaking the rules? The rules are really easy to break if you don’t know what they are. The characters in this scenario are still working for their government and still probably opening professing faith and the like. Any of that is unwise and can rack up Between points.

What is the goal? If we’re playing a one-shot, the goal could be to get to the Monument and provide assistance to the command staff that’s trapped there (the Monument itself has been nearly leveled by Them). If we’re playing a multi-session game, the goal might be to do that and then get out of the city and back to a base somewhere.

Actual Play: The Severed Bridge (part 2)

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

Last time, of course, the characters wound up camping out at a marina, having gotten away from the collapsing bridge.

When they woke up, there was a man with wild hair and a frayed suit sitting on a boat watching them. He introduced himself as JaeJae (this would be Misha’s character; Misha couldn’t make it last time). He was a club DJ, originally from Tennessee, and had been wandering west from New York.

The characters chatted a bit, and then JaeJae and Trey walked toward the old man’s boat to see if he was up. They heard a radio squeal, and JaeJae heard him say, “Yeah, they’re still here, so you’d better hurry.” Trey and JaeJae weren’t trying to be terribly subtle, so he shut the radio off right after, and then grabbed his rifle and headed out of the boat. He sat there with the characters for a minute, and then wandered off into the woods, ostensibly to take a leak. Meredith, meanwhile, went off to smoke up.

JaeJae informed the others what he’d heard, and they got rather nervous but weren’t sure what to do. The man came back out of the woods, flanked by several other dudes with guns and blunt instruments. He told them that they were taking their stuff, and they should just step away.

And this began our first Removal Challenge! JaeJae’s player had done enough Character Challenges to get three cards in his bank, so this Challenge involved all six players. Bruce (the Opener) decided he’d reach into the water and Open a gateway under the boat, using its own shadow. Meredith took a step forward and offered them a smoke and to talk this out, but her real intent was to take the looters’ attention off Bruce. Darla jumped into the water and started swimming toward the characters’ boat. JaeJae, sitting on the characters’ boat (acting as lookout), starting talking at them, again trying to distract. And Trey said, “So, what you’re doing is stealing from us?” – trying, in a very ballsy move, to get Their attention.

All of these actions were lighting a candle. We assigned suits, mixed ‘em up, and dealt them out. Trey, Darla and JaeJae drew Succeed/Stay. Meredith and Bruce drew Succeed/Leave.

Meredith lit her lighter and the thug next to her got spooked and beaned her on the head with a bat. Bruce Opened, the boat (and a lot of water) fell into Lake Erie, but a black hand grabbed his arm and yanked him in. Darla swam to the boat, but grabbed the dock when the boat disappeared. JaeJae barked at the thugs a bit, but then fell into the Between with the boat.

They boiled out of the Between, swarming around Trey and Cherie (the NPC from last time, whom the characters saved). They killed the thugs, tearing them to pieces, and then retreated into the Between. The gate closed, and the characters were alone.

(Meredith’s player took a Character Card and wrote Cherie into memory, giving her the Scope: Swim Team. Seemed appropriate, as she didn’t drown last night. Bruce’s player made up a new character, since there wasn’t another convenient NPC to write into memory.)

Cherie, Darla and Trey surveyed the wreckage. They found Meredith’s body and succumbed to nausea and shock, a bit, but then covered her up and closed her eyes (and got a few Memory Points talking about her). They had no idea if they could get to the Between and get their stuff back, so they started looking for a serviceable boat. They decided to put Meredith on a rowboat and light it, letting it drift into the lake. A kind of pothead/Viking funeral, if you will.

In the Between, a lot of water fell on a man named Ichiro Watanabe, walking in from Europe. He found JaeJae (and Bruce’s body, which was now missing an arm and had bled out), and JaeJae explained what was going on. JaeJae had never been to the Between, and Ichiro, an Opener, explained how it worked. He agreed to Open a gate to get JaeJae (and the boat) back, and JaeJae concentrated on the marina area. Ichiro Opened…

…and the boat fell out of a shadow under a pavilion. Darla (Exhausted in Stability and therefore not doing too well) was happy to see that, but couldn’t handle anything else corpse-related. JaeJae gathered up some of the body parts, and Darla, by now, had found the keys to the old man’s boat. They loaded up the boat, and Cherie (who defined a Scope as Summer Lake House to explain why she knew boats) plotted them a course to another marina. Not far off that marina, see, there was a gas station and they figured they could maybe find some fuel around there somewhere.

As they got closer, Trey, playing with the radio, heard someone. He called the guy (Jack) back, and they chatted a bit. Jack was in a truck cab, one that had overturned and fallen down a hill. He said he’d meet up with the characters at the marina, if he could.

They pulled into the marina and a dude in a sailboat stood up and hailed them. The man, named Dwight, said that he wasn’t sure if they’d be able to find gas easily, but he was happy to share some smoked perch with them (he’d built a smoker out of an old grill and sustained himself fishing the lake). He also mentioned that if they ran into a dude with a leather jacket and a bad buzzcut, named Jack, be careful – he was a looter and a thug.

The characters didn’t mention they’d talked to Jack already, but Ichiro and JaeJae went to go look for gas while Darla, Cherie and Trey stayed behind. Dwight taught Trey to fish (which he picked up as a Scope), Darla started making some canned soup (to which Dwight added some perch), and Cherie amused herself skipping stones in the lake.

Ichiro and JaeJae got the gas station and a dude in a leather jacket walked out – this was Jack. They talked a bit, and when he heard they’d docked at the nearby marina, he asked if they’d seen a dude named Dwight in a sailboat. They hemmed and hawed a bit, and Jack said he was trouble – Dwight was one of a number of thieves who worked the waters around here. They walked (or in JaeJae’s case, frolicked) down the hill to the truck cab and poked around a bit. They found, in an abandoned car, a can of gas.

That was good, and they started to head back up. Ichiro, suspicious, pulled his gun on Jack and had him step away from the truck and his pack. And then he waved his hand slightly, like a signal, and we started our second Removal Challenge.

Ichiro decided he’d shoot Jack, while JaeJae dove for Jack’s pack to see if there was a weapon. We drew, and Ichiro’s player drew Succeed/Stay while JaeJae’s got Succeed/Leave. He grabbed the pack and reached in, just as Ichiro shot Jack. And then a second shot, and JaeJae fell dead.

Back at the marina, the others heard the shots. They quickly armed themselves (Dwight handed Trey a pistol and Cherie a fire ax, and grabbed a shotgun). Darla dug into their supplies and got walkie-talkies, and handed one to Dwight. He told her if anything went wrong, head out into the water and they’d catch up in his sailboat. And then the three of them (Dwight, Trey, Cherie) headed out to find the others.

(JaeJae’s player wrote Dwight into memory.)

They got to the crest of the hill and saw Jack lying dead, but couldn’t see JaeJae from their vantage point. Ichiro was looking for the second shooter. We started another Removal Challenge, with Trey and Cherie involved (Darla wasn’t there and Ichiro and Dwight had no cards in their banks and so couldn’t participate). Cherie ran down the hill to try and help (lighting a candle), while Trey stayed on the hill to watch for the second shooter and provide cover fire (cursing the darkness). They both drew Succeed/Stay, and Cherie ducked around the truck and saw JaeJae’s body and (having something really low in Stability) screamed.

That, of course, brought Trey and Dwight down. It seemed, though, that JaeJae hadn’t been shot from behind. He’d grabbed for the gun in the pack, and it had gone off, killing him. The characters took what they could from Jack’s pack (Dwight knew Jack, and kicked his body on the way past – yes, you can get Memory for dead NPCs). They talked about JaeJae a bit, and Dwight carried his body up the hill.

They moved their stuff onto Dwight’s boat while Dwight buried JaeJae. The looter problem, Dwight told them, had gotten bad of late, and that’s probably what had attracted His notice on the bridge. They needed to get moving before Jack’s buddies came after them, so they got on the boat and headed out into the water.

And that’s where we’ll pick up next time. Of the six players, five of them have two sections of Wick filled in, so next time we should get a cascade of people making the essential choice (and thus make it possible to end the story).

curse the darkness scenario: Ohio in Winter

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

As a follow-up to the last post, I figured I would provide you with some scenarios. I know that while some folks (like me) really love the “create your own setting” aspects of games like Dresden Files, Misspent Youth, Fiasco and Ganakagok, other folks would rather have the setting more specifically laid out before starting. While curse the darkness is pretty unabashedly of the former type of game, I’m fine with doing up some sample scenarios, too.

We had some snow in Cleveland last week. There was originally a winter storm warning and dire predictions of blizzards. This didn’t happen (we didn’t get more than a couple of inches of snow, which was pretty but not enough to worry about), but it was pretty damned cold for a couple of days (now it’s up in the mid 40s again, which is downright balmy for the time of year). It got me thinking about this time of year in the rather desolate world of curse the darkness, so here you go.

Where are you? We’re in Ohio, in a subdevelopment made of three cul-de-sacs, 24 houses in total. A couple of them have burned down, a couple have been completely destroyed by Them, but most are intact. There’s no gas service to the area, though, and it’s winter and below freezing, so staying warm, even indoors, is hard.

It just stopped snowing after a continuous 18-hour lake effect blizzard. The area is covered in almost a solid foot of snow. You’d need a snowmobile to get anywhere overland quickly, and walking would of course be tiring and dangerous (hypothermia, no good way to get warm).

What just happened? There’s a church nearby – well, it was a church. Religion is outlawed, and folks have been understandably gunshy about using the building even for shelter. It’s quiet as the grave around here, and folks in the subdevelopment just saw the roof of the church cave in and heard a very distinct scream of pain.

How are you following the rules? Providing shelter in the houses for those who ask, including blankets, fires (in the houses that have chimneys and proper ventilation), body heat (don’t laugh, in this weather it’s a good way to stay warm) and food. When Openers come through, they can provide transport for people to warmer climes, but Openers aren’t common and so sometimes folks have to wait for one to show up.

How are you breaking the rules? The pastor of the local church has been ministering to folks, always on a one-on-one basis, and always in the church office. The folks in the neighborhood (which includes the PCs) know about that, though whether they’ve partaken would be up to the players.

What is the goal? The scream in the church came from the woman the pastor was talking to. He’s unhurt, but is devastated to think that he might have caused this (he probably didn’t; the church roof seems to have just collapsed on its own). The goal of the story is to get the woman to someone who can help her, or to bring someone here to tend her injuries. Of course, keeping her in the church might gain His notice faster (if I were GM, I might add Between points periodically, with the understanding that if He notices the characters the church might collapse the rest of the way), and keeping the pastor around is likewise dangerous, since he tends to vocally pray or otherwise talk about risky topics. Based on this goal, I’d say this story is probably good for one section of Wick, and therefore a one-shot.

Feel free to post your own suggestions!

You should play curse the darkness! Right now!

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

I decided that I wanted to let curse the darkness out into the wild, especially now that I have a system I like and that is working. So I took some time and put together a playtest packet, which you can download now. Read it, give me feedback, play it, talk about it on whatever forum or blog you’d like. And drop me email or comment here (or on our Facebook page) and let me know how you like it.

Do note: The rules are somewhat simplified. I removed things like card-caps and multiple-participant Character Challenges and the like just because they weren’t strictly necessary. Also, there’s not much about the setting in there because I wanted to keep it simple, and that’s mostly flavor once you get the basics. Of course, this blog has plenty of that setting and flavor, so if you download the playtest packet and want to know more, please do comb through this site and soak it all up.

There are four documents to download: The Playtest Packet contains the rules and instructions for playing curse the darkness, the Removal Challenge Sheets are necessary for (as the name implies) Removal Challenges.

And the character sheets: A page of Character Cards and the Player Mat.

And there you have it! Please spread far and wide!

Writing on the Wall

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

When I was in high school, I worked crew for a musical called Philemon (I actually auditioned and didn’t get cast). The show is about a Greek street performer and con man who takes the place of a Christian underground preacher in order to sell out the resistance to the Romans, and winds up keeping the role and the Christians’ secrets, even though it results in his death. There are two “songs” from the show that really stuck with me.

One was called “Sometimes,” and although it has a musical component, the meat of it is a monologue delivered by a young man named Andos. From memory (since I can’t find a full-text online):

On a day that seems like any other, you find yourself, outside, in the sunlight saying, “No. You can’t do this. This is not what human beings do…. I see the children huddled in the darkness. I see the bodies stacked like firewood. And I say: There is more than this. There must be more than this.”

I really wish I could remember the whole thing. I never had a script, and it’s damned difficult to find online (I’ve tried unsuccessfully). But the monologue always brought tears to my eyes, particularly since Andos is whipped to death right after delivering it. It resonates with me because this is a man (young man, only 18, with a baby son) who dies wishing, hoping, for something better. But it’s not like he’s hoping that the rains will come and water crops or that the blizzard will finally let up or the plague will pass by. The death and oppression he’s dealing with are perpetrated on him by the people around him, and they could choose to just stop.

The other bit from the show I like is delivered by a Roman solider named Servillus (played, when I was involved in the show in high school, by my best friend Mike). Again, from memory:

“Antioch prison: Already ancient in an ancient time. The walls are tomblike, wet…what do they say, these desperate writings on the walls?”

Mother.

“That’s probably the most common. Sometimes they’re pious, sometimes they’re defiant, and sometimes…simply human.”

My name is Ephemera. I’m 21 years old. I have two children, two children two and four. But they were taken away last week and sent to different camps. I die tomorrow, but I do not wish to live without my children.

I’m forgetting bits, but hopefully you see what I mean. One of the bits that I wrote early on for curse the darkness was this:

I lost my aunt my uncle three cousins and my father
Where was the UN where was the USA where was anyone?

The answer, of course, was that they were all already dead. But we didn’t know that then.

We all had questions.

I like the idea of graffiti being one major means of expression of outrage in the world of curse the darkness. It’s why there’s a little tag of “JESUS SAVES” in our ad. In the finished book, I think we’ll have some of the art be spraypainted messages to Him, statements of defiance, acquiescence, and simply humanity.

If you want to see a little of what I’m talking about, go to Pictures of Walls and look around a while. Some of it’s funny, some of it’s sad, some of it is stupid, and some of it is simply human.

Actual Play: The Severed Bridge

Posted on by Matthew McFarland

Last night was our first session of multi-session curse the darkness. Four players: Matt, Michelle, Sarah and John, with me as the GM.

So, first off (after explaining the game to John, who was new to curse the darkness) the players decided on their situation. We also decided that the “setup questions” need to be set, rather than guidelines, and need to include the questions “How are you following the rules?” and “how are you breaking the rules?”

In answering the questions, they decided the following:

  • Where are you? In Cleveland, in the Flats.
  • What just happened? The bridge just collapsed in the midst of terrible storm, flooding the area.
  • How are you following the rules? Stockpiling useful stuff – medicine, supplies, non-perishable food. Available to those who ask.
  • How are you breaking the rules? The characters “trade” useful items. Barter may or may not be against the rules, but it’s the kind of thing that’s risky. (A note to myself: The answer to this question should indicate how the GM can get Between Points.)
  • What is the goal? Get the stuff out of the flood zone and get it to safety.

Because this is going to be a two-session game, I decide that three sections of Wick are required to make the essential choice. As no one got any today, though, I suspect I’ll either have to revisit that or we’ll have to go another session, either’s good.

With that in mind, the players made their characters. Michelle is playing Darla, a mechanic. John is playing Bruce, who was a corporate type before the world ended (he is an Opener). Matt plays Trey, an Iraq war medic (keep in mind this is 2022, so he’s an older fellow). Sarah plays Meredith, a gardener who grows weed, among other things.

As the scene begins, the characters are in their hideout and hear/see the bridge collapse. They realize that they don’t have long before the waters rise and flood their hideout. Darla makes a list of the stuff they need to prioritize getting out of here (she chooses “Store Manager” as a Scope), and then goes running through the rain to get their boat (moored down the block a ways).

The other three characters put their stuff together on a pallet. They tie it down and roll it out to the water…where Trey and Bruce both see that the bridge didn’t collapse on its own. It’s been neatly severed, meaning that it was destroyed by Him. They aren’t sure why, but that’s enough to scare them.

As they look, Bruce hears crying from the water. He spies a woman floundering, and has Trey tie a rope around him and goes swimming (defining “Lifeguard” as a Scope). He reaches her, calms her down, and swims back. The woman vomits up a lot of river water, but is generally OK. Meredith comforts her (she is From a Big Family, she decides).

Darla, meanwhile, has the boat and is headed toward the characters. She sees bodies in the river and tries not to think about the thudding sounds. She gets there and they load up the pallet and the girl (whose name is Cherie). Cherie tells them that two groups of people met up on the bridge, one group local that wanted to trade information about a cache of stuff in an old building (that is, the characters’ stuff). And then the other group – people who strange accents, she says, and one carrying a gun – wanted to find out where the stuff was. But she isn’t sure that a deal was reached before the shadows opened and the bridge collapsed.

The characters headed away from the wreckage of the bridge (Trey defining a Scope as “Navigator”), and toward a marina. They found a place with a campfire burning on the shore, and a man cooking shepherd’s pie in the embers. He initially cocked a rifle, but someone made a Humanity Challenge and he invited them to share dinner (the characters contributed, too). They talked a bit; some of the boats here were useless, some were still inhabited (he mentioned one had a family with a baby, but they were asleep). He hadn’t been into town lately, as his hip was hurting him.

The characters bedded down for the night, figuring to make a decision about what to do in the morning.

Game Notes: A lot of our game time was eaten up in prep, plus we started late. That said, I should have been more direct in putting in a Removal Challenge, because that’s the only way to set up the characters to make the essential choice. So that’s definitely where we’ll started next time.

All in all, though, I think the situation set-up works and I like the characters we have. Shame that at least some of them are probably doomed.