[Reaper Beauties] Giving your Heart to a Hungry Ghost - for the Family's Honor

[Elliott]

First playtest of my first decent game, and it went great!

My friends Jen, Alex and Becca entered play of Reaper Beauties - the game of magical girls reaping Hungry Ghosts in a podunk town in Japan, with the help of their good friend Kwan Yin (call her Kan-chan) - with some trepidation, and came out of it knowing that it was a great game that worked very well, but it wasn't their game - words I love and hate at the same time.  It means I'm doing SOMETHING right, god knows.

We made characters together, which, really, is needful for Reaper Beauties.  Everyone Got It quickly.

This is mostly about Becca and her character.  She had her heart set on a criminal/thiefy type, so chose the daughter of a "daughter" of the Korean Yakuza.  Characters in Reaper Beauties are defined by four Passions for people that they know and love, hate or fear (or fear for) for compelling reasons, so Becca defined her rich korean Yakuza brat, Juun, with (don't have the sheet, so I may misremember the exact wordings) "I fear my mother's side - the Korean side - of my family, as I know they are dangerous criminals,"  "I hate my grandfather, as he would have disowned my father for marrying a Korean if he wasn't his only son," "I love my father, who is strong and provides for me," "I love my kind and caring Mother."

Jen's character's conflicts focused on adoption by Chinese parents and her birthmother coming out of the blue, and we never got to Alex's Gaijin Love Triangle Of Romantic Doomyness, but that's not here or there.

We had some initial problems trying to set scenes in such a way that everyone was involved.  Easily fixed by ruling that for all future iterations, one Passion had to be about another Reaper Beauty - the one on your right, in fact.

The way conflict res works in this game is that after an initial dice roll, you spend Chi Tokens - your force of intention - and describe how you make things worser and worser to get your way.  If you give up, you take the spent Chi.  If you spend your last Chi Token on a conflict, then you've given your character to the Ghost - they become an NPC, and an asshole NPC at that - until everyone else wins.  If the Ghost gets his Chi taken, you win.

So her grandfather came into Juun's house (yes, house) while apologizing for treating his son and daughter badly, for the sake of a lovely grandaughter to spoil rotten.  This was at the same time that the Ghost, acting through a Mob boss, an Oyabun, was going to have a flunky with around 7 fingers, give or take, drop off a package at the house for Juun's mom. 

Conflict between Juun and her mother ensued.

Juun wanted to spend a pleasant evening with her grandfather FAR AWAY FROM THE HOUSE so that he wouldn't learn about the Yakuza dealings.  Mom wanted to argue long and loud with 'the man who ruined my husband's life' which would certianly take long enough that a rather conspicuously Korean Yakuza dude would come in with a package for mom.  It got ugly fast, naturally.

Becca spent her last Chi Token without thinking.  I said, "Consider your position."

She did, then said, "You know, I want to beat the Hungry Ghost - but Juun wouldn't.  This is too important to her."  Then she spent it and described walking out of the house arm in arm with Okaasan.

I took the chip, described her hollow victory, and said, "Juun's heart now belongs to the Hungry Ghost.  Hand over your character sheet, Becca."

Jen went, "Time out.  We need to discuss tactics.  NOW."

Fun stuff all around, I tells ya.  The system WORKS at making people CARE.