[Fantastical Adventure] The Purple Pearl of Pinoche!

[Marshall Burns]

We a played a bit of one of my new games, Fantastical Adventure, last night.  It's, um, well, I still haven't figured out how to explain it properly.  The setting is the planet Earth during a highly fictionalized and anachronistic late Victorian era, drawing heavily from Victorian fantastic fiction and penny dreadfuls as well as their descendents, pulp adventure and pulp sci-fi (both comics and novels).  Plus a bit of those silent films with artsy, Expressionist touches for a good measure.

Forbidden cities, zeppelins, pterodactyls, cavalry sabers, motorcars, Vikings preserved in ice, Gatling guns, mummies, Mayan centipede gods, abominable snowmen, giant condors, volcano cults, submarines, voodoo queens, nitroglycerine, clockwork, privateers, Chinese sorcerors, conspiracies against the Crown, ironclads, nosferatu, mad science, jazz music, inadvisable magic, rockets to the moon, gunslingers, mole people, Gypsies, army ants, opera capes, steam gurneys, domino masks; the "fantastical adventure" style is all of these things, and things in a similar spirit, tossed into a blender for no good reason other than that they make me go, "Gee, golly, wow."

System-wise, it's an experiment in non-numerical character components, and also seeing what else I can make playing cards do in place of dice.  The great thing about cards is that they give you quantitative and qualitative data at the same time, which makes me geek out to no end. 

The scratch first draft of the rules can be checked out here.  We didn't exactly follow it; we broke a few rules on accident, and forgot about one or two, but, hey, we were playing it on really short notice.


The Characters
I wish I had the character sheets with me, 'cause they were pretty cool.  Characters are described in terms of four "Facets" that describe an aspect of the character's background and/or abilities.  Any skills, abilities, knowledge, gear, contacts, and other resources that are associated with a given Facet, you can assume the character has access to.  You also "flesh out" your facets by writing a bit about them, in character, on the sheet (this is why I wish I had the character sheets on hand).

Stephen:  Jules Advent, gentleman adventurer.  His Facets were that was Editor in Chief of the Nightside Times (a rag that exposes the faults of the upper classes), the gentleman heir to a lucrative rubber enterprise, his sense of social justice, and his secret identity as a masked vigilante (as which he fights against social injustice)

Courtney:  Blythe (forgot her last name).  Her facets were that she was a witch doctor in a long line of witch doctors (and orphaned), her trusty pouch of itching powder, her fast hands (from growing up on the streets as a result of being orphaned), and her crow familiar.

Me:  Vic Fortune.  His facets were his uncanny ability in games of chance (discovered only when he played a hand of poker with the Grim Reaper with his own soul as the stakes during a near-death experience), dancing (learned from a variety of beautiful women around the world), skill with a bowie knife, and he's a treasure hunter extraordinaire.


We couldn't decide how to start a story (which is a really big thing the rules are lacking), so I suggested that maybe we could just do a couple rounds of conflicts to test the system.  As an arena for this, Stephen asserted that the characters had all just jumped aboard a pirate ship.  Then I said, "Hey, wait, Jules and Blythe have, but Vic is already there.  He doesn't like it, but he's forced to cooperate with the pirates because they've taken the Purple Pearl of Pinoche from him, and without the pirates he'll never find out where it is now."  (I stole "the Purple Pearl of Pinoche" from the song "Wild Sea" by the Aquabats).  As for the pirates, we used the example crew from the rules, the crew of the Prosperous Wind, led by Captain Bear, who became Captain Beard when Stephen mistakenly called him that--I didn't correct him, and we went with it, because that's the best pirate name I've ever heard of

So we decided that everyone was after the pearl.  Blythe and Jules sneak past some pirates and split up.  Blythe snuck below deck, while Jules was headed for the helm.  But he was noticed by some pirates, and he was forced to fight them.  Vic Fortune emerged on deck, alerted by all the commotion on deck.  "You!" he said, "You're after the Pearl!  I simply cannot allow that!"  and he joined in on the battle.

While below deck, Blythe puts a sleeping drug in the grog, Jules manages to separate himself from the melee and make it up to the helm.  Vic easily follows, doing a tango up the stairway.  Jules turns the wheel violently to the side (at which point Vic shouts, "You fool!  You don't realize what you're doing!") in an effort to throw everyone off balance, but to no avail, as the pirates were too salty to fall for such a trick; Vic merely used his dancing ability, remarking that "It is but a rather extreme waltz!"  He deals Jules a clout above the eyes and corrects the ship's trajectory.

Having not found the pearl, Blythe begins to emerge from below deck.  She locates the "emergency anchor release" lever (technical inaccuracy is fine and encouraged in Fantastical Adventure!).  When the ship, which was moving really really fast, reaches the end of the slack on the anchor chain, the sudden shock rocks the whole ship and causes severe damage to the hull.  The ship starts taking on water.  And Vic can now see into the captain's quarters where he sees, loosed by the force.

Vic jumps down to obtain the pearl, but who should come up behind him but Captain Beard himself!  (who we gave the Facets "Pirate," "Fierce," "Greed," and "Hoarder").  He throws Vic to the floor and pockets the Pearl.

This prompts a hilarious and seemingly choreographed series of conflicts in which the Pearl changes hands back and forth several times, usually flying through the air as one person is hit, to be conveniently caught by someone else.  Lots of great swashbuckling maneuvers, swinging on ropes and that dagger-down-the-sail trick, as the ship begins sinking.  There was another sudden rock as part of the ship broke under the weight of the water it was taking on; Jules and Blythe had just made it into the only lifeboat, while the pirates and Captain Beard  easily managed to keep their balance (because they were used to this by now).  Vic Fortune, however, "died"* and fell overboard, where he vanished into the briny deep.  Blythe and Jules made it away, as the ship went down.  Roleplaying Captain Beard, I made the quip, "The captain always goes down with the ship, even if it's the third time.  Arrr."

I absolutely fell in love with the resolution system.  I mean, I made it, so I'm a bit biased, but it did exactly what I hoped it would.  It's so fast, and it flows so seamlessly into narration once you get the hang of it.

We didn't give away as many of the Applause tokens as I had hoped we would; these are 10 tokens that everyone gets and you give them away when somebody comes up with something you liked, and you would like to applaud them.  This changes them into Author tokens, which are used for various Author powers (similar to TILT! in Super Action Now!). I think everyone needs to be encouraged to be as generous as they like with them.  But, then, only one Author token was even used; most of the time, things were accomplished by conflict resolution.  (I would give some examples if I could remember them; they went by so fast, and were so numerous, that it's difficult to recall them).

Since there were only three of us, the NPCs got pawned around a lot.  Me and Stephen passed Captain Beard between us so many times it was almost a little silly, but it actually worked very well.

I realized later, after I went home, that what we had done was more than just a test of the conflict system; it was a cool in media res chunk of a story.  What we have to do next time is go back chronologically and explain how everyone ended up in that situation in the first place; how did Blythe and Jules end up together?  Why does Blythe want the pearl so badly (she even attacked Jules a few times to get the pearl from him; Jules, being a gentleman, never reciprocated the violence, even after being hit in the face by itching powder)?  How did Vic get the pearl in the first place, and how did the pirates get it from him?

I'm all kinds of looking forward to finding out

-Marshall

* Vic "died" as per the rules, which enable a "dead" character to return at any time (for 3 Author tokens) and give a monologue in which they explain how they miraculously survived.

[jag]

Is this a successor of, replacement for, or unrelated to, Super Action Now?

I ask because it seems to tell a very similar style of story -- perhaps less whimsical, but I could imagine making Bubba (that was the biker's name?) using four facets...

[Marshall Burns]

It is indeed related to Super Action Now!; specifically, it's an attempt to apply SAN!'s principles to a more concentrated, story-based aim.  Plus an experiment with qualitative character components.