[The Pool] Eden Falls - Find a Villain

[jburneko]

I've been wanting to post about my religious-flavored "superhero" game for some time now.  The game is now in it's sixth or seventh session and is going incredibly well.  When games are going well Actual Play posts for me are hard because they're either just a) transcripts of in game events or shout out posts of "Yay!  The game is going well!"  Not very interesting in either case.

So, last time I posted about Eden Falls I believe I mentioned that I had six players.  One of the players decided between the character creation session and the first session of play that he didn't want to play so I'm down to five players.  A brief recap of who those characters are:

Hannah Michaels whose family founded the city of Eden Falls.  She's the caretaker of the city cemetery and contains the combined memories of all her ancestors.

Brother Denis, a monk skilled in the natural sciences, in tune with nature and emits emotion altering pheromones.

Dumah, a holy sorcerer charged with guarding the Words of Creation that are located in a cave complex behind the falls.

John Devine aka The Sinner, a hard-core criminal who was hit by a truck and received a vision of hell as well as the ability to pass this vision on to others.  He seeks to free-himself by punishing his old associates and seeking forgiveness from his victims.

Ephany, a warrior prophet from a far away island who has traveled to Eden Falls to stop an apocalypse she saw in one of her visions.

I think the two player introduced elements that have had the biggest effect of the flavor of the game are the Words of Creation and the vision of the apocalypse.  I wasn't exactly thinking along the lines of such extreme things and they've added a sort of over-the-top Sandmanesq surrealness to the game I wasn't expecting.  My own contributions during actual play along these lines have included the falls turning to blood, more than one vision of angels, the source of John Devine's hell vision being a bet between god and the devil, and an unborn child who may-or-may not be the second coming of Christ.

In a couple of neat places the players have compounded this.  At one point John Devine passed on his vision to Brother Denis.  Brother Denis's player used his end-of-session sentence to note that he could pass the vision on as well.  Thus there is this vision of hell that is spreading like a virus through the populous of Eden Falls.  Ephany's player used a monologue of victory to hint that her more pagan gods may want her to kill the unborn child.

All of this is integrated with a rather straightforward crime drama.  Since the start of play there have been five murders, one perpetrated by a PC and one committed in an uncaring PCs presence, one suicide, and a brewing gang war over missing bootleg liquor.

The interesting variable in all of this is Dumah, both on a player level and a character level.  I stated in my last post about this game that Dumah's player is relatively new to the group and comes mostly from a hardcore D&D background.  I was very surprised at how well he took to the mechanics of The Pool.  He instantly grasped the core concepts behind the mechanics and contributed what I thought to be a very interesting character concept.

Through actual play Dumah has been the character least committed to a defined course of action.  I can't say the player has done NOTHING because he's done quite a lot.  He's been in several scenes with all of the PCs, the Words of Creation have gone missing (my contribution, not his) and he's out looking for them.  He's done a lot of stuff but that stuff has mostly been assisting or hindering the actions taken by other PCs.  I also don't think the player has been playing "badly" as he has been constantly engaged and contributing constructively all through the course of play.

So, I want it to be perfectly clear that what I'm about to say is not a complaint but rather just an interested observation that may or may not be wildly off base.  I feel like the player is "waiting" for something.  There seems to be hesitancy to his actions.  I can't help but wonder if this doesn't come from the player's mainly D&D background.  I think he may be waiting to find out who the villain is.

I think he's a little bewilder by the fact that my "villainous" NPC aren't exactly obvious over lording sources of evil and in many cases one or more PCs have sided with them.  Brother Denis has been aiding the power-hungry religious zealot mayor in organizing a witch-hunt against the "demon" John Devine.  That witch-hunt grew riotous last session and Brother Denis's player used a monologue of victory to describe how he and the organized towns folk were setting fire to several buildings.  John Devine himself has killed one person and has demonstrated that he is oblivious to human compassion.  Sebastian Bach, is my aristocratic crime lord, think evil Percy Blakeney, also he may be the grandfather of the unborn child.  Hannah has decided that the child's mother would be safer staying with him than with her own husband who is the Sheriff of Eden Falls.  Ephany also stood by while Bach executed one of his henchmen for sleeping with Bach's wife.

So the question "Who's the bad guy?" doesn't exactly have an easy answer.  I'm very curious to see how much pressure has to build before Dumah makes a stand, if any.

Hope this was interesting.

Jesse

[Andrew Norris]

I started to post this on RPG.net, but then realized there were Forge issues that would probably get more of a response here.

Interesting read. I think you could be right that the player coming from D&D may be bringing a more reactive take on play to the table, but that's not necessarily bad.

In the D20Modern game I'm running, I've noticed all of the characters but one have exhibited drastic changes in their behavior as they come to terms with what's going on. We've actually played some troupe style, as well, meaning that all the *players* (except for the one who runs the character above) have done that as well.

But this one guy, he's calm and collected, he keeps things together when everyone else is losing their head. It could be a symptom of incoherency, but I think right now he's enjoying a rather basic Sim/Exploration of Character that boils down to "I have a solid head on my shoulders". That, and I think he's been soaking up the protagonization that goes with having a character be hypercompetant and unrattled.

I've stopped worrying about it, because I feel that sometime soon, this character is going to be put in a situation where he's going to have to make a hard choice in a no-win situation, and the contrast will be dramatic. I don't want to force a mode switch on any of my players, but I do feel like there's going to be some Narr play addressing the premise "How much can you take?" or possibly, as in your case, "What's the source of evil here?"

The reason I post all this is to say that it looks like you're in a similar situation, and I wouldn't worry about it. If Dumah's player is engaged, then tying his kicker into other plot threads (which you seem to be doing) should lead to some interesting situations.