Dracula was Father Christmas!

[Jack Aidley]

So I decided to take a bit of a break from my usual game, and run a brief 'jaunt'.

I wanted to experiment with giving the players more in the way of director stance, and told the players they didn't have to either be on the same side, like or even assist each other. This is quite different to how I usually run. I did make clear that I would not allow hosing of each others characters' though.

We decided to play a modern-day wizards game in a pretty freeform style, I got the players to pick one area of magic they excelled at, one they sucked at or just plain couldn't do and a way in which the cast magic. I set the power level pretty high. They came up with these guys:

Argoth (male): capable of some time manipulation magic (normally wizards can do any time magic), terrible at illusion, casts simple spells by shouting an arcane word, and more complicated spells by performing elaborate rituals using spell components and arcane symbols.

Anook (female): excels at life-magic - healing, raising the dead, etc. Really bad at creation. Casts magic through music, using an old school recorder

Trevor (male) : excels at elemental magic, can't do any people effecting magic. Casts magic by looking at his target, or picturing it in his head.

In pre-play discussion between the players we fleshed out these guys a bit. Turns out Trevor is a 22 year old postman living on the coast of Scotland, he's a bit of a prankster and an avid campaigner, while not really involved in the wizard's organised world. Argoth's player asked to be as old as I'd let him, so I suggested he was born in 178AD, and lives in an abandoned military bunker in Transylvania. He's obsessed with magical means to extend his life, and is the current chair of the Wizard's Council as one of the oldest wizard's alive today. We also established that Dracula is actually a wizard who casts magic through rituals involving human blood, and Merlin is another wizard, still alive (wizard's can tell when another wizard dies) but not seen in 1400 years. Anook still lives in Pudding Lane, London where she was born in 1667. She is "helping" (yup, her player actually made quotes marks in the air when she said it) Argoth with his research. We also established that the wizards are trying to avoid being known about by 'mortals'.

Phew. That's enough scene setting. I'll get on to talking about the game now.

From the start the players got really well into the 'at odds but not knobbing' style of play. They also really helped flesh out each other's characters. Robin's portrayal of Argoth as a doddering old man with a constant harking back to the old ways and tradition and a total lack of understanding of the modern world but at the same time staggering power achieved through ritual was a masterpiece, while Anook's unnoticed patronising of him was beautiful to watch.

Play began with Trevor causing all sorts of trouble in Bristol by joining a protest group, and Argoth being summoned to clean up and find out what was going on. Anook accompanied him. We had an excellent sequence as the two of them tracked down and cleaned up after Trevor. Including Anook raising two security guards Trevor had accidentally killed (he stopped the air going into their lungs to temporarily disable them and forgot to put it back...) and Argoth rescuing and then erasing the memory of one poor individual Trevor had entombed fourteen feet under the ground and then forgotten about. They also discovered years of accumulated traces of infernal portals under the Iron Bridge.

I was really pleased with how well the players got into the swing of wielding insane levels of power, and just saying what happened, rather than asking 'can I raise him from the dead', 'can I walk though the wall' all the time. Ant (Trevor's player) did a wonderful depiction of a shell-suiting wearing prick with phenomenal cosmic powers, and a rather casual attitude to others life and liberty. I was also surprised by how much 'story' they spun with barely any involvement from me.

Eventually Argoth and Anook arrived at Trevor's cottage in Scotland, having worked out that he was very powerful, but also very sloppy. After a bit of a wait (Trevor was in the Amazon, replanting forests), the three finally met up in a great bit of interaction between the short-termist Trevor to whom a year was a long time and the ancient Argoth to whom fifty years was nothing. When asked where he learned magic from Trevor replied "There was this dog..."

Argoth "Oh god, not him. I've told him about this before."

Class. Pure class. When it came out in conversation that Merlin was real, there occurred my favourite moment in the game, from which this thread gets its title:

Trevor "What about Father Christmas?"
Argoth "Sorry, no, that was one of Dracula's little pranks" !!

There then occurred the one bit of play I wasn't so sure about. Robin asked me out of the room to discuss something in secret. He had Argoth contact the Wizard's Council and ask for Anook to be allowed to deal with the situation and have it viewed as an assessment of her as his potential replacement on the Council and have them agree. Now, I'm not too big on players having secrets from one another so I pointed out he could just tell them all, and let them play off it. But he said he'd rather keep it secret, and having allowed the players such autonomy over the game I didn't want to push the matter. I expect it'll be no biggy, but my feeling is better mileage could be got out of it if the other players knew.

The session finished with them returning to the Iron Bridge and Trevor being persuaded to set up a watching spell in a tree to inform them of any demon activity.

[Mike Holmes]

Cool. I've been wanting to see some postings about freeform stuff. You were the GM from what I get? Meaning that you ran "the world"?

Mike

[Jack Aidley]

Yeah, I was the GM. Although I was 'the world' a lot less than in my usual play style. I found my major role was simply moving the 'ball' between the players to make sure they got enough screentime. After the initial setup nearly everything that followed came from the players.