Another Birthday Gift for Ron

[Eszed]

Ron wants stories of favorite characters and cool role-playing moments, so I'll tell you all about Eszed and Szilvasi, the greatest double-act in history.

Two friends introduced me to Ars Magica a few years ago, and since it's pretty complex, rules-wise, we thought the best thing would be for me to roll up a couple of grogs (mundane characters who support the coven of main PC mages) and play them for the first session to absorb the rules a bit, then the next time we played I could create a magus and go on from there.  

Well, I roll for char gen, and boy do I roll badly.  Ars Magica uses a -5 to +5 range for basic traits, with 0 being dead average in each.  Each of the characters I roll is going to have maybe one positive trait and an average value of -2 or -3.

'But hey' I  think, 'they're only going to be grogs.  What does it matter?'  

I don't know where the idea came from, unless I'd been reading something about the subject, but I decided the first character was a castrato, it explained his ridiculously low strength stat, sounded interesting, and made him an amazing singer.  I bought his Charisma scores up to a fairly high level, and we decided he'd run away from a monastery (where he'd been a choir, um, boy.  He, quite understandably, had some issues with the church).  

Our setting was 13th century Bohemia, so I twisted around the names of a couple Hungarian students I had and called him Szilvasi.

The other character had a -5 for Intelligence, the lowest possible value, and I got this wonderful image of a large man with Down's Syndrome, resolutely sweet-natured, but unable to make sense of the world on his own.  I gave him animal-handling skill, because the party needed that, and again, just because it sounded interesting I scratched down that he had an empathetic mystical sort of sixth sense.  His name (since 'Szilvasi' had got us laughing about Hungarian names) was Eszed.

They were gypsies.  Eszed looked after the ox and the chickens and the goats.  Szilvasi played and sang and looked after Eszed.  Wendy's character, a young and hot-tempered hedge-wizard, tried to boss us around.  David played a hermetic mage who was trying to get Wendy's character into hermetic training, and generally GMed.

Szilvasi and Eszed began almost as comic relief.  I'm one of those role-players who likes funny voices and stuff like that, so Eszed immediately had a real stooge-like persona, and Szilvasi (inevitably) an outrageous falsetto.

Very shortly though, I started discovering things about these two characters which moved them far beyond charicature.  

First of all I discovered Szilvasi's anger.  He happened to impress the bishop of some place we were passing through (I absolutely killed on my Charisma or whatever roll it was to overawe him with Szilvasi's singing).  The roll was so high that the only justification was that he was be offering Szilvasi a job on the spot.  He practically begged the eunuch to come live in his household and be the cantor in his private chapel.  Now this woud be any jongleur's dream, but I realised that there was no way, absolutely NO WAY that Szilvasi, who'd been mutilated by the church, was going to go back into an even remotely monastic enviroment.  Szilvasi turned him down, which I think wrecked some GM plans, made the bishop into an enemy, and forced us back out onto the road.

Meanwhile Eszed is in the background.  The typical moment for him was where he'd get some kind real strong feeling about something (that sixth sense), but be utterly unable to communicate it.  'Uhhhh, Szilvasi?'  he'd say, and I'd mime his distress.  Szilvasi would inevitably snap at him, which would hurt Eszed's feelings, and then Szilvasi and the others would charge ahead into trouble, poor Eszed shambling along behind shaking his head in horrified misery.

We played a couple of sessions, and I was having such fun with these two characters that I passed on the idea of making a mage.

The best moment of all, the best roleplaying I've ever had, came in our fourth or fifth session.  We encountered some Fransiscan friairs -- I don't remember how it went at first; I think they were being chased by an inquisitor who'd also given us a hard time (in the 13th c. Fransiscans were still a heretic movement) -- Szilvasi wanted to sell them out, was overruled by the two mages, and took it bitterly.  Anyway, Eszed was impressed by the Franciscans' care for animals, and they started telling him about Jesus, about how Christ cared for animals, and how Jesus cared for him.  I pause and ask to roll for Eszed's mystic sense.  It's off the charts.  Eszed keeps asking questions, 'Jesus love me?  love ME?  uhhh . . .'  Eszed prays all night long, and in the morning the two frairs offer him communion and give him a pure white dove in a cage.  He is enraptured, 'Jesus love me, Jesus love ME!'.  He opens the cage, takes out the dove, smooths it feathers, it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.  He kisses it, and throws it into the morning light.  The dove flies free and the Eszed and the two friars fall to their knees.

Meanwhile, Szilvasi, feeling ill-used, goes to a tavern.  He drinks alot.  Curses all priests in the most scatological terms (I recalled my Chaucer here), gets drunk enough and angry enough that he tries to take one of the prostitutes upstairs.  It doesn't work of course, and he stands there breeches down, shouting curses at the girl and at the monks who did this to him until the bouncers slug him into unconsciousness and throw him into the gutter.  When he wakes up, just before dawn, he's missing his lute and his shoes.

Szilvasi drags himself back to the stable where he and Eszed were to sleep, and passes out again.  Eszed comes back home after his night of prayer, and his one thought is to share his rapture with his friend.  He shakes Szilvasi awake and starts stammering about the light and the dove and Jesus and beauty and love and Szilvasi shouts 'shut the f--- up you stupid c---' and slaps him twice across the face.

*****

All that went down without planning or notes or anything like that.  We made rolls at places where it seemed like we needed them, but it was all just riffing among the three of us playing -- there was more going on with the mages, so we'd cut back and forth to their scenes too -- and when we finished that scene we all had goose-pimples it was so dramatic.

At the time I didn't know how describe what was going on in a theoretical sense, but I've been lurking on the Forge for a few months, so I think it represented a huge discovery of Premise.  Two premises, actually.  Religion and Friendship.  We didn't start out with anything like that in mind -- and remember, my character choices were made on the basis of nothing besides justifying some seriously unballanced dice-rolls during character generation -- but somehow we drifted into RP that looks alot like what Ron describes here on the Forge.

We, alas, did not continue past that scene.  The school year ended, I got sick and went into hospital for a while, then I moved back to this country and Eszed and Szilvasi went into permanent haitus.  To this day I've never played a 'real' Ars Magica character, but I still think, almost with reverence, of beautiful but broken Szilvasi, my befuddled and beatific Eszed, as the most real and moving characters I've ever played.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Now that's why people need to post this stuff in Actual Play.

"Howwww can I be playing Narrrrrrativist? I didn't think about Premise at all!"

That's how. What you're describing, Eszed, is what I and my friends discovered in playing Champions back in the early 1980s, and I know that it's a common discovery. The grim truth is that, in the absence of a solid Social Contract to sustain it (the Creative Agenda), and in the absence of a system that ties in a reward system, it tends to disappear when the group membership changes even a little.

Why isn't it just Character Exploration (cries the peanut gallery)? Well, that will come down to a group dynamic thing. Eszed, even though you were playing two characters simultaneously, I gather from your writeup that everyone was involved. Sometimes we call this "audience" around here, but I think some people mis-read that to mean "passive" or "disconnected," so I guess I'll just say "involved."

Were they involved merely in appreciating your histrionics? I don't think so. I think it sounds like Premise in action to me.

What I'd like to know now is whether you've had any similar experiences in which two players (GM or not), with one character each, achieve a similar Creative Agenda type interaction.

Best,
Ron

Best,
Ron

[Neylana]

Happy birthday, Ron!

That's a great story. Really makes it hard for me to pick a story to tell. There are so many moments in roleplaying that have caught my imagination. But I guess I'll tell the one that comes to me the strongest.

Amazingly, it was at a cross-genre White Wolf LARP. This LARP was lax on the no-touching rule. All violent contact was banned, but other than that, it was on player agreement. Every player talks about it with the players they are about to come into contact with. If you violate that agreement, you get into trouble.

This game, at the time, also ran under the motto "Everything blows up on Saturday night." Literally. We had a bar that blew up every week, only to be replaced. IC violence ran rampant. And there were deep-seeded friendships and rivalries among every supernatural race.

Okay, so it was hokey. It still had its moments.

One of the longest running characters I've ever had in my life was handed to me as an NPC in this game. A Black Spiral Dancer. With me not knowing a thing about Werewolf. The Werewolf ST let me work out all the details of the character. The only thing about the character that was a requirement was a Pure Breed rating of 5. Yes, she looked just like the Spirals' ancestors, the White Howlers. It does get sillier, trust me. This all had something to do with a storyline wherein a pure-blooded specimen of each tribe was needed.

Once finished making the character (a Ragabash who had been kidnapped by the Spirals at age 7, raised by them, and thus didn't know anything but their party line), the GM set me out, telling me to run around, cause trouble, and let myself get caught. No problem.

So, I run around. No trouble to be had, except that about two minutes into it, I'm spotted by other Werewolves and the mighty chase begins. They catch me, drag me back to the caern (no, I didn't let them really drag me), and arguments ensue. We should kill her. No, we should cleanse her.

So they cleanse her... not even really thinking about the fact that cleansing a Spiral doesn't really work all that well if they don't want to change. Being a Ragabash, she went along with it. Hey, she's in a Gaian caern. What better way to mess things up than hang around, try to fit in, cause arguments and taint that source of power with her very presence? At some point during this time, GMs change, the new GM decides that the storyline was stupid, but doesn't get rid of the NPC, telling me to do whatever I want.

So she gets into a pack, builds friendship which are very real to her (if somewhat twisted in her mind), and actually falls in love with one of her packmates (a rather naive female Silver Fang who truly believed that everyone was honestly good inside). Some huge amount of drama later, something big happens (I can't even remember what it was anymore), which causes my character to break down into a pile of tears and proclaim her love for her packmate.

I have a problem that some people would love to have. I don't take my characters' emotions onto myself, but I show the physical signs of them. I have, in the past, had panic attacks because my character was upset. It's lame because I can't turn it off.

So there I am, collapsing onto the cold bricks of the square at the local University, into the arms of the woman playing my character's packmate, in tears. She collects me into her lap, gently caresses my hair, and tries to get what's wrong out of me, at which point, I tearfully and loudly call to the skies "I love you!" And once again bursts into sobs, my chest heaving.

My mother walks by, about 20 feet away, heading to some Changeling event she was playing in. She hears my yell (but not what it was I said), looks over, and immediately becomes worried. I'm her baby, and I'm bawling my eyes out. So what can a mother do? She comes over and asks if everything is alright.

Both me and the other woman burst into laughter. It was just too funny. And after explaining it to my mom, I gave her a hug, sent her on her way, and it took us about 2 seconds to get back into the scene.

[Lisa Padol]

Cool stories both. Can we have some more?

-Lisa

[Andrew Cooper]

Happy Birthday Ron!

Is it sad that the character that I remember most vividly and my players probably loved more than anyone else was an NPC?  He started out as an NPC in a campaign where I was a player and he was my character's best friend.  I moved away and started GMing a game at my new location and I liked the fellow so much I plopped him down in that game too and he soon became the party favorite there.

I guess I should say a little more about him.  His name was Thistle Thornapple and he was a halfling Fighter / Thief in AD&D 2nd Edition.  His personality was such that he was always affable, completely confident, would talk your ear off non-stop if you let him and he always seemed to get the party into trouble.  Also, he always seemed to have a scheme to make tons of money that was completely insane but always seemed to work.

As a player,  I remember all the silly things we did with or because of Thistle.  

I remember the DM just giving us a look of incredulity when we dropped everything and decided to follow up on Thistle's suggestion to "go to the Swamp of Old Guys where there's just treasure lyin' around on the ground."  He had just had Thistle say that on a lark as one of the crazy things the halfling was rambling on about but we all just said, "Hey, screw it.  That's sounds cool."  Of course, "The Swamp of Old Guys" was really The Mere of Dead Men and was an incredibly dangerous and haunted place.  The DM had to scratch everything he had planned and come up with something on the spot because he certainly hadn't ever expected us to take Thistle seriously.

Thistle challenged the Priest of Ilmater (the God of Suffering) to an eating contest.  The stakes were if Thistle lost, he would wear boots (which he hated) for a whole day.  If the Priest lost, he would carry Thistle on his shoulders for the whole day.  Thistle cheated, of course, and won.  The  Priest carried him for the whole day while Thistle had gone a purchased a riding crop from somewhere.  My character ratted him out after the day of watching with amusement.  Then Thistle had to wear boot for a whole day.  He went a bought a donkey and rode the whole time.

In the campaign I was running....

The party (affectionately called The Testosterone Trio, by me) had been royal pains in the ass of the "bad guys", a mercenary group called the Bloody Six.  One of the BS was an accomplished Illusionist and with some spells caused the party to be implicated in several grizzly murders.  So, now the party is in a seedy tavern discussing the fact that they are friendless, in a foreign city and wanted Dead or Alive for a reward of 10,000 gold pieces.  Their only way out of town was hitching a ride with a privateer who wants 5,000 gps up front for berthing them and their horses on his ship.  Suddenly Thistle's eyes light up and he says, "I know where I can get 5,000 gold!"  No one in the party even questioned him.  They just told him to do it.  Off he goes.  Long story made short.  He turns them in for the reward and then helps them escape.

I won't even go into how he spent the whole party's stash of money on a book called, "How to Train Platipus" or how he killed the black dragon that fell on top of him.

Anyway.... I'm off.  See ya.

[Ron Edwards]

Wait! Wait!

The first story was great. The second two are emphatically unwanted presents.

What's the difference? Reflection on the part of the writer. You're not doing this to impress me - you should be doing this in order to consider what it is you actually gain and enjoy from your role-playing experiences.

From Neylana, all I see from what's been posted is Drama Queen stuff - acting weird in public. From Andrew (Gaerik), all I see is a standard "it was fun playing this guy 'cause he was cool" post. I'd like to ask a little more from both of you. Check out Eszed's post again.

Best,
Ron

P.S. My birthday is actually in September. The recent "birthday present" threads are spinoffs from the Forge Birthday Forum we enjoyed last week, hence the name.

[Eszed]

Ron writes:

What I'd like to know now is whether you've had any similar experiences in which two players (GM or not), with one character each, achieve a similar Creative Agenda type interaction.

Yes.  But they've never been sustained to the point of really gripping drama.  

The story I told happened in the UK a few years ago when I was living there.  My RP group here at home is a long-time bunch of friends; several of us have been RPing together since high-school AD&D days, and our most natural style is along the lines of what one Forge-ite calls Gentleman Gamism.  Which is great fun, both socially and RP-wise, but means typically cede most of the world and plot responsiblities to the GM.  The thing is, that's starting (for Real Life reasons) to be a bit of a drain on our usual GM's time, and since he's by far the best GM (and would rather do that than run a PC) he's trying to encourage more director-stance from us.  

No-one else in the group hangs out here at the Forge, and when I've tried to talk in GNS terms eyes tend to glaze over a bit.  (I was an English Major,  among other things, so I kinda get a kick out of theory; they weren't, and don't).  I have been lurking about The Forge the last few months and so I've started to notice different stances and Creative Agendas and the whole bit.  

Anyway, we've been feeling our way towards more Narrativism for the last few months, I and our GM leading the way.  Now that I think about it he has ALWAYS dug Director Stance input in the past; we haven't always been that good about it, or actually that aware of it, which is the issue.  I've now got the vocabulary to describe what happens (and why) when things go spectularly Right, and hopefully the awareness to push things that direction a little more often.  

The thing right now is that my other two friends who play with us regularly (there are more that make it sometimes, but the four of us are the core group) are the eye-glazers -- good role-players, but they're so far a bit leery of assuming Director Stance during play, partly I think out of politeness ('cause they don't want to wreck the GM's plot -- which, since our GM IS good, have always been real good), and because (not having become interested in the Forge) they aren't conscious of different ways of role-playing.

For instance, in our last session (we're playing Savage Worlds in an Napoleonic-era pirate setting the name of which escapes me at the moment; it was our first time with it), we're all on board and English privateer which ambushes (and is in turn surprised by) a French vessel.  My character is an outrageous Frenchman (a royalist, and so an ally of the English against Napoleon), the rest of them are various sea-dog/Master and Commander types.  I hadn't really explained that, so my character's presence and status (especially the fact that he didn't do any work on board the ship) was a bit of a mystery to the others (players as well as characters).

So, crashing broadsides and we all leap over the rail and board the French vessel.  (I told you we're a bit gamist: nothing like a good scrap in the first session!)  I head straight for the French captain, rapier flashing.  As my character and the captain duel I suddenly think how cool it would be to spice this up a bit, so when I have the momentary advantage I yell something like "for our fazzer's sake I would not keel you monsieur.  Throw down your weapon!"  (I told you I like silly voices; I decided to play a Frenchman 'cause I couldn't nail a spanish accent off the top of my head, hehe).  It surprised the heck out of the GM, but he quite happily ran with it.  "Never," he said, "weel I surrender to zee likes of you!"  And off we went again.  We even went back and forth a few more times in the same fashion, adding more details, and since the session we've exchanged a few  emails re-writing my character's back story to work the brother into the mix.  (By the way, I won the fight, disarmed him.  Now I don't know quite what to do . . .  Next session will be a blast!)

Here's the thing, though.  When I said that about the brother, I could see the other players go 'oh, cool!' and make the assumption that that had been planned all along.  Had they known (a few seconds before) that I was just making it up right then, they'd have been a bit nervous about it .

So . . . we're gradually working our way towards a different style of play.  My first order of business is to tell them (first thing next session) that the brother-connection was totally improvised and let them see how cool that was.  We have (at my behest, and with our GM's wholehearted approval) the freedom to use the Savage Worlds bennies as Narrative Points or Plot Points or whatever you call them, but no one really did use them that way last time (I think I was out of bennies when I did the brother thing, so couldn't have spent it then, and anyway they're an important enough meta-game resource [re-rolls and so forth] that it may make people reluctant); I'm not sure everyone is aware of the possibities.

Anyway, that's where I stand.  I'm glad for The Forge for having made me aware of the possibilities . . .

[Emily Care]

Eszed,

Your gift post made me so happy. It reminds me of many of my favorite moments of play.

All that went down without planning or notes or anything like that.  We made rolls at places where it seemed like we needed them, but it was all just riffing among the three of us playing -- there was more going on with the mages, so we'd cut back and forth to their scenes too -- and when we finished that scene we all had goose-pimples it was so dramatic.

That's the good stuff. Thanks for sharing it.

--EC

[DannyK]

...The grim truth is that, in the absence of a solid Social Contract to sustain it (the Creative Agenda), and in the absence of a system that ties in a reward system, it tends to disappear when the group membership changes even a little.

Why isn't it just Character Exploration (cries the peanut gallery)? Well, that will come down to a group dynamic thing. Eszed, even though you were playing two characters simultaneously, I gather from your writeup that everyone was involved. Sometimes we call this "audience" around here, but I think some people mis-read that to mean "passive" or "disconnected," so I guess I'll just say "involved."
(...)
What I'd like to know now is whether you've had any similar experiences in which two players (GM or not), with one character each, achieve a similar Creative Agenda type interaction.

OK, I'll keep this short so it isn't one of those "Let me tell you about my guy" posts... but it totally fits what you said, Ron, and I never understood it until now.

This was an online Vampire game, mixed Sabbat and Camarilla.  My character, Larry, was a Sabbat Malkavian (crazy vampire), with the backstory that his whole pack had been killed by the Camarilla PC's and he had fled in terror.  He was now entering the game on the Sabbat side, and another player agreed to act as "Co-GM" for his intro scene.  His character, Frank, was a tough Sabbat Ventrue with Noir stylings who was in heavy grief for the death of his S.O. in the same attack.  

So, long story short, Frank's player ran a brief scene where the two vamps get acquainted in an all-night juke joint, Larry got recruited, and gets taken home to join the rest of the "family."  This was wonderful, evocative stuff, although not exactly groundbreaking for veteran vampire players.  

Unfortunately, shortly after this Frank's player dropped out and Larry was left with a bunch of other characters and the main GM, none of which were very responsive to Larry's issues.   All the electricity went out of the game for me at that point, not because it was necessarily a bad game, but because the play was so much less intense after that.

Now I think I understand why that one scene with Larry and Frank was so much more intense than anything else: use of Director Stance, compatible issues between the two characters, etc.  But it wasn't sustainable outside that two-character bubble.  

Danny

[Eszed]

I think I understand why that one scene with Larry and Frank was so much more intense than anything else: use of Director Stance, compatible issues between the two characters, etc. But it wasn't sustainable outside that two-character bubble.

Your experience sounds quite similar to mine, in that you drifted into a really really rich play experience without (at the time) quite realizing WHY it was so intense.  

The value of these discussions is because *Yoink!* I now have an awareness of how stuff like this comes to takes place.

The next step is for there to be similarly intense issues connecting each of the characters in play, and for each of the players to play with the awareness of how this works.

(Well duh.  Look at me I've invented . . . dadadaDUM: the WHEEL!)

[Neylana]

From Neylana, all I see from what's been posted is Drama Queen stuff - acting weird in public.

In this case, appearances can be deceiving. Maybe I just didn't express myself well enough. My reasons for going to a LARP are not to act weird in public, but simply because there was no other games going on and all my friends were going. I prefer much smaller table-top games, preferably in places where the gamers won't be noticed.

The reason this character, and even that particular scene came to mind was that it was such an emotionally involved character, finding friendship and love among the good and pure, while being by her very nature evil. She really stretched the limits on what people (including me) thought evil really was. Is it really evil if she simply doesn't know better, or comes from a culture that has different beliefs? Exactly how much will people put up with for the sake of friendship and 'redeeming' a lost soul? I was proud to be able to test my limits and the limits of the other characters, and in the end, the personalities of all characters faced with my character were far more defined.

[Ron Edwards]

Ah! That did it. Very nice, and thank you.

Do you see the event as carrying the whole "evil transfigured" point to anyone else involved in the scene?

Best,
Ron

[Neylana]

Ah! That did it. Very nice, and thank you.

Do you see the event as carrying the whole "evil transfigured" point to anyone else involved in the scene?

To a certain extent, yes. There had been a bit of conflict on similar subjects before. In the society she had found herself in, it is wrong for a werewolf to experience physical intimacy with another werewolf. In her own, it was encouraged. She had to learn the hard way that her new friends didn't appreciate such advances. So this was a similar, but different sort of conflict.

Romantic love is not the same as physical love, but is still looked down on in this situation. The target of such, being so insistant that all people are inherently good, saw this as yet another opportunity to teach my character the 'right' way to be (which my character saw as a sort of betrayal, and she later acted on it) and 'proof' that she could change (because evil cannot love). When other people heard, however, they were not even that understanding. To them, it was just another indication that she didn't fit in.

Some few did begin to question their preconceptions about her and her kind, and finally opened themselves to listen to what she was taught about the world, trying not to judge immediately whether such teachings were evil or not. And many finally decided that the views the 'evil' side had about things made a certain amount of sense... a 'necessary' evil, as it were.

In the end, a bunch of close-minded combat-mongers hunted her down, and her friends were given a choice. Help her against the others or not. One even went so far as to willingly change sides, which was really a beautiful scene.

[Ron Edwards]

Fan-tastic! I'm going to make a GNS point now.

(Pause while readers scatter to the winds)

This is Narrativist play. Did you use funky mechanics and Director Stance and all kinds of weird narration-trading? No. You addressed Premise, as a group, and that's all it takes.

Best,
Ron

[Eric J-D]

Reading these posts has been really enjoyable, and resurrected some important (at least to me and my friends) early gaming experiences of my own.  So, at the risk of joining the party late, I thought I would contribute one of my own.

The first game I played in where I started realize, even if only dimly, the power that this hobby could have was a Runequest game.  Just to set the context, this was back in the day, you understand, when Chaosium was putting out tremendous stuff.  The City of Pavis and Borderlands supplements had just come out, and we were their market.

So my friend had decided to start a game set in a small settlement that had been conquered by the Lunars.  I can't recall the name of the settlement at the moment, but I'm pretty sure he had made it up and that it wasn't on any of the official maps.

After some discussion, I decided that I wanted my character to be the leader of a gang of resistance fighters who operated in the town.  I can vividly recall the first session where my character, Dexter, led an ambush of a group of Lunar soldiers, who he and his fellows quite brutally murdered.  At the time of the session, I remember playing Dexter as slightly sickened by his actions, but in subsequent sessions I imagined the character (and tried to play him) as hardening slightly as he got used to the grim realities that freedom for himself, his family, and his town required him to make.  For one reason or another, Dexter's rebel activity started to attract the attention of the Lunar authorities and he was forced to go into exile.

Okay, so flash forward several in-game years later (although perhaps only a year of actual playtime).  Dexter decides to return home, confident that he can now mount a more successful campaign against the Lunars.  What does he return to?  Well, for starters my friend had decided that the town's garrison of Lunar soldiers had increased several fold as a result of the rash of killings and various other mayhem committed by Dexter and his gang.

And here was one of the first things that made this experience important for me: I suggested to the GM that I wanted Dexter's gang to have survived during the years he was in exile, but that they had changed and become more thuggish, preying on townspeople and especially on those who were suspected of collaboration with the empire.  My GM agreed.  Although we didn't have the language for it at this time (these being the dark years before Theory, of which I am a staunch advocate by the way), I was basically acting in Director stance, making decisions about what the world of the game was like.  I can't tell you what a big impression this made on me.  It was like opening up a doorway onto a new world.

So, back to the game.  Dexter comes back to discover that the state of his homeland is a disaster.  But as the player of Dexter, I started thinking that rather than go the conventional route (i.e. the homeland is in tatters because it was deprived of Dexter's leadership), I decide that Dexter begins to suspect that he is to blame for the state of his homeland.  After all, his Zealot-like attacks on Lunars has only served to tighten the screws even harder, to make life miserable for the people who have remained in the town while he has been off in exile on other "adventures."  Dexter starts to become deeper and more reflective, I decide.

Still hanging on to my newfound Director powers, I tell the GM that I want the gang that Dexter left to be wary of and even hostile towards him since he represents not only a perceived challenge to the current leader's power but also part of the dismissable past, an annoying reminder of what they had been.  The GM agrees and we play out various scenes involving confrontations of one sort or another between Dexter and his former gang, each one increasing in intensity and threats of violence.  By now, I realize that we are sort of playing without a net and it is exhilarating.

On to the big finale so that I don't bore you all with lots of "my-guy" stories.  The GM and I decide that the time has come for a the big showdown between Dexter and the gang, and especially for the throwdown between Dexter and the gang's current leader, an arrogant punk who I decide Dexter sees, depending on his mood, as either a shadowy, distorted image of himself or an almost identical copy of himself at that age.  The big night arrives and Dexter makes it clear to the gang that he wants to end this one way or another.  At this point in play, neither the GM nor I knew how this was going to go, although I think we each had some inklings.  Dexter shows up at the designated spot, is encircled by the gang, and he and the gang leader square off.  The GM says to me that the leader pulls out a gladius, and that's when it clicked for me.  I tell him that Dexter has this  almost inscrutable calm look on his face and says, "So you think that that  (pointing to the gladius) is strength?  It isn't strength.  This is."  At "this is" I tell the GM that Dexter grabs the punk's arm and pulls the gladius into his own chest.

The GM looked shocked, but his own reaction gave him the perfect cue for how to play out the punk's reaction to the events.  The punk looked shocked, a little sickened, but then quickly regained his composure and fled with the rest of the gang.

After that session, we realized together that we had found a theme (or several themes in fact) but we also reallized that we had broken through to a new and more satisfying form of play.  The punk became an obsession with Dexter and we played out some scenes where he tracked him down and tried to persuade him to leave the gang.  Redemption became one of the themes of the game--Dexter's attempt to redeem the punk which was also an attempt to redeem himself.  Responsibility for the past and for something greater than one's self also became a biggie.  From there we started to play with a greater sense of the themes that were becoming important to this game: How do you atone for a past that has created tremendous suffering for so many in the present?  How do you achieve a noble goal like the liberation of a group of people from colonial oppression without becoming as bad as the power you are opposing?  How do you keep internal factionalism from dividing you against a common opponent?

This was immensely satisfying play for us because we had a sense that not only could it create a great story, but it could help us work thorugh some really important issues as well.  Moreover, we were all bringing our full engagement to it.  There was nothing half-hearted or half-assed about it.  No bored sipping away at beers waiting for the next fight.  The whole game was full of conflicts, even if the vast majority of them never involved unsheating a sword.

Damn, it gives me chills just thinking about it.  Somewhere along the way after that game ended, our group lost its focus and although we continued to play, we never quite got the lightning to strike like that again.

So this is one of the reasons I am glad I found a place like the Forge, and games like Sorcerer, Dust Devils, and Universalis.  This place makes you realize the incredible potential of this hobby, not to mention the immense creativity and intelligence of all the folks here.

Happy Birthday Forge!

Eric