[Daker] Eating people is bad

[GB Steve]

My French friend Ben was in town for a night so we assembled some likely faces for a game. Graham W kindly offered to give us a run of Darker, his English Roach vairiant.

Ben gives his view of the proceedings here

[Jason Morningstar]

It's good to hear that the slightly more focused setting of Darker pays off.

Cold comfort now, but there's a character sheet available (just) that lists events, Darker notables, and so forth.

[Graham W]

Thanks, Steve, it was a very pleasant evening.

It took a while for everyone to warm up, I think: at first, I thought it wasn't going to go well. I explained the rules very badly, forgetting to mention NPCs being incorporated into scenes. I'm glad people enjoyed it: honestly, I wasn't sure whether they had or not.

Ben's right to say there wasn't much horror, as such. It was more epic stuff, with armies of choirboys and huge Victorian war machines. I was very glad when you burnt down the slums.

The more specific Events and Enthusiasms worked well, I thought.

It was very useful, too. I made some changes to the text after playing...

1. The original instructions, on Enthusiasms, were: choose one Enthusiasm from the original Shab al-Hiri Roach rules, plus one of the new Victorian Enthusiasms. On a hunch, I changed that for our game, so that everyone had two Victorian Enthusiasms, and the original Enthusiasms weren't used. It worked fine, so that's now the rule.

2. When I read out the Little Girls Enthusiasm, I was rather embarrassed by the reaction. Man, everyone thinks it's about paedophilia, straight away, even though I make it clear it's not. So...with regret...I've changed Little Girls to Children. Same Enthusiasm, basically, but now it's boys and girls. It has the advantage that it includes the whole Scouting movement, which is very Victorian. Still, I didn't really want to do it.

3. Also, when I read out Women's Rights, I was embarrassed to read out one sentence, with women present (the original text said "...you wouldn't deny a husband's rights over his wife", which was a bit much and I'm slightly embarrassed about). I've toned it down to "...and women shouldn't worry their pretty heads about voting!", which is, um, offensive in a less offensive way.

Thanks again.

Jason, shall we put this on the back cover?

I was ordered to eat until bursting when Roached, so undertook to swallow a little girl whole: shoes, socks and alice band. I also set fire to the poor.

Graham