Lusting After Jesus, Part II: To Hell (Pretender Playtest)

A while back, I ran a second session of Pretender, with some rules modes I suggested in the previous thread, which you might want to check out to refresh your memory. In this session, I tried out some rules-tweaks that had resulted from the previous session.

What did I change, system-wise? Well, the major changes were twofold: First, I turned Specialites into re-rolls rather than Bonus Dice (making the whole thing less confusing), and I changed the narration mechanic: On a 1-3, the GM chooses who narrates (it can be the GM, but doesn't have to be) and on a 4-6 the player chooses who narrates (it can be the player, but also another player or the GM). You can't refuse to narrate if you're chosen to do so. This got rid of the problem from the last game where people kept putting low rolls into Narration when they were afraid to narrate, to get a better overall result -- I could toss Narration in their lap if they did that. As a third, minor thing, I created a mat with different colored, labelled squares on them for people to put dice to indicate their category.

I guess there was one more change: I made the injury rules more freeform. You can find those changes in the current version of Pretender, under "Adversity and Injury".

Anyhoo, after explaining these changes to the group, the game opened with Father Jeremy visiting Terry and Lola (see the cast of characters) right after Terry finished filming a torture scene for his latest snuff film. I really liked the idea Emily had come up with for the Deaths, and wanted to do more work with her character.

Unfortunately, Lola didn't feel like talking to Father Jeremy, and the actions of the other PCs, as you will see, eclipsed anything her character might do. This led to a discussion with Emily at the end of the game about the importance of defining what kind of game you're playing, as there was very much a clash between Emily's personal, street-level idea for a game and the epic thing James turned it into with his narration.

Switch to Lilith. Jamie had already declared that Lilith was spending a lot of time at Father Jeremy's church. She got into a long theological discussion with Father Jeremy about the value of selfless devotion to God -- or Jesus, who Lilith was crushing on. I can't do the conversation justice -- I think Jamie and I enjoyed it more than the other players did. Suffice it to say it was a lot of fun, the slightly-not-human (as he was a Knight Templar, therefore a "Pretender of the Light", as it were) fanatic discussing

In the meantime, James had declared that Uriel had spent the last few weeks putting together an army of renegades (including the Wandering Jew, but mostly conisting of demons) to storm Heaven.

To make a long story short: The other PCs show up, Lilith started to argue with Uriel, blows were nearly exchanged, Uriel fights an NPC demon for dominance, and, in the end, a piece of Legion tricks Uriel into storming Hell instead. The climactic scene of the night involved this, though at the end of the narration, after despite a large amount of Adveristy Uriel was successeful, James narrates that Uriel is now trapped in Hell, as well as its ruler.

Oh, and I nearly forgot: Jesus showed up, to confuse the issue even further, which resulted in Lilith giving up on her friends and joining a nunnery.

A notable contrast to all this was a humorous little scene Russ contructed with Terry, where Terry called Lucifer on his cell phone and ended up playing golf with him. Later, Terry warns Lucifer of Uriel's plans, which uped the Adversity of the "storming Hell" attempt.

The whole thing kinda reminded me of the scenes in Hell involving the Saint of Killers in Preacher.

System-wise, the game was a lot faster-paced with the new rules, and having a mat to indicate what die went in what category was a godsend -- if I ever design a character sheet for Pretender, those boxes are going on the sheet. Surpisingly, the new Narration rules had me taking Narration as GM a lot more than I expected -- but I didn't mind so much this time, because it wasn't forced on me, and the players (like James) who liked to narrate go to.

Overall, the session was a touch more humorous, and very bombastic, surprisingly fast-paced, and epic. The "epic" bit had more to do with what James was doing with the narration, so I'm convinced the system works for games closer to what I want -- a more street-level version of the same, in the vein (heh) of the Sonja Blue novels.

I'm very pleased with the results. I think I will be returning to this game once I'm done with Unsung. All the changes suggested by this session and the last one, particularly due to some excellent feedback from Emily, have made it into the current rules of the game -- including some suggestions for how to deal with Safety for non-physical actions.