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Hey, all. I ran Wuthering Heights last night, and I thought y'all might be interested how it went.

It was a spontaneous thing. Two of the people I game with (male and female, a couple, and since I have no reason to hide their identities, I will refer to them by name, James and Emily) came over to my apartment so we could finish making characters for the Castle Falkenstein game. I had been printing indie RPGs up for today (every other Wednesday is what we call "F*ck Around Night", when we try random new games), and they persuaded me to run the Wuthering Heights RPG.

I went with Ron's suggestion from his review and just started with a simple situation and let things go from there, not worrying much about preperation at all. Emily was playing a daughter of a firmly middle-class banking family who was a socialist, a poet, and who "dressed improperly" -- that is, to match the "lower classes" that as a socialist she wanted to free from oppression. James played an alcoholic, illiterate, Irish Catholic orphan (and laborer) who had turned to the bottle when his parents died in a train accident. I was worried that with only two players there wouldn't be as much to do (no room for love triangles) but boy was I wrong...

I started out with a strong shock: a close friend of both of theirs, a socialist who was trying to organize the dock workers, was killed during a riot, his throat cut with a rusty razor. I started them out at the wake. Both got a high increase in Rage from the shock but James failed his roll to do anything violent, so he just drank a lot while Emily, who rolled below her Rage, ented up turning the coffin over in her anger! While this shocked everyone present, James's character (Seamus) was impressed, and helped fight off the people who tried to drag her away so he could talk to her.

He managed to roll his Despair in order to be sincere, and said he wanted her help to quit the bottle. She gave him a pamphlet and he successfully admitted he couldn't read.

To make a long story short, she agreed to teach him to read and met him in a pub, where he beat off all the ruffians that were ogling her. He managed to persuade her to come back to his room, because he was in love with her, and she went back with him, claiming to return his feeling but actually not: She was trying to reform him despite his "race", i.e. being Irish and all, and they ended up in bed together.

Well, I had them make a Despair check to make sure they could see outside their own feelings to actually be good in the sack (I ended up improvising a lot with the mechanics), and not only did James fail, but Emily fumbled. So I ruled that not only was the sex bad, but she was pregnant, tho I didn't tell them that yet.

So, I figured her father would send a servant out to find her if she didn't come home at night, so they wake up to find Catherwood, the family butler, staring at them, having tracked them down from the wake to the bar to Seamus's place. A shock for both of them, but more so for Emily's character. They decide the only way to save themselves is to kill Catherwood, and a couple of Rage checks later, before Catherwood can even react, Seamus has slit his throat with a rusty razor and dumped him in the Themes.

So, Seamus pressures Emily's character to get hitched, at which point she takes another shock when she discovers he's Catholic. (So naive...) He drags her to the church, but after a Despair check Emily decides she can't go through with it, so Seamus drags her back to his flat and locks her up until she agrees to marry him. At this point, she's gained enough Despair for her to go insane, and she spends the next ten days writing poetry. Seamus, yelling that she shouldn't be writing anything unless it's a marriage certificate, tries to tear up her poems, but can't bring himself to do it (rolls higher than his Rage), using the poems instead to try to improve his literacy.

Well, on the tenth day her father shows up with some bobbies in tow, and she takes another shock. Seamus hurls himself at her father and kills him, and in her anguish over what this man that she never really loved had done, Emily's character leaps upon Seamus and wounds him terribly, putting him at the Dying health level. The bobbies drag him off and he dies in prision because of lack of proper medical care. She ends up in a sanitarium, where she has the baby, and gives up being a socialist because she has come to realize that money insulates her from people like her would-be husband.

There was much anguish and gnashing of teeth, and it went just like Ron described. I can't wait to try it with more players.

Dear God that was beautiful!  Thanks for sharing.

Jesse

Amazing! You are one lucky gamer. I'd kill to participate in such a game.

Well, not actual killing - maybe an insect or two.

Joe Llama

Kirt,

Holy shite! Had your players ever done anything that intense before? Were they blindsided, and trembling afterwards, or what?

Paul

Quote from: Paul Czege
Holy shite! Had your players ever done anything that intense before? Were they blindsided, and trembling afterwards, or what?

James is an incredible ham and yes, he'd done that sort of thing before, but for a change it was 100% appropriate. (Melodrama does not fit, say, D&D very well in most cases.) And it was right up Emily's alley as well, as she distinctly dislikes most RPG combat, and the whole social thing was right up their alley.

So, they enjoyed themselves a lot, and James bounded around the room in his poet's shirt, but I don't think they were blindsided or trembling, per se. But they really enjoyed themselves, which was good. ;-) I'm looking forward to doing Soap, next...

I still want to try it with more players. Shawn, one of my other players, has an unfortunate pechant for playing paranoid loners with blunted emotions. While this is a problem in more group-oriented games, in Wuthering Heights such a character would be fine...

I also want to try it with one of our other gaming acquaintances, Frank. Frank is a good test for all the high-minded stuff here on the Forge, because while he is creative he is... well, he's a nice guy, but let's just say adding 5 and 2 sometimes gives him trouble, and there's no way there's going to be a GNS discussion with him. Unfortunately he just called and said he can't make "F*ck-Around Night"...

Speaking of which, none of these players have been exposed to the theory here on the Forge. It's futher proof that the best way to boost indie RPGs is by playing them, and letting the players make of them what they will. Theory is nice and all, but practice is better.

Okay, I ran it again. Emily played the same character. James played her brother, who was in love with his sister (incest is best), as well as being a republican socialist Caothlic about to become a priest. (Politically, he believed in a socialist society run by elected clergy. Wierd.)

Shawn, who I mentioned earllier, played a big-game hunter, an albino Baptist socialist who always wore a pith helmet (inappropriate dress). Oh, and he played the bagpipes and read 8 hours a day.

Russ played an an accountant. His problem was he was too honest, and a Methodist. The character was deliberately dull, and the oldest character in the game.

It went well. I opened with another funeral. The mother of the two siblings had died of a broken heart when her husband was killed (the result of last session). The big game hunter was a friend of the family, and the accountant... well, he was their accountant.

Emily's character was going on about how her mother had taken her child from her, and James and Shawn immediately got into a brawl, since Shawn was close to the mother and James was going on about how she was going to go to Hell because she wasn't a Catholic. Emily started screaming (irrationally, and well played) about how this was all the accountant's fault. He nearly slapped her (rolled over his Rage), and then she fainted. He took her out of the room, while everyone else fled the altercation, which was still going on -- I used the duel rules, and they both kept rolling under their Rage, so by the time it ended with James's character wounded, they were panting, low on Rage, and they ended up having a drink together. However, they soon started arguing about religion... eventually Shawn's character and the accountant went home.

So, it's a week to the reading of the will. During the week Emily's character, who has slipped into insany yet again with the death of her mum, is writing poetry, and James's character kept stealing it, daydreaming that she was pining after him. In the meantime, Shawn's character takes to playing the bagpipe in front of the Catholic church James's character goes to. James breaks the bagpipes, but Shawn's character remains calm. Oh, and I nearly forgot: Emily refuses to allow her mother to be buried, so the servants end up using a lot of air fresheners in that room...

So, on to the will reading. To cause problems for the accountant, I decided that after leaving a small stipend to her children, the late widow had decided to leave the rest of the estate to the only sane man in her life: the accountant. James is very rude to Shawn, but Shawn remains calm. When she finds out that the accountant got the estate, Emily's character tries to set fire to the mansion. The accountant tries to stop her, and they get into a brawl. In the meantime, the big game hunter runs off to get a constable. Emily's character nearly kills the accountant, and James's character finishes him off.

At this point, insane and distraught, Emily's character barricades herself in the room with her mother's corpse, as the house continues to burn. James botches his Despair roll to decide to rescue her, and instead, deciding his love for his sister can never be, he barricades her in so firmly the servants can't get her out and just decide to flee.

Shawn's character returns with a constable to find James's character watching the house burn down, going on about his sister. At this point he sees the ghost of his sister and the ghost of the accountant, and he decides to kill himself. The constable tries (usuccessfully) to stop him from stangling himself with the chain of his crusifix, while the big game hunter merely watches.

Finis. Shawn liked the game, but Russ didn't. He always takes a lot of time to make his characaters exactly as he wants them and didn't enjoy the general lack of character control. So we played Feng Shui next, which Russ liked and Emily hated. Well, win some, lose some...

QuoteEmily [is] ... a daughter of a firmly middle-class banking family who was a socialist, a poet, and who "dressed improperly" -- that is, to match the "lower classes" that as a socialist she wanted to free from oppression. James [is] an alcoholic, illiterate, Irish Catholic orphan (and laborer) who had turned to the bottle when his parents died in a train accident.

They fight crime!

Sorry, couldn't help myself.


I must say that your excerpts read just like the Cliff's notes for magazine serials written by Dickens. Even if you aren't a fan of this sort of thing, you have to admire how the mechanics produce exactly the desired effect. Inspirational.

Mike

Oh God! This is horrible. It's great. I love this game. "... taken to playing the bagpipes in front of the church ..."

A mere two days ago, I described a couple of details about Wuthering Heights to some people at the campus role-playing club get-together. As soon as I mentioned the "floating in the wind" aspect of character creation, everyone in the room started making up characters on the spot (without the rules at hand; it was just pure idea-flow).

Best,
Ron

This is insane. I have got to find a group with whom to play this game....

Hey, the link in the Review section seems to be dead.  Does anyone know where I can get a copy of the latest .pdf version?  Has Tromeur's (sp?) site moved?

Jesse

Hey Jesse,

The link in the Resource Library is good:

http://philippe.tromeur.free.fr/rene.htm">http://philippe.tromeur.free.fr/rene.htm

Paul

Quote from: Paul Czege
The link in the Resource Library is good:

Huh, that's funny.  I just get a dns error page.  Perhaps it's this machine (I'm at work).  I'll try it from home tonight and see if that makes a difference.

Jesse

I tracked it with a yahoo search using:

+"phillip tromeur" +"wuthering heights"

And yes, one more god damn game to play when I have no players.

Ron --

What are you doing right out at De Paul?  When I stopped by the gaming club at UCLA it was one of those gaming/SF mishmashes where they just get together to watch movies.

*sigh*

Christopher

[edited to correct Ron's place of employment]

Quote from: Christopher Kubasik
I tracked it with a yahoo search using:

+"phillip tromeur" +"wuthering heights"

And I found it through a google search with "Wuthering Heights RPG". Simple as that.

Anyone who lives near me (Salisbury, MD) is welcome to contact me about playing. I don't think any of y'all qualify, tho...

Quote from: jburnekoHey, the link in the Review section seems to be dead.  Does anyone know where I can get a copy of the latest .pdf version?

I was planning a new version for the end of 2001, but it will certainly be for summer 2002 ... (the rules won't change, but I'll include more explanations, and a sample tragedy).

The http://philippe.tromeur.free.fr/rene.htm is OK, but the server is sometimes down or difficult to reach.
There are other links, such as http://dagon.multimania.com/rene.htm or http://perso.wanadoo.fr/philippe.tromeur/rene.htm

Thank you for the comments on the game, and your session summaries ; I'm always happy when someone enjoys my game and understand the way it's meant to be played ...