Session 1, January 2004

Tinka is amazing. She is radiating energy as she plunges, head first, into her first time gamemastering KULT. One of her first times gamemastering at all. It is GroFaFo Winter Rally 2004 at Castle Hessenstein, and Tinka is a star. For one thing, she has organized the whole damn thing. We are some 40-50 roleplayers at a youth hostel built into a castle, and there is no-one there but us. Yesterday we have had a fantastic feast. The night was cold and clear and beautiful, and Jörg’s traditional christmas punch was delicious. Tinka was the center of attention, joking, smiling, flirting, cuddling everybody. I understand in her normal life, she doesn’t get nearly that much attention. She is loud, she can be vulgar, and she’s not exactly the image of Britney Spears. But these three days are hers, she feels liked and desired and feminine, and that really charges her up.

Tinka and I know each other from online and the Summer Rally 2003. We have this flirting thing going on, that is probably a little thicker than what the rest of the guys at Hessenstein are doing. We also flirt on the forum. Actually, we both seem to know that had we met under different circumstances, we might well have become more than friends. However, it was not to be. But I wanted to talk about the game.

This post has been inspired by the “Bennies” competition. I don’t know if this game qualifies, it consisting of 3 sessions of which only one was excellent. I’m not that much after a “Benny” anyway, knowing that I face monstrous competition. But Ben’s announcement made me think about my most treasured roleplaying experiences, and about sharing them. Unfortunately, this particular session was 18 months ago, so my memory is not as accurate as I’d like it to be.

So, KULT. The system is awful, but it’s only an excuse. We are playing more or less freeform. Tinka doesn’t know the rules well enough to care anyway. The one nice thing about KULT is the setting. If you are not yet familiar with it, there’s some nice exploration to be done. And spiritual ballance is kinda cool.

Tinka is the GM. Up to now, she has been mostly a player, in her rounds of KULT, Space Gothic, Cyberpunk 2020 and other stuff at home. She has told us the scenario: A class of 17-year-old school-kids visits Castle Hessenstein, one cold night in January.

Eva is a girlfriend of Tinka’s. It’s her first time at GroFaFo Rally, she is quite nervous. In a game of Liquid earlier the day, as the GM asked her what her character wanted to do, she replied she’d rather not participate at the moment. But now, Tinka is with her, which is reassuring. She plays her character from their KULT game at home, which is also reassuring. They can talk some funky insiders and she feels like she’s cool. Which she is. Her character is Ms. Maibach, the teacher. I couldn’t figure out anything concise about her personality, but well.

Sandra used to hang around more at GroFaFo. Now she’s all but gone. She is cute, if a little silent. I don’t really know much about her roleplaying background. She plays a girl whose name I forgot, but who is pretty and cool and has more experience with boys than most other girls her age.

Bastian was at Summer Rally 2003, too. He played in an awful game of Buffy with Tinka and me, which we managed to “save” through some witty character interaction. He is a very funny guy with a funny accent, and he looks like a dwarf. Not kidding. I like him a lot. He comes from a background of Rolemaster, Space Gothic and Call of Cthulhu, but is beginning to develope an interest in cinematic gaming. He plays August, a classic striver/bootlicker guy.

Thorsten is a friend of Bastian’s with a similar roleplaying background. He was GM most of the time in their games. Also writes poems and short stories. He’s a nice guy, if a little shy. He plays Richard, an arrogant, yuppie-type upstart.

Jochen I don’t really know much about as we start to play, apart from the fact that he talks very loudly and the stuff he was telling yesterday, admittedly under the influence of several mugs of good punch, were mightily getting on my nerve. But well, he’s in, what can I do. His character is Markus, a sort of standard nerd.

I am as yet not even registered at the Forge. I’m as Vampire, DSA and Star Wars d6 as the next man. I have played KULT once before, which was a real good game of in-character acting and player vs. player esacalation. My Character is Ben, a good-looking skater guy. Girls like him, but he’s too dumb to make anything of it except hurt their feelings. Tinka also invited us to have some dark secrets, and I don’t normally turn down such an offer. So Ben’s mother killed his father when he was a kid. She covered the whole thing up, but Ben witnessed everything.

These characters are pretty archetypical, but what do you want? We decided to play this game half an hour ago. Tinka didn’t prepare anything, she is just making stuff up. Night has fallen again over Hessenstein. We have fled the noisy rooms downstairs, to the tower with the sleeping rooms. We are the only ones on this floor. There’s some dark music playing on someones laptop, and chill air is creeping through the windows.

We know there’s horror up ahead. But for now, we are fully into exploring teenagers on a school trip. Everybody want to proove what cool roleplayers they are. What cool stuff they can come up with, and how cool they can act. Well, at least the boys. I think Eva and Sandra don’t really get to say much in that first hour or so. We are four boys charged with testosterone, trying to impress Tinka (and the other girls as well). The flirting is straight in your face. My character is out behind the castle with a girl, and I am talking to Tinka. Whom are we fooling, pretending we’re just acting? When I finally have my character say something dumb to really piss the girl off, I certainly don’t do so without announcing the real smart and charming thing I, Frank, would have said instead. Hopefully striking home.

Play is interrupted every now and then for a cigaret break. That works wonderfully for relieving the tension for a moment, laughing out loud, and giving feedback from player to player. Tinka is really anxious to do a good GMing job, and we reassure her beyond measure. She is doing a good job, too. She is improvising wildly and just reacting to what we players do. And then, suddenly, she hits us in the face with the horror. Realities are shifting, and our characters see things that ought not be there. I and Jochen are first. Of course, we are eager to act out our character’s response as best we can. It is fun. Tinka does it very well, suddenly stomping the floor when nobody expects it, then speaking in a very low voice, describing the noises outside, or mimicking a real mad laugh. Scary, it is.

In the meantime, Thorsten’s and Sandra’s characters are having a little romance, hiding away in the dining room at night. They get caught by the teacher, a nice laugh. And then the horror starts for them, too. It’s really very simple. I don’t recall exact details, but the Castle turns into some monstrous, deserted ruin, and then back into the youth hostel, and then back into the ruin. It’s cool how Tinka uses the places we all know, cause we’ve just stood there, smoking a cigaret. My character has visions of his mother (or rather, as I find out later, my mother’s ghost from the future that has succumbed to madness). He learns that his father has been a demon. The cool thing for me was that I instantly got “into” my character. I just “felt” how he reponded, in a strange, punch-drunk sort of determination to discover the truth.

So the characters grab some torches and head into the cellar, the stairs spiralling ridiculously far into the ground. They even fight some strange creature, but we don’t even notice how Tinka uses that awful combat system of KULT. We are all about being scared, shouting at one another, trying to get away.

Jochen’s character also has his little privat plotline, he is seeing some wicked old man that nobody else sees who tells him: “LEAVE MY DREAM!” Jochen is sitting right beside me, trying to get Tinka’s attention by talking very loudly. His character is also always questioning and contradicting mine. He is getting mightily on my nerves. But well, I handle his character in-game and choose to ignore him as a player as best I can. It works quite well for me.

By now, Eva is more of a Co-GM, her character not being present in most scenes. She is helping Tinka out on the rules and the music, which is good. Thorsten and Sandra are warming up, getting more into the performance and the juicy conflicts between the characters.

By now, it is 4 a.m. and we are getting really tired. Jörg has come up to the room and gone to bed, falling instantly asleep and snoring heavily. So we don’t want to shout and scream any more, in order to not wake him up. The delight of what I would consider immersion is beginning to wear off, and we have to somehow wrap up the session. So, the final dialogue with my mother’s insane ghost from the future is a little hurried, a sort of unworthy finish for a genius session. But well, what can you do. In the end, all of our characters get out alive, ready for a sequel at Summer Rally. But on that, later.

Session 2, August 2004

The CD player is playing that same song over and over. I don’t know the song, but Tinka has especially sent Eva to fetch it. It’s a dirty rock song with just the right beat. It’s rolling. It’s pure sex. Eva is giving her best narration of her character undressing and caressing Thorsten’s character.  Thorsten can’t look at her. He likes it... kind of, but is also embarrassed. I have no such qualms. Tinka and me are the only persons at the table that are looking straight at Eva all the way through, grinning our most naughty grin.

So it is Summer Rally 2004, and after the smashing success of our first KULT session, we have decided to do a sequel. Tinka has requested us all to write her what our characters have been doing after what happened to them at Hessenstein. Some two or three years have passed. She as GM will take care of what leads us together again.

Our characters have changed, and so have some of us:

Sandra is no longer with the group, nor with GroFaFo. Sad. I liked her.

Eva has significantly grown in self-confidence. She dilivers that brutally erotic narration, which lasts several minutes, without so much as a giggle. She is enjoying it. On that same Summer Rally, she GMs a game of Vampire without ever having read the rules. And I am being told that she did it well. Her character, Ms. Maibach... well, I’m still not grabbing much about her character.

Tinka has not changed much as a person, fortunately. However, she’s GMing differently. I don’t know if she’s GMed more in the meantime, or if it’s just due to the fact that she has had plenty of time for planning and plotting. She is driving more and reacting less.

Bastian has been getting more interested in cinematic stuff since Winter Rally. He is hot to play more Liquid and Star Wars d6, but also eager for our KULT game. His character, August, has had big trouble dealing with the Hessenstein experience. He is now addicted to amphetamines and working like a madman on his law studies.

Thorsten hasn’t changed all that much. His character, Richard, has successfully suppressed what happened. He’s got his own house and car now, since his parents are very rich, and his law studies are going well since August is doing all the work for him. Richard pays him, and August uses the money to buy more drugs. Richard’s father gave Richard an interesting birthday present: A book that makes everything you write into it come true.

Jochen is also pretty much the same. His character, Markus, has taken to walking the road of dreams. He stays awake barely long enough to eat and drink and buy some stuff. He’s studying something, but is never seen at university. He lives in his dreams, which the old man he met in the castle taught him to shape (to some degree).

I have registered at the Forge two months ago. I’m not really that much into it yet, but I’m into a LOT of dicussions about playing and running RPGs on GroFaFo. I have bought, read and tried out new games such as Feng Shui and Eden Studio’s Angel RPG. I have also downloaded and read The Window, The Pool and Otherkind. I am starting to really analyze and question my gaming. My character, Ben, has been searching for answers. This whole “my father is a demon and there is another reality” thing has become his obsession. He quit school and travelled the globe with a backpack, looking for clues and finding none, using his good looks to get a girl that’ll help him every time he runs out of money, staying with her for a while and then leaving without a word and stealing her valuables.

And then we have Benny, a new player who insisted to come into the game. Actually, we have a jealousy issue because he really digs Tinka and doesn’t like me and her sharing this cool thing without him. Well, that’s my take. Benny certainly doesn’t like this whole “experiencing the horror” type of play. His character is some computer guy. Whatever.

So all characters are living their seperate lives. Tinka has implemented on us our current situation. She wants to play a solitary scene with everyone before she joins us together bit by bit. These solitary scenes take several hours, then we quit play because it’s late and we are all very tired.

I realize that Tinka is giving inner monologues for my character. It didn’t even occur to me as we played seven months ago, but she did it then, as well. Only we were so much in the same vibe in that first game that it didn’t bother me. Now it does, in a way. She’s giving this huge introduction to where I am and what I’ve done recently and what I’m up to, and I am thinking: “Will you let me add something into that, please?!” But well. She has understood well about my character, so it works out alright for me.

My character Ben is in Frankfurt, and he’s finally found something. He’s all on his own. He is sneaking round some really deserted area he has been warned to come to by night. This door opens, this old man screams at him: “You are too early!” Closes the door and is gone. Ben follows him inside, unarmed. The tension is building again. I can feel it. This is perfect, I know I must carefully think about my every move because there will be no mercy if I make a mistake. My heart is beating fast. Everybody is listening, spellbound. Even Benny is mildly interested now. I make them jump badly as my character enters a room with lots of stuff stacked in it and I hit the gaming table hard with my knee, crusing under my breath, mimicking my character stumbling over some chair.

Then Ben finds the old man. The old man tries to stab him with a dagger. Again, I don’t really notice the awful combat system in action. Then the old man is talking to Ben all in riddles. Ben is trying to get some—any—information out of the old bastard. I am trying to get some—any—information out of Tinka. I don’t get but more riddles. It ist frustrating me, as a player.

That is my scene. I think it’s the second one in the session. The first scene is Benny’s, which tries to copy some of the Hessenstein horror from seven months ago, but fails because Benny doesn’t respond to it at all. You can clearly see in his face and hear in his voice that he just doesn’t know what’s expected of him, as a player. What is this nonesense? So the whole city is deserted. So I pull out the cable and my computer’s still on. Is this supposed to tell me anything?

There’s a scene with Bastian, who is acting out the “junkie in drugs trouble”, visiting his dealer, trying to persuade him that he’d soon have money. The scene is lacking drive and direction, and you can clearly see Bastian struggling to keep up his enthusiasm, and Tinka trying to figure out what’s wrong with the scene as her NPC keeps saying “no”.

And then there is Thorsten. He has decided that his character has become obsessed with his former teacher, Ms. Maibach. So Richard writes into the book that makes everything come true. I mean, Thorsten writes on a piece of paper and hands it to Tinka. I really want to know what he wrote down there. Straight out ask, too, several times. They won’t tell me, not even after the session. “We want to continue on Winter Rally”, was what Tinka sais. My frustration is mounting.

Well, obviously Richard wrote some of his dirty little erotic fantasies into the book. That scene with Eva and the CD player does compensate me for a lot of frustration. It’s really cool.

Jochen also gets his scene, about his character being so tired and having to eat something and falling back asleep. Then there’s another scene in which Jochen’s character and mine share a dream and are told by some badass demon to get the book from Richard. That’s where Tinka has intended that the actual “adventure” begin. That’s also where the session ends after some four hours or so of play.

Session 3, February 2005

“Password”, Bastian is whimpering. “Please, I need the password!” He is looking at me, as if for help. This scene needs to come to an end, now. It is so pointless. I can see the effort Bastian is making to keep his performance up, but I can also see that he is not having fun. Eva is playing Ms. Maibach, talking to a desperate August, trying to soothe him while the police is outside. Bastian finally does it: He gives in. What is his choice? His character lands in jail. Bastian will have nothing more to do than whimper for the rest of the session. Poor dwarf.

So we really continue our “adventure” from Summer Rally 2004 on Winter Rally 2005. Not that I’m all that eager to, still remembering my frustration last time. But I feel somewhat indebted to the others. I consider Bastian and Tinka real friends by now, and we only see each other two or three times a year, so I really want to spend time with them. And so I let Little Fears slip and play KULT instead.

Tinka, Eva and Jochen are pretty much the same as last time. They don’t really post that much on the forum any more, and play with their good old groups at home.

Benny won’t play with us again.

Thorsten and Bastian are much more active on GroFaFo. They also have been writing their own Fantasy Setting (which I played and found decent), and developing a game system that’s similar to a matrix game. That eventually fails because Bastian likes a cinematic style and Thorsten likes it gritty. Bastian likes player empowerment and Thorsten prefers GM-driven play.

I have written the first draft of BARBAREN! in October, have been playing Primetime Adventures and Universalis on IRC and have just run a game of The Pool and played in another PtA game (with Tinka) previous to joining the KULT round.

So what happens in this session? Bastian’s character is really messing up. There’s also nothing Bastian as a player can do about it, he feels he has to follow this established path for his character now, which Tinka is pushing him further down. He hates it.

Me and Jochen are plotting how our characters can get the book from Richard. There is a lot of plotting. I hate plotting, at least if there are no good options. In this case, there isn’t really a way. Richard’s house has top security, and our characters are no burglars. Oh, our characters also discuss whether they should really get the demon the book. But well. They don’t have any sympathy for Richard, and the demon has been pretty blunt about what’ll happen if they don’t bring it. No hard choice here, really.

They somehow get into the house. Richard has Ms. Maibach there to please him. He has also got August (Bastian’s character) whom he somehow got from jail. August is tied up on a chair (I really, really don’t remember why). Ben and Markus somehow get into the house. There is a fight, with knives and clubs. And finally, the combat system reveals its whole sad and ugly dysfunctionality.

So Ben is standing right behind Richard, who is turning his back on him. Ben tries to stab Richard in the back. First time, he doesn’t hit at all. Second time, he hits the leg?! Awful. Just plain awful.

Then the demon arrives and takes the book. Why didn’t he take it straight away? Why did he bother sending Ben and Markus to get it? Dunno. There’s also something chasing the characters. What is it? No idea. The characters are fleeing to a hospital (because August is severely injured). I don’t even recall how it ended. I think we were in the hospital and there was something outside. Well.

Tinka wasn’t there on Summer Rally 2005, which was very regretful. Still, had she been there, Bastian and I agree that we wouldn’t have played another sequel.

Hey Frank,

I really, really dig reading this, because it's so much about you and so not about gaming - or rather, about what's going on with you while gaming. It also goes to show that sometimes what matters most about a given game is not so much the quality of the plot, or the niftyness of the techniques employed, but the social interactions going on or not going on. This speaks to me in so many ways...

Also, it's quite sad. For me as a reader, the sadness adds up to the beauty - unfulfilled love always makes for the better story, I guess. Gaming and erotic attraction should have its own thread some day, it's a fascinating topic - here or at Grofafo, though I don't really feel like opening threads there anymore right now. But well.

Thanks for sharing  - and I mean it, not just as the standard line.

Same here, thanks for sharing.  It was quite insightful, both for the social dynamics as well as how the system didn't really play out that much.  I had similar experiences with regard to the KULT system.  Love the setting and mood, but it's at odds with the mechanics.

Thanks, you two.

What makes me sad about this story is not so much the unfulfilled love thing. It all turned out well for me and I’m now more happy than words can tell with the girlfriend I have. But what does make me sad is that we obviously cannot recapture what made that first session so special and great. And how these people that were able to play together so smoothly have developed in different directions and at different speed.

Tinka did order a copy of PtA, though. I think she can be reclaimed. And Bastian is on The List anyway.

Jasper and everyone else from GroFaFo, please don’t post about this to GroFaFo. Tinka and I are just a little too exposed there. Thanks.

- Frank

I won't - don't worry.