Hello, all, :)

Well. My wife blew me away, the other day.

We have a regular gaming group for Saturday nights. Used to play L5R. I've posted about it here, before, I think.

Well, the L5R campaign ground to a halt, and we decided to put it on hold for at least a year and try something new. I championed for the group to get out of "traditional" for a while, not that there's anything wrong with it, just that I wanted them to know that there's other stuff out there, stuff that they might dislike or they might like, but they wouldn't know until they tried.

So, they sort of half-heartedly agreed, and we settled on TSoY. Well, most of them settled on it. Two of the dudes bailed without even trying, (allegedly because they "didn't like the setting") but hey, their loss, I suppose... anyway...

We got started a few weeks ago. One session for chargen, and we've been going through Rat Moon Rising for the past three sessions. (And we're not done, yet. Is this normal, btw? I have a feeling it's kind of slow...)

The first session was totally blah. We were trying to get our handle on the system, and getting over our "trad" habits and vices was unexpectedly hard. The second session was a bit better, but we were still floundering. My wife Ana had a character whose flags were very hard to read, and Rogerio, the SG, constructed a few scenes to get us as a group, together for the festival and he wasn't quite sure as to how to engage Ana as a player.

And then, enter session three, the juicy one. Many scenes of interest, many cool moments, one cool plus moment, and one double whammy wow moment.

So. Character stuff. There's six players at the table. Rogerio is the Story Guide. I'm playing an Alamnite elf and my wife Ana is playing a Khalean human. Another Joao (as opposed to me) is playing a goblin from Zaru and his wife Isabel is playing a Khalean goblin. Finally, yet a third Joao (who was the L5R GM) is playing a human Walosi from Qek.

Moment of historical interest: in a valiant and successful effort to refresh our Instinct pool, my character and Ana's character decided to "bond", so to speak, and we had a fade-to-black sexual encounter, which was a first for me in an RPG session, and it was cool. The fact that it was my wife was coincidental, btw, don't anyone go there... ;)

Ok, cool plus moment. Isabel's character has Key of Lost Child. Again, I'm in an effort to refresh a pool, Reason this time, and I'm sort of brainstorming with my wife again, (coincidence again, though a historical cumulative, as you'll see later) and we decide to make up and go through a game of skill involving throwing pebbles at a nearby tree, and then Isabel steps in with her character and says, "wait, you're playing it wrong, that's not how it goes". Ana and me are kinda looking at each other going, what's she raving about, and they she says, "no, I know this game, we used to play it in my tribe", and she proceeds to explain the freaking rules to us, and suddenly, we all go "Lost Child, awesome!" Rogerio was like, "yeah, man, this is a complicated game, it's almost like Curling, you know, and you have reserve pebbles and stuff", and everyone's looking at each other and nodding their heads, just as Isabel is happily jotting down her XP for bringing her old tribe's memory to life.

And now the double whammy wow moment. We're all at the ratkin full moon fest thing and, because of my character, a generalised brawl begins, and Ana's character gains a nice 3 XP from Key of the Coward by putting everyone to sleep with a well-placed Perfect Chord, which succeeded over two penalty dice, thanks to a bucket-load of gift dice because everyone thought it was so cool.

Then a huge rat thing invades the party, and with everyone out cold, proceeds to chew on the guests, which is Not Kosher for me, because of my Key of Conscience, so I jump in on the thing. The Walosi is right there as well, and he's trying to figure out how to gain some sort of favor from the ratkin leaders on account of his Key of Power, so he decides to try to help me somehow.

And we're back to Ana, trying to decide what to do. I'm all patronizing-like, explaining the 1 XP / 3 XP thing on her key, only she was like miles ahead of me already. She crosses off the key and we're all, "cool, she's jumping into the fray as well", so she uses her two advances right away. One to purchase some sort of fighting skill, scrapping, she decides, and another to buy a new key. So she's leafing through the key booklet and then she stops at...

... get this...

Key of Unrequited Love! And then she jumps into the fight, screaming, "no, not the elf!", and I'm hand-splat-on-forehead "whoa! no way, that's awesome!" Here's this ex-coward that fell in love with my character (over the instinct thing and the reason thing, no doubt) and is now jumping in front of this rabid beast because I'm in danger, gaining a whole new 5 XP for it, and everyone's like "yeah, that's soo cool!"

I mean, over the years, we've had a few characters fall in love with other characters and NPCs and all, but never in such a dramatic, right-here-right-now, in-your-face, ex-coward-jump-into-danger kind of way. And it was so all about the keys. And of course, Rogerio, has no problem reading her flags, now! :)

Clinton, you're a genius, man!

Cheers,
J.

Why must you make we want to play SOY again so close to final exams?!

But, on point: yes, the whole Pool-refresh thing seems to be all about getting characters to interact with each other, leading to soap operas and other complications.  And the shifting Keys around always leads to fun moments.  I would bet that any time a player crosses off a character's key is bound to be a really cool scene.

João, thanks for sharing this, man. Two words: AWE-SOME.

- Frank

NICE! It's so awesome when you stick with something for a few sessions and get rewarded for doing so. Just about to start in on my first TSOY game this week. Can't wait.

I want to play this game. Frank - it's your turn when we finish Sorcerer....