The other evening I had the pleasure of leading a troupe through a short Seven Leagues game. I play infrequently with a group of indie-minded gamers, and there is no steady game night or "campaign"; we get together catch as catch can and play whatever happens to strike people's fancy. I'd been wanting to take Seven Leagues out for another spin with these players.

I had prepared a one-page outline of the scenario, with vital stats and some very basic relationships sketched in. I was anticipating a fairly short evening, and no one was able (willing?) to CharGen ahead of time (I had provided the thematic hooks of "velvet" and "box", but that seemed too tenuous to the players). In general, I don't favor CharGen away from the group, but in this case I had suggested it partly for logistical reasons (not a lot of playing time available to begin with) and also as an experiment.

As a result, we started the evening by kicking around some character ideas. We briefly toyed with one of the players, Nick, playing Waldo Jeffers from the Velvet Underground song, <a href=http://www.lyricsfreak.com/v/velvet+underground/the+gift_20143923.html>“The Gift”, in a Faerie afterlife (he’s in a box in the song, and the song’s by the Velvets). I thought that was brilliant, but Nick passed. Too bad. He ended up playing a box-inhabiting imp, who buys and sells sentiments. Also cool. Another Nick came up with a talking dog (boxer), bread for dogfighting, seeking the one small boy who had loved him. Aside from the power of speech, he could find anything. Finally, Mischa played the Laziest Man in the World. Unbelievable boons just fall in his lap, women are crazy for him.

All in all a pretty typical troupe of Protagonists, at least for this group. I must say I’m a little surprised at how long it takes for peeps to make characters in Seven Leagues (and I wrote it); once the concept is in place it takes about 10 minutes, but if the Muse ain’t there, the concept can be a long time coming.

The playing got under way rather nicely; the dog had been unable to find his boy, but did catch a whiff of one of the boy’s tin soldiers. He tracked it down to a small village church, and went into the confessional (velvet box), at which point he was whisked through the seat and into the Mortal Realm. He found himself on a stage, being presented to an applauding crowd by a stage magician in a top hat, monocle, (velvet-lined) cape. Then bam! back to Faerie. The imp and the lazy man each subsequently had a brief interlude in the Mortal realm, drawn there by the same stage magician. Turns out the stage magician has an unconscious link to Faerie, allowing him to perform amazing feats on stage by squirreling objects and people away there, then back again; he’s sort of a living Kissing Point.

Upon their return to Faerie, the Protagonists quickly meet up and discover that they’ve each picked up a new Taboo, thanks to their disruptive visit to the Mortal realm. Lazy man turns invisible at random times, the imp has been cut in two (tho’ unharmed), and the dog’s coloration keeps changing. They meet a velvet rabbit who Explains All: recently, the Magician lost a duchesses’ velvet glove whilst doing a trick, and more importantly the heirloom ring in the glove. A mere bauble in the Mortal Realm, the ring is a powerful and disruptive magic presence here in Faerie. It needs to be returned, but the Gourd King stole it from the rabbit.

Some obstacles later the Protagonists dealt with a sinister murder of crows and of course the Gourd King himself Given the make-up of the group, no fisticuffs, just some clever roleplaying and negotiations. Nick and Mischa carried on over tuppence for a while, and I think the imp-in-a-box had a great one-liner which escapes me at the moment, something about "glove will set you free", maybe? Ultimately they returned the ring to the glove and the glove to a box, and sent it to its proper home after spreading a kerchief over it.

I think everyone enjoyed themselves; I was fairly satisfied. The prepared story was pretty linear, but given the wide narrative control Protagonists have in Seven Leagues, I didn’t feel an intricately crafted plot would really be the point, nor true to the genre. I was a bit surprised that the players didn’t use their Keywords more (I think if one hasn’t read the rules all that carefully Keywords might be lost on one). On the other hand the mechanics are very simple, so there wasn’t a lot of fumbling around on the players’ part trying to figure out how to make the game go. That said, rolling a lot of dice and looking things up on charts can be good props (as in crutch), good accessories--what Mischa calls “fiddly bits”. Seven Leagues has almost none of that, it’s almost pure narration, which can at times leave you feeling a bit, er, naked, you know?

I think the one-liner was "What's glove got to do with it?"

It was a pretty fun game. I'd like to see what happens with a better grasp of the keywords, because I think those are pretty integral to bringing out the imagination-randomness of fairy tales... we got to see some flashes of that, but I think we players were still a little confused as to how exactly those keywords worked.

-Nick