Before I tell you the three things, this: instead of samurai, we're a high-end circus freak show, and instead of climbing Mt Fuji to kill the Mountain Witch, we're touring across Europe to assassinate the Kaiser. Otherwise, straight-up Mountain Witch. My guy is the tattooed gentleman.

We've played five sessions, I think. We have one or at most two more to go.

Thing I'm really enjoying #1: My guy's a werewolf. There was this one roll where it came up a minor wound for me and J was like, "so it's just a graze...?" and I was like, "hell no, he shot me right here above the eye and my brains are on the wall of the train car, and I'm like 'jesus FUCK that hurts.'" That's my mode, whatever inconveniences my guy would have completely ruined him if he weren't a werewolf. It's like in Heroes - being invulnerable means that you suffer the worst and most gruesome harm.

Thing I'm really enjoying #2: My guy's a horrible human being, and a gentleman. He's a brutal critique. There was one scene where our contact in Paris required us to kill this guy, and Meg's character (the soft-hearted human pincushion) was like, "it's barbaric that we're sitting here contemplating murder so coolly," and my guy was like, "in fact, this is the only civilized act."

Thing I'm really enjoying #3: My guy's super easy and very visceral to play. I turn off my own self and he takes over, like poink like flipping a switch. There was one scene early on in the game where Julia's character (the shapeshifting contortionist) took on my guy's face (minus his tattoos, of course) and I FREAKED OUT. My guy completely lost it, all outside my own expectations. There was another scene later where Julia's character made joking banter about whose consciences were clean and Meg said, "holy crap look how uncomfortable you just made Edmund." I hadn't realized that my face was revealing him. He has instincts and emotional responses that I don't and they're really fun to play in.

BONUS: two things I'm really enjoying about the game at large

Thing I'm really enjoying about the game at large #1: From the opening scenes of the opening session, Julia's character has totally had my character's number. She has been right there, constantly, provoking and unnerving my guy. She's going to kill him soon. I don't know how Julia's doing it but it fuckin' rocks.

Thing I'm really enjoying about the game at large #2: We have to trust one another, but we can't trust one another. I don't know what's going to happen. Emily's character's, Julia's character's, and my character's dark fates are public knowledge now; Meg's character's isn't (although take a minute to reflect, you'll figure it out, J, Em, Julia - I did). Now that I know that Julia's character is really truly going to kill mine soon, I trust her MORE. Em's and Meg's, I don't know what they're going to do. It's just plain pure Mountain Witch: I have to trust them! But I surely don't!

-Vincent

I was at a local roleplaying convention this last weekend. It was the first convention in our small town ever; the town is just 30.000 people or so, and there's never been anything like this. Well, the organizers did an amazing job, paid travel expenses for some heavy hitters of the Finnish scene, and got a very high level rpg lecture track. Which was strange, because most of the participants were otaku teenagers who have better things to do than listen to us fogies argue about whether characters exist or not. (Shame I live right here and couldn't measure my heavyhittiness by whether I'd get travel money.)

Anyway, one of the lectures at the convention was about creating characters, specifically about how to create characters that are other in the artsy humanistic sense - basically, how to play a girl when you're a boy yourself. The gist of the lecture seemed to be that the way to creating a believable and deep character who is not yourself is by studying the milieu and social conditions where the character grew up in the fictional world, as this would allow you to emphasize and construct the character in your head to have the values and thought patterns expected by the culture of the place where the game happens. I didn't listen the full lecture, as I started feeling uncomfortable about it when the lecturer stated telling about how the biggest problem of playing a girl is that the other players will think that you're a pervert.

So OK, I'm reading Vincent here, and this is what I come up with: Vincent captures the way I create characters PERFECTLY, and it has no resemblance at all to the techniques and theory that was depicted yesterday in that lecture. Would you say that I'm reading you right if I say that the character is a shard or figment of your own consiciousness, reworked to emphasize urges and thoughts that you normally do not utilize, but that are nevertheless there? So effectively, the character is always you, just a part that is not used in normal life. From this perspective the setting background has little purchase when we consider the actual choices and behavior of the character; Vincent's werewolf does not make the choices he makes because of his Bavarian upbringing, but because he reflects Vincent's own personality.

I'd continue into how this connects with immersionistic thought, except that I seem to get a different account every time I discuss immersion with anybody, so I don't have a clue whether your average immersionist would consider Vincent's character a result of immersion or not. We had one of those discussions at the convention, too, and it was interesting: this Dare guy I spoke with is a real smart fellow who had a rather lively account of how his roleplaying enjoyment is generated by the process of pretending to be somebody else, solely. Comparing the account with Vincent's I'm confused as to whether there is much difference in the immersion process, except in time-scale: Dare assured me that proper in-your-head experience can't be reached without 4-5 sessions of play.

Hmm... I'm in danger of hijacking this thread. Anyway, an interesting vignette about your play, Vincent; I should learn to write similar short pieces, so I'd get around to writing actual play reports more often.

For instance, in our most recent session, Julia invented the fact that my character had committed several murders in New Orleans. I said, "this would have been when I was in my mid-twenties?" She said, "it would have been seven, eight years ago." I said, "perfect" - that's all the control over my own character's backstory I had or wanted. Before she started talking, I'd never considered whether my character had ever BEEN to the US.

It was the second session of play when I learned that my character had been forced to kill his own first lover. It was the fourth when I learned that he'd gotten his own sister tragically hooked on opium. All three of these - the two I invented plus the one Julia invented - were details of his history that came to be true because they were, more than compatible with, called for by his personality as I've played him.

-Vincent

I just figured out Edmund's fate, Vincent. It's wonderful how perfect it works. I still can't get Ozcan's (Meg's soft hearted pincushion).

Mary, too, has been very easy to play. I have had great fun thinking of ways for Mary to needle and unnerve Edmund. Mary's been a-hunting Edmund all along, mostly because of his reaction when she made his face. Until she read the file on him and confirmed what she had suspected. I had picked Edmund as Mary's target of her dark fate from the start because he was a werewolf, and Mary was a shapeshifter. I imagine Mary lives by this code of theiving shapeshifters and she once believed that werewolves and shapeshifters have this supernatural thing in common (the whole shape change thing), that they can recognize each other, and they should stick together. I don't see it, but in thinking like Mary, it makes total sense.  I only said it happened in New Orleans because of the big Mardi Gras paper towel box in your living room, and because in the previous session Edmund went on a hedonist's binge in Paris. Hedonism, New Orleans, Mardi Gras, but of course.

I think the last two sessions our story has taken off and everything has started to click together. I totally get turning off and out comes this person. I had a similar reaction when Edmund confirmed that he was the one who committed the murders she was accused of and lynched for, albeit unsuccessfully. Mary expected Edmund to show some kind of remorse or sympathy when she basically said, "here's what they did to me when I was just 17, because of what you did." Instead, he was all "Whatever, better you than me." Getting threatened after pissing Edmund off and seeing the scary werewolf pop out was chastening. Learning that her defining moment was just another day to Edmund was totally unnerving and even gave me chills. I almost said "Why didn't you come and help me? You must've known what I am." But that would not have been characteristic of Mary to show any more vulnerability than she already had. 

I'm really enjoying playing someone whose moral code is so absurd, but when I think of it in character, it makes sense, and it's easy to act on. One night on the way home, Joshua were talking about the game, and he said that Mary was not a good person. At first I disagreed. Mary's not a bad person. She cares for Ozcan and wishes he was her big brother, she thinks Chintzer is sweet, Edmund, eh, whatever. She's all about maintaining a healthy lifestyle without alcohol, drugs, cigarettes. She remains chaste despite the fact that people make jokes about a contortionist's sexual prowess. What's so bad about her? Then Joshua said, "but she gets off on killing people."  Oh yeah. There's that. Well we all have to find our joy somewhere.

Even before our fates started surfacing, I have really enjoyed watching our characters develop, and our relationships with each other unfold, or rather unravel. Nothing has turned out as I had expected from the start.

Can you folks talk more about how you came to your circus setting for the game? I assume it was a collaborative process and you all sort of talked it out until everyone bought in. Several games (PTA, Universalis, Shooting the Moon) ask for this kind of building phase from the players, pre-game, and I'm always interested in hearing about how other groups go about it.

Julia: That werewolf-shapeshifter thing is great! Edmund feels no such thing, of course. My first guess at Mary's dark fate was that she was in love with him, because of all the attention she was paying.

(I think about this stuff and I find myself thinking like Edmund. Brr.)

John: The opposite. J was like, "I want to do this vaudeville-sideshow-performers thing. Let's do it with ... The Mountain Witch? That could be fun."

"Okay," we said.

We did some before-play emailing about what kinds of performers our characters might be and "hey did you see this really cool website about sideshows," but those were opt-in, not all of us were jazzed enough to dig into it.

In a lot of ways, for us, buying into a game means buying into our characters. Until we've played them enough to care about them, we don't really care about the game.

Others' of our experiences of it my not match mine!

-Vincent

Wow. I have had this very idea for a game for probably ten years now. I am SO glad someone is actually doing it, and I couldn't ask for a better crew than you guys to make the most of it.

I'm curious about the adaptation. Are the characters agents of some organization? How did they come to be tasked with this particular assassination?

Great posts!

I totally get what you're saying about just switching off and letting the character play itself.  It's not something that happens to me every time I play, or even something that I try for every time (It seems to be a kind of immersionist thing, which I'm not always a fan of, or at least that's how it works for me). But yeah, a couple of times in LARPS, and once in a tabletop game, I could just kind of open my mouth, and the character's words would come out.  It was really great in LARP because I think a lot of the time I get really caught up in trying to "win" a political game, but this time I was just running my mouth off, making trouble for myself and stirring stuff up, which was great for the game.  It's amazing when you discover things about a character which as soon as you say them you know must be true, but you weren't aware of until they just popped out.  I think the same thing happens writing, sometimes.  A character or a scene takes on a life of its own, and it feels like you're not creating, you're uncovering something that already exists, you're trying to get to the truth of it. 

Weird but cool.

Thanks for this post!

lumpley wrote:
Julia...My first guess at Mary's dark fate was that she was in love with him, because of all the attention she was paying.

Thanks, Vincent. It's sometimes nice when you can just throw it together like that and everyone jumps right in.