Yesterday Peter and decided to play S/Lay, more or less based on reading Elizabeth’s post on Story Games about her Gencon play with Ron. We’ve both had the book since it came out and we did play half a session over text chat then, but somehow time passed and the books ended up on the shelf among other great games. Personally I’m not turned on by mainstream fantasy at all, but pulp fantasy is right on target. In the 70s, Barry Smith’s Conan was my favorite comic, and I still remember the art vividly. I think that the Conan stories I read back then more than anything else defines, or informs perhaps, the genre for me. I’ve since read Howard’s short stories and some Moorcock stories as well. Aaaanyway, that’s my angle on it.

We played using Skype and an online diceroller programmed by Graham Walmsley, which let’s you see the dice you’ve rolled, plus you can move them around and “stack” them, so that’s very useful. For once, the technology worked perfect. We played a whole adventure in two hours, including intro small talk and a five minute break halfway through. Peter was ‘I’ and I was ‘You’.

I chose I slew men to win my freedom, but never again for my hero, and The Igai desert, which has no centre as the  place. My goal was to find the right place to die. I named him Keim    and described him as battle-scarred and tattooed, with knee-long trousers, a simple linen shirt and a well worn knapsack.

Peter made the monster fast, with deceit, savage, singly (5), and the Lover innocent, forbidden, open-hearted, knowledgeable (1). He mentioned afterwards that at this point he already had a notion of the story taking place in some Arabic-like culture, and his first idea for a monster was huge dhole worms, but he decided on a wolf-like creature living underground, digging its own passages. He thought there maybe was a city trying to survive despite the monster, and perhaps a death cult, which was inspired my my hero’s goal. The Lover Bilqis was a priestess in this cult.

I won’t go into too much details of the fiction, but man, did we cram a lot in there in two hours. The pre-match Goes saw Keim arriving at a white city of simple houses almost disappearing into the sand dunes. In the middle of the city stood the (all to emerge from the fiction) domed temple of the death cult. I should say that the terms ‘death cult’ or ‘priestess’ was never mentioned during play. His camel died right there on the edge of the city, and his requests for another animal only saw him arrested by a city guard and thrown into a cell.

Keim escaped from his cell without hurting the guard, but was later forced to kill him in a fight in a narrow city alley. While on the run Keim encountered a veiled woman (Bilqis, the Lover), whom he managed to steal a kiss from before, once again, being captured and thrown into a pit.

Keim ended up in the temple, as you do, which was covered inside by strange paintings, some of which looked like Keim’s tattoos. The temple had a pool of water under a glass ceiling, and here’s Peter’s summary of what happened during the next couple of Goes:

“The hero, Keim, has just taken a big sip of the water in the pool inside the Death Cult's Temple. You're so not supposed to do that of course, and he's vomiting blood and feeling his life force rapidly slipping away. Bilqis, the Lover, just dropped a big and weird egg she's been carrying around, and she's tending to Keim - but nothing helps. They're surrounded by the other Death Sisters, who aren't too keen on a man being inside their holiest of holy places. And then Bilqis acts resolutely. She breaks the egg and a weird wolf-monster foetus (it later turns out that it's the Monster's young) falls out. It's weird, hairless and breathing. She takes a big bite of it, then kisses Keim and forces the bite of wolf-monster-flesh down his throat. And voila! Keim feels much better now! Needless to say - they then run away and have steamy sex in a small cell.”

Play then entered the Match phase when the monster appeared quite pissed of that its young had been killed. It was a brutal, bloody fight, and Keim always looked as being in trouble. Peter rolled an early 1, and it meant that I got two good dice after the Match, which was won by the monster. I found it hard to incorporate my goal in scenes, and in the end only managed to roll three dice, one of which were for the Lover.

I chose to save Bilqis, which meant that the monster killed Keim and devoured him by swallowing him into its body (which had wet sand instead of blood). Keim never found out if this was the right place to die. Bilqis escaped the city.

It was great! Totally. Next I will be ‘I’ and Peter will be ‘You’.

The session flowed very well - we know each other well and have similar play styles (kind of, we’re also both musicians, Peter a heavy metal drummer, me jazz guitar FWIW), and the book and mechanics worked impeccably.

I my mind we created, in play, a story worth of Howard, with art by Barry Smith.

Hi Per!

Well, that's just disgusting inspiring and fun to read!

I liked the Goal, because all sorts of interesting things could be done with it in rules terms. For instance, if you had won the Match or if he lost but chose to buy the successful Goal, that would only mean Keim found the right place to die, not that he died. I do like the way it turned out for your game.

The game really hums when each person has done a couple of adventures. In my experience, not only is the right "tuning" or "tightness" as I describe it under way (which you guys seem to have down already), but each hero now has enough back-story and imagery to justify meatier setups, and each player is getting a non-verbal, creative grasp of the other player's standards for romantic content. I hope you two keep going.

Best, Ron

Sounds awesome.

I did notice it seemed you didn't introduce the lover in the first scene? She didn't appear come into play until later. Or did you somehow? (I admit, introducing the lover right off feels like a stumbling block for me, and was the one time I played so far, so I'm always curious as to how people handle this.)

I left that out of my summary. In the first scene where Keim arrived in the city, the Lover was chased by a group of men, and I think excaped into a building while Keim was talking to the city guard. But Keim noticed the woman and that was why he was chasing her later in the story. He managed to steel a kiss from her in a later night scene, while being chased by the guard, and eventually entered the temple looking for her.