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veryroundbird) wrote2024-10-05 01:45 am
nishgranting plays blood apart (#1)
trying to get into the habit of posting regular tabletop game summaries here! my regular game group recently ended the second arc of our chuubo's game, which feels like it's at a good stopping point, so we're trying out some new stuff while we gear up for whatever long thing we're playing next!
this time we're playing Blood Apart, a game I wrote in 2020 while fiddling around with the Belonging Outside Belonging style of GMless game writing that comes from Dream Askew/Dream Apart. it is, in many ways, a love letter to my background as a vampire larper. i'd never actually gotten to playtest it, so we're finding out how it actually works in practice.
the characters are:
- Percival "Percy" Baselard, the Sorcerer: former occult society member who ate his sire's soul and fled to Venice, which is ruled by a vampire who hated that guy. Hot gay party boy with blue hair. Played by Jesse.
- Elegia d'Este, the Noble: Notable singer from French Algeria whose sire decided to scoop her out of a place she felt was "beneath" her in a white lesbian's burden sort of way. Expected to be an extension of her sire in a way that is surely not going to go poorly for anyone when she fucking snaps. Played by Degen.
- Dorothea Merlo, the Silent: The youngest of the group; she likes things tidy and shares an apartment with her dead twin sister's ex-boyfriend and accidental killer. Soft-voiced with a soft smile and soft footsteps such that you never hear her coming, which is good considering that she's a serial killer. Likes things tidy. Played by me.
- Leander "Leah" Lupo, the Wildkin: The oldest of the group; good at turning into a wolf and killing people really messily. He acts as a kind of late-night delivery guy for people who need absolutely no questions asked. Played by Geo.
Our game is set in Venice in 2014, against the backdrop of some kind of scandal where there was a huge amount of embezzlement from a critical city infrastructure project. The local vampire ruler is Benedetta Innocente, who has a very particular sense of justice and recently squashed an attempted coup.
We had a short session because of holiday stuff and also the fact that half of us keep getting taken the fuck out by agonies so we were getting back into the groove.
The game opened with Benedetta trapping the entire court in a surprise meeting to discuss who'd been fucking with critical city infrastructure and forcing someone to volunteer to look into it. Pleasantly. I picked up the Ruler setting playbook while Percy volunteered to investigate (and established that he calls Benedetta "Benny" and can get away with that) and Elegia spoke on behalf of her family to offer their aid. Percy had a brief conversation with Benedetta about whether the d'Estes might have had a hand in it, and then went to discuss matters with Elegia herself, tersely.
Meanwhile, Leah and Dorothea had the rare occasion to be working together to track down someone who needed to not be talking to the cops and take care of them; Leah broke down the door while Dorothea slipped into an upstairs window and knocked the guy out cleanly. They got interrupted in the middle by law enforcement, at which point Dorothea suggested that it might be the disappointed Leah's lucky day after all. They parted ways afterward, with the target having mysteriously died at some point that Leah wasn't looking, and Leah taking the unfortunate cop off to be disposed of.
It was a fun kind of establishing episode! A neat setup for the character dynamics; it'll be fun to see how the tone of the other relationships shake out.
I feel like the main things I'm noting mechanically/flow-wise in the playtest are:
- GMless vampire specifically is kind of a strange creature insofar as urban fantasy games like this usually have some kind of overarching mystery plot—like this one does—where it feels a little odd to not have someone holding all the cards on that
- The above I think makes it a little more intimidating to pick up the setting playbooks insofar as like, the setting elements imply having to come up with Big Deal Things
- Maybe there should be some kind of helper-scaffolding for making NPCs or introducing mystery elements from each setting element? Like that'd probably make a good supplement/expansion to publish
Thoughts
That would make a great recurring post. Gaming is quite popular on Dreamwidth, with multiple communities. I don't know if any of them accept or even specialize in game summaries. It's worth exploring.
>> Maybe there should be some kind of helper-scaffolding for making NPCs or introducing mystery elements from each setting element? Like that'd probably make a good supplement/expansion to publish <<
That sounds like great expansion material. I've seen masterless games with some sort of mystery/plot development that is trigger-activated, basically "When thing X happens, do Y." Frex, a character makes a big accomplishment, and you draw a card from a pile that introduces some new challenge. If it's a mystery, you might get a clue.
Characters would be great. We routinely buy expansions for Chrononauts from Looney Labs. Its design lends itself very well to expansions for new characters or things to hunt for. They like to send out freebies to regular customers, which is great for customer relations, and they do releases of special cards at conventions too.
With a masterless vampire game, you might offer NPCs, a mystery plot arc, new settings, etc. Hmm, Call to Adventure has a structure element that would suit your context: it has three plot arc phases, with different cards you can draw for each. Imagine setting up a mystery where you have a starting card (or other element, these can also be done with a typed list); followed by randomized sets for early, middle, and late phases; and last a conclusion. You could do it in 12 parts: 1 start, 3 early, 4 middle, 3 late, 1 conclusion. It's a cheap expansion; you could do it as a printable if you like.
Re: Thoughts
Also that's a really interesting concept with the structure of Call to Adventure... I'll have to turn it over in my head, because even if I end up doing something similar for supplements to this game, it has a lot of potential for gaming in general.
Re: Thoughts
Woohoo! :D I do game reviews occasionally. They're under my Review tag, but there are more books -- well, some of the games are also books.
>> Also that's a really interesting concept with the structure of Call to Adventure... I'll have to turn it over in my head, because even if I end up doing something similar for supplements to this game, it has a lot of potential for gaming in general. <<
I love phase progression in games. It keeps everything from happening at once and instills a logical order. You can also use it as a timer to indicate when the game is done. Planetarium is another that uses this mechanic -- if you look at the board, that outer arc of circles is the timer track. When you cross a certain point, things change in play. It mimics the evolution of a solar system. *chuckle* We often play quasi-cooperatively in terms of deciding that 1+ planet will be a hellworld and 1+ will be habitable. Early on they tend to start clustering and the game plays better if you go with that instead of flip-flopping.
I find game mechanics interesting to study, in terms of the different things you can do, or different ways to do the same basic thing. They really help to shape a game, and gamers have preferences for what they love or hate.
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