Thursday
Apr022009
William Shakespeare's Dracula, Session 1
Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 4:16AM
Last night we sat down to play Annalise, Nathan Paoletta's game of vampire stories. I had played a session of it at Dreamation, and I thought it would be a good fit for the group. Despite my mangled explanation of the rules last night, I think I was right.
Shakespeare keeps showing up in our games, so we decided this time around to do an explicitly Shakespearean game. We settled on the "early timeless" setting of plays like Midsummer Night's Dream that draw on antiquity, but we're also borrowing tropes of any number of other plays. The action takes place on Cyprus (by way of Illyria), and there's a good bit of the Odyssey floating around in there, too.
Dramatis Personae:
We played through the first phase of the game, which during which the characters and their Vulnerabilities are introduced. Alexander and his loyal servent Antonio were washed up on the shore of Cyprus; Antonio is Vulnerable because he has lost his duchy to a usurper. Flavia told her mistress about rumors of the strange men who washed up on the shore; Flavia is Vulnerable because her husband (along with the Duke) is away fighting a war (against Egypt we later discover). Lucius returned in secret from his intrigues in the north and flirted with Flavia; he is Vulnerable because of his ambition. Cato also returned in secret from the disastrous campaign against the Egyptians; he is Vulnerable because he has failed his people by losing an army and emptying the treasury. After the first round of scenes we had a good sense of what was going on and a good set of Claims to support that: mistaken identity, husbands, Egypt, the Duchess of Cyprus, etc.
After that we created Secrets for the characters (more on that in a minute), assigned Coins to our Traits, and played one scene in the second phase of the game. Alexander had disguised Antonio as the Earl of Northumbria and himself as the Earl's servant in order to find out more about what was going in the court. In the course of the Moment we played out, Alexander was able to discover the lay of the land and to win the Duchess' favor, but Antonio and his strange "northern" fashions attracted the amorous attentions of the court ladies, and in grief over all that he had lost, Alexander drank too much and was left on the floor with the Duke's dog his only companion. At that point we called it a night.
The game was fun, and we're looking forward to continuing it next week, but there were some problems. First, I didn't explain the game well at all. I hadn't reviewed the rules beforehand, and it definitely suffered for that. I did, however, manage to explain how Moments work by using a concrete example, specifically the scene in Hamlet where the players perform "The Mousetrap" for Claudius. I've been reading about the power of concreteness, and as soon as I stopped talking in general terms, people started to get it.
Second, we had an unexpected disconnect when Ted got his own Secret back. We talked about it afterward, and Ted doesn't know why it happened, but it threw him off for the rest of the session. (He ended up trading Secrets with Christina.)My takeaways were that you need be prepared for that possibility and that figuring out who has your Secret can't be the major component of the fun of the game (because the odds are good at least one person will get their own). With regards to the latter, I think there's plenty more gold in the game to mine.
We're hoping to get two games in next week, as we'll be off the following week, when I'm in Vegas.
Shakespeare keeps showing up in our games, so we decided this time around to do an explicitly Shakespearean game. We settled on the "early timeless" setting of plays like Midsummer Night's Dream that draw on antiquity, but we're also borrowing tropes of any number of other plays. The action takes place on Cyprus (by way of Illyria), and there's a good bit of the Odyssey floating around in there, too.
Dramatis Personae:
- Alexander, deposed Duke of Egypt (played by Roy)
- Flavia, handmaiden to the Duchess of Cyprus (played by Christina)
- Cato, Duke of Cyprus (played by myself)
- Lucius, brother of the Duke of Cyprus (played by Ted)
We played through the first phase of the game, which during which the characters and their Vulnerabilities are introduced. Alexander and his loyal servent Antonio were washed up on the shore of Cyprus; Antonio is Vulnerable because he has lost his duchy to a usurper. Flavia told her mistress about rumors of the strange men who washed up on the shore; Flavia is Vulnerable because her husband (along with the Duke) is away fighting a war (against Egypt we later discover). Lucius returned in secret from his intrigues in the north and flirted with Flavia; he is Vulnerable because of his ambition. Cato also returned in secret from the disastrous campaign against the Egyptians; he is Vulnerable because he has failed his people by losing an army and emptying the treasury. After the first round of scenes we had a good sense of what was going on and a good set of Claims to support that: mistaken identity, husbands, Egypt, the Duchess of Cyprus, etc.
After that we created Secrets for the characters (more on that in a minute), assigned Coins to our Traits, and played one scene in the second phase of the game. Alexander had disguised Antonio as the Earl of Northumbria and himself as the Earl's servant in order to find out more about what was going in the court. In the course of the Moment we played out, Alexander was able to discover the lay of the land and to win the Duchess' favor, but Antonio and his strange "northern" fashions attracted the amorous attentions of the court ladies, and in grief over all that he had lost, Alexander drank too much and was left on the floor with the Duke's dog his only companion. At that point we called it a night.
The game was fun, and we're looking forward to continuing it next week, but there were some problems. First, I didn't explain the game well at all. I hadn't reviewed the rules beforehand, and it definitely suffered for that. I did, however, manage to explain how Moments work by using a concrete example, specifically the scene in Hamlet where the players perform "The Mousetrap" for Claudius. I've been reading about the power of concreteness, and as soon as I stopped talking in general terms, people started to get it.
Second, we had an unexpected disconnect when Ted got his own Secret back. We talked about it afterward, and Ted doesn't know why it happened, but it threw him off for the rest of the session. (He ended up trading Secrets with Christina.)My takeaways were that you need be prepared for that possibility and that figuring out who has your Secret can't be the major component of the fun of the game (because the odds are good at least one person will get their own). With regards to the latter, I think there's plenty more gold in the game to mine.
We're hoping to get two games in next week, as we'll be off the following week, when I'm in Vegas.
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