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<blockquote data-quote="jayoungr" data-source="post: 6932939" data-attributes="member: 6702445">Vago / The Farmer’s Market: What You Need for the Journey&nbsp;Vago:&nbsp; The following day, Vago is charged with provisioning, so he's here in the market.&nbsp; The market is sort of dreary right now.&nbsp; People had been full of revelry the night before, and people tonight are probably going to be exploding again, but for right now, they're hung over and quiet.&nbsp; People are toned down. &nbsp;The farmer's market is kind of an open area.&nbsp; There are buildings, but there are stalls out in front.&nbsp;&nbsp; He's walking along--again, slowly, because his head hurts too--making purchases here and there.&nbsp;&nbsp; He stops by the blacksmith.&nbsp; The clanging at first is echoing in his head, and then, in the back of his mind, the baying of hounds is echoing as well.&nbsp; He thinks, If they come--or if anything else should come--I should be armed.&nbsp; Vago will take some portion of the money that he was given by the Magus and buy a spear.&nbsp; He will perhaps return back carrying a sack of goods over his shoulder and a spear in his right hand.&nbsp;Unless anybody wants to react to that, I think that's fine for that scene.&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; I just want to check in a little bit.&nbsp; We have about about twenty more minutes left in the slot, so let's go ahead and do a couple of scenes so that everyone has a chance to do a scene in Barleytown with their characters, and then we'll take a moment for questions.&nbsp;[Everyone agrees.&nbsp; Piccolo places his token on Swine Hill.]&nbsp;Piccolo / Swine Hill:&nbsp; A Battle Fought Long Ago&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; Long ago, Swine Hill was just that, a place where people would muck their swine and have them roam, but after the battle, nothing would grow there.&nbsp; But in the mud, there was a great deal of making or baking of, almost like tablets, but in the ground.&nbsp; This is sort of another historical record. Piccolo has taken Harp here because she's a scholar, to show her the historical record of this.&nbsp; &quot;These people weren't writers,&quot; I'll say.&nbsp; &quot;This is pictures.&nbsp; I don't know the word for it, but all these are just pictures, history with pictures.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;It's amazing!&quot;&nbsp; I look at the expanse of tablets.&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; &quot;Here you can see the deal being made.&nbsp; Here you can see the building of the old abbey.&nbsp; Here you can see when the deal was broken.&nbsp; And this very large one, this is the battle itself.&nbsp; Notice the detail.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;The workmanship is exquisite!&nbsp; How old are these?&quot;&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; &quot;I can't say, only that they're very, very, very old.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;Amazing.&nbsp; Do you suppose they were made with magic?&quot;&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; &quot;I don't know.&nbsp; But one thing that I never noticed before--I guess I just never knew--this figure here, doesn't this look like the Magus to you?&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;It does!&nbsp; But it's hard to tell what his function in the scene is.&nbsp; He's standing off to the side, and that gesture--is he disapproving?&nbsp; Is he influencing it?&nbsp; Or is it just something that the artist thought looked nice?&quot;&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; &quot;All I know is, if it was him and not just a predecessor, he must be very, very old.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;He must indeed.&quot;&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; That's all I got.&nbsp; Do you want to continue?&nbsp; Anything else?&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; I think that's a good place to leave it.&nbsp; It leaves a lot of things open for possible interesting future developments.&nbsp;[She places her token on the Old Abbey.]&nbsp;Harp / The Old Abbey: Confession&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; The next day, Harp is going to the old abbey, to have a look around it as a historical site.&nbsp; [To Caspian] Somehow or other--it's up to you how this happened, but she's going to go with Caspian.&nbsp; Because we haven't had a scene together.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; No, we haven't, actually.&nbsp; All right.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; So, we are given the freedom to wander about and look at it after I express that I'm a scholar and interested in it, or who knows, maybe you're there to talk to the Magus.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; Sure.&nbsp; Well, I'll follow along because you say you're going to the old abbey, and I'm like, &quot;Oh, the Magus speaks with the abbot on occasion in private.&nbsp; It would be nice to see the abbey.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;I've heard it's a fine example of early architecture.&nbsp; It dates from shortly after the founding of the town, I believe.&quot;&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; &quot;Interesting.&nbsp; Let's see it.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; So we walk about; we check out the towers and the chapels.&nbsp; We're allowed to climb the bell tower, where we can get a view of the whole town spread out beneath us, and the fields that are golden with barley, and everything that looks really gorgeous.&nbsp; Somehow, the mood just seems right, and Harp just blurts out, &quot;I have something to confess to you.&nbsp; I've been terribly envious of you.&quot;&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; &quot;Why?&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;Your position as the Magus's apprentice.&nbsp; Were you born with magic?&quot;&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; &quot;It was a bargain, as it were.&nbsp; The Magus often talks about how non-magical folk--'the bright children,' we call you, because your lives ... You don't understand.&nbsp; You believe we have the gift, but we see it as you--you're the ones with the gift.&nbsp; You're not the first to come in and try to drink from the scrying pool, thinking that it would give you visions ...&quot;&nbsp;[Harp hangs her head.&nbsp; The others laugh.]&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; She's embarrassed.&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; Bright red.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; &quot;... or it would help you to gain power or whatever it is that you seek.&nbsp; But in order for me to gain the gift, as you would say ... My mother, you see, she was very sick.&nbsp; But a bargain was struck with the Magus that she would pass peacefully in the night, and I would carry on after he would be gone.&nbsp; Though I have abilities, or I can change the world around us, there is always a cost, a great cost, and I must confess I envy you.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;A cost to you, or to someone else?&quot;&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; &quot;To us.&nbsp; It's always a great personal cost.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;But surely, if you can do good things, isn't it worth it?&quot;&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; &quot;Absolutely.&nbsp; But pain is a hard thing to hold onto, to try to bury.&nbsp; It always comes back, like a bad dream.&nbsp; I envy you because you're a scholar.&nbsp; You've lived; you've seen so much.&nbsp; With the gift that's been given to me, I don't see the world the same as you, and it's difficult for me to explain; I just don't have the words.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;I see.&nbsp; [Sighs.]&nbsp; Well, they do say that half the world always envies the other half.&quot;&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; &quot;The grass is always greener, as they say.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; &quot;Is that what they say where you come from?&quot;&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; &quot;A traveler once said it.&nbsp; I'd never heard it, myself.&quot;&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; I'm okay ending the scene there.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; That's fine.&nbsp;Post-Game Wrapup&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; Now we're going to take a moment to reflect.&nbsp; We're going to go around in a circle, and when it's your turn, feel free to share a moment you enjoyed, an appreciation of another player, some piece of advice, perhaps an epilogue for your character, where you see your character going, something that challenged you, something you might try differently, or an emotion or memory the game prompted.&nbsp;I'll just go ahead and go first.&nbsp; I just want to say thank you so much for sharing this beautiful story with me.&nbsp; It was lovely.&nbsp; I watch people play this game a lot, and to me, it's kind of like watching my favorite TV show over and over again, but it's different every time.&nbsp; There were so many lovely moments right from the beginning, so I just wanted to thank you all.&nbsp;Group:&nbsp; Thank you!&nbsp;Vago:&nbsp; I had kind of mentioned to you earlier, I found it challenging to set the scene before I put my character into it.&nbsp; When you play most roleplaying games, you're so invested in &quot;How does my character fit into this?&nbsp; How does he react to this?&quot;&nbsp; But forcing the setting of scene first really fleshes it out for the rest of the table to envision what's happening.&nbsp; That's cool to do as a player instead of putting that burden on a single GM.&nbsp; I think that was a cool aspect, and that was something that was challenging.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; Whoo, man, I don't know where to start.&nbsp; If you could come back to me ... Jesus, I'm just drawing a blank now.&nbsp; It literally blew my mind.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; I have played a fair number of indie games, and I'd say this is the kind of experience that I like to get from them, where you have all kinds of detail and the story goes in unexpected directions.&nbsp; You get really deep characterization, don't you?&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; Yeah.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; I certainly had no clue when I just wrote down this stuff [she holds up her card] what kind of character I was going to wind up being.&nbsp;I don't know if I should say this, but I had an idea how the story might end up in my mind.&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; You can say that.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; Well, based on the conversation with Caspian, my idea is that the reason magic is dying is because the Magus is doing something to take it out of the world, because it's not really a blessing.&nbsp; So that's his gift to you, that he's going to set you free from having to follow after him.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; Oh!&nbsp; &nbsp;Host:&nbsp; I like it.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; Yeah, yeah.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; Poor Harp, but oh well.&nbsp; She'll learn.&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; I really liked that one scene where we were all in the inn.&nbsp; That was the only scene where all of us were together, and I think that was something that, if we didn't do it, then something would have been lost.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; Yeah, it kind of anchored the whole thing.&nbsp;Vago:&nbsp; It put the party together as a party.&nbsp; &nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; Yeah.&nbsp;Vago:&nbsp; [To Harp] You ended your comment with &quot;Poor Harp,&quot; but Harp is the scholar that got to report and watch the Magus taking magic out of the world.&nbsp; Nobody else gets to see that.&nbsp; You're going to go down in history.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; That is true.&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; You're going to write a thick philosophy on this.&nbsp;Piccolo:&nbsp; And sometimes what you need isn't always what you want.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; I think just the interplay off of players, and stuff like that ... I'm becoming more and more of a fan of collaborative storytelling games just for that, that you don't have any expectation on you that you have to be &quot;Okay, I'm always this character&quot; or &quot;I'm always doing this,&quot; or whatever.&nbsp; Having to set up a scene and direct other players and just bounce ideas off each other--I dunno.&nbsp; I don't have the words.&nbsp; [laughs]&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; I love how they've made the prompts just specific enough to get your mind working, but there are so many different ways any of these could go.&nbsp; Can we see what the rest of the scroll looks like?&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; Sure, check it out.&nbsp;[They unroll the scroll and all exclaim over it.]&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; Wow.&nbsp; It felt like we were progressing pretty well through a story, but now I see we barely started.&nbsp;Caspian:&nbsp; We barely scratched, yeah.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; How long does it usually take you to play through a whole game?&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; When I play, usually three three- or four-hour sessions.&nbsp; Not as long as a D&amp;D campaign.&nbsp; I would call it short-form.&nbsp;Vago:&nbsp; Sure, because you're not going to be stopped by rolling dice out in combats.&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; You get a lot done.&nbsp; It's like two years of D&amp;D campaign packed into three sessions.&nbsp;Harp:&nbsp; What's really cool is, you could do this same thing with a different set of place names and get a totally different story.&nbsp;Host:&nbsp; You'll find the next time you play it, it's going to be completely different.&nbsp; Every time.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jayoungr, post: 6932939, member: 6702445"] [B][SIZE=4]Vago / The Farmer’s Market: What You Need for the Journey[/SIZE] Vago:[/B] The following day, Vago is charged with provisioning, so he's here in the market. The market is sort of dreary right now. People had been full of revelry the night before, and people tonight are probably going to be exploding again, but for right now, they're hung over and quiet. People are toned down. The farmer's market is kind of an open area. There are buildings, but there are stalls out in front. He's walking along--again, slowly, because his head hurts too--making purchases here and there. He stops by the blacksmith. The clanging at first is echoing in his head, and then, in the back of his mind, the baying of hounds is echoing as well. He thinks, [I]If they come--or if anything else should come--I should be armed.[/I] Vago will take some portion of the money that he was given by the Magus and buy a spear. He will perhaps return back carrying a sack of goods over his shoulder and a spear in his right hand. Unless anybody wants to react to that, I think that's fine for that scene. [B]Host:[/B] I just want to check in a little bit. We have about about twenty more minutes left in the slot, so let's go ahead and do a couple of scenes so that everyone has a chance to do a scene in Barleytown with their characters, and then we'll take a moment for questions. [I][Everyone agrees. Piccolo places his token on Swine Hill.][/I] [B][SIZE=4]Piccolo / Swine Hill: A Battle Fought Long Ago[/SIZE] Piccolo:[/B] Long ago, Swine Hill was just that, a place where people would muck their swine and have them roam, but after the battle, nothing would grow there. But in the mud, there was a great deal of making or baking of, almost like tablets, but in the ground. This is sort of another historical record. Piccolo has taken Harp here because she's a scholar, to show her the historical record of this. "These people weren't writers," I'll say. "This is pictures. I don't know the word for it, but all these are just pictures, history with pictures." [B]Harp:[/B] "It's amazing!" I look at the expanse of tablets. [B]Piccolo:[/B] "Here you can see the deal being made. Here you can see the building of the old abbey. Here you can see when the deal was broken. And this very large one, this is the battle itself. Notice the detail." [B]Harp:[/B] "The workmanship is exquisite! How old are these?" [B]Piccolo:[/B] "I can't say, only that they're very, very, very old." [B]Harp:[/B] "Amazing. Do you suppose they were made with magic?" [B]Piccolo:[/B] "I don't know. But one thing that I never noticed before--I guess I just never knew--this figure here, doesn't this look like the Magus to you?" [B]Harp:[/B] "It does! But it's hard to tell what his function in the scene is. He's standing off to the side, and that gesture--is he disapproving? Is he influencing it? Or is it just something that the artist thought looked nice?" [B]Piccolo:[/B] "All I know is, if it was him and not just a predecessor, he must be very, very old." [B]Harp:[/B] "He must indeed." [B]Piccolo:[/B] That's all I got. Do you want to continue? Anything else? [B]Harp:[/B] I think that's a good place to leave it. It leaves a lot of things open for possible interesting future developments. [I][She places her token on the Old Abbey.][/I] [B][SIZE=4]Harp / The Old Abbey: Confession[/SIZE] Harp:[/B] The next day, Harp is going to the old abbey, to have a look around it as a historical site. [I][To Caspian][/I] Somehow or other--it's up to you how this happened, but she's going to go with Caspian. Because we haven't had a scene together. [B]Caspian:[/B] No, we haven't, actually. All right. [B]Harp:[/B] So, we are given the freedom to wander about and look at it after I express that I'm a scholar and interested in it, or who knows, maybe you're there to talk to the Magus. [B]Caspian:[/B] Sure. Well, I'll follow along because you say you're going to the old abbey, and I'm like, "Oh, the Magus speaks with the abbot on occasion in private. It would be nice to see the abbey." [B]Harp:[/B] "I've heard it's a fine example of early architecture. It dates from shortly after the founding of the town, I believe." [B]Caspian:[/B] "Interesting. Let's see it." [B]Harp:[/B] So we walk about; we check out the towers and the chapels. We're allowed to climb the bell tower, where we can get a view of the whole town spread out beneath us, and the fields that are golden with barley, and everything that looks really gorgeous. Somehow, the mood just seems right, and Harp just blurts out, "I have something to confess to you. I've been terribly envious of you." [B]Caspian:[/B] "Why?" [B]Harp:[/B] "Your position as the Magus's apprentice. Were you born with magic?" [B]Caspian:[/B] "It was a bargain, as it were. The Magus often talks about how non-magical folk--'the bright children,' we call you, because your lives ... You don't understand. You believe we have the gift, but we see it as you--you're the ones with the gift. You're not the first to come in and try to drink from the scrying pool, thinking that it would give you visions ..." [I][Harp hangs her head. The others laugh.][/I] [B]Piccolo:[/B] She's embarrassed. [B]Host:[/B] Bright red. [B]Caspian:[/B] "... or it would help you to gain power or whatever it is that you seek. But in order for me to gain the gift, as you would say ... My mother, you see, she was very sick. But a bargain was struck with the Magus that she would pass peacefully in the night, and I would carry on after he would be gone. Though I have abilities, or I can change the world around us, there is always a cost, a great cost, and I must confess I envy [I]you."[/I] [B]Harp:[/B] "A cost to you, or to someone else?" [B]Caspian:[/B] "To us. It's always a great personal cost." [B]Harp:[/B] "But surely, if you can do good things, isn't it worth it?" [B]Caspian:[/B] "Absolutely. But pain is a hard thing to hold onto, to try to bury. It always comes back, like a bad dream. I envy you because you're a scholar. You've lived; you've seen so much. With the gift that's been given to me, I don't see the world the same as you, and it's difficult for me to explain; I just don't have the words." [B]Harp:[/B] "I see. [I][Sighs.][/I] Well, they do say that half the world always envies the other half." [B]Caspian:[/B] "The grass is always greener, as they say." [B]Harp:[/B] "Is that what they say where you come from?" [B]Caspian:[/B] "A traveler once said it. I'd never heard it, myself." [B]Harp:[/B] I'm okay ending the scene there. [B]Caspian:[/B] That's fine. [B][SIZE=5]Post-Game Wrapup[/SIZE] Host:[/B] Now we're going to take a moment to reflect. We're going to go around in a circle, and when it's your turn, feel free to share a moment you enjoyed, an appreciation of another player, some piece of advice, perhaps an epilogue for your character, where you see your character going, something that challenged you, something you might try differently, or an emotion or memory the game prompted. I'll just go ahead and go first. I just want to say thank you so much for sharing this beautiful story with me. It was lovely. I watch people play this game a lot, and to me, it's kind of like watching my favorite TV show over and over again, but it's different every time. There were so many lovely moments right from the beginning, so I just wanted to thank you all. [B]Group:[/B] Thank [I]you![/I] [B]Vago:[/B] I had kind of mentioned to you earlier, I found it challenging to set the scene before I put my character into it. When you play most roleplaying games, you're so invested in "How does my character fit into this? How does he react to this?" But forcing the setting of scene first really fleshes it out for the rest of the table to envision what's happening. That's cool to do as a player instead of putting that burden on a single GM. I think that was a cool aspect, and that was something that was challenging. [B]Caspian:[/B] Whoo, man, I don't know where to start. If you could come back to me ... Jesus, I'm just drawing a blank now. It literally blew my mind. [B]Harp:[/B] I have played a fair number of indie games, and I'd say this is the kind of experience that I like to get from them, where you have all kinds of detail and the story goes in unexpected directions. You get really deep characterization, don't you? [B]Host:[/B] Yeah. [B]Harp:[/B] I certainly had no clue when I just wrote down this stuff [I][she holds up her card][/I] what kind of character I was going to wind up being. I don't know if I should say this, but I had an idea how the story might end up in my mind. [B]Host:[/B] You can say that. [B]Harp:[/B] Well, based on the conversation with Caspian, my idea is that the reason magic is dying is because the Magus is doing something to take it out of the world, because it's not really a blessing. So that's his gift to you, that he's going to set you free from having to follow after him. [B]Caspian:[/B] Oh! [B]Host:[/B] I like it. [B]Caspian:[/B] Yeah, yeah. [B]Harp:[/B] Poor Harp, but oh well. She'll learn. [B]Piccolo:[/B] I really liked that one scene where we were all in the inn. That was the only scene where all of us were together, and I think that was something that, if we didn't do it, then something would have been lost. [B]Harp:[/B] Yeah, it kind of anchored the whole thing. [B]Vago:[/B] It put the party together as a party. [B]Piccolo:[/B] Yeah. [B]Vago:[/B] [I][To Harp][/I] You ended your comment with "Poor Harp," but Harp is the scholar that got to report and watch the Magus taking magic out of the world. Nobody else gets to see that. You're going to go down in history. [B]Harp:[/B] That is true. [B]Host:[/B] You're going to write a thick philosophy on this. [B]Piccolo:[/B] And sometimes what you need isn't always what you want. [B]Caspian:[/B] I think just the interplay off of players, and stuff like that ... I'm becoming more and more of a fan of collaborative storytelling games just for that, that you don't have any expectation on you that you have to be "Okay, I'm always this character" or "I'm always doing this," or whatever. Having to set up a scene and direct other players and just bounce ideas off each other--I dunno. I don't have the words. [I][laughs][/I] [B]Harp:[/B] I love how they've made the prompts just specific enough to get your mind working, but there are so many different ways any of these could go. Can we see what the rest of the scroll looks like? [B]Host:[/B] Sure, check it out. [I][They unroll the scroll and all exclaim over it.][/I] [B]Harp:[/B] Wow. It felt like we were progressing pretty well through a story, but now I see we barely started. [B]Caspian:[/B] We barely scratched, yeah. [B]Harp:[/B] How long does it usually take you to play through a whole game? [B]Host:[/B] When I play, usually three three- or four-hour sessions. Not as long as a D&D campaign. I would call it short-form. [B]Vago:[/B] Sure, because you're not going to be stopped by rolling dice out in combats. [B]Host:[/B] You get a lot done. It's like two years of D&D campaign packed into three sessions. [B]Harp:[/B] What's really cool is, you could do this same thing with a different set of place names and get a totally different story. [B]Host:[/B] You'll find the next time you play it, it's going to be completely different. Every time. [/QUOTE]

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