Wicker Valley, episode 10: All Greek

We all needed some rest, especially Michael, and I needed to be up early for work in the morning. I didn't think the vicar was going to be able to cause much more havoc overnight. When I got my phone out the next morning to text Michael and see how he was doing, I found out I was wrong about that.

We hadn't added Alabaster to the Whatsapp group yet, but I texted him to tell him to join us at the Wicker Stop. Adam had the most details via his contacts. The vicar had been found early in the morning by a dog walker, seriously injured and wrapped around a tree on the church grounds. He'd been taken to hospital in Lancaster. And now nobody could get into the church.

Michael and me had to work our shifts, but the others went to get kitted up. Adam had the stone bird remains back at the junkyard to experiment on, and after a while him and Robin came back with sprayers and glass bottles filled with battery acid, which he was confident would prove particularly effective against the stone birds. Meanwhile Alabaster totally failed to notice the Whisper Sisters had dropped by the cafe and it took some quick thought on Michael's part to convince them that the knife and rifle he had with him were costume props.

Adam had a chat with the police when we got there, who were particularly unhappy because some other people in a black sedan who we'd probably call feds if we had feds here had also shown up. Fortunately it turned out Adam knew one of them as well and we were able to get to the church. Or rather, we were able to get several feet away from the church. The ward had expanded a lot. Adam was now also unable to get in. I never expected to be able to anyway, but touched it anyway, and now it felt like a solid wall. I wasn't going to be able to get through this time, whether by force or by magic. Alabaster seemed quite upset by it, but insisted nothing was wrong.

Michael walked in like it wasn't there.

I did a lap of the church, during which all I could determine was that the ward was now a smooth solid wall and that there were maybe more stone faces on the church than last time I'd looked. Meanwhile Michael went investigating in the church. He found where the vicar had been making changes to papers - presumably the ward tweaks he'd been talking about. Most of what he found was in Greek, as we could see when he started a video call. I suggested he use Google Lens, which got him part of a translation. He took some pictures and collected the rest to bring back.

By the time I got to the front of the church again, Michael was going to investigate the crypt. That's when things got weird. He seemed happy and content down there. Unnaturally so. To the point where I thought he was actually going to lie down and fall asleep down there. And then something would happen to him and none of us would be able to help because none of us could get into the church. I had to get him out of there. So I used the voice.

It was one thing using the voice to calm a frightened girl or an angry vicar. It was something else entirely using it on Michael. I felt sick, and the fact Alabaster had obviously noticed I was doing something didn't help. It worked though, and I hugged Michael out of sheer relief when he got back to us.

So now what? Reading and experiments. With some help from Alabaster's Greek/English dictionary, we got the stuff translated and learned about how this entity was summoned to keep out the non-sacred. With sacred here having a rather specific description unrelated to righteousness or good works. So Adam went with Michael to pick up his brother and see if he was able to get through the ward. They sent word that he was, although not without some difficulty.

So it seemed that the vicar's efforts to 'fix' the wards had instead managed to redefine 'sacred' to basically mean Michael. Imagine if people didn't go meddling with ancient relics and powerful magic they didn't fully understand?

Anyway, what we needed was a way of putting this guardian spirit and its ward back in a box, which sounded like something its previous users had been able to do. Specifically, by melting down the coin used to summon it, and then recasting it next time it was needed. So all we needed to do was find the coin and melt it down.

Of course we had absolutely no idea where the coin was. And the whole time I'd been at Adam's place, stone birds had been hurling themselves at the ward and exploding. I was pretty sure it was me they were after.

First Time Playing: Darkness of the Demimonde

I love the Victorian era as a setting and particularly love Victorian horror. Victoriana was the first game I ran in that setting, but ultimately the system didn't work for me and neither did the Shadowrun inspired take on the setting. Vaesen does what it does very well, but what it does is the clash of the industrial revolution against rural folklore, which I love, but isn't exactly the same thing as the classic works of Poe and Stoker. And The Between got pretty close, but between the weird design decisions and very limited character options, it really wasn't giving me anything other than the TV show on which it's based.

And then up popped a Kickstarter for Darkness of the Demimonde, pitching itself as 'Victorian Pulp Horror'. Zine sized and priced accordingly, I decided it was worth a shot. To avoid excessive postage costs I went for the PDF + POD option. The POD is printed through DTRPG and is the usual quality I expect from there.

The book is A5 size and 39 pages long. Rules are simple and reminiscent of Liminal. Character creation is deceptively simple. Players choose between playing Enlightened (human with an occupation) or Afflicted (supernatural powers with an associated drawback), assign 10 points between 7 skills, and choose knacks and items. With a few pages of options, there's enough there to cover pretty much any concept from the realm of gothic horror. Which meant that even with all the players having largely figured out their concepts beforehand, there was still a fairly long period of finishing off characters at the start of the session.

Setting information is minimal, and consists of a two page introduction. That is all the game really needs though, as the assumption is that you're going in with a pretty solid idea of what Victorian pulp horror is. The character creation section and monster list lays out all the tropes that are in play.

There's no specific rules about group concepts, but as an investigation based game, it tends towards some variation on occult detectives. The players decided that the Detective character was the owned of the business, and given that they had gone for the Wealthy knack I suggested placing it in Mayfair. (This did lead to some fun moments as we had to explain the pronounciation of such locations as Berkeley Square and Grosvenor Square.) The other two characters were a Psychic and his Created servant.

The book comes with three adventures. I picked Horror in Houndsditch to run, as it was very much my kind of thing. It's a pretty light scenario, intended to allow for a lot of improv, and gives several suggested options for involving the player characters. I went for the one that I felt best fit the occult detective agency concept: a young woman asking for help finding her missing brother.

My only issue with this adventure is the map. The one provided is very useful for the GM, but with several key locations marked on it, it's not ideal to give to the players. The geography of Houndsditch is very much not what it was in the 1890s so my usual go-to of Google Maps was less helpful as I had to locate streets that no longer exist under the Gerkin and similiar buildings. I did manage to dig up a period map via a Jack the Ripper website, but vintage maps are a struggle to read. There may be some photoshopping of the adventure map to try to hide the location markers before I run this again.

Despite the book's length, it finds time for a reminded to GMs that key clues shouldn't be hidden behind a dice roll, so if the characters went looking in a suitable place they always found something. In these cases when I asked for action rolls it was to determine if they found something extra, if they got the job done fast and efficiently, etc. Despite being only half a page, the GM advice is a solid bit of writing that's worth reading and absorbing.

(Note: the game indulges in my pet peeve of making up a new name for the GM - the somewhat cheesy sounding Gravemaster. However, since it does still have the initials GM, I'm willing to let this one go.)

The action rolls themselves are 2d6 + skill (here called Archetypes for some reason) + bonuses. There are only seven and they're fairly broad, so figuring out which one to use was sometimes a bit tricky. In particular there's quite a bit of overlap between Priest and Occultist when it comes to knowledge of the supernatural. The GM also had to determine  the Difficulty Score (DS) for each roll. There's a set of guidelines, which suggests DS8 for easy and DS10 for moderate, but I think this is a bit off. Starting characters have Archetypes from 0 to 3, and with an average roll on 2d6 being 7, a character is going to fail DS10 rolls most of the time. For starting characters I would stick with DS8 as the default, increasing it if there are additional complications as suggested.

Two features of the rules I found particularly interesting. First is stress. Stress rolls are made when encountering horrific things, and a failure gives you a stress point. Each stress point gives you a penalty to all your action rolls. The maximum is 6, and while there's no specific consequence to hitting 6 stress, it's pretty debilitating. The only way to get rid of them is rest and sleep. There's a tendency for players to want to get the whole adventure done in one day. This game encourages not doing that - once the stress points start racking up you really need to get some rest, especially since you only recover 1d6 stress each time. Something worth mentioning to new players to manage expectations.

The other interesting feature is combat. Monsters all have their own DS, and you need to exceed it to actually do any damage. But their DS is also their hit points, so once you start damaging them they get gradually easier to hit and damage. Some interesting possibilities for tactical play - particularly as failed melee rolls mean the attacker gets hurt instead.

Overall there are some small niggles with this game, but nothing that can't be overcome. Particularly as the GM I'd advise going in with a reasonable knowledge of Victorian Britain and the classic horror fiction of the time, but there's a lot packed into these 39 pages. The system is light enough that most of the time it was a breeze to run, while still having enough going on to keep things interesting. The authors know what Victorian horror looks like and deliver on that. I had a great time as the GM and fully expect to have a great time in our next session when one of the players takes over as GM and I get to make my own character.

Darkness of the Demimonde will be coming to DTRPG for general purchase soon, presumably once all the kickstarter fulfillment is sorted out. Edit: Available now!

Wicker Valley, episode 9: Going To Church

We met up at the Wicker Stop again, and Adam was about to start outlining a plan to get into the church when we were interrupted by Carmen. She had someone with her. About my age, at a guess, immaculately dressed, cross necklace. Yikes. His name was Alabaster, he'd had the same problem getting into the church as Gillian, and Carmen thought we were the best people to help him out. And she was probably right. After the things she's seen I understand why she didn't want to stick around.

Alabaster wasn't sold on the 'break into the church' concept at first, but once we managed to convince him the vicar was doing bad things, he agreed to help out. Just this once. Hah, like that's going to happen. He was pretty useful though. He knows the vicar and was able to persuade him to stay at home that evening, and also had a key to get into the church, thus taking out of the 'breaking' part of breaking in. He went over there early, then called back to say he'd had no trouble getting in there and he was going to meet us there.

So, he was trapped there, we all concluded.

We headed out to join him not long after dark. Mike and Adam went in to join Alabaster while Robin and me checked out the ward from the outside. I was hoping that just once we could get through a case without Robin or Adam peeing on anything, but clearly not. Once Robin emerged from the bushes we did a circuit of the church and found the ward seemed to be bulging slightly and was an inch further out from the church boundaries than when we'd checked it yesterday. We wondered what shape it was higher up, so once we'd checked that neither the vicar nor Alabaster was watching, I flew up to investigate. The ward was dome shaped, and went a lot higher up above the church spire than I expected.

On the way down I noticed something odd. One of the carved stone faces on the outside of the church (not a gargoyle, gargoyles are ornamental drainpipe spouts, not stone monsters, whatever Disney might say) turned to look at me.

We couldn't hang around outside forever, and now I understood more about the ward it was less of an effort to force my way through it. Robin was struggling a bit, and looked very odd as he passed through - as if something had replaced his nose with something else's nose. But I'm hardly in a position to be making negative comments about people's temporary bodily features. My shoulders were itching where my wings sprout from.

The others had made good progress in the church. Well, Michael had. Alabaster seemed to be spending his time praying, and I don't know what Adam was up to. But Michael had found an embroidered pocket in the vicar's robes with a distinctive sigil on it. It wasn't my family crest this time, thankfully, but it was clearly something religious given how much I disliked it. Adam was able to identify it as being associated with a lost relic used to create wards.

It was looking like we were going to have to confront the vicar, but first we had to deal with the sound of moving stone. I ran outside with Robin, and found the stone faces had now become stone birds, and definitely not gargoyles which as previously stated are ornamental drainpipe spouts, not murderous little stone birds screaming the word 'purge' straight into my head while hurling themselves through the air at me.

Robin took one out with his rifle and shot another with his handgun, but didn't manage to completely take out either of them. Michael got the one off Robin's back, but the other climbed back up the steeple (and wasn't the belfry looking darker than usual) and got away. I thought about going after it, but at that point the vicar showed up. Whatever Alabaster had told him, it clearly wasn't enough to make him ignore a gunshot.

The vicar was going on an understandable tirade, but then suddenly calmed down. I felt for his emotions, and there was definitely something going on. I suspect there's something Alabaster isn't telling us, particularly given his ward problems, but right now I needed to talk to the vicar. I gave Robin and Adam the 'piss off' look, met the vicar's eyes, and talked. I'm really getting the hang of this voice now.

A cup of tea in the vicarage along with Alabaster and we'd got most of the story. As suspected, he was trying to protect his people from demons and had used a relic to do it. I again insisted the things that had been taking people in the woods were goblins, but not even my voice could sway him there. So I took a different tack, pointing out that it was going wrong, and wasn't discriminating the way he intended. After all, it had kept out Alabaster who was clearly a devout and god fearing person, but had let Adam in. And now people were getting hurt, particularly Michael who hadn't fared particularly well against the stone birds.

Unfortunately his takeaway was that he needed to tweak the wards, not remove them, and he wasn't willing to let us help, but at least it was a start. We would have to watch him carefully.

First Time Playing: FIST

I buy a lot of the charity bundles on itch.io. They're generally around $5-$10 a time, and while I'm largely indifferent to most of the content, there's usually a few gems making it well worth the price. FIST has appeared in bundles for abortion funds and for trans rights in Florida and I definitely got my money's worth buying those two.

I hadn't actually looked at FIST properly though until a friend offered a game at a time I was free and I dived in. The pitch was pretty compelling. It's inspired by Metal Gear Solid and The A-Team, so you play as soldiers of fortune in the late 20th century, with a twist in the shape of everyone having supernatural abilities.

We began with character creation, which is very simple. Roll two traits and a role on random tables (or choose, if you prefer) and that defines your stats and abilities. The first trait I rolled would have left me unable to speak, which I decided would not actually be fun, so rolled twice more and got  hybrid and ninja. The hybrid could be any animal, but one of the suggestions was shark, so I went with that - King Shark but also a ninja. My role was Mercenary, so I was absolutely in it for the money.

This part was a ton of fun, as we figured out what our random traits meant and what we could do with them. We came up with our own codenames. I was Mako, and was joined by Shadow, Mr Pink, Toes and Blood, the latter being a telekinetic vampire. Then we just had to choose between extra hitpoints, a piece of equipment, and war dice (single use bonus dice you could add to a roll). Most people went for war dice but I picked the extra hitpoints, having seen how our current points compared to the weapons we already had.

And so into the game, where we were dropped in the middle of a jungle and charged with intercepting trucks, preventing their contents getting to their destination, and figuring out what was going on at the nearby hydroelectric plant. We formed a basic plan and went at it, guns blazing. And it was a wild ride, as we figured out how to make use of our special abilities and threw ourselves into the action. It's fast paced and easy to play.

FIST is mechanically pretty much a PBTA game, with the usual 2d6 and three levels of success. It's also very OSR-like in that combat is brutal and characters are disposable, easily created and easily killed. This is in my opinion, its biggest weakness.

The whole setup is for a narrative game, with supernatural protagonists with extraordinary abilities. Then there's the PBTA mechanics, where every roll drives the story forward. You're all set up for some nice genre emulation, fitting with the PBTA 'be a fan of the characters' philosophy.

Except that doesn't mesh well with the concept of disposable characters. The A-Team aren't disposable. They don't get constantly killed and replaced. Metal Gear Solid...well, the way I play video games, the protagonist dies a lot, but they don't stay dead, and Solid Snake is still the person you're playing at the end of the game. When I play Mork Borg I know my scvm is going to be dead soon enough and that all feels right and proper. In this game it doesn't.

Mako did make it to the end of the mission, entirely thanks to those extra hitpoints I bought at the start.

If you bought one of those bundles, I would definitely recommend giving FIST a try, but with the caveat that the two clashing game philosophies aren't going to work for everyone. It succeeds at fast paced action and fun characters, but ignore the trappings of PBTA because that's not the experience you're going to get. I honestly think this would be better using the Mork Borg mechanics as that would fit a lot better with how the game works generally. And with four stats and similar numeric values, it should be an easy conversion.

So that's my verdict: a game that's well worth checking out but which accidentally used the wrong system. Try it with Mork Borg, or if you want the PBTA experience rather than the OSR one, replace hit points with the harm system from Apocalypse World, which coincidentally also includes the possibility that your character will be entirely obliterated, and then suddenly come back very much like they were before. Just like in a video game. Now that's genre emulation.