Highmoon's Ponderings

Last week was the 20th Anniversary of the debut of Twin Peaks on television, a series that literally redefined the prime-time drama and opened the door to everything from The X-Files to pretty much every single geeky show on TV today. We didn’t get Twin Peaks in Puerto Rico (and I didn’t have cable) so I came to watch it about five years after it had been off the air, when the series first came out on VHS (my wife, however, watched the whole thing as it aired, behind her parents’ back, skulking down to the family room at night – she was the one who infected me with Twin Peaks fever).

I fell in love with this show once I saw it, and I continue to friggin adore it to this day. Given that at the time I was running a Vampire: The Masquerade Chronicle for my two players, I decided to express my love for the show in the one way I know how: by using it in my game.

More than 10 years after the fact, my players still remember, with unsettling fondness, that visit to Twin Peaks.

What I did was use a mix of elements from the show and Fire Walk With Me movie. The movie delved really hardcore into the mythology of the show, and given my player characters were supernatural creatures to begin with, I knew I wanted to make them realize that there are even stranger, stronger things out there than vampires. I also knew I did not want to define at all the nature of the Lodge denizens, and that I was not going to try in any way to speculate on what happened to Cooper and Annie after the end of the show (our adventure was taking place a year after the end of the TV series). I would maybe hint, but I was more interested in exploring the themes than in creating fan-fiction about a possible sequel. Because of the characters I had playing, I knew I would be playing on the idea of Nina being a possible next victim to BOB (thus why I presented the ring from FWWM), though the use of the little girl from a previous encounter Nina had had was truly what gave me the emotional key to the whole event. I also knew I would have the vampires face off BOB somehow, and the way it went down was amazing. As it should, it left scars on the characters, both emotional and physical (and spiritual, as in the case of Ben).

It was only a couple of sessions, and only two nights of in-game time, but wow, what a great story that was. It became instant legend in our circle of friends, and to this day we talk about the time the vampires went to Twin Peaks.

If you want to read a recap of the entire episode, then please read on.

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Happy Ireland day to all. It seems like the perfect day for me to finally talk about Ierne, don’t you think?

For a few weeks now I have been writing these little vignettes set in a land called Ierne, each showing a small glimpse of ongoing events before moving on to the next tale. I have also been dropping vague statements about my plans for Ierne as well as some hints as to what I’ve had in mind right from the start. Astute readers as well as customers of my Bardic Lore products for Highmoon Games (and also anyone who read my last Ierne tale) may have figured out that Ierne has been showing up for a few years now; this is a world that has been brewing in my mind, in one form or another, for over a decade, and I think it’s time to move from brewing to serving (stretching the beer analogy to its limits there). So, let me tell you about Ierne…

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Yesterday I was supposed to be studying for a Psychology test but I could not concentrate. In letting my mind empty for a few moments to see if I could get in the study zone, it instead wandered over to my past, to the late 90s, to Vampire: The Masquerade. This isn’t out of nowhere; recently I’ve been talking to Rich Rogers of the Canon Puncture Show (the GM in my recent Lady Blackbird game) about Vampire: The Masquerade. He was also a huge fan of the game and ran a long chronicle around the same time I did. I told him it would be fun to revisit that game with the tools and techniques we have learned since for more story-driven style of play and he agreed. We’re kicking it around and maybe we’ll do something with that in the future (maybe Megacon, if I manage to go?).

Vampire. That game still has a hold on me even though I haven’t played in about a decade. It was my first foray into personal stakes in a roleplaying game, even if I was crude about achieving that, if I ever did. Read more…

Those were Rich’s word during the game and on his after-game tweet (see my previous AP post) to describe how our Lady Blackbird game came to an end. “French” here could stand for “artistic/impressionistic/avant-garde,” but I’ve a feeling that it really stands for “unsatisfactory.” Or more completely, visually spectacular, but narratively unsatisfactory. If you take a moment to read through Rich’s AP Report and Mick’s Report of the last session of the game, I believe you’ll arrive at the same conclusion.

What is interesting is that, to me, describing it as a “French movie” made a lot of accurate sense. I’m not gonna say that I’m a film connoisseur–that title more aptly goes to my wife who does have a degree in Motion Pictures and is the one who studied the various film movements that we could lump under “French”–but being married to my wife, I have picked up a bit of exposure to this kind of art cinema over the years. And yes, that means having seen movies that fit the very same description I wrote above (Picnic at Hanging Rock, I’m looking at you!). But that has also taught me that not all stories are linear, and that sometimes a story is done even if I don’t think it is.

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Read the Intro, First Session Report, Second Session Report, Kale’s Second Session Report, Third Session Report, Kale’s Third Session Report and Kale’s Fourth Session Report.

Though we had planned to do this the last week of 2009, fate decreed it would be the first week of 2010 that would bring our Lady Blackbird game to a close. And boy, did it bring it to a close! We gathered around the Skype table and soared off into the Blue to find out the destiny of the crew and passengers of The Owl.

Rich, our GM, is going to write up his general recap, which I’ll link to here once it is up. What follows is all from Kale’s point of view.

I would suggest you go back and read the previous report to catch all the strings being tied-up here.

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As part of the shelved project I mentioned in my “Convictions” Witch Hunter post, my colleague and co-writer, Walt Ciechanowski, wrote this short but helpful article to help Witch Hunter GMs deal with the various disparate currencies that are available in the New World of the game’s setting.

Realistic as it may be to have the characters converting pounds into guilders, or francs into doubloons, etc, it is a tedious task that simply detracts from the main part of the game, playing a great story. Walt’s article solves that easily and brilliantly, and I’m sure any and all Witch Hunter GMs will get good use of this.

The rules have been posted to the Witch Hunter forum in the Paradigm Concepts website, and on Scribd, where it can be read online or downloaded on PDF (or use the widget below).

I hope you enjoy these rules. Please let me know how they work for you, either here or at the PCI Witch Hunter forum thread.