Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: The Forlorn Manor (Exalted)

Hey there, [insert-clever-nickname-for-my-blog-followers]! I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday weekend, whichever holiday(s) you celebrate! We're back with another adventure with the crew of the Moonlight Maiden!

Sorry this is going up so late in the week. As much as I'd love to have some holiday-related excuse, quite frankly I just haven't used my time as efficiently as I could/should have. I'm not proud of that, but I'll own it.

But now, on with the show!

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: Mysteries (Exalted)

Hello again there, folks. Back with another trip to Creation's Southwest with the crew of the Moonlight Maiden! This session serves as an epilogue for Episode 3: Hunt for the Admiral, and begins Episode 4: The Slain Scion.

I can't think of anything particularly interesting or clever to add here, so let's get into it.

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: Wood, Fire, Water (Exalted)

Hey there, season's greetings, etc., etc. Hope everybody's keeping warm right now, or at least as warm as is comfortable. So my group just dealt with the biggest fight so far of the campaign, and I've got here a blog post describing it as best I can. This mostly completes the 'Hunt for the Admiral' arc -- there'll be some follow-up stuff next session, but we managed to fit the thrilling climax into this one. (I was a little concerned we'd have to split up the fight, but we managed to do it in one.)

I do something a little different at the start of this write-up. I just saw an opportunity to emphasize a few details I didn't get a chance to do much with in the fight itself, or simply forgot to describe in the moment or whatever, and went with it.[0] Let me know if you think it works and if I should do more stuff like it.

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: Hunted (Exalted)

Hey there, hope everyone had a happy holiday whether it was just a day off work or a full family affair with all the turkey and trimmings. If you're reading this, know that I'm thankful for you.

So let's just get into it -- I've got another Exalted write-up coming at ya.

(By the way, I've gone back and fixed a few mistakes I made on earlier posts. Among a few other edits, I've made sure Hǎifēng is identified with the correct pronouns, and adjusted the early posts so I consistently refer to Xương as such unless he's taken on his more monstrous form.)

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: Puzzle Solved (Exalted)

Welp, when it rains it pours. When my group's usual time came around a couple of weeks ago, a combination of circumstances outside our collective control thwarted both our main day and our backup day. And then, when we played this past Sunday, Zac and Bryan informed me that because their schedule's settled down we'd be able to move to a weekly Tuesday schedule instead of every other Sunday for at least a while. So we went ahead and played again this week!

As a result, I've got a post for two sessions' worth of stuff here. I considered splitting it up, but nah. It neatly finishes out the current story, and to be honest, I'm not sure the second session would be long enough on its own to justify a separate post. (This is Chris from the future coming back to edit in: Actually, it would have been. Oops.) But either way, this wraps up the second story of the chronicle and the mini-arc with the puzzle box. 

Also, just to make things a little easier for folks just coming in, over on my Actual Play index I've expanded the description of the Exalted game to better delineate the game's story arcs. Hope it helps!

This has turned out to be a pretty long post (with all of the footnotes), so the sooner we start the sooner we finish!

Burning Footsteps: Sins of the Father (Promethean)

Hey there, folks, sorry it's been so quiet here. Meatspace issues have interfered with my group's ability to play Exalted, and just my own scheduling failures have interfered with my doing more Promethean write-ups. I'm gonna try to be better about that.

Ah well.

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: The Onyx Jackals (Exalted)

Alrighty, if you've been paying attention to when these Exalted posts go up (all of you who are reading them), then you'll know it's about time for another! Conveniently, that assumption is correct! Huzzah!

And let's just get into it, beneath the cut.

Burning Footsteps: The Gathering (Promethean)

Hello again. For your evening's entertainment, so on and so forth, I've got another Promethean session for you.

Honestly, it's been weird going back over these and rereading them. There are a lot of little elements that stuck with me after the game wrapped up and probably about as many that didn't. Like, most of the stuff with the Baron in New Orleans had slipped my mind until going back over the old write-ups and checking my old notes for clarifications. I mean, it's been almost fifteen years but even still.

Anyhow, if anyone is reading these, I thank you for your time. It's been an interesting trip down memory lane for the moment.

Speaking of which, going over some of my old notes for something relevant to this session, I realize my original write-up for last session back in the day left out some details that I recorded in my game notes. No, I don't know why I left them out in the original LJ write-up I was working from. But I've gone back to make a few tweaks, particularly towards the end, and fix a typo I spotted in the process.

And with that, let's get to it.

An Old LARPing Anecdote

This isn't connected to anything too specific, but I was talking to someone about gaming earlier and they shared this fun little article that hits a little too close to home even if it is satire. And it reminded me of a story from my LARPing days that I occasionally share and figured "Why not post it here?"

So this was... well, longer ago than I can strictly recall, actually. I wanna say 2009 or 2010, but I could be wrong. But my roommate Sean and I were running a Changeling: The Lost LARP. This was first edition, and also the game that finally 'sold' the local gaming community as a whole on what was then called the NWoD.[0] At one point, one player whom I won't name here but with a reputation for not being terribly bright wanted to either change his character's Kith or buy the Dual Kith Merit, I'm actually not sure which (or which version of the Merit, as there were two). I wanna say the latter, but either way it was one of those 'if I'd known about this particular option at the time I'd have built the character with this.' situations.

Either way, there were guidelines in the book about going on a quest through the Hedge, possibly through a Trod (a special Hedge path), for something like that. So I came up with a little quest for him, pointing out that because of LARPs' often-complicated relation to real-world time, this would actually take his character effectively out of play for a while, or at the very least we'd be roleplaying off to the side away from the rest of the group for at least a full session. He was fine with that.

So I came up with an outline of a journey, with a list of obstacles and encounters he'd have to overcome. I didn't want it to just be a series of fights or anything with no context between, and I also wanted to give him the opportunity to travel well enough to avoid the worst of it. I put a lot of time and work into it, too. What I did was make it an extended test, and every so many successes on his test to travel would take him to another leg of the journey. Each segment of the trip had a specific encounter tied to it, and every so many tests he would deal with whatever was the designated issue for that leg of the journey. In theory, if he did well enough, he'd handle the journey in a minimum of tests and a minimum of encounters.

Well, this player is the sort who'd realize he's not especially optimized or prepared for a journey like this and shrug and try it anyways. Which is why his first encounter was in the first segment of this long journey I'd prepared.

So his character is making his way through the Hedge, and rule one of being a changeling (especially in 1e) is "Don't fuck around in the Hedge if you can help it," and rule two is "If you must fuck around in the Hedge, stick to the path and don't get distracted." So the first encounter was, paraphrasing 'you see a break in the Hedge and there's a side path with what appears to be gold coins on it.' And his first instinct was to wander onto the side path and look at the shiny thing. Which led him into a trap where a hobgoblin spider came at him.

And I'd have to dig through the books, because I believe I took the spider directly from them, but if I recall correctly this is a pretty minor beastie, the sort of thing that you don't throw at a changeling one-on-one unless you're taking it easy on them. (Which I was -- again, first encounter of a long journey.) But his combat stats were terrible -- I wanna say he brought a gun despite not having any dots in Firearms, but regardless of the specifics this is someone who'd have trouble fighting a stiff breeze, and he undertook a long journey alone with a weapon he wasn't any good with. And died.

All the preparation, all the effort I put forth, and he dies about ten minutes into the quest.

I didn't say this was a particularly uplifting anecdote. But it's a story I've shared enough times, I figured I may as well write it up here. Sadly, I have no clever lesson or moral for the story, other than to say that stuff like this is why I try very hard to carefully curate my gaming groups these days. Anyhow, that's my story. Feel free to stick around for my gaming write-ups while you're here.

[0]-- In a nutshell: First edition Requiem wasn't different enough from Masquerade to convince the locals to give up their Sabbat games, first edition Forsaken had a 'so what do the characters actually do' problem for a lot of folks, Mage in any iteration had mostly been ruined for the locals by a powergaming Storyteller (and also had a 'what do they do' problem in first edition), and Promethean was a little too weird and un-LARPable to sell the larger community on the setting/system as a whole. But Changeling scratched the itches just right.

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: Setting Sail (Exalted)

Hello again, and welcome back to Creation!

So yesterday we had an Exalted session; kind of a short, light one. As a result this'll be kind of a short, light write-up. (or at least it seemed the case until I finished it, but I don't feel like coming up with another opening so you just get this instead) 

And let's get to it.

Burning Footsteps: Zanzibar's (Promethean)

Alrighty, so I've got a bit of free time waiting on something I need for an errand I have to run, so let's see if I can knock one of these out. (This intro is mostly to entertain me as I type, because it'll probably be long after I run said errand when this actually gets on the site. Oh well.)

Though that said, this session was the first one in a few where I actually had the entire group at the table together. I feel that noteworthy, given the likely-noticeable absence of certain characters in the last couple of write-ups.

Speaking of which, unless something happens my group should have an Exalted session on Sunday, so that's something to look forward to (both for me running it and for you, when the write-up gets posted).

And now, on with the show!

(Minor content warning for a joke about self-harm)

Burning Footsteps: Origins (Promethean)

Oh hey, didn't see you there.

No, seriously, I got nothing clever to open these with. But yeah, we've got a Promethean session for you all.

So let's get to it.

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: The Grim Vortex (Exalted)

Welcome again to another installment of Tales of the Moonlight Maiden! Circumstances almost thwarted another session, but we managed to schedule one for today outside of our usual arrangement. But this session wraps up the first story of the series (the first episode of the season, as it were)! Huzzah!

Burning Footsteps: The Mountain of Rust (Promethean)

Greetings, programs!

So I've got another Promethean write-up for you today -- technically, I had it for you a couple of days ago and then forgot to post it, whoops. Sorry, I'm usually better about that but we had an Exalted game coming up and getting this posted slipped my mind.

Anyhow, not much of interest to add to this post, so let's get into it!

Burning Footsteps: Welcome to Waco (Promethean)

Greetings again, folks. Circumstances have prevented us from playing Exalted, but it's occurred to me I've come close to slacking off on these Prometheus write-ups so I'm gonna take advantage of some newly-free time to do something about that.

And, um... yeah.

Burning Footsteps: Settling Accounts (Promethean)

Hey, guess what, it's time for another Promethean write-up! I know I've been scooting along with these for the most part (or at least it seems that way), which seems odd to me given that the process isn't that much different from what I've done for any other game given that I'm writing these posts from my old posts as reference rather than my notes. I dunno. Maybe it's the lack of pressure since I'm not actively running this? I dunno.

Either way, here we are again. If it matters, this is the point where Amanda officially informed me she was dropping out of the game, so the players I've got at this point -- Sean, Brendan, Zac, Greg, and Shomo -- are going to be the group we've got for the rest of the chronicle. (And if you've been paying attention, I still run games for Sean and Zac today whether they like it or not) Of course, that's not counting sessions where one or more players can't make it and we handwave their character into the background, etc. But I just wanted to lay that out there in case it matters.

Now, I'm not going to do this often to keep from throwing off my own numbers or anything, but this write-up is going to cover two sessions, mostly because one of them is really sparse on details and kinda glossed over (on account of being really combat-heavy), so I'd rather attach it to this post than have a separate post for what's only going to be a couple of paragraphs.

So here we go, for this game's first two-fer.

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: Hostages (Exalted)

So hey, welcome back! So we've got the second session of my group's Exalted chronicle, Tales of the Moonlight Maiden for your perusal. I know it feels like I just posted one of these, and I kinda did -- the last one was pretty close to the following session for reasons I'm not getting into here, and I'm getting this one out pretty quickly.

I don't really have anything to add, other than to say that because of character adjustments and whatnot between sessions, I've gone back and updated the little character info in the first post. So without any further ado, let's get into it.

Tales of the Moonlight Maiden: Moonrise (Exalted)

Greetings, folks! So for the first time in a few months, we've got some new tabletop content for the ol' blog here, as my group got together to have the first session of our new Exalted chronicle (if you couldn't guess from the teaser I posted), which I'm calling Tales of the Moonlight Maiden. (I was originally going to title this post 'Shakedown Cruise,' but then I remembered I used that on a Doctor Who post a few years ago)

I've typed up a primer on Exalted and posted it here. Originally I was going to include it in this write-up, but it was getting long enough that I decided to make it its own separate post where I can be wordy as hell and not clutter this more than it would be anyways.

This is going to be an all-Lunars game set in the Southwest, using the third edition core rules. Lunars are the chosen of Luna, shapeshifters and predators possessed of an inner rage that many of them channel towards the Realm. They come in three castes: Full Moon warriors, Changing Moon tricksters, and No Moon witches and shamans. In addition, there are Casteless who let their powers shift with the moon phases, flexible enough to do many things without being able to consistently excel in any one arena. They have no larger organization beyond the mutual aid society that is the Silver Pact, a network of mentors and apprentices stretching across Creation.

The Southwest of creation is a tropical area between the deserts of the South (and the Elemental Pole of Fire) and the wide oceans of the West (and the Elemental Pole of Water). Most of it is coastline and islands dotted with jungles and rainforests, and as one travels further south volcanoes become more common in the Cinder Isles.

(Not that anyone ever does, but if anyone has any questions about this specific game or Exalted in general, feel free to ask.)

While there will be the occasional short arc, recurring villains, etc., the intent is that this will be a "wandering badasses helping out the people of Creation" sort of game. Like, in my head, I keep imagining your typical early-seasons Supernatural or Incredible Hulk-style procedural but with a boat in a tropical setting.

The boat, by the way, is called the Moonlight Maiden. Hence the name of this chronicle.

This is the first Exalted game I've run, and I haven't played the game since first edition, and none of my players have experience with third edition either, so we're taking it slow as we adjust to the system, and there's going to be the occasional mistake, and so forth. So be warned. This is not a system we've been playing in some permutation for years.

So with that caveat out of the way, let's meet our Circle:

• Lintha Người Kéo Xương, aka The Bonetaker (he/him), a goblin shark-aspected Full Moon played by Sean (he/him). The Bonetaker was born and raised among the demon-worshipping Lintha pirates, until a negotiation went horribly wrong and they left him stranded for dead to teach him a valuable lesson and during his struggle to survive he Exalted. Now he's on the outs with the family, rejecting the culture that's enslaved them to the demons and fighting to free others from oppression -- brutally and messily if need be.
• Hǎifēng (they/them), a monkey-aspected Changing Moon played by Zac (they/them)[0]. Hǎifēng was taken by pirates from their village as a child, and doesn't remember where they're originally from. They escaped the pirates and grew up on the streets until their Exaltation. They carry a set of artifact war fans that they use with the Laughing Monster martial arts style.
• Shango (he/him), an osprey-aspected Casteless played by Bryan (he/him). He grew up in a wealthy family in the nation of Zhaojūn, and Exalted to escape the gilded cage he grew up in. Xương and Hǎifēng happened to be in the city at the time and smuggled him out of there. He's still Casteless and trying to find his way, but he's begun walking the path of Falcon Style martial arts.[1]

And now, let's get out into first adventure with this trio.

An Exalted Primer

First, a quick-ish primer on Exalted. Exalted is an epic fantasy game set in a land of monsters, demons, spirits, gods, and so forth called Creation. Thousands of years ago the Ancients carved Creation out of a primordial chaos called the Wyld and anchored it with five Elemental Poles. They created the gods to run Creation for them, and the gods eventually rebelled against their tyranny. Because the gods couldn't directly confront their creators, they (with the help of some allied Ancients) infused mortals with divine might to create the Exalted, champions who could fight the Ancients in their stead. The mightiest of the Exalted passed their power on to worthy mortals when killed, while others spread their power through bloodlines to create armies of demigods. The Exalted won with some of their foes slain, and the rest trapped in a Hell literally made from an Ancient turned inside out. (Kind of a dick move, to be honest.)

The Solar Exalted, champions of the Unconquered Sun, ruled over Creation itself at the gods' behest after the war, with the bestial Lunar Exalted (Chosen of Luna) and wise Sidereal Exalted (Chosen of the Maidens of Fate) by their side. They were backed by families of Dragon-Blooded (Terrestrial Exalted Chosen by the Elemental Dragons) serving as their champions and assistants. And then with the Unconquered Sun's assistance, 'lesser' gods were able to create their own Chosen -- the Exigents, each as unique as a fingerprint but no less a force to be reckoned with. It was a golden age of magic and technology, ruled by demigod kings and queens. 

Eventually the Solars grew corrupt and tyrannical and the Unconquered Sun turned away in shame. The Sidereals privately determined that unless something was done, Creation was doomed to become a land of horrors. The Sidereals orchestrated the Usurpation (or the Solar Purge, depending on who you talk to), where they and the Dragon-Blooded overthrew the Solar Exalted Host. The Maidens' Chosen sealed away the Solars' power, drove the Lunars out into the wilds, and in the process accidentally broke Fate itself so thoroughly that Creation cannot retain the memory of them. Creation was now lesser, but safe.

The First Age was over, and made way for the Second.

The Dragon-Blooded formed the Shogunate to rule Creation now. The Sidereal Exalted backed them from the shadows with tools like the Immaculate Philosophy, whose teachings claim that the Dragon-Blooded are enlightened and 'virtuous' (read: obedient) mortals may reincarnate as Dragon-Blooded in future lives. This philosophy also holds that the gods are not to be worshipped directly, but with the Immaculates as liaisons between mortals and the divine. They formed the Wyld Hunt, to fight threats to Creation and its people such as monsters, raksha (often poetically called the Fair Folk), rogue gods, and Lunar Exalted (as well as a few 'loose' Solars) who took issue with the new state of affairs. Things weren't great, but Creation functioned well enough.

Everything changed when the Great Contagion attackedswept Creation, striking down mortal and Exalt alike. Ninety percent of Creation's population perished before the terrible plague, and it looked like nothing could save the remaining ten percent. Then the raksha, previously something of a nuisance, invaded from the Wyld beyond Creation's borders en masse. And for a moment, it looked like they were about to finish the job the Great Contagion started.

In Creation's darkest hour, a squad of Dragon-Blooded soldiers broke into one of the old manses the Solars used to run Creation, braving and bypassing impossible defenses. In the end, only one made it to the controls of the Sword of Creation. She deciphered and seized control of one of the most potent artifacts ever known, and drove the raksha back to Creation's borders. Much had been lost, the Shogunate was over, but the time came to rebuild.

That Dragon-Blooded soldier, whose original name is lost to history, crowned herself the Scarlet Empress and built the Realm -- a mighty empire managed by the Great Houses, some founded by her followers and others by her descendants. The Immaculate Order (and thus the Sidereals) backed her rule, and she created a Dynasty of powerful heroes that has been the predominant force in Creation ever since. With the Wyld Hunt keeping the 'Anathema' at the far reaches, the Scarlet Empress established a peace, albeit one built on an elaborate scaffold of political manipulation and carefully-managed jealousies to keep any rivals too busy to overthrow her. (Not to get too glib with this, but I've used Ron in this video as an example of her ruling style.)

With all this power she built and ran her empire from the Blessed Isle, ransacking much of the rest of Creation -- The Threshold -- for wealth and resources, with thousands of supernatural living weapons at her beck and call. Few are safe from her greed and ambition, with those few either too far to reach or have their own Dragon-Blooded champions.

One day, 763 years into her rule, she vanished. Nobody panicked right away -- she'd taken unannounced sabbaticals before, and came back. Officially, she's gone into secluded spiritual meditation.

Five years later, she has yet to return and nobody in Creation or Heaven knows where she is. Nobody's dared declare her dead (partially for fear that she's just laying in wait to punish the first person to do so), but the Great Houses of the Realm are gearing up for a civil war to determine who's going to succeed her. The Realm's control, as well as the Wyld Hunt's effectiveness, waver as the Dynastic forces focus on building up their own power for the conflict to come. The first casualty of this conflict may be House Tepet, secretly hamstrung by its rivals as it faced the Solar warlord called the Bull of the North. At the Bull's hand House Tepet lost almost all of their military might, which in turn cost them all of their political might.

And this all happened as the imprisoned Solars returned, their power freed and empowering mortals once again as the Unconquered Sun's attention returns to Creation. And some of these Solars appear to have returned in darker, stranger forms, wielding the powers of the Underworld or Hell, their motives uncertain at best. Some of the so-called 'Abyssal' Exalted, champions of death, were seen when the Deathlord known as the Mask of Winters marched on the city of Thorns with an undead immortal behemoth. Meanwhile the 'Infernal' Exalted glow an unhealthy green tint as they unleash literally-Hellish powers in bloody campaigns of revenge and anarchy. In addition, the rogue Sidereal Rakan Thulio has stepped up his own personal crusade against Heaven with mysterious followers of his own who seem to have strange powers but no past. And then there's the flame of the Exigence, left to smolder by the Unconquered Sun when he turned his face from Creation, now blazing brighter than ever to ignite a new generation of champions.

And that's all not even mentioning the various factions who see the weakness of the Realm and are about to make their move.

The Time of Tumult has begun.

Burning Footsteps: Reading is Fundamental (Promethean)

And here we are again, with another of these flashback posts. As I write this I've got the first session of my group's new chronicle in the works, but there's some things in my notes I need to go over before I finish it so I thought I'd see if I can bang this out.

Oh, and before I get into it, Under Alien Skies is available in PoD, for those inclined!

Soon...

For the past month and change, my group's been working on plans to resume regular gaming after our post-Geist hiatus (still utilizing voice chat, as much for convenience as for safety at this point). With any luck, this coming weekend we should be able to get started on the first proper session of our next game.

Just as a reminder, my past game write-ups can be found under this label, with a detailed index here, but while you wait for me to start getting new sessions written up, there's a preview below the cut...

Burning Footsteps: Fetch Quests (Promethean)

Hey there, folks. We're back with this. Barring incident, soon my group should be starting up our next game, and since I think I'm basically set for the first session I'm putting aside what would otherwise be some prep time to crank out another of these write-ups.

Burning Footsteps: A Short Visit (Promethean)

You may be thinking to yourself "wait, didn't Chris just get one of these out a couple of days ago?" and the answer is "Yeah, and I just felt like doing another one. What of it?"

Sorry, caffeine.

Anyhow, um... not sure what else to add here. Feels weird to talk about current stuff on a 'flashback' post even if I had any news to share. So let's get into it.

Burning Footsteps: Split the Party (Promethean)

Okay, so I thought I'd have more of these up by now, but I've been distracted, and my energy for physically writing has been largely taken up by notes and prep for my group's next game, for which I might do an official announcement post or not, I haven't decided yet. I mean, we know what we're playing, I'm just trying to figure out if I want to do a thing for it before session write-ups happen.

Either way, here we are for another flashback post to my Promethean game. And, um, I can't think of anything else to add. So let's get to it.

Under Alien Skies is out!

I don't think there's anyone following this blog that isn't also following my Twitter, but just in case -- Under Alien Skies is available in Advance PDF. What this means is that there's still one more editing/errata pass to be made, but also if you get it now then when it becomes available in print-on-demand you'll get a coupon for a discount on said PoD as if you'd purchased them together as a bundle.

You can find Under Alien Skies at this finely-crafted link!

Burning Footsteps: A Dark and Stormy Night (Promethean)

Alrighty, folks, in case you missed it I'm trying something a little new. The gaming group has been on hiatus, and we're on the verge of getting things up and running again. But something that's kind of stuck in my craw ever since I put together my 'list of AP blog posts' is that my old Promethean chronicle is on another site altogether. I've decided to fix that, if for no other reason than to strip out all of the unrelated gaming stuff in addition to the things I thought were clever on LiveJournal 15 years ago. 

This is a game that's always stuck with me, and it helped build a foundation for what I've called my "Woodburn Chronicles" setting. Characters from this chronicle appear in my "Child of the Machine" and "Prodigals of the Machine" stories, as well as a few other games I've run over the years. About four and a half years ago (wait, that long? holy shit), as you may recall, I wrote "Goodbyes," which was intended as something of a tenth anniversary revisit of some of the characters from this game (so, um, spoiler alert, you might know how some of them end up already). And one of the NPCs who shows up in this chronicle has a bit of a 'cameo' in Night Horrors: The Tormented.

So I'm gonna repost those old write-ups here. As I've mentioned elsewhere, these aren't going to be copy-pastes; there'll certainly be a bit of editing here and there and the occasional footnote. That said, remember that this is stuff I ran and wrote down a long-ass time ago, so there will be details I failed to write down at the time (either because I forgot or because I didn't deem them important back then) and will not be able to recall in the rewrite (though that said, I did find some of my old notes while typing this up so that might help in the logn run). I'm not going to do them all at once, but will try to get these out over time and hope I get through them all before the Second Coming.

Two more notes before I get into this: 

First, a reminder that this was run with the first edition Promethean rules -- in fact it was while the supplements were still coming out. Big chunks of the adventure are taken from the story material in the backs of those books (I'd actually have to reread them to know exactly what I used) and some of it is just blatantly lifted and adapted from other supplements, particularly Mysterious Places. But there's gonna be stuff that doesn't quite work the same or I would have done much differently in 2e. I think in terms of the narrative enough of it fits without issue but either way I'm not going to make any special effort to reconcile any of it. Though I'm sure I'm going to have to resist the urge to update certain background details to better fit in with 2e.

Second, one of the characters has some Nazi mad science in his backstory. There shouldn't be anything directly or overtly gross, but just warning you nonetheless.

And as always, if you have questions, just ask. Here we go.

Gaming Updates

Things have been a little quiet, and I've been meaning to post some updates and now seems as good a time as any. 

First off, barring incident, it looks like we're going to be able to reconvene to start a fresh game. I'm tempted to go further into it but we're still really early in the planning stages and I'm afraid of jinxing it.

Second, I mentioned this in passing before, but I've decided I'm going to go back and dig up my old Promethean game write-ups from my old LiveJournal and repost them here. That way, all of that material is on one site, and you don't have to go wading through stuff about unrelated games, or just my random blogging BS from the mid-late 00's to read it. They aren't going to be just flat copy-pastes, for the record. I mean, I'm not going to completely rewrite them from scratch but they are going to get edited and annotated where appropriate.

But that's it for the moment, I'll probably get the first Promethean post up in the next day or two, barring incident. See you then!

Sin City: An Untimely End (Geist)

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I needed to run a few things by some people, and by the time I decided I was ready to do so I had computer difficulties that effectively made my desktop unusable for a couple of weeks and posting to this site is a frigging nightmare from my iPad.

Anyhow, the short version is that we've had to end the Geist game early. I'm not going to get into the why, but I can provide some closure as to the story. We were close enough to the end that for the purposes of my notes, at least, I could describe the rough arc of the remaining session. I mean, we were at the point where all that was left was the 'boss fight' anyways. So I wrote up, in broad strokes so as not to assume too much specific action, roughly how the finale would have gone and as my players have not objected to my interpretation of events I'm sharing it here.

Think of this as being like a YouTube video showing you a video game's final cutscenes while skipping the actual battle.

Sin City: Probable Cause (Geist)

Hey there, folks. We had to cancel last week so that's why there's the little bit of a gap, but now I'm back with more Geist-y goodness.

As I have no particular news or commentary to add, let's get into it.

Sin City: Shuffle Up and Deal (Geist)

Hey there, folks. No real news for this week, unless you count that I finished up my Realms of Magic and Mystery draft. Also, there's another Under Alien Skies art piece previewed at the Monday Meeting Notes that I'm pretty sure is from my section.

But we are here for neither the World of Scion nor the Trinity Continuum. We're here for the Chronicles of Darkness. So let's get to it.[0]

Sin City: The Extra Virgin Job (Geist)

Welp, here we are again.

While I don't have any news-news, this week's Monday Meeting Blog over at Onyx Path's website has a couple of art previews for Under Alien Skies, an Æon book that I worked on. And I could be wrong, but I think one of the art pieces is from a section I worked on. I don't think I have any way of finding out before the book is out, so I'm not going to dwell. Just mentioning it here.

And now, let's do the thing.

Sin City: The Ghost Market (Geist)

Greetings, programs!

Don't worry, I didn't skip another write-up, we just cancelled last week. I don't really have anything particular to share, news-wise, so let's just get to it.

Sin City: It's All Symbolic (Geist)

After the last couple of weeks, I'm making a little bit of an effort to get this posted before I dive into some game prep, before inevitably having to start working on final drafts for Realms of Magic and Mystery for Scion.

And things just lined up so we had a bit of a short session anyways, so let's just get to it.

Sin City: The Curious Case of Richard Truman (Geist)

Greetings, true believers!

Sorry it's been kinda radio silent here. I've been fighting to finish my freelancing assignment with a deadline looming and I just haven't had the time/energy to do these write-ups so now this one's gonna be a two-fer. (Conveniently, these two kind of flow well enough together, IMHO.) So let's get to it.

Sin City: Conference (Geist)

Hoi, chummers. So, um, that was a week, wasn't it? Let's just get on with it.

Sin City: Incoming Calls (Geist)

First off, I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday. We took a couple of weeks off because of Christmas-related schedule disruptions, but we're back now for the first post of 2021.

I can't recall anything else that needs to go here, so let's just get into the write-up.