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I'm starting an irl game of Chuubo's on tuesday! Since I couldn't wait for the printalbe issue cards pdfs (those are coming, right?) I made some of my own. Feel free to use them as you wish (except, you know, they contain text from the game, so I guess use them as Jenna Moran wishes). They're on here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iaV9-tQcX3UP_Yi5rvjJknExUY0Fg5c0oe2B78EjW20/edit?usp=sharing
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Aug 28, 2014 21:59
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:14 |
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We played our first session this wednesday! We had lots of fun, though it felt that character creation (with 5 players + HG) took a little longer than it should have had to. We're playing in a fairly nondescript countryside, our main inspiration being My Neighbour Totoro and the Swedish children's books about Bullerbyn (The children of Noisy Village in English). I warned the players that the system ensures that sooner or later something supernatural or otherworldy will creep in, but with that in mind we aimed for very mundane for the start. The PCs are: Yon, the small boy in a white-and-blue sailor shirt and hat, an only child, who lives with his parents. His father is the retired captain of a grand ship of the royal navy. They have a small boat they use to sail out in the nearby lake and fish. The three siblings Kima, Sami and Pami, who normally live in the city but come here with their parents every summer. Sami and Pami are twins. Sami is a wannabe-detective, who loves a good mystery to solve. His starting quest is to explore the abandoned house in the woods. Pami (non-gendered, with the handwave "they're drawn in a way that makes it hard to determine whether they're a girl or a boy") has the skills Talk to grownups 1 and Planning 2, but Leadership -2. Kima is the older sister, who loves animals. She's on a Bindings arc – one of her traps (a covered pit) has just caught some sort of cub! Finally, there's Kem. He also lives in the city or town or something, and gets to see his pen-pal Kima in the summers, when his parents bring him here. He's all about reading, but he always brings too few books out with him. His starting quest is to find some more books. The game opened with Yon picking redcurrants - the parents had decided that the kids should pick all of them before they overripened. Pami has dragged Sami out there too, and Pami spots Yon despite his best attempts at hiding in the bushes. Sami decides that picking berries is boring, and darts into the woods. Sami got an XP for their starting quest "Make sure those berries get picked" (a Work and Study quest), for exclaiming "Am I the only one who cares about these berries?" Now, Yon's starting quest is a paradigmatic generic quest where the thing he's always thinking about is "how do I get people to be friends with me". His player proposes a new theory: if I help Pami with the berries, maybe they'll be my friend! Cut scene. Kem and Kima are out in the woods. Kima is talking about all the cool animals she's seen, and Kem has of course read about most of them. Kima goes to check on her traps, and when Kem looks up from his book, she's gone. Kem's affliction is "I get lost if at all possible", so I declare that he's lost. Luckily Kima gives a shout which lets him locate her. She's found a furry little creature in her pit trap! They are both incredibly excited by this – "It looks like a bear!" "Or a yak! I've read that their young ones are indistinguishable!" "Maybe it's a bear-yak-hybrid!" "Oh, how cool would that be!" – and we fade, as this was a Slice of Life XP action. In the afternoon, all the kids are invited to stay for dinner with Kima, Pami and Sami. Except, Sami is still gone. Pami explains to their mother what happened, and she's a bit worried and goes looking for Sami by the edge of the forest. We cut to Sami, who is obviously spying on the abandoned house. He's been close to it many times, but today is the day he will finally enter! He's startled by a window banging in the wind, earning him a quest flavour XP. After a few false starts, he opens the creaky door and sees a hallway chock-full of furniture and old junk. Opening the first drawer he sees, he finds a crude metal medallion, taking it. The next drawer has some earwigs, though, so he decides to run away home again. After all the kids have had their dinner, Yon's father the old captain comes walking across the yard with his cane. He strikes up conversation with the other kids' mother, and mentions that he's teaching Yon to raise the sail by himself tomorrow. Yon's player holds up her two-sided card for her Struggle basic quest: the front says "I'm proud of my father", bt the back reminds her Yon is also thinking "I wish he wouldn't force me to be just like him". Aww. Yon also gets an XP for his other quest when his player proposes that "taking Pami out in the boat when I'm allowed to sail it by myself might make them want to be my friend". That's where we finished for the evening. Since less than a week passed (and we know that we want to play out Kem and Kima's visit to the cub the very next morning), the first chapter isn't over yet. I handed out Calling 1 to Kima and Pami. Maybe I should have given them to more people, but I had only printed two copies of the card. We only managed to take 2 XP actions in total – the Slice of Life, and an out-of-genre Discovery action by the abandoned house. I think they'll catch on pretty quickly though. We struggled with two things during rules explanation and chargen: bonds/afflictions, and choosing arcs and starting quests. Bonds and afflictions are just not very intuitive, or at least, I can't explain them very well. I also think it's easier to see a mythical creature have an arbitrary restriction or destiny to them, than a mundane 10-year-old. In the end I didn't push very much for everyone to get it 100% (I'm not even sure I have), so we ended up with e.g. Kima's affliction "I'm afraid of water" and Pami's bond "I always try to stay on top of the situation". They don't really feel right, but sharpening them to "I can't go near water" and "I always stay on top of the situation" seems like it might break from the mundane too much... Maybe our low-key setting is part of the problem, here? Choosing arcs and starting quests wasn't badly explained in the book, just that I hadn't thought about having to do it with five people at a time, so we had to pass the computer with the PDF on it around, scrolling between the descriptions of the arcs and the longer descriptions of each arc's starting quest. So, advice to people running this I guess: think through how you're presenting the arcs and their starting quests to the players during chargen. If you're doing chargen in person, with everyone at the same time, print multiple copies of some sort of reference sheets, or just the relevant pages wholesale. We'll play again in a few weeks.
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Sep 5, 2014 20:55
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We've played two more sessions now! I can't really say the rules have really brought it, though. The players are starting to realise that it's almost completely player-driven, so hopefully we'll pick up plot as we go along. I've been handing out some Issues, people are chipping away at their quests, but mostly the rules don't add much. No-one has ever run out of Will during a chapter, which I think is a combination of two things. Firstly, we don't really know what genre we're in and how long chapters should be. Secondly, no-one has claimed an Intention longer than a single action, and I don't think of asking about Intention levels for every single thing. For example, I could start asking about the intention levels for entering the scary house, searching through the drawers, going upstairs even though the others saw a monster there before, reading the small runes on the wall, etc to show people that that poo poo is expensive, and they should just drop an ongoing intention to "Explore the house". Is that about right, do you think? -- A brief session log: In the second session, Yon was going sailing with his father. He proved that he could hoist the sails all by himself! Kem and Kima were out looking at the byak (their new name for the bear-yak-like creature Kima trapped). Kem went to the lake to see if Yon could get him a fish to feed it. He got lost – his afflicition is "I get lost if at all possible"! In the meantime, Kima had an encounter with a majestic elk-like creature with very large horns, who seemed to communicate with the byak. Kima hid in a tree. Kem eventually found the lake and got a fish from Yon's father. He took Yon back to the byak, who liked the fish! A storm was brewing, at least according to Yon's father, the old captain. Pami tried to get Sami to help picking berries, but failed; I don't remember the specifics. Pami came up with a great plan: steal some of the others' favourite things and hide them near the bushes, and then when they find them they'll be glad they helped pick the berries! She sneaks up and takes Kem's animal book, Sami's watch (I think) and Kima's knife. She hid them in the attic until the next day; while there she found a secret "room" underneath an old bed. The others ended up finding her, and in the secret room there were a lot of pinecones and a map, with an X over the scary house Sami found. Pami enacted the plan, but I don't remember the exact details. Sami and Kima got their things back, but were suspicious. Kem's book was left in the attic for some reason. Kem wrote a letter to the Royal Academy of Science explaining their find, the byak. He delivered it to the postman when he came around. Sami, Kima and Kem went to the scary house. They got all the way up the stairs before they were accosted by a monster! They ran away. Yon invited Pami to play at his house. Yon made a small animal out of a pinecone and some sticks (this is a level 2 skill Yon has), and then they spent the rest of the day drawing. The storm obviously struck when the adventurous kids were on their way home. They were eventually found by Pami, who helped their mother look for them. Wet, tired and cold, they got scolded for being out in the storm. This was a session break, and in the third session it really took off. Sadly without Yon, as his player couldn't attend. I'll write up the third session as soon as I have time. Tiger fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Oct 24, 2014 |
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Oct 23, 2014 10:56
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