Sabina's Castle: Session Twenty-Four, Trait Vote the Last With Musings

Andy and I convened, to talk about the game and the story and to do a trait vote. We were both very happy with this campaign and how it had gone. We were both surprised at how thematically coherent it had been, and I think it's the first time Andy had been part of a game I had actually run halfway decently? 

At any rate, these were the traits Anneli had:

Call of the Stars (Char)

Wrath of the Fallen (Char)

MW to the Head (DT)

Slightly Clumsy (DT)

Shaky Hands (DT)

Haunted (DT)

Driven (C-O)

We nixed Call of the Stars (the common Elven trait in my setting) and Wrath of the Fallen (elves who get stranded on the planet sometimes develop this trait). Neither of these things really applied to Anneli anymore, who was now unlike most elves by a good margin. Wrath of the Fallen, which Andy had invoked for a couple of times Anneli had acted a bit strangely, also didn't really apply, because she no longer felt the urge to sail among the stars.

But she does feel the pull of the Island, now. 

And so we changed Call of the Stars to Call of the Island.

For Wrath of the Fallen we just flat out removed it. Anneli had found a peace in the last session that just didn't fit with Wrath of the Fallen anymore. She's moved on from feeling stranded; she is on a journey. She's not only not stuck but she doesn't have the basic drive to do something that she can't do anymore: return to the sky.

We then thought about Anneli's ending speech about the ends not justifying the means, and how she had stuck to her principles to a degree that Spar had not, as well as most people in general. We settled upon the trait Righteous from the core book to describe what she had become, for better and for worse. She's become a person who will not tolerate evil, to a degree that others would find both very helpful and not. Not quite inflexible, but determined to only let the light in, and nothing else.

We then talked reputations. Andy had come up with an awesome reputation name for what Anneli had done, Starlight Rebel, but he only wanted it to be at 2D. I pushed back and said it was definitely a 3D reputation. Anneli had deposed the head of a major army and then told all the remaining major officers not only that she had done it, but why she had done it, and then she walked away from it. That was going to spread, and fast! 

So this is what Anneli's traits and Reputations look like:

Call of the Island (Char)
Righteous (Char)

MW to the Head (DT)

Slightly Clumsy (DT)

Shaky Hands (DT)

Haunted (DT)

Driven (C-O)

Starlight Rebel 3D

As far as my own recollections from this campaign, I've got to say that I grew a lot from it, both personally and technically. Unlike most games I didn't really start with a strong vision of what I wanted to communicate. I didn't really even know where the campaign was going. Most of the time when I try to think about that sort of thing I have a pretty good idea of what it is I want to do, but that was simply not the case here. Most sessions I'd come in without even the faintest clue of what I wanted to do, so we just made it up, then and there, and Andy started to push for it as hard as possible, with me following along and trying to figure out what I was doing. 

This game was a real challenge. But it was a crucible, which formed me and strengthened some parts of my GMing where I'm definitely weak. It has changed my approach to games where I do know where I want to say, where I walk in with my big ideas and metaphysical statements, which I've been ruminating for weeks at a time. I now throw it all out the window when session time comes, because something needs to get done, right there in that situation, and the big ideas will come in when its time. And not one freaking second before. The lessons learned from this game have transformed how I approached The Giggling Dark and The Undertow. What I learned from this game informed the formation of Hallucinations and I can't wait for my players to see the difference and to post about them here. 

This was also the first GM'd game in about seven years that I got to end on my terms. The Army made it impossible to schedule practically anything. Not to mention the fact that I kept trying to play with more than... one or two people. We're getting older. We have responsibilities. And that alone makes running games with a group practically impossible. So this has been a long time coming. I'm really thankful that I got to run this game with Andy, my best man, who has consistently put up with all sorts of nonsense from me and usually seems unflappable by even the biggest GMing gaffes. 

And, whoever you are that is currently reading this, I am grateful you chose to do so. Thanks for looking in, whoever you are. This game was a lot of fun and meant a lot to Andy and I. Hopefully these reports meant something to you, as well.