On with it!
After nineteen or twenty sessions David and I finished Sorin’s first book of What Remains. Sorin began as a common woodsman, an inheritor of the old ways of Facator, The Creator. The magical fruit trees that were thought to give the earth its life had begun to die… and the soil with it. The crops began to fail, forests to shrink. Sorin heard tell of Duke Rafael giving audience to the evil Cult of Zodie, who claimed to have a solution the blight. So Sorin set out to stop the cult. It all looked so simple! The dark god Zodie was known for his hatred of humanity. Open and shut, right?
Nope.
What happened instead was almost twenty sessions of wandering, heartbreak, mysticism, and theodicy, ending in Sorin’s admittance of his weakness and the lack of clarity he could find in anything but his own weakness. The story felt akin to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, albeit with space stations and lightning guns. And the truth turned out to be much more complicated than expected. Turns out the magical trees were an invasive alien species, and had been draining the soil of its soil. The ancients slowed down the killing of the planet by releasing a specialized herbicide in a blue crowd from orbital satellites… until recently, when the herbicide ran out. Sorin was gifted the last sample of herbicide by seeming chance, thanks to an act of kindness. He retired to the city Turn Mort, which had recently rediscovered the secrets of rocketry and orbital flight, to wait out the winter.
Folks, out of the twenty or so sessions only about seven of them dealt with the above mentioned plot. In fact there would be six session stretches where the plot never came up! Sorin would be healing up, getting money for his travels, singing songs to cheer himself and others up, intertown warfare, angels, spacefaring elves, roving bands of satyrs… and just so much more. The story was alive with the unexpected. No prep was needed; our job was to roll the dice and hang on for dear life. I didn’t think about our campaign much between sessions. The story practically rolled itself into existence.
The previous first book I’d ran had been a lot of fun, with some strong character development… but had come off as too much of an adventure story. There’s nothing wrong with pulps (The Truth Found in Death will be one!) but that’s not what Crescendo is. The first book needed to bring in questions of whether the character should be a hero at all. Imperfections had to be abundantly clear, along with a general feeling of helplessness. The rest of the books could do the big plot stuff and be fine; the first book needed to have suffering. So I doubled down on the inherently unfair math; characters may succeed someday, but it ain’t gonna be happening much in those first twenty sessions! To compensate I made a mechanic that allowed players to define their own failure and make the next roll easier, provided they invoked one of their character’s Traits and made the failure their fault. It was an instant success! Turns out people really like taking control of unfair situations and role playing at the same time, who knew?
So with that done I’m pretty certain that the Melody scene (where the actual plot happens) is done, by and large. Tweaks will be needed moving forward, but the Melody fulfills its function: to generate as much pain and chaos as possible, short of sadism. The Melody’s mechanics have been fine-tuned for maximum productive cruelty. This is not an idle boast: there’s not been one playtester who hasn’t gone “What in the…” and then stared off into the distance, at least once, as they’ve tried to fit the monstrosities their characters briefly became as they fail themselves. And Sorin’s failings were particularly uncomfortable, falling to fits of murderous ruthlessness, in order to cope with the world. These moments were more often than not provoked by Melody scenes. That made the characters vulnerable and, more often than not, sympathetic. A person is frequently confused with their circumstances, and when circumstances change people usually do too. And it is this highly uncomfortable truth that the Melody is designed to bring crashing into view. After a year and a half of testing I can confidently say the Melody does its job.
What does David have to say about it?
My name is David, and I've been playing a duet game of Crescendo with Nathan for several months. This game and setting are entitled What Remains. We just finished our first Arc, which has taken a modest woodsman named Sorin on a tragic journey to save the planet. Crescendo
is an intricate game, and we have played a lot of it -- so I won't try to summarize everything that has happened or cover all the mechanics.
In creating Sorin, I followed the prompts to generate a background without any clear character concept in mind. It just fell together. The picture was complete after I looked at the setting and situation details. Crescendo includes setting generation tools, and the Movements provide the situational material. The player also creates Drives reflecting things in the world that the character feels compelled to act upon. Movements and Drives are a kind of connective tissue between GM and player agendas. With all of this in place, it was a no-brainer to create a woodsman who is motivated to restore the magical fruit trees responsible for sustaining all life on the planet.
Crescendo uses some unique mechanics (in my experience) to facilitate the incorporation of prepared materials in play, and to reuse played material in new ways.
What is known about the Immortals includes many motifs and symbols to incorporate into scenes, implying their interest in mortal affairs. In play, this lends a touch of the supernatural and divine to ordinary conflicts. As we're resolving and narrating things, symbolism works its way into the scene, but it is always left open to interpretation. The Immortals are always watching and have their hands in everything.
Crescendo has a mechanic called "Hitting the Books." As things happen, both players and GM journal certain events. Whenever we need more information, we flip to a random page and random entry in our journals as a source of inspiration. The GM then interprets the results, remixing and reshaping past content into something new. I have enjoyed some of the results from hitting the books regarding the situational changes for particular locales in which the previous events are mixed in with the results of hitting the books. This has been a great driver of big-picture events.
Characters in Crescendo have a set of Drives, which get damaged through play. When exhausted, they present a potential turning point for the character. Drive exhaustion happened to Sorin a few times -- resulting in Crisis Points. During a Crisis Point, the character is called to take drastic action that they will regret forever, and that action automatically succeeds.
In the first instance, Sorin murdered a soldier to prevent being taken back to town to pursue a course of action he felt would be useless. Peace-loving Sorin became a murderer at that moment, which completely changed his trajectory.
In the second Crisis Point, Sorin killed his ailing master. She had been severely wounded and healed herself using an ingredient (meteorites) previously thought harmful to the planet's environment. For a little more background, a cult was cutting down the existing magic fruit trees and planting these meteorites in the ground. Sorin and his master opposed this plan. However, if the meteorites healed his master, they must not be all bad. As they started to sprout in her body, Sorin deduced that they were transformed and proceeded to harvest them from her, causing her death. We haven't fully addressed this angle in play yet, but it resulted from playing the Crisis Point. It wasn't part of any pre-established lore. Crescendo prompted us to create that lore during play.
As we've developed the lore, using the various mechanics provided by the game, we've gotten more into the struggles of the Immortals. Many of these play themselves out on space stations. Sorin has traveled from place to place looking for answers while the world has kept turning. We've seen angels intervene in some of the conflicts, and we've also seen abandoned technology become operational again, technology that is essential to saving the planet. We started with a vanilla fantasy, and now we have space stations, space elves, lightning guns, and angels in the mix.
As I write this, we have just finished Sorin's first Arc after around 20 sessions of play. Arcs do not have a set length. During play, we find the Arc by listening for it -- there is a moment when it feels right. When we reached this point, we played out a scene called The Festival, where several mechanical and fictional changes can occur. Superficially the character "levels up." We take stock of what the character did and how their journey changed them. Fictional things get codified into the character sheet. Several things also get rese: in-game currencies, Drives, and Movements. This isn't the only opportunity for characters to improve, but many important things only change and improve at this moment. It also sets the game on a new course (if everybody decides there is one worth charting).
In Sorin's case, he reflected on all the drastic actions and consequences that occurred over his journey to save the planet. His solitary vision implicated and hurt the people he cared about most. There are still unfaced consequences that will eventually catch up with him. His grand realization at this moment is that he must find allies in his cause who understand the stakes. He can't just drag people along. They must be willing participants. He also accepts that one day he will have to pay the toll for the things that he has done -- but not before he has completed what has set out to do.
Crescendo has changed a lot since we first started. It is being designed as we play it, using fictional material that develops through play. As it is a changing and evolving thing, I haven't tried to internalize all of the mechanics. A large part of my enjoyment of play is discovering the different parts of the system.
For example, the different methods of recovery -- resting in town, divine visions, narrating beautiful things, attending festivals, and composing poetry. We role-play these things, and there are mechanical incentives for engaging these systems. They add to the world and change
the character. I have enjoyed some recovery sessions the most since we're not simply returning to a baseline or exchanging one currency (like spell slots) for another.
I've really enjoyed playing Crescendo on multiple levels. As a game experience, it has gotten me out of the muck of playing on the tiny scale that many fantasy RPGs default to -- zero-to-hero, strict tracking of time and space, and trading blows on a transactional basis to affect
the game world. Crescendo has been unique as a play experience, and I suspect it will influence how I approach play in the future. It has also been very intriguing to play a game as it is being developed. That is, to play and not "play test" it. Lastly, it has also been a pleasure getting to know Nathan.
Thank you David! We met up over Discord and it’s been a genuine pleasure, just all around.
So where does that leave Crescendo at? Well, there’s four types of scenes in Crescendo: the Melody, Interludes, Harmony, and Fantasia. The Melody was the most critical, but those other three need work to get them feeling right, as well as getting a comprehensive ecosystem developed between the four kinds of scenes. But there’s a definite feeling of completing an important step. Crescendo has a long way to go. But I’ve been having such a blast that I don’t mind… except when the crushing weight of just how much I’ve bitten off comes crashing in like a tsunami wave.
Thank God that doesn’t happen too often!
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