The Fall of the King of Sota: Chapter Nine

 

It Has Begun

The beginning chapter sessions of Crescendo are always chaotic. The story begins to explode in different directions, seemingly without rhyme or reason, and players hang on for dear life, as the story seems to go anyway it likes. These sessions are incredibly fun, but they are the minority in an epic of Crescendo. Somewhere between six to twelve chapter sessions, the journals have built up enough critical mass that patterns begin to emerge. And then suddenly the players become aware that the game hasn't been exploding randomly:

It's been constructing a funnel with their journal entries.

And now they're in it. And they can't get out. Each twitch draws the net tighter, makes it more definite, gives it more shape, pushes you along the funnel.

The further you get into this seemingly random funnel, the less random and more inevitable things feel. By the time session thirty or so comes around... you're ready for it to close. You want to know how it ends.

The BROSR has "convergences". Crescendo has the funnel of consequences.

Last night, Chapter Nine started that process. A whole bunch of pieces clicked together, and a definite shape began to emerge. It's still too undefined at the moment, but mark my words:  by the close of the second crescendo session (which is coming in the middle of this month), people are going to start feeling it definitely.

There is nothing else like this in any other RPG: destiny is pushing you along, and yet it is your choice where you go while you're being pushed, so long as you keep going.

Chapter Nine (August 30th)

This was another session that just came out of left field... and yet the sense of purpose has begun to leak in. It takes players a long time to get used to just how differently Crescendo operates. It requires only that you put in journal entries, and that you RP to the hilt, and that you let the consequences be completely unexpected, like they were tonight.

(Oh, and in case anyone wonders if this kind of redemption is the actual point of Crescendo, beneath the PVP, the seeming upheavals, and the utter craziness of it all.... well it is a game based on Gene Wolfe. You shouldn't be wondering.)