Roadtrip Retrospective #3

Introduction

Ian (@fandomlife on bluesky) and I decided to try out some 1-on-1 gaming, both as a way to put some meat on the conceptual bones of the gaming we enjoy and also, you know, to game! This is the story of those games… Well, it’s half the story as I am sure Ian will be blogging about these games too. 

As we exit the two-part ‘season opener’ which established some of the core conflicts in the game and the mystery of Abbey, the missing daughter, we move onto exploration of some of the themes raised in Caleb’s past. In the first of these, we’re looking at the Whispering Canvas Carnival.

This session was unintentionally in two parts. I wish I could say it was done on purpose, but rather Ian and I spent most of the first session talking and putting the world to rights. This is a danger in a 1-2-1 game, as you aren’t disadvantaging anyone, but for the second session we knuckled down and saved the chat to the end of the session.

The Nature of Mystery

I wrote last time about the need to not keep a mystery hidden, as the unveiling of the mystery is one of the golden threads running through the games. Well, this session was a start of that process, as we began to get some clarity about certain unanswered questions – especially about the nature of Abbey as a ‘moonborn’, the reason why the Black Spiral Dancers were hunting her, and the establishment that she exists in the real world and the spirit world. Additionally, we established the entire Conly family origin story too (more on that later)

This sounds like a lot, but it really wasn’t because much of the detail was left unanswered. What it did was give the game direction and more hooks to build upon in the future. This campaign is not short of session potential.

Creating the Circus

One of the challenges I had was to create a Werewolf the Apocalypse style carnival, which allowed for ordinary characters and more esoteric types. We already had a named character (Dolores Eyes-of-Stone, Caleb’s garou instructor figure) and an unnamed character – his former lover – who became the aerialist Katya, who in turn was married to his old friend Elias, the ringmaster. I created a handful of characters inspired by shows like Carnivale, American Horror Show: Freak Show, the movies Nightmare Alley and Something Wicked This Way Comes, amongst others. For each one, I push the ‘strange’ a little further – the flexible boy was almost fluid, the conjoined twins screamed discordantly when they lied, the ‘moth-eaten man’ had holes in his body into other dimensions, the strongman’s bones looked like clockwork, but flesh covered – you get the picture. I also had to make sure the description was absolutely on-point or it would be easy for us to slip our imaginations to the Newcastle Hoppings!

The Importance of Horror

There were a lot of horror elements in this session and it’s something I like to lean into. If we can make the werewolf aspects of the game as horrific as possible, it really makes the time before they become pedestrian further away. How did I try to do it?

• When Caleb fought the Black Spiral Dancer scout, I tried to make the combat as visceral as possible. Flesh was rended, organs were punctured etc. There was blood. We don’t normally play like this, and this makes it feel different.
• There was a murder in this game, and I made the discovery of the body a scary moment, to the point where Ian was reluctant to interact with the corpse (more on that later)
• Some of the themes, like the flexible boy hiding inside the moth eaten man’s holes, and him emerging from him, one spindly limb at a time, was straight out of The Ring, but seemed to work as a ‘ugh’ moment.

RIP to CIS Werewolf: You will not be missed

The murder investigation part of the game could have been awful (they always can) but when your garou is a literal missing person investigator by trade, it all fell into place. I had forgotten this was the case, and it was perfect. 

There was one moment where things could have broken down and that was when there was some concern that touching the body, floating in the creek, would have somehow implicated Caleb in some sort of super-DNA detection sting. This is where the strong session zero, and the ability to just stop and reframe comes in clutch. We just stopped and I reestablished that this wasn’t one of those ‘gotcha’ games, and that this sort of nonsense was not the point. Sure, we can frame the reluctance as Caleb simply not understanding how this works, but it need not be an issue. 

Framing is Everything

The Spirit Journey in this game was done with the illusion of tarot cards. I set up a deck so that I could deal it out and know the order of the cards. This was framed as Dolores doing this in a tent full of smoke and drugs. Each card was chosen to frame a scene aligned to the real world reading of the card; five scenes in the past, and three in the future.

Each scene was played out either with Ian playing Caleb, at different parts of his life, or as other important characters, including a former Conly on the Oregon Trail! This was, for me, a fascinating way to shine a light on events that we have never really seen before, and also lay down some possible futures as well.

We also saw our first ever soft X-card moment in a game. So for those that think the idea of safety tools is a bit wank, for people who have played together for over 25 years, sometimes you do need that permission to just ask for a momentary rewind!

What’s Next – and The Missing Piece

As we move onto something a little less hard plot connected next week, I did realise that we were missing something in this session. Caleb’s spirit mentor, Harry, was nowhere to be seen. Turns out, needing a GM voice NPC isn’t needed as much when the game is so focused on one character and their brutal life of pain. 

If you like these retrospectives and inside glimpses into game thoughts, the prep I did for this game will be starring in my friend Guy Milner’s ‘Actual Prep’ series on his Patreon, in the near future. I’ll link in when it’s published.