Roadtrip Retrospective #2

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.

Ah, the difficult second game – it’s always a proper challenge and one that I have a tried and tested solution for in normal gameplay. The patented NPC fest! I usually throw my players into an NPC rich environment and see where they gravitate and build up from there. However, in this campaign one of our challenges is to not just do the usual ‘gaming by numbers’ stuff we had noticed, so where did I go?

Take inspiration from the genre

Both Ian and I love to view games through a TV show lens, and as a result the idea of this being the second half of a pilot, rather than a second, standalone episode made more sense. In the first session we had played with some of the material we generated in the background, and built up some extra pieces along the way. In this session, I doubled down on that:

• A flashback cold open to the night of Misty’s death
• A discussion over Emmett’s thoughts on Myers’ threat to his job
• More pressing from the reporter, Nikita
• A premature ice storm strikes the town
• A choice between heroism and potential exposure
• Corrupted spirits and the challenge of defeating them
• An introduction of a ‘watcher’ style Garou from the Garou Council
• A goodbye, as Caleb leaves to continue finding Abbey

No good plan escapes contact with the player

When I prep for games like this I have scenes planned out, roughly, although they can be quite fluid. The details of the scenes are up in the air until they happen, and sometimes this all lands in a way I never planned. Take the flashback? As Caleb discovered the body of his wife, with his daughter sat next to her dead mother, we had established that she was playing. Ian asked whether he could use his latent Gift to ‘Sense the True Form’ to perceive – in a dream – what was going on. I added that she was not playing, but rather was drawing a death sigil in the blood. We then established afterwards that the crime scene photos showed no such thing.

This creation of memory as an unreliable narrator plays into the multilayered mystery of the piece. Later Caleb quizzed his father and his spirit mentor about the possible meanings of this portent – in effect, asking about one of the central mysteries of the game. We settled on two different interpretations of events, which extends that mystery. Why?

Mysteries are the two unravelled … but not today

I’m a firm believer that a mystery or secret in a game has one purpose – to be discovered. If it overstays its welcome, it becomes an annoyance. One of my favourite examples of this is the TV show ‘The Last Ship’. In it, the eponymous ship not only discovers the cure for the plague that has wiped out most of humanity, but it creates a transmission system, gets back to the USA and delivers and distributes the vaccine – all in ten episodes. It’s great because it never hangs around or has silly dead ends.

That said, revealing the absolute truth at the start of session 2 would be too soon, so more ambiguity is needed. What I need to be aware of is the sheer number of mysteries the game has built into it.

• Where is Abbey?
• What is Abbey?
• Why does Myers want Emmett out of the Sheriff position?
• What makes Emmett such a powerful kinfolk?
• What does Elena know that meant she had to be marked as a kinfolk?
• Why did the pack attack Abbey?
• Who killed the pack?
• What does the Board of Trade have to do with the Wyrm?
• Who are The Spiral?

Hell, we’ve even established the possibility that Caleb himself might be some sort of super-wolf pack-killer!

There’s a lot thrown in here, and I’m painfully aware that I need to resolve some of these quicker than others, or the game becomes frustration – especially in a 1 vs 1 game.

Werewolf combat is a strange beast

I really like the new system for Werewolf. It is just so much easier to run than previous versions I have seen, and the new rage mechanic is neat. Combat, however, is brutal and I am going to have to think hard about how I balance the threats when there is just one combatant. I very nearly took Caleb down twice, almost without trying!

One thing I am questioning is whether there needs to be that much combat anyway? I want to avoid it being a game of ‘Bane of the Week’ but come on? It’s Werewolf!

The little things make the game

There were things that happened in this session that made me really pleased, and very few of them were plot or system stuff. Most of them were the conversations had between characters.

• Nikkita trying to get an interview out of Caleb, but him resisting
• Caleb’s flashback man talk about his wife with Bryce.
• Caleb’s buddy cop relationship with Harry, his spirit mentor
• His tense interaction with Harland Smallpaw, the Garou Council watcher
• His first story interaction with his older sister, and kick ass lawyer, Elena
• and of course, another heart to heart with Emmett, who is easily my favourite NPC in the game

What makes these special – for me anyway – is that these are done as two people talking to each other. We have spoken during our set-ups about how, sometimes, we can feel a little indulgent taking the spotlight at the table, and curtail play sometimes. There’s no pressure like that here – we can take as long as we want roleplaying a father and son discussing how the son going on a spirit quest on his bike to find his lost daughter is going to affect his mother, over a whisky in a tumbler, hidden in the father’s garage, and take as long as we want. It’s a lovely feeling of freedom.

What’s next?

Caleb has gone off on his bike and is heading towards the carnival and potentially some massive revelations!