We have a history with third sessions. Not sure how it came about, but for whatever reason, the gaming group that was, via numerous choices and signals across the table, often landed third sessions that proved pretty critical to the overall experience of the campaign.
This was no different with this campaign.
As usual, these posts about the game don’t break down the plot of sessions; they’re more my takeaways of the experience. You can check out the GM’s (Neil @omnihedron.co.uk on Bluesky) view of events as well.
A session of three parts
The session had three parts to it, and the easiest way to describe it is to lean into those three parts: –
- The background and setting colour of the carnival and its participants.
- The investigation into the disappearances
- The spirit journey
While the investigation and the spirit journey fell into the whole a and b plot of a TV show they were bound together by the atmosphere and characters at the carnival.
The Creepy Carnival
One element of the game is that Caleb has circa 15 years of his life which we’ve left broadly defined. He spent some time working at the travelling carnival. He spent some time with a biker gang. We didn’t specify the order of these events or any of the details. We locked down before the session, that the time at the carnival was closer to the events of his wife’s death, along with some characters at the carnival, etc.
The unsettling horror
The unexpected part of the carnival experience was how creepy it was. I was expecting it to be evocative of another era, which it was, a bit like the Depression-era carnivals you see in the TV series Carnival or in the backstory of IT. I was not expecting how unsettling it was. We had the boneless boy, who pretty much operated as if he had no bones. Then crazy-ass ‘Moth-Eaten Man’ who seemed to have dimensional pockets people could crawl into. The scene where the boneless boy crawled out of the Moth-Eaten Man was quite unnerving.
As for the Discordant Twins, conjoined twins that completed each other’s sentences and screamed discordantly, I was probably glad I never bumped into them.
I was expecting the main carnival character created during session zero, Dolores Eyes-of-Stone, to be the most memorable character, but this was far from the truth.
If only we had editing
The carnival was brilliant, and I could have stayed to interact with it for a while. That was one of the challenges. Due to the way events unfolded, the up-front interactions with some of the core characters would have probably been better with the knowledge of what was established in the spirit quest. That’s always a conundrum when effectively writing in the moment; you don’t have a chance to edit the final result into its best form. It’s just part of the ‘medium’.
As an example, the scenes with Caleb’s ex-lover, Katya the airealist, at the carnival were good, but they’d have been better knowing the fact that part of the reason they separated was her desire for children, which wasn’t inserted until the spirit quest. The meaning came after the interactions, so to speak. In a different medium, you’d edit what you had, having realised the core meaning of the end of their relationship. It was a similar challenge with Caleb’s old friend Elias, the ringmaster; he was a friend in a ‘sidebar sense’ as we’d never got to establish why he was a friend.
Investigations, not a fan
Not a fan is maybe too strong a term. It’s more accurate to say I am wary of them for three reasons.
- I’m not a fan of puzzling things out, more what happens as a result.
- I’m not an amazing detective, so don’t ask me to be one.
- In the fiction, I detest investigating without authority.
I’m not even sure I do investigations when I rarely run stuff. It’s possible I do, but I focus so much on making the game about engaging with results rather than making them hard to find; they’re probably stealth investigations that don’t feel like one. Knowing this was going to be a missing-persons investigation, despite my character having it as a speciality, I was like… okay.
Investigations Werewolf style
Since I had a bit of time to think about it, I decided to avoid the traditional procedural elements of these things. Caleb is a werewolf. Why would he try to get involved in an official investigation, with all the challenges and anaemic narrative excuses that come with it? This guy is just as likely to try to find the person like a tracking dog rather than get pulled into procedural TV show 101. Keep the problem in the Werewolf domain; solve it there. It should not feel like a typical police procedural, as that is not the world Caleb lives in.
What is unique about this story as opposed to the standard thing you might default to without some thought? In my view, the narrative should be based around that construct.
I went to the missing persons carnival trailer, the boneless boy, and had a look around for the typical stuff that might indicate a problem, then went all Werewolf and tracked him down by his scent in the real world and its reflection in the spirit world. Evocative. Simple. A lot easier than trying to insinuate myself into some sort of CSI show.
I was quite proud of the way I shifted expectations here (even if those expectations only existed in my head) as it meant I got to use my actual wolf form, which was pretty cool. It all felt quite evocative and true to the story we are telling, rather than feeling like another show inserted over the top of it. These things also have significant advantages, as they completely change what is in play. For example, if there had been barriers to the investigation, they would have shifted the barriers and challenges into the same realm, further grounding the ‘fictional TV show’ in the elements it should exemplify.
This is a technique I use when I rarely GM. I try not to just let scenes, etc., default to expectation or the routine and always try to give them a relationship bump, a meaning bump, or, as in this case, ensure they’re really leaning into the evocative elements of the game rather than becoming other tropes, etc. It’s also why I enjoy prep, as it’s these areas I focus on as my mind wanders.
The game of cards
The spirit quest was amazing. It was amazing because it delivered something I wasn’t expecting, albeit I don’t know why, as with the benefit of hindsight, this is exactly what often happens in our third sessions. I was expecting the spirit quest to provide clarity around the mystery and the past, but what it actually did was propel purpose into the future.
The spirit quest was constructed around the reveal of (I may be mis-remembering the numbers) of four tarot cards into the past and three tarot cards (the surprise bit) into the future. I have to admit I am not remembering every single scene as I write this, but the ones I do remember are the ones that resonate more.
- Past: Caleb’s pioneer past family accepted a pact to protect their home town.
- Future: the funeral of Caleb’s sister, Alena.
- Future: Caleb’s daughter existing in a positive vision of the future.
The power of these things is not in creating them or playing them out; albeit great, the true value for me is how they transform your character. It is literal TV show stuff. The spirit quest, through mutual creation and signals, took Caleb from a character that existed in his past to one that is now existing in the present on a journey to secure a future for himself, his family and his daugher and can even look upon the legacy of those who are no longer around in a new light.
Now, that is bloody amazing and is the whole people writing in the moment thing at its best.
While this game does not have things like Aspects that represent these sorts of narrative truths on the character’s sheet, if it did, this would be the session I’d be changing a bunch of them around.
No back channel comms
Here is what I love about this game: there is no back-channel comms. In past games, I’d occasionally be reticent to write about it as, naturally, there were things I was thinking about and reflecting on, but due to the nature of group play, spotlight time and the lack of out-of-game discussion, it’s all too easy to feel the blog post is a sort of nefarious back channel messaging.
The beauty of this game is that it doesn’t feel like that, because the fabric of conversation around it is so layered. Look, in the spirit of post-game reflections, I am sure some of it is new, but it feels like it’s adding to the richness of the existing conversation rather than being a surprise.
This makes writing about the game substantially more comfortable.
Next week on..
Unlike this week, I’m not sure what is happening in the next episode, other than someone has disturbed some sort of site or grave linked to the domain of spirits I’m linked with. We shall see how that pans out; it may be more of an independent episode or woven into the whole.
What I do now is Caleb is entering the next session as a different person. He’s contextualised his past. He knows he has a purpose. Any doubts about his past actions are gone. He has a larger purpose: to save his daughter, save his sister, honour his wife’s memory and protect the land. I mean, if that’s not an aspect and a half, I don’t know what is.
Bring it on.