Friday, May 26, 2006

thanks

I said to her I wasn't going to make a counter-thanks, but I think i lied about that.. simply considering the situation, I think she made me the best thanking I ever received... I hope all your works may, one day or another, someone or some other, instill so deep a feeling, Snatch

Thursday, May 04, 2006

the (Campaign) World is ending.

Very little poly this week... strange, but I simply haven't had the time to sleep. Nor polyphasic nor monophasic. So, I'm speaking of the Campaign.

Because the Campaign is about to end.

I'm speaking of a campaign of RPG I started some 4-5 years ago, with the intention of creating the best campaign I ever did... and to end it, too (a rare thing for almost every role playing campaign i ever played, master or not).

And it is... the best I ever created.
How much time i spent thinking on the story? How much creating scenes, characters, and moving them, managing so many background stories, most advancing without them player seeing? Countless hours. When I found myself with nothing to urgently think about, I was thinking Campaign. When waiting, walking, driving. Before sleeping. Searching on internet, news, facts. Talking with friends for inspiration. I made graphs, notes, writings.

And I'm pretty satisfied. There are still things I regret not having been able to insert somewhere, but my players liked it, and so I. What better satisfaction for a master when the players, past 1-AM, about to close the scene, ask, implore to continue, because they simply cannot stop there? When they propel forward through so many years, developing their characters, evolving with them? When a players start crying for what is happening, when players get's angry about what's happening, when a player says that you've made his flesh creep, when a player feels deep feelings about a character, when they continue playing even when you are not in the room, or when they play between them in a bar? That's the only reward I seek, and I was rewarded more than I ever hoped.

It was well played. I choosed among my friends those I though more skilled, more appropriate. And no one was below expectations. More often above.
Their characters started as normal people...
ah. I'm forgetting the setting. World Of Darkness, Verona, 1999. Started in october. About to finish at the end of december. Not three months has passed in game, more than four years in real life.

I was saying... normal people, more than less. Almost all with a family, friends, university, work.A previous life not so implausible for a common citizen. Then they ae put in a maelstrom of events and they have to find a directions, find allies, find knowledge of a world parallel to the bright one of everyday life. Free to do anything, if they can. Every action a conseguence. Some that spans for the entire Campaign. They learn that the apocalypse may happen. And may happen in a short time.

And so they start to fight to find a way to stop it. And in a downward spiral of choiches, choices on players and characters both, because i narrated to afflict (yes, afflict) players and characters equally, they find themself finally with the power to influence the events that dragged them around. But now they have little freedom of choice, and they are the greatest engine of what they had tryied to stop all the time. All in a smooth, coerent transition. They snickered about the almost all-powerful angel-demon Belial, because, incarnated in the body of a child, with memories of a child, had wishes influenced by the wishes of a child. Now they have great power, but they have to choose between the world, themselves, and the ones they love. And no choice seems the right one.

So, the world may end, end maybe, they will be the destroyers.