strange city, strangers for friends, and I was broke

[enthusiastick]

At Story Games Boston last night I got involved with a game of the Mountain Witch that our GM, Nathan, jokingly referred to as "the biggest game of Mountain Witch ever played." Its a game for three to five players, you see, but due to an unusually high turnout for Story Games we had seven players. And since its a game about ronin climbing Mt. Fuji to slay the Mountain Witch who lives at the summit we made a lot of Seven Samurai jokes during character creation.

It is a really nifty game and I will have to acquire it when I have a little more cash so that I can run it for some people, and also steal adapt some of the system elements for use in my own games. Each character has a zodiac sign and 2-3 defining traits (mine were "fat yet agile" and "comic relief" -- oh yeah, I'm playing That Guy) which are things that your character can do that no one else's can. But in terms of dice mechanics the game is all about trust. You can only gain any real advantage through trust tokens, but increasing your trust in another PC also makes you vulnerable to having your narration rights hijacked by them. It all works out really well and really interestingly, particularly in light of the fact that, first thing, each character is dealt a randomly assigned dark fate, which their player is responsible for foreshadowing and bringing to eventual fruition. Which is to say you're all going to end up betraying one another and/or dying horribly, which makes trust an even stickier wicket. I'm into it.

I will admit to a little bit of nervousness, largely because Nathan had been talking about wanting to run this game for a while, and wanting to run it for the full three sessions it would take to do it justice, and much as I am hopeful, I am not optimistic about that group of eight people sitting at the same gaming table again in any sort of timely fashion. And its a really cool game, so I want to play it again, and I get the same sense from everyone involved, but its eight people with busy schedules including several newcomers to Story Games, so... we'll see.

In any event a good time was had by all. Nathan did a good job of wrangling us, letting us sort of run wild during character creation, telling stupid jokes to one another and trying to outdo one another to come out with the most outlandish yet awesome traits for their samurai. The winner, in my opinion, was definitely foreign_devilry who, after a moment of staring off into space thoughtfully, simply wrote the word "dead" in the appropriate space on his character sheet, smiling maniacally the whole time. It was a stroke of genius.

Things got under way and, with some polite nudging from Nathan, took a turn for the serious. The players were all very earnest, and though jokes were still made (I, after all, took "comic relief" as one of my defining character traits -- and yes I know I always do that, but its really working for me this time, so shut urrrrp) and people were still smiling we were all very sincere about our desire for this game to be cool and in-genre. And as a result of good players and good GMing the first chapter went really, really well (again, in my opinion.) Which will only make it more tragic if we aren't able to keep it rolling. Like I said, hopeful, but not optimistic.