Story Games Seattle Message Board › What We Played › Castlepalooza (Shooting the Moon)
A former member |
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The setting: a vaguely medieval mercenary company has won a war, and now members must choose to take a cash reward or a castle in the newly conquered lands, and peaceful retirement along with it. Unfortunately they are all heavy armed and drunk out of their minds, so decision making is a challenge. This was pretty much the goofiest game of Shooting the Moon, but not in a bad way.
Characters: Elena, beloved (Martin). She is writing a book on military life and tactics- but would she be better off doing it from her own castle, or in the midst of another battle that could teach her new lessons? Nando, suitor (sev). He is proud of his mercenary badassery and not about to settle down. Tomas, suitor (Megan). He has an awesome castle (specified as "a bitchin' castle" on the character sheet), a hot androgynous spouse, and an amazing collection of tapestries. He's never moving again. Part 1: While Elena is visiting, the lands around Tomas' castle are menaced by brigands. He and Elena counterattack and are badly beaten, but Tomas admires the bandits' ingenuity and forms a loose friendship with their leader. Nando has found a tavern with AMAZING mead. But a dilemma: the tavern has run out of mead! What to do? Nando and Elena organize a campaign to get the brewer more supplies to make more, but they know jack about brewing and screw the whole thing up. An inebriated member of a rival mercenary company shows up demanding revenge on Elena for his recent defeat. Both suitors shout at him a bit, and he shouts back, then ultimately Elena just kills him. Part 2: Nando, once again drunk, interrupts Elena and Tomas at dinner by shouting about how Tomas shouldn't have abandoned her and let her almost get killed in the previous scene. Elena and Nando ply him with mead until he stops shouting. Elena and Nando go to complain to the quartermaster about the fact that nobody is getting paid, but he's been kidnapped by the brigands from scene 1. They attempt a rescue, but forget to bring any backup, and are subdued and taken hostage. The Royal Censors, having heard about the scandalous contents of Elena's book, arrive to arrest all three characters and the brigands for conspiracy. A three way battle ensues, with our protagonists somehow coming up on top. Epilogue: Elena had been concerned that settling down in the backwoods would be too boring. The fact that she could barely eat a meal without being involved in an armed conflict or tavern brawl put that notion to the rest. She moved into the castle next door to Tomas and started sharpening her sword. Comments: This got really slapstick in a hurry, in part because the Hazard Pool won almost every conflict, so the characters never succeeded at anything. And in part, of course, because we wanted to. We decided to do a story that was about friendship rather than romance, and that worked pretty well. The only thing I think didn't work well is that the story seemed very stagnant, because no traits are added when the Hazard wins, so we had little opportunity to change anything about the characters. |