Setting: The American Revolution, with the focus on a league of super-soldiers and supernatural creatures handpicked by General Washington.


The Characters
Lady Stethacles Fayette, a shape-shifter from a nouveau riche American family with political aspirations, a magnetic personality and confidence to spare. (Brenna)

Ruth Dooley, an undead Appalachian water spirit who tends to solve problems with violence and feels social interaction is more trouble than it’s worth. (Sam)

Aubrey Dain, an exiled Sidhe with a shady past seeking both God and her own humanity in the mortal world. (Natalie)

The Story As She Was Played
Aubrey and Lady Stethacles burst into a dinner party for a British captain and took him hostage, Aubrey using her double-agent knowledge to make the captain feel it was in his best interests to come along quietly (at least a first - there was a brawl in the carriage on the way back to camp). Soon after, the trio found themselves thrust into a dire Valley Forge-esque situation, where Ruth drew upon her supernatural ability to motivate to rally the troops and, though it was not in her best interests, stuck around for the battle and managed to eke out a victory for the Americans.

After returning to the camp, the captive captain escaped while under the care of Aubrey and Ruth, though he was found and nearly drowned by Ruth. When they returned the prisoner to the camp, it came out in interrogation that Aubrey had released him on the promise of an artifact that could help her regain her humanity, but Lady Stethacles forgave her and kept the secret.

The group soon learned of the presence of an unknown supernatural entity nearby, who turned out to be a nobleman werewolf named Winthorpe. Lady Stethacles turned on the charm and Aubrey tagged along as they left him sans pants, money and horse on the side of the road, vowing revenge.

The next mission saw Ruth out of her element at a fancy ball put on by a French governor (or Duke, depending on who you ask), where a botched introduction led to a lascivious misunderstanding with Governor Duke. Lady Stethacles, disguised as John Radcliffe, managed to smooth over the situation and avoid an awkward ménage à trois and they made a new ally in the Governor Duke and shared a romantic dance.

However, all was not well as Winthorpe stormed into the ball to vow his revenge on Lady Stethacles for his humiliation. Ruth intervened and convinced him to take the duel to the bayou, where he and his second met a watery end.

As the war dragged on, Aubrey took Lady Stethacles to her grove and discussed what life after the war might hold, hinting heavily that she would be glad to be a part of it. The war finally ended and Lady Stethacles, now involved in the creation of a new country under her established alias of John Radcliffe, found herself missing more familiar battlefields. Ruth, similarly lost after the war, encouraged Lady Stethacles to stay the course and the two stayed up all night planning and dreaming of a future, one Ruth hoped would include her.

A short while later, the three gathered at Lady Stethacles' country manor. Suddenly The Order of the Sun, a secret society dedicated to rooting out supernatural abominations, attacked and set fire to the place. A monstrous and awesome battle ensued, with Aubrey stealing a kiss in the heat of the fight from Lady Stethacles. In the end, the leaders were torn asunder and their minions convinced to spy for our heroes. Standing in the glow of the firelight, Aubrey's hand found Lady Stethacles', their eyes met and love was declared among carnage and a faint crematorium stench.

The two spent some happy and passionate years together, with Lady Stethacles earning the prominent political position she desired. However, as she began to age and Aubrey did not they grew apart, with Aubrey leaving to seek out a way to become human and at last die and meet God (and Lady Stethacles) in the afterlife.

Ruth adopted one of her descendants, who had lost much of her family in the war, and took her out west to establish a home on the American frontier, where she may live still...be careful where you swim.

Thoughts On The Game
Overall a great time! I had some issues with the system, which I've called out in another section, but a lot of creativity and interesting twists emerged during the narrative. Sam and Brenna are both amazing storytellers and a joy to play with, plus Sam was a pro at facilitating the game.

Shooting the Moon Thoughts
I’m conflicted on Shooting The Moon. The idea is great, the characters and story we came up with were fun, but the system seemed to hinder the progress at times; the creation was very long and once you were actually playing it didn’t feel as though there was much playing to do – you could essentially state a scene, get a conflict, then look at your traits and see what you could do about it. This made it the most mechanics-heavy story game I've played so far.

The overreliance on traits made it a little harder to get into a character – since the scenes were so rushed due to having to pack in all the mechanics, there was no time in a scene to get a feeling for the traits and the character you already had before you were packing on more traits and trying to incorporate those.

I feel like the game needs a prologue or something – maybe two mechanics-free Suitor scenes where each suitor gets to play out their meeting/falling for the Beloved, and then another no-mechanics (or maybe everyone gets a flat dice pool) Beloved scene where the trio could do some co-narration to flesh out the setting, discover that there’s a rival for the Beloved’s affections, maybe establish a bit of the plotline based on the conflicts/dreams so the relationships and ensuing scenes have a more natural feel.

I definitely agree that StM needs something added to make it work smoothly. My opinion on what that thing is changes quite a lot.

Sometimes it's a setting problem - beyond the basic story hook and the Place trait, there are no tools for setting whatsoever, so often players .

But what was obviously missing in this session - the thing we spent quite a lot of time fumbling towards, and I think the reason why we gravitated towards mechanically resolving the scenes fairly quickly - was how exactly the romance dynamic between Suitor and Beloved works. That's the sort of thing that can take some time to figure out, and if you don't get lucky and nail it early on, you can get stuck in an awkward adolescent place where you're trying cack-handedly to impress the Beloved with impressive feats. You're fumbling around trying to work out how you have chemistry, when it should really start from the principle that you already have chemistry of some kind, and go from there.

So my thought last night was that perhaps the right approach would be to agree beforehand on how the romance dynamic starts out, rather than figuring it out through play. Maybe with a big list of Romance Tropes to spark things? Maybe after the initial scene you're talking about?

(Of course, all these ideas involve adding more complexity to an already relatively complex game.)

Very true. Perhaps the answer is adjusting an existing mechanic to better fit the love triangle. How about changing the person, place and thing for the Suitors to fit into their relationship to the Beloved?

The person could be someone they have in common; the place could be where they had or will have an important interaction; the thing could be an object that ties or will tie the Suitor to the Beloved.

To use Romeo and Juliet as an example:
Romeo: Person (Tybalt); Place (Orchard); Thing (Poison Vial)
Paris: Person (Lord Capulet); Place (Friar Laurence's cell); Thing (Dagger)