Players: Cody, Seth, Tim

Seeds:

Heroine: A boy throws rocks against a shed as hard as he can, his bruises still throbbing and starting to purple.

Light Faerie: A brave, merry elfin lad, quick to make friends and eager to meet any danger.

Dark Faerie: A jeering goblin child, malicious in its pranks, seeking new playmates.

Introduction:

Alan is a young boy who lives with his little sister, Beth, and their mother in the small town of Dillon, Nebraska. His mother is desperately unhappy with her life, and takes it out on Alan regularly and violently. Alan's coping mechanism is to draw pictures of the people who have hurt him and then tear those pictures apart and scatter the pieces. Alan's Gift is that he can empathize with others and bring them comfort even through his own pain. Alan's Flaw is that he KNOWS that every bad thing that happens to him is his fault.

The Threat:

Alan is walking home from his "friend" Andy's house, who is essentially a bully that lets Alan stick around, when he encounters Kabuu, apparently a bald girl with freckles and jet black eyes who is Alan's same age (10) and height. Kabuu, The Nemesis, steals Alan's shirt (revealing the bruises beneath for all to see), and Alan chases her across the wheat field. Kabuu's first Power--she knows peoples' shame and antagonizes them with it--is revealed. Alan lunges for his shirt and falls past her, to find his world changed. The sky is now green; the sun is now blue; the wheat field has transformed to a marsh bordering on a forest. Chasing Kabuu into this strange forest, he trips and is knocked unconscious.

The Journey:

In the forest, Alan meets Sir Applecore of the 17th Brigade, a Spright (sprite) of about 10 inches in height wielding a sword and wearing magical plant armor. Sir Applecore, The Companion, attempts to assist Alan but they are separated as a shadowy figure accosts the brave winged knight. During their separation, Alan discovers a gingerbread house full of other sprites that tell him a legend of how a Hero from Dillon will come to save the land of Faerie. He is also taunted by Kabuu, using her other power--the ability to throw her voice so that it sounds like she is everywhere--to lead him on a merry chase for his shirt, and leaving him injured. She still gleefully refuses to return his shirt...and his shame remains bare to the world. The sprites also cannot help him, their clothes being, well...small.

Alan is briefly reunited with Sir Applecore, during which time they encounter an extraordinary purple beast with four eyes and antlers that are blossoming trees, but they are separated again as the shadowy figure reemerges and drives them apart. Alone yet again, Alan wanders lost through the forest until he comes to a great chasm filled with mist spanned by a treacherous rope bridge. Crossing, he is confronted first by the bridge troll (actually rather helpful), and then by Kabuu. Kabuu's ability to get into his head becomes more and more apparent, as Alan's own confusion and shame destroy the bridge and he is sent plummeting into the mists below. Here he finds the bridge troll (dead), a great many giant glowing mushrooms, and Adnee--who is the recently deceased bridge troll's son. Together Alan and Adnee climb up through the tunnels and walkways that lead to The Land of the Trolls on the far side of the chasm.

The entrance to The Land of the Trolls is a massive city of gold, where the troll inhabitants ride elephant-like beasts. Entering the city, Alan notices Sir Applecore--trapped inside a glass bottle on a troll merchant's caravan. Unable to reason with the merchant, Alan steals the bottle and, along with Adnee, escapes into the storm drains of the troll city.

However, when the three of them re-emerge into the golden city above, the battle is lost. Alan's own empathy turns against him, as he can feel the crushing weight of judgement from all sides. He runs from the city, desperate to be alone and away from critical eyes. Returning to the tunnels, he encounters Kabuu, who taunts him one last time. He attacks her. As he hits her, bruises appear on his own body. She begins more and more to look like him, until she is him (always has been, but now he sees himself when he looks at her). This only makes him hit harder. Consumed by his own self-loathing, he throws her/him from a walkway in the cliff. When he descends to the chasm below, he discovers the body of Sir Applecore, Alan's Knight.

Journey's End:

Alan has now become what Kabuu once was. The power to see other's shame has become a power to impose shame on others. The power to project his voice has become the ability to be in someone's head. His gift for empathy has become self consciousness, and his flaw of believing everything is his fault has become the belief that it is everyone's fault but his own. He spends his days sitting on one of the giant mushrooms at the bottom of the chasm, looking up at the world above, and judging those he sees.

Thoughts:

Thank you so much to Seth and Cody for playing this with me, and for dealing with my mild neuroticism regarding this game. What I still consider to be my best story game experience ever was playing this game, so I came into it with a little too much charged up expectation. Anyway, I got past that, and we played, and made a really good (if utterly depressing) story together.

It does seem to be true that once this game starts heading one direction (for instance, if the Dark Faerie wins the first few draws), stastical likelihood will keep pushing things that same direction. So, this time was a resounding success for the Dark Faerie.

Thank you to all who read this far. If you haven't played The Dreaming Crucible (and are open to dealing with challenging subject matter in your games), I highly recommend it. Thanks again to Cody and Seth (my Dark and Light Faeries!)

Sounds like this went well!

The last time I played Dreaming Crucible, we tried a slight modification of the rules to avoid the death spiral you're talking about: instead of emptying the bag of stones after each Peril, we left the stones in it for future Perils. So if the Dark Fae wins the first four draws, now there are four extra white stones in the bag to tilt the probabilities in favor of something going right for the Heroine eventually.

Thanks for the idea, Emily. I might give that a try next time. Similarly, it would work against the "Everything's Happy" possibility of the light winning every draw as well, so that the tension level stayed high.

"Witness the murder your father and be ashamed, young prince" had a lot of problems (other than just the really long name), but one neat thing it did was have players secretly decide the ratio of light/dark stones. Each player picked secretly and put some in the "use" bag, others in the "reject" bag.

I wonder if you that could give you an interesting hack, where the story is shifted to be more light or dark based on player desire but you don't know at the beginning.

(actually, scratch that, I don't see how that would work with Dreaming Crucible)