The Mist That Would Not Rest (March 6) aka Mystery Castle reality TV
Geiger Counter (alpha)
players: Greg, Susan, Shaylee and Ben

Susan described it best in the meetup comments. I really loved how things came together at the end, with Susan framing us in the lonely high tower, just above the threatening fog, and then Greg working in his "find the fabled dungeon" goal by describing that the _real_ dungeon wasn't the one we'd already scene down below, but a secret prison here in this very tower. Opening up the chamber and freeing the imprisoned spirit (which we'd been hearing all along but took as menacing, rather than tormented) and breaking the curse of the castle was a nice poetic end. At least until the epilogue... dum dum dum!

I'm not sure it came up but I was thinking of the imprisoned ghost being a child, tying back to the whole "single mom Jennifer being horrified to hear the wails of her son" bit. She was hearing a child's cries after all.

Murderous Amanda totally surprised me, but became great grist for the mill. Nothing spices up Geiger Counter like a traitor, particularly one that feasts on the souls of the living. It really should be mandatory in every game (the traitor part).

This sounds awesome! Wish I could have been there. I will join you folks for some more gaming next week, on the 13th!

Here are a few of my thoughts on the game (as posted on its meetup page):

Another lovely Saturday afternoon at story gaming meetup. The game of the day was Geiger Counter so there were plenty of delightful twists and murders for all to enjoy.

The Scottish moors, a haunted castle, and a deadly restless mist almost spelled the end for the dozen souls who ventured there to film a reality TV show. Thankfully the menace was defeated and a handful of them survived. Three went on to thrive on the money from the settlement in their lawsuit against the production company. More ominous was the survival of an infected cast-member - a handmaiden to the dark forces.

A big thanks to Ben who both facilitated well and lit up the room with his role-playing. We were joined by Greg who was very creative and kept the story moving in new and interesting directions. Also with us was Shaylee - a knowledgeable player who brought her extensive experience with descriptive gaming by email to the group. I quite enjoyed it and I look forward to the next meetup.

Susan

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Some things I've thought about since I posted that:

The characters were fun to make - I'd love to see the first list we make be more of a brainstorm. We'd make a larger list of maybe 16-20 character ideas (if we can think of them readily) and choose the dozen survivors/goners from among them. This might help alleviate the "last picked" bummer that someone gets stuck with. It also might make it easier to skip characters that - on second thought - seem boring or redundant.

I loved the natural alliances that have the cast/crew groupings formed. It gave some immediate direction to each character about who they might have history with, resent, buddy up to, etc.

I enjoyed the "preview" we did at the beginning to get into the feel of them game - this was quite helpful.

I found it really hard to balance "getting my character's secret goal out there" and "not just telling everyone what I plan to do (and, by extension, want them to do)." Especially given that each character in this game gets only a handful of scenes. I suspect this is an essential story gaming skill that will come with practice and will translate into other games as well.

I certainly will enjoy developing my role-playing and storytelling skills in the coming meetups - thank you all for organizing this.

Really great observations Susan! I love talking about this kind of post-game stuff. It's very educational.

The characters were fun to make - I'd love to see the first list we make be more of a brainstorm. We'd make a larger list of maybe 16-20 character ideas (if we can think of them readily) and choose the dozen survivors/goners from among them. This might help alleviate the "last picked" bummer that someone gets stuck with. It also might make it easier to skip characters that - on second thought - seem boring or redundant.

You can definitely do that. The only pitfall is that during the scramble to pick, everyone might overlook a character that seemed essential when the list was made, but no one thought to pick (like the show Host or the Producer).

Geiger Counter is a strange and wonderful case, because a really boring character can be great to have in your hand, because you can have them get whacked by the Menace whenever you want (assuming they're not a survivor -- boring survivors are not allowed). You also have a lot of authority to change the idea once you own it. Maybe the ditzy blond isn't really ditzy.

It is really important in all story games to be honest with the table about your reactions to things, especially during setup. So if everyone just jumped on a setting, and you actually kind of hate it, it's better to speak up now. Same with the characters -- if you grabbed someone you don't really like, just say so and we can nix that guy, make someone new, swap, whatever. We have complete power to adjust the game to make us all happy.

I found it really hard to balance "getting my character's secret goal out there" and "not just telling everyone what I plan to do (and, by extension, want them to do)." Especially given that each character in this game gets only a handful of scenes. I suspect this is an essential story gaming skill that will come with practice and will translate into other games as well.

You've struck upon one of the big challenges of really fluid play. It's definitely a skill you develop. Most people err on the side of waiting too long, so I recommend "when in doubt, shout it out!"

Like we talked about at the game, the trick is to give it away in play (like the cool bit you did with narrating the audience seeing Amanda's pendant, even though no other character saw it) or describing it in the fiction (like the Character Monologues thing). You can just tell the other players directly ("hey, my guy's a murderer"), and that's better than nothing, but it's less engaging because we aren't seeing anything "happening" in the game. We're talking about the game, not playing the game, which can be useful at times, but if we do it too much we're just summarizing a game instead of experiencing it.

It can also seem a little trickier in Geiger Counter because you are juggling a bunch of different characters to start with -- some characters might just never get to shine. That's part of the design. The nice flip side is that the players get to decide which characters they like the most and push their stories, even if those aren't the ones they liked at first.