Chasing the Dragon: Play Report/Setting/Rules/Reflection Post

Over the last ten or so months now I've been playing in Chasing the Dragon, a play-by-post duet game DMed by friend of the blog deus ex parabola, and specifically in his setting of Yland. This game, being an experiment on several levels, is by all accounts a successful one, and I think it would be fun to talk about it for a little while. 

No better place to start then at the beginning, naked on an operating table in a dark and empty room, with no memory of any prior life. Racing through lightless corridors to find the resurrection-men who made their choice of tomb based on mistranslation; slitting one's throat in their sleep to repay the insult and steal their clothes, killing the other without thinking once they awoke from their sleep trembling with rage. It's all been downhill from there. Exploring the tombs and the town nearby (a glorified war-camp) over days and weeks began to give some context as to who I was, where I was, and most importantly, what position I was in. 

[Aside: since deus gave no prior context as to what the game would be, I started playing under the assumption that it was set in his Unfinished World setting, which it is not. In a bit of mild metagaming early on I went to peek outside to see if the sun was stationary in the north to find no, and that also it burned my eyes and skin like fire. Luckily this issue, the result of a curse laid on me during sleep, was rectified.] 

Who I am: Doll Eyes (aka, Doros, Toyer, Latro, Death Fear, the Disturber...), a [godlich|jealously guarded] of Har Magdala, the great Mountain, fortress and tower and gateway to the underworld. An ancient hero with inhuman ability, whose body has been specially prepared such that the soul can be returned to it to resurrect, again and again. 

Art by Nothic's Eye

Doll Eyes is an assassin, a sneak, a scout and a skirmisher. She's as quick as greased lightning, has senses of an acuity humans can only dream of, is as silent as she wants to be and is an expert duelist. [Aside: another earlier assumption when I started play was that she was closer to the barbarian type; some relics of this are her impractical rounded sword tip and her tendency to sometimes howl, sob and scream during battle as a sort of warp-spasm intimidation display.] Her huge black eyes and slight frame mark her as a harpisch or harpy-child; a troubled half-demon child, conceived by rape and murder and abandoned in the wilderness, an unquiet spirit, fearsome and fearful. A kind born under a bad star if there ever was one. Her appearance is forever frozen as a young teen, though her eyes have seen the passage of centuries if not longer. Who she was before, and why she was made an immortal elect as a child, she does not know and does not approve of. She is not eager to contemplate it and even if she was doesn't have the time.

Doll Eyes is arrogant, contemptuous, bitter, hateful, raging, pessimistic, confused, wild-eyed and despairing.  All this is barely contained in an iron shell of self-control. She's a very strong personality who's fun to play, and a change of pace since I don't usually play such nasty characters. It also ties into the first big experiment factor of the game, which is the unreliable narration. Playing Doll Eyes feels like playing a Disco Elysium type, or a well thought-out Malkavian or so on. Deus' descriptions of things are highly, unapologeically biased. This effect really works well in a duet game like this, where the DM only has one PoV to have to worry about. It's not just that I know Doll Eyes as a character is bad with people and sees the worst with everyone, but all the descriptions bear that out; everyone is ugly or stupid or cowardly. It took a good seven months of play before I realized that people responded to Doll Eyes' presence not with rage like herself towards them, but with terror; in retrospect I could've found that out when the child I brought as hostage to my tomb was described as shaking with anger.

 

This allows for a lot of introspection and interior brooding and, frankly, angsting. Since she is an amnesiac, with a mind like a maze full of locked rooms, introspection and ruminating can genuinely help with acquiring information that she knew long in the past. On the other hand it means that she suffers from flashbacks and periods of lost time, which can get in the way depending on what she's trying to achieve. Retrospecting on it now it gives a fairly trad (eugh) slant to the game, though that's not meant to cast aspersions at all; I enjoy it a lot.

 Another experiment is the rules. While we started with a G24 statline, we very quickly switched to a FKR-ish (also eugh) dicepool system where 1-3s are failures and 4-6s are successes, and combat is determined by rolloffs and fictional positioning. Doll Eyes has Dexterity 2, Fortitude 1, Prudence 3, Celerity 4, Audacity 2. I'll post deus' own words to explain what those mean:

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The swordsman's skill is DEXTERITY, which is the highest virtue. DEXTERITY in turn is made up of four lesser virtues. Each of these virtues may be assigned a value, which is how many dice you roll when asked to check that virtue. I will not explain how a dicepool works.

FORTITUDE

I am the elephant and a castle is my cargo, and I do not kneel nor lose my way. 
FO is the strength of your body and the care in your footwork. A normal person is killed when they receive one fatal blow; your FO is how many fatal blows it takes to kill you. Check FO to lift gates, bend bars, force doors, or stay unmoved.

PRUDENCE

No other creature is able to see so clearly as I the lynx, and I bring proper order and full measure. 
PA is the keenness of your mind and acuity of your eye. A normal person has merely human senses; a PA higher than 1 represents more-than-human senses. Check PA to seek out or identify the enemy, to find them in darkness, or to predict their next move.

CELERITY

I am the tiger, so quick to run and turn that the arrow of heaven can't overtake me. 
CS is the speed and precision of your movements, and your ability to do several things at once. In situations where a normal person would have just a split-second to react to danger, a swordsman has CS split-seconds. Check CS to flee or pursue your enemies, to dodge rocks and serpents, to throw darts and knives, or to stalk in silence.

AUDACITY

No one has a bolder heart than I, the lion, and so I invite everyone to fight. 
AA is the gravel in your guts and the redness clouding your vision. A normal person looks like a match for one person; a swordsman can probably scare off AA people with a menacing glare. Check AA to close with an enemy and kill them.
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This... isn't my first time using a dice pool system, but Mage the Ascension generally sucks dick (derogatory). This is my first time using a dice pool system that's so airy and freeform, and I gotta say it's really opened my eyes to how easy and fun it is to play like this. While I probably won't stray too far from standard GLOG rules for procedural dungeon- and hexcrawls, for stuff outside of that I'm definitely using this basic system with bespoke stats for the game. It really doesn't seem to me like you need much besides this and whatever bespoke bolt-on MOSAIC strict (also also eugh) systems you want to apply. 

I will say, one thing that didn't work for me was playing with the rules as a black box. Learning my capabilities as a character is a very important part of the loop, and knowledge acquisition is highly important; but not even knowing what my dice results meant or why I was rolling what I was felt like a step too far, and hindered me from getting into the game until I learned a little more about the basics.  

 Back to setting. The Jealously Guarded sort themselves according to their highest virtues. Those of Fortitude are Strugglers, of Prudence Counselors, of Celerity Dancers, and of Audacity Destroyers. In happier days Doll Eyes was one amongst many brothers and sisters who worked to serve Har Magdala's will together. Some of the notables which she remembers more are:

Candle Friend, a struggler. The opposite of Doll Eyes in every way: strong, clumsy, a kind and optimistic gentle giant. His corpse is the one I have access to, and one of the major arcs of play is finding a means to have him risen.
Far Light, a counselor. His tomb is blocked by rubble. Once he wielded a pair of hooked swords, his WAIST HEIGHT FLOWERS. 
Heir Light, a destroyer. His sword, Icheteremos, is fashioned after the style of those in the Holy Islands. He jested to a giant that it could be taken from dead hands; the giant did, because they are creatures without hearts and do not jest or love or regret.
Cloud Watcher, a struggler. Is a Nimbad, a ripped dude with a crocodile head.

Others are even vaguer names: Fame Light, Far Goal, Vase Breaker, Scatter Bones, Turn Tail, Sunder Born.

 Two stand above all others. One is Fickle Heart, the archwizard. At his command Doll Eyes was set aside from the other to sleep dead, await as contingency to waken when the worst has come to pass. The other, whose tomb he sealed, above even him, is Orphan Eyes. Orphan Eyes is the oldest and greatest of all heroes, the lord of the mountain and father to all the Jealously Guarded, the plucker of heroic souls who feast and fight and serve him. Har Magdala is his great citadel on the west end of the world besides the seas of grass where the sun sinks each night.

 His foe is the Red Titan, the king of demons and lord of evil. His chief lieutenant in the area around the mountain is Aster, a wind-demon served by red-robed wizard priests in their towers, by harpies, and by demon knights, who ride winged serpents or maybe pterodactyls or maybe just the winds themselves. He is the Enemy, and Doll Eyes' purpose is to oppose the Enemy and kill its servants.

The Red Titan has won. The Twilight Kingdom, which Har Magdala sits at the end of, is the weakest and most irrelevant of all the kingdoms under his command; and Saborda, the major city closest to Har Magdala, the weakest and most irrelevant of all its cities. Its king is weak and accompanied at all times by a horrible demon-advisor named Maserit. His sons plot against him and each other and a war is inevitable, and his one true friend, his general, lies slowly dying from a wound. Candle Friend and all the soldiers under him were slaughtered in a desperate last stand two or three centuries ago now. The situation is beyond dire; it is irreparable and has been for generations. It is Doll Eyes' great task to begin to reverse it.  

Art by JFoliveras

 What of things so far? She went to the glorified encampment of Warguard, and met there a foreign shapshifting warrior-princess named Shor (the ugly gluttonous werehorse, Doll Eyes thinks of her); and Wolf, the young precocious son of the town priest. She brought the latter back to her tomb as hostage, and the former followed. Some demon-knights attacked, and she slew them; Warguard was being razed, and she saw the fires from afar. She went to investigate and to try to recover the corpse of Candle Friend. She slew a wizard, several demon-knights, and many mortal servants of the enemy before a knight cut off her arm. She wandered off in a daze clutching it and her sword, burrowed into the snow, and died.

[Aside: while I'm taking a light, skimming touch with this recap, I do want to note that Doll Eyes' death here was by far the saddest a game has ever made me. It was very effectively and affectively played out. Compliments to the DM.] 

Then, an intermission. I played for a while as Wolf, the bookish and newly-orphaned child who Doll Eyes had inadvertently saved from being put to the sword. He wandered through the halls of the mountain with a sort of cheer, trying desperately not to think about his father. His sensitive mind half-possessed by both Fickle Heart and Doll Eyes, he gained access to the great library, read about Sadan Sade from cross the sea who saved the town of Belmarie, and assembled and used the means to resurrect Doll Eyes once more. For his troubles her curse was transfered onto him, and now he lies insensate and withered like an old man.

 Back to Doll Eyes. She found that the few survivors of Warguard had brought Candle Friend's corpse to the edge of the mountain. She ran to Saborda and reestablished contact with an ancient thieves guild which she must've founded, seeing as how they all throw knives and wear masks of harpy-feather, but has no memory of. She received a fortunetelling from a witch and a weapon commission from a friendly smith. She wanted to do more to plan a diversionary dawn raid on one of Aster's temple-towers, to let Shor bring the corpse over to the city, but the servants of Maserit cracked down. Human guards above and demon-panthers below. As of posting this, she stands armorless, with a useless exsanguinated arm and a wizard's fugue-curse on her brain, scrambling for time and a chance to lick her wounds and worrying that the stupid mortals underneath her will get themselves killed while she's gone. Throughout the whole game, one thing remains consistent: poor, miserable Doll Eyes can never, ever, ever catch a break.

 There's not much more to say than that, I think. It's a fun game.