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5/18/2022

Entanglements

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Entanglements remain one of my favorite aspects of Hearts of Wulin: relationship triangles where your connection to one person is complicated by another person. We put together a new deck of reference cards for HoW, with names and sample entanglements on each one. In doing that I went back through our earlier lists and tweaked some, cut others, and added several new ones. Below is the latest version of these lists, which I'm hoping might be a useful resource for any game where you want to start out with messy relationships. 

ROMANTIC ENTANGLEMENTS
  1. I cannot choose between _____ and _____.
  2. I disguised myself to get close to _____, but _____, their lover, suspects and hates me.
  3. I disguised myself to get close to _____, but _____, their lover, is falling for me.
  4. I fled from _____ because of the heartache, but _____, their lover, has called me back to honor a debt.
  5. I know _____ desires me, but _____, who I pine for, loves them.
  6. I lost to _____ in order to maintain the affections of _____.
  7. I love _____, who I overlooked for too long; now they love _____.
  8. I love _____, but _____—a leader of my faction-- has forbidden it.
  9. I love _____, but my family member _____ is their sworn enemy.
  10. I love _____, but my teacher, _____, killed someone dear to them.
  11. I love _____, but their family member, _____, is a villain.
  12. I love _____, but my family member, _____, is a legendary villain.
  13. I love _____, but their family member, _____, has sworn revenge against me.
  14. I love _____, but I have sworn revenge against their family member, _____.
  15. I love _____, but their sibling, _____, considers me beneath them.
  16. I love _____, but they are engaged to _____, who I respect.
  17. I love _____, but I know a dark secret about, _____, who they adore.
  18. I love _____, but they are wed to _____, who I serve.
  19. I love _____, but they are wed to _____, my sibling.
  20. I am wed to _____, but I know they actually pine for _____.
  21. I pursue _____ despite knowing that my friend, _____, pines for them.
  22. I rejected _____, but _____--who I desire-- loves them.
  23. I still pursue _____, who rejected me, despite the interference of _____, who holds an unrequited love.
  24. My friend _____ and I vie for the attention of _____ despite their indifference to both of us.
  25. There is mutual unrequited love between _____ and I because of my duty to _____.
  26. _____ advised me not to pursue _____, but secretly wooed them.
  27. My teacher, _____, and I share an unspoken love because of the shame it would bring to _____.
  28. _____ has become jealous of the attention _____ pays to me instead of them.
  29. I am engaged to _____, but have fallen in love with their sibling, _____.
  30. I love _____ from an enemy clan, and _____ blackmails me about my passion.
  31. I love _____ but I cannot tell them the truth about what happened to their lover _____.
  32. I love _____, but their duty to _____ draws them away.
  33. _____ openly pursues me, but to avoid a scandal I’ve hidden my relationship with _____.
  34. I humiliated myself in front of _____, who I desire, and _____ will let no one forget it.
  35. A prophecy has kept _____ and I apart and _____ is determined to keep it that way.
  36. _____ and I love one another, but that will change if they learn of my history with _____.
  37. I brought my lover _____’s sibling _____ to justice.
  38. I have been promised to _____ and _____ wants to get rid of me for that.
  39. I have been promised to the awful _____, but I find their friend _____ much more interesting.
  40. _____ has disguised themselves to pursue me, but my friend _____ has begun to resent them.
  41. I love _____ but _____, has seduced their family with wealth, status, and power.
  42. My junior _____ has feelings for me, but my heart belongs to _____.
  43. I took up my role to become closer to _____, but _____ keeps working to keep me away from them.
  44. I feel pangs when my friend _____ teaches _____ and gets to spend time with them.
  45. It is assume that _____ will wed _____, but I need to drink every time I think of it.
  46. _____ started to flirt with _____ to tease me, not realizing I actually pine for [first blank].
  47. I love _____ who I have known all my life, but _____ continually reminds them of my youthful indiscretions.
  48. I don’t mind when my friend _____ mocks me for my restraint, but it kills me when _____ laughs along with them.
  49. I adore my superior/subordinate _____, but they only think of their duty to _____.
  50. I promised _____ I would aid them in wooing _____, but in doing so I have fallen in love with (one of them).
  51. _____ mocks me for my manners, but I tolerate it because their sibling _____ has stolen my heart.
  52. My friend _____ has changed their manner after I let slip about my time with _____.
  53. _____ is far beneath me in social status, but I fear what _____ will do to them if my infatuation is discovered.
  54. _____ spends all their time trying to draw me out, but everything reminds me of what happened to _____.
  55. I helped _____ gain their status, but they have since become overly close with _____, whom I desire.
  56. _____ is far above me in social status, and _____ will be furious if they even suspect a connection.
  57. I love _____ but their desire for revenge against _____ has poisoned their heart.
  58. I owe _____ everything, but despite that my heart belongs to _____.
  59. I fled from _____’s declaration of love but their marriage to _____ has drawn me back.
  60. I saved _____, who I desperately love, but _____ took credit and has used that to begin courting them.
  61. I love _____, but my senior, _____, and the rest of my clan believe they serve a dark force.
  62. I failed to save _____ from taking up unorthodox techniques, and out of love I accept _____’s blame of me for that.
  63. _____ looks so much like my love who died at the hands of a villain, but they are promised to _____.
  64. My sworn brother, _____, continually shows me up in front of _____, despite knowing my feelings for them.
  65. When their lover _____ asked me to save _____’s life, I never thought I would fall in love with them.
  66. My heart aches for my teacher _____, but _____ would bring me to ruin if I said anything.
  67. I love _____, but they have declared their hatred of my clan after what happened to _____.
  68. _____ has offered to be my patron and more, but I’ve fallen in love with their (child/sibling/servant) _____.
  69. _____ continues to step between _____ and I to protect them from me, and I can’t say I blame them.
  70. I fled from _____ because of my guilt, but when I see them with _____ now, my heart aches.
  71. I rescued _____ from evil, but to my dismay they seem to only have eyes for _____.
  72. I fought _____ while in a disguise and fell in love with them, but revealing myself would draw _____’s ire.
  73. _____ and I were childhood soulmates, but they have mysteriously forgotten that and now seem to love _____.
  74. _____, _____, and I were once in a love triangle I fled from, but now neither seems to remember me.
  75. I used to tease _____ who was once my servant, but in their new status they have rejected me and fallen in love with _____.
  76. I mistakenly declared my love to _____ who I thought was _____ and now confusion abounds.
  77. _____ mistakenly declared their love to me, thinking I was _____ and it’s crushing my heart.
  78. Every time I try to express my feelings to _____, _____ gets in the way.
  79. I love _____, but despite that I have promised to help them find the one they love, _____, who has mysteriously vanished.
  80. My heart pines for _____ but they love the legendary thief _____ who continues to confound and tease me.
GENERAL ENTANGLEMENTS
  1. My sibling _____ disparages me, and my parent, _____, won’t condemn them for some reason.
  2. My rival _____ speaks ill of me, but my mentor _____ strangely ignores the situation.
  3. _____, my rival, knows about the bad actions I did to the family of my friend, _____.
  4. Local authority _____ hints they know of my shady dealings against my mentor _____ and their family.
  5. _____, my rival, has sworn to kill me, but I have promised _____ that I will not harm them.
  6. I brought my sworn ally _____’s sibling _____ to justice.
  7. I suspect my friend _____’s parent is the villain _____.
  8. I allowed my friend _____’s sibling _____ to escape justice.
  9. _____, an authority of my faction, has ordered me to undercut _____, who I respect.
  10. _____, my clan leader, has told me to spy on my comrade, _____.
  11. My teacher, _____, has passed me over in favor of _____, my rival.
  12. I have discovered my friend, _____, has hidden their true power from me but told _____, another friend.
  13. I have discovered my sibling _____ has been in contact with _____ from an enemy clan.
  14. I have discovered my friend _____ has been consorting with _____ from an enemy clan.
  15. I have hidden my true identity from _____ because of my past with _____.
  16. I found that _____ has hidden their true identity from everyone because of their past with _____.
  17. I’ve learned my friend _____ has been betrayed by their teacher _____ but they will never believe me.
  18. I’ve learned my friend _____ has been lied to by their parent _____, but they will never believe me.
  19. I have promised my teacher, _____, that I will destroy the family of my friend, _____.
  20. I have promised my sibling, _____, that I will destroy my friend, _____.
  21. I have hidden _____, who is wanted by my friend _____ for their crimes.
  22. I have hidden _____, who is a threat to my respected clan senior, _____
  23. I discovered my sibling _____ has been learning techniques from _____, master of an enemy clan.
  24. I learned my friend _____ studied secrets with _____, a heretical master.
  25. I promised my friend _____ that I would aid the troublemaker _____.
  26. I promised my sibling _____ that I would help my rival _____.
  27. I owe loyalty to my elder sibling, _____, despite how they treat their spouse, _____.
  28. I remain loyal to my master, _____, despite how they treat my younger sibling, _____.
  29. I rejected _____ and now they have sworn vengeance against me and my friend, _____.
  30. I suspect _____ of evil, but _____, who I respect, believes in them.
  31. My friend _____, suspects _____ of evil, but I remain steadfastly loyal.
  32. I swore to _____ that I would project _____, but they would be offended if they knew.
  33. I took part in a crime against _____, my friend _____’s sibling.
  34. I took part in a crime against _____, my sibling _____’s lover.
  35. _____ has chosen me as heir, but _____, who I’ve known all my life, resents it.
  36. My senior, _____, treats me badly, but I give them loyalty despite _____’s disapproval.
  37. _____ chose my long-time friend, _____, as heir and I resent it.
  38. My clan senior, _____, suspects that my friend _____ works against our faction.
  39. My friend, _____, is an agent for _____ of an enemy clan, but I do not know it.
  40. My spouse, _____, secretly works for _____ of an enemy clan, but I do not know it.
  41. My master, _____, has secretly trained me as part of a revenge plot against my friend, _____.
  42. My master, _____, has trained my sibling _____ as part of a revenge plot against my family.
  43. My friend, _____, has rejected my sibling _____’s declarations of love.
  44. My sibling, _____, has rejected my friend _____’s declarations of love.
  45. My friend, _____, has been exiled from my school, but my teacher _____, will not tell me why.
  46. My sibling, _____, has been sent away from our family by my parent, _____, without explanation.
  47. I believe my parent, _____, has been seduced with evil intent by _____.
  48. I believe my sibling _____, has seduced _____ for evil ends.
  49. My teacher, _____, disapproves of me, and my friend _____, agrees with them.
  50. My parent, _____, disapproves of me, and my sibling _____ won’t stand up to them.
  51. My peer, _____, and I defeated the powerful _____, but only I gained credit and now they resent it.
  52. My sibling, _____, and I were separated at birth and _____ raised them to destroy my clan.
  53. My sibling _____ loves our clan enemy, _____.
  54. My sibling _____ has fallen in love with my rival, _____.
  55. My parent, _____, abandoned me to be raised by _____, but now they’re returned.
  56. _____ and I both seek revenge against _____, but must be the one to strike the killing blow.
  57. I have learned about my elder sibling _____’s affair with _____ which may doom our family.
  58. My friend, _____, hates _____, but refuses to tell me why.
  59. My friend, _____, has lied to our teacher, _____, but will not explain why.
  60. An enemy, _____, has come to me to change their ways, but I know my friend, _____, will never believe them.
  61. _____ tells me not to worry when _____ belittles their studies, but I grow ever angrier.
  62. I suspect _____ maneuvered to bring before the authorities because of my connection to _____.
  63. I keep trying to invest _____ in their training, but _____ continually draws them away.
  64. _____ claims to be my friend, but I see how they treat my rival _____ with deference.
  65. I betrayed my friend _____ when _____ challenged them before authorities, and they have not forgiven me.
  66. My parent _____ has told me that _____ stands in the way of our clan’s plans, but I cannot bring myself to betray them.
  67. I received a role which _____ had promised to my sworn ally _____, but they refuse to understand how important it is to my family.
  68. I promised _____ I would not reveal their failings, but I fear their efforts will harm _____.
  69. I helped _____ gain their position with _____.
  70. I have taken the novice _____ under my wing, but I suspect their sibling _____ is involved in something nefarious.
  71. I love my naive sibling _____, but I fear that their admiration for _____ is dangerous.
  72. I have to keep my ambitions for revenge against _____ hidden from my sworn friend _____.
  73. _____ would be furious if they knew _____ had involved me in secret plans.
  74. _____ has given me private, secret training, but _____ will be enraged if they learn of it.
  75. _____ has wormed themselves into the good graces of _____ because they have suspicions about me.
  76. I have hidden that my sworn brother _____’s inattention caused the tragedy which haunts _____.
  77. Despite asking them not to, _____ has begun to ask _____ about my past and I fear what they will learn.
  78. I suspect _____ knows of my friendship with the wanted thief _____.
  79. My companion _____ absolutely insists on listening to _____’s advice but I can tell they’re a fraud.
  80. I suspect _____ knows much about my family’s destruction, but accusing them will offend _____.

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5/13/2022

Gauntlet Video Roundup - May 13, 2022

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[Gauntlet Calendar: Online Tabletop RPG Play]
​Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Calendar video roundup! Enjoy these recordings of online games organized through Gauntlet Calendar and the Gauntlet RPG Community. These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the selection of games available every week, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play or watch more games like these, check out the links and information at the bottom of the post.

Gauntlet Calendar

Against the Fae Queen (Session 1)
Will H runs for Alun R., Horst Wurst, Paul Rivers, and Puckett
1 year from now, the Fae Queen will make her return. 10 years from now, the only law of the world is caprice and cruelty as her Court divides humanity between them. The borders of the Twilight realms weaken and shatter and life will never be the same again. Unless the Resistance can set right what went wrong. Stepping from the future to NYC, 2022 via the Doorway Into Summer, the Operatives have one last, desperate chance to prevent the Queen's reign. An adaptation of Fate of the Faerie Queen by Shane.

Tales from the Low Cantrefs: The Rite of Spring (Session 1)
David Morrison runs for Anders, Dana Pena, Paul D., and Steven S.
We introduce the game, describe the village of Longhill, and meet our cast of characters. Jac the Blade, a sturdy young farm boy who works hard to support his family. Zéline the Door, the youngest of a large family who spends her time exploring the ancient tower on her family lands as strange magic stirs around her. Oren the Loom, a devoted son on the cusp of manhood, trained in the art of carpentry at his father's side. And Glyn the Cloak, a skilled young woodsman trained by an eccentric old woman in the way of the forest, with a mischievous streak. Jac and Zéline celebrate the impending wedding of their siblings, while Glyn consoles Oren with stolen pie after a romantic encounter goes awry. Meanwhile the bride-to-be enchants the party with her dancing...

Dungeon World: Nentir Vale (Session 1)
Blake Ryan runs for David Montgomery, Joe F, and Tim Leitner
🏰 🐍 🗡

Hearts of Wulin: Wedding of Shadow and Gold (Session 2)
Lowell Francis runs for Austin C., Mona, and Paul D.
Our heroes arrive at the wedding and things get complicated quickly, but the arrival of a dangerous and uninvited wuxia legend lights the fuse that sets the event aflame.

Gauntlet Quarterly

Hearts of Wulin: Odyssey of Jade and Stars (Session 5)
David S. runs for Greg Fulford, José Feito, Max Airborne, and Steven S.
In the dead of winter, months after the conclusion of the battle at Heaven and Earth Temple, a dark and suspicious haunting plagues the lord of Blackwood Palace. Wu Dongshan, Zhou Jiang, and Cloud Crow team up to exorcise the ghost that has wormed its way into the palace, but uncover forbidden secrets along the way. Jiang's disappeared lover, a cursed opera mask, and a descent into hell all make appearances as we kick off our second story arc of the quarterly.

Star Wars Saturday

Apocalypse World: Burned Over (Session 1)
Rich Rogers runs for Alun R., Cody Eastlick, Sawyer Rankin, and Steven Watkins
On the ruddy streets of the Fallen City in Dathomir, a lone nightsister Brain-picker meets a lost nightbrother Vigilant and a kindly act by an Undaunted leads him into trouble as he tries to help a Volatile ally.

Stars in the Dark (Session 25)
Anders runs for Marc Majcher, Rich Rogers, and Steven Watkins
Bringing Guns to Bring People Together - The crew take on their first job since joining up with Val and Tycho, who are not in this episode. Instead Etema, Boko, and Bade go up to 1314 to pick up some weapons for their Rebel friends down on 1313. Mild hijinks ensue!

Magical Multiverse Tour

Cartel: New Capenna Rumble (Session 1 of 4)
Alexi S. runs for Chase Ordonis, Marc Majcher, and Sam Zimmerman
Welcome to New Capenna: gritty and glamorous, a metropolis built by long-gone angels, ruled by crimelord demons, and home to many striving gangs of upstart criminals—like our "heroes" for this series. In the first session, we meet Zephyr Feru the headstrong Hawk, Cormella Jean the slippery Spy, and Azazi the naive spouse. Lies, schemes, heists, and shootouts immediately ensue.

Gauntlet Reading Club

The Veil: A Master of Djinn (Session 1)
Steven S. runs for Ben Bond, Donogh, José Feito, and Lyra
The Gauntlet Reading Club starts our run of The Veil inspired by P. Djèlí Clark's A Master of Djinn, in which a cursed books causes trouble and Sadir becomes the most popular golem in Cairo.

Monsterhearts: Every Heart a Doorway (Session 6)
Steven S. runs for David Morrison, Kae, Marleigh, and Sabine V.
The Gauntlet Reading Club concludes our run of Avery Alder's Monsterhearts inspired by Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway. Evil twins and toothy cats. With half our characters in their darkest selves will our teens be able to band together to confront the monsters hunting them?

Where to Find More

You can see all these videos (plus all the ones that have come before) on The Gauntlet YouTube channel playlists, and be sure to subscribe to catch all our great podcasts!

If you'd like to catch these sessions in an audio-only podcast, check out the community-run Hangouts Podcast at http://gauntlet.hellomouth.net/.

If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Forums where games are announced, or catch one of our Gauntlet Community Open Gaming online mini-conventions.

To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon. Everyone is welcome to sign up for Gauntlet Calendar games, but Patreon supporters get extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Calendar games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events and pickup games are announced.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend

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5/10/2022

200 Dune-ish Names

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Built from different source generators and then run through another program to recombine sounds. The first column leans female; the second male, but I suspect genders and names matter little in a setting like this.

​Like Dune this grabs cultural bits left & right and remixes them...
​Elissa Akaralelis
Tanweerah Al-Chandan
Valen Al-Sabet
Alzhbetana Andraderi
Kuline Andrades
Savin Artinhmar
Suratia Atalli
Helentina Athanan
Phanna Barak
Diamanto Barbosal
Mantina Bayrakos
Halie Bayrakos
Suhaysah Bhainsen
Palati Bhanasiou
Sumay Bhani
Suray Biari
Aarian Boosa
Utamilla Boulidis
Kulinah Chahimil
Abeer Chandez
Aayaada Chengmian
Gurati Chosal
Adelia Cibergh
Colia Clocheren
Varis Costanasiou
Varie D’Haensen
Aayal Darakos
Uppenderica Darigul
Diamantinah Darizkinar
Caeta Desramatou
Lubaba Dewael
Frederjit Dinghu
Abeera Dōngzhur
Pervina El-Sampos
Stelisha Erdemin
Variane Fiseth
Guratia Gabrakoc
Heerah Gangani
Lillianna Georgiadi
Buhaa Gersangani
Marifa Gieterdael
Melian Gongying
Varifa Gulpinard
Batia Hamdani
Steline Hongze
Nuhaysah Inandixen
Haline Jipina
Maris Karaškievič
Magalina Kasoulos
Payaada Lauri
Majeetu Lilis
Adelian Línglán
Spyridoul Loukašuk
Galaha Mandani
Coliane Marirat
Charian Mavroun
Guratina Mendixen
Valentinah Molacič
Utamillia Mukhangi
Suratina Narwar
Galati Ninggu
Adeliane Nunesar
Nuhaa Odhanmony
Meline Ovestre
Mariane Philipalli
Dianna Pohantre
Elishai Primil
Aariane Purwal
Stelianna Qīnghu
Coliann Qirenbero
Tinah Rains
Apostolina Ramchana
Varinderica Rangzhū
Chariane Remetriou
Diann Rondopou
Adelisha Rosal
Charie Rothana
Melinah Sachanak
Sirna Santinhmar
Walmia Shànggu
Laura Shènglín
Kayla Siarhiesen
Morgan Siarizkina
Kayleigh Silvestrea
Rabaka Sinho
Sahar Sintinhmar
Ilhani Sohantrea
Atana Sovandani
Mahdeha Sukhandixen
Mumaba Taraǔkin
Rabema Thran
Najmat Tiān-ér
Kezzuy Tybero
Cheda Utarigul
Czano VanIster
Valentina Wuxiang
Tomochka Xuangji
Valeriya Yinghu
Raisa Zervili
Larissa Zhongzhur
​Willy Akaralelis
Elnata Akarany
Kaarinos Al-Chandan
Kypriacos Al-Sabet
Demetrios Al-Sarwal
Carlik Andraderi
Maazi Andrades
Kypriakos Artinhmar
Adeen Atalli
Pantinos Athanan
Christeidis Barak
Arvinder Barbosal
Ravindera Bayrakos
Dabram Bhainsen
Zasimus Bhanasiou
Suaybah Bhani
Villiam Biarhiejeva
Chhanes Boosa
Konstantel Boulidis
Nadheed Chahimil
Nadheen Chandez
Dimitri Chengmian
Kyrianon Chosal
Maheer Cibergh
Varlitos Clocheren
Thanesimus Costanasiou
Tejarukman D’Haensen
Onesim Darakos
Asharamil Darigul
Marim Darizkinar
Ghazin Desramatou
Nikolaslaŭ Dewael
Zasil Dinghu
Jeandro Dōngzhur
Jasmohana El-Sampos
Muhyddeeb Erdemin
Yohan Fiseth
Shaheer Gabrakoc
Bertelis Georgiadi
Pantel Gersangani
Mohanes Gieterdael
Maheed Gongying
Agostinos Gulpinard
Kyrianos Hamdani
Chhanassis Hongze
Milas Inandixen
Zianos Jipina
Pantinho Karaškievič
Dharamil Kasoulos
Ionassis Lauri
Thana Lilis
Basim Línglán
Villem Loukašuk
Shaheen Mandani
Kyprianon Marirat
Chhana Mavroun
Yohanesim Mendixen
Jasmohanas Molacič
Yohanassis Mukhangi
Thanesim Narwar
Acunmanas Nunesar
Yohana Odhanmony
Basimus Ovestre
Yohanas Philipalli
Chhanesim Pingguān
Chhanas Pohantre
Thanes Primil
Elnathana Purwal
Elnathanes Qīnghu
Chhanesimus Qirenbero
Thanas Rains
Hatrar Ramchana
Motas Rangzhū
Vetror Remetriou
Raleus Rondopou
Zurkor Rosal
Caleb Sachanak
Archie Santing
Stanley Santinhmar
Jackson Shànggu
Lutfiq Shènglín
Jabeel Siarhiesen
Farus Siarizkina
Samen Silvestrea
Furqoq Sintinhmar
Bahammam Sintinotis
Mujim Sohantrea
Haithael Sukhandixen
Pabaa Taraǔkin
Fiazeyd Thran
Cheyt Tiān-ér
Zoguy Tíngzhur
Zuggal Tybero
Innokentiy Utarigul
Fridrik VanIster
Leonid Wuxiang
Zhenka Xuangji
Moaric Yinghu
Hayshem Zervili
Kaal Zhongzhur

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5/6/2022

Gauntlet Video Roundup - May 6, 2022

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[Gauntlet Calendar: Online Tabletop RPG Play]
​Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Calendar video roundup! Enjoy these recordings of online games organized through Gauntlet Calendar and the Gauntlet RPG Community. These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the selection of games available every week, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play or watch more games like these, check out the links and information at the bottom of the post.

Gauntlet Calendar

Trophy Dark: Gift of the Sea (Sessions 1 and 2 of 2)
Ben Bond runs for Chet, Chris R., David S., and Paul D.
Four treasure-hunters travel beyond the forest to an isolated coastal village. Two have been there before, but all are looking to profit from the offerings to the sea made during the Greentide festival. Things don't go swimmingly.

Wanderhome: Bright Young Things (Session 4)
David Morrison facilitates for Brandon Brylawski, Donogh, José Feito, and Nathan Harrison
Traveling on from Flickerstone, the band meet Remy the Dancer, a fabulous roseate spoonbill, who joins them in their travels. As they pass by the imposing form of the Emeraldine Halls, seat of the Lynx Queen, Tal decides to stop in and catch up with their past. Barnaby meets a god of lost love, Gus barters with a clerk at the lost and found office, Remy leads the band on a merry dance through the labyrinth, Quoth is commissioned to write a complicated history, and Tal comes face to face with Princess Tabitha for the first time in a while.

Dungeons & Dragons: Eberron: The Glass Keys (Session 1)
Lowell Francis runs for Chris R., Jim Likes Games, Joe F, and Tim Leitner
We arrive in the city of Sharn and meet our team of inquisitives as they take down a sinister arcano-scientist aboard a wildly careening skyship.

Volley Boys!!: 'Time Out' (Session 1 of 2)
Donogh runs for Darin Rebertus, DeReel, and Sabine V.
Episode 1 - Practice vs Practice - in which our teammates work on a few routines for their next game; and then go to spy on their rivals across town! Episode 2 - Tea for Two - in which failing grades cause some trouble, and late night 'studying; and Dale & Sky go for boba tea.

Against the Vampire Conspiracy: Ties of Blood (Session 5 of 5)
Will H runs for Alun R., Donogh, Puckett, and Sabine V.
The video the Conspiracy didn't want you to see! Unredacted at last. The Operators hit their greatest challenge yet - the HMS Prosperine, home of EDOM's 'special biological assets' and where the Conspiracy is holding the AVH 'sources'. Can the team rescue Yelena's sister?

Voidheart Symphony: Forgotten Concerto (Session 4)
Lowell Francis runs for David S., Mendel Schmiedekamp, Patrick Knowles, and Sherri
The group tracks down a significant member of the Vassal's family, touching her with the power of the Void. After regrouping they decide to enter the Castle--splitting up in order to uncover more secrets.

Hearts of Wulin: Wedding of Shadow and Gold (Session 1)
Lowell Francis runs for Austin C., Chris Greenbriar, Mona, and Paul D.
We meet our wuxia heroes as the travel to a wedding atop a mountain, one which will end a war between two factions. But dark forces have another agenda, leading to a cliffside conflict.

Gauntlet Quarterly

Hearts of Wulin: Odyssey of Jade and Stars (Session 4 of 12)
David S. runs for Greg Fulford, José Feito, Max Airborne, and Steven S.
Our first story arc comes to a climactic end as the treacherous Mo Feng launches an all-out assault on the Heaven and Earth Temple. Nameless Blade takes the opportunity to infiltrate Mo Feng's camp and discovers a shocking secret of Violet Widow's, while Jiang and Song Tian engage in a little larceny themselves as they make a pass at the much-desired bronze vessel--only to find out that there is more to its contents than meets the eye. Meanwhile, Cloud Crow and Dongshan grow closer, even as Crow's master and would-be lover both turn against them.

Star Wars Saturday

Stars in the Dark (Session 24)
Anders runs for Marc Majcher and Rich Rogers
With a somewhat reduced crew we follow Etema on her shockboxing tour and Boko as he seeks her out to prepare for the next job. They also drop in on Tiri for a moderately wild night out on the town.

Gauntlet League Wrestling

World Wide Wrestling (Session 4)
Tyler Lominack runs for Chris Newton, Greg G., Sawyer Rankin, and Shane
The roster rubs elbows with fans at the Con. Lilith deals with trouble at home. Dr Retro and Jefferson end their feud with briefcases on poles, and a legend returns to the ring with the new Golden Boy.

World Wide Wrestling (Session 5 of 5)
Tyler Lominack runs for Brandon Brylawski, Chris Newton, Greg G., Lowell Francis, Sawyer Rankin, and Shane
The tour comes to an end. The Candy Man rides a sugar high. Retro and Santa Muerte put on a 5-star match of a lifetime. The Percolator challenges Lilith with Jefferson for the title and one last shot at the top. What does the future hold for our roster?

Gauntlet Reading Club

Monsterhearts: Every Heart a Doorway (Session 5)
Steven S. runs for David Morrison, Kae, Marleigh, and Sabine V.
The Gauntlet Reading Club continue our run of Avery Alder's Monsterhearts inspired by Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway with an important PSA: Just because the mushroom says "Eat Me" doesn't mean you should.

Where to Find More

You can see all these videos (plus all the ones that have come before) on The Gauntlet YouTube channel playlists, and be sure to subscribe to catch all our great podcasts!

If you'd like to catch these sessions in an audio-only podcast, check out the community-run Hangouts Podcast at http://gauntlet.hellomouth.net/.

If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Forums where games are announced, or catch one of our Gauntlet Community Open Gaming online mini-conventions.

To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon. Everyone is welcome to sign up for Gauntlet Calendar games, but Patreon supporters get extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Calendar games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events and pickup games are announced.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend

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5/3/2022

Unpacking Voidheart Symphony

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THE DEPTHS OF THE VOID
Voidheart Symphony is not an easy game. That's not a bad thing, but it does mean that a few sessions into this quarterly series I'm still trying to get a feel for the game play. I've run a lot of
Legacy, Free from the Yoke, and various related hacks. While Shattered City threw me a little, having the physical book in my hand has made me more confident that I could run it again successfully.


Voidheart isn't exactly a Legacy game. It draws inspiration from there but is very much its own beast, except for one detail. In Legacy you split between the family side and character side, each with their own set of moves. In Voidheart the split is between moves your character does in the real world and moves that your character does in the other world aka The Castle. There's an added wrinkle In Voidheart that each side has a different set of resolution mechanics.

Last session we hit a couple of stumbling blocks trying to figure out exactly where the PCs needed to go and how things worked. We also began to see the “death spiral” of PbtA present in this game. That's something you learn to manage in play, but we’re just starting so we aren’t sure. People failing and digging themselves in deeper in a not fun way. Part of why I wanted to sketch out how VS works is to list ways to heal and escape the abyss. 

I want to try and unpack what's going on in Voidheart. That means figuring out what I need to know as a GM (aka Architect), what the players need to know, and what the stages of play are. This isn't written from an expert point of view. Instead it is by an experienced GM who has run three sessions of Voidheart so far, has read through the book thoroughly, and has worked with the character keeper.  Take this with a grain of salt. it may well be that there's an emergent play that I haven't hit yet where all the gears and cogs hum and work together smoothly. I’m not there yet.
​

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COSMOLOGY
Voidheart takes a lot of inspiration from Persona 5. It is not a Persona 5 simulator, but I in my reading it’s the most significant touchstone for play, even more so than say Persona 3 or Persona 4. The book cites other sources, like the amazing The Invisibles, but at heart Persona 5 shapes how the book translates for me. When I read it, that's the paradigm in the back of my mind for better or worse.

At the start of Voidheart the cosmology of the situation is unclear, especially for the players’ PoV. Some of that’s sketched, but there's a lot of not explicitly describe imaginative space. So we come in with questions of how the Castle-space works, how do others see it, and so on. In most pbta games that's a fruitful space where players collaborate to fill in. That holds true to an extent with Voidheart but not entirely. Some of what's happening isn't explicitly sketched out, but is implicit in the many moves. And that can be tough because there are so many moves: basic- broken into several categories, moves contingent on situations, playbook moves, hangout moves, and Covenant moves. Everything has multiple moves.  

Here’s the vision I’ve come to– the structure I think players’ need to have in mind to approach play. It may not exactly be how Voidheart presents it, but it is workable for a shared understanding. One of the shortcomings of taking a Persona 5-based vision of this that key aspects of the video game aren’t present here. Things like a singular character with bonus powers, a mentor-explainer, slowly gathering members of the team and dealing with their individual trauma via the Castle, a bigger villain behind the scenes which only gets revealed at the end.

VASSALS AND CASTLES
So let's talk about the Vassal. Each is a figure who exists in the real world, the city. They have garnered some additional supernatural power. They use this power mostly unconsciously to cause harm in the real world. Exactly what has granted this power to them is unclear at the start. Each Vassal has a Shard, a unique segment within the Castle. Shards are mental constructions and represent Vassals’  their inner lives. It echoes who they are. This exist in an otherspace. The Vassal does not actually enter the shard or castle. While they are connected to the shard. the shard is not where they are. Instead the shard exists connected to a place of significance for the vassal. It is a magical, liminal space which the vassal cannot see. The PCs can enter the shard from that point of significance. 

Within the Shard are spaces (rooms, locations, etc) that reveal things about who the vassal, their purpose, their fears and hopes, etc. . It is a subconscious presentation. Vassals have a independent thought form existing within the castle, an avatar. Depending on the shard’s themes the Vassal’s avatar move through, manage, or play out fetishes here. Enforcers exist within the shard. These can be simple shadow puppets as obstacles or monsters  with a stronger existence, look, and personality. Generally Enforcers remain within the castle. But as a Vassal becomes aware of being stalked and pursued, the subconscious shard may bleed into the real world as a defensive measure. In this case enforcers may enter real world.

To get to the castle the players need to find that area of significance, and then locate the door. This is abstract. Once players arrive at the place, they can locate a passage without having to roll. They can define the entryway, and it should be a generally accessible place.

The idea is that in the real world players investigate the Vassal. They use info discovered to disrupt the Vassal’s actions a little in the real world. The games structure suggests that it is unlikely the PC can fully stop them in the real world. But by disrupting and learning about the Vassal, they gain an edge when they enter the shard to fight the Vassal. PCs also go into the castle to gain information, fight enforcers, and figure out how to get to the Vassal for the final confrontation. At a certain point the players should know where the vassal’s lair is in the shard and have enough that they feel confident taking on them on. If they beat the vassal in a final confrontation, there’s a check to see what results. It might give them a new conscience, force them to admit their crimes, or something else. It isn't about killing the the Vassal— it's about changing who they are by shattering this magical mind shard they’ve created to empower themselves. 

Enforcers: These are monsters of significance within a Vassal’s shard. They exist within that as a monster or foe, but the Vassalss clock fills, then an enforcer can leave the shard and cause problems in the real world. It took us a bit to realize in play the enforcers operated in this context and weren't necessarily additional allies in the real world. It's spelled out later in the book but it wasn’t immediately clear.


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STARTING THE CYCLE
Let's assume we're starting fresh and the characters have returned to the city, have defeated a vassal, and you've resolved all those details. At that point the group talks about what the next Shadow (aka Vassal) is. This requires a little bit of prep on the part of the GM (note: I’m going to use GM to refer to what is called the Architect in the game). They should have one or more ideas ready and then collaborate with the players based on a list of questions. The book has some examples– which is good. The way this process is first presented makes it looks like it's a purely collaborative thing. But I think the GM needs to have some concepts ready. Otherwise it is a big conceptual ask.

With the Vassal set, the phase begins with each player rolling The Grind. This is a check made against their worst gauge, so it is already a painful thing. Regardless of what is rolled– strong hit, weak hit, or miss– there's a crisis facing the character. They and the GM define it based on that specific gauge rolled. This crisis starts as quelled or imminent. Quelled means that it is been dealt with for the moment. However GM as a reaction they can move it back to imminent during play. That's supposed to show how the Vassal can steal your victories from you. But if the player is taken action to quell a crisis and then gets it pulled away, that feels not great. If a crisis has not been quelled at the end of the “mission,” then that crisis becomes a long-term problem. The player must either put a black mark or a tick in that gauge (GM option). 

If a player misses on The Grind then the crisis is dire. There’s only one obscure way to remove the Dire tag (see later). If a dire problem is imminent at the end of the investigation, you take a black mark. Is that in addition to the black mark or tick from it being imminent? It's not clear. One issue here is also that it's very easy to forget that while the crisis is imminent, a player has lasting disadvantage against that gauge– making a real a pain in the ass.

It is really important to figure out how to deal with a crisis and how to clear text from gauges.

The next thing that happens is the GM sets a six-section clock on the investigation. They add a tick at the start of each day. but reactions can also add them. If the clock is filled, the Vassal moves to a new stage of awareness. The first stage is passive, meaning the vessel isn't aware of the rebels. The second state is alert, meaning that the vassal knows the rebels are out there, but probably doesn't know their identities. (Question here is how much this is subconscious vs conscious awareness?)  The third state is hunting, meaning they likely know the identities and that a confrontation is coming. The heightening stages have consequences. At the start of each Alert day, players each mark a gauge. Each Hunting day they have to mark two different gauges. Pressure in the city is significant as marking gauges increase the failure chances on rolls. 

Play operates in days. Days split into two actions. You can do two “everyday" actions or one “everyday” and one “rebel” action. Note that while everyday actions are marked as such, rebel actions aren’t explicitly labeled that way, though there are some examples given. Going into the shard itself is a rebel action as are the more directed investigative ones..

DEALING WITH EVERYDAY LIFE
Let’s start with the crises for you and/or your Covenant NPCs. The move for this is Wolf at the Door. This requires no roll but there's a cost: mark a condition, fade a covenant, or ask a PC for help and have them market a condition. It is simple but costly..

If you want to heal a condition you can Let Your Hair Down which is rolled against the Lack gauge. It has some significant upside: meet a new NPC, refresh a gauge (i.e. remove a tick), gain a minor Covenant. This feels like a good fallback unless your Lack gauge is really high. It also means you mark World which potentially gets you an advance.

The other fixing action is Let Go. This one has some fictional costs. You can choose to rest when other people are depending on you and lose a rank of World affinity, which means you also lose an advance. But you get to heal a condition. On the flip side you use your power and authority for someone else rather than for you. In this case you lose rank of Void and heal a condition. The latter’s a little odd and the book doesn't give an example of what that actually looks like. 

The other option is to heal up via the Wrap Up end of session move where choices there can be used to heal condition or refresh a gauge. Some Hangout moves also heal things, but I’ll come back to that. 


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THE INVESTIGATION
The other side of the story, which pushes the conflict forward, is investigating the vassal. Some of this is about figuring out the vassals form, generally what they’re doing, and what their resources are. But the most important part of this process is to set up The Emperor's New Clothes move. This is the big finale roll you make after confronting and defeating the vassal. .

The elements of this move set up what you need to be working for in play. It’s a little buried in the Castle moves section and easy to overlook. You want to make as many of these things true as possible:
  • You confronted the vassal in person in the city. 
  • You've uncovered the full details of what they're planning. 
  • You've met people the vassal holds dear. 
  • You've defeated at least one of their enforcers. 
  • Your mundane self has suffered at their orders. 
  • There's organized resistance to the vassal among the city's people. 

One of those six can usually only be done within the castle, defeating an enforcer. Another one, uncovering details, can be Castle or City. But the other four are things that you need to do in the City. So players need to have these goals clearly in mind when they're proceeding. 

The most basic investigation move is a the universal move: Take a Risk. When you do something risky which isn't covered by another move, you do it and the GM says what consequences occur. So if you're doing something which doesn’t exactly fall under one of the others you can come back here.

The next move is one that should be kept as a fallback in almost every circumstance. If you don't know exactly what your character wants to do or should be doing then Read the Wind. Why? Because there are no costs and it or downsides to this move. Essentially you get to narrate something in the city and then ask the architect to add a detail to it: a new way your target is hurting people, an unexpected meeting with an NPC, or a sense of the overall mood of the city. The move isn't fully directed, but it is an opportunity to find things out. Most importantly it gives you fleeting Advantage when you follow up on that. As the book says this is the move to do “…if you want the architect to give you leads to follow up on on.”

Now as for actual investigate or “find out” moves there's only one really directed to that and a couple of others that tangentially fit. The clearest one is Rebel Eyes: when you spend time looking for information, say what you're trying to find out and check against Heat. The questions are open on this one; it seems like you can find out anything. Except that's not really true, as written on a hit you'll have a clearer idea of how to get the information, the architect gives you one or two costs. I’m not sure if the point here is to add more narrative or if we need to go to another move, but it does mean a potential roadbump whenever you use this. It makes a really key feature costly and doesn’t offer a great sense of the scope. 

This move has a couple of other issues. First it checks against one particular gauge, Heat. So some players can be have a really hard time with what is a key action. Second, the weak hit has someone in the scene uncover something about you. That’s in addition to other costs– and it might be an NPC, but it might be the Vasal or a Vassal’s agent. Regardless I would use this as the standard “I want to find something out move,” and keep any costs modest. I’d also usually allow a Miss to gain information but with a limitation, cost, or consequence.

The next most likely move for finding things out is Connect. This move assumes there’s an already established NPC or maybe a generic figure like a security guard. When you try to connect with them, you can roll on one of three gauges depending on how your approach. Players found the description of those approaches a little wonky. But on a hit “they'll give you a chance to make your case" now I assume that's a fictional description rather than the player now having to follow up in the fiction. It feels like to use Connect as a source of information you need to have already know the shape of what you're investigating.

A few other City moves could be used to gather information in the right context. You could use Make a Stand to get someone to pay attention to you. This might be used where you have have failed with Connect or you're starting with a hostile person. But it seems like a more aggressive action-oriented move rather than an information gathering one. The next move is Pass Beneath Notice which on a hit allows you long enough to get what you wanted. I assume you would use this to access a secured source of information. The last one is Vent which is when you vent out the Void’s power within you, you choose an effect. One of those is “perceive something you couldn't otherwise sense.” This move has some downside in backlashes, but these don't involve marking conditions or a gauge. Instead they're weird side effects. So from maximizing point of view it's a good go to move.

So the other tools PCs have are their Covenant moves. Some of these can provide information via doing a Hangout with them (The Fool, The Sage, The Hermit, Justice, The Sun). Others offer information as a standard City move (The Oracle, The Lovers, The Star, Judgment). A few of Covenant city moves offer an assist to the information-gathering moves (The Hermit, The Vagabond, The Moon). 


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SO WHAT ABOUT THE CASTLE?
To the other side of this is that the characters will venture into the Castle and the particular Shard of the vassal. The question is why? What do you gain by going into the castle, either together or by yourself, before you're ready to directly confront the vassa1? I will say that the game isn't particularly explicit or obvious about what your characters are doing there.

So let's look at the moves here. The most basic is Dive Into Darkness. This is basically the transitional move to enter the otherspace. Depending on how you roll, you'll arrive in a better or worse position. The exploration move is Travel the Labyrinth. It has two sides. On the one hand there's Exploration. This allows you to reach a place that reveals a hidden truth about the vassal. So that answers one of the requirements of The Emperor’s New Clothes. but in general this move also has some down side even on a hit.

But if you're going somewhere specific then the goal seems to getting to a location, rather than an information action. The book has four examples: The Shard’s Heart, which seems to be where you go to fight the vassal; an enforcer’s lair, which I assume would be to battle and defeat a particular enforcer; a landmark, which isn't particularly clear, but I assumed in the fiction could be a place that could reveal something about the Vassal. But there’s also The Exit which suggests that to get out at the end of whatever you're doing, you have to make a roll to leave. 

It seems like the Castle has very limited utility and some high risks. You want to go in there once to find out hidden truths and maybe another time to fight the enforcer to get those benefits for The Emperor's New Clothes The rest of the castle moves seem to be about exploring and gaining Advantage when you're doing the exploring or when you're fighting the vassal at the end. 

Most of the Castle Covenant moves center on helping out or providing advantage while you're there. Only one of them, The Gardener, seems to be about providing information. the rest are very much set up during exploration, action and fighting the vassal.

RESTORATION AND HEALING UP
This is the other big question: how you repair your character? I mentioned up above the basic moves that work help in part with that. Check In lets you heal a condition or intensify a Covenant. Let your Hair Down just heals a condition. Let Go heels a condition potentially but at the cost of an advance. Within the Castle itself there is only Find Shelter which allows you to heal another Rebel’s condition or intensify their crew Covenant. It also allows you to use your Playbook’s shelter move. The only other basic move that seems to offer some healing is the Stand with Me Castle move which lets you heal a condition on a 10 plus.

Please note that in this I'm not going through all of the Playbook moves. I'm assuming players will have a handle on that, and if they’re taking a move from another Playbook they can find which moves fall into these categories..

What’s really important is which Covenant moves offer some kind of healing
  • The Fool: The Hangout move can heal a condition
  • The Magician: The City move here can quell a crisis oh, but it can also remove the Dire state from a crisis. This seems to be the only way to remove the dire tag.
  • The Oracle: The Hangout move allows you to heal a condition
  • The Gardener: This one is a little odd in that it allows you to refresh another Rebel’s gauges when you check in with them, but there's a significant cost: either you have to tick one of your gauges or you take disadvantage the next time that person is hurt.
  • The Auteur: The Hangout move can refresh infamy or Lack, stacked with other effects. The City move can remove a tick from Fealty.
  • The Lovers: The Castle move allows you to heal another condition when you mark a condition.
  • The Chariot: The Hangout move allows you to heal a condition. 
  • Strength:  The Hangout move is a not-as-good version of healing a condition in that it doesn't heal it but it mitigates the next miss you make with a roll affected by that condition.
  • The Wheel of Fortune: The City move gives you fleeting advantage on Let Your Hair Down.
  • Death: The Castle move has a weird ability to remove a Blood-related crisis by inflicting a condition on someone
  • Temperance: The Hangout move allows you to move a tick from a stress gauge with the most ticks to the one with the least.
  • The Devil: The Hangout move allows you to heal a condition.
  • The Tower:  The Hangout move allows you to heal someone else's condition. The City move allows you to once per investigation fully refresh a gauge when you max out that gauge.
  • The Moon: The Hangout move allows you to swap one condition for another. 

​FINAL NOTE
I hope this doesn't come off as too negative-- because I'm really excited and hopeful about this game. I spent all this time looking through and putting this together because I'm super excited about the game. But we ended up with questions after the last session, so I wanted to make things clearer for all of us. We have another nine sessions and want to make it smoother and easier for the players.

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4/29/2022

Gauntlet Video Roundup - April 29, 2022

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[Gauntlet Calendar: Online Tabletop RPG Play]
​Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Calendar video roundup! Enjoy these recordings of online games organized through Gauntlet Calendar and the Gauntlet RPG Community. These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the selection of games available every week, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play or watch more games like these, check out the links and information at the bottom of the post.

Gauntlet Calendar

Eotenweard: Cweningas (Session 1 of 2)
Alun R. runs for Blake Ryan, Darin Rebertus, Joe F, and Paul Rivers
We meet Ethwin 'Two Trees', the Sword of God, who discovers that a skinchanger can regenerate, so just has to be stabbed more often; Garwyn the Fae Changeling with the seeming of a common hunter who is mistaken for a treacherous intruder and then thrown across a Lady's hall; Wystan the Commoner who sends his voice into the mind of a monster only to find it just attracted its attention; and Geldhere, the Pagan Mystic, who summoned the power of the Old Gods...and then felt he deserved a rest...with the Lady of Cweningas, no less.

AKA: Inside Man (Session 2 of 2)
Donogh runs for Chris R., David Miessler-Kubanek, and Mark
Kobayashi, the Boss' old protégé has turned up in Milan and the Agent races to intercept, to turn him against The Agency. But things careen off course, and explosive revelations change things forever!

Wanderhome: Bright Young Things (Session 1)
David Morrison facilitates for Donogh, José Feito, and Nathan Harrison
We introduce the game, and meet our starting cast of characters. Barnaby the Caretaker, a young otter with a collection of small gods. Gus the Peddler, a donkey merchant traveling the land with his pack beetle Atlas. And Tal the Veteran, a laconic wolf carrying a blade they have sworn not to draw. The trio arrive at the town of Floatsham - a bustling port town watched over by a haunted lighthouse...

Wanderhome: Bright Young Things (Session 2)
David Morrison facilitates for Donogh and José Feito
Barnaby and Tal investigate the haunted lighthouse, and meet the spectral salamander responsible for keeping the ghostly light burning. At breakfast, they meet Quoth the Poet, a scatterbrained rook. They charter Captain Bertha to take them on the next leg of their journey away from Floatsham, but not before going for a swim in the lagoon...

Wanderhome: Bright Young Things (Session 3)
David Morrison facilitates for Donogh, José Feito, and Nathan Harrison
Barnaby, Gus, Tal, and Quoth come to the end of their voyage in a vast mangrove swamp. At nearby Castle Flickerstone, the Sun Parade is about to begin, heralding the arrival of the season of Bright. Barnaby befriends a young raccoon and together they help decorate the castle. Gus helps an alligator girl called Sally find her heart's desire. Tal meets an antiquarian, and assists Gus' wheeling and dealing. And Quoth discovers secrets both ancient and personal in the castle undercroft.

Vow of the Knight-Aspirants: To Seek the Tower Perilous (Session 3 of 4)
Alexi S. runs for Chris Newton, Danielle B., and David Miessler-Kubanek
The questing squires bargain for a diadem of great power in the midst of a bandit camp. Gilly proves her prophetic insight to the Bandit King. Caedun makes big promises and grapples with his family's legacy of heresy. And Kae attempts to befriend everyone, witches and bandits alike. All this, and a truly special cow—along with a glimpse of the Tower Perilous itself!

Eotenweard: Cweningas (Session 2 of 2)
Alun R. runs for Blake Ryan, Darin Rebertus, Joe F, and Paul Rivers
As Ethwin the Sword of God investigates the mysterious roman ruin, Garwyn the Changeling and Wystan the Commoner are ambushed by the skinchanger. Meanwhile, Geldhere the Pagan Mystic touches a raw nerve in a meeting with the Lady of Cweningas. There's a blood soaked mosaic, an escort of ghostly roman legionaries, and a dangerous cavern...then bloody confrontation, a dark ritual, and a family decimated...

Voidheart Symphony: Forgotten Concerto (Session 3)
Lowell Francis runs for David S., Mendel Schmiedekamp, Patrick Knowles, and Sherri
Our heroes continue their work in the city and struggle to figure out how to deal with the Vassal even as his sinister influence begins to hurt more people.

Masks: Born to Run '22 (Session 2 of 2)
Lowell Francis runs for Anders, Chris R., and Mairi
Our heroes decide to break into an AEGIS facility to rescue their fellow teen heroes, leading to revelation about what the agency's true purpose is and a shocking connection to the members of our team.

Old School Essentials: Against the Slavers (Session 11)
Mike Ferdinando runs for Anya Reyes, Ben, and Vince
Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, part 3! Our heroes Caldas, Bah-Rûn, Woodchuck, Jeronimus, and Zalalaz delve farther into the bizarre underground complex full of tricks, traps, and monsters!

Gauntlet Quarterly

Hearts of Wulin: Odyssey of Jade and Stars (Session 3 of 12)
David S. runs for Greg Fulford, José Feito, Max Airborne, and Steven S.
The wulin go their separate ways following the end of the Ghost Festival, each pursuing their heart's own interests. Dongshan grapples with inner conflict between duty to family and sect as he attempts to discover the antidote to Violet Widow's dark poisons, while Zhou Jiang plots a dangerous move against the Heaven and Earth Temple. Cloud Crow sets out to duel Jiang's lover, but finds themself in a forbidden rendezvous with Nameless Blade, who herself has discovered dark secrets relating to Jiang's curse.

Gauntlet Reading Club

The Veil/Veil'd Fantasy: A Master of Djinn (Discussion)
Steven S.
Spoilers in the first section!!! If you instead want to skip to the part where we talk about adapting it as a game, click here.

The Veil/Veil'd Fantasy: A Master of Djinn (Character Creation)
Steven S. runs for Ben Bond, Donogh, José Feito, and Lyra
The Gauntlet Reading Club puts together characters for our run of The Veil inspired by P. Djèlí Clark's A Master of Djinn. We are introduced to orphaned golem Sadir, angel-trained assassin Aasim, the magical body-modder Rafiq, and Kamal the hunted last member of an ancient mystical order.

Where to Find More

You can see all these videos (plus all the ones that have come before) on The Gauntlet YouTube channel playlists, and be sure to subscribe to catch all our great podcasts!

If you'd like to catch these sessions in an audio-only podcast, check out the community-run Hangouts Podcast at http://gauntlet.hellomouth.net/.

If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Forums where games are announced, or catch one of our Gauntlet Community Open Gaming online mini-conventions.

To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon. Everyone is welcome to sign up for Gauntlet Calendar games, but Patreon supporters get extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Calendar games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events and pickup games are announced.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend

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4/27/2022

Delta Green: Divergence (Casefiles 3 & 4)

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This is the last in a series by Lowell @edige23 looking at a recent modern Fall of Delta Green campaign run on The Gauntlet Gaming Calendar. Earlier installments can be found here: Mission Briefing 1 &2, Mission Briefing 3 & 4, Campaign Concept and Case One, Case Two. The AP video playlist for the series is here. The example character keeper is here. 

THIRD OPERATION
For the third mystery of the series I wanted something that twisted the pattern of the previous cases and deepened the feelings of paranoia and control. I needed a session where they could start to see the shape of the overall plot. To do that I would deliberately put them into a smaller urban environment where they would be constantly under threat and surveillance. There's a little of that in the original Delta Green “Convergence” scenario. There the PC arrive in a small town and have potent force available, but they’re almost immediately on edge and under suspicion.


If you're interested in the scenario sketch which followed, you should skim the mission briefing here. Early on I had a strong idea about which formed the cornerstone of this adventure. I wanted something novel which would also hint at paranoia and uncertainty within Delta Green on two levels. First would be the idea that someone would is feeding information to enemy assets. Second, and more subtle, would be the detail that one of the slain DG agents was, against regulations, recording the mission briefing. I didn’t dwell on it but left it an open question.

I had pretty thoroughly sketched out the parameters of the previous two investigations; coming in with a sense of plot hooks, directions, and order of events. But here I went with an impressionistic approach. So my notes are more sketchy; they're more a set of ideas and notes for me to improvise from. By this point I had a lot of stuff already in my head that I didn't need to set down to paper. This becomes even more true with the final mystery but I'll come back to that at the end of the post.

Where the previous two posts might be useful to adapt for other GMs or work into their own games, I suspect what I'm present here is less directly useful. Instead it is more illustrative of my approach to planning for open world play. I should also mention that between the last investigation and this one we had a session mostly made up of home life play and deepening questions of allegiance, duty, and trust.

INVESTIGATION #3 NOTES:
VALEDICTORY SUNRISE

May 2016/years ago. Delta Green team follows up on something involving a private military company which went belly up. Investigation will reveal some links to the Nevada group. Past history and such. In any case, Company sites divested from, but actual fate of them uncertain. That and some other incidents led DG to dispatch a team to the county.

The OLD TEAM vanished, but this happened in early 2016 and things got lost in the immediate shuffle. We’ll come back to exactly what happened to the team in a minute.

Inciting Incident
Team shown footage and given details. AGENT from the Old Team interrupts the briefing of a DG team. Agent kills members of the team, three in the building and one in the parking lot. Agent is seemingly wounded and leaves the scene. One of the OP TEAM, contrary to protocol, had a body cam. DG will provide the tape to the PCs with the audio redacted. Allow them to review the footage and possibly draw more info from it.

Leadership/handlers won’t reveal Op Team’s mission parameters—explain that others will deal with that mission. However, with some pushing they can find out that they were being dispatched to look into the Nevada cult.

Realize this: players will also want satisfaction about who tipped off the Agent to the meeting. Will need to figure out how to provide a useful, interesting answer.

Details:
  • Location of Agent’s last, unfulfilled mission—though exact details may be unknown. Piecing things together.
  • Names of the other team members.
  • General details of mission sent on
  • Operational Goals:
  • Find out Fate of team
  • Determine connection to Agent’s actions
  • If connected, how and why
  • Sanction agent
  • Confirm and complete earlier mission parameters.

ELEMENTS I HAVE IN MIND
  • Distribution center—or better yet a disposal center for returns. Not salvaged, just destroyed. Theft being heavily punished.
  • Local controlled small hospital and medical center—no private practices. Insurance requirements make that onerous. Larger than you would expect plasma donation center. Painkiller/OxyContin addiction.
  • No one does anything out of kindness. No donations—all sales. Private post office.
  • Idea of a place where folks never have to drive long distance for the wealth and are restricted by culture from driving by the system. .
  • Originally I was thinking shanty town, but now I’m thinking just a question of accessibility. One road in and out. Small private airport. No rental car office, one car dealership, outside the radius of delivery services. Police control the major arteries. No rental vehicles allowed in town. No public transport. Back trucker roads which are watched. No trains. Truckers doing deliveries never actually see the town. No buses, no taxis, no Uber except local.
  • A folk-rock band, ala Mumford and Sons. At the top of the food chain. Mansions on the hillsides. They’re involved with occult bs. They are big sponsors of the Medical Marijuana facility. This is Hills are Calling (Lost in Thought at the Junkyard, Pulling Out the Copper, We Played Until Dark). BAND MEMBERS: Rick Craft, Donnie Horton, Rex Lindley, and Greg Ball)
  • I like the siege energy from The Void.
  • Military contractor owned a prison and a training city. There’s a separate marijuana grow facility run by local elites. The sites have been repurposed as an online sales reclamation facility. Fines and punishment can be worked off here. In one part of the place, immigrants held hostage here as workers. Hunting?
  • Stuff from Silent Legions: Terrible Pact, Exploitative Industry, Breeding Program, Entrenched Poverty.
  • Should hint at Shub, but then twist that.
  • The atmosphere and feeling should be one of creeping economic unease and distress. Things happen which cost money to fix. Things are expensive and also shitty and cheap. Local taxes on internet sales are regressive.
  • Historical notes: avoidance by Native American tribes. Has a mound builder civilization mound—unusual. Matching sites in Binger, OK and a location in Deacon, Nevada (close to the cult compound). Find what archaeologists call the early NA tribal civilizations. Name for the related mounds.
  • The location is at the far end of the Appalachia’s—northern Alabama.
  • So what is going on here—I’d like to tie it into the Underground folk and the new god. A worship center for one of their gods—the new god, a feeder. It is the god of hierarchy, control. Dominion, exploitation. Can echo the cult of Nyarlethotep in the sourcebook. Exploitation within a system of exploitation.
  • Everything should lean into that: enforcement, liens, traffic tickets, internet. Refills aren’t free. Internet should be spotty and throttled. Fake cell towers.
  • Absence of Yelp reviews in many places.
  • The extra challenge here should be the need to maintain a low profile. Previous mission and general feeling play into this.
  • People tied to other people. Rotting. Burn marks.  Some kind of in-group membership.  Pact which binds these people together.

Casefile: Valedictory Sunrise
Elements of the city: no corporate run, all franchises, all prices higher.
Hoachapoka (name of place and county)
Feeling of Economic Tension: Charging for everything, even refills. High prices for shitty food places (transport costs). No library, only newspaper is the Penny Saver. Extra roaming charges on phone—data plan minutes used up. Cards declined. Losing money, losing credit cards. Leaking gas. Food going bad. Small aches and injuries.

PEOPLE
  • Corey Stonecipher: late 30’s mayor of Hoachapoka.
  • Rick Craft: Cultist, forest and mound ceremonies. Leader of Hills Are Calling.
  • Ken Petkovsky: Former DG CIA, fully turned. Currently laid up in a hospital bed hidden away. Car has been stashed.
  • Linda Mize: Brainwashed and lost among the victims at the plant.
  • Cortez Noragula: DG agent being worn down by the towns feeling of distress and tension. May have put some drop markers—but they’ll lead to a place he’s left.
  • Mandy Fuller: One of the People. Too perfect.
  • Darryl Hand: Sheriff
  • Cindy Sellers: City Councilperson
  • Mick Crowley: Physical Services
  • Philip J. Rice: Grow lab manager
  • Moira Harless: Priestess
  • Nolan Tate: Roads and traffic
  • Jennifer Ruiz: Current host for Noragula
  • Marco “Marky” Reveltuas: Former firebrand, now trapped here.
  • Diana De Lugo: Panicked about where her cousin’s family is.
  • Eduardo Vicario: Desperate informant on his fellow underclass peoples.

PLACES
  • Town: Dollar general. Local drugstore. Wendy’s. McDonalds. One former chain restaurant. Family Video. The buses which arrive early in the morning to transport folks out to the site. Much less car traffic—cars are all several to many years old. Payday Lending stores. Large OctoPharma blood donation center for profit.
  • Motel: The Starway Motel
  • Ways into Town—north and south entryways, tight and easily blocked. Subroads are badly managed. Google maps here is willfully incorrect.
  • The Mound: Out in the woods, below the ridge. Sacrifices made—others brought here as witnesses. Some made into vessels for the Golden Mead which can be produced in people subject to the intervention.
  • The Growhouse: Clean and modern vibe. Scared workers—highly regulated.
  • The Ridge: Private accessways from the airport as well as a special delivery route which doesn’t connect with town. Live In Servants. All ethnic and marginalized.
  • The private airfield
  • The Training Facility
  • The Prison

TIMELINE
  • Pre-2000s: Born in Binger, OK—now a distant suburb of Oklahoma City, Harris Perkins serves as a low-level consultant during the first Gulf War. That experience changes him for the worse. Using family money, he begins to build up Remility, becoming known for being willing to take on the most questionable activities and jobs.
  • 2000 The People utilize their powers to recreate the fallen god Y’glonac using their own worship and elements of the Mi-Go Protomatter. It is a god of hunger and the perversion for domination, but not necessarily in a sexual way. It is a god of for the new century, hierarchies, and predatory capitalism.
  • Early 2000s: Harris Perkins begins to have visions. He finds himself on the fringes of several cults, courting him for his wealth. He is visited by a representative of The People who binds him to their new god. Eventually he is put into contact with Art Stanley. Stanley has money of his own, but also draws on his money. Perkins begins to quietly buy up land in Hoachapoka with the ultimate aim of creating a worship center for the new god. He constructs a training center and begins construction of a for-profit prison.
  • The person on site is a native born person, the youthful politician Corey Stonecipher. He makes arrangements and slowly begins to bring the town under his sway, starting from the time he turns 18. In 2007, he begins to see that Perkins is starting to crack up—spending money on wild relics, flirting with other cults, demanding more and more Golden Mead. The following year, Stonecipher, despite some things not being fully in place has Perkins killed. He moves to continue the cult using money siphoned off, financial assistance from agents of The People, and the bits and pieces already established.

Timeline of changes and growth.
In late 2014 and 2015 forensic accounting picks up on some unusual transactions related to Hoachapoka. A training facility located there has fallen off the books without being depreciated. A construction project seems to have been halted, but there’s no record of what happened to the lot. As well a couple of slush funds seems to have vanished tied to the location. This happens around the time of Perkins suicide, both before and after.

DG flags this low priority since Perkins’ connection to the occult is unconfirmed, but given the money involved, it is worth sending folks to look into the situation. The team is
  • Ken Petkovsky
  • Maurice Craft
  • Linda Mize
  • Cortez Noragula

They arrive on site, originally hoping to act in paired cover as an EPA Inspection team and Park Service Documentarians. Communication quickly becomes spotty. Noragula, the tech person, begins to look into this, trying to figure out what’s happening. His partner Petkovsky begins to walk the area, looking for things. He realizes the carefully cultivated isolation of the region, but then he comes upon the Mound. Observing an apparent folk ceremony involving the sacrifice of the underclass, he is captured. Stonecipher calls a representative of the people who drag him under and begin to turn him.

At the same time, Craft and Mize, proceed from the approach of EPA inspectors. They go through official channels and immediately begin to hit stonewalling. In particular there’s a strong litigious streak and city lawyers push back against them. They cite local regulations and rights. The pair become aware of the wealthy upper class on the mountainside.

By this point they have lost contact with the other pair. Noragula manages to get them a message that communications have been compromised. They opt to at least try to make a recon out to the construction site. There they find a city duplicate, an urban environment made for training security services. From there they reach the prison and discover it is operational. It is half immigrant prison camp and half local workhouse and punishment facility. Mize is captured and put to work. Craft escapes, is chased through the cityscape and eventually killed by an Avatar of the Flesh.

Noragula destroys everything electronic he has. He tries to get out, but rapidly realizes just how insular and dangerous this place is. He manages to find refuge with some of the locals. Their fear and despair makes them vulnerable to manipulation. He uses this to move from house to house, kind of couch surfing. He doesn’t realize how much the atmosphere here is changing him.

SCRAPS
  • Chicken processing plant
  • Burned out town: ethnic cleansing? Maybe too much. Talk about Sundown towns though.
  • Idea I’m probably dropping: flooding. Burying a town. Maybe flooded and then unflooded.

INVESTIGATION #4:
CASEFILE COMBUST REFLECTOR

The third mystery above took more sessions than usual, leaving us with just two sessions for the final case. I wanted to give the players the idea that they would be finally dealing with the threat behind the scenes. The would strike at the foe they had gotten information about throughout the campaign. But I wanted to subvert that. At the end of session 10 where we case  number three, I immediately provided them a briefing document for their next assignment. You can see that here. Casefile Combust Reflector. 

I wanted to give them a chance to chew on that between sessions and get excited about what they were going to do. We started the next session with the player downtime, continuing with the assumption that this was the mission. Then when we had the PCs together for the full meet up and briefing,I presented them with this:

STAND DOWN FROM CURRENT OPERATION
YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN COMBUST REFLECTOR HAS BEEN SUSPENDED
NEW CASEFILE—WITH IMMEDIATE ATTENTION—FOLLOWS
CASEFILE ZEPHYR CUNEIFORM
After several incidents and interventions, Midwestern distribution of an Unnaturally-tainted drug (Code Names Broadcast, Janus, Hyperion) was disrupted, particularly from key centers in Chicago and Ohio. Reports indicated connections between South Asian ethnic enclaves, Latin American Cartels, and several US Agribusiness Start Ups. Delta Green has continued to monitor the situation for flare ups and persons attempting to fill the gap.

Colodane is a coastal Louisiana former town. While it remains a settlement on former marsh borderlands, it lost its town charter in the early 2000’s thanks to redistricting. Damage from hurricanes and two separate oil leaks devastated the local environment. Corporate payments allowed some people to relocate, but many remained. Large sections of the area have been fenced off and abandoned, purchased by corporate interests for “reclamation.”

We have indications that a new group is using Colodane as an entry point, bringing a new Unnatural substance into the country. We are currently trying to ascertain the nature of the substance. For the moment we are using the Codename Catalyst.

48 hours ago a satellite photo showed a moderate vessel, likely a barge moving into the area. On a secondary pass and follow up, the vessel had vanished. We suspect this is a recent delivery, possibly from Latin America, possibly from Sub-Saharan Africa.

MISSION PARAMETERS
  • Travel to Colodane and survey the situation
  • Locate trafficking site for Catalyst
  • Recover data on connections to other parties (persons, corporations, or the like)
  • Recover and deliver sample of Catalyst
  • Destroy trafficking operation

TRANSLATIONS
I wanted to offer a difficult choice: would they follow orders and take on this new mission or would they follow their instincts and try to carry out the original mission without permission, backup, or support. I complicated that in a couple of ways. First, during the downtime I had a key NPC warn one of the agents that historically Delta Green agents had two ways out: either cracking up and retiring or going off mission and getting themselves killed. Second, one of the PC's did not receive the countermanded mission orders. This was the agent who had been put in the care of a handler from a rogue DG agency. This forced that character’s hand a little and he had to reveal what had been going on with him. 


I honestly went in uncertain about which direction the players would jump. I said that very explicitly to them once the problem was presented. I wanted them to know they didn’t have to second-guess me: whichever route they chose, we would go down it.

It ended up as a really fruitful exchange between the players about what their characters wanted. For a bit, I thought they would take the new mission. But after several swings back and forth they opted to ignore the new orders and try to carry out the mission they’d been originally assigned. They would not have access to resources and support, but at least had operational info. After this briefing, most of the rest of session 11 focused on drawing on all the resources that they had: calling on friends, using Agency, spending Network. We ended session 11 with them about to go in on the raid. And then session 12 was the raid. 

I don't have any notes typed up on that. I had some sketches but they were very much just prompts for what I had been thinking about. As for the mission that they decided not to go on, I’m keeping that in my back pocket for a future session.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I've written these posts for several reasons  First, because the players asked if they could see the notes which is unusual. Second, because I think at least the first two missions have enough to them that somebody else could run or remix them. Third because I’m actually very proud of how this played out. It was a really strong campaign. Some of that came from my GMing, some from the system, some from my the choice of time and atmosphere, and a good chunk came from just having a great table of players. 

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4/22/2022

Gauntlet Video Roundup - April 22, 2022

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[Gauntlet Calendar: Online Tabletop RPG Play]
​Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Calendar video roundup! Enjoy these recordings of online games organized through Gauntlet Calendar and the Gauntlet RPG Community. These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the selection of games available every week, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play or watch more games like these, check out the links and information at the bottom of the post.

Gauntlet Calendar

Vow of the Knight-Aspirants: To Seek the Tower Perilous (Session 1 of 4)
Alexi S. runs for Chris Newton, Danielle B., and Joe F
Three squires go questing into a dark fairy tale wood to prove themselves. In short order, they become aware of a living statue, a lost cow, and a stolen diadem. Caedun (The Serpent & Clarion) leads an ambush and gets stabbed for his trouble, Gaston (The Boar & Chalice) offers hearty encouragement to a new friend, and Gilly (The Colt & Hourglass) takes a flying leap into a battle with bandits.

Vow of the Knight-Aspirants: To Seek the Tower Perilous (Session 2 of 4)
Alexi S. runs for Chris Newton, Danielle B., David Miessler-Kubanek, and Joe F
A new squire joins the quest! Kae (The Owl & Bridge) befriends a wolf and tries to befriend some outlaws as he meets up with his companions. Caedun plots a path to a hedge witch's hut, Gilly ignores her prophetic insight and falls into a pit trap, and Gaston challenges the Bandit King to a wrestling match.

Brinkwood: The Gilded Countess (Session 3 of 9)
Jesse A. runs for Ben Bond, Jason Zanes, Jex Thomas, and Steven S.
In which our brigands make their first major Foray, wreaking havoc on Fort Glimmerspire and freeing the potential victims of the Countess' hunt.

AKA: Inside Man (Session 1 of 2)
Donogh runs for Chris R., David Miessler-Kubanek, and Mark
Cliff Diggs, the CIA's inside man in The Agency is in Mexico City to retrieve a dossier that would reveal the source of a leak inside the organisation. One that his half-sister Monica is eager to bury and that his father, their Boss, needs to clean shop. Her CIA handler Danny Lewis sees this as a perfect opportunity to turn another asset inside the Agency - willing or unwilling...

Voidheart Symphony: Forgotten Concerto (Session 2)
Lowell Francis runs for Mendel Schmiedekamp, Patrick Knowles, and Sherri
Our heroes return to the real world and begin to face the challenges of their daily lives even as they begin to track down the next Vassal causing misery in the city.

Masks: Born to Run '22 (Session 1 of 2)
Lowell Francis runs for Anders, Chris R., Jeremy Abernathy, and Mairi
We meet our team of young heroes, surviving in a world where 90% of adult supers have vanished and where authorities have begun to crack down on vigilantes--especially teen vigilantes.

Old School Essentials: Against the Slavers (Session 10)
Mike Ferdinando runs for Anya Reyes, Ben, Tim Leitner, and Vince
Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, part 2! Pushing farther into the secret entrance to the City of the Slave Lords, our heroes Caldas, Bah-Rûn, Jeronimus, Woodchuck, and Zalalaz encounter more strange and deadly things!

Gauntlet Quarterly

Hearts of Wulin: Odyssey of Jade and Stars (Session 2 of 12)
David S. runs for Greg Fulford, José Feito, Max Airborne, and Steven S.
Jiang curries favor with Mo Feng after delivering a demonic payload. Nameless Blade prepares to ambush the mysterious Violet Widow, but discovers that she is more than she appears. Meanwhile, Dongshan is tasked with breaking the bonds between Nameless Blade and Cloud Crow. Will Cloud Crow be able to foil Mo Feng's plot at the last minute? And what exactly lies within Mo Feng's demonic vessel?

Star Wars Saturday

The Sprawl (Session 3)
Rich Rogers runs for Alun R., Brandon Brylawski, Sherri, and Will H
The Team have quite a bit of trouble delivering the target to her concert, then they take on a new mission.

Gauntlet League Wrestling

World Wide Wrestling (Session 2)
Tyler Lominack runs for Brandon Brylawski, Chris Newton, David L., Lowell Francis, Sawyer Rankin, and Shane
Tag-team mayhem in Texas. Swerves, stiff moves, and backstage drama abound!

World Wide Wrestling (Session 3)
Tyler Lominack runs for Brandon Brylawski, Chris Newton, Lowell Francis, Sawyer Rankin, and Shane
Plenty of backstage drama and a new Champion is crowned...despite management's intentions.

Where to Find More

You can see all these videos (plus all the ones that have come before) on The Gauntlet YouTube channel playlists, and be sure to subscribe to catch all our great podcasts!

If you'd like to catch these sessions in an audio-only podcast, check out the community-run Hangouts Podcast at http://gauntlet.hellomouth.net/.

If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Forums where games are announced, or catch one of our Gauntlet Community Open Gaming online mini-conventions.

To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon. Everyone is welcome to sign up for Gauntlet Calendar games, but Patreon supporters get extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Calendar games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events and pickup games are announced.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend

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4/20/2022

Delta Green: Divergence (Casefile Critical Carbine)

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For the first part of this series see here. 

INTERLUDE AND CITY
For my second Delta Green mystery I wanted to do something less rural. The players' feedback after Session 1 suggested they wanted an urban mystery. That paralleled my own thinking. I chewed on that for a bit, before realizing I could rework elements of a Trail of Cthulhu scenario I’d run for my face-to-face group. As I was planning I watched the slow-burn horror film Come True. It isn’t great, but it is atmospheric. I decided to incorporate some of the details and imagery from that into my case. Below are my raw GM prep notes. 


Between this case and the first one, I knew we would want to play out some personal stories for the investigators. That was another end of session wish: a chance to explore those lives. Mechanically this is how PCs restore bonds and stability. but it also lets them deepen their character.

For each investigator I had a set of themes I planned to explore. I’d let them have narrative control of these scenes for the most part, but where they gave me room, I hoped to hit these notes. 

Agent Jean Oliver (Will): Operated as an FBI field agent in the Chicago office. I wanted her to be pressured by a new set of leaders with a new set of marching orders. In particular they would be taking her off her normal caseload and instead have her investigate what they saw as the real threat: BLM and Antifa.

Jim Williams (Paul): An Undercover DEA agent in Chicago. Williams’ set up made things a little more tricky. He could operate more off the grid. So I wanted something that paralleled the weird secrecy he operated within. In this case his Handler would actually be in the sights of folks purging DG in Washington. The handler would hand him off to a “rogue” DG operative outside the normal structure– though much of the details I kept hidden. In later sessions I followed that up with some more shady stuff.

Dr Marcus Evans (Alun): A scientist and researcher for the CDC in Atlanta. As we established in the first session, where they others had already seen some mythos stuff– Evans was a DG asset who was being shifted into a field agent role. I wanted to show Evans wrestling with the demands of a professional job while dealing with being a DG operative. Where PCs had some excuse for operating in a law enforcement capacity, Evans did not. In the first downtime episode he had to deal with blowing up his personal RV and having to file an insurance claim. Then he had to explain this to his co-workers and his wife.

Susan Rajavi (Horst): A former journalist now operating as an analyst for the FBI. I wanted to hit on the dual notes of being a woman and a person of South Asian descent. She would be the segment where I could most illustrate things happening in Washington. I used this to develop a back drop of events in the FBI: shifting agendas, paranoia, a changeover of leadership, and a general sense of uncertainty.

Before I get to the notes, I need to mention that this mystery is a homage/draws on the scenario “The Book” from Arkham Detective Tales by Gareth Hanrahan. The plot both directly references it and strongly parallels events of that mystery. So if you don’t want to be spoiled for that, stop reading. 

CASEFILE CRITICAL CARBINE
You can find the PC briefing here: https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/blog/delta-green-divergence-casefiles-part-1​

Begin session with discussion of experience Mission refresh and downtime

Run downtime scenes – figure out about stability recovery. The play should allow them to generally be able to recover stability, but need to narrate any issues with bonds used. The real hit should be the reduction over time of their stability Max.

General Outline
Ray Lafferty is a highly intelligent solitary programmer. He came of age in the early 2000s in an internet culture. He learned about cyberbullying and used that to sublimate his proclivities. Eventually that also grew into some activities – physical abuse of schoolmates, elder abuse of his grandfather, etc. An apathetic family life let this fester

Lafferty became a programmer, working in implementations of code especially related to image processing and 3D visualization. In his first years of employment he moved to Chicago where he came into contact with some Hypergeometric folks in the form of The Cult of Transcendence, dealers working the Tcho Tcho drugs, and others. He finds these via both an unhealthy internet life and exploration of boundary pushing scenes where he looks for victims. He takes a version of the Liao drug and it fuels his decline.

During this time, his inclinations finally turned towards murder, beginning with an online date he ends up killing. From there he escalates his need to assault and kill– a mix of online dating and sex workers. It's a control issue, but also tied to his drug experiences. He doesn't mark up the bodies of his victims yet. He's still learning. Eventually in 2008 he's roped in as a person of interest in the 3rd of these Chicago killings (Veronica Molnar). He's questioned but nothing comes of it

Lafferty waits until the heat dies down and then relocates to Kansas City, doing contract work.  It is here that he first makes contact with Mazespace. They're a weird seed company with research interest and backing from some private investors. He's put into contact with the Apexi Project, involved with dream visualization, exploration, and therapy. Thomas Braylan is the lead, a person with some tangential Mythos experiences including glimpses of the Dreamlands and his mind being projected out of time (a brief breakdown phase in his early twenties). However while he is not connected to hypergeometric work, Braylon has seen the edges of things, but kept his sanity

Apexi is working out with a combination of drugs, “neuropathic therapy,” quote and visualizations. Essentially it's about dream projection combined with therapy. The program hopes to use recorded dream visualizations to help patients and explore how those recordings may be used as a diagnostic. But Braylan’s at least as much interested in changing up and projecting the subject’s consciousness to new places (GM Note: I ended up cutting this detail as it didn’t add anything and was a red herring).

So basically Braylan can hook people up to a machine and see visualizations on screen of their dreams– though super rough and abstract. This connects up with The Dream Syndicate from the DG supplement, The Labyrinth. I want to reference the shared and repeated dream images, but that’s more ornamental than related to the investigation. 

Lafferty is interested in Apexi’s work and goes out of his way to take up contracts with the team. He becomes known to them. At the same time Lafferty is getting deeper into hypergeometric matters, getting a hold of excerpts from various tomes. He gains a copy of The Book of Iod, The Zamacona Papers (links to the meta-narrative of the campaign), and perhaps most importantly sketches from The Invisible Path: Visions of What Lies Ahead by Martin Belgrave. Lafferty doesn’t acquire that book, but instead other notebooks from Belgrave. (GM Note: This is the book at the center of “The Book” from Arkham Detective Tales). 

This puts Lafferty on DG's radar, mostly as an internet figure they're unable to trace.

Lafferty begins to make his own version of The Invisible Path. He plans to black-box his own consciousness to experiment on it or even send it out into The Beyond. He fuels this with some torture killings, following his pattern. There's some key details which might be used to trace back to the Chicago killings but only with a serious spend.

Lafferty's work and obsessions make him sloppy. The police pick up on two of his killings, with a few others dismissed as unconnected. Detective Turner Stone isn't convinced. In the investigation Lafferty's name pops up in connection with one of the victims (a supposedly missed online date) and then spotted in the same location as another victim. Stone has no forensic evidence, even after some deep pushes. Lafferty keeps things off site and carefully hidden. Stone can't devote the resources to peel this away. His investigation into the nature of the symbology reveals nothing, but put Stone on DG's radar in the killings as well.

Stone becomes obsessed with Lafferty after harassing him and getting reported (not by Lafferty but somebody with him),  Stone ends up stalking and following him. Eventually he has a breakthrough and sees Lafferty return with Zaria Wylie back to his apartment. He panics– with the breakdown of his bonds making him shakier than he should be. Stone enters the apartment and shoots Lafferty twice, killing him

But it is not a justified shooting. While Lafferty had just begun his hypergeometric practices to imbue Wiley with fragments of himself, this is only prep work and light drugging. There's no evidence Lafferty was going to do anything, perhaps even the suggestion that he was helping a drunk woman. Stone convinces Wylie otherwise: that Lafferty was a serial killer and he saved her. He's forceful about this, even borderline abusive, using all of his Cop Talk. Wylie goes along, rebuilding her memory of the events.

Turner Stone goes to his partner Detective Morgan. They get a couple of others and clean up the scene, and dump the body. It ends up deep in a landfill, buried during the process of another investigation. Lafferty doesn't have any real connections. It's actually Braylan who asks the most about him, wanting the rest of his work. (Easy investigation connection)

Two years pass. Wiley suffers from recurring dreams and panic attacks from the incident, exacerbated by current events. Stone continues to meet with her regularly to “check up on her” and help her out, including warning off of stalker Lane Moss. Wiley ends up enrolling in the Apexi program, pushed a little by Lafferty's week influence. Stone tries to dissuade her, afraid she'll tell someone the truth. He breaks into our apartment to check on this and make ready in case he has to kill her.

Wiley undergoes several sessions with Apexi before being moved on to full visualization; her recurring figures make her an ideal candidate. The program’s looking for repeated images between dreamers (see "The Dream Syndicate" in Labyrinth). However, Wylie’s engram and dreams interact with the work Lafferty has done with the Apexi program. It flashes out and fails in Wylie’s session, but it has more deeply awakened Lafferty. Four other patients are imprinted before the system crashes hard – forcing them to take things off line for the foreseeable future.

But now we have five fragmented versions of Lafferty running around. He's trying to piece together their lives, given that he doesn't have full access to their Memories. The four are:
  • Harley Kim
  • Alex Salinas
  • Joel Robles (see below)
  • Vanessa Lazic: Athletic, tall close to 6 ft, former basketball player and now a physical trainer
They're all incomplete and realize that the only way to become whole is to kill off the other subjects. By the time of our case, only three remain and three other killings have occurred.

VICTIMS
Joel Robles: the first to die. Robles had claimed to have recurring premonition dreams, but in fact was faking it to get close to a woman he dated a few times, Harley Kim. When he approached him again, Kim/Lafferty recognizes what he is. She kills him in a downtown alley and his body combusts. Evidence is found on scene and between that and the dental, he is identified. Blunt damage to back of head. No accelerant. Occult spend to connect to Shrivening spell. 

Lane Moss: Shortly after her Apexi session, Moss, her stalker, confronts Wiley. She agrees to go with him and then manages to taser him. In his shock he fights back and she continues her work with a box cutter. She kills him behind the motel and then carves up the body with the sigils, trying to empower Lafferty. Body is discovered the next day, little in the way of cameras. Moss does have a restraining order out against him from two women, his ex-wife Carla Moss and Wylie. Detective Stone’s name pops up on the Wily report.

Jelena Petrovic: A friend of Vanessa Lazic and desperately in love with her. Jaiena/Lafferty takes advantage of this and lures her out to a park for drinks. She kills her, marks the body and leaves it. This happens the same night as Lane Moss is killed across town.

Adrian Volwinkel: Wrong place, wrong time. Harley picks him up two days after she’s changed in the late evening after the club. He takes her back to his place where she smashes him over the head and kills him in the same manner as Jelena. Stone manages to take the case.

Harley Kim: Wiley/Lafferty has realized what's happening. She returns to the Apexi facility to find out what's going on – complaining and gaining access to records. Harley's name is first on the list. She tracks down Kim at her home and breaks in. There's a struggle but Wiley’s prepared with a full murder kit, including taser and other materials. While she hoped to kill Kim elsewhere, she kills her here and then has to leave before clearing up the details.

TIMELINE
Basically it’s a cat and mouse game with the three killers in play. Some of how they react will depend on if and when the PCs contact them. Wiliey in particular will depend on what’s happening with Stone. Stone wants to cover his ass and doesn’t understand what’s happening. 

Wiley is active and has Stone’s help if she needs it. Lazic is more cautious. Alex Salinas only half understands what is going on. He might be at the clinic having had a breakdown or at home crashed out.

INVESTIGATIVE CONNECTIONS
  • Lafferty's personality tics: Addiction to certain pornography. Fascination with Certain kinds of black metal. Smoker
  • What happened to Lafferty computer?
  • Lafferty’s books being located in a storage unit he was using as a killing floor. Those materials ended up auctioned on eBay. Allows for strong connection to the cultic stuff. 
  • Stone freaking out that he might have killed the wrong guy
  • Symbology in the dream patterns– recordings left around. 
  • Talking to Stone's partner
  • Symbols on the victims
  • (Zamacona Papers connect up to Nevada cult mentioned in Mystery 1)

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4/15/2022

Gauntlet Video Roundup - April 15, 2022

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[Gauntlet Calendar: Online Tabletop RPG Play]
​Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Calendar video roundup! Enjoy these recordings of online games organized through Gauntlet Calendar and the Gauntlet RPG Community. These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the selection of games available every week, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play or watch more games like these, check out the links and information at the bottom of the post.

Gauntlet Calendar

Red Carnations on a Black Grave
Donogh facilitates for David Morrison, Sebastian Deterding, and Thomas Manuel
The Paris Commune begins with a concert, celebrating the new life that everyone can expect to life in the city, but slowly the concerns of public morality and secret miseries begin to dominate. Gustave Courbet clashes with Louise Michel over their approaches to Versailles. Amanda Mercier attempts to steer her daughter Camille through life, her view of the Commune worlds away from that of Felix Vincent (her father). Meanwhile Anna Jaclard hides her husband's dark secret...

Brinkwood: The Gilded Countess (Session 1 of 9)
Jesse A. runs for Ben Bond, Jason Zanes, Jex Thomas, and Steven S.
In which a rebellion is formed, and oaths are sworn.

Brinkwood: The Gilded Countess (Session 2 of 9)
Jesse A. runs for Ben Bond, Jason Zanes, Jex Thomas, and Steven S.
In which taxes are recovered, plots are discovered and a plan is made.

Eotenweard: Hrothford (Session 2 of 2)
Alun R. runs for Rod Santos, Sam Zimmerman, and Will H
Continuing to explore the haunted moorland Walden the Hunter distracts a skinchanger and gives a victim the chance to escape; Beornoth the Hammer of the Gods sees that victim betrayed and killed; while Thrydwulf the Storyteller attracts the skinchanger's attention and wishes he hadn't. There's a windswept tor that stinks of a curse, the ghostly figure of a dead son, and a dramatic return to Hrothford...then a hunter accused and a shocking discovery in her hut...

Dungeons & Dragons: Strixhaven: A Syllabus of Shadows (Session 5)
Lowell Francis runs for Matthew Arcilla, Nicholas Timperio, and Vince
Our students' studies lead into a post-testing celebration which quickly gets out of hand--resulting in time in the detention bog and a new danger.

Masks: Born to Run (Session 2 of 2)
Lowell Francis runs for Adam Oh, José Feito, Mark, and Paul D.
The team's attempt to regroup is interrupted by a raid, leading to them splitting up to discover who framed them and why. This path will lead them to a noted hero's base and a trio of foes with different agendas.

Old School Essentials: Against the Slavers (Session 9)
Mike Ferdinando runs for Anya Reyes, Ben, Tim Leitner, and Vince
Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords! After rescuing the prisoners from the slavers' stockade, the Dwarven galdiator Bah-Run, the barbarian Caldas, and the wizard Zalalaz join up with the cleric Jeronimus and the thief Woodchuck to press the attack before the Slave Lords can react! Sneaking through a hidden passage into the enemy citadel, they find that this back-door is far from unguarded...

Gauntlet Quarterly

Hearts of Wulin: Odyssey of Jade and Stars (Session 1 of 12)
David S. runs for Greg Fulford, José Feito, Max Airborne, and Steven S.
Ill omens and foul plots come to the surface as four wandering warriors, each locked in conflict between duty and heart, investigate the Hungry Ghost Festival at the riverside fishing village of Ardent Maple. Romance, dark magic, and a teahouse brawl kick off the first session of this quarterly run.

Star Wars Saturday

SwoDu (Session 2)
Rich Rogers runs for Anders, Greg G., Jo Lene, and Steven Watkins
Trapped in a Star Destroyer under heavy attack, the team has to get out by any means necessary!

The Sprawl (Session 2)
Rich Rogers runs for Brandon Brylawski, Sherri, and Will H
The team finds their quarry and infiltrates the estate, but things go wrong before they get her out!

Where to Find More

You can see all these videos (plus all the ones that have come before) on The Gauntlet YouTube channel playlists, and be sure to subscribe to catch all our great podcasts!

If you'd like to catch these sessions in an audio-only podcast, check out the community-run Hangouts Podcast at http://gauntlet.hellomouth.net/.

If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Forums where games are announced, or catch one of our Gauntlet Community Open Gaming online mini-conventions.

To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon. Everyone is welcome to sign up for Gauntlet Calendar games, but Patreon supporters get extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Calendar games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events and pickup games are announced.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend

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