Our first discussion episode! Kevin, Dan, Jen, and CJ gather ’round The Walking Eye to discuss our recently completed run of The Grey Ranks by Jason Morningstar. It was an interesting and educational experience, one that we’d recommend to anyone.
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I managed to put some serious editing time in this weekend and have a lot of content to put out there.
First off we have Session 3 of our Grey Ranks game. In this session, things really pick up the pace as two characters (Yankee and Xero played by Brandon and Dan respectively) are written out. I think this was probably our best session, the energy was high and the final results heartbreaking.
Session 4 wraps up our Grey Ranks game. This session went pretty well also, these last two you can definitely tell we were more comfortable with the scene framing aspects of the game. If you’re curious to find out what happens to Skaut and Diana, check it out:
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Session 2 Covers chapters 3 through 5. The end of Chapter 3 hums along quite nicely, and we were having fun throughout. Just one more session and we’ll have this tragic tale of tumultuous teenaged trama tied together! I make no apologies for my alliteration!
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We start things of with a bang: Grey Ranks by Jason Morningstar. Overall I think the session went really well! My only real concern is we might not have framed appropriate scenes for the chapters we were on. As one player said “We’re somewhere right between Schindler’s List and Indiana Jones”. A game with this serious of a tone makes me sensitive to if we’re “doing it right.” Still, the last hour and a half really hums and I think we got a strong grasp on how things work. Next session should be great!
Here’s who’s at the table:
One minor hiccup we had was with how to handle the creation of reputation. We were slightly confused if they evolved version of the reputation always had to be the exact opposite of it’s predecessor. I posted on story-games.com about that and got a pretty succinct answer from the creator: [Recorded AP] Grey Ranks # 4
“Yeah, I chose very obvious/binary transformations as a teaching tool, but there’s nothing requiring that. I’ve seen people go from ‘clumsy” to “respectful”, or other non-intuitive changes, and as long as they are motivated by what’s happened or what they want to happen (or both) it’s fine.”
In retrospect this makes perfect sense but at the time I think our hesistation came from our concerns about making sure we were playing it “right”.
Session 1 Recorded Sept 10 2008:
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