FARC! (Was: Fark!)

[robotnik2004]

Two very fun gaming sessions this week: jeregenest's Pantellos game on Sunday and Unknown USA last night.

In both cases I think one of the things that made it fun was that the GM was pushing a little, but not all the way, out of their regular comfort zone: Jere kicked off the Pantellos game with a great pulp action sequence—Chase scene on narrow Peruvian mountain road! Incan mummy and Tesla-Marconi gravitic radio in the back! Gorillas! FARCs! It's not his normal style, but I for one ate it up with a spoon. (OK, it turned out they were Shining Path, not FARCs.) But FARCs ("Farks!") is more fun to say.)

And in the UA game, I ran with much less script than I'm used to. About half the characters were on fairly well-prepared paths, but the other half were roaming around with really no preset storyline to follow at all. I had a few bangs to throw at them (and some goodies I didn't get to use) but nothing that had to happen or any real sense of where it would end up. That half of the group probably had more slow time (exacerbated by having 6 (!) PCs, including 2 that had just joined the group), but it also generated the most exciting moments of play (for me, at least), including a 1-in-a-100 roll by John as his old blues man recorded a song in a Memphis record studio. What do you do when someone makes a spectacular roll on something non-spectacular like playing a guitar?

Funny: Jere runs these intricate, intellectual games and I'm kinda pushing him for more straight-forward action. While in my gaming history, action has typically been everything, and I'm now trying to figure out ways to make a scene with an old man playing his guitar as exciting and as valid a climax as a car chase or a shoot 'em up. Playing what you know is good, but so is stretching your muscles.

Comments

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we're definitely going to have to run with this. Like John said, Tepper saved a copy of the recording and somehow it gets onto the net. The MP3s spread, meme-like, and Blind Joe becomes a phenomenon without knowing it.

Homage to O Brother is entirely appropriate in this game.

Of course the key difference here is that the song "Man of Constant Sorrow" isn't, well, evil.

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

And hey, don't forget Elvis' first recording at Sun Records. And he did it for Mama. If you can't take those two sentences and pack them full of occult goodness, I can't help you. :)