2020.06.03 Bluebeard's Bride: The Boarding School

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:03.520 Hey everybody, and welcome to just played. This is the podcaster. I 2 00:00:03.560 --> 00:00:08.839 RECAP THE TABLETOP RPG's I've recently participated in as player orgume master. I'm Joe 3 00:00:08.919 --> 00:00:14.080 Cracker of Jimlikes Gamescom, and today I will be talking about, well, 4 00:00:14.119 --> 00:00:17.120 I'll be talking about a game that I played a couple of months ago. 5 00:00:17.239 --> 00:00:21.199 With the craziness that has been going on over the past several months, everybody 6 00:00:21.239 --> 00:00:25.440 knows how insane things have been, it has been really tough for me to 7 00:00:25.480 --> 00:00:30.679 put down a podcast, so I buckled down. I have moved my out 8 00:00:30.719 --> 00:00:39.079 of so of course, as all of you may know, there are no 9 00:00:39.079 --> 00:00:42.759 conventions going on right now and that means that I need to move out of 10 00:00:42.799 --> 00:00:46.799 my office that I was occupying when I was doing conventions on a regular basis, 11 00:00:46.799 --> 00:00:50.320 because now I've gotten a revenue coming in. I'm okay, please don't 12 00:00:50.359 --> 00:00:53.719 worry about me. I'm fine. I've got a family situation that means I'm 13 00:00:53.759 --> 00:00:56.520 all right, even though I can't attend conventions for the time being. But 14 00:00:56.560 --> 00:00:59.719 that did mean I couldn't afford my office anymore. So I spent the last 15 00:00:59.759 --> 00:01:02.640 couple of months getting everything together moving out of there, and it made it 16 00:01:02.679 --> 00:01:06.040 really tough for me to put down a podcast. So what I'd like to 17 00:01:06.079 --> 00:01:08.640 do is I've got some write ups of games that I played over the last 18 00:01:08.640 --> 00:01:12.120 couple of months and I'm going to just stick those in there and pretend that 19 00:01:12.159 --> 00:01:15.719 I did in fact just play them for all of you. You're just hearing 20 00:01:15.719 --> 00:01:19.000 about it now, so I guess that's sort of counts. So to catch 21 00:01:19.079 --> 00:01:23.359 up, I'd like to talk about a session I played of blue beards bride. 22 00:01:23.400 --> 00:01:26.120 This was the boarding school variant. Bill Bit's bride is a powered by 23 00:01:26.159 --> 00:01:33.680 the apocalypse game of feminist body or. The base setting is a haunted house. 24 00:01:33.719 --> 00:01:37.480 It is the haunted castle of Blue Beard, but in this case we 25 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:41.879 were playing in a haunted boarding school. Our Game Master who ran the game 26 00:01:41.959 --> 00:01:46.599 for us, daryld Ross over gauntlet hangouts. This is the Guntlet RPG community 27 00:01:46.680 --> 00:01:49.879 that I'm a part of, Collet d rpgcom, so we can find out 28 00:01:49.879 --> 00:01:53.079 more info about them. Darreld wanted to run all of the various variants of 29 00:01:53.079 --> 00:01:57.000 blue beards bride, so I got to play in some other ones as well. 30 00:01:57.079 --> 00:02:00.040 We played in the Carnival and the mental hospital, but I wanted to 31 00:02:00.079 --> 00:02:04.680 talk about the boarding school variant that we play. So blue beards bride is 32 00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:07.400 a little different from some other games in that you don't play individual characters, 33 00:02:07.400 --> 00:02:12.520 you play different aspects of a single character. In this case in blue beard's 34 00:02:12.520 --> 00:02:15.439 bride, it's the bride. Because we were playing the boarding school variant, 35 00:02:15.520 --> 00:02:20.280 it was the teacher. So which player takes on different aspect of the character? 36 00:02:20.479 --> 00:02:24.439 I was the witch, Jami was the mother, Robert was the Animus 37 00:02:24.439 --> 00:02:30.039 and Rappie was the pure. So, because this is an alternate setting for 38 00:02:30.039 --> 00:02:34.039 blue beards bride, it frames the bride as a teacher at a boarding school 39 00:02:34.039 --> 00:02:38.680 where blue beard is the headmaster. Our teacher had a difficult first semester and 40 00:02:38.680 --> 00:02:42.120 blue beard left her the keys to the school so that she could stay there 41 00:02:42.120 --> 00:02:46.039 over break and consider whether she should remain there as a teacher, assuming she 42 00:02:46.080 --> 00:02:51.319 could curtail the feminine wiles that were causing problems for the lads who were the 43 00:02:51.319 --> 00:02:53.800 students of the boarding school. As far as plot snopsis, just like with 44 00:02:53.879 --> 00:02:58.400 standard blue beards bride, we had a ring of keys that allowed us to 45 00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:01.439 explore the grounds of the school, going anywhere we liked, with the explicit 46 00:03:01.479 --> 00:03:06.080 exception of Blue Beard's own office. So we set out to explore, with 47 00:03:06.159 --> 00:03:10.439 the pure holding the school crest that gave her agency over our teacher's movements. 48 00:03:10.439 --> 00:03:14.800 We entered a library. We found a student having difficulty with a book, 49 00:03:14.840 --> 00:03:17.439 which he hurled across the room and, frustration, then grabbed up an odd 50 00:03:17.439 --> 00:03:21.840 pair of shears and started cutting the pages out of another book. So, 51 00:03:22.039 --> 00:03:24.159 after scolding him and grabbing the shears away, we sent him packing out of 52 00:03:24.199 --> 00:03:30.000 there, but the librarian was upset as all the books had started to bleed 53 00:03:30.039 --> 00:03:31.840 ink all over the place. This is the sort of thing that happens in 54 00:03:31.879 --> 00:03:37.840 these games. Things get creepy pretty quick. The pure proposed that this room 55 00:03:37.919 --> 00:03:44.479 was where blue beard instructed select students in dark rituals taken from forbidden texts, 56 00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:49.199 marking a grade. And in this case, instead of deciding whether they are 57 00:03:49.319 --> 00:03:53.560 a loyal husband or a disloyal husband, we need to decide with is a 58 00:03:53.639 --> 00:03:57.560 loyal or a disloyal headmaster. So in this case the peer gave him the 59 00:03:57.560 --> 00:04:01.360 grade of disloyal or his betrayal of the institution's ideals. As we exited, 60 00:04:01.719 --> 00:04:05.560 she passed the crest to me, the which so we recovered an inch. 61 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:09.800 So I wanted to clean that up, so I went looking for a washroom, 62 00:04:09.800 --> 00:04:14.840 but instead we found ourself in a sweltering utility closet with steaming hot pipes. 63 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:17.879 Hearing giggling from behind the walls, I decided that I would complain about 64 00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:24.160 the heat and that the only way to cool off was to remove my petticoats, 65 00:04:24.199 --> 00:04:28.319 and this elicited a sharp intake of breath from behind the wall. So, 66 00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:31.360 taking one of the keys from the key I spun around and jabbed it 67 00:04:31.399 --> 00:04:35.680 into the hole, and a stifled yelp of pain emerged from next door. 68 00:04:35.680 --> 00:04:41.519 No sooner had the cry been cut off than we got tackled from behind and 69 00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:45.839 jacked up against the hot pipe, the unseen assailant muttering to us that we 70 00:04:45.879 --> 00:04:49.079 had spoiled the show. So I know when I'm out of my depth, 71 00:04:49.240 --> 00:04:55.120 so I passed the crest to the Animus, and the animus wrenched US free 72 00:04:55.120 --> 00:04:59.319 and ordered what turned out to be the janitor, a ragged and burning woman 73 00:04:59.399 --> 00:05:03.000 in sodden overalls, to reprimand the boys next door, a command she executed 74 00:05:03.079 --> 00:05:10.279 with exceeding Gusto. Discovering a corkscrew with the woman's name carved rudely into it. 75 00:05:10.360 --> 00:05:15.920 The animals proposed that this room was established by blue beard to reward both 76 00:05:15.959 --> 00:05:19.680 the boys and the janitor, who would put on obscene displays to each be 77 00:05:19.800 --> 00:05:25.319 viewed by the other through the wall, and of course this received a grade 78 00:05:25.399 --> 00:05:30.079 of disloyal disloyal to the students and the staff for allowing such a mutually degrading 79 00:05:30.120 --> 00:05:35.639 activity to persist. The animals passed the crest to the mother upon our exit. 80 00:05:35.759 --> 00:05:39.920 So whenever you leave a room you have to pass the crest. Technically 81 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:42.240 it's not part of the rules, but Darreld wrote this in in a way 82 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:45.319 that I think is really interesting. We just agreed that we, whenever we 83 00:05:45.439 --> 00:05:48.759 leaved, left it whom we would pass the crest onto a different aspect of 84 00:05:48.839 --> 00:05:53.920 the teacher. So, hurt and exhausted, the mother found our way to 85 00:05:53.959 --> 00:05:59.000 the school infirmary, where we staggered down the row of beds to this bizarre 86 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:03.600 colossal medicine in cabinet carved in the shape of blue beards recently deceased wife. 87 00:06:03.639 --> 00:06:08.519 Like I said, it gets creepy pretty quick. After swallowing a handful of 88 00:06:08.680 --> 00:06:13.560 random pills hoping that they would help our pain dulled, but we were accosted 89 00:06:13.560 --> 00:06:16.560 by a nurse wielding a Syringe, who insisted that she was there to help 90 00:06:16.680 --> 00:06:21.360 us and attempted to forcibly strap us down onto a bed. After the ensuing 91 00:06:21.399 --> 00:06:28.240 struggle, we fell through the floor into this morglike space beneath the infirmary, 92 00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:32.600 where corpses were arrayed, and we realized these were all former patients of the 93 00:06:32.600 --> 00:06:39.199 infirmary. After chasing way the nurse, the animus proposed that this place proved 94 00:06:39.279 --> 00:06:43.560 blue beards loyalty, as it was hardly his fault that the quite necessary sedative 95 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:48.639 to the nurse administered to recalcitrant students intent on disrupting the entire institution occasionally had 96 00:06:48.680 --> 00:06:54.480 unforeseen effects. That wasn't his fault. Likely it was exacerbated by poor breeding 97 00:06:54.519 --> 00:06:58.240 and deportment among the students who found such treatments to be necessary in the first 98 00:06:58.240 --> 00:07:01.000 place. So she took with her a token of loyalty, which was an 99 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:05.000 empty Syringe, and then pass the crest back to me. I was fed 100 00:07:05.079 --> 00:07:10.560 up with our being hot, exhausted and filthy, so I had US walked 101 00:07:10.600 --> 00:07:15.079 down to the school boat house on the lake and, finding a boy's bathing 102 00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:17.680 costume that seemed to fit we changed into it and waded into the water to 103 00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:23.560 swim, we noticed the presence of a huge luminous jellyfish, despite the fact 104 00:07:23.639 --> 00:07:26.680 that it was supposed to be a fresh water lake that we were swimming in, 105 00:07:26.839 --> 00:07:30.120 and we were astonished to discover a diving bell anchor to the rocks at 106 00:07:30.120 --> 00:07:33.399 the bottom of the lake. Inspecting it, we discerned the story of the 107 00:07:33.399 --> 00:07:38.279 inventor of the device who, falling in love with another lad when he was 108 00:07:38.319 --> 00:07:43.920 a student here, consummated this perversion beneath the waters of the lake. This 109 00:07:44.120 --> 00:07:47.920 little fish swam up and whispered in our ear about how we couldn't allow such 110 00:07:48.040 --> 00:07:51.920 bombinations, but we would have none of it and flew from the water to 111 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:57.079 leave the place, attempting to escape, but we were confronted by the wife 112 00:07:57.120 --> 00:08:01.120 of one of the men, who insisted that we had had some sort of 113 00:08:01.199 --> 00:08:05.120 dalliance with him, and a punctuated that quite emphatically by stabbing us in the 114 00:08:05.120 --> 00:08:09.399 shoulder. We insisted we had no part of it, making plain the nature 115 00:08:09.480 --> 00:08:15.759 of her husband's disinterest in her, and us for that matter, given his 116 00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:20.800 real proclivities, and left the place, little interested in whatever truth that it 117 00:08:20.879 --> 00:08:24.160 might hold. That's one of the options you have is to just escape the 118 00:08:24.199 --> 00:08:26.199 room because you want to be out of there and you don't necessarily need to 119 00:08:26.199 --> 00:08:28.560 propose a truth about it if you just want to be done with it. 120 00:08:28.600 --> 00:08:33.320 The shock of the encounter was sufficient that the pure could take no more and 121 00:08:33.399 --> 00:08:39.559 she shattered, which allowed the witch to consume the shards of her essence and 122 00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:43.240 regain strength. With sufficient evidence of blue beards disloyalty, it was time to 123 00:08:43.279 --> 00:08:46.919 make a choice for the ending fictional state. We were presented with a choice 124 00:08:46.919 --> 00:08:52.759 to either keep quiet about everything we had seen or attempt to report principal blue 125 00:08:52.759 --> 00:08:56.399 beard and get the school shut down. We chose to attempt to shutter the 126 00:08:56.399 --> 00:09:00.879 school, which proved wildly unsuccessful, as all the parents assisted that there was 127 00:09:00.919 --> 00:09:05.480 no problem and that the idea that anything had happened to their precious sons was 128 00:09:05.559 --> 00:09:11.000 preposterous. So we remained haunted by the way the janitor had touched us as 129 00:09:11.039 --> 00:09:16.399 no man ever had, patiently absorbing the books of Tamed Women that Blue Beard 130 00:09:16.480 --> 00:09:20.519 left us as instructional tales, our faith in the rigor and value of proper 131 00:09:20.559 --> 00:09:26.399 classical education permanently dispelled. My favorite other player moment in this particular session was 132 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:31.399 the way Robert Stuck the landing for us on the final question of which room 133 00:09:31.399 --> 00:09:35.919 will haunt the teachers dreams. It was the utility closet, and that rough 134 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:39.960 handling that the janitor gave us was unlike anything we ever experienced from any of 135 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:43.840 the Genteel men we would know for the rest of our lives. It was 136 00:09:43.879 --> 00:09:52.720 this really sublime call back to the simultaneously deeply problematic but also unrelentingly erotic force 137 00:09:52.840 --> 00:09:56.000 of that particular encounter, and it just distilled but what I hope to get 138 00:09:56.039 --> 00:10:01.200 out of this game in terms of walking the line be between shuddering discomfort and 139 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:07.559 atavistic fascination. It was so good. A favorite gamming moment was the way 140 00:10:07.679 --> 00:10:13.279 Darald hit us with an incredibly hard move when I refused to engage the boathouse 141 00:10:13.399 --> 00:10:18.080 demand of complicity and punishing the boys and men who loved each other in defiance 142 00:10:18.120 --> 00:10:22.919 of propriety. He didn't just let us run away, he forced us to 143 00:10:22.919 --> 00:10:28.759 pay a price for not participating in the shaming and punishment that was expected of 144 00:10:28.840 --> 00:10:33.240 us by the cool by the rules. It was exceptionally brutal and just very 145 00:10:33.240 --> 00:10:37.519 real. It's the kind of thing that can emerge at a moment's notice from 146 00:10:37.519 --> 00:10:41.960 really unexpected places in this game and one of the things I love about it 147 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:46.879 as far as missed opportunities go. Because we were playing online with the usual 148 00:10:46.039 --> 00:10:52.320 limited time frame and this series of vexing technical difficulties that ate up sometime, 149 00:10:52.639 --> 00:10:56.240 we ended the game for time just stopped at the three hour mark. As 150 00:10:56.240 --> 00:11:01.759 opposed to collecting the requisite number of tokens that you're supposed to trigger the end 151 00:11:01.799 --> 00:11:03.919 game ideal. You're supposed to collect three of one or the other. In 152 00:11:03.960 --> 00:11:09.039 this case we had two disloyalty tokens, one loyalty token when it became clear 153 00:11:09.080 --> 00:11:11.639 that we were running out of time and wouldn't have time to do another rooms, 154 00:11:11.720 --> 00:11:13.240 when we got to do like about half of what you would do in 155 00:11:13.240 --> 00:11:16.679 a typical game. The end game still happens, certainly, and it was 156 00:11:16.879 --> 00:11:22.120 very satisfying, but I am looking forward to getting a chance to play one 157 00:11:22.159 --> 00:11:26.679 of these alternate play sets in a full convention slot facetoface where we don't have 158 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:30.600 a lot of overhead with tech and having enough time and enough space to have 159 00:11:30.600 --> 00:11:33.320 it just fully play out, because every single one of these we played we 160 00:11:33.399 --> 00:11:37.759 ended up running a little bit short. We were engaged and we love them, 161 00:11:37.799 --> 00:11:41.159 but it would be cool to really see the whole thing play out. 162 00:11:41.159 --> 00:11:45.039 So a thing I noticed. This was not my first online play through a 163 00:11:45.039 --> 00:11:48.919 blue beard's bride, but mostly I've played the game facetoface up until now, 164 00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:54.480 including running it for Magpie Games at the packs conventions last year, and we 165 00:11:54.559 --> 00:12:01.279 only had a single player invoke the shiver with fear remove in any of the 166 00:12:01.320 --> 00:12:05.879 online games that I played. It's happened a lot in those tabletop sessions. 167 00:12:05.879 --> 00:12:09.279 Now this is a move where when something happens in the game that causes a 168 00:12:09.279 --> 00:12:15.039 player to react somehow kind of goose or cringe or shiver or go oh that's 169 00:12:15.080 --> 00:12:18.039 too much, it actually triggers mechanics in the game. It's an interesting little 170 00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:22.960 Meta thing that plays on the horror aspects of what's going on. But it 171 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:26.320 didn't really happen when we were playing online, so I'm wondering why that is. 172 00:12:26.600 --> 00:12:31.080 In future one shots of this that I play online, I will definitely 173 00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:35.600 be keeping an eye out and trying to be more conscious myself of triggering that 174 00:12:35.600 --> 00:12:37.720 move and keeping an eye on the other players to see if it's happening and 175 00:12:37.720 --> 00:12:41.120 we're just missing it because we're tiny little squares on the zoom screen. It 176 00:12:41.399 --> 00:12:46.399 may just be that those cues are just way harder to Parse when the person 177 00:12:46.440 --> 00:12:48.639 you're looking at is, like I said, in a tiny little window rather 178 00:12:48.679 --> 00:12:52.879 than clenching their jaw and shaking their head while they're sitting right next to you 179 00:12:52.960 --> 00:12:56.279 to real table. This is one of those questions where there's so many potential 180 00:12:56.360 --> 00:12:58.519 variables. Is it because we're using a different play set? Is it just 181 00:12:58.559 --> 00:13:03.159 that mix of players didn't have that reaction? Was It online play? Was 182 00:13:03.200 --> 00:13:05.960 it technical difficulties that disrupted the flow and so we kind of ended up not 183 00:13:07.039 --> 00:13:09.879 being in that spirit of building tension? I don't know. I definitely can't 184 00:13:09.879 --> 00:13:15.120 point at one particular one and go that's it. Hopefully, with more of 185 00:13:15.159 --> 00:13:18.279 these games under my belt I'll have a better idea of what's going on and 186 00:13:18.320 --> 00:13:20.840 if our sparse use of that core move has a discernible cause or it's just 187 00:13:20.879 --> 00:13:24.080 a cork of this session. I don't know that. Wait See, I 188 00:13:24.120 --> 00:13:26.320 guess. So that's it for this episode. Thanks for tuning back in. 189 00:13:26.360 --> 00:13:30.000 Sorry it took so long for me to get back in the saddle here. 190 00:13:30.240 --> 00:13:33.320 I've got more episodes in the pipeline. Absolutely coming. I've got several more 191 00:13:33.320 --> 00:13:35.000 write ups. I did that. I didn't do episodes four, so stay 192 00:13:35.039 --> 00:13:39.440 tuned. They'll be coming in pretty rapid succession. Thanks very much for listening. 193 00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:41.279 If you're enjoying the show, please rate and review it wherever you found 194 00:13:41.320 --> 00:13:43.919 it. That does help other people find it. Check out the show notes 195 00:13:43.960 --> 00:13:46.639 for a link to the full video of this session, if one's available. 196 00:13:46.639 --> 00:13:50.159 I think it's on Youtube. All linked to it if we've got it there, 197 00:13:50.200 --> 00:13:52.799 as well as further info on the game that I played. Blue beards 198 00:13:52.799 --> 00:13:54.799 bright is, of course available from Magpie Games. I'll put a link to 199 00:13:54.799 --> 00:13:58.480 where you can get it. They're either from my store directly or from them. 200 00:13:58.519 --> 00:14:01.399 As always, you can follow me on twitter at Jim Likes Games, 201 00:14:01.639 --> 00:14:05.679 and you can buy games from me at my website, Jim Likes Gamescom or 202 00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:09.720 at a convention I attend as a vendor. Hullo, yeah, that's boiler 203 00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:13.559 plate. Whenever they do convinced again and I'm attending those evender, you'll be 204 00:14:13.559 --> 00:14:16.399 able to buy games from me there. Hopefully we won't be too too long 205 00:14:16.440 --> 00:14:20.440 before that happens. Maybe in a limited and hopefully very safe kind of a 206 00:14:20.440 --> 00:14:22.159 way. Will find out, but that is the best way to support the 207 00:14:22.159 --> 00:14:26.320 show. But now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go play another game.