Intermission

You know, the Unisystem rules that Buffy uses aren’t my absolute favorite, but I will say this. It does a bang up job of running a fast paced Buffy-like game. It’s simple, it’s easy to pick back up, there aren’t a ton of skills and it’s difficult enough o make rolls, while allowing you to spend points to make those REALLY IMPORTANT rolls. Using this system I have successfully thrown an axe through a demon’s head at 100 paces, survived being literally used to demolish a few stone walls, bloodied a vampire that I REALLY had no business even coming CLOSE to hitting (which resulted in the aforementioned demolishing) and many other stunts, while still making sure it isn’t EASY to do these things. The system is really cool if you keep the Buffy world constantly in mind. Thinking of this, I don’t even hate the division of PCs into Heroes and White Hats, which White Hats being the normal Scooby types who are pretty much less powerful than Heroes in EVERY WAY. Aaron and I each play a hero (me the Slayer, him a fallen angel) and the rest are White Hats. Balanced? Nope, but still cool enough that I’m okay with it.

Thoughts on the future of our little game? Well, I’d like to think we can save Ember (one way or another). Sadly even if we can return her to life Cameron’s little half-crush on her is bound for failure, as she’s older and I’m sure she doesn’t want to live anywhere CLOSE to anyone named Tanaka for quite some time. Besides, I like having him free to pursue other fem….i mean interests in the future. Take Snow for instance. ;-)

He should at least get a goodbye kiss out of the deal….and more importantly, even if it was for a girl, he realized that he’s a bit less okay with just letting complicated things go and going back to the party than he used to be. Whether it’s because of the light in his head or the fact that he might actually now be capable of DOING something good is anyone’s guess. He’s going with the light in his head explanation. Still, keeping this schedule and some semblance of a social life isn’t going to be easy.

We seem to be doing the teenage comedy/drama half of a Buffy game as nicely as the action half. Awkward stares and not-quite love triangles abound in this game, where people may or may not LIKE each other, but are too chicken to actually do anything about it. We had the Opal/Anzo/Sascha triangle rear it’s ugly head, and we have Bastion/Sascha/Anzo, the Dawson/Joey/Pacey (wait wrong game…), and of course the Opal/Cameron/Any-interesting-pretty-girl triangle.

And the best part is that other than a few idle discussions about who finds who attractive, there really hasn’t been a single feeling openly admitted as of yet, as they are all teenagers and too damned nervous about it all to admit anything. Sascha really likes Bastion, but is actively trying for Anzo because Anzo has paid more attention to her. Bastion acts unsure of himself enough around her that he might just like her back, but is far too repressed to say anything even if he did. If Anzo is paying attention to Sascha it’s to use her for some scheme, which could be fun. Sascha’s anger at Anzo will know no bounds if and when that all comes out, even though she knows he’s using her RIGHT NOW. Opal and Cameron also actually like each other (them a little more obviously), but they are both a bit too deep into their completely opposite world views to do anything but argue constantly around each other.

It all makes for an interesting backdrop to the action, and makes it all a little more Buffy-like.

I read a bit into the Slayer section of the Slayer’s Handbook and remembered something. Sascha’s bad attitude and dim world views are actually darn near WORD FOR WORD out of the handbook’s description of how Slayers often deal with being what they are. The ones who aren’t trained from birth pretty much all have the bitterness over never being able to have a normal life, they all are ticked that they have such a short “expiration date” (their words, not mine), and while they are all more than human, most of them feel like they are a lot LESS than human. For her, a lot of these feelings got mixed into the general bad attitude and only now that she came so close to dying is she actually looking at it all. Also, unlike some other similar characters (like Drac), Sascha does NOT have a deathwish. I’ve built in a pretty decent fear of death as a GM plot hook later, should he wish to exploit it.

Singing may help her develop a bit more of a connection to humanity and normalcy. It’ll give her another outlet for her aggression and emotions, and it’ll give her something she likes to do that doesn’t involve an axe and a vampire’s head. It will help her get out of the funk she’s in now.

What else is coming? Well we have a harbinger to stop, a vampire god to seal away again, aliens who are a little too interested in me...oh yeah…and fall formal.