So, we played Nine Worlds this monday. It was fun! During the last few days I slowly realized I've fallen for it. Hard.

It's like a new friendship that just invigorates you, makes you inspired. Like that person that you met the other day and can't stop thinking about. The way she said that. How he smiled.

It was meant as a one shot but felt more like a tantalizing start of something bigger. Perhaps a little bit rushed and bittersweet cut short but so, so good.

The system mechanics speak to me. They're slick, subtle but also a little slippery. I want to get a good grip on them (and unlike a lot of rules out there can see myself doing so) and be able to heighten play through use of Points and Trump.

Some of the Muses didn't get adressed in play (two or three tops) but still felt like they added to the session. They were there with their possibility. The ones that got used though, oh sweet mama, Muses are good stuff.

Some scenes from the shifting seasons of Luna:

Jonas' old, alky, exiled Amalthenan has the Muse "Help the child of Athena to safety". Thing is she shows up at the steps of his reclusive wilderness mansion and kills a poacher. He tries to stop her of course; the man got there first and asked him for help after all. But he fails. He then spends the night talking to the child Cosmia (a young adult, really) drinking wine on the porch on the last night of summer. This Archon, Ocnus, distrusts the power that Prometheus gave him. He can't control it and has destroyed to much that he cares about. Jonas gave him high Hubris and Chaos to make it interesting. When Protean agents shows up in the misty dawn, as the autumn leaves fall from the sky, Ocnus rises from his talk with Cosmia and, to protect her, makes the ground swallow them whole.

When Johan's character Cassius finds himself with his ex-lover in an Arcadian bar they don't sit down to talk about old times. She sold him out to Appollo who in his wrath struck him with the Twiligth Fever he's now suffering from. Using Stasis he stops his shapechanging, Protean-spying old flame from fleeing the scene by locking doors and with his bare hands stopping her transformation into a cat. He stretches her out into human form again. She give him a defying stare, still the hard unfeeling cat glare in her eyes, but when he throws his hood back, showing her what the fever's done to his face, she turns her gaze away.

The archon played by Hans, Argos, is the only one born on Earth. He's an ex-private eye with ties to the Proteans and owes Hecate a favor. He's all about Hubris though and when Hecate calls on him to settle the debt (by killing Cassius) he tries to have her tell him she loves him. Smoking a cigarette, Argos (not born with that name by the way) freezes, his words stuck in his throat when Hecate shows him his place. Hecate walks around him telling him what he must do and when she's left and he's finally released several horus later, he takes a last draw on his cigarette, stubs it out and leaves.

Boy, I want to play again!

Nice! I really like the scene closer where he reveals his diseased face.

We've heard some here about the events in the game. What were the players themselves doing? What were their reactions, what did they like? Any thoughts?

Hi Matt,

Good questions!

We all enjoyed ourselves, for sure, although everyone might not be excited to the same extent as I.

Jonas was tired and admitted to not being that happy with his contributions. Thing is, he suggested stuff a lot to the other players in their scenes and was obviously invested in their stories. He seemed to have the most trouble coming up with Muses that he cared for though and that might say something of both his slight detachment from his own character and of how important Muses are to the game. He still made some tough choices for his character that really mattered in my book.

Hans has expressed interest in playing again. He seemed to enjoy playing his Hubris-using earth-born archon to the hilt. He surprised me a bit by centering his Muses around a mysterious woman being turned into a swan. Hecate had saved him from being transformed and he owed her a favor, he wanted to win Artemis trust to get her to turn the swan back to a human, and he wanted to (if I remember correctly) find the swan. The kind of melancholy back story this hinted at and brought into play was intriguing and added a very human element to it all.

One thing I liked was toward the end of the session when I'd set up a scene where Johan's archon was being manipulated by Hecate to show his worth by killing a swan and swim in it's blood (to cure him of the Twilight Fever according to Hecate). Hans asked me (tongue half in cheek) if he could "spend a fate point or something" to get into the scene. He wanted in so bad. I was just going to ask you to show up, I said.

The unfamiliarity with the system might have something to do with the sometimes hesitant atmosphere, but I also felt that the choices made were grounded and thought through.

Johan commented afterwards that the session really had feet, something he rarely experienced in one shots otherwise.

I should add that Johan was a guest player at our table while visiting Stockholm this week. Jonas, Hans and I play together regularly otherwise. Johan was the only one beside me familiar with the rules and setting, and this showed a bit in his approach to the game. I think he set a great example fleshing out setting details and showing what you could do. We decided to not use Points for the first couple of conflicts, but only began doing so toward the end of the game and then rarely did something with them. Moved some Urge-ratings around, bought a Talisman. I think by that time we all were a bit drained and wanted to wrap things up. It might have something to do with a coupl eof comments saying that the rules felt fiddly and hard to get a hold on.

We'll meet tonight again for dinner and a proposed session of Lacuna. I'll see if some thoughts about this session comes up, and if so, I might write more about it here.

Posted By: hixIn the "How do you prep a one-shot?" thread, I saw that Luna really had you fired up. Could you share your take on it?
What did you connect with when you read through its description? How'd you present Luna to the players?

I saw the potential in Luna mainly because of it's feature as a haven and place outside of immediate outer conflict. I figured that would do for a good focused set-up for a one shot. Earlier I had only skimmed the section on Luna, having placed more interest and ideas in places like Mercury, Saturn and Sol. When I read it closely I got hooked to the situation - Hecate working her shadowy schemes, the shape-changing Proteans, naive but powerful Artemis, the presence of people using up and even destroying the natural resources - and decided to build something around that, with The Stranger at the center. The thing that truly sold me was the fact that seasons change with every week on Luna. I found that very evocative and the perfect back-drop for the mood I wanted.

If I succeeded in getting that mood across I can't say, but I definitely put some effort into doing so through short descriptions of flora, fauna and weather. Sun-rays through a glass coloring the wine amber, red gold leaves floating on a lake - that sort of thing.

I also wanted an ancient peaceful air, and we discussed this a bit beforehand. It sort of showed in our scenes in Arcadia that we connected there, I felt.

I wanted to contrast the sense of age and pastoral idylls with something as well, so mid-session I came up with the Villa/Palace/Temple of Hecate as a Le Corbusier-like very modern building, here rejecting the predominant art nouveau style on other planets for something stranger and even more out of place on Luna.

Something I also longed to do something with, and I talked to Hans and Jonas about this beforehand, was to really magnify the political situation and make it matter. Here I saw potential for environmentalism issues amongst other things, and it's something I'd like to grab onto and push to the forefront should we play again, but we sort of agreed on it being a bite too big too swallow for a one shot.

Does this in any way answer your questions, Steve? Did you do something similar or different when you played?

Thanks for your interest!

Hey, I just discovered I know the Hans you're talking about here. I've been e-friends with him for several years now. Neat.