Violent City Session #1 Reflections
Session #1 - Reflections
So begins Violent City, a campaign I’ve had in mind for some time. Today we did a Session 0, and then did a short session with actual gameplay. Violent City itself is a post-apocalyptic campaign centred in a wasteland built on the ruins of the last city on Earth; adventure follows in the wake of demons, machines, mutant bugs, and gangs.
These will not be recaps of events as they occurred in the session, unless I think they are particularly noteworthy; instead, I will be doing reflections that discuss the state of the game, how I am preparing things, etc.
For system, we are using Whitehack, which has a fairly open ended class system. While the mechanics of the classes (The Strong, The Deft, The Wise, etc) are well defined, their actual in world function is not: so a Strong character could be a Roadwarrior, a Punk, a Devilman, etc. This requires a bit more work than rolling up Bob the Fighter, so I felt a Session 0 was necessary. Also, I really enjoy inviting the players into collaborative worldbuilding, and I think this is best done from the jump. The highlight here was oldhawkeye’s character, Molars, who is a man created by a Geneprinter, a machine that can create fucked up replicas of people. This slotted well into the world I had built up, and I find this kind of jazz helps the campaign sing. Now I could include, for instance, other replicas built on the same genetic code, and that encounter could be a challenging moment for our savage yet somewhat childlike Molars, who has spent most of his life hunting bugs in the extensive sewers below the ruined city.
Last night, as has become usual for me, I slept for about 3 hours. Thus, during the Session 0 part I felt a bit sluggish but, launching into the session itself, things took off well. Most of Session 0 was discussing how, exactly, the mechanics of Whitehack would work for each particular character, as well as noting down character backgrounds and motivations. I’m not super interested in fleshing out character psychology before play, and would rather players focus their efforts on connections established in game, so I kept my questions fairly fast and loose; the rhythm of play falls into place through play, and I’m not interested in creating promises of arcs to occur ahead of time. Likewise, there’s not yet a need to focus in on character origin: Havoc’s character, for example, is a high school girl with a gauntlet that can digitize and then summon demons. How did she get this? It might not ever matter, and I don’t necessarily care unless Havoc decides it does, then we can start looking into the many concomitant questions that would inevitably arise from there; how did her friends react? How did her personality change? How did she meet her first demon? etc
Our cast of heroes is as follows:
- Ags, the Gourd Dwarf, is Dingo “Wild Dog” Wells, whose son was killed by demons. He now is a bounty hunter with an ambivalent relationship to demonkind, as after his son’s death the dog they cared for, named Wolf, became a “devil dog,” and is now part demon. He is a Deft character attuned to a sword called Jackal, which eponymizes his son, and the demon dog Wolf.
- Oldhawkeyes is PRJCA045773, nicknamed Molar, a Geneprinted Sewer Sweeper made to be a disposable body for the 12th Legion in their endless war. Geneprinted people are able to consume memories by eating brains, which Molar uses to access the combat talents or knowledge of others. His life has left him an impulsive, simple, and beautiful being. He is a Strong character.
- nobody is Zero, a Hydra devilman who possesses somewhat obscene powers. Devilmen characters are able to take elements of their demon form at will, and have a heightened combat profile compared to normal characters: in addition, Zero has 18 strength. Despite these powers, Zero seems to be a fairly uncertain figure, having previously been an average porter making treks across the wastes. He is also a Strong, and due to being demi-demonic can take on the features of devoured creatures.
- Havoc is playing as Leaper Black, the aforementioned school girl turned Devilsummoner. She’s a bit of a punk, and a bancho-type. She is a Fortunate character, who can get and use minions—in this case, demons. To start she has an Eyeball Devil, a winged eyeball who, hopefully, will grow into something more impressive.
Overall, I was very happy with this cast of characters; it’s a varied group, and has injected lots into the world that can be drawn on as needed (sewers, high school, geneprinting, etc). The setting of the first session was also spun up by Ags, the Warhol Liner, a skeletal frame of a cargo ship within the relative security of Almond Bay.
Why Whitehack? I’ve spun up plenty of ideas for how to do Violent City, primarily based on Wolves. In my original vision, everyone would start as normal dudes and increase in power through either Cyberization or Demonization. The advantage of WhiteHack is that character advancement is largely internal rather than external; there is not much support for Devil Man/Shin Megami Tensei inspired OSR campaigns, and what is there I fundamentally do not align with aesthetically. That means that in order to create the dream of Violent City I would have had to cook up all of that external advancement myself, or just figure things out as I go. WhiteHack offloads some responsibility onto the players and the system. Because advancement is internal, it means that we can work things out as we encounter them. Whitehack is open enough that it fits in the post-apocalyptic setting without me having to do work; this is a reverse of my usual sickness that bids me build an entire system that is basically just D&D for every campaign, a disease even worse when I ran GURPS and had to make character templates using the clunky ass points system, or explore god knows how many supplements for answers to inane questions. Ahem.
The session itself I prepped using the bad doctor’s very famous and good And Other Stories format. My overworld is a pointcrawl with very simple keys, and to prep the session I wrote about events as they will unfold without intervention and the motives/personalities of the major players. I paired this with some freewriting over the week during writing warmups that explored concepts relating to Violent City. The end result was a session that was very to run. I prepped no statblocks or anything, as Whitehack is very easy to spin up stats for.
Lots of awesome action and colourful characters marked the first session! The conflict centred around a woman named Jewel, who returned to the Warhod Liner after being gone a fortnight with a new face. Immediately interest in her skyrocketed: her new kaolin beauty, its source, the question of its installation, all drew interest even from Prodigo, who is the wealthiest man west of Golgotha. Of course, the party ended up killing an Enforcer from Prodigo's gang, and ended up, at least temporarily, ruining Jewel's chance to become one of Prodigo's courtesans. Thus, the party is already "in a situation" which will motivate sessions of play.