In 2018, I played this game at a convention when there was buzz about this game, lauded as a feminist RPG written by women. I came to the game cold and totally hated it. Here's my experience. I'm a guy, so I thought maybe I just didn't get it. Years later, at another convention, while chatting with a fellow Player who I respected, she told me she liked Bluebeard's Bride, but she had to be in the mood for it. Another friend of mine said he'd only play it with a specific group of people, but he liked it.
In my local group, one of our rotating GMs wanted to run Bluebeard's Bride. I was willing to give it another try since this GM was a woman. The GM I had at the convention was a man.
Well, I actually enjoyed it a lot more this second time. Part of it is because I knew what to expect.
Bluebeard's Bride uses a system lite version of Powered by the Apocalypse. When we played, we rarely rolled any dice.
This time, we didn't have a large group of personas, but we only got 2 Players and 1 GM. We spent very little time creating the characters, maybe at most 20 mins compared to the 2 hours I spent at the convention with 4 Players. I picked Witch (with the Viper move). Ken, the other Player, picked Mother (with the Kingmaker move). The Viper move lets me kill servants with my lies. The Kingmaker move lets the Mother gain a champion. We went with PCs who could manipulate NPCs.
We explored rooms with the expectation that every room was horrible and haunted by a previous bride, looking for evidence of her demise. We improvised pretty dark stories about how Bluebeard manipulated the brides to cause their deaths.
We decided Bluebeard's previous bride was our older sister. Originally plump, she got addicted to cocaine until she wasted away like a concentration camp victim. In her room were mirrors everywhere for the cocaine and also so she can see her reflection that wasn't thin enough for Bluebeard's liking. Depression combined with the rollercoaster ride of drugs doomed her. We encountered our sister's ghost and using the Viper move, put her spirit to rest (yeah, GM let us bend the rules for better story effect).
In a picture gallery of previous brides, we found a portrait of our sister. Her plump self stood in front of a mirror whose reflection was her inner thin. Also her thin version looked like us, since she was our sister. Portraits of other brides showed either subtly or overtly their fate. There was an animated statue that tried to paint our fate. It refused to let us move, "Stand still." Mother called the champion to rescue us, eventually I had to ridicule the statue and made it (a dark liquid inside the hollow statue) withdraw (I berated her artist abilities).
In the kitchen we found beautiful pastries and cakes, but mixed into the batter were herbs and drugs that caused diarrhea and vomiting. I got infected with bulimia before leaving the room.
We also found at the stables how our champion, Helen, was thrown by her horse and made into a hunchback. Another plot by Bluebeard to punish her for NOT ridding sidesaddle and losing her virginity to her saddle. Chastity belts and a punishing nun was in the barn. The Mother used the move Dirty Yourself with Violence. Took her scourge away from her and punished her with it.
In the finale, we decided to go into the Final Room. According to the rules, since we were Disloyal to Bluebeard, we we're only supposed to Present Evidence to the Town or Run Away and Start Anew, instead we wanted to Enter the Room. The GM let us do that. Bluebeard punished us by making an Aviary to cage us (one of our desires was freedom). Our long white hair and ribcage bones were woven into a bird nest. The birds, looking like doves, cooingly whisper about the fates of the other brides, when ignored, the doves transform into vultures and peck at recalcitrant brides.
So, with expectations set (there is no escape), creative Players and GM, Bluebeard's Bride becomes a very dark and psychosexual adult game.
As an aside, we wondered if we had more Players, we might have gotten a less sinister view of what a room really meant.
I came up with an alternative interpretation of the bedroom. Our sister was locked into her room by Bluebeard due to her drug addiction, in order to detox her, but with easy access to expensive furnishings, she was able to bribe servants to obtain drugs for her. Her death was self-inflicted.
Helen wasn't deflowered by her saddle, but by the stable hand. The stable hand put an irritant under her horse's saddle in order to cause her accident and death, so he wouldn't be found out and punished by Bluebeard.
Three of the four games that I played in were really, really good. Thus the Excellent in the blog post title. The most fun game was The Great Hog Purge of Marrow County. Goodcliffe brought out improv skills in all the Players and no duds, everyone was excellent. Ultima ratio was very interesting and Hilmar always delivers a great game. The pacing for Murder Most Foul! was just too slow for me; round robin through 6 Players just kills it for me.
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Slot 4, Friday 3/1, 7-11am (4 hrs)
Goodcliffe
System: Cthulhu Dark
GM: GrahamWalmsley
4 Players: SpoJino (Joseph playing Felix the Blacksmith), CollegeOfCthulhu (Andrew playing Otis the Miner), CaptainKudzu (Jeremy playing Bill the Baker), Morgan Hua playing Truth the Barber.
Characters will be created during or before play by the players.
On the stormy Cornish cliffs, William Trevellyn has created a model village. It's an idyll, where workers learn and grow in the beautiful stone buildings, all provided by the company. But why has one of the teachers disappeared? Why is everyone acting erratically? And why can't you sleep? This is a Cthulhu Dark mystery. Expect bleak horror and not much combat. You are all doomed. Spoiler: The village is not really an idyll.
Graham Walmsley designed and wrote Cthulhu Dark. Sometimes good GMs aren't good Players and vice versa. So, I wondered if a system designer is a good GM. Cthulhu Dark is a rules lite system, so the GM has to be good at improv. I was not disappointed. Graham was very good at tying together our individual backstories, created at the table, into a cohesive game. The first 1/2 hour of game was a Q&A session about our characters.
One interesting thing that Graham did was that there's always that guy that wants no NPC connections, the lone PC, but Graham insisted that there was at least a NPC that the PC would have left behind in a previous life. The Player had to invent one. Graham folded that into the game. Yes, there's no escape from your past. No lone wolves. A number of Players create lone wolf PCs because they don't want the GM to have a handle on the Player's actions, it insolates them and lets them act selfishly. It gives them no reason to act in accordance to social norms. Also there's the romanticism of Shane and The Man with No Name.
In Cthulhu Dark, "When you investigate, ... on a 6, you may glimpse beyond human knowledge (and probably make an Insanity roll)." Graham treated it as should glimpse. Also he told us we should make an Insanity roll whenever we feel weirded out, not when he tells us. I really liked this because in most games, Players will decide to just roll their one human die and their one occupational die, but never their Insanity die.
Graham was an excellent GM and the Players were excellent also. Lots of imaginative improv.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Goodcliffe is a god fearing, upright, tin mining town designed by Trevallyn. He's also bringing the railroad to the town. Sarah Trevellyn, daughter of William Trevallyn, is a common thread we all have.
We start off with creating our occupation and why we decided to be at this model village. After various questions about our characters by the GM, we were ready to start.
We start off in art class one of the few diversions in the town. Both Bill and I had disturbing visions after finishing our work. Bill painted a manger, but got carried away with adding various animals, including chickens. I did the crucifixion of Christ, but it was more of a hill with crucifixes on the hilltop. In my fugue, I saw my wife Patience crucified on the hill and tried to knock her cross down and she screamed at me. Then I snapped out of it. Bill saw Joseph's badly done drawing of a horse come to life and stare at him.
Mary, the Lady's maid for Sarah, told us she was suddenly fired. Sarah has also not been seen for a few days. The PCs investigate.
My wife faints when I show her the painting and I decide to bleed her for her health. Her bleeding gets out of hand and I finally stop her bleeding, getting blood everywhere, including my drawing.
Joseph found a short tunnel branching off from the train tunnel being built. Inside were strange glimmering stones. Sort of a mix of the Color out of Space and the Dreamlands.
PCs have bad dreams during the night. I dreamed of being on the crucifix hill again. Everyone being crucified were screaming. I took out paints and an easel and started painting them. In the morning I asked Joseph to look at my drawing and see if he could see a small man drawing on an easel. Joseph doesn't see anything.
Through hook and crook, we get into the Trevellyn mansion. We find Sarah locked in a small room, she's clutching a small bundle to her bosom. Andrew's backstory was that he abandoned his pregnant wife, Elizabeth, who Sarah reminds him of. He keeps conflating the two. Andrew climbed a tree and was looking through a grimy window at Sarah. Joseph and Bill free Sarah and find that she's cradling a baby-sized glimmering stone.
The PCs try to leave town with Sarah, but get stopped by the townsfolk and the miners. The miners insist that Sarah's stone must be returned to the mine. Sarah resists. I try to take the stone away from Sarah, but I get affected by it, so I take it and smash the local reverend's head in with it; yeah, I had issues with the reverend.
In the end, the stone is put back in the tunnel and sealed off. The visions dissipate.
My PC is lynched for the reverend's murder. Somewhere, my drawing, blowing in the wind, has a small drawing of a hangman game, a stick figure of someone hanging at the gallows, at the top of the crucifixion hill.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 5, Friday 3/1, 12-4pm (4 hrs, took less than 2 hrs as per game description)
Ultima ratio
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: hilmar_firestarter
3 Players: CrimsonShadow_08370 (Jon playing as Manfred Hermaan - Soldier), ben_nor (Ben playing as Werner Muller - Engineer), Morgan Hua (Luisa Grünfeld - Antique Dealer)
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
Germany, 1937. Adolf Hitler’s government is issuing new state bonds to fire up the arms industry. In Spain, the German bomber squadron “Legion Condor” levels the town of Guernica. Back home, millions of adolescents are flocking to the Nazi youth organizations, while jews are barred more and more from higher education. Thousands of convicted criminals are sent to concentration camps during the first mass roundups of people not deemed to be political opponents. In this highly charged atmosphere, three Germans need to find their way. They are two men and one woman. They don’t know each other yet, but soon their fates shall be bound up with each others’, when it falls to them to take one final decision of the last resort – “ultima ratio”. “Ultima ratio” was voted best German RPG expansion in 2022. It has been run at countless German conventions, often as a freeform game. It’s fast-paced, it puts constant pressure on its protagonists, and it’s mostly over after an hour or two.
Hilmar is an excellent GM. So, I look for his games. This was an interesting short scenario, quite enjoyable.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The 3 PCs start with amnesia. We wake up with no knowledge as to why we're in a strange room. There are strange walkways and a large black box. As we investigate various things, our memories return in flashes. I learn I had drawn the sigils on the black box. Werner learns that he had originally planted the bomb that he had just defused.
After some more clues and running around, I realize we're in an airship.
The black box is about to fail and release something horrible. After some fights and fleeing. An insane Werner dives out of the airship, falls only hundreds of feet to his death, the airship is moored. Luisa after a miraculous evasion of some Nazis gets to the dining car. The creature gets out and there's a huge explosion.
Camera pans out and it's the Hindenburg going up in flames.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 6, Friday 3/1, 4:30-8:30pm (4 hrs)
Murder Most Foul!
System: Swords of the Serpentine
GM: markk_1848 (Mark K)
6 Players: khneori (Klil playing Sarina - Warrior), SaccharineChokingHazard (Andiel - priest), hellogold (Jaxon H playing as Lucius - Mercenary), modoc31 (Keith playing as Torio - Secret Police), BinaryLife (Connolly B playing as Marius - Spirit of the Goddess), Morgan Hua playing as Hassia - Market-priest.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
Master Pietro Contrari is the city's greatest slink; he's solved one or two murders per month for the last 35 years. How has he always been in the right place at the right time? It doesn't matter; what matters is you have invitations to his 60th birthday party. I'm sure it will be a tasteful, mystery-free celebration . . . Swords of the Serpentine is a sword & sorcery game of daring heroism, sly politics, and bloody savagery, set in the fantasy city of Eversink, rife with skullduggery and death. The rules adapt the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system to create a fantasy RPG with a focus on high-action roleplaying and investigation inspired by the stories of Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchett, Robert E. Howard, and others.
I got into this game when a seat opened up. I wanted to play this game because it's Swords of the Serpentine, but I had reservations about a 6 player game and I was right. The GM took about 1/2 hour going over character sheets. Then when we arrived at the birthday party, he did a round robin between characters as to what they were doing in the party. The issue was that he put up very vague descriptions of various NPCs for us to interact with; none of the descriptions were very interesting. Though each NPC had some interesting info. It was almost like opening a random door to see what was behind it. At some point, the PCs spit up into two groups of 3. When the other group was doing their thing, I almost fell asleep. The plot was interesting, but I found the pacing too slow for me. That said, the game did take 4 hours with several short breaks, and didn't run over time.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The PCs are basically strangers sent to investigate why Pietro have solved so many murders. Something doesn't smell right.
We arrive at a giant ballroom with lots of NPCs. Each PC gets to interact with NPCs. Then there's a murder at the party. Pietro starts investigating. The PCs split up into two groups. One watching Pietro and investigating the murder. Another group snoops around investigating Pietro's home.
The PCs solve the murder at the same time Pietro does. The other group finds an old demon trap and proof that Pietro has been possessed.
4 Players (3, one no-show): karohemd (Ozzy playing Snake Toes), rocinante_on_focus (Robert playing Gadabout), Morgan Hua (playing Firebug)
Characters will be created during or before play by the players.
Something awful is going down in the old MacReady farm. The pigs have all gone bad, wrong, somehow, and the menfolk followed soon after. Someone said he heard one of their hogs speak like a man, saying the most awful things. Another that they saw the oldest MacReady girl on all fours, snuffling around in the forest muck like a truffle pig, hooting and hollering. Someone should do something, and as an honest, god-fearin', right minded man of action, I'm paying you dumb sons of bitches hard cash to go make all that nonsense go away. Frontier Scum is a rules light game of gonzo violence and strange people getting into deadly trouble.
Content Warnings: insects, parasitism, body horror, loss of agency, loss of self, cruelty and harm to animals and children, eye trauma, monstrous pregnancy, gore
Additional Safety Tools: Pre-game discussion, Lines and Veils
I had an incredible amount of fun in this game. A version of Mörk Borg in the Wild West. I used the first character the PC generator made because he was so on point for this scenario.
One of the coolest thing is that every PC has a hat. You can use your hat to take a bullet or attack and it might survive, so you can put it back on again. Your lucky hat can save your butt.
I'd definitely run this system for my own groups. I liked this more than Pirate Borg.
I let out my inner MurderHobo. GM said we were the most murderous of playgroups so far. Oh, yeah!
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Rev Ollie sets us on a task to murder the MacReady family. The sheriff was sent and either he didn't do his job or the MacReadys did him in. Once the family is taken care of, we're to go to another town and collect our pay from a lawyer. Plausible deniability for the Reverend. The MacReadys consisted of 10 family members, no babies or small children are at the farm. After our deed is done, another group will go to the farm and destroy all their pigs, about 200 of em.
We decide to go around the left side of their farmstead, sneaking in through the backwoods. We start seeing hogs that aren't right. At one point, a tapeworm as big as your forearm was dragging a real sickly looking pig into the brush. As we got a vantage point to have a looksee at the farm, these babies carrying knives and guns crawled out of the high weeds near the pond and headed towards us. Well, we opened up with our guns and blew them to high heaven. The farm stayed silent, but two of the MacReadys were just standing in the front yard, staring at the sun. We thought we spotted some movement in one of the cabins.
So, Snake Toes and I ride towards the back corner of the farm. Gadabout on watch. Two MacReadys jump us, there's a gun fight. The resulting dead MacReadys were not right. Strange worm-like things sprouting from them. I did find in the cabin a whole sack of money and bearer bonds. Yee Haw! But we made a promise to do a job. So we'll take that, but split it up later.
It had gotten dangerous, so we decided to set the main house on fire. Then the grain silo, which got the barn on fire too. Things came at us. In the end we got only 7 of the MacReadys and the Sheriff who was right strange also. That Sheriff darn near strangled me. Good thing Snake Toes got a good shot at his back.
In the pigsty was an abomination of a pig, birthing those baby things that we killed. We shot it to hell and set it on fire too. One of the MacReadys was there, not quite right in the head, but at least he wasn't full of worms. Apparently he was some sort of artist as he had painted the night landscape Gadabout found in the other cabin. Though we had all preferred that it was instead a portrait of a reclining naked lady that you generally see hanging in a saloon behind the bar. We shot him too.
Did I tell you that I had a fascination with flames? It lets me ponder what the fires of hell would be like. We watched the fires burn and waited until it cooled down to embers so we could dig through the ashes to look for the 3 bodies of the MacReadys we're missing.
There were no bodies, but we found a trap door. That gave us a start as we figured on an ambush, but under the burned out house was a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, there's some leftover dynamite, used to make the tunnel, and an entrance to a cave. We find another MacReady and he tells us the last two are inside some metal sphere. I thanked him and shot him in the back of the head. We decided we didn't want to go in there, so we started setting a slow fuse for the dynamite, but before we were done, this three faced Cherubim came out of the sphere. As we ran, it tried to smote us with a divine ray of light. Luckily the dynamite blew up, blocking the tunnel, but it still tried to come at us. Well, stuck the way it was, it was like shooting a fish in a barrel. We dragged the Cherubim's body out. I took his ray gun. In the tunnel was Snake Toes, knocked out by the explosion, but still alive.
Then we went into the sphere, looking for the last two MacReadys. We found them inside, bound to some infernal machine with their guts all hanging out. We put them out of their misery and set the insides of the place on fire.
We rode out and collected our pay from the lawyer. We got an honest dollar for an honest days work and as a bonus, the MacReadys' life savings, which they have no need for no more.
We did hear later that some giant worm-thing came out of the pond and ate some of the boys sent to slaughter the hogs. Well, ain't that something?
