Everway: Quest for the Queer Sphere

This is the blurb for the Everway quest I'll be running at virtual ConFABulous, on Sunday, November 7, 1-4 PM:

Everway-Silver Anniversary Edition RPG : "The Quest for the Queer Sphere" - You play Spherewalkers with the ability to use gates to walk between worlds in this multicultural, mythic, high fantasy RPG. Out now in a new edition via Kickstarter, Everway uses a Tarot-like Fortune Deck to determine the results of character actions. The focus is on narrative and story. Rules are easy to learn.

ConFABulous is a gaming convention for LGBTQ+ people and their friends. ConFABulous is 100% virtual this year. As well as RPGs, there will be a single track of high quality panels on topics of interest to gamers and fans of SF&F, horror, and comics. 

The entire convention schedule (panels and games) is here.

To play in the game, you will need to register for ConFABulous, here. Registration is free. Then, you will need to email confabulous.info@gmail.com and indicate that you want to play in this specific game session.

 The game will be played on the ConFABulous Discord server.

The convention schedule has also been published on the convention website. 

Although the panels are all on Saturday, November 6, there are enough cool RPGs that we decided to open up gaming for both November 6 and 7!

Everway At Gamehole Con 2021-Return to Fire's Wall

"Garden of Rest" by Em Niwa

I had a great time running Everway-Silver Anniversary Edition as part of the virtual game track at Gamehole Con 2021 last night. It was a great experience. The PCs had an adventure in the Realm of Fire's Wall, one that I explored for the first time earlier in the year with my home game group. While in my earlier campaign, the Realm of Fire's Wall was mainly a starting point to bring a new group of adventurers together, last night the PCs solved a fundamental mystery/problem in that realm. 

They did great with the adventure, and found that a bit of violence actually helped move things toward a solution. This felt like a bit of a surprise for the players, but each of them chose Spherewalkers who had histories of violence, so it kind of made sense. 

That being said, the violence was of the "last resort" type, in the face of an inflexible adversary who was doing real damage to the realm.

To prepare for the game, I created form-fillable versions of the sample characters from the Player's Book. Careful readers of the book will note that these are the signature characters and mostly complete sheets, except that the third image tied to the character's story is blank, as is the space under the image for players to create a brief narrative interpreting the image's relevance for the character's story.

It's great that the third picture and narrative detail are blank, as that creates a great way to pull the players into co-creation of their stories. So I made the third picture and narrative block form-fillable to support that ideation.

I provided about 20 PDF/PNG images in a Vision Card folder (including the one up above) for players to select an image that called to them. I collected these from various online art sources. Once everyone had an image, I had players introduce their characters and say something about why they selected that image, and how it related to the PC's story. Then we entered a Questions phase, in which players asked each other questions about the images and their significance for the characters, digging deeper.

This worked really well, the players were clearly engaged with the process and their characters, which set the stage for a great, character-driven game. This activity took about 45 minutes, but it was time well invested and enjoyable for everyone. 

I'll be using this technique again for convention scenarios.

Everway: The Great Return at Virtual Gamehole Con

 

Event signup for Gamehole Con, October 21-24 is now LIVE. You can sign up for my virtual Everway-Silver Anniversary Edition game right now.

To register to attend Gamehole Con, for either the virtual or in-person track or both, go here.

To sign up for my event, go here.

My game is Saturday, October 23, from 6-10 PM CT. 

The event description is here:

More than 25 years ago, Wizards published an RPG with three booklets in a white box. Everway reinvented fantasy gaming, taking things to a mythic level in which you play Spherewalkers exploring the Multiverse. Characters were created using Vision Cards, and a Tarot-like Fortune Deck was the tool for resolving character and NPC actions. At the center of everything is the great City of Everway, the city with the greatest number of gates to other Spheres in the Multiverse. Now back in a new Silver Anniversary edition, this is your chance to experience this unique and visionary RPG for yourself! Visit everwayan.blogspot.com for more about the game and the setting. Game will be run on the convention Discord server.

New Fortune Deck, New Realms

 

I'm working on two Everway convention scenarios for October (virtual, and the details on the Gamehole Con scenario will follow in tomorrow's post), so that means I am in the ideation stage and creating new Realms. I pulled four image cards from my collection to get a sense of the Realm, and things that might happen in it. 

The uppermost card on the left is from a Frank Frazetta art card deck and was never part of the Everway decks. It has great atmospherics, and the background details include rather succubus-like harpies, or harpy-like succubi. 

It's interesting that the male figure is completely naked except for his sword (no symbolism there at all, move along!). The female figures are naked as well. The male is crossing water. Is this a ritual activity, perhaps even a rebirth?

Key questions that this card provokes for me include: Who are the women? What wisdom or gift does the man seek from them? What will he sacrifice to gain what he needs? 

The next image, V10 by Janine Johnston, has an interesting question on the back asking: "What is the woman facing a different direction from the person leading the camel?"

I'm less concerned about the presence of the camel (the two final images are pretty Greek/Cretan, maybe) but what the question underscores is countermovement, maybe connected to the Fortune Card that I drew for this Realm's Fault: Law - Inverted: Treachery...

The next card, by Roger Raupp, is S1/71, a Spherewalker Source Card. It shows two wrestling men. Perhaps there is a connection between these two men and the first card? What is that relationship?

The final card, V24 by Roger Raupp, shows a man trapped in a labyrinth. A robed figure with a staff and a bull's skull is also in the labyrinth. A vulture looks down at the trapped man, patiently awaiting its meal. The card asks: "Who put this man in the labyrinth and why?"

I drew a Virtue, Fault, and Fate for the Realm as well. You can see the difference in size and detail between the original Fortune Deck cards and their counterparts in the Deluxe Fortune Deck! 

Each Deluxe card is marked with a number on the upper left, denoting that the card is part of Tier 4 of the Fortune Deck (Tier 4 is Seasons). This is new, and I like seeing how the cards relate to each other. On the upper right (admittedly hard to see on this card) is the Roman numeral X, which is the number assigned to the card in the Fortune Deck. So if you want to store your deck with the cards in numerical sequence, progressing from highest to lowest Tier of the Walker's Pyramid, you can!

Along the left side of the card are also icons representing what elements this card is tied to, as well as the astrological signs relevant to the card. This again makes relationships between elements of the Fortune Deck more explicit. The zodiac signs will also be useful when adjudicating Star River Magic.

So the Virtue is Winter: Maturity.  I think this means that the Realm is an old one, previously stable and well-established. Since the element is water, that reinforces the Greek/Cretan connection for me a bit. Islands and sea trade are important here. The camel headed in the opposite direction of the woman in V10 may really be a ship.

Since the Realm's Virtue is tied to the element of Water and that Virtue card signifies maturity, the Realm's name is Eldersea. 

With respect to the other Fortune Cards, as noted above we have Law - Inverted: Treachery as the Realm's Fault, and Trickery - Deceit vs. Subterfuge Revealed as the Realm's Fate. 

Its Fault is tied to the elements of Air and Earth, and its Fate is tied to the elements of Air and Fire. Perhaps all this treachery and deceit is due to a conspiracy linked to those three elements. It is also noteworthy that the Fault and Fate cards represent deities - a god of knowledge, law, and magic, and a trickster god.

Interesting times are ahead for Eversea.

Details on Gamehole Con Virtual Everway Game

My Everway-Silver Anniversary Edition game has posted for Gamehole Con's virtual game track. The link to the event description is here. The game is slotted for Saturday, October 23, from 6-10 PM. 

I had a great time running virtual RPGs at Gamehole Con last year, and am really looking forward to it this year. Anyone, anywhere can register to play. The admission fee for the virtual con is $20, which is very reasonable considering the scale, care, and level of organization behind this convention. 

Go here to register for the convention; registration is open now! Sign up for events starts on Sept. 1 (Wednesday)! Events fill-up fast so if you want in, sign up as soon as you can!

The scenario is called "Everway: The Great Return". 

Here is the event blurb:

More than 25 years ago, Wizards published an RPG with three booklets in a white box. Everway reinvented fantasy gaming, taking things to a mythic level in which you play Spherewalkers exploring the Multiverse. Characters were created using Vision Cards, and a Tarot-like Fortune Deck was the tool for resolving character and NPC actions. At the center of everything is the great City of Everway, the city with the greatest number of gates to other Spheres in the Multiverse. Now back in a new Silver Anniversary edition, this is your chance to experience this unique and visionary RPG for yourself! Visit everwayan.blogspot.com for more about the game and the setting.

Here's a hit about what you might encounter in this scenario:

This fall, I will have at least one other virtual Everway game at a convention: ConFABulous. This Minneapolis convention was scheduled to be in-person, but due to the Delta variant, we have pivoted to running a virtual convention. We will be using a different date than the one published for the in-person convention. Date and scheduling information will be available soon, and I will share that here. 

Deluxe Fortune Deck

Yesterday, my Deluxe Fortune Deck arrived for Everway Silver Anniversary Edition. I'll actually open the box a bit later, but for today I am sharing the form factor and appearance of the box. The cards themselves are probably about twice as large as the original Fortune Deck cards. They will be a lot easier to see around the game table, and MUCH easier to share in an online game, by holding the card up to the camera. Just imagine how great they must look out of the box!

The deck box is very similar in size to the box for a standard Tarot deck. The Fortune Deck works in analogous ways to a Tarot deck, including: 

• Quick one-card draws for fast, decisive resolutions in-game;
• Serial one-card draws for blow-by-blow resolutions in an extended conflict;
• Divinatory spreads to determine particularly complex in-game outcomes;
• Generative spreads to create new realms or scenarios 
• Exploratory spreads to discover the deep-structures and conflicts affecting particular realms, spheres or spherepaths; and
• Personal spreads, used out-of-game for personal divination, reflection, and meditation

The box will be easier to open, due to the side notches. I like the icon of the Walker's Pyramid. The lettering reminds me of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, so it evokes other settings that I have loved for decades. The box needs to be wider than the original Fortune Deck would have required because it contains more than the original 36 Fortune Deck cards: there is also a 41 card Season Deck within the box. Divided into four suits, these cards expand on the Fortune Deck adding the dimension of time and additional setting flavor - a suitable Minor Arcana for the 36 "majors."

I might add that the box has a very nice matte finish.

Over the next week we'll unbox the box (as it were) and begin to explore things we can do with this new set of cards.

 

#StayAtHome: "Outlaws of the Marsh, Vol. 3"

 

We're now past page 1,603 in this Chinese epic martial novel. In Vol. 3 of Outlaws of the Marsh, the scope of the action broadens significantly, from the individual and small scale melee clashes of Volumes 1 and 2, to predominantly large scale battles involving fortified villages, towns, and cities. Similarly, the targets of the outlaws' covert operations also shift toward larger targets, including the Eastern Capital of Kaifeng.

It took me slightly longer to read this volume (close to 40 days), as I had a few other books I was reading at the same time. The story continues to engage and entertain however.

A few things stand out in this volume:

• Chivalrous values continue to trump realpolitik: when extremely competent enemy commanders (officials of the Chinese state) surrender, their respectful treatment by Song Jiang, the supreme chieftain of the outlaws, often compels them to join the outlaws' cause. Virtue wins out.
• Song Jiang has a propensity to offer the supreme role to conquered commanders who join the outlaws. He does this repeatedly. Eventually, his veteran chieftains get really irritated by this, and threaten to quit if Song Jiang doesn't cease and desist from trying to yield the supreme role to others. [Incidentally, if I were to run my own martial arts campaign based on Outlaws, which I am tempted to do, I might begin it with an "Empty Fortress" scenario, in which the outlaw chieftains all quit, and everyone leaves in frustration with Song Jiang. It is up to the PCs to rebuild the grand rebel alliance, or do something new and different.]
• The outlaws' opposition are an interesting bunch and include a commander who is a fire specialist, another who is a water specialist, another who is a master of the devastating (and perhaps legendary and impractical) chained cavalry tactic, as well as a master of the twin iron rod combat technique, and yet another who is an expert at throwing stones (!). [I actually checked my copy of Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades to see if that RPG has a stone throwing martial arts technique, but it doesn't. We'll probably be eventually creating one.]
• The number of female combatants increases from two to three, as Sun Erniang, the Witch, joins Hu Sanniang, Ten Feet of Steel, and Mistress Gu, the Tigress. There is at least one battle in which they team up as a unit, and Mistress Gu also takes part in covert action inside a city under siege by the outlaws.
• Chapter 71 comes very late in the volume (and around p. 1500 in the novel), but feels very much like a formalization of everything that has happened previously. After a major victory, Song Jiang convenes his chieftains for a supernatural ritual in their fortress on Mt. Liang, formalizing membership and governance among the outlaw chieftains, and assigning military and other duties to the heroes. The outlaws essentially instantiate a rebel government in a liberated zone. The narration lists the 36 stars of the Heavenly Spirts and 72 stars of the Earthly Fiends, which roughly sorts the heroes by status. During the ritual, the actual "list" falls from heaven inscribed on a stone, so the heroes and their government are divinely ordained to restore dignity, order, and justice to the imperial government. 

We'll end with a quote from Chapter 72, when Song Jiang and close associates go undercover to see the lantern festival in the Eastern Capital (Kaifeng). They visit the home of one of the Emperor's favorite concubines. She serves our heroes tea, and the narrative describes the tea leaves as: 

"finer than bird's tongues, [and] the brew was as fragrant as dragon's saliva."