Bluestockings: A Thousand Faces

Character: Fawn, the Midwife of Barleytown Game: Fall of Magic Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Breath of Life by Florence and the Machine Quote: "Human beings are not born once and for all the day their mothers give birth to them, but life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves." Yes. I'm playing more Fall of Magic. Stop asking. Two of my friends hadn't play FoM. So naturally I offered to facilitate a game for them. But I had played almost all the roles available. We had five players, a hefty group, and I let everyone else choose first. So that when Barleytown was the only option left, I had already played a Hero and a Swine-Herd (best one btw). So it was midwife. But I didn't want Fawn to be a traditional maternal guiding midwife. I'm a doula, so in real life I deal with midwives a fair bit. Instead I wanted someone who was somewhat masculine and intimidating, even though the rest of the party are all men. I didn't want the only

Character: Erusiniel Larentansel Game : Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Episodes: 0 Theme song: Belly of the Beast by Gazette Twin Quote:  "Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back." So a long time ago I played in a one-episode D&D game, and I played an elf warlock pirate who hated mages and wanted to fuck the world if it meant she got her cure. When one of my besties was going to start running 5th ed, I jumped at the chance to play that elf again. I delighted in a rum-drunk, cursing-like-a-sailor, grumbling elf who hated most things, loved being flirtatious, and got angry for no reason. She wasn't going to be stoic at all. She was going to be all the emotions, anger, and riotous joy that elves never were. Eire was an elf from a shit village called Stonewall who got captured by some mages who imbued her with a great old thing and thus turned her into a warlock. She woke up,

Character : Cara Harrt Game: Urban Shadows Episodes: 1 Theme Song : Pack of Nobodies by Emily Wells Quote: "Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like." When I got the opportunity to play an online game of Urban Shadows with an all star cast, I jumped at it. When asked what I would play, I was somewhere between Wolf and Oracle. I finally settled on oracle, after playing around with the idea of being a religious oracle loosely inspired by the Warrens of the 70's. In the 70's, there were a lot more paranormal hunters and their exploits were talked about in news papers. It was treated almost like a real phenomenon. I watched a few docs on people who claimed to have grown up in haunted houses the Warrens helped cleanse. While I was watching this doc, one of the women in it mentioned how much PTSD her mother had from the haunting and how she never really recover

Character: Caspian, the Hero of Barleytown Game: Fall of Magic Episodes: 2 Theme Song: Drink the Water by Justin Cross Keywords: Roguish, Compassionate, Rebellious I've never played a Caspian before. Nor a hero of Barely Town. And so I made Caspian, a brash young man who was charming, sincere, and a bit of as schemer for the greater good. Barley Town is generally a congenial place every time I play Fall of Magic. So I tried to set up a different atmosphere than any other time I had played. In Caspian's view, the Barley Lord was a tyrant who was oppressing the people. I didn't have much sketched out for this, but I knew Barleytown would have hanging people by the gates, an angry and oppressive Barely Lord, and people afraid to whisper of the rebellion that had been started, I also knew that Caspian had gone with the Magus to try to get help for Barelytown. Caspian was a determined man who was a nobody up until recently, when he chose to stand up to the Barely Lor

Character: River, fugitive of Stormguard Game: Fall of Magic Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Eivør - Trøllabundin Keywords: Cautious, fierce, cunning Recently I started ANOTHER Fall of Magic game, and in this one, it's a one on one game. I've done this before, but this will be the first time I finish it. I love one on one games because you really get to explore each little area a lot more with your characters. I initially was going to make another Ellamura, but in the end, ended up with the name River once more. I don't know why. I like the name River because of the connotation to flowing and change and movement. When you have a Fall of Magic character, you have something in your hands that's about to dramatically change. I wondered what a fugitive from Stormguard would be like. I knew Stormguard had a Stormqueen. And I will say, one of the neat things about playing the game over again is that you know there are certain prompts and that let's you have a character

Character: Madison aka Maddi Game: The Forgotten Episodes: 1 Theme Song: The Classics by Owl and Mouse Keywords: Optimistic, emotional, hopeful When I was at the cottage, we decided to use the freezing cold bunkie (One little one-room cottage that had a bunk bed in it and that's it) to play the Forgotten, a game about living in a war torn city. It was freezing. It was so cold. We all had blankets. And one light. Did I mention it was cold? We pulled our characters and our relationships randomly. I was playing an art student who was in love with a lawyer (who was partner at his firm, dude wasn't young) and the daughter of a smuggler. She worked at a local art store to pay her way through art school and was mostly into sculpture. Maddi wanted to work with her hands, and to make beautiful things for the world. That was, until the war broke out. It had been two years of living with her mom, her cousin, her potential brother in law, and her boyfriend. Two. Years. She had b

Character: Ellamura, Scholar of Istallia Game: Fall of Magic Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Blood I Bled by The Staves Keywords: Impatient, Skilled, Antisocial Magic is dying. There are so many magical creatures in the world, and they too, are dying. They draw their last breaths and no one bears witness. They seek refuge in the few small magical places left in the world. They hide. They need protection and safety. Ellamura is a scholar from the prestigious school in Istallia. She has no magic of her own, but is a kind of zoologist of magical creatures. Despite appearing as a proper scholar, she's the first to get her hands dirty, to know how to camp, and to seek out magic nearby. She travels with a swineherd, a giant, and a fox. None of them are especially talented or useful. Of all of them, Ella seems to be the only one who understands what it means that magic will die. The others, lost in their own daydreams of life and death, scare her. She knows magic will die and there is

Character: Gwyneira, Regent of the Stormsworn Game: Before the Storm Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Black Sea by Natasha Blume Keywords: Charismatic, Coquette, Unyielding A long time ago, some vain prophet declared that the Stormsworn would come across the land to conquer Iriya and Andar. So determined were the Iriyans that fate and destiny be true that they saw a conqueror in a potential friend, and war broke out. The Stormsworn, with their preternatural grace and ephemeral, cloud-like bodies, conquered Andar without a struggle. Then they came for Iriya. As it had been predicted, so it would be. The ardent love of Destiny, and it's religious and cultural importance, was the focus of our game of Before the Storm. We had fate weavers, people who spun to tell the story of fate, and who could manipulate fate (secretly) with their weaving. All of the characters in our game were from Ardan or Iriya. Except my character. My character was a captured royal from the Stormsworn. She was b

Character: Mother Asha Game: Apocalypse World 2nd Ed Episodes: 2 Theme Song: Forty One Ways by Azam Ali Keywords: Protective, Peaceful, Clever "My treasures do not chink or glitter. They gleam in the sun and neigh in the night." "Truth may walk through the world unarmed." So we began a new AW campaign, using the new version, and we choose a desert setting. We were in a toss up between unending snow and ice, and the unending sands and dust of the desert. I was fine with either, but as soon as I heard we were doing desert, I imagined a nomadic people who wandered from location to location, and were farmers or herders. I wanted a people who weren't guns and motorcycles. I wanted a simple people who were deadly and fierce, if you dared cross them. I created Mother Asha, a hardholder. Her hold? The Tent:   "The Tent arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.  The Tent expands the horizon wi

Character: Nikola Banas Game: Les Petites Choses Oubliees Episodes: 1 Theme Song: All The Things Lost by MS MR Keywords: Hard Working, Resilient, Sincere Continuing the field trip through sad RPG land, Rach and I also played a game about a young couple who fell in love, broke up, and then got their memories of each other removed, a la The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This young couple we knew were two women, who had an economic difference, and had met at St Lawrence Market in Toronto as my character worked at her family's butcher stand despite going to school for business. Nikki was a first generation Polish Canadian who came to Canada when she was seven. Her father came first, and she followed, and went to school for business in Toronto because her parents expected her to do big things. She had several siblings but was the eldest, by a number of years, and she called her grandmother in Poland every week. I wanted to make a character who was entrenched in family

Character: Lavender Game: Lost in the Rain Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Dolphin by Poe Keywords: Quiet, delinquent, forgotten Recently I decided to facilitate a game of Lost in the Rain, which is a game about lost children getting eaten by monsters in the rain. And not just any type of monster, but the kind that calls your name, pretends to be loving adults, or manifests in your fellow children by hunger or meanness or fear. They're monsters designed to find and kill and eat children. The doesn't have one GM, but rather, it has one active player while everyone else is GMing. So everyone makes a character. I made Lavender, a poor girl whose family was a lot of people, from her parents to her many siblings to aunts and uncles and cousins... and they all lived in the same house. It was easy for her to disappear because there were just so many people no one noticed when one of them went missing. Her fear? Wolves. I chose this because it was my fear when I was little. Too man

Character: Alexa Atreus "Keres" Game: The Sprawl Episodes: 2 Theme Song: Waiting to be Born by Rotersand Keywords: Dedicated, careful, plotting Our final episode of the Sprawl happened awhile ago, where we finished an arc for Meno and Keres and decided that what we're trying to do with the Sprawl isn't what the Sprawl was made for. Which is too bad. The Sprawl touches on some serious big cyberpunk themes, but the heist layout isn't quite what we were going for. We may pick them up later, when we have more time, but for now this'll be the last bit about Keres for awhile. I'm sad I didn't get to play her more. Compared to Robin, she's a pretty stable, reliable, and focused on her goal. Given she's one of the carnations of Robin-Dragon, it was my goal to imagine what she would be like without the trauma of Robin's life. A woman who lived in a dark world but found her place within it. Who loved a good time, was a bit of a junkie, died

Character: Sam Game: 183 Days Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Afraid of the Dark by Phildel Keywords: Afraid, Resigned, Enamoured Wanna be depressed? Play 183 Days. There are two characters, Sam and Dylan. I decided I would play Sam. There are three cards that fully define Sam. Sam was born a psychic. She could see the future. She could see her parents die in a plane crash when she was nine. She did everything to stop them from going. They still went. And they died. Sam knows she's going to meet Dylan. They're going to fall in love and they're going to break up. But those will be the happiest days of her life. So it's worth it. Because it's been a long time since she's felt loved. In the game, both Sam and Dylan are whatever gender you want them to be. I chose to be a Sam who wasn't really sure about her gender, but was kind of cis-by-default because she hadn't really explored the spectrum of gender. She lived a lot inside her head, except with her f

Character: River, Heir of Stormguard Game: Fall of Magic Episodes: 1 The me Song:  Eivør - Í Tokuni Keywords: Indomitable, commanding, straightforward A friend and I decided to play two player Fall of Magic and amped the metal aspect of it to eleven. I made a character type I hadn't played yet in Fall of Magic, which was the warrior, the straight forward sword-bearing fighter who sought to follow and not lead, and yet was a leader of her people. So I made River, a storm of a woman who had fled her own country because she did not want to usurp her mother even though her mother had gone quite mad, and only women can rule in Stormguard. So River abandoned her twin brother to mind their mother and went on a quest instead to help the Magus go to Umbra. Her purpose feels unfulfilled. She's avoiding the noose of royalty and would rather journey and see the world than take on the mantle of Queen. In FoM, you're discovering the character as you go. I had no idea what Riv

Character: Poe Stackhouse Game: Monsterhearts 2 Episodes: 3 Theme Song: Mad World by Jasmine Thompson Keywords: Out of Control, Spiralling, Lost We finally had an episode with all of the characters together and it exploded magnificently. Just as I had predicted though, Poe ended up being the most human of all the characters, despite there being a mortal present. She spent most of the episode just doing her normal things and then getting caught up in the horrible truths of everyone else. Now keep in mind, Poe was the one who gave out free acid at a party so she could steal something without letting people see her do it. I had thought this would explode by causing a meat grinder effect at the old mall, but all it did was cause one hell of a party. Poe had promised she would also find out some information about the future Queen of the high school, but totally forgot about it and failed her demon that way. He did want her to steal a wallet out of the glove compartment of an old

Character: Miranda Leigh Daily Game: Monsterhearts 2 Episodes: 2 Theme Song: Porcelain by Rachel Taylor Keywords: Hopeless, needy, abandoned Burnt out as I am and have been, I decided to still go to Monsterhearts with a new group in TAG. Miranda is a mortal, and easy for me to play because it's easy to play mortals. But I did discover some new things about her as I played her. While Miranda defines herself mostly by what she does for other people, she conflates this very easily to mean love. Even if she doesn't actually love someone. Her infatuation with Flinch, the werewolf (she doesn't know he's a werewolf and neither does he), mostly comes from a need to keep him safe and to help him escape his shitty situation. To her, that need to help him, to do all she can to help him, must mean love. Just like when she was tutoring Tucker and getting him to pass his courses, she genuinely wanted him to do good, and so she thought that was love. And then it wasn't

Character : Gabriela Silva Game:  Chill 3rd Edition Episodes:  1 Theme Song: Lucifernandis by Boogarins Keywords: Stubborn, reactive, commanding I got to play one game at Breakout, and I had decided it would be Chill. Chill is a game I continue to support but have never played. I wanted to see this horror baby in action, and see how Matt ran it, but mostly I choose Chill because I wanted play a game with him. I have all the bits to Chill. Dice, tokens, books, etc. I love games that have societies, and Chill has SAVE. In this game, we got to play members of SAVE. I chose Gabriela Silva, partly because I was at a table full of men, and partly because she was a cop, and I didn't want to play an emotionally laboured woman. In her little write up, Gabriela is described as a second generation SAVE member, whose mother was a member and has since gone missing, so Gabriela and her girlfriend joined SAVE to try to find her mum. Before then, she was a cop in her hometown in Brazil

Character: Miranda Leigh Daily Game: Monsterhearts 2 Episode: 1 Theme Song: Fickle Game by Amber Run Keywords: Outgoing, optimistic, haunted When I sat down to play Monsterhearts, my initial goal was to play a young Jason Momoa as the Queen and function as a hot queen instead of a cold one. Of course, when I sat down, I sat down with a lot of powerhouses. The werewolf, the ghoul, the vampire, and the witch. I didn't know the group playing, but I knew based on the law of averages, if I played a manipulative dude queen, I'd be dead before episode 2. So I defaulted to my comfy space and made a mortal named Miranda. I wanted her to be different than my other mortal, who was a really broken individual coming in. That being said, I knew my high functioning, popular, nice girl needed to have a reason she was vulnerable and why the darkness would make her feel beautiful. We started with the established relationship of Miranda being in love with the werewolf, Flinch. That wa

Character: Alexa Atreus the Keres Game: The Sprawl Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Still Life by Covenant Keywords: Ideological, tender, contemplative I honestly never thought I'd be playing a heist focused game. Cyberpunk is a genre I love and hate. But I adore Hamish and I like his design ideas, so when Rach was like "let's play the Sprawl!" I was in. I had heard interesting things about it. Now, that being said, we are playing in a cyberpunk future of Toronto, not the USA. Thus, the culture around technology and such was going to be different, and we all wanted to bring some Canadiana to the genre in how we made our characters. When I looked at Canadian culture, specifically Toronto culture, I wanted to explore the idea of consensual death and assisted suicide. What did death look like in the future, and with the collapsing of industries into one-stop shops, how did that impact death? So I made an agency that specializes in death and dying. They handle the legal