Sessions 31 and 32 - A Play for Today
WW asked to run us through a scenario she made, and since I was feeling pretty bad (I've since gotten better) I saw it as a much welcome respite.
A brief recap would be that a mutual friend of the characters, Baldosto, enlisted them for help setting up a play about the life and times of a local anchorite. We eventually found out that the local knight made a deal with the Devil to get her soul to come back so he can talk to her one last time, and then we left him to be dragged to hell because he had made a bad deal.
The scenario featured a lot of forced hangouts with other NPCs, which is something I always find fun because it drives up the juice of drama and conflict. I played as Corina, a straightforward crybaby with little regard for chivalry who was in it chiefly for the love of the game.
My main thought regarding this scenario is that, with Hearts Aglow, I really do prefer the social stuff rather than the adventure stuff. I LIKE the adventure stuff, but I think it fits best for a different project - specifically for Shining Sword, a hexcrawl I've been working on where I Frankenstein together Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Wolves Upon the Coast, Hârn, and my favourite bits of Glorantha in a... well, in a Glorantha that feels more "mine".
I've also been reading Mansfield Park after 5 months of pretty much all adventure (like The Swords of Lankhmar and The Aeneid) or adventure-adjacent books (like the Gormenghast trilogy), and it's been giving me more confidence regarding just dropping the players in a farcical situation and playing up the drama as much as possible.
(I wrote up until here before I read WW's retrospective, but I agree with all of it and love her as a friend very much too.)
I have this weird resistance towards just quietly dropping the adventuresome part of the campaign. It's probably because, for pacing issues, it is fun to actually get to use your skills here and there and to get things which make a difference in the social game, such as Alessa getting her heart stolen and things of that sort, and the players enjoy it. Ultimately though, due to the lack of planning autonomy I end up having the same issue I had with my Delta Green campaign, which is that it all feels too episodic. Periodically they venture out, make a gesture towards interacting with that part of the world, and then come back. That's not very fun.
I think part of the reason is that I also lack some confidence in the social world of the campaign, because I've mishmashed things so carelessly that a lot of the things which could be interesting stakes... aren't. Nevertheless, societal pressures and roles aren't the only thing that make up drama, so I've been thinking of doubling down on that instead. Being more proactive about throwing characters at the players, being less unwilling to simply repeat events (such as another tournament), doing that should make the wane of Hearts Aglow more fun for me to prepare and feel a bit less like showing up to a test you didn't study for.
