Session 4 of #theHulls

Session 4 of #theHulls

In contrast with the drawn out, stressful info gathering last session, the score was neat and quick.

Rat (the Lurk) was the bait the unquiet dead Mr Posselthwaite into crossing Brightstone bridge. Then Talon (the Hound) was in position on top of building and, when the ghost finally appeared for a final taunt, dispatched the spirit with a single electro plasmic-charged bullet.

The efficiency of this was definitely in part to the particular skills of the Hound, the canny rolling of the Hound’s player, and a unfamiliarity on my part with how to handle ghosts fictionally and mechanically. Nevertheless, this efficiency was helpful to balance out some of the misgivings from last session, that it was all swings and roundabouts and that the game wasn’t death spiralling away from the big picture—a fear raised because of the feeling the crew was beginning to deal with entanglements within entanglements.

The rule I had missed applying was Stress & the Supernatural (p7):

A close encounter with a spirit or demon is a harrowing experience. By default, the standard effect is to either paralyze a person with fear or panic them into fleeing from its presence. A PC can choose to roll to resist the effect. Characters with lots of exposure to spirits, such as Whispers, Rail Jacks, and occult weirdos become less susceptible and only face fear or panic from exceptionally powerful entities.

This slip had two immediate effects. One, the Hound wasn’t really sure why they had bothered hiring a Whisper; he was the one with the electroplasmic bullets afterall. Two, Rat conversed with the ghost and Talon aimed and shot the ghost, and neither suffered any stress or risk of freezing/fleeing. We’ll definitely be applying that rule in future though.

But we’ve come up with a fictionally satisfying explanation for the rules mishap. How it went down last session is how the Hulls retell it, not how it really went down. The experience was actually nightmarish, so much so the crew only remember fragments, their minds painting over the harrowing details to make themselves look better, and feel better too. Of course, Vixen the NPC Whisper knows the truth of the matter, but it’s unlikely the crew want to hear it.