Academy Playtest Report 2

Academy Playtest Report 2

THE GHOST HIVE

Hey everyone! I got to run another session of Academy, my magical schoolkids hack. I’m going to do a few more of these regularly and then just do it every once in a while so as not to overwhelm you guys.

The Circle spent their first week recovering from their first brush with the Unknown. They studied, exercised, made friends, and did research in order to prepare themselves for their next mission. Importantly, Flag accidentally let his friend Phoenix into the Circle, which no one was very excited about–at first.

That Friday, October 13th, the group decided to lure Mark Esperanza, their ghost-possessed lead actor off-campus with the promise of weed and tickets to a J.J. Abrams movie adaptation of Hamlet that thankfully only exists in this fictional universe. After a successful engagement roll for this Parley mission, Mark agreed to come along. As the film progressed Mark got more and more worked up, mouthing Hamlet’s lines, whispering “THE GHOST HIVE”, and eventually standing up and proclaiming he would be Hamlet, for real, and then walking out.

The Circle followed Mark into the parking lot, where he began to talk about being Mark and feeling things like fear and excitement for the first time in a long time. Eventually, this confrontation escalated until Phoenix punched Mark, driving a shimmery white figure out of his body, which whispered “Here comes…THE GHOST HIVE.”

Arthur had a flashback of stealing holy water from his church, which he then tried (unsuccessfully) to splash the ghost with. Ghostly reinforcements showed up, but Ben calmed them down until Arthur used his new magical power to tear the ghost out of Mark’s soul. A slow-speed car chase followed, where THE GHOST HIVE pursued a pickup truck full of underage drivers through the city. Holly took the wheel, and the team finger-gunned magic back at the ghosts while the Ghostbusters theme blared on the radio. The Circle finally escaped after taking a handful of Devil’s Bargains, Danny maxing out on Stress and taking a Strike, and Mark suffering level 3 Harm to his soul.

Several minutes later, he woke up in the back of their pickup truck, bleeding from his mouth and nose with no memory of the past hour.

Needless to say, this mission generated the Circle a lot of Trouble.

Over the next week, as Danny recovered from his Strike, Holly watched The Princess Bride with her friends, Phoenix went to a party with their volleyball team, Arthur and Ben were ambushed by a lone member of THE GHOST HIVE, Flag’s car broke down, and Ben smartly used his Haunt Talent on THE GHOST HIVE to learn they had been recently driven away from their home cemetery.

Will they drive off THE GHOST HIVE before Hamlet‘s first showing on October 31st? They’ve only got about a week left!

I was very, very pleased with this session. It was smooth and snappy, downtime worked better than I expected, and everyone was always engaged. I really underestimated the importance of Devil’s Bargains in Forged in the Dark games–they really helped everyone participate in the fiction. If anyone has any suggestions for new names for Devil’s Bargains in Academy, I’d love to hear them (someone suggested Extra Credit once). I’m really excited and hopeful for next week!