Thursday, September 8, 2011

Vacation in Vancouver

All this talk of NC-17 and R rated blogs has reminded me of one of the few purely adult games I have played.

While all my games can be considered to have "Adult themes", after all the main characters of "The Dragon and the Phoenix" and "Season of the Witch" were two lesbians, I generally try to run a game that is enjoyable on many levels.  So my Tara player could stand up against the patriarchy and fight for her right to love another woman and my Robert character could concentrate on killing monsters.

Ghosts of Albion: Obsession  deals with a serial rapists/killer that is trying to find a perfect match for the woman he really desires but can't have.  So yeah, not all my games are kid-friendly.

But lately I have been wanting to get back to another game I was playing online using WitchCraft.  The game was called "Vacation in Vancouver" and the hook was that members of Vancouver's supernatural community were going missing.  Long story short there was this entire underground where vampyres, demons and witches were getting together and engaging in all sorts of lewd sexual acts in exchange for essence.  After a while even open acts of magic were considered acceptable.
The game though was not really about sex or even depravity (there was a lot of sexual slavery going on and it was hard to know who was using who), but about addiction and loosing yourself.
A couple of characters had to be literally pulled back from the edge.

As a role-playing experience it was intense.  There was not much combat to be honest.  Part of that was out of choice (the characters were investigators, not thugs) and part out of necessity (combats online can be dull, even in Unisystem).

The game ended like so many others, not with a big finale, but a gradual dying off.
The mystery of where all the supernaturals were going was solved, but not the one of the demonic sex trafficking. The demons never actually killed anyone, in fact they seemed to be concerned for the wellfare of the Gifted and Lesser Gifted in their "care".  And there were plenty of volunteers for the demons too since the exchange of Essence was pleasurable for both (but only humans can 'regenerate' Essence).

I'd like to revisit that world someday.  But the alchemy of the players and the right situations is gone.  I *know* for a fact that if I went in with a another group it would be of the "kill demons and ask questions later" sort.

It was one of those rare RPG moments were the bad guys might have won and there was nothing the PCs/Cast could do about it.  While the game was fun and provided some of the best pure Horror roleplaying I have run in a long time, I am just not sure how it could even be revisited.

I guess there is the feeling of it not being finished and too many questions left unanswered. The big questions of course were who was in charge of the trafficking and if it could even be stopped, how?  And then there was "Kim". That was the character's name.  She willing sold herself to a demon for the pleasure it provided. I wonder what happened to her.

So. I guess I don't kill characters, but having their minds tore apart by Essence overload and sold into deviant sexual slavery for a bunch of demons is not exactly beyond me.

*Picture unrealted. I thought it looked cool.

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