[Liminality] Game 0.1 : the players and the pitch

The players :

Even though I had been GM'ing for years prior to buying and reading Ryuutama, I must admit I was a little afraid of it at first. As a GM, my go to genre had always been story heavy dark fantasy games. I ran a lot of D&D, Pathfinder, Shadow of Esteren, World of Darkness and Shadow of the Demon Lord games in the past. I always gravitated around dark adult serious themes and never touched more light-hearted or soft stuff. So for me, Ryuutama was uncharted territory, an untamed beast I barely understood... Essentially, it was as far away from my normal style as it could be. And the same goes for my usual players. Luckily for me, I knew just the right people who would be interested in it.

I asked 2 couples who I knew would were already into TRPG's and who would be interested in playing something that was often compared to Hayao Miyazaki's work. Manuel et Mikael were both already into Trpg's and anime fans while both of their girlfriends were not really into these type of games but are huge Studio Ghibli fans so it was kind of the perfect game for them to get into the hobby. Convincing them into playing was actually so easy I was quite surprised of their interest at the time. Luckily for me, they are all artsy people, something that will then come on handy during the campaign.

The pitch :

Through the years, my abilities as a game master changed a lot. Initially, I was your usual railroading storyteller doing my best to force players into specific situations all the time. I learned from my mistakes and corrected most of my wrongdoings. Nowadays, I am more versatile. I can go from running a pure sandbox to doing some half-and-half stuff or sometime coming back to controlled storytelling. It always depends on the players, what they are looking for and my ideas for this campaign.

For Ryuutama I had this idea of controlled storytelling where I would pretty much force a Main Quest for the players and give them free reign as of what they could do while on their Journey, as long as they we’re slowly pushing toward the objective. Here’s my pitch, translated as best as I could:

• ''Once a year, the Sacred Pyre is lit in the religious capital of Seishu Eina. This marks the beginning of the Summer Festival that spans 3 weeks. Adolescents aged 14 to 18 year old from all around the continent are flocking to this festival. This journey is a necessary rite of passage into adulthood and everyone has to do it at some point. It is now your turn to do it, it is your turn to partake in this great voyage. Be aware that this journey is more than just a casual trek. The teens are given ''Carvings'', which are personal ID cards or dog tags everyone possess. Each Carving is different of the other as they are custom made to represent it's owner. The Carvings they are given are those of the last year's deceased of their village. Their goal is to bring them to the Sacred Pyre and burn them so the spirit of their past owners can join the Dragon Gods in the afterlife. During this journey, you will be able to learn more about your world, and most probably, yourselves.''

This pitch gives out, I think, a lot of important information on the campaign. The world has a main religion about some Dragon Gods. There's a rite of passage which consist of bringing things to the religious capital and burning them. This quest has societal, cultural and religious meaning. Everyone has to do it and you have an important goal. As the game was based around a rite of passage into adulthood, I felt like naming it ''Liminality'' was not a bad idea.

I felt this pitch was ''anime'' enough and my players actually loved the concept. They were aware that this game would be somewhat railroaded but were fine with it. My objective was to force a Main Quest with a time limit so it would kind of stopping the players from dicking around too long while giving them plenty to do in the different towns and travels so they wouldn't feel like they we're always on rails.

I hope you enjoyed the read. Sure my ideas and writings are far from perfect as english is not my first language but I am doing my best to make everything make sense. Feel free to comment on the blog. The next part will probably be about the characters.

Fiona's Carving