One Shot: Kimrath

Character: Kimrath
Game: Epyllion
Episodes: 1
Theme Song: Responsibility by MxPX
Keywords: Loud, honest, derpy

On my one day off in the last month and a bit, I played Epyllion. If you're not familiar, Epyllion is Marissa Kelly's game of baby dragons. It touches on My Little Pony in terms of themes and content and is overall quite delightful. That being said, there are also mechanics that can push a darker theme. The game is awesome. I want to run a full campaign of it in the new year and you should go buy this game.

Moving on to my baby dragon. I played the Warrior playbook. Which in a normal PbtA game you would think "Hey, that baby dragon is violent!" Except dris is a baby dragon (dragon pronouns are dris/dre) who mostly functions to yell at older dragons. I found this mechanic kinda fascinating. The top score for a warrior is Courage, which is what you use to essentially be smarmy at older dragons who will find you amusing and pat your head. I didn't have a fight move and there wasn't a basic fight move either.

The playbook suggested I really liked humour and brashness, and I embraced that full tilt. I had no problem playing the character who was eager to yell at others, but wasn't the sharpest tool in the box. I deliberately played dre as someone who took things pretty much at face value and was confused by anything more than that. Dre wasn't the kind to try to figure out someone's motivation. Dre would just ask. Kimrath didn't get varying levels of motivation beyond the obvious. Even though dre was a bit of a traitor, I rationalized it by saying it was because dre simply believed what the evil dragon had told dre.

When were making plans to play Epyllion, it wasn't a game I really thought a lot about. It was a game I was just gonna play and not think about. This isn't all that common for me. But I had been working fifteen or so days straight before I was going to go to this event so my spoon level was low, as it is every November/December. Thankfully, I got to play the character I thought was gonna hit things.

As we played, I came to find Kimrath was the dragon who asked a lot of interpersonal questions that was more about being confused than it was to be hurtful, but it was read as hurtful by everyone on the receiving end. Dre felt sad when dre finally learned that drey were the reason some dragons felt hurt. It was a lot for Kimrath to try to figure out. Asking point blank questions seemed to be the way to get approval from older dragons, but it seemed to be the way to hurt dragons drier own age.

Kimrath reminded me of Spike from the Land Before Time. Dre liked eating and mostly had little interest in restoring dragon lands or anything like that. Dre mostly wanted to prove dremselves cool and awesome and have a good time. Maybe Kimrath was a bit of a big ole dumb jock stereotype. But dre were cool to play. Dre certainly weren't the hero, and dre were okay with that.

There were no particular challenges in mind when I was playing Kimrath. I wanted dre to be kinda derpy and a little oblivious to dris impact on the world. Which I think I pulled off well when another dragon told dre how mean dre were. It was a sad moment but Kimrath recovered pretty quickly.

I loved Epyllion. I would play it more and I plan on running it in 2017. I wouldn't play Kimrath again. But dre was a fun little tumble into derp-land.

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