Bluestockings: A Thousand Faces

Character: River, fugitive of Stormguard Game: Fall of Magic Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Eivør - Trøllabundin Keywords: Cautious, fierce, cunning Recently I started ANOTHER Fall of Magic game, and in this one, it's a one on one game. I've done this before, but this will be the first time I finish it. I love one on one games because you really get to explore each little area a lot more with your characters. I initially was going to make another Ellamura, but in the end, ended up with the name River once more. I don't know why. I like the name River because of the connotation to flowing and change and movement. When you have a Fall of Magic character, you have something in your hands that's about to dramatically change. I wondered what a fugitive from Stormguard would be like. I knew Stormguard had a Stormqueen. And I will say, one of the neat things about playing the game over again is that you know there are certain prompts and that let's you have a character ...

Character: Madison aka Maddi Game: The Forgotten Episodes: 1 Theme Song: The Classics by Owl and Mouse Keywords: Optimistic, emotional, hopeful When I was at the cottage, we decided to use the freezing cold bunkie (One little one-room cottage that had a bunk bed in it and that's it) to play the Forgotten, a game about living in a war torn city. It was freezing. It was so cold. We all had blankets. And one light. Did I mention it was cold? We pulled our characters and our relationships randomly. I was playing an art student who was in love with a lawyer (who was partner at his firm, dude wasn't young) and the daughter of a smuggler. She worked at a local art store to pay her way through art school and was mostly into sculpture. Maddi wanted to work with her hands, and to make beautiful things for the world. That was, until the war broke out. It had been two years of living with her mom, her cousin, her potential brother in law, and her boyfriend. Two. Years. She had b...

Character: Ellamura, Scholar of Istallia Game: Fall of Magic Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Blood I Bled by The Staves Keywords: Impatient, Skilled, Antisocial Magic is dying. There are so many magical creatures in the world, and they too, are dying. They draw their last breaths and no one bears witness. They seek refuge in the few small magical places left in the world. They hide. They need protection and safety. Ellamura is a scholar from the prestigious school in Istallia. She has no magic of her own, but is a kind of zoologist of magical creatures. Despite appearing as a proper scholar, she's the first to get her hands dirty, to know how to camp, and to seek out magic nearby. She travels with a swineherd, a giant, and a fox. None of them are especially talented or useful. Of all of them, Ella seems to be the only one who understands what it means that magic will die. The others, lost in their own daydreams of life and death, scare her. She knows magic will die and there is...

Character: Gwyneira, Regent of the Stormsworn Game: Before the Storm Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Black Sea by Natasha Blume Keywords: Charismatic, Coquette, Unyielding A long time ago, some vain prophet declared that the Stormsworn would come across the land to conquer Iriya and Andar. So determined were the Iriyans that fate and destiny be true that they saw a conqueror in a potential friend, and war broke out. The Stormsworn, with their preternatural grace and ephemeral, cloud-like bodies, conquered Andar without a struggle. Then they came for Iriya. As it had been predicted, so it would be. The ardent love of Destiny, and it's religious and cultural importance, was the focus of our game of Before the Storm. We had fate weavers, people who spun to tell the story of fate, and who could manipulate fate (secretly) with their weaving. All of the characters in our game were from Ardan or Iriya. Except my character. My character was a captured royal from the Stormsworn. She was b...

Character: Mother Asha Game: Apocalypse World 2nd Ed Episodes: 2 Theme Song: Forty One Ways by Azam Ali Keywords: Protective, Peaceful, Clever "My treasures do not chink or glitter. They gleam in the sun and neigh in the night." "Truth may walk through the world unarmed." So we began a new AW campaign, using the new version, and we choose a desert setting. We were in a toss up between unending snow and ice, and the unending sands and dust of the desert. I was fine with either, but as soon as I heard we were doing desert, I imagined a nomadic people who wandered from location to location, and were farmers or herders. I wanted a people who weren't guns and motorcycles. I wanted a simple people who were deadly and fierce, if you dared cross them. I created Mother Asha, a hardholder. Her hold? The Tent:   "The Tent arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.  The Tent expands the horizon wi...

Character: Nikola Banas Game: Les Petites Choses Oubliees Episodes: 1 Theme Song: All The Things Lost by MS MR Keywords: Hard Working, Resilient, Sincere Continuing the field trip through sad RPG land, Rach and I also played a game about a young couple who fell in love, broke up, and then got their memories of each other removed, a la The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This young couple we knew were two women, who had an economic difference, and had met at St Lawrence Market in Toronto as my character worked at her family's butcher stand despite going to school for business. Nikki was a first generation Polish Canadian who came to Canada when she was seven. Her father came first, and she followed, and went to school for business in Toronto because her parents expected her to do big things. She had several siblings but was the eldest, by a number of years, and she called her grandmother in Poland every week. I wanted to make a character who was entrenched in family...

Character: Lavender Game: Lost in the Rain Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Dolphin by Poe Keywords: Quiet, delinquent, forgotten Recently I decided to facilitate a game of Lost in the Rain, which is a game about lost children getting eaten by monsters in the rain. And not just any type of monster, but the kind that calls your name, pretends to be loving adults, or manifests in your fellow children by hunger or meanness or fear. They're monsters designed to find and kill and eat children. The doesn't have one GM, but rather, it has one active player while everyone else is GMing. So everyone makes a character. I made Lavender, a poor girl whose family was a lot of people, from her parents to her many siblings to aunts and uncles and cousins... and they all lived in the same house. It was easy for her to disappear because there were just so many people no one noticed when one of them went missing. Her fear? Wolves. I chose this because it was my fear when I was little. Too man...

Character: Alexa Atreus "Keres" Game: The Sprawl Episodes: 2 Theme Song: Waiting to be Born by Rotersand Keywords: Dedicated, careful, plotting Our final episode of the Sprawl happened awhile ago, where we finished an arc for Meno and Keres and decided that what we're trying to do with the Sprawl isn't what the Sprawl was made for. Which is too bad. The Sprawl touches on some serious big cyberpunk themes, but the heist layout isn't quite what we were going for. We may pick them up later, when we have more time, but for now this'll be the last bit about Keres for awhile. I'm sad I didn't get to play her more. Compared to Robin, she's a pretty stable, reliable, and focused on her goal. Given she's one of the carnations of Robin-Dragon, it was my goal to imagine what she would be like without the trauma of Robin's life. A woman who lived in a dark world but found her place within it. Who loved a good time, was a bit of a junkie, died...

Character: Sam Game: 183 Days Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Afraid of the Dark by Phildel Keywords: Afraid, Resigned, Enamoured Wanna be depressed? Play 183 Days. There are two characters, Sam and Dylan. I decided I would play Sam. There are three cards that fully define Sam. Sam was born a psychic. She could see the future. She could see her parents die in a plane crash when she was nine. She did everything to stop them from going. They still went. And they died. Sam knows she's going to meet Dylan. They're going to fall in love and they're going to break up. But those will be the happiest days of her life. So it's worth it. Because it's been a long time since she's felt loved. In the game, both Sam and Dylan are whatever gender you want them to be. I chose to be a Sam who wasn't really sure about her gender, but was kind of cis-by-default because she hadn't really explored the spectrum of gender. She lived a lot inside her head, except with her f...