We’ve talked about Monsters and Other Childish Things time and time again on The Drunk and The Ugly because it is my favorite RPG and because we play it very often. In spite of all that, we have yet to post a session of it. Until now.
A few weeks ago, our friend Nate (the guy who’s hosting this server) finally got his first set of dice ever, despite how he’s been gaming for over 10 years. Understandably, he wanted a medium to use them in. The Road Trip crew was unavailable and none of us really had anything prepared, so Nate wrote up a one-shot setting in about an hour. This setting was Mrs. Frieda’s Home for Terrible Freakish Children, and ended up becoming sort of a side campaign that is more flexible player-wise, as it’s a fixed position with lots of children, so kids can jump in and out as they need to.
In a nutshell, Mrs. Frieda’s Halfway Home for Children (its official name) is a halfway home for children taken from abusive homes. Why has it gotten the reputation that it has? Because most of the children here responded to the abuse in their homes with abuse of their own. Everyone has their own reasons for being here, and most of them are never going to leave this place with a new family. While everyone has secrets to hide, some kids have worse secrets than others: Some kids have “special friends” that would freak out everyone in the city, and others are slowly transforming into eagles. Not everyone has these kinds of problems, mind you, but a few kids within this establishment do. Mrs. Frieda’s is about the life and times of these children.
Experienced players of One-Roll Engine games may notice that we’re not using the hard and fast ORE rules. This is mainly because the One-Roll Engine becomes very cumbersome in games with large numbers of players, and especially in Skype games. We’re using a homebrewed version that involves a single d10 and rolling under the combined number of a stat and skill. Height and Width are determined by margins of success (and in combat, a separate die is rolled for height). It’s different, but it works much better for our group.
PLAYERS
- Manda – Manny (the Devil Child)
- Matt – Scott Valle (the Eagle Boy)
- Nate – Emma Vaerbond
- Sam – George Fillburn
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You clearly need to be posting more of these, Matt. At least up until the birthday episode!
I need to get the rest of them edited before I can post them. Session 2 should be coming out sometime in the next week or two.
This is totally the “TV Pilot” episode of Mrs. Frieda’s.
Yeah, I can see that. Then again, this episode was pretty much entirely devoted to introducing the setting itself. We sort of spent as much time establishing the setting as we did establishing the characters in the setting.
Sam said it best, “The scenario is just in constant process of starting”
I love this game though. CANT WAIT TO HEAR THE OTHERS. AND TO PLAY MORE
Alright, this was damnably awesome. I can’t wait to hear the rest of these.
😀
I just started to relisten to all the episodes and thought I would put some comments as I go.Starting the entire thing off with the introduction of a new character is a great way to start off. It is a common way in tv shows as I have noticed.It really lets you explain things without it seeming odd. I am kind of amazed at how natural and easy the relationship between the characters that already knew eachother worked out that early on.
Yeah, giving things from Manny’s perspective was a pretty good info dump. It managed to explain everything without being explicit about it.
The characters and their relationships are pretty different from how they are later on, though. Well, aside from George bashing on Scott. That’s starting to come back.
Would the people involved in this be okay with me writing this out in actual story form? I’m not promising that it’ll be a good rendition, but I’d like to try my hand at it, and I don’t want to start until I have the creator’s (creators’?) and players’ permission.
So… Can I attempt it? I’d try to stay as close as possible to the source material, but I might add or take away different things. You would all be free to comment on it and change things if need be.
Unless of course, someone is already doing that and I just haven’t found it online…
Sure! We appreciate all kinds of fan submissions. Post it on the forums if you feel so inclined.
Never mind, I just found the art forum.
Ignore that last comment, I was never here.
Scott: “Because then the guys in the suits with the mirrored shades come, and they do the flashy thing, and nobody remembers it.”
George: “Yeah. Wait – what?”
Manny: “Sounds like it’d make a great movie.”
Woahwoahwoahwoahwoah. Wait. So how does SCOTT remember the Men In Black? Does that memory-wipe not work on him because of his part-avian brain?
Hahaha uh. . . don’t take stuff said in the first session as canon. We were finding our sealegs there.