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Jun. 26th, 2020 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI've been meaning to write up the Friends at the Table podcast's Bluff City campaign ever since the beginning of the quarantimes, when they announced they were making the whole first season free, but first I had to a.) finish listening to the first season and b.) find time ...
... anyway now I have not only finished listening to the first season but just started in on the second, so the time is clearly now!
I've written up some Friends at the Table campaigns before, but if you're not familiar with it,kate_nepveu has an extremely good recruiter post that I've been wanting the excuse to direct people to! Bluff City is quite different from a usual actual play campaign, though, functioning more or less as an anthology series -- each mini-arc (usually two episodes, some longer) consists of the cast playing a different (usually very indie) RPG game to explore a different aspect of the titular Bluff City, a weird and very slightly supernatural riff on Atlantic City featuring a boardwalk, gangsters, casinos, several small businesses of varying sleaze levels, some ghosts, some superheroes, the occasional selkie, a few interdimensional rifts, quite a lot of class struggle, a very sinister Coast Guard .... there's a lot going on in Bluff City, most of it hitting a tone of more or less black comedy that occasionally edges further into noir-tinged surrealism.
(Austin Walker, the DM of Friends at the Table, grew up in and around Atlantic City and it really shows; I did not grow up there, but I did spent quite a lot of time there as a kid, which means I extremely enjoy the deep dive into South Jersey Gothic while also being mildly disappointed that no one has yet referenced Lucy the Elephant.)
Each arc features a different set of characters, some occasionally recurring or weaving in and out of other stories as NPCs; although there's a slow build for some of the big-picture mystery stuff, most arcs stand alone and can be listened to independently.
A Bowling Alley, a Boxer and a Bird: a game of Fiasco (an RPG designed to generate small-time capers gone wrong) featuring the ill-fated collision of an underground boxing ring and an incredibly stupid bird heist; extremely funny, a very good starting place, if any of this sounds interesting at all I would at least recommend trying this episode out and seeing how you feel about it
The Cost of Greed: probably my favorite arc, a game of InSpectres (an RPG designed to generate Ghostbusters adventures) featuring a lovable band of low-rent paranormal investigators squaring off against a casino haunting, a cash-for-coats scam, a selkie, and Their Rivals From Trenton.
There Is No Greater Love: a game of Noirlandia (an RPG designed to generate fantastical noir adventures) featuring a collection of more or less paranoid investigators looking into the death of a conspiracy-theorist radio host during a populist uprising ... higher on the surreal quotient than many (also higher on the 'players spend a lot of time trying to figure out how actual game works' quotient)
The Eighty-Six: a game of Action Movie World (an RPG that, as you may be able to guess, is designed to generate action movies) that is very metafictionally "based on a true story" about police corruption in Bluff City, now with 3x more buddy cop. Fun, silly, many explosions.
The Grapplers Down at Promenade Arena: a game of World Wide Wrestling RPG (an RPG that, once again, is fairly self-explanatory) that managed the incredible feat of not only thoroughly charming me but making me actively care about what was going on despite the fact I had literally zero knowledge of wrestling going in ... now I have, like, .5 knowledge of wrestling! I know what kayfabe is and everything! thank you for the educational experience, Friends at the Table! (This is one of the few arcs that probably shouldn't be listened to out of order, since it features a major player character from The Cost of Greed and his arc is much more fun as a callback)
When Justice Is Done: a game of Masks (an RPG designed to generate plucky teen superhero adventures) featuring an art heist, at least one disaster lesbian (more if you count the mentors), 100 shark masks, a costume change effected via bird army, and the truly incredible concept of a popular superheroine named Paternoster who took her stained-glass wings from St. Paul's Cathederal
Messy Business: a game of Lacuna (an RPG designed to generate a nightmarish postmodern experience like something out of Thomas Pynchon) with some TechNoir (an RPG designed to generate cyberpunk) mixed in for flavor that did indeed very successfully make me feel a bit like I was back in the conspiracy-lit class I took in college where I read a lot of Thomas Pynchon. (Definitely do not listen to this one as a standalone, it's the culmination of a full season's worth of weird conspiracy/worldbuilding hints and I'm still working out how I feel about it)
... anyway now I have not only finished listening to the first season but just started in on the second, so the time is clearly now!
I've written up some Friends at the Table campaigns before, but if you're not familiar with it,
kate_nepveu has an extremely good recruiter post that I've been wanting the excuse to direct people to! Bluff City is quite different from a usual actual play campaign, though, functioning more or less as an anthology series -- each mini-arc (usually two episodes, some longer) consists of the cast playing a different (usually very indie) RPG game to explore a different aspect of the titular Bluff City, a weird and very slightly supernatural riff on Atlantic City featuring a boardwalk, gangsters, casinos, several small businesses of varying sleaze levels, some ghosts, some superheroes, the occasional selkie, a few interdimensional rifts, quite a lot of class struggle, a very sinister Coast Guard .... there's a lot going on in Bluff City, most of it hitting a tone of more or less black comedy that occasionally edges further into noir-tinged surrealism. (Austin Walker, the DM of Friends at the Table, grew up in and around Atlantic City and it really shows; I did not grow up there, but I did spent quite a lot of time there as a kid, which means I extremely enjoy the deep dive into South Jersey Gothic while also being mildly disappointed that no one has yet referenced Lucy the Elephant.)
Each arc features a different set of characters, some occasionally recurring or weaving in and out of other stories as NPCs; although there's a slow build for some of the big-picture mystery stuff, most arcs stand alone and can be listened to independently.
A Bowling Alley, a Boxer and a Bird: a game of Fiasco (an RPG designed to generate small-time capers gone wrong) featuring the ill-fated collision of an underground boxing ring and an incredibly stupid bird heist; extremely funny, a very good starting place, if any of this sounds interesting at all I would at least recommend trying this episode out and seeing how you feel about it
The Cost of Greed: probably my favorite arc, a game of InSpectres (an RPG designed to generate Ghostbusters adventures) featuring a lovable band of low-rent paranormal investigators squaring off against a casino haunting, a cash-for-coats scam, a selkie, and Their Rivals From Trenton.
There Is No Greater Love: a game of Noirlandia (an RPG designed to generate fantastical noir adventures) featuring a collection of more or less paranoid investigators looking into the death of a conspiracy-theorist radio host during a populist uprising ... higher on the surreal quotient than many (also higher on the 'players spend a lot of time trying to figure out how actual game works' quotient)
The Eighty-Six: a game of Action Movie World (an RPG that, as you may be able to guess, is designed to generate action movies) that is very metafictionally "based on a true story" about police corruption in Bluff City, now with 3x more buddy cop. Fun, silly, many explosions.
The Grapplers Down at Promenade Arena: a game of World Wide Wrestling RPG (an RPG that, once again, is fairly self-explanatory) that managed the incredible feat of not only thoroughly charming me but making me actively care about what was going on despite the fact I had literally zero knowledge of wrestling going in ... now I have, like, .5 knowledge of wrestling! I know what kayfabe is and everything! thank you for the educational experience, Friends at the Table! (This is one of the few arcs that probably shouldn't be listened to out of order, since it features a major player character from The Cost of Greed and his arc is much more fun as a callback)
When Justice Is Done: a game of Masks (an RPG designed to generate plucky teen superhero adventures) featuring an art heist, at least one disaster lesbian (more if you count the mentors), 100 shark masks, a costume change effected via bird army, and the truly incredible concept of a popular superheroine named Paternoster who took her stained-glass wings from St. Paul's Cathederal
Messy Business: a game of Lacuna (an RPG designed to generate a nightmarish postmodern experience like something out of Thomas Pynchon) with some TechNoir (an RPG designed to generate cyberpunk) mixed in for flavor that did indeed very successfully make me feel a bit like I was back in the conspiracy-lit class I took in college where I read a lot of Thomas Pynchon. (Definitely do not listen to this one as a standalone, it's the culmination of a full season's worth of weird conspiracy/worldbuilding hints and I'm still working out how I feel about it)
no subject
Date: 2020-06-27 03:42 am (UTC)If that were a story, I'd read it.
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Date: 2020-06-27 03:56 am (UTC)(...also, having just searched the transcript to remember all these names and also the name of Chips Directly, owner of Bluff City's Cash-4-Coats, I probably should have mentioned that there are also transcripts for many of the episodes! But I haven't tried to read them without the audio so I've no idea how the experience compares.)
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Date: 2020-06-27 04:01 am (UTC)They sound deeply lovable.
(I just love the concept of a cash-for-coats scam involving a selkie. I can think of several ways the interaction could go and all of them feel like folkloric gold.)
Chips Directly!
no subject
Date: 2020-06-27 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-27 04:11 am (UTC)I would be asking if that character were a crossover from Baccano! even if
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Date: 2020-06-28 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-27 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-28 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-28 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-27 11:07 am (UTC)(Austin once turned a livestream Patreon thing into him wandering around real-world Atlantic City on google maps and talking about his childhood and it remains my favorite episode of Drawing Maps because it's just so delightful to see the roots of what became Bluff City.)
I found Lacuna fascinating and hard to understand and also very different from most other things FatT has done. I think in the end I liked it? Very much 'I liked it?' with the question mark in, though.
The callback to Bowling Alley... in When Justice Was Done was truly such a beautiful moment. (Also I love those teens, they're wonderful.)
I'm curious what you think of season two so far! It has a different kind of feel in many ways, since they aren't doing quite as much slow-burn on the lore and instead just jumping right in with it. (I'm also just SO EXCITED to see what the newest arc of Bluff is gonna be like, damn, it has an ep0 out now and I want more.)
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Date: 2020-06-28 05:25 am (UTC)The thing I'm still not sure how I feel about in Lacuna is the sort of reframing of Bluff City as an ... explicitly more liberated and joyous/creative space than the 'real world' (as opposed to just a heightened version of reality); it changes the way I think about the show & Bluff City as a place and I haven't figured out if the way it changes it really works for me yet. Though the mechanics and play of the game itself were fascinating.
As of right now I've only made it most of the way through the first part of the first Fiasco episode of s2 but I am really looking forward to more! (I've been very slowly ploughing my way through all the Patreon stuff in order .... I am now only 40 episodes behind the present day?)
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Date: 2020-06-28 11:20 am (UTC)Mm, that's fair? I feel like its one of those things where philosophy sometimes gets in the way of reader/listener interpretation? I think that for me, the idea of Bluff City as kind of a wild dreamspace isn't negated by the philosophical underpinnings that are brought to the fore in Lacuna. But also, I feel like some of what's hard about it is that s1 is almost exclusively in Bluff and a dyadic(/triadic) system needs to show more of the other parts of the system for it to really be able to stand on its own and not just be an explanation of authorial fiat.
I'm aware that Bluff s2 starts with Fiasco again but also I've completely forgotten what that Fiasco game is. xD; Perhaps I should relisten to it at some point.
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Date: 2020-07-03 04:14 am (UTC)Thus far I can tell you only that it involves a casino heist! I listened to the first half and now I'm in the middle of the Live at the Table baseball game again ... there are perils to listening to everything directed in order and one of those perils is it's going to be several episodes before I'm back to Bluff again. :(
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Date: 2020-07-03 11:48 am (UTC)I love Bluff City for the fact that "It involves a casino heist" could describe multiple different arcs to some degree or another. But okay, yes, I think I remember that now.