Entry tags:
Primetime Adventures :)
Today I wrapped up GM-ing a Primetime Adventures (PTA) story that's a sort of steampunk/magic thing set during the Russo-Japanese war! :D
The larger context was that I've been wanting to do table-top roleplaying, but it's hard to do it with Spouse because then we'd have to find a time where both of us are free, which translates to "10pm after the child is asleep," which is... a difficult time. So back in March, I said to Spouse, "Hey, maybe we should roleplay with other people," so he joined a DnD campaign, and I asked my coworkers whether anyone was interested in doing a PTA game with me. I specified that I was fine with history, fantasy, steampunk or space operas, as long as it's not Euro-centric, and got 3 players. Us being history nerds, we decided it was going to be Russo-Japanese war steampunk. It ended up being a story about a mercenary transport ship who had to navigate through nationalist sentiment and weird religious syncretism stuff in order to deliver (or not deliver) a special cargo. So it's like... Firefly, but with 1910s submarine technology and a dose of folk religion. (Our ship's name was the Kappa and it literally had a kappa powering the engine.)
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the story (although it turned out to be a fun one -- I'll put the summary at the end). I'm here to talk about running a PTA game to a bunch of people whose only TTRPG experience has been DnD.
Setting up:
- I was very insistent that they don't do any brainstorming on their own, so that we can do collective brainstorming.
- I explained to them that the two major differences were:
--- Scene Framing: PTA exists in scenes, so there's a beginning and an end, it's not a "and then..." sort of contiguous experience.
--- Conflict Granularity: PTA scenes have one conflict and end after that conflict, and said conflict needs to have an interesting win/lose stakes -- as in, if losing isn't interesting, then why have a conflict.
- What I wish I also explained at the beginning:
--- Players are co-creators of the story. I ran into some problems in the beginning where I kept lobbing issues at the players and they wouldn't pick up the thread, instead sort of waiting for me to tell them how they could act. I haven't really played DnD since 3rd ed, but I'm wondering if it's because there's a more circumscribed range of permissible actions in DnD in terms of how much a player can actively influence the story? Another possibility is that my players were too used to thinking and acting only as that character, and not really thinking (or at least verbalizing) their meta story goals. Anyway, I wish I told them, "Hey, you have agency in this story, you're not just flavor text. I don't have a script written, or really anything more than a few vague ideas and a handful of names. My job is to hit your issues but you can direct the story, too. As long as it's interesting and reasonable, I'm not going to say no. Sometimes you might end up doing things that are good for the story and your character's development, but bad for the character themself."
I used![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yeloson 's PTA spreadsheet and playingcards.io to set up a play space, and that worked really well! Here's a screenshot:
One thing that was great was that I could just leave that table set up as-is, which meant that I didn't need to track how much fanmail was left over from last time.
PTA House rules
- I made it a 3 episode season, with screen presence of 1, 2, 3 (instead of 1,1,2,2,3 of a 5 episode season). I wanted something short and therefore lower barrier to entry, and it worked pretty well. There was one episode that was a double-spotlight episode, but that just meant more budget and getting the issues to cross-pollinate a bit, so it worked out. The shorter season definitely made scheduling easier, and even with that, the 3rd episode was postponed about a month due to various scheduling and health issues. And the ending has left people wanting more, so we may do a 2nd season!
- I had every character do an epilogue scene at the end of the season, the way a teaser scene would work at the end of the other episodes -- it worked really well.
Some future houserules:
- I kept forgetting that fanmail had that special rule of "only flip if tied" or something, so I just had the players spend fanmail to get cards. But the problem with that is that the fanmail was plentiful and therefore it was too easy to add cards without pulling in one's edges and connections. I think the next time I run PTA, I'm going to say that fanmail has a 2:1 conversion rate, so 2 fanmail = 1 card, and maybe fanmail can be spent to bring in an Edge after you've run out.
- Narration after conflict resolution has always been a complicated and poorly defined part of PTA, imo. If you're too meta about it, that breaks people out of the TV show framing and is less fun. But if you're too granular, then you end up putting words into other people's mouths, which isn't fun, either. But if you let other people just free roleplay, then no one "won" narration rights. I think something I want to try next time would be to stipulate that the person who won narration rights would (a) get to stipulate an additional thing that happens, and (b) get to narrate non-player action. And then we roleplay the scene.
- We had one or two conflicts that were very obviously player vs. player, and I feel like forcing that to be a player vs. GM conflict feels very clunky. Maybe next time, it can be player vs. player, and the GM just spends x budget to "host" the conflict? That way, it doesn't mess with the budget system, but lets the players to really bring in their edges, etc.
Some more GM thoughts
- At first I was a little leery to force the player's hand or make the player do something, but by episode 3, the best things happened when I just brute-forced it. (I made a player drop a crucial book, and pulled another player into a scene.) Both of those things made the scenes far more interesting, and the players were totally fine with it. I feel like, ideally, the player would decide to do these things (and PTA has the mechanism for that), but pending that, it worked out. (When I pulled a character into the scene, the player was like "oh good I was hoping you'd do that."
- Something that really helped get the players to shift from "playing their characters" to "creating a story" was using TV descriptions, like "this scene opens all black, and then there's a bit of light as the door cracks open" or "the camera does a slow pan across the room." Asking the characters to describe that just automatically put their mindset in the right place.
- Once again I'm struck by how good PTA works re: interesting conflict stakes + the card flip probabilities = high drama that makes people go "oh shit!" By episode 3 the players were much better at framing conflicts and so we had some pretty good moments of "oh shit what do we do now?" (We had a case where GM got 3/3 black cards, one player got 5/5 black cards, and one player got 1/1 red card. And in the final climax, GM got 3/3 red cards.) I love the "oh shit" moments because you really can't plan for these, and it really throws everyone into creativity improv mode. :)
- I don't know what magic the budgeting system does, but all of the sessions have clocked in at around the 2 hour mark, +/- 15 minutes.
- I really like how little prep PTA requires. After each session, I spent about half an hour typing up what happened and the teasers, then brainstorming 2 or 3 possible problems to throw the players' way for the subsequent episode, and finally deciding on the opening scene. Since so much of the story is either in the hands of the players (scene framing, conflict narration) or in the hands of fate (how the conflicts end up resolving), 95% of it is being improvised on the spot. Which means that as the GM, I get to do a fair amount of roleplaying! :D (After we wrapped up, a player asked me "so what *was* that thing that was chasing us in the first episode?" and I was like "lol I have no idea" and he was like "!!!" and I was like "if the thing managed to catch you guys, I'd have figured it out then."
- I think at the end of the day, "Do the thing that's interesting" is a good guide to PTA. Or maybe a corollary, "Don't sweat the logistics -- everything travels at the speed of plot." Sometimes the players got into a headspace of "but who's where when" or "but is there a chair in this room?"
Setting: The Kappa is a small submarine cargo runner that takes jobs from Vladivostok. Yunjin (Eugevny) is the half Korean, half Russian second in command who gets the jobs from his underworld connections. He is a cynic living in a world of ideals. The captain is his uncle, a disaffected Korean loyalist taking the pragmatic path. The ship's engineer is Miyoko, who comes from a family of engineers and trusts engines more than people. The medic and general man-at-arms is Sanjiro, a Japanese nationalist and vet of the first Sino-Japanese war, but who was court-martialled and exiled from Japan. He wishes to return to his family there.
Episode 1:
- Yunjin gets a job to transport Otake Shin, a scientist, to Sakhalin.
- As they travel, they hear a mysterious deep sea pinging, and even though they're able to evade the mysterious pinging by stopping and dropping to silent, the the engine gets busted.
- They limp over to Hakodate to get parts:
--- When getting parts at the shop, Miyoko finds that Otake Shin had followed her, and between Otake's enthusiasm and the shop owner being a busybody, Miyoko grudgingly agrees to let Otake Shin take a look at her engine (social pressure from old lady at the ship parts shop)
--- On the way back to the ship, Otake Shin is recognized by Japanese policemen at the market, and is saved by Sanjiro (who sacrifices the boar meat that he’d just bought).
- Back on the ship, Yunjin and Sanjiro play good cop bad cop and get Otake Shin to reveal that his research is about getting the spirits from different religions to interact in a way that boosts the engine, and that he's on the run from the Japanese imperial army.
Episode 2 Previews:
- Yunjin is some place dark, there is a glow, he is holding a Russian Orthodox cross, and his eyes are burning red with fire. Yunjin is looking a bit panicky
- Miyoko and Otake are standing in the bridge, covered in soot, looking like they did something bad, standing in front of the captain, pointing to each other: “they did it”
- Sanjiro is in his room, and he is unwrapping his palm, and there’s an infected gash on his palm that looks REALLY BAD
Episode 2
- The Captain wants to convince Yunjin to take Otake and his research to help the Korean resistance fighters. Yunjin disagrees and proposes to let Otake do his research, but keep an eye on him
- Otake is in the engine room under Miyoko's watchful eye. Otake feeds the Kappa in the engine a Russian communion wafer. The kappa spits it out, so he tries again, this time dunked in the water on the Kappa’s head. The Kappa goes crazy and then passes out.
- Otake and Miyoko work together to revive the kappa, and manage to do so by putting Narazuke in a Russian incense burner.
- After they land in Sakhalin, Otake spots a torii gate on a path that leads up to a Russian Orthodox church and gets super excited. Yunjin gets some village goons and persuades Otake to not run and (sort of) cooperate, as long as he gets to work with Miyoko (because she’s the only one who doesn’t have ulterior motive).
- When Yunjin picks up the cross that Otake had dropped, his eyes glow red and he becomes unresponsive. (it has some aspect of fire kamuy on it).
- Seeing this, Sanjiro runs back to the ship and gets yelled at by Captain for being a bad medic and a poor soldier -- why is he always running away from things? Does he really do anything on the ship? He is told to grab Miyoko and return.
- Miyoko and Otake mix sacramental sake with holy water and manage to revive Yunjin
- That night, camped on the beach looking at the stars, Otake wondering if he should stop his research. Yunjin persuades him that it's still worth pursuing.
Episode 3 Previews
- battle of Tsushima, Japanese and Russian battleships shooting the shit out of each other. The Kappa is caught between them, going fast, being chased by something that looks like a whale.
- Sanjiro is praying over every bottle of sake they have
- Miyoko and Otake Shin taking swigs of sacramental sake and engage in a fever-pitched writing session
- Imperial Japanese commander saying “I don’t care about the ship, I just want the scientist alive”
Episode 3
- Sanjiro gets approached by Kuba Takao, a Japanese agent, and accepts his offer to trade Otake Shin for reinstatement + backpay in Japan. Kuba gives Sanjiro a flare gun to use when he's ready.
- The coast is getting bombarded with light artillery fire as the Japanese are trying to seize Sakhalin from the Russians. Gotta hustle! Otake runs off to the church to try to carry a brick containing a hearthfire Kamuy back with them. Miyoko tries to help, but in the end, something hits the corner of the building and they’re out of time, so Miyoko slings Otake into a fireman’s carry and runs back onto the ship with him (and sans brick).
- Sanjiro goes to check out Otake Shin’s room while the others are upstairs, finds and pockets Otake’s research notebook, but runs into Yunjin as he’s trying to slip out. After a brief exchange, Sanjiro is able to push past Yunjin without revealing that he has the book.
- Captain, Otake, and Miyoko are on the bridge when Sanjiro tries to push through on his way back to his quarters, and he bumps into Otake and the book falls out. Yunjin grabs the book and refuses to return it to Otake. Otake feels betrayed, stomps off -- “good luck understanding what’s written in that book!” A big argument ensues re: book -- Yunjin wants to sell the book and Otake to Americans in Shanghai, Sanjiro wants to turn Otake over to Japanese, and Miyoko wants Otake safe on the ship with her.
--- Conflict resolves with Sanjiro loss and Yunjin and Miyoko victory, so Yunjin tells Miyoko that if she can convince Otake to give up the cypher for the book, then Otake can stay on the boat and they just have to sell the information (and no longer be holding dangerous info.) Captain is in favor because Americans are at least a neutral party and not embroiled in regional politics.
- Miyoko goes to convince Otake -- she returns the book, but tells him that the others intend to sell him to the Americans. Otake says that at this point, he only trusts Miyoko. After having that reciprocated from Miyoko (Miyoko says that she's willing to run with him as long as she can take the boat), Otake asks Miyoko if she’s willing to help him make a fake notebook, and Miyoko says yes. Otake burns the research notes and they start writing their own.
- The boat nears the Battle of Tsushima, there’s lots of boats and chaos, so they decide to gun the boat and go through the battle itself. The boat is being chased by a whale-shaped ship with Japan flags, but Yunjin is able to guide the Kappa through the battle and lose the ship.
- Just prior to landing in the docks of Shanghai, Sanjiro fires off the signal flare while others are below deck. After then land, Sanjiro wants to take Otake with them to the American meetup, but Otake convinces them to just take the book, since he’s safer on the ship. Yunjin agrees since he promised Miyoko to keep Otake safe. Sanjiro and Yunjin are intercepted on the docks by Kuba and some Japanese soldiers and local goons. After a bit of evasive banter, Kuba asks Sanjiro outright: where is the scientist. Sanjiro points to the ship, and Kuba moves to board the ship. Yunjin uses his underworld dealings to get the local toughs to turn on Kuba and the Japanese soldiers, making it a more fair fight
--- Conflict: Sanjiro’s stakes are to keep all the crewmembers safe, Yunjin’s stakes are to stop Kuba from apprehending Otake. Both lose. Draw cards to see which crew member dies, and Yunjin gets the lowest card.
--- Yunjin gets stabbed by a bayonet during the scuffle, and as Sanjiro’s trying to hold back Yunjin’s gaping chest wound, Yunjin asks Sanjiro: why’d you do it? Sanjiro replies: I just want to go back and raise my daughter. Yunjin understands and forgives Sanjiro, giving Sanjiro his wallet as he dies. Miyoko has been shot trying to stop Kuba, but the Japanese soldiers strong-arm Otake out of the ship. As Kuba passes Sanjiro, Sanjiro gives Kuba the notebook (which they don’t know is fake), and Kuba gives Sanjiro the papers of a full imperial pardon. No one alive on the ship knows that Sanjiro was the traitor.
Epilogue snippets:
- Sanjiro packing his stuff to go ashore, finally back at Japan. He has Yunjin’s wallet.
- The Captain telling the ship’s owner back in Vladivostov that with Yunjin dead, he’s resigning to go fight with the Korean resistance forces
- In the engine room of the Kappa, Miyoko has her arm in a sling, sad and feeding communion wafers to the kappa
- In Yunjin’s room in the Kappa -- the camera pans over all the objects in his room, and zooms in on the cross that he’d touched. It starts pulsing red, like a heartbeat.
- Otake is in a cell, sketching a cross/torii diagram on the floor. As it completes, the cell starts to rattle.
The larger context was that I've been wanting to do table-top roleplaying, but it's hard to do it with Spouse because then we'd have to find a time where both of us are free, which translates to "10pm after the child is asleep," which is... a difficult time. So back in March, I said to Spouse, "Hey, maybe we should roleplay with other people," so he joined a DnD campaign, and I asked my coworkers whether anyone was interested in doing a PTA game with me. I specified that I was fine with history, fantasy, steampunk or space operas, as long as it's not Euro-centric, and got 3 players. Us being history nerds, we decided it was going to be Russo-Japanese war steampunk. It ended up being a story about a mercenary transport ship who had to navigate through nationalist sentiment and weird religious syncretism stuff in order to deliver (or not deliver) a special cargo. So it's like... Firefly, but with 1910s submarine technology and a dose of folk religion. (Our ship's name was the Kappa and it literally had a kappa powering the engine.)
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the story (although it turned out to be a fun one -- I'll put the summary at the end). I'm here to talk about running a PTA game to a bunch of people whose only TTRPG experience has been DnD.
Setting up:
- I was very insistent that they don't do any brainstorming on their own, so that we can do collective brainstorming.
- I explained to them that the two major differences were:
--- Scene Framing: PTA exists in scenes, so there's a beginning and an end, it's not a "and then..." sort of contiguous experience.
--- Conflict Granularity: PTA scenes have one conflict and end after that conflict, and said conflict needs to have an interesting win/lose stakes -- as in, if losing isn't interesting, then why have a conflict.
- What I wish I also explained at the beginning:
--- Players are co-creators of the story. I ran into some problems in the beginning where I kept lobbing issues at the players and they wouldn't pick up the thread, instead sort of waiting for me to tell them how they could act. I haven't really played DnD since 3rd ed, but I'm wondering if it's because there's a more circumscribed range of permissible actions in DnD in terms of how much a player can actively influence the story? Another possibility is that my players were too used to thinking and acting only as that character, and not really thinking (or at least verbalizing) their meta story goals. Anyway, I wish I told them, "Hey, you have agency in this story, you're not just flavor text. I don't have a script written, or really anything more than a few vague ideas and a handful of names. My job is to hit your issues but you can direct the story, too. As long as it's interesting and reasonable, I'm not going to say no. Sometimes you might end up doing things that are good for the story and your character's development, but bad for the character themself."
I used
yeloson 's PTA spreadsheet and playingcards.io to set up a play space, and that worked really well! Here's a screenshot: One thing that was great was that I could just leave that table set up as-is, which meant that I didn't need to track how much fanmail was left over from last time.
PTA House rules
- I made it a 3 episode season, with screen presence of 1, 2, 3 (instead of 1,1,2,2,3 of a 5 episode season). I wanted something short and therefore lower barrier to entry, and it worked pretty well. There was one episode that was a double-spotlight episode, but that just meant more budget and getting the issues to cross-pollinate a bit, so it worked out. The shorter season definitely made scheduling easier, and even with that, the 3rd episode was postponed about a month due to various scheduling and health issues. And the ending has left people wanting more, so we may do a 2nd season!
- I had every character do an epilogue scene at the end of the season, the way a teaser scene would work at the end of the other episodes -- it worked really well.
Some future houserules:
- I kept forgetting that fanmail had that special rule of "only flip if tied" or something, so I just had the players spend fanmail to get cards. But the problem with that is that the fanmail was plentiful and therefore it was too easy to add cards without pulling in one's edges and connections. I think the next time I run PTA, I'm going to say that fanmail has a 2:1 conversion rate, so 2 fanmail = 1 card, and maybe fanmail can be spent to bring in an Edge after you've run out.
- Narration after conflict resolution has always been a complicated and poorly defined part of PTA, imo. If you're too meta about it, that breaks people out of the TV show framing and is less fun. But if you're too granular, then you end up putting words into other people's mouths, which isn't fun, either. But if you let other people just free roleplay, then no one "won" narration rights. I think something I want to try next time would be to stipulate that the person who won narration rights would (a) get to stipulate an additional thing that happens, and (b) get to narrate non-player action. And then we roleplay the scene.
- We had one or two conflicts that were very obviously player vs. player, and I feel like forcing that to be a player vs. GM conflict feels very clunky. Maybe next time, it can be player vs. player, and the GM just spends x budget to "host" the conflict? That way, it doesn't mess with the budget system, but lets the players to really bring in their edges, etc.
Some more GM thoughts
- At first I was a little leery to force the player's hand or make the player do something, but by episode 3, the best things happened when I just brute-forced it. (I made a player drop a crucial book, and pulled another player into a scene.) Both of those things made the scenes far more interesting, and the players were totally fine with it. I feel like, ideally, the player would decide to do these things (and PTA has the mechanism for that), but pending that, it worked out. (When I pulled a character into the scene, the player was like "oh good I was hoping you'd do that."
- Something that really helped get the players to shift from "playing their characters" to "creating a story" was using TV descriptions, like "this scene opens all black, and then there's a bit of light as the door cracks open" or "the camera does a slow pan across the room." Asking the characters to describe that just automatically put their mindset in the right place.
- Once again I'm struck by how good PTA works re: interesting conflict stakes + the card flip probabilities = high drama that makes people go "oh shit!" By episode 3 the players were much better at framing conflicts and so we had some pretty good moments of "oh shit what do we do now?" (We had a case where GM got 3/3 black cards, one player got 5/5 black cards, and one player got 1/1 red card. And in the final climax, GM got 3/3 red cards.) I love the "oh shit" moments because you really can't plan for these, and it really throws everyone into creativity improv mode. :)
- I don't know what magic the budgeting system does, but all of the sessions have clocked in at around the 2 hour mark, +/- 15 minutes.
- I really like how little prep PTA requires. After each session, I spent about half an hour typing up what happened and the teasers, then brainstorming 2 or 3 possible problems to throw the players' way for the subsequent episode, and finally deciding on the opening scene. Since so much of the story is either in the hands of the players (scene framing, conflict narration) or in the hands of fate (how the conflicts end up resolving), 95% of it is being improvised on the spot. Which means that as the GM, I get to do a fair amount of roleplaying! :D (After we wrapped up, a player asked me "so what *was* that thing that was chasing us in the first episode?" and I was like "lol I have no idea" and he was like "!!!" and I was like "if the thing managed to catch you guys, I'd have figured it out then."
- I think at the end of the day, "Do the thing that's interesting" is a good guide to PTA. Or maybe a corollary, "Don't sweat the logistics -- everything travels at the speed of plot." Sometimes the players got into a headspace of "but who's where when" or "but is there a chair in this room?"
Setting: The Kappa is a small submarine cargo runner that takes jobs from Vladivostok. Yunjin (Eugevny) is the half Korean, half Russian second in command who gets the jobs from his underworld connections. He is a cynic living in a world of ideals. The captain is his uncle, a disaffected Korean loyalist taking the pragmatic path. The ship's engineer is Miyoko, who comes from a family of engineers and trusts engines more than people. The medic and general man-at-arms is Sanjiro, a Japanese nationalist and vet of the first Sino-Japanese war, but who was court-martialled and exiled from Japan. He wishes to return to his family there.
Episode 1:
- Yunjin gets a job to transport Otake Shin, a scientist, to Sakhalin.
- As they travel, they hear a mysterious deep sea pinging, and even though they're able to evade the mysterious pinging by stopping and dropping to silent, the the engine gets busted.
- They limp over to Hakodate to get parts:
--- When getting parts at the shop, Miyoko finds that Otake Shin had followed her, and between Otake's enthusiasm and the shop owner being a busybody, Miyoko grudgingly agrees to let Otake Shin take a look at her engine (social pressure from old lady at the ship parts shop)
--- On the way back to the ship, Otake Shin is recognized by Japanese policemen at the market, and is saved by Sanjiro (who sacrifices the boar meat that he’d just bought).
- Back on the ship, Yunjin and Sanjiro play good cop bad cop and get Otake Shin to reveal that his research is about getting the spirits from different religions to interact in a way that boosts the engine, and that he's on the run from the Japanese imperial army.
Episode 2 Previews:
- Yunjin is some place dark, there is a glow, he is holding a Russian Orthodox cross, and his eyes are burning red with fire. Yunjin is looking a bit panicky
- Miyoko and Otake are standing in the bridge, covered in soot, looking like they did something bad, standing in front of the captain, pointing to each other: “they did it”
- Sanjiro is in his room, and he is unwrapping his palm, and there’s an infected gash on his palm that looks REALLY BAD
Episode 2
- The Captain wants to convince Yunjin to take Otake and his research to help the Korean resistance fighters. Yunjin disagrees and proposes to let Otake do his research, but keep an eye on him
- Otake is in the engine room under Miyoko's watchful eye. Otake feeds the Kappa in the engine a Russian communion wafer. The kappa spits it out, so he tries again, this time dunked in the water on the Kappa’s head. The Kappa goes crazy and then passes out.
- Otake and Miyoko work together to revive the kappa, and manage to do so by putting Narazuke in a Russian incense burner.
- After they land in Sakhalin, Otake spots a torii gate on a path that leads up to a Russian Orthodox church and gets super excited. Yunjin gets some village goons and persuades Otake to not run and (sort of) cooperate, as long as he gets to work with Miyoko (because she’s the only one who doesn’t have ulterior motive).
- When Yunjin picks up the cross that Otake had dropped, his eyes glow red and he becomes unresponsive. (it has some aspect of fire kamuy on it).
- Seeing this, Sanjiro runs back to the ship and gets yelled at by Captain for being a bad medic and a poor soldier -- why is he always running away from things? Does he really do anything on the ship? He is told to grab Miyoko and return.
- Miyoko and Otake mix sacramental sake with holy water and manage to revive Yunjin
- That night, camped on the beach looking at the stars, Otake wondering if he should stop his research. Yunjin persuades him that it's still worth pursuing.
Episode 3 Previews
- battle of Tsushima, Japanese and Russian battleships shooting the shit out of each other. The Kappa is caught between them, going fast, being chased by something that looks like a whale.
- Sanjiro is praying over every bottle of sake they have
- Miyoko and Otake Shin taking swigs of sacramental sake and engage in a fever-pitched writing session
- Imperial Japanese commander saying “I don’t care about the ship, I just want the scientist alive”
Episode 3
- Sanjiro gets approached by Kuba Takao, a Japanese agent, and accepts his offer to trade Otake Shin for reinstatement + backpay in Japan. Kuba gives Sanjiro a flare gun to use when he's ready.
- The coast is getting bombarded with light artillery fire as the Japanese are trying to seize Sakhalin from the Russians. Gotta hustle! Otake runs off to the church to try to carry a brick containing a hearthfire Kamuy back with them. Miyoko tries to help, but in the end, something hits the corner of the building and they’re out of time, so Miyoko slings Otake into a fireman’s carry and runs back onto the ship with him (and sans brick).
- Sanjiro goes to check out Otake Shin’s room while the others are upstairs, finds and pockets Otake’s research notebook, but runs into Yunjin as he’s trying to slip out. After a brief exchange, Sanjiro is able to push past Yunjin without revealing that he has the book.
- Captain, Otake, and Miyoko are on the bridge when Sanjiro tries to push through on his way back to his quarters, and he bumps into Otake and the book falls out. Yunjin grabs the book and refuses to return it to Otake. Otake feels betrayed, stomps off -- “good luck understanding what’s written in that book!” A big argument ensues re: book -- Yunjin wants to sell the book and Otake to Americans in Shanghai, Sanjiro wants to turn Otake over to Japanese, and Miyoko wants Otake safe on the ship with her.
--- Conflict resolves with Sanjiro loss and Yunjin and Miyoko victory, so Yunjin tells Miyoko that if she can convince Otake to give up the cypher for the book, then Otake can stay on the boat and they just have to sell the information (and no longer be holding dangerous info.) Captain is in favor because Americans are at least a neutral party and not embroiled in regional politics.
- Miyoko goes to convince Otake -- she returns the book, but tells him that the others intend to sell him to the Americans. Otake says that at this point, he only trusts Miyoko. After having that reciprocated from Miyoko (Miyoko says that she's willing to run with him as long as she can take the boat), Otake asks Miyoko if she’s willing to help him make a fake notebook, and Miyoko says yes. Otake burns the research notes and they start writing their own.
- The boat nears the Battle of Tsushima, there’s lots of boats and chaos, so they decide to gun the boat and go through the battle itself. The boat is being chased by a whale-shaped ship with Japan flags, but Yunjin is able to guide the Kappa through the battle and lose the ship.
- Just prior to landing in the docks of Shanghai, Sanjiro fires off the signal flare while others are below deck. After then land, Sanjiro wants to take Otake with them to the American meetup, but Otake convinces them to just take the book, since he’s safer on the ship. Yunjin agrees since he promised Miyoko to keep Otake safe. Sanjiro and Yunjin are intercepted on the docks by Kuba and some Japanese soldiers and local goons. After a bit of evasive banter, Kuba asks Sanjiro outright: where is the scientist. Sanjiro points to the ship, and Kuba moves to board the ship. Yunjin uses his underworld dealings to get the local toughs to turn on Kuba and the Japanese soldiers, making it a more fair fight
--- Conflict: Sanjiro’s stakes are to keep all the crewmembers safe, Yunjin’s stakes are to stop Kuba from apprehending Otake. Both lose. Draw cards to see which crew member dies, and Yunjin gets the lowest card.
--- Yunjin gets stabbed by a bayonet during the scuffle, and as Sanjiro’s trying to hold back Yunjin’s gaping chest wound, Yunjin asks Sanjiro: why’d you do it? Sanjiro replies: I just want to go back and raise my daughter. Yunjin understands and forgives Sanjiro, giving Sanjiro his wallet as he dies. Miyoko has been shot trying to stop Kuba, but the Japanese soldiers strong-arm Otake out of the ship. As Kuba passes Sanjiro, Sanjiro gives Kuba the notebook (which they don’t know is fake), and Kuba gives Sanjiro the papers of a full imperial pardon. No one alive on the ship knows that Sanjiro was the traitor.
Epilogue snippets:
- Sanjiro packing his stuff to go ashore, finally back at Japan. He has Yunjin’s wallet.
- The Captain telling the ship’s owner back in Vladivostov that with Yunjin dead, he’s resigning to go fight with the Korean resistance forces
- In the engine room of the Kappa, Miyoko has her arm in a sling, sad and feeding communion wafers to the kappa
- In Yunjin’s room in the Kappa -- the camera pans over all the objects in his room, and zooms in on the cross that he’d touched. It starts pulsing red, like a heartbeat.
- Otake is in a cell, sketching a cross/torii diagram on the floor. As it completes, the cell starts to rattle.