#RPGaDay2024
Much like yesterday’s prompt, today’s prompt has many nominees. I am lucky; with my channel, I play 5-10 sessions a month with a large pool of great players and GMs. I could pull out sensational sessions from each of the runs this year. One does stick out for me, though.
Recently, we finished our run of Public Access by Jason Cordova. It is a Carved from Brindlewood game about characters in 2004 (former latchkey children, now adults) investigating strange mysteries in and around their childhood town of Deep Lake, New Mexico.
In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Deep Lake was the home of a notorious public access television station called TV Odyssey, and the history and fate of the channel are the sources of much speculation in certain corners of the internet. As the Latchkeys conduct their investigations in Deep Lake, they will become increasingly aware of TV Odyssey’s central role in everything happening. They will have to face whatever terrible truth lies at the heart of the infamous station.
Like Brindlewood Bay, the GM does not decide the solutions to the mysteries. The characters investigate, gather clues, and work out the answers. They then roll to see how accurate their sleuthing was. I fought this idea hard at first. Once I saw it in action, I now struggle to solve a traditional mystery, though running these games did make me better at running RPG mysteries in all systems.
Public Access has a final question for the characters that marks the finale and wraps up the campaign. I watched the characters investigate, gather clues, connect them, and ultimately uncover the answer that tied together everything we’d played up to that point. It was magic to watch. Their solution made perfect sense for the clues and all the events of the previous 10+ sessions. Their answer was perfect and satisfying. In the final session, they then took what they learned in all their investigations and “saved the world” but, as significantly, closed out their arcs as characters.
The game includes mechanics that allow each character’s history and traumas to emerge. Session 1 had no backstories, but by session 13, we saw characters completely drawn and colored in with emotional stakes. We watched the game support creating compelling characters with real connections to each other and the town.
The final session will stay with me for a long time. It was emotional and satisfying, putting the perfect bow on the 25+ hours we invested in play. The table still chats about the game in the Discord room I created for us. One player hired artists to make souvenirs for the game that he plans on sending to everyone. What happened in that game and that final session is all anyone can hope for in this hobby.
