Ten Candles: A Tragic Horror RPG

A couple of weeks ago our Sunday afternoon play group played Ten Candles. Ten Candles is a narrative focused RPG where the characters in the game will all die. If you have played "Alice is Missing" before there is a very similar game setup and mechanic between these two games. Your players will create some players, establish a handful of relationships between each other and then setup some sort of personal goal. In Alice is Missing this is facilitated through the cards with the locations in the game and through the inherent relationships defined, such as someone being Alice's brother. Ten Candles handles this approach a little bit differently where players have notecards and have to write down some adjectives for their character. One is positive, one is negative and one sort of serves as a trigger that would make them lose hope in the world. The thing is, those aren't your character's motivations. You end up passing those to the players to your left and right. It was a cool mechanic and took everyone by surprise, while also establishing some "knowns" about the character next to you. 

Conceptually Ten Candles is storytelling game where the players at the table need to setup scenes, and everyone needs to collaboratively play the scene out. Ten Candles uses a candle mechanic where after each scene or each failure in the narrative a candle is put out. These candles work as a sort of countdown to the end of the game where everyone has to eventually narrate their death. Our game centered around an unknown horror (known as "Them") that had been unleashed from a mountain by a railroad company that was drilling a tunnel through the mountain. That was the premise we started with and that is it. The game specifically instructs the GM and players not to prep the game in any way. From there I facilitated several scenes where our players were trying to escape the town. 

The game played wonderfully at our table and there was a constant tension as our players had to make difficult decisions through each scene. There are a couple of caveats though to this game that I think need to be spelled out for players looking to play this game. First, I think there needs to be an understanding and level of comfort with everyone at the table about the emotional weight of this game. This isn't something you will be playing with people in a FLGS. Players can be hit with some pretty heavy stuff and there is emotion at play. I was on the brink of tears while playing Alice is Missing and we had several who had similar emotional reactions here as well. Second, everyone needs to be on the same page with playing the game. The game rules are incredibly loose; some people need to understand the assignment and come to the table to play cooperatively. 

Comparing this game to Alice is Missing, I like it more, but I think it is a bit hard to facilitate the game. There are some good prompts in the back of the book, but there were a couple of times where I was struggling to make sure, I queued up enough scenes to go through all of the candles. I would highly recommend just straight up asking your players to suggest or craft a scene with you. Specifically asking also helps to make sure the players can try and hit the narrative points on their notecards. 

As the game progresses you will burn off your notecards with your traits and also put out candles. The end of the game is narrated in the dark and is very impactful. If possible, I would highly recommend that you setup your game session where everyone gets up and quietly leaves without saying anything. 

Overall a wonderful a experience that shared a lot of similarities to Alice is Missing. 

Ridelog: Trois Nashville




This past week we had a wonderful trip down to Tennessee. Did you know that there was a Nashville in Illinois? I didn't. Last year we had a weekend trip organized to Nashville, Indiana. It was a delightful surprise of a ride, with incredibly technical roads. We decided to make a week long trip out of the whole thing and to "Trois Nashville". This was perhaps the largest group ride we have done with I think a total of 14 bikes. We had even more people (friends and family of various members) meet up with us in Nashville Tennessee.  

Sometimes life is a fucking disaster

The world is weird sometimes. I feel like this across the board are kinda shitty right now, but I had a nice extra does of shininess this past couple of weeks. Those of us in the northern Illinois region have been hit with some pretty heavy storms. I think we had 3-5 storm events that dropped +2" of rain in less than an hour over the course of about ten days. I experienced seepage in my basement for the first time from these storm events. Thankfully the actual amount of water was minor and just amounts to mostly wetness under the flooring. 

I do have pull all of the flooring up however. The benefit and bane of waterproof vinyl floors is that the water has probably spread to a larger area than where it actually seeped in, so there is going to have to be some investigation as to where the water is coming from. I have my first meeting with a company next week to take a look at the foundation. 

Megan thankfully has talked me off my panic attack this past week, and I am slowly coming to realize that while the basement might be impacted for the next couple of months, we thankfully have not had any real damage. 

Just when I was getting a handle on the situation though, I saw a mouse today in the basement while pulling up some floorboards. The cats are on high alert, but my anxiety immediately spiked back up after this incident. An exterminator is I guess also now on our list of things to do in the next week or so. 

Videogaming: Citizen Sleeper

I've been playing Citizen Sleeper for a little over a year now, popping on to play it in 20 minute bursts. This game was so delightful and hit the same sort of melancholy vibe for me that Spiritfarer did. This is a narrative game with a delightfully dreamy ambient soundtrack, that is perfect to play in the dark late at night. The stories told here through your experience as sleeper are very heartfelt and personal and are designed to showcase each of your direct impacts upon the people and places that are around the Eye, which is the space station you inhabit. 

Play this game and go ahead and IV drip it in slow increments as it is just pure bliss with some fantastic storytelling. 

Book Review: Red Rising


Red Rising by Pierce Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book started off a bit rough for me, coming across as just "Irish Hunger Games", but grew on me as it progressed. I think the interesting cast of characters is what really kept me going in this book more than anything else. Mustang, Antonia, Sevro, Pax, Cassius, Tactis. They all held me on while this story progressed. I was also really impressed with Darrow as a character. It isn't often that you see a story written where the main character is so unequivocally dominating in persona. It was refreshing to see that, and I can glimpse the future where he will perhaps cross that threshold into monster.

Pierce Brown also did a wonderful job taking these characters and turning my love of them into disgust. For the first third of the book, I thought to myself "Man, I love some of these Golds", and I could see parallels in plenty of modern fantasy and genre fiction for the character archetypes (ahem, regency period), but the way he turned that love back into disgust in the second half with the rebuilding of Darrow's army and followers was masterfully done. It all focused on the leadership style and the reason why people hold their values.

Despite all of these wonderful characters, my biggest struggles with the book in general were around the overarching story here. The whole idea that all of these kids (and they are kids), are going to a "school", which has no real training and teaching, to just murder each other seems completely impractical. The book even covers some of the weirdness of this when it showcases how several of the "best and brightest" of the students are killed off in various ways. Even at the end of the book, I was never really convinced that this whole year of just war actually amounted to anything believable in the broader society setup. The structure of the "games" don't even really give me a good idea of how the other students would secure apprenticeships. Such a large percentage of the participants end up enslaved, sometimes by happenstance, that I can't grasp how this would further the meritocracy (even when it is working) in any way.

I felt that the conquering of the other houses often times felt rushed narratively too. Each house is clearly described as having a castle, but somehow Darrow and is group are able to breach the walls of each location within a matter of minutes, with seemingly little to know capability. It seemed like the author wrote themselves into a corner a little bit and needed to resolve those narrative points just to get to the core character resolutions.

I suppose this is all just dressing to act as a setup for the future civil war though and that is fine I suppose, but I really lost a lot of my "suspension of disbelief" when it came to the whole premise of the "game" that was being played, especially when "kids" had the skills and wherewithal to literally murder the adults around them.

The ending of the book to also felt weirdly incomplete. The game was completed, Darrow gets his apprenticeship, but everyone and everything else is just left, unexplained or resolved. What? Maybe that gets resolved in a future book I guess.


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The Queen of Spades - A Parlor Larp

This past Saturday I had a chance to try out an experience I have never done before and play something called a parlor larp. What is a parlor larp? It is a live action roleplaying game, that takes place in a single location (one's home usually) and has no combat. This is my first time playing a parlor larp and I believe it was the first time for everyone playing, including the director. The premise of this larp is that all of the players in the game, including the director, wake up on a ship after they were drugged and kidnapped. All of the characters have a history or relationship with a character named Marissa who at some point during the story will probably die. 

The story then unfolds into a "Murder on the Orient Express" sort of whodunnit. The general premise is pretty straight forward and everyone was able to grasp the general concept easily enough. 

General Thoughts and Observations on the game:
- The game is played in someone's home so there is some care needed by the host to make clear what areas are off limits and what are part of the game. Our play group uses some simply cardboard signs to indicate the rooms on the ship. 

- The location of the ship did not play a huge part of the game except for creating a space where people could not leave. There were several locations like the helm and engine room which were inspirational but otherwise didn't really serve much purpose in the game. I'll touch on this a bit more below. 

- The game appears to really only have one objective, which is to kill or find out who killed Marissa. Our play group ran into a few narrative stalling moments. For example, the players who were inclined to kill Marissa weren't explicitly stated to do so in their character backstories. We had to force this pivotal moment. Once it occurred though, there was a general "what's next" sort of revelation. The handful of characters who wanted Marissa dead had their mission accomplished by someone else, and were not inclined to turn that person in or exact any sort of justice. 

- The game overall could use a few more milestone triggers in the story to help push some narrative. As I noted above, the ship we were on was inoperable and the scenario stated there was no way to fix the ship. I think there could've been some more effective storytelling in allowing some environmental events to occur that would force certain characters to be in proximity with each other, or be in a room by themselves to force some story. Having two people forced to work in the engine room to repair the ship for example gives them an opportunity to talk by themselves in an isolated and unusual area of the ship without inherently triggering suspicion.

- Similarly, secondary objectives for the characters could have been very useful to keep the game moving after Marissa's death. In our game, once Marissa died, we all basically sat in one room on the ship and tried to logic our way through what happened. There was no further separation for the social interaction. The character backgrounds allude that certain players may have conflicts, but it doesn't provide anyone and guidance as to an objective. One character for example was a surviving member of a family my character eliminated. Sure, she was upset with me and we had a confrontation out in the open, but at no point was she urged to try and kill me as well. Perhaps experienced larpers would know do this, but with new players and strangers none of us really had the awareness or knowledge that it was ok to eliminated other players. 

- The abilities mechanics in this game were sort of confusing and seemed like they were unnecessarily complicated. Abilities had a limited number of uses in most cases, but would cost players a portion of their "life" (FL) when used. It was a challenge mechanic, but if we were reading the rules correctly even if a player won a challenge it was very probable they would take more damage than if they just allowed themselves to lose. Additionally, some of the jumps in life didn't make sense thematically. For example, if I used a non-combat mechanic against someone, let's say "talk down to", the result might bring the character from FL 5 (highest amount) down to an FL 3. That meant that they had broken bone, or bleed or were physically impaired in some way. That didn't seem to make sense. After the game we discussed as a group of perhaps using a separate token mechanic, perhaps each player has 5-10 tokens as a limited resource they could use in those non-combat challenges, and damage to FL would only occur to players during combat or physical encounters. 

Overall, It was an interesting system. Our group wants to play some more, but we feel we would tweak the mechanics a bit more and perhaps pull in some mechanics from "Good Society" where before the game we can establish some secondary character issues and relationships.

Ridelog: May 4, 2025 Slimey Crud Run


The bi-annual Slimey Crud is a ride that takes place each fall and spring ending in LeLand Wisconsin. More often than not, it is cold and rainy, but this year the wear was sunny and a brisk mid-50's. We had a great MEWS ride up this year. I would love to take this ride up again on a regular day to try and have lunch at Sprecher's bar up in LeLand. 

Videogaming: South of Midnight

I have not had an opportunity to play a lot of games over the past couple of months. I recently wrapped up Indiana Jones and the Great Circle a few weeks ago, and that game took me almost 3 months of on and off play to finish. There is a lot of good stuff coming out this summer, so I didn't want to get into another super long game. South of Midnight came out on Gamepass a few weeks ago and had a bit of hype going around it online. I decided to give it a go, not knowing exactly what I was getting into. 

I was pleasantly surprised by South of Midnight as it turned out to be a really nice adventure game. It really harkens back to an older style of gameplay that I felt was very refreshing. It's a simple, run/jump/fight/explore game that is fairly linear in process. It took me about 12 hours to complete, and I really enjoyed my time with it. 

The game has a beautiful graphical style, an almost quasi-stop motion design that gives me Fable aesthetics. If Fable ever comes out and looks like this game, I would be more than pleased with the aesthetic. The music in this game was also delightful as well, giving me "Tim Burton" vibes where the songs and lyrics played into the scene and narrative. It really incorporated into the gameplay really well.

The game does have some issues. Notably, the combat. While it is good, it is largely stagnant, and you are doing the same thing from the start of the game all the way to the very end. I never felt like the combat was that big of a deal and most instances were quick, so it never really got in the way of the gameplay. 

There was one story element that also really didn't feel cohesive and was sort a sloppily wrapped up at the end of the game. Again, not a big deal, but it just felt a bit weird. 

Overall, totally worth playing. Great vibes with some very touching moments and some fun character design. Worth checking out for a quick game. 

Videogaming: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

I've been slowly making my way through Indiana Jones and the Great Circle over the past couple of months. I started it back around January while over holiday break and I just wrapped it up this past weekend, taking a small break for the past month or so. This has been a really fantastic game that captured the feel and of the original Indiana Jones movies really well. Everything from the music, to the writing, to the score all nailed the feel and I honestly would love to see this story made into an Indiana Jones movie. 

I need up taking a break in the game because I was striving to get all of the secret collectables, which I haven;t done yet, but aim to go back and do at some point. My only real critique of the game is that I felt the third act (in Sukothai) felt a bit long for me and was mostly the same gameplay mecahnics being brought forth for a third time. Even while exploring that area, I never really felt like I had a good handle on where things were in relation to each other, even with the use of the boat. I think this in part might be due to the forest generally looking the same, but also the traversal areas are much more limited due to the flooded pass area. 

Such a great game though and just makes me want to see and consume more content in this world.