Monday Musings #138 🤬
The Magic of letting go, and a PF KS Zine update!
Good Monday, Gamer!
“Magic is believing in yourself. If you can do that, you can make anything happen.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Two players, one continuing mystery, and a players that kept choosing curiosity over control. Running Occulted KC down a player gave the Mundane and the Flake more room to matter — they saved a cop, discovered a body‑stealing siren business, and turned a few GM instincts into useful table fiction. This week’s takeaway: Session Zero gave us the right seeds, the Use Magic move forced honest choices, and sometimes the hardest monsters to beat are the habits we bring to the table.
Occulted KC
We had a bye week or two and were a player down, which pushed spotlight time from the usual ~30% to roughly 50%. Running two‑PC sessions can be terrifying on paper and lovely in practice — this week it was Michael Lewis (the Mundane) and Eleanor (the Flake), the two “normies” who are weirdly into cryptids. Michael drives. Eleanor connects the trouble.
We’re three sessions into the Case of the Curse of the Frog Monsters. Officer Harris was hospitalized after getting wrecked by a huge frog thing and is now showing early signs of transformation. The players decided to chase that thread. They learned Harris had been smuggled out of the hospital by Det. Vaughn, before experimental hands could get to him. They also caught the Siren (maybe Harpy—more on that later) working with Michael Jones, wheeling a body into a restricted area.
The GM question across the session kept returning: what do “normie” characters actually do when mundane problems go sideways? What do they do when the weird starts to bleed through? I kept leaning on the MotW maxim: these sessions are about who the Hunters are. These hunters did fine. They made smart, human choices, and the game rewarded them for it. MotW’s end‑of‑session XP questions are pretty solid — we didn’t finish the mystery, but we established some table lore:
Sirens (or harpy‑adjacent creatures) are physically strong and interested in stealing living bodies.
The team saved Harris from completing his transformation.
Michael Lewis is the GOAT of persuasion.
Our mystery cast board is expanding: Officer Duchovny, The Siren (or Harpy?), and Michael Jones were added.
The Use Magic move is settling in for me. I bring old GM junk and baggage to it. I don’t like the idea of everyone having magic; something in me wants to keep it rare. That’s 100% about me. This was the third time the Use Magic move was triggered across three or four sessions. The players used it to disarm Michael Jones when he grabbed Michael Lewis’s pistol. It worked, and a glitch followed: Eleanor’s casting attracted unwanted attention. Perfect table fiction — Bennie, another occultist, is now aware they’re on his trail. And I do like that!!
Small housekeeping confession: in Session Zero, I meant “harpy,” not “siren.” I’ve been letting it slide because the fiction is working. What matters is we’ve got a foreshadowed, sirene‑ish agent with unknown aims, and it’s doing interesting work at the table. I’m running with it.
Kickstarter update — Play Fearless Greatest Crits Zine
The Play Fearless Greatest Crits Kickstarter is live. This morning, it sits at $820 of a $2,000 goal, backed by 24 people.
Numbers matter less as metrics and more as proof that the idea exists outside my head. People saw it, recognized something they liked, and backed it. That’s the whole scary, wonderful part. The project isn’t an archive of everything I’ve written — it’s a selection of what survived real tables and real time: play‑tested ideas, session notes, and actual play inserts. If Play Fearless helped you prep less, trust more, or let a moment breathe at your table, consider backing and/or sharing! (no pressure — just an invitation).
ICYMI
Rusty is hammering away on Gyro Shooter over on Patreon
Michel Fiffe — one of my big comic inspirations:
Sarah Doom — also worth a look! She’s got a secret project!!
And while you’re over there, you may as well take a listen to Muses of Play