Monday Musings #95 🤬
All the things I've taken this week...
Good Monday, Gamer!
“Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast…”― The White Queen, NPC
This past week? Pure consumption mode. Games, shows, stories, vibes—just taking, taking, taking. Sometimes you need that….and a steak.
Cartel One-Shot
Cartel is a PBTA tabletop RPG from Magpie Games that drops you into the heart of a Mexican narcofiction drama. You're not playing heroes—you’re playing people caught in impossible situations, trying to survive. I dropped into a Cartel one-shot game this week. I decided to play La Polizeta mostly straight—a good person or someone trying to be. But when you're in Cartel, straight doesn't mean safe. People kept pulling guns on me and getting merc’d! Nobody was about my redemption arc?! It's such a powder keg of a game as a one-shot. One move from "quiet tension" to "who's dying next." Still, a con table favorite, drama AF.
Best Hacking Rules in RPGs?
No contest: FFG's Shadow of the Beanstalk. They have the best hacking rules for use on the table, hands down. Fight me.
Sandman, Season 1, Episode 4 (Netflix)
Gave it a rewatch. Loved it, still. The way Morpheus descends into Hell to retrieve his helm? Vulnerable, desperate, proud. And Lucifer? 100% here for the Light-bringer. All the social and rules maneuvering Tip toeing the lines—peak dueling.
Moonrise (Netflix)
Watched the first episode of this anime film directed by Masashi Koizuka. Set in a future where Earth and the Moon are divided by war, it follows a lunar soldier haunted by loss and grief. I'm interested. The implied history and world-building seeds are tasty, but the protagonist isn’t landing for me yet. Still, I'm gonna keep going for the vibe alone. Feels like it might open up to something that grabs me.
Witch Hunter Robin & Lifted: Indomitable
I rewatched some Witch Hunter Robin, which is for sure a touchstone for Lifted: Indomitable. It's an anime about a secret group that hunts down rogue witches with strange powers. It’s all nice and wholesome in the beginning, then you learn the difference between witch and craft-user…and other very bad things! The aesthetic, the tension, and the way "witch" is both power and curse aligns with what I'm working on for Lifted. The "witches" in Lifted are the Lifted themselves: gifted, targeted, feared, and essential. Robin's world is also saturated with moral ambiguity and surveillance culture and fear of witches (but craft-users are ‘aight)
ICYMI
Love and Violence in the Jungle: I played in The Clay That Woke, and Sarah wrote up her reflections. Read Sarah's Post
Prep Preferences: Thomas at ttrpg.in talks about interpretive labor and how we prep differently. I’m always a fan of GM prep and the way games approach it differently—especially when games bake it in.. Read the Post
Catch ya next week!