#bisexualpiratequeen

“Caleb, are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” Molly asked, looking at the human. The wizard stumbled into the room, catching himself on the table. 

“I....yes.” Caleb said softly. He rested his hip on the table, head swimming. He was exhausted and his head was pounding. He had too much magic during the fight and he could feel the hangover crawling up his spine. His eyes drifted close and his hips slipped from the table. 

Molly caught him before he fell, wrapping his hands around Caleb’s hips. Caleb’s head dropped to his shoulders before he pulled himself up. He was here, in Molly’s arms, in his room at the inn. 

“No. I’m not leaving you alone.” Molly said. “You’ll sleep in your boots, Caleb. That’s uncomfortable.” Caleb pressed his mouth to the silk of Molly’s coat. 

“Are you sure?” He asked. 

“Caleb, darling.” Molly’s voice hitched as he guided the wizard to the bed. “Let’s get you some sleep, alright?” 

“Molly, you don’t need to do this.” Caleb protested softly. Molly’s hand on his body felt nice. It was nice to be touched in a way that didn’t bring pain to his person. 

I know their botanical name is formicae or something but formiform is super awkward

I’ve definitely got one for that, and it’s a real doozy:

Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine

It’s a diceless, story-driven game about kids - teenagers around 14-16 years of age, specifically - having adventures in and around a pastoral small town. The default assumption is that the kids in question are actually young gods of various descriptions (hence the game’s title - one of the iconic characters literally built an engine that grants wishes), but it scales down to mortal player characters very easily, which is entirely due to how the gameplay works.

While the game does have skills and health levels and all that good stuff, the core of CMWGE (how’s that for an acronym?) is a system that frames narrative charater development as a series of RPG-style quests. Each character has a personal Arc, which falls into one of eight colours: from orange Knight Arcs, which revolve around finding a role in society, to gold Aspect Arcs, which focus on the pursuit of self-improvement, to purple Shepherd Arcs, which involve taking responsibility for guiding or guarding something. Each Arc, in turn, is made up of a series of Quests.

The way that works is that you’ll pick a Quest or set of Quests - you can be on up to four Quests at a time - that fit your personal Arc and the circumstances of your character’s life, then pursue them by performing various narrative actions. A given quest can fit into multiple types of Arcs, so you have a great deal of flexibility to arrange them as you see fit; for example, learning how to take care of a small child can be the first Quest of an orange/Knight Arc, but it can also be the second Quest of a blue/Bindings or purple/Shepherd Arc, or the final Quest of a black/Emptiness Arc.

(If you’re wondering how the heck child care can slot into something called an Emptiness Arc, it’s because the final Quest of an Emptiness Arc is about finding answers, reaching closure, or reaffirming your purpose in life after the living hell the previous four Quests put you through. Simple, right? ;) )

Anyway, you complete Quests by spending XP on them, which can be earned in one of two ways:

1. Performing genre-appropriate XP actions, which generate XP for a shared pot that’s divided among all players at the end of each session; and

2. Completing Quest goals, which mark XP against the relevant Quest directly.

XP actions are basically stuff that reinforces the game’s genre. Every genre has a list of such actions, which are associated with colours just like Arcs are. For example, the colour blue, which is associated with Bindings Arcs, is also the colour of “Science, Faith and Sorcery” - the act of proposing a theory about how the world works, then gambling your own safety or wellbeing on that theory. If you’re playing a game where that’s an in-genre action, every time somebody does that, a point of XP goes into the shared pot.

Quest goals, on the other hand, are tied to the Quest itself. Suppose, for example, that for the second Quest of your Aspect Arc, you take “Someone’s in Trouble!”, a Quest about helping or protecting a vulnerable person who’s somehow tied to the story of your current Arc. Then your Quest goals might look like this (this is right out of the core book, not an example I made up):

***

Major Goals

The GM can award you 5 XP toward this quest when:

You formally commit to trying to help this person;

They open up to you while talking to you in their home or important haunts;

Some element of their problem bridges from the metaphorical or emotional to the real - e.g., a gate opens from their nightmares to the world, or a fear turns into a curse, or someone who always gets a little carried away gets physically carried away.

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of 15 XP.

Quest Flavour

Once per chapter, you can earn a bonus XP toward this quest when you:

catch eerie glimpses/foreshadowing of a threat to them

have a sleepover/slumber party or visit their dreams

listen to them explaining their despair

are shown one of their secrets

hunt down some specific bit of trouble

drag them somewhere they really shouldn’t be

You can combine this with an XP action, but you’re not required to.

***

Completing Quests and Arcs is the game’s only mechanism for character advancement, and if you’re playing a miraculous (i.e., godly) character rather than a mundane one, it’s also how you awaken your powers.

some people think adding something for other people, that they’ll never touch or use, devalues their experience just by existing.