Welcome to the sixteenth instalment of the column "Winging It", a column discussing the promises and pitfalls of a more improvisational approach to GMing.

Here is a tricky premise: having a game set in two different time periods, with the players playing two different sets of characters, with one story informing the other one, all the while allowing for as much improvisation in the game itself as possible.

This was the task I had set for myself in a recent Hunter: the Reckoning game session, one that I had been thinking about for quite some time.

I'm a big fan of the concept of the parallel game, one where a group of players ends up playing two different groups of characters. I've done it where the groups were kinda-sorta opposing each other (a group of vampires on the one side, and a group of FBI agents on the other), and I've also done it where the groups had no direct contact (two different groups of vampires, one attending a funeral for a friend in a modern setting, the other a slightly different group of vampires several hundred years earlier where they worked to save that "friend" from an earlier threat). The notion of these separate storylines providing an alternate perspective on a particular story or idea has always appealed to me.

With my current H:tR game, I had the idea that the characters would have to face off against a very minor Earthbound Demon, something that would be difficult to fight directly, but relatively easy to subdue (once they figured out how).

I also liked the idea that a given weapon, something designed to feed off the life force of its' victims, could actually trap spirits, demons, creatures like that. Something like a particular sword mentioned in the Book of Storyteller Secrets in Vampire: the Dark Ages.

Keeping these two ideas in mind, I came up with a premise whereby two different groups of Player Characters would end up battling the same Earthbound Demon at different points in history, with dramatically different results.

This, however, resulted in me having to put in a lot more planning than I normally am wanting to do in this game. Because of the concept behind the game, I determined that the part of the game involving the original encounter with the Earthbound Demon would be set up very traditionally (hopefully without railroading the players into specific actions, but definitely setting up a typical "quest" and hoping they would follow the clues and more obvious actions), while only a couple of elements in the second encounter would be laid out beforehand, and virtually everything else would be open to whatever bizarre logic and decisions the players could come up with to deal with the situation.

The second group, the parallel game, began in a small village in the south of France. The players were given two characters to choose from, each Ghouled servants of a Lhiannan vampire who was seen as a god to the members of the village. For the sake of simplicity (and to hammer home the fact that these characters were created by me simply to tell the backstory, not to survive), these characters will simply be referred to as the Warrior and the Witch. The Vampire informed them that the three of them had to travel to a larger city nearby to pick up a weapon with which to battle a Demon at a third location.

The Demon in question was a creature summoned a few centuries previous by the Vampire, but managed to free itself from her influence and control. Recently, its' activities became known to the Lhiannan, and she felt the danger it posed to all the communities nearby (including, eventually, her own village) was too great a risk to leave unchecked. Thus, she felt that the Demon had to be confronted and destroyed by the three of them.

The Warrior, Witch and Vampire ended up in this larger centre to meet a second Vampire, one who was known across the Vampire Courts of Medieval Europe as a master weaponsmith. He presented the trio with a sword, one capable of drawing power from its' victim, while also imbedding itself into the flesh of its' user for additional power.

Thus equipped, they travelled on to another secluded village deep in very rough country, the scene of horrific rites and rituals, more repugnant and disturbing than those created to the Lhiannan herself. In a makeshift temple, amidst scenes of carnage and debauchery, the trio confronted the Demon.

All of this portion of the game had been fairly well planned out. There had been the requisite encounters on the roads with bandits, the haggling with inkeepers over safe lodgings, the difficulty with transporting a Vampire abroad during daylight, that sort of thing. Even the setting of the Demons' village was fairly traditional, the sort of touches most long-time roleplayers would expect to see when encountering a Demon or Devil character. If anything, I was perhaps a touch less lurid with the actual encounters, as this setting, I find, is a bit more about atmosphere than combat.

The actual combat scene also had several things that had to happen – the Lhiannan was to prove not powerful enough to take on the Demon herself, the Warrior and the Witch were also to seem somewhat overpowered (even with the Lhiannan taking the full brunt of the attack), but the Warrior (armed with the mystical Vampire sword) would strike a killing blow. Or at least that is what she would initially appear to do.

What happened was, when the Warrior struck the fatal blow, the Demon itself became entirely absorbed by the sword (to those who know about such things, its' pre-existing reliquary was destroyed by this action as well). However, the Demon, through the connection the sword had with its' user, then possessed the Warrior, killing and reshaping her, rebuilding itself into its own image.

Cut to the present day, with the current characters of two of my Hunter players, Izzy and Daniella. The player for Jason was not available for this session, but I've structured the game so it is still playable with one player missing. Anyway, Izzy and Daniella had been approached by their ally Devon (a member of the Arcanum) about assisting him with a bit of business in Hong Kong. It appeared that Devon had left the Arcanum (or was at least doing some "freelancing" for ... a different group), one that was willing to pay Izzy and Daniella for their services in retrieving an item. A box.

Izzy, Daniella, and Devon all meet with a contact in the Hong Kong airport, Ken. The Second Sight ability of Izzy and Daniella show Ken to be very supernatural, but something new, something they have not seen before. Oddly enough, they both get the feeling like he is somehow larger than life, like he is constantly the star of a movie or something. All their additional perceptive Hunter abilities show them is that Ken himself is not aware that he is supernatural.

The four of them are to attend a particular night club that evening. The object they are looking for is on the second floor, in a secluded VIP room. Cutting through the descriptions of cultural differences (and the familiarity of nightclubs across the known world), eventually Izzy and Daniella get invited upstairs to the VIP room, mostly by their ally Ken putting on his charm (and insanely high Joss rating – unknown to everybody, even Ken, he is a Dhampyr, and has the most fantastic and improbable luck).

Past the "regular" VIP room, the PC’s encounter a gentleman’s club with plenty of businessmen engaged in interesting acts with very young women, and a glass case in the middle of the room that contains a long box. Devon informs them that this is the item they need to retrieve. While they muddle over how to do exactly that while surrounded by people and supernatural guards, another young woman enters, walks to the glass case, and, reaching in, opens the box. Retrieving a sword. This would be the same sword from the earlier part of the game, and, as Izzy and Daniella can clearly see, it causes the young woman to become instantly possessed by the Demon inhabiting the weapon.

The good guys all do battle with the Demon and some of its' henchmen, scattering the businessmen and hookers from the room. At one point, after it physically transforms into a much larger, more menacing and Demon-like visage, the arm that wields the weapon gets cut off, and the possession is disrupted. Daniella falls on the sword, and can feel it attempting to dig into her, as well as the Demon trying to possess her. However, her Hunter abilities protect her from that, and she is able to put the sword back into the box so they can all flee, sword and box in hand, before their luck runs out.

This part of the session is wrapped up with Daniella and Izzy returning to Canada.

Now, as complex as the above scenario was, it was made even more complex by switching between time periods periodically during the game session, trying to get as much of the two separate stories to reflect each other as much as possible. Thus, the players did not know that the "actual" artifact to be collected was to be the sword their characters in the other time period had utilized until the box was opened. Keeping the "modern day" part of the game as loose and open to improvisation and last-minute changes helped the feeling of the two stories commenting on each other, and helped heighten the tension of the evening.