Miseries & Misfortunes: Playing to Find Out.
The Road to Occult Paris.
“You step into this world poor, untested, but ready to make your mark. Will you ply your blade as an agent of the Cardinal? Will you resist the royal will as Frondeur? Will you seek to profit from the chaos as a merchant adventurer? Whatever you chose, you will spend your very life to achieve your aims.
Miseries & Misfortunes is a roleplaying game for three to five players. A complete game, it adds lifepaths, skills, social combat and the eternal search for truth to the foundation begun by Basic Edition Dungeons & Dragons.” — BWHQ
1647: A Time of Shadows and Secrets
Ah, 1647. The air in France is thick with whispers and the scent of impending doom. The Young Sun King lies ill, displaying the very same symptoms that plagued his father five years prior. It seems the ne’er-do-wells have returned to finish their insidious work! Though doctors were summoned in haste, the wise Brotherhood of Cyprian knew that mere physicians would not suffice.
The Miseries & Misfortunes Session structure has us begin, for the first session only, by recounting the story of our motif. I cue and prod with questions, and the players decide that the Brotherhood, our secret occult society, has its origins in the final dark days of Louis XIII. Formed to protect France for the French, our protagonists take up the motto as their motif.
The Mission
Our brave protagonists — Mouston, Hendrichus, and Jean-Baptiste — have been entrusted with a delicate task. They will deliver a missive to Basot in the countryside and return with a package he will hand over. However, upon reaching Basot’s cottage, they are greeted not by the man himself but by chaos. The home has been ransacked, and Basot, along with his wife and child, is nowhere to be found. A dead man lies sprawled across the floor, a spike gruesomely embedded in his head, guarding a trap door beneath him.
I handle the ‘mission’ details as a flashback scene between Mouston and his sovereign LeClerc while our trio walks through the rainy streets of Paris to the ferry dock where Jean-Baptitste stores his boat. The game’s first tests come when Jean-Bapstiste recognizes a tax collector, Hubert, shaking down other passeurs!
Unexpected Visitors
As our protagonists assess the grim scene, two men arrive and enter the cottage, intent on retrieving the dead body. From the loft, Jean-Baptiste confronts the newcomers at pistol point, initiating a tense dialogue. These men, too, are searching for Basot, and they hold his wife as collateral to settle an old debt. A tenuous agreement is struck to meet at noon the following day to combine efforts in finding Basot.
I should mention that Henrichus was on the ground floor when the two men entered the cottage; he quickly laid down to play dead while the other PCs hid in the upper loft. The ruse is up when the two men reveal in dialogue that they know the dead man but not Henrichus. Furthermore, in the heated exchange with Jean-Baptiste, they implied they were here to recover their fallen friends plural!
Discoveries in the Cottage
Determined to uncover any clues, the protagonists search the cottage thoroughly, ever watchful through the windows. Beneath a second hidden door, they uncover two identical boxes. One is wrapped with a ribbon and bears the seal of St. Cyprian; the other lies empty. The missive they were to deliver to Basot now becomes a subject of heated debate. Mouston, reluctant at first, is persuaded by Jean-Baptiste and Hendrichus to open it. The letter, written in Spanish, reveals little beyond the cryptic phrases “last installment” and “returning the blade.” A large cheque is also enclosed. They cover their tracks, and they leave the missive and cheque hidden within the fireplace’s secret compartment. Gathering up the cottage’s food stores, they set out with the boxes in tow.
This moment is the roleplaying I think of when we use the term in the hobby. In-character pleas and arguments are made, out-of-character clarifications are made, and interests are declared. Mouston’s player indicated he was interested in opening the letter, but Mouston would need to be persuaded. It wouldn’t be true of the character. We could have engaged in the social rules but agreed a simple opposed test would suffice. A +1 bonus to Houston for precedence, +1 to the combined Henrichus/Jean-Baptitse side for help. Mouston loses and concedes to opening the letter.
The Reckoning
Upon their return, Monsieur Leclerc listens to their account of the day’s events with mounting fury. As they recount their tale, he kicks over the table where the sealed box rests.
“That’s the wrong box!” he roars, his anger palpable.
I end the session there. In the next session, Mouston’s player will be absent, which makes for an organic break where Jean-Baptitse and Henrichus can continue to play. The session structure concludes with a review of experience charts and advances as necessary. There is some bookkeeping around exertion, a dice re-roll mechanic that expends your future life years, and a player stating their favorite part of the session. In our case, it was the discussion of opening the letter.
GM’s Epilogue
I attended Burning Wheel Con 2023 in the outlands of NY somewhere. I considered it a win if I got to play one or two games of Miseries & Misfortunes. I got to play no less than four sessions! And here I take my turn, mon ami, running two concurrent series of games (FKA Campaigns). We’ll play through a Moment, M&M’s campaign structure covering a time period and a series of events resolved in four to eight play sessions.
We convene sessions online weekly on Sundays. Henrichus is a scribe that knows a demon’s name and a necromantic spell. Jean-Baptiste, a simple passeur of discreet means. Monsieur Mouston, agent for the indomitable Monsieur LeClerc. These PCs were made in session zero. Almost all aspects of the character come from random tables and dice rolls. Birth quality, stats, God, and politics. Players make choices about lifepaths and think about careers. They also choose what skills increase during their two advancements during character creation. What’s fantastic is if you feel your final result is unplayable for you, you begin again, with the discarded character as a dependent of your new one! When it’s all done, you’ll have dependents, obligations, your place in society, and maybe an income source and property.
Motifs are what binds our characters. Ours is ‘Protecting France for the French!’ In our first play session, we’ll have to recount the story behind this motif. This is the hard part, I think. You get through it by talking it out, at least nail down the phrase and refine it. I think it is easy to discard and poo-poo it. Don’t, there’s magic here.
Moments are the game’s unit for campaign structure, and events are tucked in under moments. Our Moment is about the young Louis XIV’s battle with smallpox. However, with the occult turned up to 11, we know history covered up the dark occult agenda!
Plots are when our protagonists enter the scene (of an event). There are quests and intrigues. We begin with a quest, the simpler of the two for this novice GM. Our man, Monsieur Mouston, is assigned a task by his sovereign like usual: Deliver a letter and bring back a box discreetly.
Writing down the events of play in rough right after the session is fantastic! I wish I had begun doing this sooner. I typically wait. Somewhere in the recall and recording process, more of the situation is revealed to me. Who the kidnappers are, where has Basot gone, and why? How Hubert makes another appearance later. Who is Nicholas Du Guet, the name on the letter? The two men, Ian and Marin, relatives -I know who they are now. Basot’s wife has a name: Isabel. And more importantly, I’m about to do some “woke ass shit” -as the kids say! It’s good to be the GM.
Notion, as our session VTT is holding up. I was able to drop in a map of a 17th-century cottage in real time for effect. The game map of Paris had to be reduced from 12M to 5M for the free Notion account. I can make GM-only notes in the same “workspace,” and the players will not see them. It stayed out of the way.
At slightly over 2.5 hours. We got a great deal done. What awaits our heroes in the next chapter of this dark saga? Will they uncover the truth behind the Young Sun King’s illness? And what is the mysterious blade mentioned in the missive? Only time will tell as the Brotherhood of Cyprian continues its perilous journey through a world shrouded in mystery and danger.
Adieu!
Originally published at https://playfearless.substack.com.
