MC Notes: Recount 07 Election Day Part 1

So I guess I cursed this episode when I introduced myself as the manager of crises… We lost a bunch of audio for this recording and only had a backup of half of it because my internet went out halfway through the record and I had to call into our online meeting with my cellphone. So we had to re-record some bits from memory which was an adventure but I think it turned out really well.

Obviously in this episode we learn who wins the election. Were you surprised??? One of my friends was messaging me to say, “Anna can’t win! She’s just so mean!” and that’s absolutely true but this isn’t a story that’s interested in what’s fair or the good guys winning (which are the types of stories we tend to gravitate towards to be fair to my friend). As the rulebook says, this is a story about the messy lives of teenage monsters, and boy are they messy. We have a debrief episode that will come out after the finale where I’ll touch on this too, but the custom moves really made dramatic shifts in the voting and then I didn’t fully follow those rules because narratively I didn’t agree with the outcomes of every roll. That’s playtesting! For example, even though Anna technically stole Elizabeth’s vote, I felt like her loyalty to Declan specifically had not been challenged in the story since Anna went after Gwen who Elizabeth was already weary of.

Something kind of funny about this campaign is that the first 4 episodes are about the election first and foremost, and then the last 4 episodes go down a different path. I enjoy that the plot followed what the players thought was interesting rather than anything I prescribed in the setup of the campaign. That’s the beauty of Playing to Find Out What Happens.  I had a feeling the election would fade into the background as the characters had other teenager problems to deal with like your unfriendly neighbourhood vampire running around as a threat.

My favourite scene in this episode has to be Anna and Gwen yelling at each other. As characters, these two really haven’t spoken since episode 1 where they fought at the party, so it was great to have them come back together only to butt heads in a verbal throwdown. We do play with safety tools, so we checked in after the scene to make sure that scene felt good to everyone. No IRL feelings were hurt during this scene!

I hope the twists and turns coming in the finale will excite you as much as they excited me. The ending is not what any of us expected, but just wait til you hear it because it moved me so strongly. I made something really special that I’ll get to share with you as my notes for the next episode too (which was actually teased in this episode for those of you who are taking notes or re-listening).

Okay time to stop before I give anything away!

- Jillian