Author: Seth Harris

Had a great first session of my new 4-parter, The Manic Kingdom. It’s part of my continuing quest to find alternative set ups to the classroom. Previously, I’d used the funeral of a close friend. This time the set up involved us constructing a bottom tier theme park, naming some notable attractions in the areas of the park, creating some employees of the park, and establishing why each of our teens is their every day (the group collectively went with being summer break employees).

The cast includes Micah the Werewolf, Yvonne the Ice Queen, Red the Giant, Lucia the Witch, and Selene the Fae. We established some interesting NPCs: Willard Dokie (founder of the park), Brucie Dokie (his coke-addled loser nephew), Gretchen (former beauty queen now playing a fairy princess), Cancer Mom (a woman using her son’s illness to scam perks off the park), and some more interesting ones. My personal favorite is Okie Dokie, the sloth mascot, whom no one has ever seen out of his costume. I have some unsettling plans for him in the future sessions.

We had a few establishing scenes after a pretty lengthy world building discussion. Micah and Lucia arrived at work only to encounter creepy stage magician Mercutio who kept asking about their weekend plans. They successfully blew him off before reporting for duty at El Dorado Taco in the Aztec Kingdom area of the park. Micah failed to impress Lucia and he tried to make her jealous with college co-ed Shelly which seemed to work a bit. 

Red was donning his Jolly Red Giant costume to work in the fantastically over-sized area of the park, Bigburg. Selene noticed he was down and made it her goal to make his day better. However, they encountered the irate Cancer Mom trying to use her kid to pass a long queue for a ride and things got bad. Red attempted to lift the boy and carry him above the line but broke the child’s leg instead. Selene stepped in and escorted the woman to customer service. On the way, they ran into Yvonne who was arguing with security about letting a woman in who was carrying her husband’s ashes in an urn. Yvonne blew it and the urn ended up spilled across the entrance and, when she attempted to run away, she knocked the sick boy out of his wheelchair, breaking his other leg. Selene finally got the mother to coke-addled Brucie who tossed some drink tokens to the woman while medical wheeled her child away.

It was a great first session that let the players test drive the characters and firmly establish the world. Such a great experience, playing with such respectful, thoughtful players who are working on all cylinders to develop a rich story. Can’t wait for session 2 on Saturday.

Here is the map for our park: Happytown with accompanying notes.