For the first 48 hours, please only sign up if you joined the Gauntlet in the last six months or haven’t played a game that I GMed. (The usual priority sign-up time is waived for this game so new players can join more easily.)
At the Academy Passerine, nothing is more important than the duels. Governed by the Academy’s bizarre dream-logic, a single duel can mean the difference between glorious popularity—the coolest friends, the best invitations, the hottest dates—and crushing irrelevance. But the school’s hard-fought hierarchies are thrown into disarray when a mysterious new social media account starts exposing the students’ deepest secrets. Hidden crushes, illicit liaisons, unspoken jealousies and unspeakable embarrassments are all revealed, and nobody is safe. Can you solve the mystery of the poster’s identity and intentions before you, too, are caught up in the tide of humiliating revelation?
This is a game of Hearts of Wulin using the optional rules from Academy of the Blade and Numberless Secrets: a complex mystery in a weird high school where duels are common and death is impossible. No rules knowledge is required and all rules will be taught in play.
The intended touchstones for this game are Revolutionary Girl Utena and Gossip Girl, but I’ve actually never seen either and am going to rely on my favourite high school movies (Bring It On, Mean Girls, etc) with some added surreal swordfighting.
Subject matter includes teen power dynamics, violence, possible sexual references and drug use. Romantic entanglements are fairly central to the game, but we can work around that if you prefer. We’ll use safety tools including lines and veils, the X card and the open door, and the game will run under the Gauntlet Community Code of Conduct.
Sessions will be over Zoom with short breaks on the hour. I don’t intend to record these sessions.
Please sign up for all sessions you’d like to attend. Signing up for all sessions is encouraged, but not required. One session falls on Easter weekend, and if it turns out most players are unavailable then, I’ll look at rescheduling or cutting that session.
Please note that daylight savings ends in my timezone between the first and second sessions, so the start time will probably change for you unless you’re in Australia. Please check both start times are good for you if signing up for multiple sessions.
I’ll send an email a week before the first session to confirm attendance and share play materials.
Session one: https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-MyBO0wDtJr1s_6yVTDn
Session two: https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-MyBONpiTSRdGtM8QUki
Session three: https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-MyBOfD8kiYiShFtM-fq
Session four: https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-MyBOp0uZkJf66YapOgn