Silver Bullets

Had a rather interesting and intriguing Saturday. The afternoon was much okay with the usual visit to Vinnie's shop in Megamall. It was the evening that got a rather exciting turn with a role-playing session, GMed by Dean and it was done in 3 acts. Too bad it was short-lived session given how much dialogue and outtakes went into it. It it were done into a movie, it would have its commentary and outtake section for the laughs. I also liked how organic and mushy the handling of the session went. No stats, no number crunching. Just pure storytelling. The stuff which makes RPing as to what it supposed to be. Something I did before back in 3rd year high-school.

I was a bit overwhelmed at the start and at some points of the dialogue since subject matter involved, especially Act III's scene which I would call "Conversations with Samael and Seraphim" was kinda deep for me to formulate a response. The 1st act would read off like your run-of-the-mill horror movie startup but when Act II started up and ended, the players involved felt the sentiments of thinking "Do we have to go back to being those helpless students? We liked being the way cool operators of Excelsis." Act III was a rather mind-bending twist of getting into a debate with the Serpent, mentioned in the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament. Player-wise, I had a distinctly niggling sensation that the entire lynchpin to the Serpent's plan is of the choice, the initiation of it and not the resolution or the end-result of it would be the key to liberating it from its captivity.

The Act II aspects were pretty much the stuff of a high-budget production with SFX to outdo the Matrix in my view. I mean its pretty way cool to having superhuman abilities powered by faith then that done by Neo for sure. The matter of the Excelsis team's Saint-based abilites powered by faith harkens me back when I collected all the issues of St. George from the Shadowline Comics made under Marvel. I pretty liked Michael Devlin as the current Knight of St. George

The RP session that night all in all was fun and memorable. Carl's character protrayal of Keisha was definitely one of the highlights of the session, especially with Keisha talking to Samael. Vinnie's character Anton was pretty much into the lengthy debate aspect of it which was quite interesting to see from either perspective as player or character. This session I've been a part of has made me see how much away I was from what I've been in high school and a bit of the college RP days. I can sum it up that such a great session would be done with a innovative or compelling story, players backing up characters as best they can put in the portrayal and of course, the power of imagination working through it.

The mention of this blog's title was attributed to prior discourse with Dean and Vinnie prior to the late evening's RP session involving the matter of high-fantasy. I'll not dig into the nitty-gritty of the matter of the state of high-fantasy and the literary quality associated with it. The interesting kernel of the discussion was Dean's mention of the silver bullet. Silver bullet, Golden BB, whatever magic element projectile it may be, can be defined as something that would be like an intense creative investment of sorts that would make the project in question worthwhile from its creation to its final production, regardless of the outcome that can affect the creator's view as long as the said creator in question is satisfied with the project and what it comprised of. It is very much something that can make a written work a good one or just a run-of-the-mill hack job given the level of creative investment put into it. Of course, such ammunition in question is rather finite but possibly replenishable as one goes through the experiences of life for certain that would create and shape more ammunition to use in future endeavors that would call for it.

All in all it was a rather interesting Saturday. The conversations and the role-playing session involved makes it a memorable one.