After the last adventure I asked my student if her character Arin had anyone special she looked up to, maybe a singer or an actor or someone in a field of knowledge she liked? Maybe an influencer or someone from TV?
She had no-one, so I had to think who my GM character Alfie would find interesting enough to ignore others for, and came up with a friend who is also an astronaut. He's only on earth for a limited amount of time before he needs to head back. His name is Filip. And so our game starts as Filip the Astronaut comes for a surprise visit, but the clubhouse is a big mess. What are they gonna do? And that's the start of our game.
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| Filip the Astronaut |
Behind the Screens Interlude:
I had had no time to prep, but I've run these before. Maybe this made me a little to self assured, but I needed a limited time for Filip to be here before he needed to go back somewhere else. I rolled some dice and came up with him being here for only 9 turns. I ruled that cleaning up the place and making cookies would need 10 successes (I actually ruled that beforehand) and that 2 successes are needed to clean enough for a check on the clock, and that rolling 5 successes was a great success meaning checking off 2 boxes instead of 1.
The way the system works is that you roll a 4 dice to try something uncertain, only 3 if it relates to your problem tag and 6 if it relates to your talent. For most things you need 3 successes, but if you want to work together, all dice from all characters are rolled, drastically improving the chances of success. This is done deliberate since these games revolve around friendship and teamwork. Even if you use a talent, on your own you'll only have about a 50% chance to succeed most of the time.
Anyway, unless she gets Alfie to help, the deck is definitely stacked against her. Let's see how it goes.
Back To The Story:
Alfie immediately sits with his friend and starts talking and listening. Arin starts cleaning up, and tries to convince Alfie to help her, but he could not be convinced. She decided to just keep cleaning on her own, but she could not even clean up 5 of the 10 tick-boxes on the cleanup tracker before Filip had to go again. Filip was sad he didn't have the time to get to know Arin, and Alfi had learned some new things from Filip!
Moral of the Story?
This story is based on the Story of Mary and Martha inviting Jesus over into their house. Mary sits at his feet and listens, while Martha is busy with trying to clean up and make tea and cookies (or something equivalent) for the guests. She gets fed up with her sister not helping her and confronts Jesus Christ about it. Shokingly he takes Mary's side and tells Martha that, while he appreciates her care, Mary made the wiser choice. You can clean and bake every day, but He is here now and will be gone later, the good news he has is very valuable, and will be missed when you are busy. It is better to listen first and then do, rather than immediately and constantly working.
