The Clubhouse Chronicles 2024 edition! // Clubhouse Banana — Story 2: Visit From a VIP!

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.

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.

 

The Clubhouse Chronicles 2024 edition! // Clubhouse Banana — Story 1: Sick Mama!

 Here we go again!

It's second grade and we learn about friendship and team work based on some stories about Jesus and his friends. This year we are playing at two schools but —due to circumstances— one of the schools has some delay, so we start with school #1.

School 1: Clubhouse Banana

There are two friends here: Arin and Alfie who come together in a clubhouse based in the basement of the supermarket where Arin's mom is the store manager. It's real cosy with lots of little lights, but more often than not all the boxes with food from the supermarket are in the way and smell a little off.

Arin is a girl who likes to dress up. She's really good at it, but she's got a problem, she cannot stop giggling! Alfie is a guy who likes to build stuff, but is incredably shy. He always wears a home made helmet on his head and claims to be an alien. It's clearly a box covered with aluminium foil and some bottlecaps for knobs. He's adamant that he's an alien though. They are both 7 years old.

Arin and Alfie from Clubhouse Banana

 

Adventure 1: Sick Mama

Arin's mother calls her to tell her she's sick and they need to head home. The clubhouse is gonna have to be closed until she's better enough to come back into work. She's taking Alfie home as well until his mom can come pick them up. Arrived their they decide to help mom by doing the dishes while she's sleeping it off and making some instant soup with some toast. It all works out great and they get great praise from doctor Lisa who arrives to look mom over. If she's being taken care off like this for the next couple days, she'll be better in no time, and the clubhouse can open again!

The kids learned a new talent! Cooking!

We also listen to a story about how Jesus helps his friend Peter when his mother in law is sick and think about how friends help each other out! Friendship is beautiful!

The Clubhouse Chronicles 2023 - Episode 4: With A Little Help Of My Friends

 The last one in the series, where the friends will need to work together to an end, just like the four friends of the lame man had to work together to get the man to Jesus, by making a hole in the roof!

Next week is fall vacation and with that a new chapter of the lessons will start, which means the Clubhouse Chronicles are done for now, after this session report. I do feel like, when I find the time, the energy and the focus, I could really turn this into something to publish. Unfortunately I rarely have all three of these at the same time.

Anyway, we only got to this one in one school, no fault to the player in school #2, but there was a day off, which meant that we couldn't get the game in before the story could be told, and playing the game only to remember it still after a week-long vacation is a tough call for the kid.

So we only got to close things off in the Movie Bunker, and the story of Tom, Tom, Tom and Toby (and more).

THE STORY OF TOM, TOM, TOM AND TOBY

The kids had made new characters and this resulted in us having a bunch of player characters with the same name, which I let fly because it was funny. And of course, gotta keep things moving if you only have about half an hour.

Tom (the human) was in the woods with Tom (the cat) and Tom (the dog). Unfortunately Human Tom was not very careful and fell from the tree. He broke his wrist and foot and needed to be helped since he could not move. Cat Tom and Dog Tom had a big problem, they didn't have hands to build something with or voices to call the doctor with. But Tom the Cat had an idea that had worked before (though I'm not sure I remembered to record it in these reports) The mobile Tom's raced to the clubhouse and Cat Tom used his claws to write the problem on the wall. For some reason he can read and write! 

Wilfried and Evy rushed ahead, as did Toby the dog. They called Doctor Apple who could not come because she was simply too busy. So they decided to build a sled-type thing that the dogs (Tom and Toby) could pull to the doctor. Working together they were able to get there just in time for the bell.

Happy End! See ya next year.

The Clubhouse Chronicles 2023 - Episode 3: The Disaster

 After the cleaning and learning adventures of last episode our friends find ourselves faced with a disaster, except, it's not them directly, but one of their friends who is in trouble. Will they help their friend in need? How will they do that? And will they stubbornly break out of my "real world slice of life setting" approach to this game? 

(The answer to that last question is yes. I guess slice of life needs some action or sci-fi at some points in its run.)

This week's adventure revolves around a BIG PROBLEM that someone they know (or they are currently not playing) has. They hear about it, and seeing the helplessness of their friend's situation, hopefully they will come to the rescue.

This will then be linked to the story of the Raising of Lazarus where our recurring characters from the last story (Mary and Martha) ask Jesus for help with their sick brother, who is also His friend. (What he did will surprise you!) 

There's a lot going on in this story, but we're focussing on friendship and helping your friends, which is kind of slightly besides the actual point of the story, but thus dictate the lesson plans.

THE MOVIE BUNKER: Missing Puma!

In the first school I gratefully reached for a problem that was created in the first session, where the hunters that hunted for Super Ryan the Puma had narrowed down the location of where he's at to the forest the Movie Bunker is in. Since no-one was playing Super-Ryan and took my chance and pounced on this problem (Kind of like a Puma. See what I did there?) and told them that they noticed that Super-Ryan's food bowl was staying full for a few days now...

Strange...

And so our friends, some of them new, head out to the forest to try and find him. They find tracks that lead to a cave and there find some hunters that are discussing how much a Puma's pelt can be worth. They split up and while some, including Toby the dog, distract the oafish goons, others go and get the Puma out of his cage! A big celebration is had!

THE CHURCH ATTIC: High Maintenance!

In the other school I had doctor Apple check in again on the pastor with the broken foot, only to have her car not start again. What a disaster! She's got more patients waiting on her! Apparently the solution is obvious to Waïl. "I call my robot motorcycle".

uhm... I guess? We didn't establish it beforehand, but this was a kind "Yes, And" situation.

Sure, he gets there, but now what? Well, turns out that the robot is a good mechanic, besides being good at "Going Fast", well, mechanic isn't a technical talent, but he rolled well. And working together with Waïl, he was able to fix the car and the doctor could visit her patients. She also got a giant cake to reward the helpers and a party was had (the ban on candy being lifted for once).

The Clubhouse Chronicles 2023 - Episode 2: The Visit

 After dealing with a sick or wounded friend in their clubhouse, and comparing it to how Jesus of Nazareth helped his friend's sick relative, we now move on to the next story, to compare it to another bible story.

This time they will get a visit from someone that can teach them some new skills, but the clubhouse is a mess and needs to be cleaned. How will they deal with it? This will link up to the story where Mary and Martha host Jesus in their home.

School #1: The Movie Bunker

First off, Super Ryan kept in hiding and did not see play this game. Instead his player made a new character, a bulldog called Toby. I guess humans are too boring to him.

Evy's character just played Evy again and I played Wilfried again, but only as a background character, since they are already with two and don't really need the third friend for things to be interesting. In this episode, having a GM-PC actually worked against me in this group, since it took some of the gravitas of the dilemma at the center of the episode away from it.

Anyway, Evy, being a singer, gets a letter that a famous Belgian kids-pop group called K3 wants to visit her at her clubhouse. They heard she likes to sing and want to hang out with her and maybe teach her some things.

The Pop-Group in Question

And so it happened, they came over, but the Movie Bunker was still a whole mess and could they host them when everything is a mess? They really wanted to come in though as they had heard rumors of an escaped Puma being spotted in the area. (A consequence I carried over from last episode.)

And so in they came and Evy and Wilfried started cleaning up while the pop-stars were distracted by the cute little doggy. There was a timer though, and an amount of mess to get through (I would change the numbers to make it harder now, in hindsight) which I made clear (the pop-group had a show later that day). So after a while Evy starts to hang out with them and they teach her some dancing and some other tricks that I don't recall, while Toby and Wilfried keep cleaning up. In the end Wilfried was the only one cleaning while Evy and Toby were learning new tricks (and talents) from the V.I.P.'s. 

See how it took away some of the burden. Maybe I should've let Wilfried get more upset that he ended up cleaning all alone at the end, but I was in the moment, and excited for my players...

I had planned to end it there, but they asked if they could go to the concert with the group, and that was such a nice finally. They were even called up the stage for the encore and did a number, that was televised, and gained the V.I.P. status for themselves. Great cheers were had.

I think in a next run, I should focus more on the dilemma at hand, making the choice actually hard for them.

School #2: The Church Attic

Everyone stayed the same here, characters wise. Tibo for the pupil and Grietje for me. Having a GM-PC here was good, as there would be no other possibility for team-work.

Here the visitor was a friend of Tibo, called Wail, who was in the same soccer team. They wanted to practice for the game the next day, but Wail (pronounce "wa-heel" I guess?) didn't have much time and the attic was a mess. And so they showed some of the things to the side, with Grietje doing most, so that Tibo and Wail could get some training in. They also learned from each other, receiving new talents and then they got to show them off in the actual soccer game, where I let the pupil roll dice for all the players on the field at once (I think it were 24 dice in total) versus me for the other team, which did not have their edge of practice (I think 22 dice). They clearly won, and rolling handfuls of dice was great fun (luckily I had a container to roll them in).

Next time, a very bad thing happens!

The Clubhouse Chronicles 2023 - Episode 1: In need of Medical Assistance

Wheeeeeeeeeeeelp! Time flew away from me and this blog was collecting cobwebs like nobody's business! I thought to post more in the vacation times, but I actually found a TTRPG group laying one-shots in a nearby city that I started frequenting reasonable regularly, and the rest gotten up by household catch-up and spending time with my lovely wife. But now I'm back, because I'm playing games in class again, and that's my main jam on this blog, so it's time for Actual Play Reports again!

We're starting this year with the one that works best, but that I still have to write down for other people to use. FRIENDS OF THE CLUBHOUSE. I changed the dice mechanic because I lost my heaps of six sided dice somewhere at the end of the last school year. But other than that, the concept is the same.

Some friends set up a club house, where they come together. The clubhouse itself, as well as the friends have a strength (or talent) and a weakness. When using your talent, you can use more dice and when working together, you can roll all your dice together and add them up. The story prompts are still related to the Bible story we will be working with after the game.

This year I work in (only) two schools, which means that there will be two clubhouses reacting to the same stories. The age of the players is 7-8 years old (for the children) and 39 (for the teacher).

The Clubhouses

School #1: The Movie Bunker (2 pupils, 1 teacher)

The clubhouse here is a Bunker deep in the woods. Its benefit is that it has a movie theater, while the disadvantage is that it's far away from everyone. The friends we start with are:

Evy, a black haired, black eyed girl who likes to wear pink. Her talent is singing and her problem is that she's not good at drawing.

Super Ryan (three guesses what the player's name is), who is a puma that escaped the zoo. His talent is hiding and escaping (I grouped this together) and his problem is that they're still looking for him.

Wilfried (everybody calls him Friet, which is dutch for french-fry) who is an extremely tall boy. His talent is cooking and his problem is being too tall for most things.

School #2: The Church Attic (1 pupil, 1 teacher)

The clubhouse is in the attic of the church. It has the benefit of having a playstation, but as a drawback there's no candy allowed. The friends we start with are:

Tibo, who has a talent for football (soccer) but is poor.

Grietje, who is good at investigating nature but is bad at reading and writing.

***

Episode One: The sick friend.

In which a friend falls ill or otherwise in medical trouble and the friends are asked what they do about it. This will be followed up in the following lesson hour by the story of Jesus healing Peter's sick Mother in Law. (Matthew 8:14-15)

In the first school there are two friends without my GM-pc, so I let my character fall ill while in the clubhouse of the bunker. Now what will Wilfrieds friends do?

As it stands, his human friend Evy (a shy player, red.) didn't know what to do, so Super Ryan, the Escaped Puma decided to go to the doctor, but he needed to be careful that he wasn't spotted by the Zoo people still looking for them. He was not very successful at that, and he needed to hide.

Meanwhile, Evy decided to try and call the doctor, as she was waiting and nothing was really helping or happening except for her making soup. She was able to reach Doctor Apple (Doctor Apple is a recurring character through the years of playing these games, red.) who came immediately.

Super Ryan seeing the lights go on decides to go home. I ask if he's sure. Does he know what's happening? He looks at me, thinking for just a heartbeat. "I can smell it, I think, that the doctor is going to our bunker." he says. "Oh, sure", I reply, with a laugh, and roll with it, since it actually helps us stick together.

He gets home but finds that being an escaped dangerous animal is a bigger problem than he would have thought, in this slice of life type setting. (He previously played a knight character in a Troika game. Different feel completely.) He finds that he has to hide to not scare away the doctor, while the doctor works on Wilfried.

Wilfried heals up and the doctor is befriended and is available to pick up as a PC in the next games. Due to rolling the maximum amount on a searching roll, Evy gained (or rather discovered) a new talent: Cooking.

Super Ryan's player decides that next game he'll want to play something less difficult than a Puma. Like a dog. We'll see how that goes (well, I kinda already know, as we've already played the second episode, but I can't seem to find the time to type these up).

In the second school there's only one pupil, so to encourage friendship and working together, I played along and let someone else fall ill. Since their clubhouse is in the attic of a church I had the Pastor working below, decorating the church with streamers and stuff and falling down from a ladder, hitting his knee, unable to move it. I ask the kid what the pastor's name is. "Mohammed", he immediately says. The screams of pain alert the characters Grietje and Tibo. They go down and try to help. 

Tibo runs for the doctor (with soccer as a talent he could roll 3 dice, but could not beat a 10, so he wasn't there very quickly, but not too late either) and tells her (Doctor Apple again) what happened (incorrectly, but not too much off the mark that she should bring the wrong stuff). They get ready to go over to the church.

Meanwhile at the church Grietje tries to find an ice pack or other materials with which to help the man, but she can not (and I could not roll high for the life of me) crawling into a corner and crying. This is what Tibo and Doctor Apple find when they arrive. Tibo tries to comfort Grietje while Doctor Apple works on Pastor Mohammed. While Doctor Apple is an automatic success since none of the involved characters are players, Tibo has to roll to try and calm down Grietje, failing miserably for multiple rolls, resulting in her running away, him going looking for her, visiting her house and looking with the parent, only to find her hiding and crying in an abandoned treehouse in the forest. 

Tibo speaks some questionable words of wisdom that I can no longer immediately recall, but imagine a 7 year old trying to comfort someone with words. Not always a success. But here, as the bell rang, I decided it worked. Both because we were out of time, and were veering off topic quite a bit in relation to the Bible story it's based on.

The Clubhouse chronicles #4: Fixing the stairs

 So, we return to the Clubhouse in my second grade classroom where, in the run up to learning about working together (for which the lesson plan wants us to use the story about the miraculous catch, for some reason*) I had the friends working together to fix that dang stairs to the clubhouse that had caused so many problems before.

All the friends were there and helped in whatever way they could. The Super-intelligent baby came up with plans, the easily distracted toymaker would craft materials and fix the stairs, helped by the cat who kept his attention to all the things. Waren, the pupil's character called the Mayor, who couldn't be there because he was too busy, to see if he could use his money to buy some parachutes, like 10 of them, so people could pull the parachutes if they fell down the stairs. And as such they met Amber, the Mayor's secretary, which has not Benn developed through play yet.

*I mean, yeah, they need to work together to catch all the fish and prevent the nets from rupturing, but it's kind of missing the point of the story really

The Clubhouse Chronicles #3: The mayor is sad and has to cry!

The mayor's letter

In episode 3 of our Clubhouse games in class the mayor sent another letter because he was sooo unhappy and sad that he needed someone to comfort him. What had happened? His favorite toy car had broken into pieces and he couldn't fix it. Now he wanted people to feel sad with him about this.

Bram (the cat) and Waren (the cook) responded and after gracefully descending the dangerous clubhouse stairs (for Bram) and ungracefully slipping, falling and getting an aching back (for Waren) they piled into their car to get to the mayor's house faster. That is, they would be faster if they wouldn't have gotten lost. In any case, they were let in to the mayor's office to find him dramatically crying over his broken car, with a pot of glue next to him. Bram started rubbing his head against the mayor in an attempt to comfort him, which did not help since Waren started laughing at the sight of the mayor crying over a toy.

Eventually Waren thought about what he could do to help his friend though, and called an old acquaintance from when he was five years old. Turns out the friend, called Adriaan Busan became a toymaker. He came over, fixed the mayor's toy car and got invited by Waren to join the Clubhouse.

***

This will lead in to our next lesson about Jesus caring for his friends, as he brings Lazarus back to life from the dead, comforting Mary and Martha. It's one of the uncomfortable situations where a story is used to teach a different lesson than the original one. It's not really about Jesus showing that he wants to comfort his friends, but rather to show that he is Life Eternal. In this case the game does a better job teaching the goals than the Bible story does.

The Clubhouse Chronicles #2: A visit from the mayor!

As an introduction to the next bible story in the lesson series about friends of Jesus, the story of Mary and Martha, we had a second episode of our Clubhouse Friends. 

Waren the Cook's Character Sheet

This time as we set the scene, the pupil was describing that Waren (played by my pupil), the cook from the previous session, was watching TV with Baby Beatrice (the NPC from previous game, turned PC for this one, played by teacher) while Bram, the cat from previous game was sleeping in the room Waren had given him at the beginning of previous game. He did not join us in this game.

As they were hanging out they hear someone climbing up the stairs to the treehouse, tripping and falling. It was established last game, that the treehouse's problem was that it was unsafe. While it's good thing was that it has many rooms. They weakly hear someone shouting "I'm okay!" from the ground.

They hear the person climbing back up and suddenly hear a knock on the door. They open to see a man in a fine suit with leaves and twigs sticking out here and there. He hands them a letter with a golden trim to tell them the Mayor wants to come for a visit, since he heard of their heroics saving Baby Beatrice's mom. Waren and Baby Beatrice accept and the fancy suit man goes back down, where they hear him slip and fall again, with a weak "I'm okay!" after the big fall.

They look around the room and realize, after reading the letter, that they have only a little bit of time to prepare for a visit, and everything's a mess. They have about half a day to clean things up, but most tasks are estimated to take up half a day's time, the main things being, cleaning the clubhouse and fixing the stairs.

They decide to work together to clean the clubhouse, but don't have enough time for the stairs. So the mayor obviously falls down when trying to climb up the stairs to the clubhouse. Here as well there's a reassuring "I'm okay!" after each fall. And the mayor eventually manages to get up, leaves and twigs sticking out of hair and pockets and take place in the living room.

Baby Beatrice realizes that they don't have any snacks or tea ready and starts clinging and clanging in the kitchen while Waren talks with the mayor. They hear a big crash and some baby wailing. Baby Beatrice had tried to bake some cookies and make some tea, but her not being able to walk, being a baby, dropped everything. Everyone, including the mayor then worked together to clean things up and do the dishes and a good time was had. Eventually the mayor had to go, but he said he would surely want to come visit again.

The Clubhouse Chronicles #1: The sick friend (Roleplaying in class)

A new school year means a new year of playing with kids in class. Specifically in 2nd grade (7-8 year old) where until fall vacation I've got small little one-shot adventures based on the stories we're going to learn from the Bible.

Usually in this game you play a care bear, but since I didn't get to printing the character sheets we could be whoever, which I think is better anyway, as most kids don't know the care bears anymore anyway.

So every player made a friend and then we kind of designed a home base, a clubhouse. The clubhouse and the characters worked about the same in creating, in that you choose something you are good at (a talent) and something you're not good at (a problem).

This session had the following cast:

• "Waren", played by my pupil. He's good at cooking, but has problems with burning his food. So, as long as he can cook stuff that does not need a furnace or flame, he's good. He's also 18 so he can drive a car.

• "Bram", a black cat player by teacher (me). He's good at climbing but his problem is that he cannot speak. 

• "Baby Beatrice", a hyperintelligent Baby who is also a Professor. This is an NPC, and thus not yet fully worked out. She might be picked up in a following game.

Our clubhouse was established to be a treehouse in a high tree without any leaves. It's "talent" is that it has many rooms to host a lot of friends, while it's danger is literally that people fall off of it easily.

We open play on a scene where I ask what we are doing. My pupil decides that he had renovated an entire room for my character, a cat. A room all for myself, with a cat-flap so I can pass through easily. My character goes in to examine this wonderful gift and returns with a letter in his mouth, which he found in the room.

Baby Beatrice's Letter

The letter was from Baby Beatrice who asked for help as her mom fell ill and she did not know what to do. The friend decided to come over and help her. Bram helped Waren climb down the tree safely and as we rolled to see what we could do to get there as fast as we could we found that the car Waren came in was out of gas, and so we had to walk. We arrived and Waren used his cooking talent to make a soup that would heal Beatrice's sick mom in no time. 

We had to end the game there as the bell went, and next class we'll start with a story about Jesus heading over to Peter's house to see if he can help his sick mom (in law).