Blog, Jvstin Style

Ire #11: Ash Wednesday

Hi everyone! After a week off thanks to my trip to NY, we are back with Game IRE. I had a plethora of choices for this one, but I have settled on the Christian tradition of Ash Wednesday as this week's topic.

Ash Wednesday, for the uninitiated, is the beginning of the forty days of Lent which precede Easter Sunday. (Mardi Gras/Carnival takes place on the last day before Ash Wednesday). Ash Wednesday is a somber day, where many sacrifice something prized until the Easter holiday arrives. And thus we have a Game IRE.

I think of Ash Wednesday and Lent as a purification ritual. By sacrificing and fasting and the like, you are purifiying yourself and making yourself more receptive and more able to appreciate the Passion, and the Resurrection. It is that aspect that I am going to focus on, in a pantheonic fantasy setting of your choice.

The player characters, as part of some goal of theirs, need access to the Library, or a personage, of a powerful and influential temple of a faith not their own. The priests will allow the player characters access--once they have been purified by fasting and self-denial for a certain period. If the periods of time allow it, you could go the traditional 40 day route.

It takes strong roleplaying to make this actually work, its very easy to "gloss over" the time, and provide no RP juice out of this at all. Perhaps the temple is of a sect that doesn't believe in killing, and as part of this purification, the PCs cannot kill (even in self defense?) during this period.

Throw in some rumors of treasure or the like in the wilderness outside of town, add in a bit of competition (if they don't go for it, other adventurers will get the boodle first), and the player characters will have a whole new set of challenges during their period of lent, trying to deal with traditional foes but without slaying them outright.

Posted by Jvstin at February 10, 2005 7:18 AM