In my last post exploring the Penned to Good Society game jam, I talked about the fascinating expansions that folks created as part of the jam. This time, it’s all about supplements. These are interesting additions you can frame your game around to change things up – sometimes just a little bit, and sometimes a hell of a lot.

I’ve sorted the jam submissions I’ve discussed by category, that they might be of more use to anyone looking for Good Society resources. Within the category, I’ve discussed each in the order they were entered into the jam.

• Part 1 – Full expansions (in this blog post)
• Part 2 – Supplements (right here right now baby)
• Part 3 – Desires, relationships, roles, rules modifications and reinterpretations (in this blog post)

Part 2 – Supplements

And then something happened… by Julia Rose

Good Society characters live in a world of genteel privilege where their everyday needs are met by… you know, those other people who do that kind of thing. And then something happened… turns this norm on its head in a way that has the potential to affect your game dramatically. Halfway through your game you decide collaboratively what happens to trap and isolate your characters from society. You might be lost in the wilderness, stranded in a blizzard, or even locked in a haunted house.

Along with answering some extra collaboration questions about your situation, the supplement also asks you to allocate all of your available tokens to four areas: needs, hysteria, ruin and injury. The more you have to spend, the worse off you are, and more problems it creates for the group. These provide bounteous inspiration to explore the implications of your predicament. With this set up, things can get grim pretty fast, so the supplement wisely suggests to go over your lines and veils (or Collaboration “don’t want to see) before you proceed, and I fully agree.

A Christmas Prince of Darkness by Storybrewers Roleplaying

That’s our supplement! Inspired by A Christmas Prince, Underworld and the many works of fiction featuring sexy vampires, A Christmas Prince of Darkness is a romantic story of dark power, succession, and the joys of the holiday season. It tells the story of a journalist who arrives in the sleepy country of Aldovania to investigate its reclusive royal family, and in particular its wayward prince. What the journalist doesn’t realise is that this royal “family” are…yes, vampires. And they are in the middle of a power struggle of their own to decide who sits on the Vampire Throne.

It’s a pulpy concept that can lend itself to a range of tones, from farce, to romantic comedy, to black comedy or even drama. The playset focuses equally on the high stakes vampire throne action, and the possibility for budding love between the arriving journalist and a certain mysterious prince (or someone else in the royal “family”).

The Space Between Us by Luiz Paulo Ferraz

The Space Between Us is a sci-fi supplement for Good Society built on a truly wild premise. It focuses on the “Habershire System”, a cluster of space stations that are part of a social contract called “the Dance”, who collectively agreed to emulate Regency Society. In other words, you play people in the year 3000 or similar who have agreed to replicate the 1790s. 

However, this supplement isn’t just about emulating the Regency – it’s about the controversial system that the cluster uses for that emulation, and the fallout that results. The details outlined about the Habershire system are just fascinating, and paint a wonderful picture of a strange reality where AI monitors societal misconduct, and rank is determined randomly through a process called “the draw”. I had the privilege of playing an early version of this supplement and it’s a very meta experience.

Percival by Elise Grifka Wander

If found family, identity and loss sound like the recipe for your ideal rpg session, Percival is definitely worth your attention. Designed to be used with Emma, Forget Me Not, the supplement adds the figure of Percival – a connection who no one plays but everyone is involved with, and who is destined to die as time passes. Based on the eponymous character from Virginia Woolf’s the Waves, Percival is a vector for feelings, desires, and dreams of the major characters.

Uniquely, the whole table is responsible for Percival. Anyone can spend resolve tokens for Percival to appear or take action (until their death), however they can only ever be described from the perspective of the other characters. Their interiority remains a mystery. 

Importantly Percival isn’t limited to being a school friend; they can be a sibling, a lover, a parent; they can be any gender, and their name does not have to be Percival. There are plenty of ways to explore a shining and unknowable presence in your life – and the hole it leaves when it’s no longer there.

Dracula, Guest by Violet Flohr

Dracula, Guest invites a sinister and secretive version of Dracula into your game of Good Society. Much like Lady Susan from Lady Susan P.I. Dracula enters the game as a facilitator connection and ordinarily does not have a relationship with any of the major characters. However, that’s where the similarities end. 

Dracula starts the game with no resolve tokens, but instead gains these from other players – either through a player resolve token offer, or a player’s choice to extend epistolary. These tokens allow Dracula to appear in novel chapters, and as their tokens grow, to do all the things one might expect a horrific (or bad-ass) vampire to do, like drinking blood, using vampiric powers, and turning characters into vampires. The insidious entry of Dracula into the story that increases in intensity over time is a very clever part of this supplement that mimics the novel Dracula itself.

As well as being a fully functional supplement, Dracula, Guest is also a very funny joke about the meta of Good Society – there are times two letters in the epistolary phase doesn’t feel like enough, and players have tried to bargain a resolve token for a third. This supplement says yes, you can, but beware of the trouble you’ll invite.

That’s it for the supplements! Read on here with part 3.