The Unmarked - Chapter 18

Welcome to The Unmarked, an episodic collaborative storytelling RPG made possible by our Patreon subscribers! Join Game Master Rob Daviau as he takes Sean Sands, Shawn Andrich, Karla Andrich, Cory Banks and Julian Murdoch into the small town of Coffeyville, Kansas. The end.

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"The Unmarked" is copyright Ironwall Games 2016

Comments

Great series all!

Bad GM, letting the players slide when they all skipped answering the first part of your last TWO part question.

This episode gave me chills too many times to count. Bravo, everyone. I'd say I can't wait to see what you cook up next, but I'm actually glad for a bit of time to let this one sink in a bit.

Such a great job from start to finish. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thoroughly enjoyed the series. Got some work folks to listen as well.

Woah. Great end to a great series! Good work all - thank you for recording and sharing this with us!

I don't get to play RPGs very often, but I think listening to this is going to help me RP/improv a little bit better when I do. I loved the collaborative storytelling and the tarot card system.

Thanks everyone!

Toddland wrote:

Thoroughly enjoyed the series. Got some work folks to listen as well.

Spreading the word is the best thanks

This was amazing, stem to stern. Thank you all very much for putting the time into creating it! Eagerly looking forward to the next one!

Really enjoyed this, start to finish. Well done!

This series has become my go-to podcast for my 45 mile motorcycle ride to and from work and I have looked forward to each episode with the giddy joy and anticipation of a 5-year old on Christmas. Throughout your narrative, I have found myself participating and trying to "share" my own insights and/or "drive" the circus in the direction I thought they should take.

Since finding this gem, I have tried a few other audio/video collaborative story telling offerings and the only one that has come close to bringing a similar level of enjoyment has been HarmonQuest. Most of the others seem to focus on dice-based gaming rules, and with the exception of HarmonQuest, the rolling of the dice, adding modifiers, etc., always breaks my immersion in the story itself. The Unmarked, on the other hand, was ingenious in it's use of tarot cards as the "skill check" for any given scenario. Instead of breaking my immersion, this method actually enhanced it, and I often found myself laughing, groaning, crying right along with the cast as a particular card draw weaved its' way perfectly into the narrative. All I can say is THANK YOU, JOB WELL DONE, and I look forward to the next in the series.

I've never been much of a table-top roleplayer, but I've always enjoyed creative writing and story telling. If you guys decide you need an extra or a guest star, I'd be excited for the opportunity to join along.

Keep doing what you do.

Regards,

Drew (Vypre)

It really did turn out Stephen King AF! I have enjoyed this so much, thank you all for sharing this and for being such awesome storytellers. Great not-so-happy endings all around.

I really enjoyed this series and looked forward to every episode. It really set a standard for what a story telling RPG should be and how it let the players decide the story, Rob did a great job. After liking this one so much I have listened to other RPG podcasts and I always do a little inward wince when the GM lets dice control decisions too much or tells the players what they are doing instead of letting them decide and let the story flow.

Spoiler:

The end was so sad though! All of the heroes basically ended up broken people, discovering their powers essentially ruined all of their lives. It was so bittersweet because they saved the town but had to give themselves up to do it. Really hit that melancholy feeling that the series had throughout.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and admit that I could not figure out the implications of Karla's flash forward. How did people interpret Regina's epilogue?

Spoiler:

She died and her personality is still inside Killer. I think it was left up to the listener to imagine how that works, like do they take turns controlling things? Or can she just think but not really act? Or is she the primary personality with the dog stuck back in a mental corner?

LeapingGnome wrote:
Spoiler:

She died and her personality is still inside Killer. I think it was left up to the listener to imagine how that works, like do they take turns controlling things? Or can she just think but not really act? Or is she the primary personality with the dog stuck back in a mental corner?

Spoiler:

But didn't I hear Karla say that there are two people inside Killer, and "neither of them is Regina?" I originally thought that meant that Regina had displaced another dog's mind, which ended up inside Killer. On further reflection, it could just mean that Regina's 'self' had degenerated to the point where she was no longer Regina, but rather someone else entirely.

Right, degeneration is how I took it.

Just got the chance to finish the last two episodes during the driving we did for the holidays. Throughout the year we had made it a family affair, listening to an episode or two whenever we took longer car rides. We all thoroughly enjoyed it, and look forward to whatever adventure 2017 holds!

Spoiler:

Red Ravens! Caw! Caw!

The Unmarked was pretty riveting. I downloaded it once it was completed, but didn't listen to is right away. Once I started, it was all I listened to while working from beginning to the end. Someone should seriously sit down and write a book or a screenplay that follows the events of this role-play series. (Not because of the actual "actor" that "played" him, but because of the description, I could picture Chet being played by John Goodman, in a live action movie of this.)

Man, this seemed like so much fun for the participants also. I can't wait until the next one.

This honestly never seemed like something I would get into and it took one false start and also pushing through the first episode before I felt like it might even be worth listening to. Now I'm at the start of episode 7 and ready for each new episode, but attempting to limit myself to no more than 1 a day.

I finished this recently and enjoyed the ride all the way. I enjoyed the melancholy, struggles and bits of humor all the way through. I thought the flash forward was a nice way to wrap things up without bogging down in detail. After each episode, I always spent a bit of time imagining how I would have responded to some of the challenges differently and wondering how that would have changed the story. It never felt like the story was on rails, so that was definitely part of the fun for me.

Thanks!

Finally just finished this myself. Enjoyed every moment of it. Teared up at the

Spoiler:

death of Regina's brother and her description of little paws on his face

And was very surprised

Spoiler:

Nobody died! Thought for sure the magician and the clown were goners.

Something maybe to consider for the next project: I would have loved if there was a post-mortem episode (no pun intended). To hear everyone's thoughts on what doing the project was like, and to get insight into how Rob set the whole thing up and how it changed as it went along, etc.

But loved it. Was inspiring. Thinking of doing this with some of my friends.

Also: I listened to the last 30 mins walking through the woods of NJ on this windy, blustery day. Was kind of perfect.

Way behind the curve on this one but I finally managed to finish listening to the last episode this evening. What an absolute pleasure it's been listening to it all. Rob was an inspired GM and the ending fit the tone and bitter sweet feel the series has had from the beginning.

I live on the coast and I have mostly been listening to the series while out on my evening walk long the sea front. I spent a good 15 minutes tonight when the epilogues were finished just staring out to sea. Felt like pretty much all I could cope at the time.......

I will never look at Circuses the same way again, and in a good way. The ability to drive darkness away from a community, even literally as told through this story, is a great way of thinking about what public performances do.

I've never seen/heard/participated in an RPG like this, in a primarily story and interaction based way. It's improv but you get to talk things out, and with an important dash of random chance with card pulls/dice rolls. There's another podcast I listen to that is JUST improv, and everything that is said becomes canon (Hello from the Magic Tavern if you're interested). It just lets things get a bit too absurd when you don't have a DM to rein things in a bit.

I'd love to know how much of the story and characters were thought out before hand. Did Rob know who was going to be the clown or magician or ringmaster, or did he know he had these number of roles to fill with a certain number of players? How developed was the town and the darkness they were fighting before they all started running around in it?

Also, I was totally crying through the last five minutes of this episode, and I think part of why that is is because everything was told as a story. There wasn't any player/DM banter to give you a moment of relief, and everyone listening had the background to know and understand why everyone got where they got, and why it was important for them. I mentioned this in a comment in Orbital Decay, but these podcasts are making me want to learn and run my own story-based RPG (even though I'm barely 3 sessions into playing my first DnD campaign).

Keep up the good work!

I know this is an ancient thread, but me and my son just finished the series last week and I thought I'd mention that we both really loved it. Beginning to end, it was just fantastic. Great job, all!

d4m0 wrote:

I know this is an ancient thread, but me and my son just finished the series last week and I thought I'd mention that we both really loved it. Beginning to end, it was just fantastic. Great job, all!

It was a great series. I was disappointed with the latest podcast RPG/contributive story (forget name... didn't like it). I was especially disappointed by the fact they didn't use the Tarot system which was such a boon to the organic story telling of The Unmarked.