Caleb’s Better Angels campaign, No Soul Left Behind (formerly known as The Spared and the Spoiled) is complete. We decided to take a look back, discussing the origins of the campaign, our favorite moments, and the dubious morality of the protagonists. The Kickstarter for the campaign should be up soon and we’ll let you know when it is!
Promo: Mythcreants
Song: Better Angels by Lesley Gore.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:29 — 42.9MB)
Subscribe: RSS
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I really enjoyed this campaign and I have to admit that it’s right up there with the RPPR classics like Know Evil, TOT and The New World classics.
Bran Yorke is an amazing PC. I hope that he makes it into the final product.
Thank you! ^_^
He was really fun to play, and I’m glad you liked him. The surname is Roark, by the way; I know it’s hard to hear (I blame my smoker-voice.) I picked it for the pun; sounds similar to rook, as in the relative of the jay.
In the playtest for the book, we had to use multiple GMs because of the time constraint, so one of the players actually had a demon based on Everyone is John. His name was John the Single-Mindedly Fickle, and he would have a singular obsession for something he demanded the player do every time he was invoked. And he would have no recollection of things he demanded from previous scenes (unless the character didn’t fulfill them, of course, then he would remember). So it was like, “OK John, I ate a bunch of pizza last time like you asked, can you turn on my aspect now?” “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I really need you to kick a puppy like right now.”
Thanks for many hours of entertainment. Each character -and the demon inside of them- was awesome, and the situations they *usually put themselves in* were seriously amazing. Great work Bill, Caleb, David, Ross, and Sara!
Thank you guys, while I haven’t finished, everything so far is great.
I’m already listening to it again and I almost like it more the second time around, which is a feat. I do kind of like the subversion that the final plot has nothing to do with anything else going on, but I think that point’s…like, it has a very brief payoff? “heh, it’s like real life, where things don’t make sense or hook together.” but I think the sense of investment players would/will get by having the mayor more present is more enduring. for sure instant purchase, no question.
Thanks for the great campaign, and I hope Sara sticks around for some further misadventures with the RPPR crew!
I’ll definitely be considering getting the No Soul Left Behind and running it in the future. Already have plans to invent some NPC supervillains such as:
Mistress Pain: A Dominatrix Style Supervillian who has Impossible Beauty and Dominator Strike (Spiked bloody chains shoot out and wrap targets up in chains). Her demon is a succubus named Lilliel the Tormentor. Wings and Glory Aspects.
Shadow Nocturne: Dressed in a black trenchcoat with a ski-mask and tinted glasses and a black fedora. He has Crime Time and Withering as his powers. His demon is an amorphous shadow with glowing red eyes Oroan The Living Darkness.
As for Angel antagonists I came up with;
Valkyrie: A Norse Themed warrior-angel superhero that has the powers of Summoning (Used to summon a suit of battle armor and a spear) and Dominator Strike (Shoots holy lighting bolts using Open Courage as her dice pool). Her aspects are Wings and Regeneration. She is the president of Asgard Securities and specializes in providing security solutions against super-powered villains.
The No Soul Left Behind kickstarter is live!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcdream/no-soul-left-behind?ref=nav_search
He-who-seizes-the-means-of-production
Absolutely brilliant, I dont think I’ll ever actually play BA itself, but I’m going to back the KS anyway, and maybe find a way to adapt the setting for my games.
Probably my favorite setting so far. (although ToT was great as well, and slightly behind that is Iron Heroes)
Just finished listening to the campaign, excellent as always. Did no one remember that Susan Ledbedders husband’s name was Micheal? And was his name forgotten due to the time between sessions?
I know this is over a year old now, but I have to comment.
I work as a special education paraprofessional at a public school, and aspire to be a school teacher someday. I really got sucked in by the subject and related to it. Especially the goddam standardized tests. Truly an invention of the devil.
This summer I worked a lot of continuing ed programs, teaching video game design to overprivileged white kids! It was fun, but not as fulfilling at all, except for those few kids i know whose parents saved to send them to a video game course. In this time I spent many hours commuting to schools. So RPPR became my “Summer Homework.” And I finally finished this campaign.
It was a funny, inventive and moving campaign. It broke all expectations. I remember you guys first talking about this gonzo game, Better Angels, and thinking it was novel, but lame. Boy was I wrong. So very very wrong. Thank you for making me wrong. So wrong I’d love to run this with 40 and 50 year old school teachers at my school. I don’t know if I should though.
My friends and I just passed our 27th episode of our Podcast, All Roads Tavern. I had the opportunity to run a horror game because of player conflicts. The premise was school kids on an adventure, against the dark Lovecraftian forces in their town. It was going to just be a throw away one or two shot, but it turned into a full blown summer campaign. More so, it’s turned into a campaign setting I love.
Caleb, You’ve inspired me on many occasions. And this game has pushed me to put the nose to the grindstone, and write my game into a full blown campaign book. And I have to just thank you.
From one educator / gaming hobbyist to another. Thank you for proving me wrong. Thank you for No Soul Left Behind. Thank you for the inspiration.
Thank you to the rest of the cast for bringing this game to life. You all were great. Especially you Sara. You were great. You got me to empathize with administrators. Good job. Also Lazer-eyed honey-badgers forever!
Favorite moment was Lucius the hobo to Ledbetter.
“Sock full of paint?”