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Thumping music brings you to a busy city, the night sky is lit up and the city comes alive as the Storyteller, Fabian, leads us into the Midnight Rush.
Midnight Rush is a Hunter the Reckoning Actual Play following a group of Hunters dealing with the Gig economy in a world of vampires and werewolves. Darkness Eternal is the setting Bad House has created for their World of Darkness shows, and takes place in fictional versions of Cities around the world. I listened to some of the first episode of this series along with the screener to grasp a little more of the setting, and the show very deliberately takes place in 2024, in the US and in New York. Alongside Fabian, the entire cast is composed of BIPOC individuals, Ambrose, Laurel, Josephine and Stella.
The Hunters are a group of people brought together by a job listing, and are now risking their lives for a paycheck. The screener sets up a dual narrative, one hunter is seemingly becoming embraced by a vampire, a deal for more power, and the rest of the group piecing together where their missing friend wound up. Now, a story set in this universe and using these systems, inherently horror themes will appear, however the speed at which I felt my stomach drop was astounding when the Storyteller began to explain the Foundation, where our other player seemed to have made a deal, is very similar to that of a Church of a Scientology.
Midnight Rush balances the horrors of living with things that go bump in the night with the real life horrors of late stage capitalism in ways that keeps you watching and that had me hooked, I will be listening to the series in whole and excitedly will look forward to what Bad House will show us next.
"Midnight Rush," produced by Bad House RPG, is a wonderful display of intimate, narrative forward actual play, which focuses on the relationships between the characters and the greater world. Fabian does an exceptional job setting the tone for the game with descriptive narration that is designed to not only convey information to the players but to pull us as the audience in. The players themselves prove to be engaged, intentional storytellers, dedicated to moving the story forward and pressing in on the things that matter in a story like this. With the screener alone, the dynamics within the group are already made very clear and there is so much desire to follow these characters through what will prove to be a very difficult path.
While there were very little mechanics put on display, the heart of the game is laid bare. Even if it weren't advertised as such, there is no doubt that this is a World Of Darkness story. The players and Fabian as the storyteller live and breathe the tone of this world, and as such, make for an incredibly immersive and emotional listening experience. I am especially appreciative of the amount of character acting done throughout. It is about expressions and body language and the feeling that you are really in the room with these characters as they uncover a horrible truth about someone they care about. This, like many stories set in The World Of Darkness, is about community.
Something else that caught my attention is the use of multiple casts to feed into one, conjoined narrative. It would be easy for the character of Adrian to have been another NPC, but getting to see them, to have a player live in them, added to the amount of investment I felt watching the reactions of the rest of the characters as opposed to if they had simply been a character only seen off screen.
Within the screener there were a few examples of sound designed used to set the tone of a scene or further immerse us in the setting. I would love to see more of this, and for its use to be refined. That being said, the scenes in which music or sound design weren't lacking, due to how well the cast and storyteller carry the story. The choice of theme song as well was very good and I knew what I was getting into as soon as the screener started playing. Exceptional work from the folks over at Bad House RPG.
Video, R
Action, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Romance
System: Hunter: the Reckoning/Vampire: the Masquerade
Content Notices: Monstrosity, Gore, Mature Language, Violence, Firearms, Cultural Trauma, Politics, capitalism, mild sexual content, cheating/affairs/divorce, surrealism/unreality, torture
Description
In the worst time the economy has been in a while, four down on their luck 20 somethings get tricked to pad applicants to a task app that is actually a hunter's consignment app. While stuck in the nitty gritty of their situation, they learn to adapt, rake in the cash, and become hunters of Duskborn in New York City. It only gets more complicated when a conspiracy arises and the gang gets in deep with the secret kindred benefactors of the app. Midnight Rush tackles the subjects of poverty, found family, monstrosity and finding oneself.
Liberatory Artistic Practices
I think the liberatory practices we can share and are proud of is our use of Dramaturgy in the preparation of each episode. Because we tell stories with intention, the story, plot and direction do not solely fall onto the storyteller's shoulders. We stretch the meaning of collaborative storytelling by involving each cast member to where the story goes. Of course everyone utilizes safety tools but the dramaturgy is what we feel puts us in a different part of the actual play space.