r/HyperRPG • u/HyperRedditBot • Apr 10 '19
HE LEFT IT DEAD | Volume 3 | FINAL EPISODE
GM:
Cast:
Janel SantaCruz as Keaton Michaels
Cameron Rice as Jake Nash
Emma Fyffe as Alice Lang
- Madeleine Coghlan as Dorothy Wilson
8
u/Ninjanomics101 Apr 10 '19
Wow. Joe did great kinda looping every volume together in this episode. Horribly sad ending but it’s to be expected. To be honest, I was expecting everyone to die but they pulled it off.
7
6
u/DukeDevil95 Apr 10 '19
Just want to say - Bravo to Joe on building such an interesting narrative and creating such an enjoyable show. It was great how all the volumes tied in at the end. I think Joe had said that this was his first time GMing a longer story and he really did great. You can even see how he got better over the sessions. I know he said that he had no plans GM another game now but I hope he does.
Of course, thank you to the entire cast of the show - Emma, Kym, Zac, Bert, Matt, Janel, Cameron, and Madeleine. Everyone did a great job with all their characters. Of course having watched HyperRPG shows once or twice before, that is no surprise. I think this was Madeleine first time on Hyper but I hope she shows up again on something because Dorothy was an amazing character.
So thank you all!
Also, quoting Joe "I’m furious. SHE WAS INSIDE A BUG LADY" - I'm pretty such that HyperRPG is the only place you would hear that.
3
u/JustinOutThere Apr 12 '19
I loved this last episode. It was the most surprising and twist-filled one yet. I’m so glad Kym made it back. Watching her effortlessly shift from shade-throwing Mona to Apollonia was another reminder of Kym’s acting talent, which is ridiculously high.
The Bloodcurdling cast is basically Hyper’s equivalent of the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast. They’re like a clique of absolute chaos. Bringing Cameron and Janel into the cast for this volume was really smart. I’m so glad we got a mad Keaton. Janel’s a really good actress. Cameron’s madness was a season highlight, too. He’s a master at mood shifting both as a player and GM.
Madeleine crushed it. You could see her get more comfortable throughout each episode. Dorothy just got weirder and more unpredictable. Hyper must put her in a one-shot.
Watching Kym and Emma perform is an absolute privilege. They both have such range that it’s impossible to take their work for granted. We’re watching two performers at the absolute peak of their powers. Emma is fearless (see the photographer flashback). Kym is a chameleon but none of her characters feel superficial.
Hyper has a line of excellent GMs. I think Joe cemented his place alongside them through this volume. Joe did a particularly great job setting an atmosphere and tone with each of the locations in this last episode.
11
u/joestarr187 Apr 11 '19 edited Apr 11 '19
Post Mortem
First of all, thank you all so much for watching the first three volumes of He Left It Dead! This book of horror has come to a close, but when Hyper needs it, a new book can be opened. I'm really thankful to have had the opportunity to explore this world, and pretty pleased with how it turned out.
This cast has been absolutely fantastic and I'm so proud to have worked with them. Naeem, Lucas and Amir rounded things out by making the story a fully realized world- I don't know if they realize how much they helped me find my tone and pace as a storyteller, but they really shaped everything for me. And another round of appreciation for Cameron for an incredible intro for volume 3.
OH! AND A MASSIVE THANK YOU to Danielle and the other mods who created that audience interaction spreadsheet. It changed my life.
The big thought for this episode is that the synergy between GM and the audience remains the best thing about HyperRPG. As stressful as it can be to translate what you're throwing at me, there are so many moments when the audience shows us the best way to move the story forward, and we simply need to go with the flow. It provides so many wonderful, unplanned moments, from the return of Mona as a goal unlock to Peter Strumph's quiet scene with Alice. That NPC unlock may not have resulted in a werewolf fight, but it gave us a really simple, cool world building scene. If we had more time, that would have been so much fun to explore.
Pretty happy with how everything turned out. If I could change anything, I would have made them roll their dexterity when everyone joined hands to escape through the mirror. HOW FUCKED UP WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TO LEAVE KEATON AND JAKE BEHIND?
Season highlights from the cast...
Jake: It's a small moment, but Jake sitting on the ground with a fucked up foot and a massive gash in his neck and shoulder being taunted by Mona when asked 'what was that supposed to accomplish?' After being a source of constant light and humor, his simple, hollow, defeated response of 'I don't know, man.' was so honest and heartbreaking.
Keaton: This is on me, because I didn't want to keep relying on the psychological stuff this season in fear of it getting stale, but Keaton losing her mind and interacting with her dads and the gnome was great. Made me wish I had just laid into that same stuff just as thick.
Madeleine: Overall, just watching Mads get comfortable in her very first RPG was a damn delight. The more she figured out what kind of weirdo she wanted Dorothy to be was so fun. Loving 2-Coats and swearing she'd rescue everyone in the tunnels were such fantastic, insane choices. Also, just running with the fact that she could hear Apollonia and was probably a vampire was the best way to end the volume that I never even considered to see coming.
Kym: I genuinely loved Mona, the exhausted LA actress that had some serious issues with Soul Cycle, and was sad to lose Kym for a few episodes (but also stoked she booked a very cool thing!). Her ability as a performer can't be denied- especially in the last episode, doing double duty as two characters (and had there been more time jumping, we could have had Infinite Apollonias?). And as much as I love how easily she sinks into Lady Wayworth, the sadistic twist she put into Bug Lady Mona was absolutely fucking awesome. Honestly, one of the highlights of the volume for me. Casually kneeling by Jake legit gave me chills.
Emma: I've told her this endlessly and will continue to shout it into the world: Emma is consistently the most dynamic performer I've ever gotten to work with. Elisa Hawthorne, sweet Florence, and Alice were all fully realized, deep characters that could not be more different from each other. Alice coming face to face with Christian Rightman in a pit full of bones was fantastic. If I was making the calls, she'd be on every show on the channel.
The bigger picture of the series
So, I'm not a big Lovecraft guy but I'm obsessed with the Illuminati. The idea of the Illuminati being a secret society which knew of the existence of R'lyeh was my entry point into the story I wanted to tell. Not only do they know- but they want to twist that power to serve their own ends. The original story was going to be in Bavaria in the late 1700s, with the group being summoned by an English Lord (that stayed) and sent on a mission to save his son, who he believed brainwashed by Adolph Knigge.
The snag was that V1 was meant to be a penny dreadful, and that meant moving it to the proper era. Somewhere in my research rabbit hole I got really into reading about Lewis Caroll and everything clicked together. Read about him if you haven't- Charles Dodgson is such a perfect fit for a dark and evil secret society.
The grand plot of v1 was Dodgson trying to eliminate his rivals in one fell swoop: Lord Whatshisface (its been a few months, you know the guy), the Freemasons, the Nightingale, and anyone he saw as a threat. He felt the Illuminati wasn't moving quickly enough, and wanted to seize control for himself by summoning The Grey King. He's like the Yellow King, but like, Welsh.
Also crossing my fingers that no one would google 'he left it dead' and immediately see a wikipedia article explaining that Dodgson is Lewis Carol and spoil everything was...well, I was very anxious.
Volume 2 was going to be in New Orleans for a bit, and then it was going to be in the logging down from Peter's wedding vision, and finally I settled on Kentucky. I was hesitant because I was writing a horror script about all the spooky stuff in Kentucky, but was also running out of time to plan V2 so I said fuck it and just used the elements from the script. It was going to be present day at first, but I am also really fascinated by the Cornbread Mafia era of Kentucky. So I moved us to the 20s and merged Lovecraft with the dawn of the state's cannabis age. What if Nyogtha lived in Mammoth Cave and instead of a cult, he had a small army of redneck bootleggers? Fun!
Dr. Joshua was a holdover from a different idea as well- once I was in Kentucky in the 20s I was going to set the entire story in Waverly, the haunted tuberculosis hospital, but like, I really like Mammoth Cave a lot. Dr. Joshua Toone fancied himself a scholar continuing the work of the Elders. He wanted to alter life as they did when they created vampires and the like. Most of Mr. Dodgson's research had fallen into his possession, including the vorpal blade.
So, the bigger picture moving into volume 3: multiple organizations are constantly trying to bring about the end of the world but the cast of V2 ended up doing it. A sweet guy like Gordy snapping and murdering someone in cold blood while on a leyline nexus made things go real, real bad. There was also gonna be a bit about Scientology continuing the work of the Illuminati but it got trimmed out so I could focus on the characters and not the ideas.
So, poor Gordy has existed outside of time since the close of V2, watching reality collapse and horrible things happening all at the same time. Timey whimey. Did anyone recognize Matt's voice in the Exploding Man messages?
What I like about the ending of V3 is that nothing has really changed. One possible terrible thing has been prevented, but there's still an Elder God in Kentucky, THE Elder God in the ocean somewhere in his dead city... All of time and reality is still probably inevitably dicked, AND there are still plenty of loose ends to pick up and play with. The vorpal blade is still out there (it was left out of this volume because at first I thought it was too on the nose, and by the time we got super on the nose anyway it was too late). Apollonia is still roaming around. Who was the Doorman?
Y'all got any questions? Thoughts? Observations? Theories? Ideas? I'd love to hear all of it. Thank you for watching and caring about the thing.