Catching Fireflies at Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
A Solo Playthrough for Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is a roleplaying game with multiple ways to play - including solo play, which may not be quite as fun as sitting at a table with friends, but is a convenient way for a reviewer to get a sense for how the game might play out without having to organize a group to do it. You can read my review of the game here.
What follows is an extract from one of the game’s earlier chapters - and, following that, how my playthrough continued the story.
It was a cool night, in that warm summer way. The sky was crowded with brilliant stars, perfectly mirroring the fireflies flickering among the trees. Sal was sitting in one of the chairs on the back porch, looking out at the woods that surround the Bed & Breakfast. His guitar was heavy in his hands, and he could feel a song burning underneath his fingertips.
Someday, I’ll see the contrails for what they are…
I’ve named every light but one…
I just want to trace that line and know
He sighed. The song in his head was louder than any chords he could play, and none of the words fit. He probably could’ve stayed on that porch forever, but the screen door creaked open and Hey Kid wandered over, heralded by the clapping of their flip flops.
“Hey Sal! Is everything okay?” Hey Kid held up a plate of spaghetti. “Parish wanted me to bring you some dinner, since you missed it and all.”
Sal shrugged. “Thanks, Kid. Lots of stuff on my mind sometimes. I must’ve been distracted.”
Hey Kid hopped up into another wicker chair, and looked up at Sal. In the light of the lonely bulb hanging over the porch, Sal looked …older than he was, and sadder too. Hey Kid glanced out at the dark woods, and the crisp air, and the stars. They took a deep breath, and tapped on Sal’s guitar.
“Hey…do you wanna go firefly catching?”
[There are three questions. Sal wonders, “Would I have become famous if I’d chosen a different route?” It has nine tokens. Hey Kid wonders, “Does being a grown up mean losing your passion for life?” It has nine tokens. Neither of them has asked the question “What does it mean to change?” - but they will. This question does not have any tokens…yet]
“Why don’t you get started, Hey Kid,” Sal replied, holding a hand out for the plate of spaghetti. “I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, I’ll join you in a bit.”
“Okay!” said Hey Kid, giving Sal the plate. “I’m going to see how many I can catch before you finish!” They rushed off into the yard, hands outstretched, focused on the fireflies buzzing around the place.
[Hey Kid takes a token from their question for using their Bingo - “Run somewhere and get there first!”]
Sal took a bite of the spaghetti. It had cooled a little, but it was still delicious - Parish’s spaghetti always was. Sal took another bite, and then put the plate aside, pulling out his notebook to write down the lyrics from his head, hoping that would help him get past things.
Someday, I’ll see the contrails for what they are…
I’ve named every light but one…
I just want to trace that line and know
He stared at the words. He liked them. He liked how they looked. How they felt in his head, how they felt beneath his fingertips, but there was…something blocking him. A dam, around that last line, against which a swell of emotions were gathering.
Know what? Sal wondered. He considered the lyrics, and the tune that he’d been playing in his head when he wrote them. There had been a sense of wonder in the stars he’d been staring at, and in the music in his head. A sense of peace - and in that peace, a panic. Something missing. Something urgent. Something he wanted to be confident about - but confidence was in-
[Sal takes two tokens from his question for their Whoopsies: “Fail to Follow Through” and “Get caught up in my own drama.” The tokens are given to Hey Kid - who now has three]
“SAL!” cried out a very frustrated Hey Kid.
They’d so far had no luck catching fireflies. They hadn’t bought a jar, or a net, or anything like that. They knew what happened when you put a firefly in a jar. All Hey Kid wanted to do was to be able to catch one in their hands, see the glow through their fingertips, and then let it go. They’d tried being fast. They’d tried being slow - approaching the fireflies carefully, before they could flit away. Both approaches had failed, and Hey Kid had been at it for about fifteen minutes. What made it worse was that Sal was still sitting on the porch. He hadn’t even finished his dinner!
[Hey Kid takes a token from their question for their Whoopsie - “Get impatient and give up" - and gives it to Sal]
A somewhat grumpy Hey Kid came and sat in front of Sal.
“You said you were going to come and play once you finished eating, but you’re not even eating!”
“I’m sorry,” said Sal. “I got caught up writing some lyrics - I’m, uh, working on a song.”
Hey Kid’s eyes went wide. “Ooooh! Can I see?”
[Hey Kid takes a token from Sal’s question for the Whoopsie - “Embarass someone with an innocent question" - and gives it to Sal]
Sal closed the notebook, and tucked it into his jacket pocket - perhaps a little too quickly. “It’s, uh - sorry, Hey Kid, it’s not done yet. I’ll show it to you when it is, okay?”
“Is it a sad song?” asked Hey Kid. “You look sad.”
[Hey Kid takes a token from Sal’s question for - you guessed it - the Whoopsie “Embarass someone with an innocent question" - and gives it to Sal]
“I don’t know,” said Sal, being as honest as he could. “but it is making me a little sad.”
“Why?” asked Hey Kid.
“It’s…bringing up a lot of feelings. It’s making me think about where I am. Uh, in life, not at Yazeba’s,” Sal explained, quickly. “I’ve been trying to write my own music for a while now, and honestly, Hey Kid, I really thought I’d have made it by now. I don’t know why I haven’t - if I’ve done something wrong, or whether it’s supposed to take this long, to be so hard. I mean - not everyone becomes a great musician, you know?”
“I think you’re great,” said Hey Kid. “You wrote that song, about making waffles, I sing it all the time! It’s my favourite!”
Sal couldn’t help but grin, but then Hey Kid started singing it with such gusto, such earnestness, that he couldn’t help laughing, either. Encouraged, Hey Kid doubled down on the silliness of the song - the extra loud “WHOOMPH” for adding in flour, making frantic motions with their arm to stir the bowl, and dragging out the “HISSSSS” of the batter being poured into the waffle maker. Sal was laughing - and he seemed like his old self again.
[Sal gets a token for his Bingo “Laugh about it”, while Hey Kid gets a token for their Bingo, “Watch, learn and copy!” - they are copying Sal’s Waffle song, after all]
Still chuckling, Sal reached for his plate, taking a bite of the now-cold spaghetti. “We should get up early tomorrow. Make waffles for everyone, give Parish a rest.”
“YES!”
“Strawberry cream for it, too.”
“YES! And ice cream!”
Sal thought a moment. “Yes. You’re absolutely right. And ice cream.” Hey Kid’s face could not have been more gleeful. “You know, maybe I can forget being famous. I can just be the house bard for the Bed & Breakfast instead.”
Hey Kid was about to let out another enthusiastic “YES!” but they sensed something had changed. They couldn’t quite tell what - Sal’s tone was the same. He was still smiling - but it wasn’t the same smile. It wasn’t a waffles-and-ice-cream smile.
“You can still be famous and do both,” Hey Kid said.
“Being famous is not always good,” said Sal. “There are…a lot of music stars whose lives went bad because they got too famous and didn’t know how to handle it. It used to be all I wanted, though.”
“Why?” asked Hey Kid.
“It’s, uh. Just what you do, when you’re into music, I guess,” said Sal. “The people you admire are all famous, and it means that they’re the best at what they do, that everyone knows it - you get paid millions of dollars, you go travelling around the world, you can buy anything you want, and everyone in the world gets excited when you play. You sell out concerts, and everyone’s there to listen to your music. I used to think that was everything you could want.”
“Used to?”
“Well…before I came to Yazeba’s, I was with this group. Some big production company, putting together young musicians - kind of pop-rock-kid-punk stuff, music made by market research and no soul. They wanted us to be trendy, to do what they thought people wanted - they didn’t want to make good music. They wanted to make popular music. There’s a difference between being a good musician - and a famous one,” said Sal.
[Sal gets a token from his question for the Chapter’s unique Bingo, “Tell a short story about how you’ve changed”]
“And you’re a good one,” said Hey Kid, emphatically.
Sal laughed. “Thanks, Kid. If you ever start writing music yourself, remember that. You should never, ever, ever be someone who’s focused on fame - the music’s everything.”
[Sal takes a token from his question and gives it to Hey Kid for the Chapter’s unique Whoopsie - “Tell someone who they should be.”]
“Then why did thinking about being famous make you so sad?” asked Hey Kid.
[More innocent questions - another token to Sal]
It was a fair question, one that cut to the quick. It stung, but Sal refused to let that show. He took a moment to consider the question, to answer carefully.
[Sal gets a token for his Bingo - “Take my time to get it right.”]
“It is…easy to confuse being famous with being recognized. With people seeing you for who you are,” he said, slowly. “Even when you know better, it’s easy to forget that. I’ve…got good music in me. I’ve got really good music in me. And I want…I want people to see that. I want everyone to-”
“GOT YOU!” shrieked Hey Kid, as a firefly drew near, finally, near enough to catch at just the right moment. They reached out, and trapped the bug in their little blue hands. “Sal, Sal, look, I caught one!”
[Hey Kid’s Whoopsie - “Interrupt someone to show them something I think is really cool”, and their use of the Chapter’s unique Bingo, “Describe how you catch a firefly” takes the remaining two tokens left on Sal’s question card: “Would I have become famous if I chose a different route?”]
[With the Question card emptied of tokens, it’s time for both characters to answer the question, in their own way]
Sal looks over, and peers into Hey Kid’s little hands, looking at that little glowing bug. “You know - Yazeba has an enchanted jar somewhere in the house - we could collect fireflies and keep them there, and they’ll be totally safe, unhurt.”
“WHAT?” said Hey Kid. “This jar was there the WHOLE TIME and nobody told me? Let’s get it!”
Laughing, Sal led Hey Kid to the closet where the jar was kept. He thought about the idea of fame as he moved. Would he have been famous if he’d stayed with that pop group? If he hadn’t just left them without so much as a note in the middle of the night? Maybe. But it wouldn’t have been the kind of fame he wanted. His self - it would have been boxed in by other people’s ideas of what music should be. It would have been a nightmare.
Hey Kid was thinking similar thoughts. They were thinking that they were walking with someone who could have been famous - a word that had always seemed so sparkly. Now, however, it had lost some of its shine. Hey Kid thought that Sal would have been famous if he’d stayed with that band - but then he never would have come to Yazeba’s. And the people here saw him for who he was - with or without his music.
[Sal has 7 tokens. Hey Kid has 6. They each place 6 tokens on the final question: “What does it mean to change?” With 12 tokens, each person gets to give a 1 sentence answer about the question, if they have one - and Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast gets 1 Jar of Fireflies, which can be used to unlock later chapters, guests, or residents]
As Sal helps Hey Kid catch more fireflies under the starry night sky, he thinks of the changes he’s been through. He wonders what it means to change. To become, day by day, the person you’ve chosen to be, he decides.
Hey Kid, as they jump around with the jar, trying to fill it with fireflies, realizes that they’re not going to be able to run around and play forever. Change is coming for them - some day, they will grow up. They think of Sal’s story, and think, Change means other people telling you who you are - but you can always escape to places you can just be yourself.
[With the leftover token, Sal marks a track on his individual journey, “What do you think of this?”, coming that much closer to completing a song. He has a ways to go yet - but he’s started]
[[You can buy Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast here: https://possumcreekgames.itch.io/yazebas-bed-breakfast ]]