(As a followup to my previous post on our recent Shadow of Yesterday game)
For simplicity sake, here are some ways that stakes can work in tsoy:
win/lose: "If you win this dice roll, your action is a success. If you lose, its not and you fail." I generally think that these kind of stakes are boring and try to avoid them.
win/complicated win: "If you win the dice roll, your action goes off without a hitch. If you lose, you still did what you wanted to do, but it just got complicated - more guards just came in, or you realized that its a trap and they were waiting on you, or your sword/lockpick/gun/tools break during the process, etc" I love this kind of stakes, and usually try for this kind of thing. I think that it is important to note that these stakes are actually toying with the facts in the game, beyond "Am I successful or not?".
Its worth noting that Role Playing games are all about using dice to determine facts - Dungeons and Dragons does it - you roll your d20 to hit the orc, pick the lock, jump the wall, etc. Did you succeed at your task, or fail, you ask. The dice answer.
TSOY has taken this a step further, and that's one of the reasons that I love the game so much. Dice checks are usually very binary, the answer is either Yes or No. TSOY changes that, and lets you talk about what "yes" or "no" means.
I recently got to play with Inspectres, and read through Houses of the Blooded. Both systems use mechanics that turn over some narrative control of the game to the players. The players get to say "This happens." Which is totally cool.
I have always run TSOY in a somewhat traditional fashion. I, the GM, know what is happening in the story, and through the game I share that with the players. I have a cast of good guys and bad guys, I have a plot, I know where the McGuffin is, and what it does. The players are along for the ride, to interact with the story that I've created. The difference with this game was that I pitched that out the window. Kindof by accident. I mentioned in my previous post that we did some stakes like: "Win - Stephan walks right into you, Lose - he went into hiding somewhere that is going to be damn tough to reach." This makes me froth at the mouth a little because I let the players decide how the game goes. Right now, brewing in my head are stakes like "We arrive at the keep of our dear Uncle Bob, how's he doing these days? We'll roll our Socialize skill. On a win - he's doing just dandy and there's going to be a huge gala held here in just two days, woo! On a loss - he just died from an assassins dagger, like - two minutes ago. The keep is in an uproar!"
Showing posts with label tsoy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tsoy. Show all posts
Friday, September 5, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Thieves of Highwater Street: Sibling Rivalry
I had the pleasure of running one of the coolest sessions of Shadow of Yesterday ever.
After a very long wait, we picked back up with the Thieves Guild themed game of Shadow of Yesterday with Michael and Kelly. This time, we had those two, Jason, Michael's wife Beth, Doug and Sonya.
Beth had not played with us before, and was new or pretty new to role playing games. Doug and Sonya were new introductions to me. Both have played role playing games, and Doug had played or run a FUDGE game once before.
In order to simplify things, speed things up, and give us some good story hooks, I created character backgrounds for everyone, and let everyone get familiarized with them.
Each character had a few secrets from the other characters. We are not doing any sort of PvP, but there's certainly some subterfuge and conspiracy at play. We discussed handling these secrets in a Cards Up or Cards Down fashion. Cards Up indicates that we as players are all In The Know. Like the audience in a book or movie, we already know the juicy secrets. This style is better suited to casual, easygoing and friendly play. Cards Down indicates that we keep all the dirty secrets until they come out in play. As a group, we decided on Cards Up. During our quick Spilling Of Secrets, Michael mentioned that his character Thomas had a crippled father, and because of that, he worked for the Guild, to keep his family fed. Doug spoke up and asked if he could add to the background info, and asked if his character could have, on orders, been the one who broke Thomas' father's back. Oh Hell Yes.
I began by outlining that the players formed part of the Highwater Street Crewe. Not all of it though, as there are "bit players", or cronies who do stuff off screen as well. The crewe had a few things that needed to be accomplished. They still needed to turn up the missing courier and gems that their boss, Malek, wanted. They also needed to make sure that they were collecting "protection money" from the businesses around Highwater. I explained that they had a short list of establishments that had not or would not hand over money. They started at the Golden Drink gambling den, looking to secure some cash from the owner. He told them that he had little cash, and that his business had dried up in recent days. They asked as to why, and he told them that his customers had instead been buying some kind of narcotic off of some hooligans up the street, and he pointed them out. Now, Doug was aware that his character had a brother who had recently arrived in Highwater. This brother had falled in with some street punks who were selling a narcotic. Doug asked if his brother was among them. Yes. He took off up the street to get his confrontation on. He got into a physical altercation with his little brother and the two toughs with him, and we went to dice. Simple stakes, Doug won. He intimidated an agreement out of his brother to leave the dope alone and get lost, and his brother took off.
They headed on down the street, debating whether to look into the missing gem courier, or into the businesses that they needed money from. They passed by a group of city militia harassing two young men. The goody-two-shoes Lieutenant was with the guards, as well as the tough-but-corrupt watch Sergeant. The two young men were familiar to the characters, one of them being an errand boy for the Guild. Kelly's character, who has a bone to pick with the city militia, along with Beth's character, marched up to the guardsmen and started in sarcastically on the Sergeant. Soon, they could see that the watch was going to let the young men go, and Kelly's exchange with the guardsmen began to get dangerous. Beth's character chilled things out by getting them out of the confrontation, once they saw that the young men would be released.
Soon they passed the business of a dock hauler, one of the businesses that had not paid up. They debating how to deal with them, considering some options, before deciding that they needed to make an example of someone, and preferably a somewhat easier target than a bunch of haulers. They settled on a well-to-do seamstress shop just up the street. When they walked up to the shop, they recognized a young man sitting outside the shop os one of the Brickdown Street Crewe, a rival crewe to the north, and headed by the son of the Underboss. He told the characters that this seamstress shop belonged to the Brickdown Crewe now, and that Underboss Malek had given it to them. There was much consternation and discussion about this. Soon, Sonya's character went in to the shop to talk to the owner. The owner became concerned about the prospect of being caught in the middle of a Guild dispute, but Sonya's character assured her that it would be handled without any problem, and said that she would need to be giving her Guild payments to them instead of the Brickdown crewe. Headed by Michael's character, the rest of our crewe soon ran the lone Brickdown fellow off. He threatened a bit, and left.
The crewe decided that they wanted to do some hunting for the gem courier, and sought out the other gambling hall in Highwater, the Lady's Dice, and things began to pick up. Up until this point, we'd only rolled dice once or twice over the entire evening. I was having a blast narrating and playing the NPCs, and the players seemed to be having a fine time doing what it was that they were doing. At the Lady's Dice, Kelly's character did some socializing, and Sonya's character went and talked to one of the bouncers. She had taken Secret of Contacts, and decided that this bouncer was a contact of hers, a good buddy. He came clean that they'd underpaid a little, but he'd not seen this gem courier. Sonya asked if he hung out with the bouncers at the other places, and if he might be able to coax any information out of them. A light came on above my head, and I said sure - that we could go to dice for it. If Sonya won, then the bartender left work after a few hours, went and hung out with his buddies, asked them about the gem courier and got a lead. If she lost, his buddies had no information for him. This was solid gold. Tons of gift dice came out, and she handily won the contest. Her bouncer friend informed her that the gem courier who'd been thrown out into the gutter in front of the Golden Drink gambling hall, had been rolled by some punk kids.
Doug immediately expressed concern over whether his brother had been involved in this, and there was much speculation around the table. The crewe decided to go off in search of the brother, Stephan. They weren't sure where he'd be hiding, so they decided to start checking at the homes of relatives. They went by an Uncle's place, and Doug's character asked his uncle if he'd seen Stephan. The uncle replied "no", and I told Doug that we'd need to go to dice. The uncle was lying, and the dice would tell us whether he was fooled by it or not. The dice came up a tie, and Doug decided to bring down the pain. Thanks to lucky rolling on my part, and unlucky rollng on Doug's part, he finally Gave, and his character left, frustrated.
The crewe regrouped in the street, and debated their next move. They still wanted to find Stephan, and Jason proposed a dice roll to try to get some word as to where Stephan was hiding. Jason went for big stakes, and proposed that if he won, Stephan walked right into them. Wanting to meet his stakes scope, I said fine, and that if he lost, Stephan had gone and sought shelter with their rivals, the Brickdown crewe. Gift dice flew at Jason, and he won handily.
They grabbed Stephan and the guy with him, and began trying to get information out of him. We went to dice, and they learned the names of three street punks who'd done the rolling.
Quick note:
Stakes in TSOY have always been awesome. Letting stakes decide truths in the game, and the direction that the story and narration goes? AWESOME.
This was a fairly quick writeup, and I may post more about it later.
After a very long wait, we picked back up with the Thieves Guild themed game of Shadow of Yesterday with Michael and Kelly. This time, we had those two, Jason, Michael's wife Beth, Doug and Sonya.
Beth had not played with us before, and was new or pretty new to role playing games. Doug and Sonya were new introductions to me. Both have played role playing games, and Doug had played or run a FUDGE game once before.
In order to simplify things, speed things up, and give us some good story hooks, I created character backgrounds for everyone, and let everyone get familiarized with them.
Each character had a few secrets from the other characters. We are not doing any sort of PvP, but there's certainly some subterfuge and conspiracy at play. We discussed handling these secrets in a Cards Up or Cards Down fashion. Cards Up indicates that we as players are all In The Know. Like the audience in a book or movie, we already know the juicy secrets. This style is better suited to casual, easygoing and friendly play. Cards Down indicates that we keep all the dirty secrets until they come out in play. As a group, we decided on Cards Up. During our quick Spilling Of Secrets, Michael mentioned that his character Thomas had a crippled father, and because of that, he worked for the Guild, to keep his family fed. Doug spoke up and asked if he could add to the background info, and asked if his character could have, on orders, been the one who broke Thomas' father's back. Oh Hell Yes.
I began by outlining that the players formed part of the Highwater Street Crewe. Not all of it though, as there are "bit players", or cronies who do stuff off screen as well. The crewe had a few things that needed to be accomplished. They still needed to turn up the missing courier and gems that their boss, Malek, wanted. They also needed to make sure that they were collecting "protection money" from the businesses around Highwater. I explained that they had a short list of establishments that had not or would not hand over money. They started at the Golden Drink gambling den, looking to secure some cash from the owner. He told them that he had little cash, and that his business had dried up in recent days. They asked as to why, and he told them that his customers had instead been buying some kind of narcotic off of some hooligans up the street, and he pointed them out. Now, Doug was aware that his character had a brother who had recently arrived in Highwater. This brother had falled in with some street punks who were selling a narcotic. Doug asked if his brother was among them. Yes. He took off up the street to get his confrontation on. He got into a physical altercation with his little brother and the two toughs with him, and we went to dice. Simple stakes, Doug won. He intimidated an agreement out of his brother to leave the dope alone and get lost, and his brother took off.
They headed on down the street, debating whether to look into the missing gem courier, or into the businesses that they needed money from. They passed by a group of city militia harassing two young men. The goody-two-shoes Lieutenant was with the guards, as well as the tough-but-corrupt watch Sergeant. The two young men were familiar to the characters, one of them being an errand boy for the Guild. Kelly's character, who has a bone to pick with the city militia, along with Beth's character, marched up to the guardsmen and started in sarcastically on the Sergeant. Soon, they could see that the watch was going to let the young men go, and Kelly's exchange with the guardsmen began to get dangerous. Beth's character chilled things out by getting them out of the confrontation, once they saw that the young men would be released.
Soon they passed the business of a dock hauler, one of the businesses that had not paid up. They debating how to deal with them, considering some options, before deciding that they needed to make an example of someone, and preferably a somewhat easier target than a bunch of haulers. They settled on a well-to-do seamstress shop just up the street. When they walked up to the shop, they recognized a young man sitting outside the shop os one of the Brickdown Street Crewe, a rival crewe to the north, and headed by the son of the Underboss. He told the characters that this seamstress shop belonged to the Brickdown Crewe now, and that Underboss Malek had given it to them. There was much consternation and discussion about this. Soon, Sonya's character went in to the shop to talk to the owner. The owner became concerned about the prospect of being caught in the middle of a Guild dispute, but Sonya's character assured her that it would be handled without any problem, and said that she would need to be giving her Guild payments to them instead of the Brickdown crewe. Headed by Michael's character, the rest of our crewe soon ran the lone Brickdown fellow off. He threatened a bit, and left.
The crewe decided that they wanted to do some hunting for the gem courier, and sought out the other gambling hall in Highwater, the Lady's Dice, and things began to pick up. Up until this point, we'd only rolled dice once or twice over the entire evening. I was having a blast narrating and playing the NPCs, and the players seemed to be having a fine time doing what it was that they were doing. At the Lady's Dice, Kelly's character did some socializing, and Sonya's character went and talked to one of the bouncers. She had taken Secret of Contacts, and decided that this bouncer was a contact of hers, a good buddy. He came clean that they'd underpaid a little, but he'd not seen this gem courier. Sonya asked if he hung out with the bouncers at the other places, and if he might be able to coax any information out of them. A light came on above my head, and I said sure - that we could go to dice for it. If Sonya won, then the bartender left work after a few hours, went and hung out with his buddies, asked them about the gem courier and got a lead. If she lost, his buddies had no information for him. This was solid gold. Tons of gift dice came out, and she handily won the contest. Her bouncer friend informed her that the gem courier who'd been thrown out into the gutter in front of the Golden Drink gambling hall, had been rolled by some punk kids.
Doug immediately expressed concern over whether his brother had been involved in this, and there was much speculation around the table. The crewe decided to go off in search of the brother, Stephan. They weren't sure where he'd be hiding, so they decided to start checking at the homes of relatives. They went by an Uncle's place, and Doug's character asked his uncle if he'd seen Stephan. The uncle replied "no", and I told Doug that we'd need to go to dice. The uncle was lying, and the dice would tell us whether he was fooled by it or not. The dice came up a tie, and Doug decided to bring down the pain. Thanks to lucky rolling on my part, and unlucky rollng on Doug's part, he finally Gave, and his character left, frustrated.
The crewe regrouped in the street, and debated their next move. They still wanted to find Stephan, and Jason proposed a dice roll to try to get some word as to where Stephan was hiding. Jason went for big stakes, and proposed that if he won, Stephan walked right into them. Wanting to meet his stakes scope, I said fine, and that if he lost, Stephan had gone and sought shelter with their rivals, the Brickdown crewe. Gift dice flew at Jason, and he won handily.
They grabbed Stephan and the guy with him, and began trying to get information out of him. We went to dice, and they learned the names of three street punks who'd done the rolling.
Quick note:
Stakes in TSOY have always been awesome. Letting stakes decide truths in the game, and the direction that the story and narration goes? AWESOME.
This was a fairly quick writeup, and I may post more about it later.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Narrative Control
One of the coolest things about the game of Shadowrun of Yesterday that we did, was that thanks to using Shadow of Yesterday rules, I had much more control over the narrative of the story.
Case in point: the Cyberzombies busted in. In a normal game of Shadowrun, one of two things would have happened. 1) The players manage to somehow take down the cyberzombies. 2) more likely, the players shoot back in an intense firefight, cause that's what players do, and the cyberzombies would have eaten them for lunch.
Two vastly different systems. In Shadowrun, which is pretty hard core "Sim", the rules are the boss. With TSOY, which gives alot of space to "Narrative", I had the ability to direct the story by deciding the stakes. And I guess that's the difference. With Shadowrun, I have no real control over the stakes/outcome. Its all down to the dice. I can influence it, by rolling more dice, but I can't control it. With TSOY, we talk about what happens, instead of letting the dice decide for us.
/game nerd
Case in point: the Cyberzombies busted in. In a normal game of Shadowrun, one of two things would have happened. 1) The players manage to somehow take down the cyberzombies. 2) more likely, the players shoot back in an intense firefight, cause that's what players do, and the cyberzombies would have eaten them for lunch.
Two vastly different systems. In Shadowrun, which is pretty hard core "Sim", the rules are the boss. With TSOY, which gives alot of space to "Narrative", I had the ability to direct the story by deciding the stakes. And I guess that's the difference. With Shadowrun, I have no real control over the stakes/outcome. Its all down to the dice. I can influence it, by rolling more dice, but I can't control it. With TSOY, we talk about what happens, instead of letting the dice decide for us.
/game nerd
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
another note about the game
Sorry for the spam, feed reader people.
It also occurred to me that, when running TSOY games, I can liven up stakes by doing things like this:
If you win this conflict, the fellow does what you say, and leaves the room, shamed. If you loose the conflict, you are embarrassed and humiliated, and you leave the room, but you'll get a clue about the location of the lost mcguffin.
It also occurred to me that, when running TSOY games, I can liven up stakes by doing things like this:
If you win this conflict, the fellow does what you say, and leaves the room, shamed. If you loose the conflict, you are embarrassed and humiliated, and you leave the room, but you'll get a clue about the location of the lost mcguffin.
Thieves of Highwater Street, II
As an addendum, while its in my head, I think that when we meet up for another session, I'll go ahead and discuss having some stuff happening "off camera". I don't intend for the crewe to have to spend every moment with role playing going shop to shop, strong-arming every store owner for protection money, cause that's only cool about three times in a row, maybe. That stuff can all be happening off screen, and we'll just focus on it when something about it gets interesting (which it will). That leaves them more time to focus on things like the bad guys other interesting NPCs in the game, and looking for lost gem couriers, and stuff.
Shadow of Yesterday: Thieves of Highwater Street
So recently, in a wild coincidence, I was contacted by a fellow who was interested in getting into some role playing gaming, and had run across my info on the internets. It turns out, he's the fellow that I bought my current house from. Small world. *hi Michael*
Sadly, I told him that I was far too busy to crank up another regular game, and that my new D&D game was just plain full. I'm always excited to hear from other gamers though, and so we chatted about gaming and games and such. He went out and tried playing in some local D&D groups. Well his experience, over the course of two games with them, ranged from "meh", to "this is the worst gaming experience of my life, ever". So we chatted some more about Shadow of Yesterday and some other stuff, and then I caved, cause I love gaming, and can't really pass up the chance to run some TSoY for some folks.
So last night we got together down at his place, Jason, Krissi, myself, Michael, and his friend Kelly.
I'd thrown together a thieves guild game, based alot of The Sopranos and The Godfather. I cranked out some set and setting details, some Important NPCs, and some background stuff for the characters, in order to get everyone hooked in right away. Note to self: don't mix wine and typing up setting info. The content is fine, but your spelling is awful, and you end up somehow leaving words out of sentences.
The Horn Lake crowd headed down to Michael's place, who was gracious enough to host. Everyone shook hands and said hi, and we sat down, threw pizzas in the oven, and started talking about the game. Naturally, everyone feeling out the new people, we chatted about xbox games and films and books a little bit. I had everyone read the info I'd brought. Two pages for everyone, one, chock full of setting info and NPC info. More information than I'd intended to dump on folks, but I was trying to paint a clear and fairly complete picture for folks. The other page, with personal info about their background, their relationship with the other characters, and so forth.
We went straight into character creation, and discussed the mechanics of all the character bits, and how they impacted gameplay. I'm always surprised at how long character creation takes in TSoY, when introducing new people to the system. It's not a bad thing, it just always surprises me a little. Despite its ease and simplicity in action, TSoY is a system with some depth to it, and some tricky mechanics.
Also, I'd neglected to bring all of the extra printouts of TSoY rules info, like abilities and secrets and keys and such, so we were all sharing the one book that I had. I'll remember that for next time.
Michael and Kelly followed right along, asking questions and getting clarifications on things related to the game setting and to the system mechanics. Soon enough, we'd gotten everyone's characters settled, and were ready to start playing.
The game opened at a funeral for the recently deceased Underboss of the Harbor. Within a few minutes, they were summoned to an impromptu meet with the new Underboss. He "swore them in" to the Guild, and told them that the Highwater area, their neighborhood, was their territory. Basically, they were in charge of collecting "protection money" and running the criminal enterprises of the neighborhood. He also asked them to keep an eye out for a courier who was supposed to be delivering a shipment of gems. The courier did not show up for a meeting, and was last seen at a gambling hall on Highwater street.
The crewe took to the street, back to their neighborhood. With a few questions unanswered, they waited for the arrival of one of the Underboss's men, who came to help out with details and such. He showed up, filled them in on some basic info, got into a near physical altercation with one of the crewe, and then left, leaving them with a semi threatening "good luck".
The players decided to start at a gambling hall, and hit the owner up to start getting protection money again. He was easy enough to deal with, and they moved right along. They hit the next gambling hall, which was also the last place that the gem courier was seen. The owner of this establishment was a little less excited about the idea of forking over money to the crewe, but mostly just grumbled about it, and they didn't have to convince him hard. They also inquired about the courier, and were told that he'd shown up, sat down at a card table and started drinking. At some point, he got combative, slugged the dealer, and got thrown out of the place. That was the last they'd seen of him. The players/characters did alot of throwing around the Underboss' name, which proved to be quite effective. No one likes sleeping with the rats. The crewe questioned the dealer that he'd played with, as well as a few regulars who had been at the table, as well as the bounces that threw him out. The questioning of the dealer turned interesting. There was a hard bitten sailor playing at his table, and Kelly, playing a smooth and subtle talking type, pulled up a chair, and gently worked to convince the sailor to find another table to play at. This led immediately to our first rolling of dice.
Kelly quickly said that he was interested in going to dice to determine the outcome. We discussed how stakes and conflict worked. We discussed stakes, with Kelly winning we decided that the sailor would take his advice, and head to another table. If Kelly lost, the sailor wasn't interested in heading to another table, and as Jason suggested, the dealer was now upset with Kelly, since he was trying to run off paying customers. We rolled, and Kelly lost. We discussed how he could go to Bring Down the Pain, or he could let it lie ("cause more conflict is fun", I said)). He let it lie, and about that time Michael's character jumped into the mix to shoo away the sailor, who was becoming more angry by the minute. This was the first fellow who didn't waver in fear at the mention of "Underboss Malek". At some point (the order has already begun to escape me) Jason's character got involved, and claimed to be a city watchman. The crewe called over Krissi's character (she's playing the bruiser), as she'd been chatting up the bouncers. She rushed in, and went straight for the "intimidating with a knife" tactic. The sailor responded in kind, and presently we had another conflict on our hands. This one was a little different, since we weren't just using words here. If Krissi won, the sailor was suitably cowed and intimidated, and put his knife away and left. If the sailor won, Krissi's character got a nick, and lost the physical conflict, meaning that it was lost - she could not just say "well I intimidate him again". We rolled, and she almost lost, but thanks to some last minute adjusting of abilities, she prevailed (we changed her "dueling" ability to "knife work" which was more effective). There were some questions thrown in during this, like "So if she gets nicked, what does that mean? does it go on the harm tracker?" and so forth. I decided no, it didn't need to go on the harm tracker. She'd almost gone to Bringing down the pain when we thought she'd lost, but we got it settled.
They gang mollified the dealer, chatted him up about the missing courier, though he didn't have must in the way of helpful information. They tracked down two of the guys who were playing at the table with him that night - regulars in the place. Jason's character set about to questioning them, still using the guise of being a city watchman. I'd given him a penalty dice the first time he used this in the place, seeing that he didn't have anything to back up his story, but they bought it anyway. He continued the charade (and I think, got a little XP for his key, having to do with impersonation), and set about to interrogating the two gents. After going into deep detail, we all decided that they had little information to offer. Meanwhile, Krissi's character had chatted up the bouncers that tossed the courier out of the place when he'd gotten drunk and fighty. They said that they tossed him into the gutter, where he lay for awhile. When they looked out an hour or so later, he wasn't there anymore.
We pretty much trailed off there, for the evening, as it was already 9:30. I think that everyone had a good time, and I'm hoping to continue the story in the near future.
Michael and Kelly seemed to enjoy themselves, and claimed that the TSoY game was far superior to the other gaming stuff that they'd experienced, which I'll gladly accept. They both did a great job of jumping right in. Both are somewhat new to role playing games, Kelly having only played two sessions of gaming before, and Michael having been long separated from the hobby. They both did a fantastic job of hopping into the setting, and playing the characters. There wasn't much in the way of grabbing XP, but I think it was largely because of the short time that we played. We may need to do some key tweaking as well. We'll see.
I enjoyed running the game. I was a tad rusty at TSoY mechanics, but it was a blast. I enjoy the way that setting stakes in conflict allow you to take the game in directions that are seemingly impossible in most any other system.
There are more details that I'm missing, but mostly now because my memory and recall are poor, and I've been crazy busy at work today, and have only barely been able to steal away enough time to write this.
Hopefully there'll be more coming down the line.
Sadly, I told him that I was far too busy to crank up another regular game, and that my new D&D game was just plain full. I'm always excited to hear from other gamers though, and so we chatted about gaming and games and such. He went out and tried playing in some local D&D groups. Well his experience, over the course of two games with them, ranged from "meh", to "this is the worst gaming experience of my life, ever". So we chatted some more about Shadow of Yesterday and some other stuff, and then I caved, cause I love gaming, and can't really pass up the chance to run some TSoY for some folks.
So last night we got together down at his place, Jason, Krissi, myself, Michael, and his friend Kelly.
I'd thrown together a thieves guild game, based alot of The Sopranos and The Godfather. I cranked out some set and setting details, some Important NPCs, and some background stuff for the characters, in order to get everyone hooked in right away. Note to self: don't mix wine and typing up setting info. The content is fine, but your spelling is awful, and you end up somehow leaving words out of sentences.
The Horn Lake crowd headed down to Michael's place, who was gracious enough to host. Everyone shook hands and said hi, and we sat down, threw pizzas in the oven, and started talking about the game. Naturally, everyone feeling out the new people, we chatted about xbox games and films and books a little bit. I had everyone read the info I'd brought. Two pages for everyone, one, chock full of setting info and NPC info. More information than I'd intended to dump on folks, but I was trying to paint a clear and fairly complete picture for folks. The other page, with personal info about their background, their relationship with the other characters, and so forth.
We went straight into character creation, and discussed the mechanics of all the character bits, and how they impacted gameplay. I'm always surprised at how long character creation takes in TSoY, when introducing new people to the system. It's not a bad thing, it just always surprises me a little. Despite its ease and simplicity in action, TSoY is a system with some depth to it, and some tricky mechanics.
Also, I'd neglected to bring all of the extra printouts of TSoY rules info, like abilities and secrets and keys and such, so we were all sharing the one book that I had. I'll remember that for next time.
Michael and Kelly followed right along, asking questions and getting clarifications on things related to the game setting and to the system mechanics. Soon enough, we'd gotten everyone's characters settled, and were ready to start playing.
The game opened at a funeral for the recently deceased Underboss of the Harbor. Within a few minutes, they were summoned to an impromptu meet with the new Underboss. He "swore them in" to the Guild, and told them that the Highwater area, their neighborhood, was their territory. Basically, they were in charge of collecting "protection money" and running the criminal enterprises of the neighborhood. He also asked them to keep an eye out for a courier who was supposed to be delivering a shipment of gems. The courier did not show up for a meeting, and was last seen at a gambling hall on Highwater street.
The crewe took to the street, back to their neighborhood. With a few questions unanswered, they waited for the arrival of one of the Underboss's men, who came to help out with details and such. He showed up, filled them in on some basic info, got into a near physical altercation with one of the crewe, and then left, leaving them with a semi threatening "good luck".
The players decided to start at a gambling hall, and hit the owner up to start getting protection money again. He was easy enough to deal with, and they moved right along. They hit the next gambling hall, which was also the last place that the gem courier was seen. The owner of this establishment was a little less excited about the idea of forking over money to the crewe, but mostly just grumbled about it, and they didn't have to convince him hard. They also inquired about the courier, and were told that he'd shown up, sat down at a card table and started drinking. At some point, he got combative, slugged the dealer, and got thrown out of the place. That was the last they'd seen of him. The players/characters did alot of throwing around the Underboss' name, which proved to be quite effective. No one likes sleeping with the rats. The crewe questioned the dealer that he'd played with, as well as a few regulars who had been at the table, as well as the bounces that threw him out. The questioning of the dealer turned interesting. There was a hard bitten sailor playing at his table, and Kelly, playing a smooth and subtle talking type, pulled up a chair, and gently worked to convince the sailor to find another table to play at. This led immediately to our first rolling of dice.
Kelly quickly said that he was interested in going to dice to determine the outcome. We discussed how stakes and conflict worked. We discussed stakes, with Kelly winning we decided that the sailor would take his advice, and head to another table. If Kelly lost, the sailor wasn't interested in heading to another table, and as Jason suggested, the dealer was now upset with Kelly, since he was trying to run off paying customers. We rolled, and Kelly lost. We discussed how he could go to Bring Down the Pain, or he could let it lie ("cause more conflict is fun", I said)). He let it lie, and about that time Michael's character jumped into the mix to shoo away the sailor, who was becoming more angry by the minute. This was the first fellow who didn't waver in fear at the mention of "Underboss Malek". At some point (the order has already begun to escape me) Jason's character got involved, and claimed to be a city watchman. The crewe called over Krissi's character (she's playing the bruiser), as she'd been chatting up the bouncers. She rushed in, and went straight for the "intimidating with a knife" tactic. The sailor responded in kind, and presently we had another conflict on our hands. This one was a little different, since we weren't just using words here. If Krissi won, the sailor was suitably cowed and intimidated, and put his knife away and left. If the sailor won, Krissi's character got a nick, and lost the physical conflict, meaning that it was lost - she could not just say "well I intimidate him again". We rolled, and she almost lost, but thanks to some last minute adjusting of abilities, she prevailed (we changed her "dueling" ability to "knife work" which was more effective). There were some questions thrown in during this, like "So if she gets nicked, what does that mean? does it go on the harm tracker?" and so forth. I decided no, it didn't need to go on the harm tracker. She'd almost gone to Bringing down the pain when we thought she'd lost, but we got it settled.
They gang mollified the dealer, chatted him up about the missing courier, though he didn't have must in the way of helpful information. They tracked down two of the guys who were playing at the table with him that night - regulars in the place. Jason's character set about to questioning them, still using the guise of being a city watchman. I'd given him a penalty dice the first time he used this in the place, seeing that he didn't have anything to back up his story, but they bought it anyway. He continued the charade (and I think, got a little XP for his key, having to do with impersonation), and set about to interrogating the two gents. After going into deep detail, we all decided that they had little information to offer. Meanwhile, Krissi's character had chatted up the bouncers that tossed the courier out of the place when he'd gotten drunk and fighty. They said that they tossed him into the gutter, where he lay for awhile. When they looked out an hour or so later, he wasn't there anymore.
We pretty much trailed off there, for the evening, as it was already 9:30. I think that everyone had a good time, and I'm hoping to continue the story in the near future.
Michael and Kelly seemed to enjoy themselves, and claimed that the TSoY game was far superior to the other gaming stuff that they'd experienced, which I'll gladly accept. They both did a great job of jumping right in. Both are somewhat new to role playing games, Kelly having only played two sessions of gaming before, and Michael having been long separated from the hobby. They both did a fantastic job of hopping into the setting, and playing the characters. There wasn't much in the way of grabbing XP, but I think it was largely because of the short time that we played. We may need to do some key tweaking as well. We'll see.
I enjoyed running the game. I was a tad rusty at TSoY mechanics, but it was a blast. I enjoy the way that setting stakes in conflict allow you to take the game in directions that are seemingly impossible in most any other system.
There are more details that I'm missing, but mostly now because my memory and recall are poor, and I've been crazy busy at work today, and have only barely been able to steal away enough time to write this.
Hopefully there'll be more coming down the line.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
TSOY Wuxia
One day I hope to be able to run a Shadow of Yesterday Wuxia game.
*Drool!*
I note this here, mostly as a note to myself. Man this would be so bad ass.
*Drool!*
I note this here, mostly as a note to myself. Man this would be so bad ass.
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
the Shadow of Yesterday
Ok, so if you read anything I write on here, you've read about the Shadow of Yesterday.
I'll try though to sift through and break down the mechanical and gameplay aspects of it though. For some reason I got a wild hair to do this for the games that I'm currently into or reading. It bears mentioning that I did a post that hit on alot of the mechanical/game aspects of TSOY here.
The Shadow of Yesterday [wiki] is a game that's actually available for free, thanks to its author, Clinton Nixon and the Creative Commons License. You can grab the text of the main book here, and the setting here.
Firstly, damn, I cant say enough good things about this game. I'm totally hooked.
TSOY is a rather rules-lite fantasy RPG. It uses FUDGE dice.
Character creation is pretty quick and simple. You'll divide 11 points among your three Pools, Reason, Instinct and Vigor. I'll fill you in on what these do shortly. Abilities (skills basically) are all ranked Unskilled (rank 0), Competent (rank 1), Adept (rank 2), Master (rank 3) or Grand Master (rank 4). Everyone takes Endure (based off of the Vigor Pool), React (based off of the Instinct Pool), and Resist (based on the Reason Pool). They take one at Adept, one at Competent and one at Unskilled. Then you choose four more abilities, and there are excellent examples provided in the book, enough that you dont have to create your own, though you're encouraged to do so, if you find yourself in need of one that's not printed. Of the four additional abilities that you take, you get one at Adept and the other three at Competent. You also get one Secret and one Key. Secrets are the equivalent to Edges or Feats. They let you hit harder, jump higher, be more convincing, etc etc. Keys are part of where the game really shines. A Key is something like the Key of Bloodlust. With this key, every time your character defeats someone in battle, you gain 1 xp; or 3 xp for defeating someone who is equal to more powerful than your character. In short, Keys are how you define the game for yourself. If you want to play a character who is all about the brawling and fighting and blood, you take Keys like Bloodlust, Masochist and maybe Conscience. Thus you're getting XP whether you're beating people down or getting beaten down yourself. Or if you're a more thiefly type, you can take a Key that gives you XP for stealing stuff and getting gold. Its really really the most excellent thing. There are a number of good keys in the book, and you're encouraged to make up your own. Someone familiar with the game could have a new character ready to go in like three minutes probably, and a first timer with some guidance could have one done in five or ten mintues, allowing for time for them to read through the abilities, secrets and keys.
Since they're so cool, here are some more of the keys written up in the book:
*Key of the Coward
Your character avoids combat like the plague. Gain 1 XP every time your character avoids a potentially dangerous situation. Gain 3 XP every time your character stops a combat using other means besides violence. Buyoff: Leap into combat with no hesitation.
*Key of the Impostor
Sometimes your entire life is a lie. You gain 1 XP whenever you pass yourself off as someone/something you're not. You gain 2 XP whenever you convince others in spite of serious skepticism. You gain 5 XP whenever your story survives a deliberate, focused, "Hey everybody, look!" attempt to reveal your identity. Buyoff: Confess your imposture to those duped.
*Key of Renown
"You must be the worst assassin I've ever heard of." "But you have heard of me." You gain 1 XP whenever you see to it that your name and deeds are known, by bragging about them or making sure there are witnesses. You gain 2 XP whenever you put yourself at risk to do something unnecessary or foolish that will add to your reputation. You gain 5 XP whenever you risk your life to take credit for your actions (bragging that you were the one who killed the Duke's son, for example.). Buyoff: Give someone else credit for an action that would increase your renown.
Gameplay is pretty simple, but has a twist, which I'll explain. Every dice roll is going to be a conflict of some type. The system is setup for Conflict Resolution, rather than Task Resolution. The clearest example of this is combat, in which instead of declaring that you're stabbing the nasty orc, then rolling to hit and doing some damage, then repeating the process until it falls down, you create stakes and roll the conflict. It might work like this. "The nasty orc is going to stab your eyes out! Conflict time. Lets set the stakes as follows- if you win, your quick work with your shortsword leaves the orc in a bloody messy pile in the dark alley. If you lose though, the orc is dead and in a messy pile at your feet, right as his four friends come around the corner. Roll." Or something similar. There are innumerable variations, all depending on your groups creativity and scope of play. Basically though, while failure at a conflict can mean failure at the task, it more often, or perhaps should result in a complication. If you're picking a lock in the middle of the night and you roll poorly, it doesnt necessarily mean that you just failed this time and should try again. Heck maybe the door clicks right open, but the owner of the propery you are breaking into and his two mean nephews are just inside and happen to be sharpening their new swords. Complication :)
As far as the actual dice rolling, its Fudge dice, so they're six sided dice, but instead of the sides being numbered 1 through 6, you have two faces with a "+" on them, two with a "-" on them, and two blank sides. By default in a conflict you roll three Fudge dice. I'm sure you can do the math, but with three of these dice you may get a +++ or you may get a ---, or anything in between. You take this result (a plus, a plus and a blank is 2; a plus a minus and a plus is 1, three blanks are 0) and add it to your rank in the ability. All you need to succeed is a 1, unless its a contested roll. So if you're Competent in the ability, you only need three blanks to succeed, since Competent is (1).
Now the twist. Bringing Down the Pain, or BDtP. Any player can elect to Bring Down the Pain after a resisted ability check. Usually its done after a failed check. What it does in regard to the game is allow the player to "do over". But more than that, it allows them to focus the invisible camera of the game onto them and what they're doing. It breaks from the Conflict Resolution system of the game, and becomes more task based and granular. It uses what's called the Harm Tracker to determine the outcome, though of course either opponent can give, and allow the others intent to take place. I'll talk more about the Harm Tracker in a sec. Lets say you're a sneaky thiefly type, trying to sneak your way into the Baron's castle. Well there's a guard walking a regular patrol on the parapet that you just scaled, and you need to get past him. He's keeping an eye out for people just like you, so we have a conflict (unless you Said Yes, as in "Say Yes or Roll Dice" another separate but fun topic). We setup stakes - you're going to use your Stealthy ability, which you're a Master in (that's 3), and I'm going to use the guard's React ability, in which he is a Master as well. Stakes are that if you succeed, you've grasped the lip of the parapet, waiting until the guards patrol carries him past your position, then once clear you launch yourself up over the battlement and land on the balls of your feet, sprinting silently across and leaping over the opposite battlement to catch hold of the edge so that you can climb down the inside of the castle's wall, if you fail I decide that you leapt onto the parapet right after the guard passed, but that a flagstone shifts under your foot, alerting not only the guard that just passed, but also the Captain of the Guard and his two cronies who you didnt notice until just now.. We roll and I get a plus, plus, blank, so a 5, while you get a plus, minus, blank so a 4. Well you could certainly stay with the results of the failure. It might be alot of fun to figure out how to get out of that predicament. But instead you can ignore the result and Bring Down the Pain. We rewind, you're still clinging to the outside wall of the castle. There's a guard walking patrol on the top. We break it down and set intents, yours is to get across the wall unseen, mine is to discover the thief hiding about in the shadows. You decide that you're going to use your Deceit ability to provide a distraction, throwing a small rock down the parapet to draw his attention. In turn, I'm going to use his React ability to keep a wary eye out on the shadows, looking for anyone trying to infiltrate the castle. You notice these are Parallel actions - they dont actual counter each other, if that were the case we would call them Perpendicular. So you roll your Deceit and I roll my React, the guard ends up with a 2 and you end up with a 3. Since these are Parallel, we both deal harm to each other, there's no defending or subtracting anything in this case, so I take Harm at level 3 and you take Harm at level 2. Next round we'll both have a penalty dice. At any point either of us could give, allowing the other's intent to take place. But we're going to keep going, so you decide that you're going to use your Athletics now to move hand over hand down the wall, further away from the guard in order to get away from his gaze, while the guard continues to keep a close eye out, made nervous by the clattering rock. We roll our abilities and perhaps in this case, the thief might use his successes to subtract from the number of successes that the guard got, thereby reducing my harm - since the thief is moving away from the guard. We continue back and forth like this, using any abilities that we can bring into the action here and going back and forth with dice rolls until one of us gives, or until we're taken past 6 on the Harm Tracker. And that's another of the really really beautiful things about the system. The harm tracker is not just another clever take on Hit Points. Its not just how many hits from a sword you can take. It is used whether you're having a spear duel against barbarians from the north, trying to talk the king into considering your plan, or attempting to sneak past guards on top of walls.
So I went kinda long there. I sorta get a wild glint in my eye and begin to gesticulate and froth at the mouth when it comes to TSoY. You'll have to pardon me. But that's really it. That's the system. Players hit their keys and grab XP (I use pennies and nickles, penny = 1 xp, nickel = 5 xp, easy enough). When they hit them, they reach in and take XP. You can use those Pools I talked about earlier to add a bonus dice to your pool for a conflict. Oh, and there are gift dice. At the beginning of every session, you get a number of dice equal to the number of players at the table that you can give out once per conflict to other players when they're doing something especially cool or groovy. They roll that as a bonus dice, increasing their chances for success.
I cant say enough good things about this system.
[edit - fixed a couple errors]
[edit - more on keys!]
I'll try though to sift through and break down the mechanical and gameplay aspects of it though. For some reason I got a wild hair to do this for the games that I'm currently into or reading. It bears mentioning that I did a post that hit on alot of the mechanical/game aspects of TSOY here.
The Shadow of Yesterday [wiki] is a game that's actually available for free, thanks to its author, Clinton Nixon and the Creative Commons License. You can grab the text of the main book here, and the setting here.
Firstly, damn, I cant say enough good things about this game. I'm totally hooked.
TSOY is a rather rules-lite fantasy RPG. It uses FUDGE dice.
Character creation is pretty quick and simple. You'll divide 11 points among your three Pools, Reason, Instinct and Vigor. I'll fill you in on what these do shortly. Abilities (skills basically) are all ranked Unskilled (rank 0), Competent (rank 1), Adept (rank 2), Master (rank 3) or Grand Master (rank 4). Everyone takes Endure (based off of the Vigor Pool), React (based off of the Instinct Pool), and Resist (based on the Reason Pool). They take one at Adept, one at Competent and one at Unskilled. Then you choose four more abilities, and there are excellent examples provided in the book, enough that you dont have to create your own, though you're encouraged to do so, if you find yourself in need of one that's not printed. Of the four additional abilities that you take, you get one at Adept and the other three at Competent. You also get one Secret and one Key. Secrets are the equivalent to Edges or Feats. They let you hit harder, jump higher, be more convincing, etc etc. Keys are part of where the game really shines. A Key is something like the Key of Bloodlust. With this key, every time your character defeats someone in battle, you gain 1 xp; or 3 xp for defeating someone who is equal to more powerful than your character. In short, Keys are how you define the game for yourself. If you want to play a character who is all about the brawling and fighting and blood, you take Keys like Bloodlust, Masochist and maybe Conscience. Thus you're getting XP whether you're beating people down or getting beaten down yourself. Or if you're a more thiefly type, you can take a Key that gives you XP for stealing stuff and getting gold. Its really really the most excellent thing. There are a number of good keys in the book, and you're encouraged to make up your own. Someone familiar with the game could have a new character ready to go in like three minutes probably, and a first timer with some guidance could have one done in five or ten mintues, allowing for time for them to read through the abilities, secrets and keys.
Since they're so cool, here are some more of the keys written up in the book:
*Key of the Coward
Your character avoids combat like the plague. Gain 1 XP every time your character avoids a potentially dangerous situation. Gain 3 XP every time your character stops a combat using other means besides violence. Buyoff: Leap into combat with no hesitation.
*Key of the Impostor
Sometimes your entire life is a lie. You gain 1 XP whenever you pass yourself off as someone/something you're not. You gain 2 XP whenever you convince others in spite of serious skepticism. You gain 5 XP whenever your story survives a deliberate, focused, "Hey everybody, look!" attempt to reveal your identity. Buyoff: Confess your imposture to those duped.
*Key of Renown
"You must be the worst assassin I've ever heard of." "But you have heard of me." You gain 1 XP whenever you see to it that your name and deeds are known, by bragging about them or making sure there are witnesses. You gain 2 XP whenever you put yourself at risk to do something unnecessary or foolish that will add to your reputation. You gain 5 XP whenever you risk your life to take credit for your actions (bragging that you were the one who killed the Duke's son, for example.). Buyoff: Give someone else credit for an action that would increase your renown.
Gameplay is pretty simple, but has a twist, which I'll explain. Every dice roll is going to be a conflict of some type. The system is setup for Conflict Resolution, rather than Task Resolution. The clearest example of this is combat, in which instead of declaring that you're stabbing the nasty orc, then rolling to hit and doing some damage, then repeating the process until it falls down, you create stakes and roll the conflict. It might work like this. "The nasty orc is going to stab your eyes out! Conflict time. Lets set the stakes as follows- if you win, your quick work with your shortsword leaves the orc in a bloody messy pile in the dark alley. If you lose though, the orc is dead and in a messy pile at your feet, right as his four friends come around the corner. Roll." Or something similar. There are innumerable variations, all depending on your groups creativity and scope of play. Basically though, while failure at a conflict can mean failure at the task, it more often, or perhaps should result in a complication. If you're picking a lock in the middle of the night and you roll poorly, it doesnt necessarily mean that you just failed this time and should try again. Heck maybe the door clicks right open, but the owner of the propery you are breaking into and his two mean nephews are just inside and happen to be sharpening their new swords. Complication :)
As far as the actual dice rolling, its Fudge dice, so they're six sided dice, but instead of the sides being numbered 1 through 6, you have two faces with a "+" on them, two with a "-" on them, and two blank sides. By default in a conflict you roll three Fudge dice. I'm sure you can do the math, but with three of these dice you may get a +++ or you may get a ---, or anything in between. You take this result (a plus, a plus and a blank is 2; a plus a minus and a plus is 1, three blanks are 0) and add it to your rank in the ability. All you need to succeed is a 1, unless its a contested roll. So if you're Competent in the ability, you only need three blanks to succeed, since Competent is (1).
Now the twist. Bringing Down the Pain, or BDtP. Any player can elect to Bring Down the Pain after a resisted ability check. Usually its done after a failed check. What it does in regard to the game is allow the player to "do over". But more than that, it allows them to focus the invisible camera of the game onto them and what they're doing. It breaks from the Conflict Resolution system of the game, and becomes more task based and granular. It uses what's called the Harm Tracker to determine the outcome, though of course either opponent can give, and allow the others intent to take place. I'll talk more about the Harm Tracker in a sec. Lets say you're a sneaky thiefly type, trying to sneak your way into the Baron's castle. Well there's a guard walking a regular patrol on the parapet that you just scaled, and you need to get past him. He's keeping an eye out for people just like you, so we have a conflict (unless you Said Yes, as in "Say Yes or Roll Dice" another separate but fun topic). We setup stakes - you're going to use your Stealthy ability, which you're a Master in (that's 3), and I'm going to use the guard's React ability, in which he is a Master as well. Stakes are that if you succeed, you've grasped the lip of the parapet, waiting until the guards patrol carries him past your position, then once clear you launch yourself up over the battlement and land on the balls of your feet, sprinting silently across and leaping over the opposite battlement to catch hold of the edge so that you can climb down the inside of the castle's wall, if you fail I decide that you leapt onto the parapet right after the guard passed, but that a flagstone shifts under your foot, alerting not only the guard that just passed, but also the Captain of the Guard and his two cronies who you didnt notice until just now.. We roll and I get a plus, plus, blank, so a 5, while you get a plus, minus, blank so a 4. Well you could certainly stay with the results of the failure. It might be alot of fun to figure out how to get out of that predicament. But instead you can ignore the result and Bring Down the Pain. We rewind, you're still clinging to the outside wall of the castle. There's a guard walking patrol on the top. We break it down and set intents, yours is to get across the wall unseen, mine is to discover the thief hiding about in the shadows. You decide that you're going to use your Deceit ability to provide a distraction, throwing a small rock down the parapet to draw his attention. In turn, I'm going to use his React ability to keep a wary eye out on the shadows, looking for anyone trying to infiltrate the castle. You notice these are Parallel actions - they dont actual counter each other, if that were the case we would call them Perpendicular. So you roll your Deceit and I roll my React, the guard ends up with a 2 and you end up with a 3. Since these are Parallel, we both deal harm to each other, there's no defending or subtracting anything in this case, so I take Harm at level 3 and you take Harm at level 2. Next round we'll both have a penalty dice. At any point either of us could give, allowing the other's intent to take place. But we're going to keep going, so you decide that you're going to use your Athletics now to move hand over hand down the wall, further away from the guard in order to get away from his gaze, while the guard continues to keep a close eye out, made nervous by the clattering rock. We roll our abilities and perhaps in this case, the thief might use his successes to subtract from the number of successes that the guard got, thereby reducing my harm - since the thief is moving away from the guard. We continue back and forth like this, using any abilities that we can bring into the action here and going back and forth with dice rolls until one of us gives, or until we're taken past 6 on the Harm Tracker. And that's another of the really really beautiful things about the system. The harm tracker is not just another clever take on Hit Points. Its not just how many hits from a sword you can take. It is used whether you're having a spear duel against barbarians from the north, trying to talk the king into considering your plan, or attempting to sneak past guards on top of walls.
So I went kinda long there. I sorta get a wild glint in my eye and begin to gesticulate and froth at the mouth when it comes to TSoY. You'll have to pardon me. But that's really it. That's the system. Players hit their keys and grab XP (I use pennies and nickles, penny = 1 xp, nickel = 5 xp, easy enough). When they hit them, they reach in and take XP. You can use those Pools I talked about earlier to add a bonus dice to your pool for a conflict. Oh, and there are gift dice. At the beginning of every session, you get a number of dice equal to the number of players at the table that you can give out once per conflict to other players when they're doing something especially cool or groovy. They roll that as a bonus dice, increasing their chances for success.
I cant say enough good things about this system.
[edit - fixed a couple errors]
[edit - more on keys!]
Sunday, July 30, 2006
TSOY!
We gathered earlier today, Jason, Krissi, Michael, Maddie and myself.
Maddie actually was not in much condition to play, as the previous evening had been an exciting night for her, so she was not very involved with the game.
We opened the game with the character's having been captured by a large litter of ratkin in the Ruined City of Thet. The party was disarmed and taken before Lucas, the Litter Boss. He was both the biggest, and apparently the smartest of the litter. The group was told that they would be provided to the large pack of cannibals in the ruins, which the ratkin offered to try to keep the cannibal menace at bay. The party talked Lucas into considering an offer that they would go solve the cannibal problem. Lucas let them enjoy the "guest quarters" overnight, and in the morning he decided to release them to remove the cannibals.
The ratkin told them that the cannibals seemed to gather around a large ruined temple in the center of the city. They set off for the structure, and surveyed it from a distance. They saw a few dozen cannibals moving around in the ruined temple, and its surroundings. Also they saw Valadon, the wizard they'd run into last session, enter the area and ride right into the temple, keeping the cannibals at bay with some kind of magic. Valadon left, and the party decided to go in. Violet, Krissi's character, hopped out of their hiding hole, into a shallow stream that ran from the temple ruins, and ran right into a small group of cannibals. Violet made fairly short work of them, and the group moved up along the filthy stream toward the temple. Reaching the edges of the ruined structure, they formulated a plan of attack. Reek kept watch downstream (with Maddie mostly out of the game) and Violet kept point. Their goal, on reaching the temple proper was to have Violet provide a distraction and run interference while Kragar and Sedu infiltrated the temple itself. Right away they ran into a group of eight of the cannibals, whom Violet ran into the midst of, in order to allow Sedu and Kragar to pass into the temple. While Violet kept the group of cannibals busy, Sedu and Kragar crept into the temple. They skirted the main hall, keeping to the ruins of the antechambers and such in order to move around closer to the apparent source of the filthy stream which appeared to bubble up from a fissure in the stone floor. Meanwhile, Violet was having a tough time keeping the cannibals busy, and in fact had to Bring Down the Pain, thanks to a failed roll while fighting the cannibals. The fight was still tough, and she was quite bloodied, but managed to defeat the cannibals with her martial mastery. In fact shortly after this, she upped her Spearfighting to Master. While Violet fought cannibals outside of the temple, Sedu and Kragar snuck through the ruined structure. It was tough going, at one point, Kragar getting wedged into a collapsed doorway. Still, the two of them made it around to the outlet of the stream, and quickly took out the two cannibals who were there at the source. The crept out toward the fissure, but Sedu was less than quiet, and managed to attract the notice of a few of the cannibals in the temple. They rushed toward him, but Kragar, from hiding, managed to take out two of them, leaving only one to attack Sedu. They managed to down him as well, then checked out the fissure. Inside, beneath the water, they saw something glinting. Deciding to try to grab whatever it was, they had Sedu reach in, but the water pressure was too strong, and swept him nearly out of their grasp. Meanwhile, Violet had managed to rejoin them. They tried again to retrieve the glinting object, and again the pressure of the water provded a challenge, sweeping Violet downstream. Sedu tried to pull her out, but she rushed past him, and right amist a group of cannibals gathered down the stream from the source. The cannibals went to pull her from the water, but Violet pulled herself away from them, and after a back and forth battle, she defeated them, and headed back up the stream to her companions. Finally, the managed to extract from the fissure a large Garnet, after which the rust colored water ran clear.
They took the stone and headed out of the temple, running into Reek, coming up toward the temple, with a few hungry cannibals in tow. The group made quick work of the cannibals, and went back to the Litter Boss. He was grateful for their having destroyed what turned out to be the source of the cannibals, and told them that he had captured some other bandits, which he intended to use for a great feast to celebrate the demise of the cannibals. The party realized that these bandits were in fact Lord Philips men. The group parleyed with them, and Sedu convinced the Litter Boss not to use them for the feast, and instead to send them out to wipe out the last of the cannibals. The Litter Boss agreed, and Sedu gathered some horses to be used for the feast instead. Also in return for the group's help, the Litter Boss gave them many pieces of the Crown, which had been scattered in the city.
Soon they headed back toward Lucen. Upon arriving, they found the city to be a tense place. They made stright for the Green Drake, and upon their arrival, were told by a group of armsmen that they were under arrest. They soon discovered that Lord Duval finally realized that the Green Drake was a headquarters of sorts for the Zaru underground. He took this information to Lord Marcus Renald, the head of the Renald family in Lucen, and primary adversary to Lord Philip. In exchange for his information, Lord Duval was granted status by Lord Marcus. The party discovered, to its horror, that much of the Zaru underground had been rounded up and imprisioned, with many of them having already been crucified or hung. In fact, they learned that the city's gallows were not able to meet the new demand, and so were importing a load of lumber from Khale with which they planned to build a whole new gallows system. Lord Marcus asked them to deliver a receipt to the Docks Master, so that when the shipment arrived it would be properly moved. The group left the Renald compound, arguing amongsth themselves about the resistance and Ammeni in general. The saw the red-haired sorcereress in Philips employ that they've run into frequently before, and Kragar set off following her. She went to the docks, and had a quiet meeting with a shady character. Meanwhile, Sedu and Violet plotted on how to free resistance members from the Renald dungeons.
Maddie actually was not in much condition to play, as the previous evening had been an exciting night for her, so she was not very involved with the game.
We opened the game with the character's having been captured by a large litter of ratkin in the Ruined City of Thet. The party was disarmed and taken before Lucas, the Litter Boss. He was both the biggest, and apparently the smartest of the litter. The group was told that they would be provided to the large pack of cannibals in the ruins, which the ratkin offered to try to keep the cannibal menace at bay. The party talked Lucas into considering an offer that they would go solve the cannibal problem. Lucas let them enjoy the "guest quarters" overnight, and in the morning he decided to release them to remove the cannibals.
The ratkin told them that the cannibals seemed to gather around a large ruined temple in the center of the city. They set off for the structure, and surveyed it from a distance. They saw a few dozen cannibals moving around in the ruined temple, and its surroundings. Also they saw Valadon, the wizard they'd run into last session, enter the area and ride right into the temple, keeping the cannibals at bay with some kind of magic. Valadon left, and the party decided to go in. Violet, Krissi's character, hopped out of their hiding hole, into a shallow stream that ran from the temple ruins, and ran right into a small group of cannibals. Violet made fairly short work of them, and the group moved up along the filthy stream toward the temple. Reaching the edges of the ruined structure, they formulated a plan of attack. Reek kept watch downstream (with Maddie mostly out of the game) and Violet kept point. Their goal, on reaching the temple proper was to have Violet provide a distraction and run interference while Kragar and Sedu infiltrated the temple itself. Right away they ran into a group of eight of the cannibals, whom Violet ran into the midst of, in order to allow Sedu and Kragar to pass into the temple. While Violet kept the group of cannibals busy, Sedu and Kragar crept into the temple. They skirted the main hall, keeping to the ruins of the antechambers and such in order to move around closer to the apparent source of the filthy stream which appeared to bubble up from a fissure in the stone floor. Meanwhile, Violet was having a tough time keeping the cannibals busy, and in fact had to Bring Down the Pain, thanks to a failed roll while fighting the cannibals. The fight was still tough, and she was quite bloodied, but managed to defeat the cannibals with her martial mastery. In fact shortly after this, she upped her Spearfighting to Master. While Violet fought cannibals outside of the temple, Sedu and Kragar snuck through the ruined structure. It was tough going, at one point, Kragar getting wedged into a collapsed doorway. Still, the two of them made it around to the outlet of the stream, and quickly took out the two cannibals who were there at the source. The crept out toward the fissure, but Sedu was less than quiet, and managed to attract the notice of a few of the cannibals in the temple. They rushed toward him, but Kragar, from hiding, managed to take out two of them, leaving only one to attack Sedu. They managed to down him as well, then checked out the fissure. Inside, beneath the water, they saw something glinting. Deciding to try to grab whatever it was, they had Sedu reach in, but the water pressure was too strong, and swept him nearly out of their grasp. Meanwhile, Violet had managed to rejoin them. They tried again to retrieve the glinting object, and again the pressure of the water provded a challenge, sweeping Violet downstream. Sedu tried to pull her out, but she rushed past him, and right amist a group of cannibals gathered down the stream from the source. The cannibals went to pull her from the water, but Violet pulled herself away from them, and after a back and forth battle, she defeated them, and headed back up the stream to her companions. Finally, the managed to extract from the fissure a large Garnet, after which the rust colored water ran clear.
They took the stone and headed out of the temple, running into Reek, coming up toward the temple, with a few hungry cannibals in tow. The group made quick work of the cannibals, and went back to the Litter Boss. He was grateful for their having destroyed what turned out to be the source of the cannibals, and told them that he had captured some other bandits, which he intended to use for a great feast to celebrate the demise of the cannibals. The party realized that these bandits were in fact Lord Philips men. The group parleyed with them, and Sedu convinced the Litter Boss not to use them for the feast, and instead to send them out to wipe out the last of the cannibals. The Litter Boss agreed, and Sedu gathered some horses to be used for the feast instead. Also in return for the group's help, the Litter Boss gave them many pieces of the Crown, which had been scattered in the city.
Soon they headed back toward Lucen. Upon arriving, they found the city to be a tense place. They made stright for the Green Drake, and upon their arrival, were told by a group of armsmen that they were under arrest. They soon discovered that Lord Duval finally realized that the Green Drake was a headquarters of sorts for the Zaru underground. He took this information to Lord Marcus Renald, the head of the Renald family in Lucen, and primary adversary to Lord Philip. In exchange for his information, Lord Duval was granted status by Lord Marcus. The party discovered, to its horror, that much of the Zaru underground had been rounded up and imprisioned, with many of them having already been crucified or hung. In fact, they learned that the city's gallows were not able to meet the new demand, and so were importing a load of lumber from Khale with which they planned to build a whole new gallows system. Lord Marcus asked them to deliver a receipt to the Docks Master, so that when the shipment arrived it would be properly moved. The group left the Renald compound, arguing amongsth themselves about the resistance and Ammeni in general. The saw the red-haired sorcereress in Philips employ that they've run into frequently before, and Kragar set off following her. She went to the docks, and had a quiet meeting with a shady character. Meanwhile, Sedu and Violet plotted on how to free resistance members from the Renald dungeons.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
TSOY and breaking down the system
So we got together for our Shadow of Yesterday game this past weekend.
It went well, in *very* brief form - because there's a particular aspect that I want to discuss- the party ambushed a wagonload of goods bound for Lord Philip. They bested the guards (and the red-haired sorcereress, again), and found part of the Evil Crown, then managed to glean from Red-Head that more of Philips men were headed to the Ruined City of Thet, looking for more crown parts. They supplied up in Lucen, their temporary base city, and headed off to Thet. They stumbled across a Sorcerer named Valadon and his retainers, who were upset at the party's mistaking them for Philips men. But they managed to avoid having a serious misunderstanding. Searching the ruins for Philips men, they happened upon some hungry cannibals, they were able to kill a couple and drive the rest away. Then, they were captured by a large litter of rats and ratkin, and taken before Lucas, the Litter Boss..
The meaty part that I wanted to talk about include stakes, and dice mechanics.
In the Shadow of Yesterday, it uses conflict resolution. If you run into two bandits on the highway, and we get to the point where there are two conflicting objectives (You: not get stabbed, not give them your gold; them: take the gold from you, or stab you and take the gold from you), we setup stakes for the conflict. stakes might be "If I win the conflict, I sneak past the bandits, they dont even know I came by, if I lose the conflict, they've caught me and tied me up." When you roll, you're comparing skills. The outcome is determined by the stakes you've set, and the roll of the dice, influenced by your skill level.
But lets take it to another level. What this means is that you set the stakes. Your stakes could be "If I win, I kill all 40 bandits, and I lose, I only kill 20 of them, before their arrows wound me enough that I flee". This is great because it is swiftly modified to the kind of game you're playing. Gritty and hard core? "If I win, I drive my icepick into the guard's skull, if I lose, I miss, and it catches him in the neck, he's bleeding all over the place, and he's triggered the alarm". Over the top and cinematic (kill bill)? "If I win, all of the Crazy 88's are dead or dismembered, if I lose, they've driven me off". Let me note that while these examples are primarily combat oriented, they can be anything. "I win- I manage to pound a hole in the outer fortifications with my bare hands", "I win- I've talked the king into abandoning this war and releasing the princess" Again, the defining thing here is what the group wants the game to be like. The players have veto power on each other's stakes.
The same applies to Bringing Down the Pain. It uses a Harm tracker. Whether you're trying to serenade the princess, talk the judge into letting you off, convince the captain that he's got you confused with someone else, sneak past the attack dogs, or simply trying to brain the watchman into unconsciousness, you use a harm tracker. It is abstract. I'll note that hit points are abstract as well, but this is even more abstract. Here are some examples. You're in a conflict, you've resorted to Bringing Down the Pain (more blow-by-blow than conflict resolution). Let's leave the nature of the conflict blank - you've made your opposing rolls, and you're up by two, so you'll be inflicting two harm to your opponent. Here are some things that you might hear at the table. "Bang! Two harm! You tell the prince that you've never met someone with worse teeth. You see tears well up in his eyes.", "Two harm! You pull slightly ahead in the footrace, your opponent looks like she's beginning to tire.", "Two harm! Your plasma cannon belches out green liquid fire that sends a Klingon gunship to oblivion!", "Two harm! A great swing of your axe sends a half dozen of the Baron's men to the creator.", "Two harm! You punch the beefy thug square in the nose. He looks pissed." All of these are perfectly fine and dandy, depending on nature of the game that you're playing in.
This goes right into Social Contracts, which I won't dwell on long.. but here's how it relates to role playing games... all of the players and GM need to be on the same page, in simple common things like "We're playing a fantasy game with elves and sorcerers", to things like "This is a gritty game, the object is just to stay alive" or "this is a game with politics and intrigue!" etc. The same applies to figuring out what kind of stakes will work. Do you plan to be doing high adventure powerful gaming, or smaller scale gaming?
And finally, kinda winding down and changing gears a bit - this was something that I meant to mention before I got sidetracked... During the game, when the players were taken by the ratkin, the conversation at the table went something like this. me: "Guys, like a hundred rats and a dozen or so ratkin suddenly come pouring out into the street around you, you're totally surrounded. They're apparently trying to overwhelm and capture you. There are just SO many of them.. you're totally going to be overwhelmed.. We can roll dice for this I guess, but man, there are just SO many of them.. it'd be tough not to be taken down.." The gang kindly consented and on we went, but here's how I think I should have handled it. me: "Guys, a hoard of rats and ratkin come pouring out into the street surrounding you. Now, I'd like to have them capture you, because I have a cool scene that I'd like to do when they take you before the Litter Boss. What do you guys think?" I think asking the players is a better way to go, because it lets them buy into the story, rather than being forced into it. It worked out fine, but with the former way, the GM is steamrolling them into it, whether they really like it or not. Maybe it totally doesnt work for them.. and there's going to be frustration because of it. This also gets into PLAYER involvment in the story, as opposed to CHARACTER involvement in the story. Sure, most of the time we're doing it first-person, "*I* shoot him the with arrow, *I* sneak past the guard" etc, but sometimes letting the players have some weight in how the story goes can work really well. Well, it can if done right, you players can also be horrified when you say "You sneak into the noble's compound, You've gotten past the guards and are headed up to the main house. Do you encounter anything along the way?"
And to back up again, the other thing I was going to mention, which turned into the long thing about stakes and harm and so forth, is that during our game, two of the players got involved in some fighting, Jason facing off against two guards, while Krissi faced off against another two guardsmen. Using the stakes and dice system, rather than, in each conflict, playing out two NPCs against each of the characters, I played them as one entity each against my player's characters. Jason faced two guards, but I used only one "turn", one dice pool, one harm tracker. But the narration was where the difference was. ("Jason, the two guardsmen use their tactics skills to try to flank you, one on either side of you, hoping to catch you between them.") I thought it worked fantastically, though I'm still talking it over with Jason a bit ;)
It went well, in *very* brief form - because there's a particular aspect that I want to discuss- the party ambushed a wagonload of goods bound for Lord Philip. They bested the guards (and the red-haired sorcereress, again), and found part of the Evil Crown, then managed to glean from Red-Head that more of Philips men were headed to the Ruined City of Thet, looking for more crown parts. They supplied up in Lucen, their temporary base city, and headed off to Thet. They stumbled across a Sorcerer named Valadon and his retainers, who were upset at the party's mistaking them for Philips men. But they managed to avoid having a serious misunderstanding. Searching the ruins for Philips men, they happened upon some hungry cannibals, they were able to kill a couple and drive the rest away. Then, they were captured by a large litter of rats and ratkin, and taken before Lucas, the Litter Boss..
The meaty part that I wanted to talk about include stakes, and dice mechanics.
In the Shadow of Yesterday, it uses conflict resolution. If you run into two bandits on the highway, and we get to the point where there are two conflicting objectives (You: not get stabbed, not give them your gold; them: take the gold from you, or stab you and take the gold from you), we setup stakes for the conflict. stakes might be "If I win the conflict, I sneak past the bandits, they dont even know I came by, if I lose the conflict, they've caught me and tied me up." When you roll, you're comparing skills. The outcome is determined by the stakes you've set, and the roll of the dice, influenced by your skill level.
But lets take it to another level. What this means is that you set the stakes. Your stakes could be "If I win, I kill all 40 bandits, and I lose, I only kill 20 of them, before their arrows wound me enough that I flee". This is great because it is swiftly modified to the kind of game you're playing. Gritty and hard core? "If I win, I drive my icepick into the guard's skull, if I lose, I miss, and it catches him in the neck, he's bleeding all over the place, and he's triggered the alarm". Over the top and cinematic (kill bill)? "If I win, all of the Crazy 88's are dead or dismembered, if I lose, they've driven me off". Let me note that while these examples are primarily combat oriented, they can be anything. "I win- I manage to pound a hole in the outer fortifications with my bare hands", "I win- I've talked the king into abandoning this war and releasing the princess" Again, the defining thing here is what the group wants the game to be like. The players have veto power on each other's stakes.
The same applies to Bringing Down the Pain. It uses a Harm tracker. Whether you're trying to serenade the princess, talk the judge into letting you off, convince the captain that he's got you confused with someone else, sneak past the attack dogs, or simply trying to brain the watchman into unconsciousness, you use a harm tracker. It is abstract. I'll note that hit points are abstract as well, but this is even more abstract. Here are some examples. You're in a conflict, you've resorted to Bringing Down the Pain (more blow-by-blow than conflict resolution). Let's leave the nature of the conflict blank - you've made your opposing rolls, and you're up by two, so you'll be inflicting two harm to your opponent. Here are some things that you might hear at the table. "Bang! Two harm! You tell the prince that you've never met someone with worse teeth. You see tears well up in his eyes.", "Two harm! You pull slightly ahead in the footrace, your opponent looks like she's beginning to tire.", "Two harm! Your plasma cannon belches out green liquid fire that sends a Klingon gunship to oblivion!", "Two harm! A great swing of your axe sends a half dozen of the Baron's men to the creator.", "Two harm! You punch the beefy thug square in the nose. He looks pissed." All of these are perfectly fine and dandy, depending on nature of the game that you're playing in.
This goes right into Social Contracts, which I won't dwell on long.. but here's how it relates to role playing games... all of the players and GM need to be on the same page, in simple common things like "We're playing a fantasy game with elves and sorcerers", to things like "This is a gritty game, the object is just to stay alive" or "this is a game with politics and intrigue!" etc. The same applies to figuring out what kind of stakes will work. Do you plan to be doing high adventure powerful gaming, or smaller scale gaming?
And finally, kinda winding down and changing gears a bit - this was something that I meant to mention before I got sidetracked... During the game, when the players were taken by the ratkin, the conversation at the table went something like this. me: "Guys, like a hundred rats and a dozen or so ratkin suddenly come pouring out into the street around you, you're totally surrounded. They're apparently trying to overwhelm and capture you. There are just SO many of them.. you're totally going to be overwhelmed.. We can roll dice for this I guess, but man, there are just SO many of them.. it'd be tough not to be taken down.." The gang kindly consented and on we went, but here's how I think I should have handled it. me: "Guys, a hoard of rats and ratkin come pouring out into the street surrounding you. Now, I'd like to have them capture you, because I have a cool scene that I'd like to do when they take you before the Litter Boss. What do you guys think?" I think asking the players is a better way to go, because it lets them buy into the story, rather than being forced into it. It worked out fine, but with the former way, the GM is steamrolling them into it, whether they really like it or not. Maybe it totally doesnt work for them.. and there's going to be frustration because of it. This also gets into PLAYER involvment in the story, as opposed to CHARACTER involvement in the story. Sure, most of the time we're doing it first-person, "*I* shoot him the with arrow, *I* sneak past the guard" etc, but sometimes letting the players have some weight in how the story goes can work really well. Well, it can if done right, you players can also be horrified when you say "You sneak into the noble's compound, You've gotten past the guards and are headed up to the main house. Do you encounter anything along the way?"
And to back up again, the other thing I was going to mention, which turned into the long thing about stakes and harm and so forth, is that during our game, two of the players got involved in some fighting, Jason facing off against two guards, while Krissi faced off against another two guardsmen. Using the stakes and dice system, rather than, in each conflict, playing out two NPCs against each of the characters, I played them as one entity each against my player's characters. Jason faced two guards, but I used only one "turn", one dice pool, one harm tracker. But the narration was where the difference was. ("Jason, the two guardsmen use their tactics skills to try to flank you, one on either side of you, hoping to catch you between them.") I thought it worked fantastically, though I'm still talking it over with Jason a bit ;)
Monday, July 10, 2006
TSOY, short
We also did some gaming this weekend.
Sunday afternoon the gang came together over at my place to continue our Shadow of Yesterday tale.
The session went well, there was a super fun scene in which they snuck into a nobleman's compound and ended up rescuing another nobleman. It was good stuff. It slowed down at the end though. That's my fault.
Its tough to keep things moving and exciting while trying to build story and frame stuff for later.
Still, people seemed to enjoy themselves, and we're planning on gaming again this coming sunday.
Sunday afternoon the gang came together over at my place to continue our Shadow of Yesterday tale.
The session went well, there was a super fun scene in which they snuck into a nobleman's compound and ended up rescuing another nobleman. It was good stuff. It slowed down at the end though. That's my fault.
Its tough to keep things moving and exciting while trying to build story and frame stuff for later.
Still, people seemed to enjoy themselves, and we're planning on gaming again this coming sunday.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
the Shadow of Yesterday
We sat town to play again, a continuation of last week's game.
This time we had Michael and Maddie as well.
I missed going over this in my last post about the game: the characters.
Jason created Kragar, a Khale Human. He currently is Adept in React, Stealth and Deceit, and Competent in Reist, Aim, Theft and Guerilla Warfare. He took Secret of Contacts and Hidden Pocket. He took keys of the Outcast (thieves guild back in the city) and Impostor.
Krissi made Violet, a Khale Human. She is currently Adept in Endure and Spear Fighting. She is Competent in React, Stealth, Athletics, First Aid, Sense Danger, Woodscraft and Scrapping. She took Secret of Mighty Blow and Signature Weapon (Spear). She took Keys of Bloodlust, Conscience, Masochist and Carousing (gets 1 xp for engaging in boisterous, drunken merrymaking. gets 2 xp when she engages in drunken merrymaking which results in a bar fight or a problem with the law. gets 5 xp when her drunken merrymaking results in an incarceration, arrest, or becoming a fugitive, or when a barfight gets way out of hand)
Maddie created Reek, a Ratkin of unknown origins. She took Adept in React and Scrapping. Competent in Resist, Litter Bond, Streetwise and Athletics. She took Secret of Suddden Knife, Rat Familiarity, Contacts and Throwing. She took Keys of Reknown, and the Litter.
Michael created Sedu, a Zaru Human. He is Adept in React and Zu. He is Competent in Resist, Uptenbo, Research and Counsel. He took Secrets of Kinetic Redirection, Zu (syllable), Sand/Sleep/Weaken (syllable), Spyglass/Focus/Intensify (syllable). He took keys of the Collector, Pacifist, and Conscience.
As we all sat down, I explained that after the events of last week's game, the food-carrier who got away in the forest earlier, burst into the Meeting Hall with 10 guards on his heels and called them out. They were slapped around and thrown into a hut to await dawn, when they would be hanged. Also in the hut with them were Reek and Sedu. These two had also infiltrated the bandit camp in search of a huge garnet, which they'd been commissioned to find and return to a noble in a nearby town. They were caught and were also awaiting the noose. I explained that they sat huddled inside this dark hut awaiting dawn, but that they could hear the snoring of the guard outside.
Maddie announced that Reek was going to start digging. Stakes involved either digging a good enough tunnel, or having the guard wake and come investigate what was going on. She managed fine and dug herself a tunnel under the wall of the hut. They all managed to crawl out, and huddled beside the hut in the darkness, debating in whispers what to do with the guard near them. Sedu advocated a non-violent course of action, while Reek nearly set upon the guard with a dagger that Kragar produced. Violet brought an end to the argument though by thunking the guard on the head, rendering him even more asleep. I had set the stakes as guard is knocked out/guard is awakened and pissed off, and will try to attack. Jason disliked the stakes, saying that the guard wouldnt be able to respond so quickly. Dice were rolled though and the guard was out. While Violet hid the unconscious guard in the hole they'd dug, Kragar took his helmet. They spied a wagon being loaded a distance away, apparently with assorted goods. About this time another guard patrolling the camp came their way. Sedu spoke the syllable "Sleep" and the guard collapsed in a snoring heap.
The players sat and debated for a few minutes, their next course of action, wanting to locate their missing gear - I implied that they loaded a couple of spears possibly including Violet's into the wagon. I suggested at one point that it would be really awesome if they posed as bandits again and approached the wagon and ordered it off, basically taking command of the wagon and its guards. Krager headed in on his own. He told the fellow who looked like he was in charge that "Your Captain wants to talk to you. You better get back there right now." Dice were, of course, rolled. Jason and the NPC came out dead even. [Question: should I use Jason's Deceit vs the guard's Sense Truth, or should it be Deceit vs Resist?] So Krager has not convinced the guard that he was needed, while the guard was not certain that Krager was lying. The guy he was talking to turned out to be a Captain. Krager played dumb though, and said that he was just following orders. The guard Captain agree'd to go with Krager and talk to the fellow that supposedly sent him. Krager led him back toward the hut where his compatriots lurked, and Sedu attempted to use "Sleep" on the Captain, but the roll outcome was even! He didnt go to sleep. Reek charged out, using her Athletics to charge before using Scrapping. She rolled incredibly well on her Athletics, getting an outcome of 5! So she added 5 dice to her Scrapping roll and got a smashing success. The stakes dictated that the guard captain was down and out!
They advanced back to the wagon, Kragar had donned the scarf of the Captain. They reached the wagon, and Kragar told the sergeant that he was the Captain in charge now, that the other had been reassigned (ding, xp for Jason). At the same time, Reek climbed on top of the loaded wagon and proclaimed that in fact, she had killed the previous captain! (xp for Reknown) The sergeant bought Kragar's story, and Kragar's subsequent explanation that the Ratkin was uh.. insane. Reek continued to menace the guards, until Sedu discreetly used "Sleep" on her, sending her into la-la-land. They played it all off, and soon has the wagon and its guards heading off along the narrow track into the forest. A few hours later, they planned to stage their inside heist. "Captain" Kragar stopped the wagon and said that he'd heard something in the woods, and sent Violet and two of the guardsmen into the woods. Reek (awake again) followed Violet into the woods, bitterly bickering about a misplaced pendant of some sort. Reek, Violet and the two guard stomped around in the bushes for a few minutes, and just as they were all ready to spring the trap on their unsuspecting guards, an arrow thumped into a tree near Violet. Then a number of heavily armed soldiers emerged from the trees, making straight for Violet, Reek and the guards. The guards turned and ran back toward the wagon, shouting that they were under attack. Two of the soldiers attacked Violet. Dice were rolled, but everyone broke even and no damage was done. One soldier began to attack Reek but suddenly recognized her (Secret of Contacts). The soldiers were from the same region as she was, and one of them knew that she was in service to one of that region's lords. They ceased attacking the two of them. Reek hurried back toward the wagon, where Krager had ordered the guards to both sides of the wagon - splitting them up. Reek walked onto the path and demanded that the guards drop their weapons. I had her use Sway, even though she was unskilled, resisted by the guards. These players had some great rolls. And a few terrible ones as well. This was a great roll though, and they all dropped their weapons. Then the soldiers walked out of the trees as well. They bound all of the guards and took possession of the wagon. Krager explained that he was a spy in service to the soldiers' region, and they bought it (ding!). Meanwhile, our characters had found both the Ruby and the Garnet that they'd all been hunting for. The soldiers were taking the wagon back to their town. The characters traveled along with them, and at one point they stopped and the sergeant of the soldiers decided that he didnt want to continue to keep up with prisoners, and ordered one of his men to kill the tied up guards. Sedu of course objected, and managed to talk the sergeant into not killing the prisoners (ding! key of Conscience).
On they traveled, and came to the town, Ammen, from where the guards were as well as Reek's employer. The characters split off from the wagon and headed toward Lord Duval's place in town. Reek explained that they had gotten the Garnet that he sent them after. Also Kragar asked if he wanted a ruby. Duval was certainly interested in the ruby, and they set to haggling. Finally Kragar agree'd to let Duval have the ruby appraised, meanwhile, Duval would put them up in the Horse and Tack Inn, "the finer of the two inns in this town". They ate and drank, while Sedu looked around forlornly for a library. Violet hit on her key of Carousing. They overheard that someone was in town asking around about some fine gems. It was a very very tall man with black hair. Jason used the Secret of Contacts, and so this fellow turned out to be the Boss of the local thieves guild, with whom Jason was formerly affiliated (key of the outcast). They laid low that evening, but then heard something from outside, and discovered that Lord Duval's place was on fire. They raced over, well except Kragar, who for some reason chose to hang out at the Inn. At Duval's they found the home in flames, and ruffians doing battle with Duvals men-at-arms in the courtyard. Also in the courtyard was one very tall, black haired man, and a woman with long red hair who was using magic against Duval's men. She used "Flight/Flee/Fugitive" on one of Duval's men, and Sedu promptly stole it! Reek and Violet rushed in to do battle, Reek leaping onto one of the ruffians to assist the combatants. Sedu attempted to use "Sleep" on one of the ruffians, when the red haired woman stole his syllable! He of course brought down the pain. I debated for a bit on how to properly run this bringing the pain. What actually occured was that Sedu used "Sleep" on one of the ruffians, successfully, then red-hair stole it. The pain was brought, and I finally concluded that the conflict was simply over controlling the word- Sedu trying to keep it, and red trying to steal it. I tried to figure out what the bits of the conflict were, the actions that they'd be rolling over. Finally I just had Michael and myself start rolling the conflict. The first round went to Sedu, as his fellow players were being liberal with their Gift dice, but then it was back and forth after that. Both characters in the conflict were Adept at Zu. The Gift dice, and pool dice quickly ran out, and quite a few rolls were dead even. We probably rolled a dozen times, and still only ended up with red being Bloodied. Still, she dropped out of the conflict, and Sedu kept the syllable.
Reek and Violet rushed in and dispatched tall black hair and red hair, while Sedu and Duval's men finished off the ruffians.
We left off there.
I'd explained to my players that this two-game session was really intended to be a figuring out of the system. Thus, I'd dispensed with some of the things I'd normally do, like setting up relationship maps and really striving to make sure all the characters were super compatible and so forth. The players seem open to making it a semi-regular game and keeping it going. They seem to like the characters that they've got, and say that they're enjoying the story. So I will probably try to flesh out the characters and tweak them some and keep it all going.
Michael, having never seen TSoY before, and being somewhat new to Role Playing Games anyway seemed to jump right in, but took a little while to start hitting his Keys. Admittedly, Key of the Collector isnt super-easy to hit if I'm not trying to help with it- so I'll have to work on that. But he got some points for keeping the guards from having their throats slit, and for his non-violent approach to conflict. Maddie really racked up some xp using key of Reknown. Jason and Krissi both did pretty well also.
This time we had Michael and Maddie as well.
I missed going over this in my last post about the game: the characters.
Jason created Kragar, a Khale Human. He currently is Adept in React, Stealth and Deceit, and Competent in Reist, Aim, Theft and Guerilla Warfare. He took Secret of Contacts and Hidden Pocket. He took keys of the Outcast (thieves guild back in the city) and Impostor.
Krissi made Violet, a Khale Human. She is currently Adept in Endure and Spear Fighting. She is Competent in React, Stealth, Athletics, First Aid, Sense Danger, Woodscraft and Scrapping. She took Secret of Mighty Blow and Signature Weapon (Spear). She took Keys of Bloodlust, Conscience, Masochist and Carousing (gets 1 xp for engaging in boisterous, drunken merrymaking. gets 2 xp when she engages in drunken merrymaking which results in a bar fight or a problem with the law. gets 5 xp when her drunken merrymaking results in an incarceration, arrest, or becoming a fugitive, or when a barfight gets way out of hand)
Maddie created Reek, a Ratkin of unknown origins. She took Adept in React and Scrapping. Competent in Resist, Litter Bond, Streetwise and Athletics. She took Secret of Suddden Knife, Rat Familiarity, Contacts and Throwing. She took Keys of Reknown, and the Litter.
Michael created Sedu, a Zaru Human. He is Adept in React and Zu. He is Competent in Resist, Uptenbo, Research and Counsel. He took Secrets of Kinetic Redirection, Zu (syllable), Sand/Sleep/Weaken (syllable), Spyglass/Focus/Intensify (syllable). He took keys of the Collector, Pacifist, and Conscience.
As we all sat down, I explained that after the events of last week's game, the food-carrier who got away in the forest earlier, burst into the Meeting Hall with 10 guards on his heels and called them out. They were slapped around and thrown into a hut to await dawn, when they would be hanged. Also in the hut with them were Reek and Sedu. These two had also infiltrated the bandit camp in search of a huge garnet, which they'd been commissioned to find and return to a noble in a nearby town. They were caught and were also awaiting the noose. I explained that they sat huddled inside this dark hut awaiting dawn, but that they could hear the snoring of the guard outside.
Maddie announced that Reek was going to start digging. Stakes involved either digging a good enough tunnel, or having the guard wake and come investigate what was going on. She managed fine and dug herself a tunnel under the wall of the hut. They all managed to crawl out, and huddled beside the hut in the darkness, debating in whispers what to do with the guard near them. Sedu advocated a non-violent course of action, while Reek nearly set upon the guard with a dagger that Kragar produced. Violet brought an end to the argument though by thunking the guard on the head, rendering him even more asleep. I had set the stakes as guard is knocked out/guard is awakened and pissed off, and will try to attack. Jason disliked the stakes, saying that the guard wouldnt be able to respond so quickly. Dice were rolled though and the guard was out. While Violet hid the unconscious guard in the hole they'd dug, Kragar took his helmet. They spied a wagon being loaded a distance away, apparently with assorted goods. About this time another guard patrolling the camp came their way. Sedu spoke the syllable "Sleep" and the guard collapsed in a snoring heap.
The players sat and debated for a few minutes, their next course of action, wanting to locate their missing gear - I implied that they loaded a couple of spears possibly including Violet's into the wagon. I suggested at one point that it would be really awesome if they posed as bandits again and approached the wagon and ordered it off, basically taking command of the wagon and its guards. Krager headed in on his own. He told the fellow who looked like he was in charge that "Your Captain wants to talk to you. You better get back there right now." Dice were, of course, rolled. Jason and the NPC came out dead even. [Question: should I use Jason's Deceit vs the guard's Sense Truth, or should it be Deceit vs Resist?] So Krager has not convinced the guard that he was needed, while the guard was not certain that Krager was lying. The guy he was talking to turned out to be a Captain. Krager played dumb though, and said that he was just following orders. The guard Captain agree'd to go with Krager and talk to the fellow that supposedly sent him. Krager led him back toward the hut where his compatriots lurked, and Sedu attempted to use "Sleep" on the Captain, but the roll outcome was even! He didnt go to sleep. Reek charged out, using her Athletics to charge before using Scrapping. She rolled incredibly well on her Athletics, getting an outcome of 5! So she added 5 dice to her Scrapping roll and got a smashing success. The stakes dictated that the guard captain was down and out!
They advanced back to the wagon, Kragar had donned the scarf of the Captain. They reached the wagon, and Kragar told the sergeant that he was the Captain in charge now, that the other had been reassigned (ding, xp for Jason). At the same time, Reek climbed on top of the loaded wagon and proclaimed that in fact, she had killed the previous captain! (xp for Reknown) The sergeant bought Kragar's story, and Kragar's subsequent explanation that the Ratkin was uh.. insane. Reek continued to menace the guards, until Sedu discreetly used "Sleep" on her, sending her into la-la-land. They played it all off, and soon has the wagon and its guards heading off along the narrow track into the forest. A few hours later, they planned to stage their inside heist. "Captain" Kragar stopped the wagon and said that he'd heard something in the woods, and sent Violet and two of the guardsmen into the woods. Reek (awake again) followed Violet into the woods, bitterly bickering about a misplaced pendant of some sort. Reek, Violet and the two guard stomped around in the bushes for a few minutes, and just as they were all ready to spring the trap on their unsuspecting guards, an arrow thumped into a tree near Violet. Then a number of heavily armed soldiers emerged from the trees, making straight for Violet, Reek and the guards. The guards turned and ran back toward the wagon, shouting that they were under attack. Two of the soldiers attacked Violet. Dice were rolled, but everyone broke even and no damage was done. One soldier began to attack Reek but suddenly recognized her (Secret of Contacts). The soldiers were from the same region as she was, and one of them knew that she was in service to one of that region's lords. They ceased attacking the two of them. Reek hurried back toward the wagon, where Krager had ordered the guards to both sides of the wagon - splitting them up. Reek walked onto the path and demanded that the guards drop their weapons. I had her use Sway, even though she was unskilled, resisted by the guards. These players had some great rolls. And a few terrible ones as well. This was a great roll though, and they all dropped their weapons. Then the soldiers walked out of the trees as well. They bound all of the guards and took possession of the wagon. Krager explained that he was a spy in service to the soldiers' region, and they bought it (ding!). Meanwhile, our characters had found both the Ruby and the Garnet that they'd all been hunting for. The soldiers were taking the wagon back to their town. The characters traveled along with them, and at one point they stopped and the sergeant of the soldiers decided that he didnt want to continue to keep up with prisoners, and ordered one of his men to kill the tied up guards. Sedu of course objected, and managed to talk the sergeant into not killing the prisoners (ding! key of Conscience).
On they traveled, and came to the town, Ammen, from where the guards were as well as Reek's employer. The characters split off from the wagon and headed toward Lord Duval's place in town. Reek explained that they had gotten the Garnet that he sent them after. Also Kragar asked if he wanted a ruby. Duval was certainly interested in the ruby, and they set to haggling. Finally Kragar agree'd to let Duval have the ruby appraised, meanwhile, Duval would put them up in the Horse and Tack Inn, "the finer of the two inns in this town". They ate and drank, while Sedu looked around forlornly for a library. Violet hit on her key of Carousing. They overheard that someone was in town asking around about some fine gems. It was a very very tall man with black hair. Jason used the Secret of Contacts, and so this fellow turned out to be the Boss of the local thieves guild, with whom Jason was formerly affiliated (key of the outcast). They laid low that evening, but then heard something from outside, and discovered that Lord Duval's place was on fire. They raced over, well except Kragar, who for some reason chose to hang out at the Inn. At Duval's they found the home in flames, and ruffians doing battle with Duvals men-at-arms in the courtyard. Also in the courtyard was one very tall, black haired man, and a woman with long red hair who was using magic against Duval's men. She used "Flight/Flee/Fugitive" on one of Duval's men, and Sedu promptly stole it! Reek and Violet rushed in to do battle, Reek leaping onto one of the ruffians to assist the combatants. Sedu attempted to use "Sleep" on one of the ruffians, when the red haired woman stole his syllable! He of course brought down the pain. I debated for a bit on how to properly run this bringing the pain. What actually occured was that Sedu used "Sleep" on one of the ruffians, successfully, then red-hair stole it. The pain was brought, and I finally concluded that the conflict was simply over controlling the word- Sedu trying to keep it, and red trying to steal it. I tried to figure out what the bits of the conflict were, the actions that they'd be rolling over. Finally I just had Michael and myself start rolling the conflict. The first round went to Sedu, as his fellow players were being liberal with their Gift dice, but then it was back and forth after that. Both characters in the conflict were Adept at Zu. The Gift dice, and pool dice quickly ran out, and quite a few rolls were dead even. We probably rolled a dozen times, and still only ended up with red being Bloodied. Still, she dropped out of the conflict, and Sedu kept the syllable.
Reek and Violet rushed in and dispatched tall black hair and red hair, while Sedu and Duval's men finished off the ruffians.
We left off there.
I'd explained to my players that this two-game session was really intended to be a figuring out of the system. Thus, I'd dispensed with some of the things I'd normally do, like setting up relationship maps and really striving to make sure all the characters were super compatible and so forth. The players seem open to making it a semi-regular game and keeping it going. They seem to like the characters that they've got, and say that they're enjoying the story. So I will probably try to flesh out the characters and tweak them some and keep it all going.
Michael, having never seen TSoY before, and being somewhat new to Role Playing Games anyway seemed to jump right in, but took a little while to start hitting his Keys. Admittedly, Key of the Collector isnt super-easy to hit if I'm not trying to help with it- so I'll have to work on that. But he got some points for keeping the guards from having their throats slit, and for his non-violent approach to conflict. Maddie really racked up some xp using key of Reknown. Jason and Krissi both did pretty well also.
Monday, June 19, 2006
running and tSoY
Weekend festivities! WooHoo!
Saturday morning Krissi and I got up and were over at Maddie's place at 6. Jason met us there. Maddie and I went on a run, while Krissi and Jason walked, and we all did a 10 mile track. Good stuff. I'm hoping that I do not develop a splint or anything from it.
Saturday afternoon we gathered at my house to try out The Shadow of Yesterday. Jason and Krissi were present, but Maddie was home catching up on lost sleep. Still we had a good time.
Jason came up with a stealthy and deceitful human character, and we set Krissi up with a warrior-woman type of character. Winging it, I told them they were bandits, who preyed off of those who were unable to keep ahold of their valuables. They were in the forest of Khale, and had gotten word that a small village held a valuable ruby. Off they went to the village, and found the elder's hut.It was night. We started rolling dice. The door was held closed by a latch inside, and Jason wanted to defeat the lock. We decided on stakes, if successful, the door was open, if unsuccessful, the lock remained fastened, and there was a chance of waking the occupant. In retrospect, I probably should have made the failure stakes that they had defeated the lock, but that it had a chance of waking the occupant. But on a second attempt Jason got the door open. Now they stood in the entryway to a dark hut, which appeared to be two rooms. They were after the ruby. I asked what they wanted to do. They were interested in finding the ruby, but I explained that they were moving into a dark hut and had no idea of the obstacles or layout etc. After a moment, they decided that they would try to find the elder in his bed and knock him out, so that they could interrogate him. I had them roll, with I think 1 penalty dice. The stakes, I think, were success = finding the elder in his bed, failure = waking him and him sounding the alarm (I was ratcheting up the stakes a little). They rolled and were successful, so found him sleeping in bed. Krissi wanted to knock him out with her spear, with which she got a bonus dice anyway. Stakes were either knocking him out cold, or not, and him rising and sounding the alarm. *Thump* he was out cold (and Krissi got XP- Key of Bloodlust). They bound him and turned the light on to search the place. Just when they were certain that the ruby was not hidden in the hut, they discovered a locked box hidden in the floor. A roll later, Jason had opened it and inside discovered.................. a human skull. The roused the tied up elder and asked about the ruby. After some resistance he told them that it was in a locked box in the floor... and countered that it was not, and what was the skull all about? The elder looked horrified, and said that the Forest King must have taken it. The Forest King, he explained, was an evil sorcerer of the woods, who would kill or steal, and leave a skull behind. Our heros, er, villans, whatever, decided to head out and look for a sorcerer with a ruby.
Out in the woods, they made camp, only to be awakened by the sound of people in the woods. They saw three people carrying sacks, and called out to them. The three ran. Krissi and Jason wanted to stop them, and so Krissi threw her spear, while Jason threw a dagger. Dice were rolled, and two of the three were winged and fell (xp for Krissi). They went and questioned the two, who warned Jason and Krissi that they were messing with the Forest King. Jason told them that they were also in the service of the Forest King (xp for Jason- Key of Impersonation). After a bit of arguing, the four of them headed toward the Forest King's camp. After they passed into a marked area, obviously growing close to the camp, our adventurers decided it was time to take out their two charges. Dice were rolled and down they went (xp for Krissi). They snuck further in, but were not especially sneaky and were called out by a pair of guards with crossbows. Again, Jason insisted that they were supposed to be here (xp for Jason) and managed to convince the guards. Krissi lured them off, and with a brilliant ability stacking, got herself into position and then took both guards out with a smooth sweep of her spear (xp for Krissi). They continued into the camp. They now saw a small but busy village, hidden away in the trees. Jason used his Secret of Contacts, and bumped right into his second cousin. Jason told him that he was here doing odd jobs (xp for Jason) since he was no longer with the Thieves Guild (xp for Jason - Key of the Outcast). They agree'd to meet up later at the meeting hall in the center of the village. Looking for the Forest King, they headed to the only two story structure in the village, the meeting hall near the center. Inside on the first floor, they found a large meeting hall that doubled as the watering hole. It was one huge open room, with fireplaces, benches and tables, and a set of stairs going up to the second floor. There were a small number of people at the tables, apparently enjoying themselves and some grog. They went straight for the stairs, and told the guard at the foot of the stairs that they had been attacked outside the camp and were told to report to the Forest King. The guard gave them a funny look and asked if they'd spoken to their captain, and who was their captain? The dice came out. Jason wanted to convince the guard that they were supposed to be there (and then to convince him to let them upstairs), and the guard wanted to ascertain whether they were supposed to be there or not. It was Jason's deceit vs the guard's um, truth detection or something. Well the dice were not in Jason's favor this time, and he lost the conflict, by two points even. We took the chance to Bring Down the Pain. The stakes were: Jason would convince the guard that he was supposed to be here, or the guard would divine that they were NOT supposed to be here and sound the alarm. Now we broke it down, and this is where I'm not sure if we did BDtP correctly or not. Anyway, not knowing how to really further refine those stakes, we started rolling. We figured this was Parallel. We figured they could do these at the same time, Jason trying to convince the guard, while guard tries to see through his facade. Either way, it worked out pretty well, we rolled dice, Jason took 1 point of harm, and the guard took 3, as Jason apparently was doing a good job of convincing him. Another round, and the guard managed to inflict no harm, and Jason inflicted 1 more harm. The guard backed down, satisfied (or cowed) that Jason was indeed supposed to be here. (xp for Jason) Next Jason and Krissi quizzed him about the Forest King, certain that they were about to be able to meet the mysterious sorcerer of the woods. The guard said, "There he is." and pointed across the room to a fellow with his head in his arms, snoring softly at a table full of rough looking fellows.
Our heros walked over and plopped down next to the sleeping fellow, and Jason immediately put his hand in the guys pocket, looking for a ruby or some keys. Instead, someone grabbed his collar from behind and pulled him off of the bench, demanding to know what the hell he though that he was doing. Jason, being fairly quick - told the burly fellow that he was just trying to collect some money. Jason did a good job of passing it off, and then they engaged the rest of the table in rowdy conversation as the sleeping fellow woke and demanded more grog. It turned out the sleeping fellow, who they continued to refer to as "King" was a guy named Dave, an accountant. Actually he was the Accounting Captain, so he was an important enough person, but he wasnt quite a king of anything.
We left off there, as we were running out of time, and I needed to be able to prepare some more cleverness for these players.
During a brief intermission in play, I'd asked the two players what they thought of the system. They both said that they liked it. They both seemed to like the dice mechanic. They both liberally spent their Gift Dice, and I'm certain Krissi ran out, and Jason probably did too. Krissi didnt know that Gift Dice did not refresh so quickly though. I went ahead and let them refresh some pools during the meeting hall scene. Jason got involved in a game of darts and refreshed his Instinct, while Krissi caroused and carried on with the accountant and the folks at the table, refreshing her Vigor and Instinct. After the game I quizzed them more about their experience with the game and system. I asked point blank if there was anything system related that they disliked or thought would be better some other way, and they both shook their heads. I asked what they did like, and they immediately volunteererd that they liked the xp system. Jason had managed to really ding his keys, and was holding 10 xp at the end of play, which I think took us about 3-4 hours, even with small breaks. Krissi hit her keys well early on, but ran out of opportunity once they got into the camp, and was holding 5 xp at the end of play. I think they really picked up quickly on the Keys idea. Secrets worked pretty well but did not end up being used alot, though both Jason and Krissi managed to use their Secrets. Conflict resolution flew, and was great. I'm really excited for myself and my players that we seemed to do some fun and interesting things with stakes and conflict resolutions. Bringing Down the Pain was an interesting concept to the players. I think they were skeptical of it, being from more traditional role playing stock, but Jason seemed to enjoy his spotlight during the BDtP.
So.. two thumbs up! I'm looking forward to trying to do some more with it next weekend, and we'll see if our third player can join us :)
Before closing (and since I'm now a day or two later posting than I'd intended to be) I should mention that I've gotten a pair of new running shoes. My old ones were, I think, at the end of their useful life. They're Brooks, same as my old pair, but these are an awesome Sunray color. I'm a big nerd [PDF].
Saturday morning Krissi and I got up and were over at Maddie's place at 6. Jason met us there. Maddie and I went on a run, while Krissi and Jason walked, and we all did a 10 mile track. Good stuff. I'm hoping that I do not develop a splint or anything from it.
Saturday afternoon we gathered at my house to try out The Shadow of Yesterday. Jason and Krissi were present, but Maddie was home catching up on lost sleep. Still we had a good time.
Jason came up with a stealthy and deceitful human character, and we set Krissi up with a warrior-woman type of character. Winging it, I told them they were bandits, who preyed off of those who were unable to keep ahold of their valuables. They were in the forest of Khale, and had gotten word that a small village held a valuable ruby. Off they went to the village, and found the elder's hut.
Out in the woods, they made camp, only to be awakened by the sound of people in the woods. They saw three people carrying sacks, and called out to them. The three ran. Krissi and Jason wanted to stop them, and so Krissi threw her spear, while Jason threw a dagger. Dice were rolled, and two of the three were winged and fell (xp for Krissi). They went and questioned the two, who warned Jason and Krissi that they were messing with the Forest King. Jason told them that they were also in the service of the Forest King (xp for Jason- Key of Impersonation). After a bit of arguing, the four of them headed toward the Forest King's camp. After they passed into a marked area, obviously growing close to the camp, our adventurers decided it was time to take out their two charges. Dice were rolled and down they went (xp for Krissi). They snuck further in, but were not especially sneaky and were called out by a pair of guards with crossbows. Again, Jason insisted that they were supposed to be here (xp for Jason) and managed to convince the guards. Krissi lured them off, and with a brilliant ability stacking, got herself into position and then took both guards out with a smooth sweep of her spear (xp for Krissi). They continued into the camp. They now saw a small but busy village, hidden away in the trees. Jason used his Secret of Contacts, and bumped right into his second cousin. Jason told him that he was here doing odd jobs (xp for Jason) since he was no longer with the Thieves Guild (xp for Jason - Key of the Outcast). They agree'd to meet up later at the meeting hall in the center of the village. Looking for the Forest King, they headed to the only two story structure in the village, the meeting hall near the center. Inside on the first floor, they found a large meeting hall that doubled as the watering hole. It was one huge open room, with fireplaces, benches and tables, and a set of stairs going up to the second floor. There were a small number of people at the tables, apparently enjoying themselves and some grog. They went straight for the stairs, and told the guard at the foot of the stairs that they had been attacked outside the camp and were told to report to the Forest King. The guard gave them a funny look and asked if they'd spoken to their captain, and who was their captain? The dice came out. Jason wanted to convince the guard that they were supposed to be there (and then to convince him to let them upstairs), and the guard wanted to ascertain whether they were supposed to be there or not. It was Jason's deceit vs the guard's um, truth detection or something. Well the dice were not in Jason's favor this time, and he lost the conflict, by two points even. We took the chance to Bring Down the Pain. The stakes were: Jason would convince the guard that he was supposed to be here, or the guard would divine that they were NOT supposed to be here and sound the alarm. Now we broke it down, and this is where I'm not sure if we did BDtP correctly or not. Anyway, not knowing how to really further refine those stakes, we started rolling. We figured this was Parallel. We figured they could do these at the same time, Jason trying to convince the guard, while guard tries to see through his facade. Either way, it worked out pretty well, we rolled dice, Jason took 1 point of harm, and the guard took 3, as Jason apparently was doing a good job of convincing him. Another round, and the guard managed to inflict no harm, and Jason inflicted 1 more harm. The guard backed down, satisfied (or cowed) that Jason was indeed supposed to be here. (xp for Jason) Next Jason and Krissi quizzed him about the Forest King, certain that they were about to be able to meet the mysterious sorcerer of the woods. The guard said, "There he is." and pointed across the room to a fellow with his head in his arms, snoring softly at a table full of rough looking fellows.
Our heros walked over and plopped down next to the sleeping fellow, and Jason immediately put his hand in the guys pocket, looking for a ruby or some keys. Instead, someone grabbed his collar from behind and pulled him off of the bench, demanding to know what the hell he though that he was doing. Jason, being fairly quick - told the burly fellow that he was just trying to collect some money. Jason did a good job of passing it off, and then they engaged the rest of the table in rowdy conversation as the sleeping fellow woke and demanded more grog. It turned out the sleeping fellow, who they continued to refer to as "King" was a guy named Dave, an accountant. Actually he was the Accounting Captain, so he was an important enough person, but he wasnt quite a king of anything.
We left off there, as we were running out of time, and I needed to be able to prepare some more cleverness for these players.
During a brief intermission in play, I'd asked the two players what they thought of the system. They both said that they liked it. They both seemed to like the dice mechanic. They both liberally spent their Gift Dice, and I'm certain Krissi ran out, and Jason probably did too. Krissi didnt know that Gift Dice did not refresh so quickly though. I went ahead and let them refresh some pools during the meeting hall scene. Jason got involved in a game of darts and refreshed his Instinct, while Krissi caroused and carried on with the accountant and the folks at the table, refreshing her Vigor and Instinct. After the game I quizzed them more about their experience with the game and system. I asked point blank if there was anything system related that they disliked or thought would be better some other way, and they both shook their heads. I asked what they did like, and they immediately volunteererd that they liked the xp system. Jason had managed to really ding his keys, and was holding 10 xp at the end of play, which I think took us about 3-4 hours, even with small breaks. Krissi hit her keys well early on, but ran out of opportunity once they got into the camp, and was holding 5 xp at the end of play. I think they really picked up quickly on the Keys idea. Secrets worked pretty well but did not end up being used alot, though both Jason and Krissi managed to use their Secrets. Conflict resolution flew, and was great. I'm really excited for myself and my players that we seemed to do some fun and interesting things with stakes and conflict resolutions. Bringing Down the Pain was an interesting concept to the players. I think they were skeptical of it, being from more traditional role playing stock, but Jason seemed to enjoy his spotlight during the BDtP.
So.. two thumbs up! I'm looking forward to trying to do some more with it next weekend, and we'll see if our third player can join us :)
Before closing (and since I'm now a day or two later posting than I'd intended to be) I should mention that I've gotten a pair of new running shoes. My old ones were, I think, at the end of their useful life. They're Brooks, same as my old pair, but these are an awesome Sunray color. I'm a big nerd [PDF].
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