[Circle of Hands] Session Report: Ulfstal

[Nyhteg]

"I like this game; you can do evil stuff and still be good."

"I'm a ghost. I'm going to heaven soon."
"You're not going to heaven. They don't let idiots into heaven..."

This is a write-up of our second playing of Circle of Hands.
There are three of us at the dining room table again - myself as GM, with my two teenaged sons as the Knights.

I told the players that the Knights were paying a visit to the village of Ulfstal in Tamaryon, situated in a river bend about twenty miles or so from the borderlands with Spurr. Word is that the village is in a bad way due to relentless attacks by Spurrish raiding ships and could probably use some help.

The PCs selected by the players from the Circle of six characters (excluding the one they each played last time) were:

- Burkhard, a fierce Priest turned fist-for-hire from Rolke (played by Benjamin, 17)
- Therese Oda, a friendly boat-builder wizard from Spurr (played by Joseph, 15)

SETUP
The roll for the scenario components was Black: 1, White:1, Red: 4, giving me a Humanitarian Crisis, some Local Tensions and a spot of Rbaja Presence, with the two ones indicating that it was taking place in Tamaryon.

Humanitarian Crisis
The village of Ulfstal has been subjected to systematic raids by Spurrish ships over the last 30 months or so. The chieftain and family have been slain, their livestock decimated, their ability to raise crops reduced to almost nil. They are disorganised, broken, and one more raid will probably finish them off. When the Knights arrive, they have just received word that a pair of Spurrish raiding ships have been sighted downriver, no more than three days away.

NPC: Ansgar, leader of a raiding party from Spurr. 7-8-5-6 [toughest NPC]
Ansgar leads a band of two dozen fighting men, split between two ships. They leapfrog up the river, aiding each other in raids or scouting ahead as circumstances suit. He is on the lead ship; his men are bored and dissatisfied with the meagre pickings on their trip so far, and he's keen to give them something to get stuck into.

Tripwire: If Ansgar is killed, the second shipload of raiders chooses that moment to round the bend.

Local Tensions
A pair of young folk - Roland (17) and Silke (16) are in love and wish to leave the village for pastures new. Silke's family are all for it (get out while you still can), but Roland's family (mother and two older brothers) are dead set against - every able bodied man is needed to defend and rebuild the village. Things are growing heated between the families; with Roland watched at all times and essentially under house arrest.

NPC: Silke, a girl in love. 2-4-5-8
Silke is the driving force behind the desire to leave the village and Roland will do anything she asks of him. Arguably she is spoiled and selfish, but she is also young and romantic and currently ruled by her emotions.

Tripwire: If it's looking like Roland and Silke are in genuine risk of leaving, Roland's family (most likely his two brothers) will kidnap Silke and drag her into the wilds to be murdered.

Rabaja Presence
Many years ago, a black wizard from Spurr built a secret, underground redoubt in the hills near Ulfstal. He had aspirations to Lichdom and was preparing himself a magical tomb, complete with enchanted, demon guards. Summoning a succession of three Nzagg to act as an immortal security detail he was undone when the third Nzagg rejected his attempt to command it and ripped him to shreds. Stuck inside a sealed tomb with no-one to order it about, the Nzagg hibernated until a pair of local kids from Ulfstal stumbled upon the tomb and found a way inside. One of the children was horribly slaughtered, but the other succeeded in bringing the Nzagg under his will.

NPC: Erik, ten year old owner of a pet Nzagg. 2-4-8-5
Erik treats the Nzagg as a pet (he calls it his 'bear'), simply going to visit it in the tomb whenever he can. He is traumatised and unstable after the loss of his parents during successive attacks, and by witnessing the horrific death of his only friend Artur in the tomb. He will respond extremely to acts of both compassion and unkindness.

Tripwire: The first two Nzagg are still sealed in hidden chambers within the wizard's tomb. If the PCs disturb the inner sanctum, they will be released with long-standing orders to rend all intruders.

Play
As it happened, we had been on a family walk on the Burton Dassett hills just the day before, so that served as a pretty good reference point for Tamaryon:

( https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x48772e39dfffe383:0xeb87510c33474fd7!2m5!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i100!3m1!7e1!4shttp://www.panoramio.com/photo/24013915!5sburton+dassett+hills+pictures+-+Google+Search&sa=X&ei=rOBoU9agH4fFPa7ZgbgJ&ved=0CLoBEKIqMBE )

I described the landscape as the PCs and their entourage approached the village - rolling hills, birds of prey, patches of farmland, rivers and streams, an Amboriyon cloud citadel or two off in the distance. As they approached Ulfstal, Burkhard the peasant immediately noticed the poor state of the fields, and the village itself was clearly in a bad way. The wooden defensive wall was breached all over and basically useless, the houses all looked as if they'd been patched and repaired many times, and one of the buildings was nothing but a burned out ruin.

Ingratiating themselves with the locals a little (Burkhard with a goat herder, Therese with a fellow working on some desultory repairs to the wall), the PCs soon discovered the pertinent facts about the situation. In short: Raiders from Spurr had been sighted just downriver, and no-one had the faintest clue what to do. Some wanted to surrender, some wanted to hide in the hills, some wanted to evacuate for good, some wanted to go down fighting. None of the options actually offered any real hope for survival, however, and at worst would simply hand the raiders a new base of operations.

While Therese went in search of the closest thing to a leader in the place, Burkhard decided that armed resistance would be the best option. He resolved to find the toughest dudes around in order to start building an army. As he went to return to the village, he noticed that a young lad (Erik, as it happened) had been staring at him from a little way off this whole while. Burkhard grunted a "Beat it, kid" sort of a comment and stomped back into Ulfstal.

Therese, meanwhile had been struggling with the burden of a low C score (a 4). She was introduced to the de facto village leader but the player couldn't make a successful roll with him or the next couple of people the PC approached and Therese's honest and good natured offers of aid were rebuffed out of hand. Almost demoralised, the player was leafing through the spell book, and suddenly stumbled on the Glamour spell... A moment later, and with her C score doubled, Therese went on a major charm offensive. Falk was won over in an instant and together they began to form a plan of action to save the village.

Burkhard followed directions from his goat-herding friend and came upon the home of two of the toughest guys in the village - the lovelorn Roland's older brothers, Heino and Gert. As it happened, they were in the middle of an altercation with Silke and her family. Roland was being bundled back indoors by his mother, Heino and Gert were blocking the way, Silke was screaming at them...it was a right old soap opera. Focused entirely on recruiting the two burly farmers, however, Burkhard barged into the middle of this, swinging his Charm of 8 around with great effect, and broke the whole thing up in an instant. After roaring at Silke to just shut up and go home, he turned his attention to the brothers and swiftly convinced them that the only chance of surviving another raid was to fight back. They agreed to go round up every able-bodied man they could find for a council of war.

As this was decided, Burkhard again noticed that Erik had been hanging around watching him. Convinced the lad was up to no good, he stormed over, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and demanded to know what he was looking at. After being thus scared half to death, Erik managed to stammer out that it was just that Burkhard was new around here. Burkhard tossed the boy to the floor and told him to clear off and leave him alone. As Burkhard strode off, he heard the boy yelling at him that he'd be sorry, and turned to see the boy pointing at him, his face white with rage - "I'm going to get you, you wait! I'm going to set my bear on you!"

This seemingly clinched it for Burkhard's player. The boy was almost certainly a black wizard, summoning beasts to attack the village or something. Totally distracted by this, he set off to find the hovel where the boy lived and searched it for proof of evilness. He found only a sheep's shoulder blade with some scratched drawings on of a small human stick figure and a bigger, bear-like figure standing together. Proof!
Pausing only to tell Heino that he was in charge of organising the gathered menfolk until he got back, Burkhard hared off into the hills in the direction Erik had been seen running by one of the men.

By this time, Therese was organising the village in a slightly different manner with the help of Falk. The wizard had come up with an audacious plan.
The folk of Ulfstal had no way to escape the village - a forced march into the hills would be too far on too few rations, and their boats had all been sunk in previous raids. So Therese's proposal was a simple one. When the raiders attacked, they would steal their ship and sail it upriver to safety.
With Therese's Charm still enhanced by the Glamour, Falk was sold. The fighting men, such as they were, would hold the raiders in the village proper, while the rest of the villagers hid in the dense treeline near the river waiting for a signal to take the boat. Falk set about getting people to gather their belongings and otherwise start making preparations.

As Therese was keeping an eye on things, Silke and Roland dashed up to her, begging for her aid to escape the village while everyone was distracted - Heino and Gert were busy with Burkhard and his putative army at this point, and everyone else was busy following Falk's orders. Therese, simply looked them in the eye and told them to grow up and stop being so selfish. The village needed them. This was not the time to be running off and abandoning their families. You, go and help pack what you can carry; you, go and join your brothers preparing to defend your home. C vs 12 roll...double six. Boom. Silke and Roland hang their heads in shame and go do what they've been told without another word.

You may have noted that at this point the PCs are, if not exactly working at cross-purposes, certainly failing to be a united force in this scenario. Burkhard started with a vague sense that folks should be fighting back and has now got himself well and truly side-tracked with Erik the Obvious Black Wizard. Therese's systematic strategising and co-ordinated social action has essentially now eaten Burkhard's fledgling plan whole. Most importantly for what happens next, the PCs have not at any point conferred - or even seen each other - since they first arrived in the village and split up to gather intel. Therese has no idea where Burkhard is or what he's doing, and he has no clue about what Therese is up to either.

So...Burkhard is, for reasons best known to his player, running off into the entirely unfamiliar hills in pursuit of a small boy whose location he can't even begin to imagine (but who he suspects is, at minimum, a black wizard in command of a bear), alone, unarmed and unarmoured.
I check that this is, indeed, what he wants to do. It is.
Not stopping for your armour? Or a weapon maybe? Or Therese? Nope and nope. You know this sort of thing could get you killed, right? It's fine, apparently; got to catch up with the boy.

Alrighty then... Off Burkhard charges. One Wits roll using a single die later and now he's lost in the hills and the sun is going down.
Long story short: he's ambushed and killed by Erik's pet Nzagg. It's over in a heartbeat. A low growl in the gloom, a blur of movement, teeth, claws, a desperate swing from a conjured sword...then death. In the very first clash Burkhard is crippled (B:0, Q:1) by a single bone-crushing blow from the Nzagg's claws. While still half-conscious and feebly crawling over the blood-soaked turf, he is seized and literally torn in half at the waist.

Shocked silence. Time to look up the rules for Wraiths.

It's fair to say that after the first scenario, Burkhard's player has become slightly obsessed by the spell Rip. In the ensuing events, his Wraith casts it repeatedly (and utterly pointlessly in terms of getting any information) on the Nzagg until his B runs low, then follows the wounded and bewildered creature back to the tomb where Erik is waiting for it. The red mist now well and truly descended, Burkhard trails Erik out of the tomb and, his B recovered, proceeds to torture the boy to death using Rip and gaining no information of use whatsoever. More shocked silence. A black Tally is acquired.

We leave Burkhard's player to just sit there quietly and think about what he's done and return to Therese.

With preparations well underway, we breeze through the next day without undue fuss and arrive at the moment when the raiders from Spurr are almost at the village. Therese has laid a rope across the river with a Ward cast upon it to let her know when the ship was on its way (in retrospect this was probably a misreading of the spell on my part, but the intent was fine enough - if the Ward wasn't allowable, then a villager would have simply hidden in the bushes keeping watch, so no harm no foul). With warning received, the dozen fighting men (and a tougher woman or two) hid themselves in the village with Therese, while the rest of Ulfstal laid low in the treeline near the river. Burkhard's Wraith stationed himself at the jetty to get a good look at the raiders as they arrived.

Things shaped up well. The raiders all piled out of the ship and headed up the track to the village, overconfident and spoiling for a fight. Therese had cast Vine to create a fairly decent barricade at the village entrance, which stopped the raiders in their tracks for a moment. Although they could simply go around it into the village, it made them far more cautious and split them up a little.

At this point, the players suddenly remembered - wait a second - how many Spurrish ships were coming? The players couldn't recall, so a W vs 12 roll later and yes, oh good grief, there were two ships en route not one! Burkhard raced to the river to try to intercept the second ship.

Once the raiders were well and truly inside the village, Therese went into action. She began by summoning a Dancer right in the middle of their attackers. A few of the villagers went berserk and ran screaming into the fray but most held their ground. Keeping control of the Dancer throughout, Therese then cast Beacon to let the villagers at the river know they should take the ship and finally, with the raiders starting to fall back, lifted her arms and cast Wrath.

Out on the river, Burkhard had found the second Spurrish ship and fell upon it, Blasting the crew, raising the dead as zombies and generally being a devastating force of righteous horror for all concerned. Before long he'd racked up a second black Tally and slaughtered all on board. He returned to the fresh Amboriyon zone that the village had become in time to manifest at Therese's side before the now-cowering Spurrish leader, Ansgar. They spared his life but commanded him to return to Spurr and warn all he met never to trouble this region of Tamaryon again.

And that was the adventure done. I told the players that the villagers took both ships and sailed them up-river where they joined another settlement and thrived. Spurrish raids in this part of the river ceased, for the time being at least. Mark up another victory in the name of Rolke.

Post Mortem
Despite another slow start, the players again enjoyed the game immensely and are already asking if I've done a third scenario yet.

Regarding the (stupid, senseless, careless) death of their first Circle member, the initial reaction was that, oh well, they could just roll up a similar character to replace him. When I explained that these six characters were all they had to work with - and now they had just five to pick from - they were immediately like "Ohhh... Coooool..."

I'm really not sure what was going through the player's mind when he sent Burkhard off to die in that way. He might have been a bit disengaged form the game for whatever reason - maybe due to not being sure what he was meant to be doing or how to do it, I don't know - but afterwards he said that he had "somehow forgotten what game we were playing". One of the things he particularly enjoys is the fact that combat in Circle is utterly brutal. I think he just got carried away with the idea that he really wanted to catch up with Erik and try talking to him instead of being mean, and lost touch with the broader fiction. The stuff with Rip...well I guess it was him just depersonalising the NPC and blowing off frustration at dying. He'll probably move on in later scenarios.

My suspicion is that these kind of events in early games will become memorable reference points for later play. The salutary example of the death of Burkhard will live on as a vivid reminder the next time they're tempted to run off into dangerous territory on their own.

Moments I enjoyed:

- Therese resolving an entire component (the situation with Silke and Roland) with a single C vs 12 roll.

- Burkhard coming back to town as a Wraith and trying to convince Therese that he'd just died saving Ulfstal from an impending attack from a black wizard. And Therese not believing him for a second longer than it took to make a W vs 12 roll.

- Therese's player suddenly realising that Wrath killed all unnamed characters in the area and then desperately trying to remember the names of or ascend as many NPCs as possible so that the spell didn't kill all the villagers' fathers, sons and husbands fighting alongside her...

- The players letting Ansgar live and thereby managing to unintentionally sidestep the Tripwire for that component right at the last moment.

- Rip is a nasty, insidious little spell. It reinforces the fact that torture basically gains you nothing, and a character who uses it does so not because they benefit from access to useful or reliable information but because that character...enjoys torture.

- Dumb as it was, Burkhard's death was actually pretty freaking epic. Shocking, horrible and so very, very quick.

What struck me in this session particularly was how the system for scenario prep makes the play experience incredibly robust. There is no plot or prior agenda to preserve. There's nothing really to co-ordinate or stage manage. I had no worries at all about what the players would or could do. It didn't matter in the slightest how they went about things, who they killed, who they pissed off or befriended, whether they fixed things quickly, slowly or not at all. There were consequences, of course, but no one action was better or worse for me as GM than any other. I just played the NPCs and let whatever happened happen. Ansgar, for instance, did not enter play in any significant form at all. In another type of game that might have been traumatic to a GM's careful and dramatic prep of the Big Bad Guy. Here? Not even a blip.

I couldn't help noticing that the Tripwire event for that first component was basically neutralised before it could be triggered (Burkhard took out the second ship before it arrived). Not sure if this indicates a less-than-optimal Tripwire in the first place.
Had it become an issue, I think I would have considered the Tripwire triggered, but had the effects happen in the post-play narration rather than anything in-game. Had Ansgar been killed, the ship wouldn't have arrived because it couldn't, but the raids from Spurr on this part of the river would have continued unabated.

Lastly, the way I set up the components was quite low-key, I think.
In the end I decided not to worry about it and let the players create events, chaos and drama for themselves, which they did very nicely.
It certainly showed me that prep doesn't necessarily have to be operatic and overblown to generate fun play.

We only had a few of questions this time:

- Not sure if I've simply missed a rule, but in a clash does damage happen simultaneously or sequentially? So Burkhard went first when he clashed with the Nzagg. We worked out the PCs attack, and he did a little damage. When the Nzagg's attack was calculated would damage be worked out using the demon's full B (uninjured when the clash was joined), or its injured B (reduced by the time we came to do the sums)?

- Would Wrath have killed the Dancer? I ruled that it did because I had in mind that it could have been banished at will anyway (is that right?) but I wasn't sure what the rule about Wrath + demons would be. Technically the demon might be considered 'unnamed', but I don't know if that's a term reserved for humans...

- Do Wraiths need to manifest in order to cast spells? I played that it wasn't necessary and that manifesting visibly was simply a choice for effect.

- How do Wraiths move and how quickly? The way I ended up playing it was that if Burkhard was already familiar with a person or location he could simply become a presence there instantaneously; if he was heading somewhere new he could get there quickly but not immediately. Also that he could effectively fly. Saying "Wooooooooh...!" was optional. :)

G

[Ron Edwards]

So much to say, and it crosses over with the thread I recently started. So, more to come regarding prep and play. For now, just answering questions.

- Not sure if I've simply missed a rule, but in a clash does damage happen simultaneously or sequentially? So Burkhard went first when he clashed with the Nzagg. We worked out the PCs attack, and he did a little damage. When the Nzagg's attack was calculated would damage be worked out using the demon's full B (uninjured when the clash was joined), or its injured B (reduced by the time we came to do the sums)?

Good question. I think the B at the start of the clash has to be applied for all participants. Too much hassle and worrying about sequence otherwise. Whether the attacks hit at the precise same microsecond in-game is not the issue; they don't have to, and it can be left entirely to narration. The rule about how much B can be left simply to ease of play rather than fictional justification.

- Would Wrath have killed the Dancer? I ruled that it did because I had in mind that it could have been banished at will anyway (is that right?) but I wasn't sure what the rule about Wrath + demons would be. Technically the demon might be considered 'unnamed', but I don't know if that's a term reserved for humans...

Definitely not! Demons are not destroyed by Wrath.

- Do Wraiths need to manifest in order to cast spells? I played that it wasn't necessary and that manifesting visibly was simply a choice for effect.

Correct.

- How do Wraiths move and how quickly? The way I ended up playing it was that if Burkhard was already familiar with a person or location he could simply become a presence there instantaneously; if he was heading somewhere new he could get there quickly but not immediately. Also that he could effectively fly. Saying "Wooooooooh...!" was optional.

I do it a little differently. If a scene is framed, the wraith is automatically there, and that's all. You never have to worry about whether a wraith "can get there in time" or anything logistic at all.

[Ron Edwards]

I agree with you that Benjamin's play-experience isn't a red flag. I wrote about this kind of thing about ten years ago in Learning the interface, and although it's frustrating for everyone else in play (especially the one who organized the group), it can become a useful part of play-history as long as the person does some thinking about it. Seems as if that's definitely the case here.

[Nyhteg]

Thanks, Ron.

So can a demon (or any summoned beast, avatar, what-have-you) be dismissed by the caster at will (W vs 12 roll?), or is it a case of "You summoned it, mate - you deal with it..." Kill it, run away, stick it in a ring of White Light, hide up a tree  til sunset, things like that?

And yes, I'm not overly concerned by Benjamin's play choices. Measuring it against experiences in other games we've played I'm expecting him to really start to find his groove next session.

G

[Ron Edwards]

As currently conceived, all the creation spells last until the next sunup or sundown, and there's no banishing of any kind, not even by the creator. I'm even thinking of removing all concept of "going back," so that the creature or whatever basically disintegrates right here in reality. Once you make it, it's here, and unless you enchant its presence, it'll die/disintegrate at a set time, unless it's killed or destroyed first.