[Circle of Hands] Session Report - Anselborg

[Nyhteg]

This is a write-up of our third session of Circle of Hands.
There are three of us at the table again - myself as GM, with my two teenaged sons as the Knights.
This was played over two, roughly one- to one-and-a-half-hour evening sessions at the dining room table

I told the players that the Knights had received word that a nearby, fortified mountain town in Rolke was under threat from attack from Rbaja.

The PCs selected by the players from their current Circle of five characters were:

- Baldur Elmo, a fierce, brutal Merchant turned 'leader-of-the-guard' from Tamaryon (played by Benjamin, 17)
- Oda Ingrid, a cunning, formal Scholar-wizard from Rolke (played by Joseph, 15)

SETUP
The roll for the scenario components was Black: 6, White:3, Red: 4, giving me Rbaja Presence in Rolke.

Location
Anselborg is a largeish, fortified mountain town, set high in the wooded foothills with a commanding view of the valley below. Stone walls and buildings, wooden and stone watch towers at the gates. Fairly close-built houses. Above it, the mountains rise steeply and massively, the distant snow-capped peak mostly wreathed in cloud, its flanks all dense, dark, ancient pine forest. The people here herd goats on the high meadows; graze morose, hairy cattle and cultivate a few crops in the valley below; they raise sturdy, stocky ponies for draft and travel; they hunt and forage in the woods; they mine and smelt ironstone in a few locations in the mountains above the town. The people here are stalwart and proud, and Anselborg itself is a solid, long-standing grey presence, hunched defiantly in the face of the mountain elements.

Rbaja Presence
An outdoorsman, named Wieland Engels, lived with his family in the forests above the town. Through chance, he became a black wizard after stumbling on an Rbaja zone in a high mountain pool a few years back. Under the pretext of teaching hunting and tracking skills, he effectively built up a small cult of a half-dozen men, centred on Rbaja and his own spellcasting ability. His obsession with Rbaja has recently led him to sacrifice his family to summon and enchant a Yoggoth, however. He was killed by the creature, but the men who witnessed and assisted him in the ritual fled with their lives. The Yoggoth is slowly descending from the mountain, night by night, the town of Anselborg in its sights.

NPCs

Rodolf Hartmann - Chieftain of Anselborg [7758]
Alarmed by strange noises form the forest and by the uncanny fogs that had started spilling from the treeline, Rodolf sent a small group of men into the forest to investigate. They came back dead; literally - as zombies.
He now fears an assault by undead hordes or worse and is strengthening the forest-side defences, determined to protect his town at all costs.

Kinge Hartmann - Rodolf's wife [4258]
Kinge is loyal to her husband, but is far less convinced of their ability to defend against an unknown foe, possibly wielding black magic. She is pressing for an evacuation - at least of those who cannot fight.

Manfred Gert - Cultist with a conscience [5842]
Manfred, like the other five survivors of the Yoggoth ritual, has seen and done terrible things. Unlike his fellow cultists, however, Manfred is wracked with regret and shame. He knows he shares responsibility for the doom about to fall on the town, too terrified of the other five students to speak out against them but too guilt-ridden to flee and abandon the town to its fate.

Tripwire
If the presence and actions of the cult becomes known in town, it will result in fast-spreading panic and rage. Accustations will begin to fly; people will be killed, with and without cause; the cultists will start to act openly against the townsfolk with sabotage and violence.

PLAY

I described the landscape and initial appearance of the town as the Knights approached then we were swiftly into the town itself, where the PCs sought initial contact with the locals. With a lot of warlike-preparations obviously afoot, Baldur quickly fell in with one of the Chieftain's senior guards, Wolfgang. He lent a hand with a bunch of other men outside the forest gates digging earthworks and building barricades of sharpened stakes.
Oda found a merchant busy loading up a cart and helped out stacking bundles of wool.
Successful C vs 12 rolls ensued and the details of the situation soon emerged.

Oda and Baldur were introduced to the Chieftain, who happily enlisted them in the defence of the town. Kinge approached the Knights at this point seeking their aid on the side of her evacuation plan. Tense words were exchanged between the Chief and his wife at this point and the Knights caught somewhat in the middle. Baldur tried to dismiss Kinge's anxieties with a brusque leave-it-to-the-menfolk kind of angle - and swiftly discovered that he wasn't talking to some farmer's daughter but the Wife of the Chief of Anselborg-and-I'll-thank-you-to-remember-that-sonny. Oda managed to placate her with a delaying tactic; of course they would aid in an evacuation but they didn't even know what they were up against yet. With the Chief's permission, they would head into the forest to find out exactly what they were facing and make plans from there. Grudgingly, Kinge agreed to this. Rodolf was all for it and sent for a guide.

Naturally, the guide turned out to be Manfred. Accompanied by Wolfgang, the two Knights armoured up and headed into the shadowy forest. With Perfect Senses active, finding the source of the trouble wasn't a problem - they simply homed in on the distant sounds of snapping breaking branches and weird, wet growling noises. Soon they were surrounded by cold, dense fog, certain that something big was just up the slope ahead of them, but not yet sure what it could be. Manfred, visibly agitated, took Oda to one side and begged her to make everyone return to town. In desperate whispers, he told her that he knew what was up there but they had to leave before they disturbed it and it killed them all.

Baldur, however, was just as desperate to see what they were up against.
After some debate between the players - Joseph was 100% for getting back to safety, Benjamin was 100% up for getting eyes on the foe - they decided to let Baldur sneak closer on his own, while the others retreated downslope a way, ready to run for their lives. Casting Glow on a helmet, they set up a visible half-way marker for Baldur to make for if things went pear-shaped.

So Baldur crept into the fog, expecting a zombie army to leap out at him at any moment. What he found was three-foot visibility and the sense of a lot of lazily moving shapes all around him in the trees. Dunno...bit like...hanging tentacles or something..? When something brushed past his back and a stream of drool landed on his shoulder from above he decided he had seen all he wanted to and scarpered back to the others before anything killy started happening to him. At this point, I suppose could have had everything kick off and unleash the Yoggoth at them, but in the moment I was actually enjoying them freaking out far too much to 'spoil' it with a fight. I was still interested to see where they'd take the relationships with the NPCs and there would be plenty of time for monster fighting later, I figured.

High-tailing it back to town, Baldur button-holed Manfred and got him to tell them everything he knew - and without using Rip this time, either (yay!). So now they had the story of Wieland and the cultists. Baldur got the names of the other five guys out of Manfred and  hurried to the Chieftain's longhouse to fill him in. Oda set about preparing for a White Light ritual to help add to the barricades.

Hearing Baldur's story, the Chief dispatched some men to lay hands on the suspected cultists. They found a couple of them, but the others made themselves scarce as soon as it became clear what was afoot. In the course of this manhunt, however, word soon got around town about the cultists; rumours flew, panic spread...and the Tripwire for the adventure was triggered.

Meanwhile, Joseph (Oda's player) had been scouring the rulebook to try to work out what on earth they were up against. He put two and two together and got 'Yoggoth'. An uneasy silence ensued, as the players read and re-read the monster description. Seeing as Oda was a wizard and a scholar to boot, it made sense that she'd know plenty about the creature, including the part where a willing victim will banish it.

Oda joined Baldur and explained what they were facing. There then followed an extended exchange where the Knights attempted to persuade just about everyone in the room, from the Chieftain down, to throw themselves into the maw of the Yoggoth to save the town. Naturally, the fundamental counter-argument was "If it's such a great idea, oh brave Knights of the Circle, why don't you bloody do it..?"

In the middle of all this, Kinge Hartmann was demanding that the Knights immediately accompany her and any non-spear-carrying member of the population to the Young King's stronghold ASAP. As the players writhed on the horns of this dilemma, news arrived in the longhouse that the town had gone crazy. The panicking townsfolk had begun to turn on each other - houses were burning, fights were breaking out...oh, and the Yoggoth was almost at the treeline.

Thinking that this was definitely going to be a "Two Knight Problem", Oda wrote a letter of introduction for Kinge to carry to the young king in lieu of one of them physically going with her. A successful Charm roll meant she accepted the letter and left immediately to commence evacuation of the town.

The remainder of the adventure wrapped up swiftly. With the town pulling itself apart in a combination of panicked escape and cultist-driven anarchy, the players and the chieftain dashed to the town's forest-side wall, joining the nervous spear-bearers at the barricades. As the fogs rolled out of the treeline and the sound of breaking branches grew ever closer, one of the players suddenly had a thought. "Just a minute...where's Manfred...?"
Short story made shorter: they found Manfred and played on his guilt (via a strong Charm roll) to get him to agree to walk willingly into the maw of the Yoggoth and save the town. Which he did. Manfred strode silently into the darkness of the trees, and a minute or two later the forest fell silent, the fogs faded away, and the town was saved.

Unfortunately, with the Tripwire sprung the Knights left in shame. Their presence in the town had resulted in only disruption, chaos and death. Danger had been averted, not by heir hand but by the courage of a local man laying down his own life. The Circle came off as weak, dithering and ineffectual. The town of Anselborg was never quite the same again, its people now divided against themselves in suspicion and recrimination.

Post-Mortem
To my surprise, the players thoroughly enjoyed this session. Far more than I had expected them to, in fact.
Events kept moving, the players were generally proactive, invested in the fiction and enthusiastic about the threat to the town.

I think the previous session's PC death had given them a strong sense of risk and of the mortality of their characters. They played cautiously, keen to avoid combat with the Yoggoth at all costs. Although events were low on violence and action, the play experience was actually intensified and gained weight. "We know this game can kill our dudes like that and this freaking thing in the forest is bigger than anything we've seen before..."

So...interesting experience.
I was still left thinking I probably could have pushed things a bit harder throughout.
I still suspect that what Ron is designing for and imagining in CoH is not exactly what we're producing in play.

No technical questions arose this session but there was a definite minor stumbling point early on - what on earth does a scholar wizard do when she rolls up in a town? How does she contribute to the existing daily activity of a place when her profession is about geography and map making (in this case)?

So that's it. Session three complete.
We're definitely keen to play again and see where the Circle is taken next.

Questions, comments, suggestions welcome as always.

G

[Ron Edwards]

A scholar is welcome because of the importance he or she assigns to the area. Think about it: no one else, ever, is interested in the geography, history, or customs of your town. Although modern literacy is practically unknown, effective recorded information is a universal, so it's not like anyone asks "what are those marks he's making" or anything dumb like that. In other words, an inquisitive scholar engaged in ordinary (to scholars) information-gathering is a big ego-boost, a big excitement.

Tell me about your learning curve. You seem to have found a bit of a groove with the game now.

[Nyhteg]

A scholar is welcome because of the importance he or she assigns to the area.

That's really interesting, thanks.

Tell me about your learning curve. You seem to have found a bit of a groove with the game now.

We've certainly reached a point where what we're doing is running smoothly enough.
What I'm not sure about is whether our groove bears any resemblance to what your groove looks like.
I'm sure I've seen you post a video of a session of Spione in the past. If I were to watch a video of you playing CoH, I feel 100% certain that I'd be going "Whoa. I didn't realise you were meant to play it like that..."

The players are starting to get a feel for the sort of things that seem to be expected of their PCs, their capacities and options.
They've got a sense of the Knights' potential physical vulnerability, and the scope for authority based on action but don't really have the measure of their own power yet, I think.
In three sessions I also don't think we've really done more than scratch the surface of the type of situations and challenges they can face.
We've not had any full-on combat yet; they've not met an NPC wizard; there's bucket loads of stuff that hasn't been encountered.

The sticky bits so far have been knowing what to do at the start of venture; how engage with a town; knowing how to work with NPCs; knowing how hard to push; learning to really get a handle on venture prep; acquiring a rich enough sense of place and culture to bring things fully alive. The essential character of the game, I guess.

These aspects are all still works-in-progress for all of us, of course; it's an incremental thing.

Is that the sort of thing you're interested in?

G