[Trollbabe] Imperatrix Pontifex Diamante I

[Moreno R.]

It ended with a lighting bolt. Cast by Diamante, riding the dragon she had just tamed. She had followed the magic trail of the force that was controlling the horde of dragons that attacked the Trollbabe's conquering army, leaving her two friends, Geli and Zaqhi, to fight that battle alone.

It was the last resistance. A group of centuries-old troll shamans, the hidden force behind the Great Troll Invasion. They had stayed hidden, fearful of these three Trollbabes, but at last, with the Troll Horde smashed and broken, they had to act directly.

After smashing the biggest dragon's head, sending it spiraling down to crash on the mountainside, Geli had screamed to Diamante to get the people who were controlling the dragons and make them appear right there, where all the three trollbabes were (Geli is good at smashing things, not at casting spells, and Zaqhi was protecting the army). Diamante smiled, and said "no, I am going where they are, instead". And disappeared (with her new Dragon mount) before Geli could stop her.

Diamante is clearly tired of being "protected" by other two trollbabes. That treat her like... like a baby! Now she had seen a way to fight a battle by herself, alone, and she had taken it.

They battle by magic, the old trolls and the young trollbabe. She is wounded and has to use forgotten magic, but at last a lighting bolt destroy the controlling orb, winning the battle and killing most of the shamans. The few left are shaken and wounded and she easily capture and bind them.

And then, there is no one left. The had already destroyed the Troll Horde, dispersed and shattered the human Golden Army, conquered the Forbidden City and taken its gargoyle army for themselves, they have shattered the High Tower, massacred (and eaten) the Black Council and taken the crown for themselves. There is nobody left to stand against them. This time, the stakes were "everything, the entire island" and they have won. All that's left is to accept vows of fealty from the surrendering cities, countries and tribes.

After almost two years, the Trollbabe campaign I described here is finished. From scale 1 to scale 7, all the way.  We didn't play Trollbabe every week, Diamante's player has to go to school so this campaign was played only in the summer and on some of the holidays. But still, I think we played at least 40 adventures, maybe more (I stopped counting after a while)

Most of the time was passed at scale 1, 2 and 3. The adult players had passed years playing in never-ending railroaded "sagas" where they have to save the world (one of them still play them, with my old AD&D group, and part of our sessions is usually dedicated to her rants against the other group railroading - she even tried to suicide her character once, but the GM did not allow it... ) so they enjoyed the freedom of playing unconnected adventures that addressed "little" problems and not the usual "must save the world" sagas.

I was the one that pushed for increasing the scale. Because I wanted to see how the game worked at a higher scale. So I used Diamante's player naivety - she still don't know the dirty tricks used by the GMs - talking about conquering cities, counties, kingdoms, and fueling her greediness for bigger prizes. So she started increasing scale adventure after adventure.

The rise on the bigger scales was very fast. A single adventure was played on scale 6 and 7, and probably less than half a dozen in total at 4 and 5.  I found more and more difficult to create adventures that did not include the trollbabes when they began to build armies and were more and more difficult to ignore for somebody who wanted to get "stakes" big as countries. After the fourth or fifth army defeated by these strange women with horns (that had adventures up to that point practically in every square inch of the map) it was not very credible that they could stumble upon something that did not already considered their possible interference. At scale 6 I did it by having two big armies fighting and having both with ties to one of the trollbabes, and trying to get their help (but one of the trollbabes was already the leader, at least nominally, of one of the two forces, so they were not outsiders at that point). Having that adventure ending with the trollbabes destroying BOTH armies and practically every human mage worth of that title at the same time really did not leave much to build on. For the last adventure, the trollbabes were one of the interested parties. They had already stated that they wanted to conquer all the island (all the map - I had not used the map on the manual because we had already played with that map a lot of time, so for this campaign I used a downloaded map on a big island-continent), and for their opponent I did not want to come up with some continent-level threat just out of the blue, so I reused some dangling thread from previous adventures - where a lot of time it was stated that the trolls were getting help from someone very powerful - and had that "someone" attack.

Part of the problem probably was caused by the fact that I did choose a map of a single "scale 7" island instead of a bigger map, that would have allowed different scale 7 stakes that were not "everything on the map", but I don't regret it.  It worked well, at that scale, to have a single "big finale" adventure, even if it meant changing that time the way I created the adventures.

And after all... it finally happened! After years of false promises from D&D and other games of that ilk, finally we had had played a "from simple adventurer to king" game, with them ending as "Supreme Pontifex" (it's a little in-joke about the way they wanted to "build bridges between humans and trolls", there is nothing religious in the title) at the end of a series of adventures...  with no railroading at all!

About Diamante's player... reading again my first posts from two years ago I see how much she is grown in only two years (literally...  she is almost 4 inches taller...). Now she is 9 years old, she knows the game well enough to make sound tactical decision by herself, and she really wanted do defeat these trolls alone at the end.

Now I have the problem of what to play with her this summer: one possibility is to start again with other trollbabes with a new map (she would prefer this at this point, but she never played another rpg... apart from once when she convinced her mother to take her to see the other group playing (D&D), falling asleep after a while and showing no interest in going there again afterwards...).
Another possibility (the one I would prefer) would be to try a different game, but I don't know a lot of games for as 9-years old child that would be simple enough for her and challenging enough for the other players...

[Ron Edwards]

Wow!