[Circle of Hands] Playtest: The Wyrm in the mountains

[Moreno R.]

Hi!

I am writing this right after the end of the game session, because I don't know if tomorrow I will be able to decipher the notes that I quickly scribbled during the game (I am barely able to understand them now...)

I was the GM, the players were Alessandro Riccò and Mauro Ghibaudo, the full set of 6 circle members is here (sorry, it's in Italian).

For the game preparation, I rolled a 5 (black die), 4 (white die) and 1 (red die), so the adventure was in Rolke, and had a single component, "Monster or similarly dangerous specific threat"

I did read the list of monsters, and I did choose a Wyrm, because it's typical for Rolke, and because it's a single creature with no complications or strange powers and I wanted the most simple adventure I could thought of as the first one (I thought about using a family of ogres at a certain point but I didn't want to play too many opponents).

I thought about a mountain pass between Famberge and Rolke, and the Wyrm attacking caravans. For the three named characters I did choose the head of a small village of sheperds and woodcutters, that had reached a sort of agreement with the wyrm - they gave some sheep to the monster as offering and it would not eat people, they would comb the remains of the attacked caravans and return the best items to the wyrm, keeping the rest. The second character was a widow, that had her husband killed and eaten by the Wyrm before the agreement was reached. As for the third character, it was a guard on one of the last attacked caravans, he did survive, wounded, and he had joined the village, living with the Widow.

GERD 4 2 8 5 chief of the village, 45 years old, shepherd. He is very happy about the deal with the wyrm, and don't want it to be disturbed.

THERESE 4 8 5 2 widow 21 years old, she want to survive and don't want to break the ties with her community, but she hates the wyrm

OSKAR a caravan guard, wounded, he had found hospitality from Therese, that he has promised to marry. He would like to stuck a bargain of his own with the wyrm, directing the monster to attack caravans in others, more important routes, to get a bigger pickings for himself and his own band (he has still not a band, but he knows people that he could enlist). His characteristics are 8 7 6 6

The dangerous territory was a map of a cave (the wyrm lair) that I downloaded, but it was not used. The tripwire was simply to enter the cave without having dealt with the wyrm before.

The initial informations for the players: caravans were attacked by a wyrm in the mountain pass, go there and deal with it.

The players did choose to play:

Friedhold Smith
Brawn 6
Quickness 6
Wits 10
Charm 4

TRAITS  Cunning, Ambitious
HOMELAND From Spurr
PROFESSIONS AND SOCIAL RANK: Artisan, Scholar, Martial (high) : Professional

MAGIC  Healing, Instant Craft, Righteousness, Spirit Warrior, Stimulant

DETAILS: Friendly, Blaze

WEAPONS AND ARMOR
Any shield, Fight either mounted or on foot, Spear, Bow, Crossbow
Cone helmet, Chained Mace.
Mail, Cone helmet, Buckler, Parma

KEY EVENT:  see italian version in the link above


Astrid
Brawn      6
Quickness   8
Wits      7
Charm      6

Ambitious, Cunning

From Famberge, where people fight to live

Outdoorsman, Martial (high) - Freeman

Demeanor  Fierce – not hostile or angry, but clearly ready for action
Feature   Emblem – denotes family, region of birth, or a profession; this is in addition to the Circle emblem ordinarily worn by the player-characters  (I asked Mauro what the Emblem was, but then we were distracted and I forgot to ask again)

Spells:
Cat (1w)
Perfect senses (1w)
Command plant (2w)
Shadow Cloud (2b)
Trailtwister (2b)

As Outdoorsman, I'm familiar with staff sling, bow, and hand axe; moreover, I'm good with the knife and spear. As a knight, I was trained in mail, cone helmet, buckler, and parma.

Key event: A young woman from a small village, Astrid was caught by warring faction attacking her village, and brought away from her native land. During the voyage she was freed in a fight, and hid herself in the woods, living in small wood communities and learning a way to survive there. One day she was leading astray some army's scouts, but she was cornered and had to fight her way out; when she was outnumbered and nearly defeated, a group of Circle knight helped her to save her life, and the wood communities.

In the next post: what happened

[Moreno R.]

The session started with a lot of questions from the players, that I listed HERE

I did start the adventure with the PC (and their entourage) checking the place of the last attack to a caravan, after briefly describing the surroundings. I decided that they had taken some local guide from the previous village, and these guides told them where was the more nearby village (the one there Gerd and Therese live)

Astrid is a Outdoorswoman, so I simply described to the player every trace present on the scene, when he did say that she was checking. A old trace of some very big reptilian talon, smashing the wood of a carriage into the ground. Many traces of wild animals dragging something away (there was no body left on the scene), and, more recently, traces of many humans looting the place, from and to the general direction of the village described by the guides.

The group went to the village, where they were greeted by Gerd in behalf of the rest of the village. When Astrid (she did negotiate, being a freeman like Gerd) asked about the Wyrm, explicitly saying that they were there to kill the beast, he did minimize his own knowledge of its whereabout, but Therese (a face in the crowd) did step into the conversation saying that she would have guided the knights to the beast's lair (I did not roll, because I figured Therese had hoped for years that somebody would arrive and kill the Wyrm, but I am not sure I did right or not)

Friedhold did go to the hut where the villagers kept their iron-working utensils to make repairs to his equipment, and noticed that the village had a rather good selection of utensils and irom objects for a so tiny place. I had told Astrid from the beginning that the villagers did seem well-fed and, even if not rich by any means, they did seems to not have economics problems. Deducing that the villagers were stripping down any valuables left from the attacked caravans, the two knights assured Gerd that there would not be any retaliation, and that the villagers could keep everything, they were there only to kill the wyrm.

Friedhold had cast at the beginning of the days 2 Righteoness (armor and sword) + 1 stimulant (to himself) for a total of 6 white points and 2 black points. At the end of the day, all these disappeared and he got -2 BQ, so he did heal himself  (7 white, 2 black). Next morning he did cast all these again (1 righteoness - turning the total to 9 white points, getting a tally, and casting after that the second riughteoness and the stimulant, for a total of 3 white and 2 black points)
The tally item chosen was "Upon a person's death (including killing them), release their Spirit Warrior under your control until sunrise or sundown"
The following d6 roll was a 3 - no effect.

Astrid had cast every day "Perfect senses" and "cat", so she had 2 white points in the evening, and 4 white points next morning.

During all this I was imagining what the three named character would have done during the night, and I decided that Oskar would be very angry about Therese helping the circle knights, that he had beaten her and menaced her, saying that he would alert the Wyrm and that if she had led the knights to the lair, she would die too.

After that Oskar did depart during the night to alert the wyrm. Therese did show up the next morning into the knight's camp with a clearly battered face, and the knights asked her what happened.

At this time I had Astrid roll C (two dice) to see if Therese would trust the knights and tell them the truth, or if she would be too scared of Oskar. Astrid roll was abysmal, Therese didn't trust them at all, she decided that these "knights" were not to be trusted with the truth, and they would not be able to protect her from the wyrm either, so she decided to mislead them leading the group to a totally different direction, away from the wyrm.

Friedhold tried to convince Theresa to trust them, too, but he rolled a single die (both for the distrust caused by Astrid's roll and the different social class) and he failed too.

Theresa did lead them for 3-4 hours but Astrid (being a outdoorswoman) noticed (I simply told Mauro without rolling) that they were moving in a large circle, returning back from the way they came.  At this point Friedhold questioned again Theresa, menacing her of death if she had not lead them to the true trail. I decided that this warranted another roll, with two dice... and Friedhelm failed again!

Theresa would not trust them, but, scared of being executed (impaled, to be exact, was Friedhold's menace), she devised another ruse: she did return them to the right trail, but not to the Wyrm's cave: when they were at a certain distance, she said that she did know the trail only to that point, that she could not help them anymore, and they should go on without her.

Not trusting her, the knights decided to make camp there, wait for the night (a couple of hours away) and then use Perfect Sense to proceed in the darkess without being seen.

At the same time (i was imagining in my head), the Wyrm, that was waiting for them, spying from some hundreds of yards above hidden behind the rocks, waited for their arrival in the ambush. Seeing that they would not proceed instead, the monster resolved to attack them in the night (I was not sure about the wyrm intelligence, the text treat it in some parts like a animal with dog-like intelligence and in other parts like a cunning and expert opponent. I decided that I liked the more intelligent version, not a genius by far, but intelligent enough to plan an attack and wait hours for the best circumstances)

With the night, the knights permanent spells expired, so they cast them again. They decided to "power up" each other, too, so Friedhold did cast some spells on Astrid (but I don't remember which ones, I cannot decipher my notes about this and she didn't use them during the session) and Astrid did cast "Cat" and "perfect senses" to Friedhold too  (going to 8 white points)

Friedhold did wear the full armor and stayed 150-200 yards behind Astrid, that was not wearing armor and was moving stealthy in the natural setting. After a while Astrid with her Perfect Senses notice a big mass of something blotting out the stars in the peak above, and then that mass began to flow down.  At this point there is a break in my notes and my recall of the situation, I don't remember if Astrid was able to alert Friedhold, or if Friedhold had noticed the monster too. But they organized an ambush, waiting for it. Astrid hid behind some rocks with his bow ready, and Friedhold did cast Spirit Warrior on himself.

I did not look at their quickness at this time, the Wyrm was still far away, but when the wyrm saw the luminescent outline of the Spirit Warrior, it quickly attacked it, so combat started.

What happened next? See my next post!

[Ron Edwards]

I'm guessing a TPK. Two characters against a wyrm at night? Granted, they were optimized with magic, which was the right thing to do. In my games, no one's killed a wyrm without the help of a group.

... Therese (a face in the crowd) did step into the conversation saying that she would have guided the knights to the beast's lair (I did not roll, because I figured Therese had hoped for years that somebody would arrive and kill the Wyrm, but I am not sure I did right or not)

You did. This is related to what I plan to write about Justice, that these are not "hide it from the characters! Make them roll to reveal it!" scenarios. The logic is much more similar to that of Trollbabe than to Call of Cthulhu.

[Moreno R.]

Everybody had Brawn at the maximum level (they had rested a little after casting the spells at sundown)

The quickness order:  Astrid (Q=9), Friedhold (q=6+1 for the stimulant = 7), Spirit Warrior (Q=6+1=7), The Wyrm (Q=6)

Actions declaration:
Astrid: shoot an arrow in the wyrm's wings from behind the rocks
Friedhold and the Spirit Warrior: hack and slash at the fucker. Friedhold did stay some paces behind the Spirit Warrior.
The Wyrm: take a bite off that strangely luminescent guy. As an appetizer.

The Spirit Warrior did spend a point of B to jump ahead of Astrid, and engaged the wyrm in a clash. The wyrm wanted to clash with him too so it was happy to oblige. I gave the wyrm the advantage, it was swooping down in the darkness and its target was literally sparkling in the night.
The Spirit Warrior had Q=7 for a total pool of 14. He did put 10 in defense and 4 in attack, and rolled a total of 8 (attack:12, defense:18)
The Wyrm did not move any point (so it had a 6 both in attack and defense) and rolled a total of 13 (with 3 dice). It did beat the Spirit Warrior's defense by 1, + the wyrm's brawn (6), total damage 7, it was not enough to pass the 10-point armor.

What happened: I narrated that the Wyrm was more fast than his size would suggest, and the Spirit Warrior's attack had missed him, and the wyrd's fangs had slided on the Warrior's armor (in hindsight, I should have said "on the shield" seeing that the SW had one...). That the wyrd's momentum had made it pass the spirit warrior and that the beast had turned trying to bite the warrior

Then it was Astrid's turn, she did shoot an arrow: quickness 9, I assigned no advantage die because it was not a clash, but she did beat 12 with a rolled 7.  9+7=16, 4 points of damage +6 = 10, the Wyrm's armor is 9, the arrow did nick a wing reducing the wyrm's Q to 5.

Then it was Friedhold's turn, and he did get into a clash with the wyrm too. It was at this time that we debated the issue of question 9 (see the rule question thread for details), because Alessandro's tactic was based on his own interpretation of the rules, in which the Wyrm could not attack him back.

I applied my interpretation instead, and it was a normal clash between the wyrm and the knight. Friedhold did put 10 in defense and 4 in attack too, and rolled a 8 (with 3 dice: I had given him the advantage because the wyrm was both turning back to bite the most visible foe and had been hit by an arrow that distracted it), so the totals were: attack 12, Defense 18.

The wyrm still didn't move any point around (I wanted to keep it simple) and rolled only a 3 with two dice, for a total of 8/8

So, the Wyrm was not able to turn in time to attack Friedhold, that had instead hit the monster with 12-8+3(Brawn left)+1 for the weapon =7, still not enough to pass the wyrm's thick hide.

[possible error alert: seeing that +1 declared by Alessandro and the list of Friedhold weapons, I suspect that he was using a great axe as a weapon - I really don't remember the weapon he declared for the attack - but in that case his advantage die should have been given to the dragon, seeing that the knight's Brawn was only 3 in that moment. If, instead, Friedhold was using a sword, the error was the fact that it is not listed among his weapons.
Talking about Friedhold's list of weapons, if you check the original version in the gcg forum it says "added: Glaive (Great Axe + Reach). I disallowed this at the beginning of the session, I had forgotten to tell it in the first post. But I don't remember if Alessandro did change it into a great axe or in another weapon...]

The Wyrm has a special free attack, swinging his tail to the people behind it, but seeing that during the free and clear phase it had nobody behind him, he had not declared it. I have some doubts about this free attack, too: how it works? The wyrm attack two times, at the same quickness? It can use this attack even if it had lost his action for the round?

At this point we have played everybody's initial action. it's the Spirit Warrior's turn again. He engage the Wyrm in a clash again. The wyrm is being battered by two sides and it's wounded, so this time I give the advantage die to the Spirit Warrior, that rolls a 13. He had put 4 in defense and 10 in attack this time, so the total is: attack 23, defense 17
The wyrm rolls a 8, plus 5, the total is 13/13.
So the SW attack pass the Wyrm's defense dealing 23-13+6=16 points, of which 7 passed the monster's armor. -3 B and -4 Q.  So the wyrm goes to Brawn= 3 and Quickness = 1

It's Astrid's turn, the roll is noted as "10+9" in my notes, but I don't know why, Astrid Quickness is 8...  probably an error in the concitation of the moment (I have seen with different groups and in different games that when the players sense the victory nearby, they tend to play faster, making many more errors and dropping a lot of the attention for the narration. I am no exception. I always make a mental note saying "next time, keep calm and play until the end at the same pace and attention to details", but then I always forget...). Anyway that is a 19-12+6=13 for damage, of which 4 pass the armor, dropping the Wyrm's stat to Brawn 1 and Quickness 0

It's Friedhold's turn, he put all the points into attack, and he gets the advantage die, so he rolls a 14, for a total attack of 28 (the defense is only the rolled value, 14)

The wyrm is really unlucky this evening, it rolls a 3....

Friedhold's attack smash the Wyrm and inflict a mortal wound, the wyrm still thrashes on the ground for a while but it's completely helpless.

At this point, having resolved the biggest component of the adventure, the adventure is effectively over, but i let the players play the epilogue. Astrid (still with Perfect Senses) hear the footsteps of Oskar running down trying to flee, she follow and reach him (I don't know if I made an error here, I made her roll quickness against 12. Thinking about it, she is an outdoorwoman that see in the dark, he is a caravan guard fleeing in the dark with no night vision, I could have simply said that she did reach him, no problem. By the other hand I could have made both of them roll quickness making Oskar roll a single die...)

Oskar try to tell some excuse for his presence there, but when Theresa see him tied up, she accuse him and tell the knights about his menaces. The knights execute him on the spot (Friedhold proposes the pole, Astrid reply that it would be too much an hassle and waste of time and they simply cut his head)

After the end of the adventure, the players rolls for stats improvement (2d6 against each).  Astrid improve Quickness, Wits and Charm. Friedhold improve everything. So after the adventure they have:

Friedhold Smith
Brawn 7
Quickness 7
Wits 11 <----- provisionally: what is your decision at this time about the stats upper limit? Does it go up or it stays at 10?
Charm 5

Astrid
Brawn   6
Quickness   9
Wits   8
Charm   7

At the end of the adventure, Mauro had a doubt: All that Astrid had to do to get a white tally was to cast a 2 points white spell. But would have they counted, for spells cast after the end of the adventure only to get a tally?  I said to cast it, in the worst case all he would have to do was to cancel it if it wasn't valid, but at the end he decided that he didn't like to "play the numbers" in that way and didn't do it.

Both players considered the tallies as wholly positive things, with the benefits that are much bigger than the drawbacks. Mauro talked during all the session about wanting to get the "turn into a silver dragon" power, and Alessandro is waiting only a "Ok, this is allowed" confirmation to start healing a lot of people to get half a dozen of tallies in a single adventure...

About the narration of details, this is a sticky point: Mauro noticed, after they had cast a lot of spells, that no detail was ever described about the way they were cast, the visible effects, etc: they did forgot, I did forgot, everybody did forget.

It was a little better with the fight and the environment, but even these description got more and more simple when the events got faster. After a minimal but decent description of the surrounding mountains and forests, I described the village only as a nondescript "bunch of huts" (and to think that I had downloaded a map for the village, too, yesterday: I completely forgot about that until now).  After a "you see trees, you see mountains, three hour pass" quick description, I remembered to make a little effort to make things a little more interesting when I described the wyrm swooping down, a big black mass blotting the stars behind and moving from jump to swoop to slither.... but that lasted only until after the first turn of combat. After the wyrm was put in the middle by the two Friedhold it was only a series of "I hit him, I miss, I hit, I miss"... but at that time I could not imagine the wyrm doing nothing more interesting that "it squirm and bleed a lot"
What I noticed was that I was pushed to better description when the advantage die was not a given, when I had to visualize myself what was happening because I was not sure about who had it, so I imagined (and described) the wyrm turning around trying to bite the Shadow Warrior, and before that, the light drawing it to attack the SW first, with advantage. When the Wyrm was attacked and wounded by every side there was no doubt anymore about who was getting the advantage die and I stopped visualizing and describing the single actions.

Even with a minimal preparation, most of the material was unused: no NPC did roll anything, the PC didn't even go near the cave entrance. Maybe I was too proactive with the monster's attack to the knights, making the adventure collapse around as single fight, but that worked right, in hindsight the player were looking for a fight and if the monster had not attacked probably the session would have ended without one. It was not planned anyway, at most my impatience infected the wyrm's reasoning...

A last question: after the end of the adventure, the color points return to zero, or the next time that one of these two characters will be played they will still have the color points they have at the end of this adventure?

[Ron Edwards]

after the end of the adventure, the color points return to zero, or the next time that one of these two characters will be played they will still have the color points they have at the end of this adventure?

The color points remain as they are. The next person to play that character receives them exactly in that form.

Mauro and Alessandro need to be spanked with a big wooden paddle with the imprint "Munchin" in reversed letters. I have a whole list of rules-clarifications to add to prevent their little tricks.

[Joshua Bearden]

Isn't "munchkin" another word for excellent high stress play tester?

[Ron Edwards]

Sure it is! Doesn't mean they don't get paddled.

[Moreno R.]

Some bits and pieces from the other playtesters (they are not sure about joining the forum after reading about Ron's paddle...)

1) "It's Astrid's turn, the roll is noted as "10+9" in my notes, but I don't know why, Astrid Quickness is 8"

8 + 1 for Stimulant. That was the spell Friedhold had cast on her

2) About the "not gentry with martial arts (high) problem, they suggested changing the phrase. 'A professional character skilled with martial (high)' into 'non-gentry skilled with martial (high)' on page 27.

[Moreno R.]

I have a whole list of rules-clarifications to add to prevent their little tricks.

Can you write them before next Thursday?

[John W]

Moreno, thanks for writing a very detailed play report.  Interesting reading!
-John

[Moreno R.]

Thanks, John!

Reading about the Wits rolls in the other thread made me think about how I used in this session: as in, I didn't.

For the entire venture I used the "you are successful in your profession's skill" every time, and used the dice outside of combat only for Charm rolls.

More in detail:

1st scene, at the site of the ambush to the caravan: Astrid is a outdoorswoman, I simply told to the players everything it would be read from the traces: signs of a big beast with talons and at least some flying ability, wild animals did eat the corpses, humans looted the caravan more recently and did go back to the general direction of the village.

At the Village:  The things to notice were clear in my opinion for Astrid, for her background:  The village elder presented himself, people were well-fed, even if not rich by any means.

Maybe I could have made them roll Wits (or Charm for the village's reaction) when they declared that they were there to kill the Wyrm, but at that time I simply had Therese offer herself as a guide to the beast's lair.  Everybody was still under parameters of their established characters, and nobody was pushing anybody to do anything.

During the same evening, Friedhold noticed the amount of iron in the viulklage, and this too was something he would notice because of his profession.

Next morning, the signs on Therese's face were evident, no need to roll, the only rolls were Charm rolls to convince her to trust them (all failed)

During the travel in the forest up to the mountain, I simply told Astrid's player that Astrid had noticed that they were traveling in circles. As in the firdt scene, I thought that it was something she would notice.

And when the Wyrm attacked, I simply described what they saw.

So, not even a single Wits roll in the entire session.

[Ron Edwards]

I didn't see any situation in your adventure that called for a Wits roll. I am also seeing that this mechanic is subject to crucial assumptions that people will be bringing to play from past history, so its application in this game needs special handling.

In a nutshell, Wits rolls are supposed to be about putting two and two together in complex, non-obvious situations. It's easy to see what other characters' social ranks are, for instance, or anything economic or interesting about local conditions, through the lens of social rank and profession. What's not obvious are emotions, ties which aren't being made explicit, and power dynamics.

All of Moreno's information was, in my opinion, legitimately obvious. Putting in a Wits roll for something like that is basically, "Roll to see if your character is an idiot," which isn't what I'd like to see.

This isn't too surprising considering that he had one component, and it happened to be "monster," which isn't - you know - a particularly subtle thing in isolation. Making it more subtle would necessarily bring in stuff that's supposed to be present only for other components, like "social tensions" and whatnot.

In more complex situations, such as figuring out that the leader-guy in my example scenario doesn't know about the odd weapon without tipping him off, or spotting a feud in process (not an obvious thing), then the role of the GM is to play the characters consistently with the actual dynamics – so NOT trying to hide them!! - but without explaining them either. Then Wits rolls can be a matter of player proactivity and not mysterious at all.