[Circle of Hands] Session Report: Karlsgard

[Nyhteg]

Players
There were two players in this game, with me as GM.
The players were my teenaged sons, Benjamin (17) and Joseph (15).
We've played a bunch of different RPGs together over the years (Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, S/Lay W/Me, My Life With Master, 3:16, InSpectres, a little bit of Primetime Adventures) but never an old school, D&D-style game of any kind; and the closest to a Swords and Sorcery, 'classic fantasy' type of setting has been S/Lay W/Me.
We were playing in the evening, sitting at the dinner table, after their younger brothers had gone to bed.

We'd created the Circle of six characters earlier in the week. This was our first session of CoH so after hearing the initial description of the adventure they chose one of the characters they'd personally created and we were good to go.

The characters were:
- Oda, a female Scholar-Wizard from Rolke (played by Benjamin); and
- Baldur, a male Merchant with Martial (high) experience from Spurr, carrying a White Tally which allows him to release and command a dead person's Spirit.

Scenario Prep

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
The mountain town of Karlsgard in Rolke has recently been taken over by Ortwin Half-Beard and his son, Marwin. Ortwin's own settlement of Torbheim was failing and, following his assault on the town, he has moved his people into Karlsgard. Out of misplaced fear of losing control of the locals, he now rules through cruelty and oppression - his own people are privileged, the locals downtrodden, starved and brutalised.

NPCs:
- Ortwin Half-Beard (5-2-4-8), gruff and paranoid chieftain of Karlsgard. Needs the locals to help re-establish the town but fears a rebellion against his rule. Still nursing a leg wound from the attack on Karlsgard.
- Marwin, son of Ortwin (9-8-4-5), a hulking giant (think of Kurgan from "Highlander" with Viking facial hair...) and his father's right hand man. He's content following his father's orders but also can't understand why they don't just kill all the locals and be done with it.

Tripwire:
If Ortwin or Marwin are killed, their men will panic and start going house to house, murdering every local they can find.

HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
By tradition, authority in Karlsgard is symbolised by custodianship of an ancient staff. This staff is unremarkable in itself, save that the headpiece is an actual glass lens, fashioned outside the Circle Lands some time in the distant past.
The staff is hidden in times of trouble to prevent it falling into enemy hands. At this time, no-one in town (with one exception) is sure where it is, and the incomers do not even know that it exists.

NPCs:
- Hartmut (8-4-5-2), stubborn, self-preserving farmer and the person who hid the staff prior to the Torbheimers' attack. Currently refuses to risk going to get the staff under any circumstances.
- Friederieke (2-4-8-5), priestess of the local faithful, wants to get the staff to the old chief's half-brother in Famberge to legitimise a counter-attack against Ortwin. Knows Hartmut hid the staff but doesn't know where and can't persuade him to reveal its location.

Tripwire:
If Hartmut ever feels endangered, he will seek to give the staff to Ortwin in return for his protection.

Summary of Play

I told the players that the scenario was set in Rolke and that Circle Knights had come to investigate reports of the cruelty and oppression being enacted in the town of Karlsgard by its new chieftain.

After a bit of opening description of the journey through the mountains, their characters approached the town - initially seeing peasants toiling in the fields and working to rebuild a breach in the town walls. They counted a dozen heads impaled on poles along the track up to the town, and at the gates found what later turned out to be the corpses of the old chieftain's wife and sons hanging crucified opposite the impaled head of the chief himself.

Once in the town, the PCs split up and found a couple of locals to engage with, gaining a view of both sides of the story of the town's 'change of management' and hearing a bit about the staff from Gilbert, the old fellow who kept (ie remembered) the town's history. As play unfolded, they saw some examples of the brutality of the current regime and started to form an opinion about the whole matter. High concept plans along the lines of "Let's kill the chief..." and "We should set fire to the longhouse..." were floated at this point.

Their C vs 12 rolls going well so far, they were shortly approached by Friederieke and asked for aid in getting Hartmut to reveal the location of the staff. At this point, things started to get a little messier...

Barging into Hartmut's hut, Oda opened the bidding by casting Rip without a single word of preamble - "Where is the staff?!" The roll for BQ damage was a maximum 6. Hartmut collapsed against the wall, eyes rolled up in his head, black bile spewing from his mouth as Oda got her one word answer: "Island". In retrospect I suppose I could have run this as a full conflict but the setup, with Oda already casting the spell as the door opened, seemed to not require it at the time.
Anyway, despite Baldur stepping in to heal the damage with a hasty casting of Balm, Friederieke was utterly horrified by all this and Hartmut was left a trembling wreck. The terrified farmer agreed to take them to the staff around midnight when darkness would keep them relatively safe form being spotted and killed by Ortwin's men. The PCs agreed to his terms.

Hartmut, however, was simply stalling. The Tripwire for this component was well and truly triggered at this point - Hartmut was going to make a break for the staff and hand it over to Ortwin at his earliest opportunity.

The PCs were drawn away from Hartmut and Friederieke, however, by an invitation to the chief's longhouse. They met with Ortwin and Marwin and were lightly grilled about their presence in the town. Staying on best behaviour, the C vs 12 rolls went the PCs' way again, although they did end up agreeing to help Ortwin suppress some of the more unruly local elements. They may have had their fingers crossed behind their backs but the chief certainly believed them. Before they could be held to this, however, everyone was drawn back outside by the sounds of a disturbance.

A crowd - of both locals and incomers - had gathered outside the longhouse with Friederieke and Hartmut at its head. They were noisily demanding that the PCs be cast from the town (or, indeed killed right there and then) as black wizards. With fear quickly turning to anger bordering on violence, Ortwin ordered the Knights to be seized and bound. At which point we had our first conflict of the game...

Oda spent a long time weighing up which spells might be best to get them out of the situation. In the end, Plan A was Hate, with Plan B being Wrath(!). I suppose they were unarmed and unarmoured after all, and the crowd was getting pretty threatening by then...
In any event, what actually happened was a demonstration by Marwin as to just what a total combat monster he was. Despite Baldur going full defence in order to try to cast Web, Marwin smashed him off his feet into Oda. Baldur was knocked unconscious by the impact, Oda took a couple of points of BQ but, more importantly, failed a Q vs 12 roll to retain her action.
Finding Oda at the bottom of the order with three guards still to act before anyone else got a look in, Oda's player pumped B to jump into first place but was closely followed by Marwin, who had B to spare. Needing to preserve B for spell casting, Oda couldn't follow suit and had to go full defence and pray for good dice as Marwin piled in. One roll and a moment later, Oda had joined Baldur in an unconscious heap on the floor...

They came round, in the darkness, tightly bound and imprisoned in a low-roofed storage shed. (Playing Haunts might have been cool, but a) it seemed a harsh way to go on a first outing; and b) I allowed the PCs to live at this point because, with their prior successful C vs 12 rolls and pledges to aid them, I figured Ortwin and Marwin might decide the PCs' wizardly fear-value might yet become an asset to them). With just enough B recovered to cast Balm, the PCs quickly freed themselves (Oda cast Blade to cut them free, and Ruin to break through the back wall of the hut), neutralised a pair of guards, and headed off with appropriated spears and shields to track down Hartmut.

Hartmut was gone however. He had tried to slip away from the crowd earlier but been cornered by Friederieke. In desperation, Hartmut had stabbed her and fled into the woods while chaos still reigned back at the longhouse. The PCs healed Friederieke's injuries (avoiding a lynching through a cunning combination of Cloud and Throng from Oda) and persuaded the old man, Gilbert to lead them to the "island" Harmut had 'mentioned' earlier.

Casting Perfect Senses and Forward, they made preternaturally good time through the pitch black forest to a glacial lake, high in the mountains above the town. A cluster of ruined stone buildings stood on a small island at its centre, reachable by a chain-pulled raft. The PCs cornered Hartmut on the island, staff in hand, and incapacitated him with a combination of Infect (a crippling attack of explosive diarrhoea...ew) and a quick bash from the the side of a shield. Leaving Hartmut unconscious on the island, they returned to shore, scuppered the raft and hurried back to town with the staff.

At the longhouse, they rang the iron bell to summon everyone out of their homes. After a debate between the players, Baldur handed the staff the Friederieke who, after some careful thought and some fierce laying down of terms, gave the staff to Ortwin in order to bring peace to the town. Ortwin was definitely the best man to be chieftain and the session ended with him lifting the staff in hand, and the whole town kneeling before him in fealty.

Post Mortem
So overall we enjoyed the game very much.
The players were really enthusiastic about the experience and said they definitely wanted to play again. Interestingly, when I said they couldn't play the same PCs again themselves, but could simply swap characters if they really wanted to, they immediately rejected the idea, keen to try out some of of the other Circle members instead.

As for play and rules and things...

It initially felt a bit slow getting started - although I was sure I had the workings of C rolls down pat, as we got going I felt in fact like I totally didn't have a clue.
What did "first interaction" mean..? Just walking up to someone? Saying something? Doing something, but not talking? Was it like a 'success roll'?
Took a little while to find my groove, but it smoothed out in the end. After a few NPCs emerged, it simply became a matter of any time the question of "how did they take that?" emerged I took a C roll to find out. Worked OK.

What I found in particular was that every once in a while, events started to lag a little. The players would lose momentum and start to get that "Ummm...now what...?" kind of air and instead of going into "Come on, what do you do?" mode (which would rapidly lead to fumbling around and 'investigating'), I quickly learned to simply hurl the NPCs at them. eg: They discussed what they'd found out and now..."er...", so along comes Friederieke. Hartmut has rolled over and now..."er...", so some guards turn up to invite them to see the chief. They've talked to the chief and now..."er...", so a crowd turns up outside baying for blood...
Don't know if it was how it was intended to function, but for us it worked very well.

The players were definitely, and understandably, in a "What can I do?" mode rather than a "Who am I?" mode. The PCs were very much 'tools' rather than 'people' during the game - traits and demeanours were not played to in the slightest. Oda, for example was 'Cunning' and 'Formal' on her sheet but definitely got played more 'Brutal' and 'Fierce', but what the hey? :)

The wizard did a lot of spell casting once the player got into his stride and swung from 8 white colour points at one stage all the way over to closing the game with a black Tally.

Overall, the rules played out smoothly. We found a few questions nonetheless (mostly about spells), but nothing that broke our fun:

- Was the Infect spell played correctly? Instant stomach 'flu seemed like it just about fitted with the spell description but I wasn't sure.

- We noticed that the paralysis spell doesn't particularly paralyse. Target spends a point of B and nothing happens. I appreciate that's not always a small thing, but it did feel odd at the time. "Paralyse! Oh. Well that was a let down..."

- How dependant is spell casting on free movement? When the PCs were tied up, I let the cast spells anyway despite the inability to gesture and utilise spell components and such. Was that OK and in keeping?

- How dependant is spell casting on range, physical contact, LOS? I allowed, for example, a casting of Infect, at distance, with the target hidden behind a rock but clearly perceivable due to Perfect Senses. Seemed OK at the time, but it made me wonder though.

- What happens to the 'entourage' during a scenario? The PCs really wanted to armour up and get their weapons after escaping from capture...but where was their stuff? I granted them Wits rolls at one die to try to work out where they were in town in the dark - which they totally failed so they ended up having no idea. Is that the way to handle it?

- Regarding advancement, the current draft is ambiguous. It suggests rolling against every stat of 9 or less but also says "or choose one and risk it?". I had the players roll against every stat, which worked OK - some misses, some improvements for both PCs.

- Nothing at all, really, but it amused me: the players immediately and spontaneously started calling 'BQ damage'...'Barbecue Damage'..!

Finally, regarding end of play.
There came a point where I simply stopped using mechanics.
They had the staff, they'd got back to town and had gathered the all the people to the longhouse; importantly there was no immediate hunger for more conflict from the players, so I just said "Well, OK. What is it you want to happen?" The players had a discussion - they weren't in a agreement at all initially - and ended up saying "We want Ortwin to stop being such a dick and everything to work out peacefully; and we're giving the staff to Friederieke so that will happen".
So, again without feeling any need to roll, I narrated things along those lines until everyone started nodding and going "Yeah! Circle Knights save the day. We rock!" and so we stopped.

G

[Mitch R]

Sounds like a really fun adventure, and with your two boys to boot!  Awesome.

Just regarding your ending: our sessions seemed to end similarly, too.  I wonder if the game mechanics of CoH just leads to that kind of a thing.  You're told to wrap up once you get to a point where things seemed to have "ended" - so once it's been decided that the "end" has been reached, you're free to make stuff up, narrate a story, etc. to wrap it up.  I kind of like it.  I also know that Ron has been asking about ending play - so I thought that I'd jot this down in case he takes a look.

- Mitch

[Ron Edwards]

All great feedback and I'll second Mitch about your awesome family role-playing.\

I'm focusing on writing for a bit so need to stop myself from intensive dialogue here - I'm reading all the time, though, everyone, so don't stop posting.

[Joshua Bearden]

Gethyn,

That has to be one of the most enjoyable AP's I've read in a long time.  I'm going to study it just for advice on how to write APs.

[Nyhteg]

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Much appreciated.

Forgot to mention one additional thing about 'emergent terminology' and rules-in-action.

In addition to the 'Barbecue Damage' thing (*eyeroll*), during combats we fell into using the term 'Split' to describe the allocation of Q between attack and defence. as in: "OK, it's a clash - what's your Split?"
The convention we arrived at for the response was simply the two numbers, stated attack-then-defence:
"What's your Split?"
"Eight four."
"Cool. He's going one nine. Let's roll it..."

Working on our second scenario now; it's a three component setup in Tamaryon - Humanitarian Crisis, Local Tensions, Rbaja Presence...
I expect I'll post the prep and session report in due course.

G

[Ron Edwards]

I totally forgot to address these ...

- Was the Infect spell played correctly? Instant stomach 'flu seemed like it just about fitted with the spell description but I wasn't sure.

I think it's OK. I should probably specify precise permissible effects of the spell as such, regardless of the disease.

- We noticed that the paralysis spell doesn't particularly paralyse. Target spends a point of B and nothing happens. I appreciate that's not always a small thing, but it did feel odd at the time. "Paralyse! Oh. Well that was a let down..."

I'm thinking of changing the name, or reconsidering the spell. As it stands, it's simply a way to make a character spend B, but that's not really a bad thing. My current thought is to bump the character to the end of the order line, so the "recovery" is automatic, and maybe rename it "Palsy." So it's more of a spasm and less of a "freeze!"

- How dependant is spell casting on free movement? When the PCs were tied up, I let the cast spells anyway despite the inability to gesture and utilise spell components and such. Was that OK and in keeping?

That's a good question. I don't want the movements of spells to impose constraints on what can and cannot be done, but I do want the Color of such movements to be validated. My take is that if any movement is possible, then the spellcasting is possible without penalty or concern. The idea is that casting a spell is not a fixed and absolute routine, but that some ritualized and symbolic action is required. So if you're tied up, then a word; if you're gagged, then a motion of the fingers ... basically anything: a symbol drawn on the ground with your toe, whatever.

H'mm ... is absolute, motionless, silenced spellcasting worth a whole rule?

- How dependant is spell casting on range, physical contact, LOS? I allowed, for example, a casting of Infect, at distance, with the target hidden behind a rock but clearly perceivable due to Perfect Senses. Seemed OK at the time, but it made me wonder though.

Perfect Senses is made for exactly this sort of thing.

- What happens to the 'entourage' during a scenario? The PCs really wanted to armour up and get their weapons after escaping from capture...but where was their stuff? I granted them Wits rolls at one die to try to work out where they were in town in the dark - which they totally failed so they ended up having no idea. Is that the way to handle it?

Exactly. The entourage should be mentally accounted for by the GM, but not too terribly hard to get to under ordinary circumstances. It is not, however, hovering invisibly in the air to be drawn upon at any moment.

Whereas what you're describing has less to do with the entourage being unaccounted for, and more to do with being lost. That latter is a crucial issue of its own with or without armor, with or without the entourage, and with or without any other desired outcomes.

- Regarding advancement, the current draft is ambiguous. It suggests rolling against every stat of 9 or less but also says "or choose one and risk it?". I had the players roll against every stat, which worked OK - some misses, some improvements for both PCs.

It should be choose one, period - that's a recent revision.

- Nothing at all, really, but it amused me: the players immediately and spontaneously started calling 'BQ damage'...'Barbecue Damage'..!

All the annoying initials will be scrubbed as a late-stage writing step and the various things will be given real names.

[Moreno R.]

- How dependant is spell casting on free movement? When the PCs were tied up, I let the cast spells anyway despite the inability to gesture and utilise spell components and such. Was that OK and in keeping?

That's a good question. I don't want the movements of spells to impose constraints on what can and cannot be done, but I do want the Color of such movements to be validated. My take is that if any movement is possible, then the spellcasting is possible without penalty or concern. The idea is that casting a spell is not a fixed and absolute routine, but that some ritualized and symbolic action is required. So if you're tied up, then a word; if you're gagged, then a motion of the fingers ... basically anything: a symbol drawn on the ground with your toe, whatever.

H'mm ... is absolute, motionless, silenced spellcasting worth a whole rule?

From you description, it seems that the important point is to able to "do something that communicate something"

I like the idea that even a blindfolded, hand-tied and gagged sorcerer could cast a spell by simply walking around creating patterns on the ground, or any other manner that has to be described and "created" by the player: "this is the situation of you character: do you want to cast a spell? How do you do it?", requiring a creative answer.

I don't like a "You always can, just say how you do it" answer, because it usually tend to become "don't bother describing how you do it" in play

A totally immobilized and silenced spell caster should not be able to cast spells, but in play, in practice, that should be "the player was not able to describe a credible way for the character to cast the spell"

[Nyhteg]

Thanks, Ron.

Just to clarify your clarification...

It should be choose one, period

...is that choose one to roll against, or choose one to automatically go up a point?

G

[Ron Edwards]

Choose one to roll against, win or lose, live with the result.

[Ron Edwards]

So, regarding endings, I'm not sure what to say about what I'm reading here except that it's not what I am designing toward. Specifically, the idea that at some point, you all stop playing and then story-conference a bit about who does what, how they react, and what happens. Clearly I'm failing to communicate something important about the ending of a session, and I'm trying to figure out how to say it.

For now, my hope is that all play is real play, without any "stepping out" or higher-level above-the-fray descriptions. Real play finishes, and then the screen fades to black, or you close the book's covers, or however you want to see that.

After that, then the overall success or failure is described by the GM, which is above-the-fray, but not a conference, there's no offering of ideas or give-and-take. I'm seeing some stumbling about this in my own games as well, at least in the sense of, "Hey, we killed the big bad, so wait, you want me to do what?" Whereas I'm expecting people to stay focused on the characters' own reasons for being there and personal reactions that have arisen from being there, big fight or no big fight. I suppose the best way to put it is that the characters don't know "it's over," so what do they do?

[Mitch R]

Ron:

Are you saying that you keep playing the game as you did the whole session, and then at some point the GM decides that things are done, and then HE/SHE wraps things up (with no input from the players)?

In our sessions, John made it clear in some way, shape or form, that we had finished (to whatever extent), and then we (in character, still) decided what we did.  So:

When we finished in the Spider-Hag's lair, we decided to kill everyone there, and the two PCs decided what we would do after that (our characters, that is) - we planned it, and then John "let that happen".  We went back to town, told everyone that they all died, and made some strong suggestions about how they should handle themselves in the future.

When we finished our second adventure - with the young witch - again John had indicated somehow (I don't exactly remember) that things had come to a close, and again - in character, we decided what to do and explained it to the townsfolk (after some commiseration between players).  John thought about it, shrugged his shoulders, and said something to the effect of: "I see no reason to believe that they wouldn't accept your proposal."

In both cases, even though the GM decided the ending point, it was the players who constructed the fiction around the ending.  If this is wrong, according to your vision of the rules, how would you have conducted these two endings differently?

- Mitch

[Ron Edwards]

I'm still figuring, Mitch, because I need to distinguish between play which tells me how I should be writing rules, and play which lets me know I haven't implemented the rules right, or conceived them well enough to begin with. And that sentence applies to my own playtesting as well as what you guys are very rightly describing. So, I'm deciding whether doing X is obviously the right way to do it and I should simply describe it and say so, or whether I really want people to do Y ... and hope that whatever dynamics that lead to X can be overcome. Or something in between.

That's why I've been hesitant about posting regarding the topic, because I'm still poking the mud. A lot more stuff clouded the water than I anticipated.

[Nyhteg]

Ron, hi

For now, my hope is that all play is real play, without any "stepping out" or higher-level above-the-fray descriptions.

I'm only 99% sure (we played a little while ago, now, so I'm trying to remember the exact process) but in summarising play in my post I've almost certainly ended up over-stressing the "story conference" aspect. The discussion between the players at that point was essentially no different than the discussion they had over what they should do to get out of the impending mob scene earlier in the game (ie what the hell are we going to do now?).

At the end of the game, they had the staff...the whole town was looking at them...they weren't sure what to do next...so they were talking about it.
The "How do you want things to end?" aspect was my input to focus their thoughts on their next actions in game, rather than any sort of "what story shall we tell to wrap it all up in a bow".
The players finished their discussion and said "Right. We want Ortwin to chill out and for things to work out peacefully..." and I said "Fine. So what is it you decide to actually do..?"

And the players simply gave the staff to Friederieke and stood back to see what she did with it.

I considered what they were hoping for, considered what I knew about the NPCs involved and figured actually, yes she probably would hand it over to the new Chieftain to bring peace rather than more death. If she'd got the staff in secret, she'd have fled with it for sure...but in public like this, she had to rethink. I didn't see any further rolling was required to resolve that process, and things seemed to be done so we ended it there with the narration I described previously. I could, I suppose, have made a C vs 12 roll for Friederieke or something, but I didn't because it felt like we were finished - although reflecting on it now perhaps that was a mistake. I think I didn't want a new conflict breaking out from a whiffed roll, but actually if Freiderieke had failed a C vs 12, Ortwin could, for instance, have accepted the staff from her then killed her as a final act to seal his authority. Players could have reacted to that or not, as they chose to. Which could have been super cool in an emphatically brutal sort of a way in itself...so I'll definitely be bearing that in mind for the future.


So there we are. Even with clarification that still may be - and probably is - a long way from what you're aiming for.
I'm not totally sure what you are aiming for other than "keep playing until you stop", but it's clear you're working it all through and I know it'll come out in the wash. :)

I'm hoping to run a second session soon so I'll report back on that too and we'll see if it plays out any differently.

G

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks Gethyn - that helps me dial back some of my reading interpretation.