The Forge Archives

Set Up
Our group of 30-somethings has been playing a D&D (3.5) Eberron campaign once a month for about a year now (we meet once a week for other games, including BESM and Werewolf). I'd been burning to give The Shadows of Yesterday a try, and when a couple folks cancelled out of this month's game because of summer plans, I saw this pause in the plot as a chance for a one-shot. The gang was up for it, especially when I told them the concept for this side story.

Earlier, the regular cast of player characters had left Sharn (the biggest city in the campaign) just a few steps ahead of some nasty conspirators. While the party went on a hunt for lost ruins in a western mountain range, allies in Sharn would arrange for lookalikes to cover for them and throw the conspirators off their scent. For this evening's one-shot, the players would take on the roles of changelings (an Eberronian race of lesser doppelgangers) masquerading as their usual characters.

I started off explaining the basic rules of TSOY, but about five minutes into that I thought better of it and said, "Okay, casting time." We went around the table and talked out loud about who the characters would be, their names (especially fun, as in Eberron changelings have a tradition of one-syllable names), their "schtick," and how they related to the Tyrants (the changeling criminal organization in Sharn). Once we had names, I used the process of filling in the rest of the character sheet to introduce the other rules: pools, abilities, secrets, keys. We ended up with:

Sim: A "face dancer," and a very professional member of the Tyrants. Sim took the Key of the Impostor, a real challenge since he'd be trying to pass himself off as a kalashtar soulknife (a special warrior of a telepathic race), the player's usual character. With the goal of duping a race of telepaths in mind, we agreed he could have a Secret of the Shadowed Mind, allowing him to use his Deceit skill to resist mind readers.

Parr: "Not a ne'er do well, but a never did well," this changeling was a frequent hire of the Tyrants but could never get "made" while he jumped from con to con. We created the Key of the Grifter for his character (the more he gets somebody to give up, the more xp he'd earn). Parr would be imitating the player's usual character, an ambitious heir of House Orien.

Lyn: This changeling was a made Tyrant and a gambling professional. Card counting, shilling, provoking—whatever the house needed to keep other people from winning, she could do it. She took the Key of Fraternity for Parr. She also took a secret we decided to call the Secret of Parkour, or "the art of running away." If you've seen the opening chase sequence from Casino Royale, that's what parkour is. Since Sharn is a vertical city of towers, the whole group was quite enthusiastic about the idea. Lyn would be passing herself off as the player's usual character, an artificer from Morgrave University.

Dare: Pronounced "DAH-ray," this was a gnome "facilitator," an enforcer whose handiwork looks like an accident or act of nature. He was working off a debt with the Tyrants based on "a blown assignment," and would be imitating the regular cast's gnomish bard. We created the Key of Indentured Servitude for Dare, which would give him xp based on how much he contributed to the Tyrants' agenda.

The Game
The players knew before the game started that their stand-ins had been attacked by an anti-kalashtar mob. As an "opening credits" sequence, I described how this faux-party was to go from the city gates to the Overlook neighborhood, the first step in establishing the treasure-hunters' alibis. As the faux-characters were nearing their destination, two thugs jumped out of a shop entrance and sandbagged Sim (in his kalashtar guise). Only after they had him down did the mob come around the corner, pointing and charging. One of the assailants pulled an ornate dagger and stuck it in Sim's back, and then both of them fled back into the shop. I should note that since I had imposed the beating on Sim by fiat (we all knew it was coming), he took no actual Harm, but instead was encouraged to "play up" his wounds. He did so, admirably.

"Okay," I said, "your pal is pummeled and bleeding, the assailants just ran into the shop, and the mob is coming at you. Go." At this point, I turned over the reins.

The players surprised me a bit—I expected them to pick Sim up and flee down the street. Instead, they grabbed him by the ankles and ran into the shop the thugs had come out of. It turned out to be a tailor's shop, and there were some great bits of business with bolts of cloth and a beaded curtain as the party tried simultaneously to lock the front door and pursue the thugs out the back. They managed to capture one of the thugs on a bridge after a daring bit of acrobatics by Lyn. The thug had been hired by a dangerous halfling of the Boromar family, Sharn's biggest criminal gang. This caused the players some concern, since in their other incarnations they had enjoyed relatively peaceful contact with the Boromar. They took Sim to get healed (fun interlude with a gnomish priest of Olladra), dropped the assassin's knife off for identification (fun bit of business with Tyrant blind-drop hand signals), and got in touch with their Tyrant boss to set up a meeting with the Boromar.

The confrontation with Halak Boromar turned out to be the big confrontation of the evening, and it came down to a card game between him and Lyn. If Lyn won, Halak would call "this kalashtar" (Sim, hitting his Key of the Impostor) off-limits for one week. If Halak won, he'd keep Sim as a guest for a week, so that if the sponsor of the contract wanted to hit him again, "This time, I don't miss." Bonus dice flew in abundance. If I'd been thinking clearly, I'd have asked Lyn's player to turn this into a Bring Down the Pain, since she was the one player nominally familiar with those rules. As it was, she won the skill challenge handily, and Halak was embarassed. He grudgingly sent them on their way (though without telling them who the sponsor of the hit was).

After leaving the Boromar stronghold, the fancy knife was ready for them to pick up. It had been identified as a very expensive, exotic blade designed specifically for killing kalashtar—fortunately, the fatal magic had ignored Sim. The party delivered the knife to the kalashtar community in Overlook, where it was revealed that the blade could only have come from the Riedran ambassador, whose people had a special vendetta against the kalashtar. Perhaps the Tyrants could help arrange some payback...?

On that tantalizing note, we had to wrap up the game.

Wrap Up
Over all, everybody had a fun time. The character creation and rules explanation took about an hour, followed by about 3 hours of play. We had a chance to discuss what we liked about the evening and it was observed that:

• The "casting session" was fun, especially the collaborative creation (and naming) of characters' secrets. There was a great sense of ownership about these "one-shot" characters.
• The players got really creative with the characters' skills. Dare used his Alchemy to stinkbomb a bridge, Lyn used Acrobatics to cut off a thug's escape, and so forth. I think there was a great sense that they could do what they wanted (though this still translated more into tasks, rather than plot-changing).
• The players also like the "setting the stakes" approach to dice rolls, since it fit fairly well with our habit in other systems of colorfully describing successes.

There were a few other things that struck us as odd:

• There were far fewer dice rolls. Subduing the thug only took three checks (pursuit, block, and tackle), and nobody took any actual Harm all evening. There was a great deal of agreeing a player's action succeeded because we thought it was cool and/or expedient.
• As a DM, I'm used to saying, "Make a Spot check," to point things out to players and lead them somewhere else. With no Spot mechanic in TSOY, I had to either button my lip or drop the coyness and say, "Hey, the thug is over there, getting away."
• After all the discussion of how to refresh pools, no one actually ran out of points during our (brief) session. We probably could have spent more.
• Everybody hit their original key at least once, and two players picked up new keys (of fraternity and impostor) during the game. But no one seemed to go out of their way to pursue keys. Perhaps they were waiting more for my lead?

As I said, had I thought of it, the big card game probably should have been a Bring Down the Pain. Still, the players thought the TSOY rules were perfect for a session set in an urban environment like Sharn, though they expressed doubt that it would be appropriate for the dungeons. There was even a token motion to use D&D for combat, and "these new rules for everything else." Quickly voted down, of course, but it was a high compliment to suggest it in our group. Given the fun we had with these characters, I'm hoping we get a chance to pull them out again some time down the road.[/list]