[TSOY] Crimson Sands

[Robert Ahrens]

Just thought I'd share:

I put together an alternate setting for TSOY - a pulpish sword'n'sorcery world named Crimson Sands.

A draft setting document (meant to server in place of the Near document) can be found here:

www.geocities.com/mindangels/crimson_sands/index.html

I'd be greatful for any feedback or suggestions peole have to offer, although the game starts Monday so I've probably left it too late.

I may post some thoughts about adventure ideas, kickers and/or problems I have with the game to this thread too.

Thanks!

- Scorpio Rising.

[Andy Kitkowski]

I mentioned this to you personally, but I think that this is the best idea ever, and needs to be in everyone's "Setting One Page" as a player handout: A "Top Ten Things you Need to Know":

(from the site, above)

Ten Things You Need To Know About Crimson Sands

The following section will be fleshed out at some point.

1) This is a sword & sorcery game.

2) PCs are strongly protagonized

3) This game is open source

4) We are not using the published setting

5) Character concept = good, but don't engrave it in stone.

6) The rules are pretty simple.

7) There is no such thing as "the party".

8)This is a work in progess

9) I don't know what I'm doing either...

[Robert Ahrens]

So five players came over Monday and made PCs for this game.

Four of the players have been gaming together for years and are part of an epic 4 year campaign of Vampire The Dark Ages which is in its bazillionth episode.  The fifth player is my s/o.

I started by giving an (extremely) potted overview of GNS theory, just so I could stress what "Narrativism" is supposed to be and use that to talk about how I think TSOY is intended to be played.  

I'm glad I did.  I felt like putting that on the table helped people to be able to view playing TSOY as a kind of experiment, something we were collaboratively engaged in.  So far, that seems to be a good thing.

Then we talked over the game system a bit, especially Keys and the Conflict system (including BDTP).  

Finally, we talked about the setting a bit and started making characters.  People went around the table and listed concepts they were interested in.  We workshopped them a bit, discussed possible Keys and Secrets, and talked about ways that they could be connected to the other PCs.  I asked the players to deliberately avoid "partying up" but to create a couple of connections between their character and the others.  

The finished PCs looked like:

Sajirah [Josh C]
Born a slave in the harems of the Yellow City, Sajirah has worked her way up to a kind of almost-freedom, as a courtesan-assassin serving the vicelord Zoran.  Sajirah has just learned that the Iron Legionaire, Lieutentant Bothan, who owns the lien on her sister, Zala, is will be returning north in two days time, taking Zala with him.

Ahsan [Tim]
One of the few remaining members of the bloodline of old Tan Silat, Ahsan was trained as a dune sailor by the Qarimi of the Dune Seas but now he has turned against them and raids them as a pirate.  He is associated with Fathiel the Slaver and sworn enemies with the Dune Sailors.  Ahsan dreams of one day making Yarsht his power base for an attempt to reclaim the throne of Timora and oust Goran Zuur.

Amira, aka "Mori" [Sarah]
A princess from one of the major houses in the Theocracy of Rama, Amira has fled from an arranged marriage.  She has come to Yarsht seeking an old family friend, Ianos, who was exiled for political reasons.  She seeks magic to undo the soul-binding rituals which link her to her betrothed.  Ianos has told her (or may be about to tell her) of a Qarimi mystic named Chaloni who may be able to help her.  She is watched over, and nagged by, the spirit of her late father.

Akantha [Mary]
Amira's aunt (I think) and old tutor.  Akantha is a Priestess of the Ramanite faith and an accomplished Necromancer.  When Amira ran away, Akantha lobbied her parents for the job of pursuing her; her motivation is a mixture of affection for the child and a curiosity as to what would make one break such a strong taboo.  However, upon arriving in Yarsht, Akantha has lost her boon companion, the ghost of her lover, Vladimir, who has been stolen from her by an unknown Krethaani girl with strange powers.

Chaloni [Josh M]
The Qarimi mystic Chaloni lost his tribe when they were betrayed and wiped out by other tribes of the Dune Sea, working in concert with agents of Goran Zuur.  In the carnage, the tribe's most powerful artefact - an ancient torque which allows the wearer to bring the dreamtime into the waking world - was stolen.  Chaloni wandered long years seeking the torque, but eventually settled in Yarsht after a vision revealled to him that the torque would eventually come there.  He has struck up an acquaitanceship (perhaps a friendship?) with Ahsan, based on a mutual dislike of the Qarimi tribes and a mutual interest in important artefacts.

I'm pretty happy with them.

Next: Bangs.

- Scorpio happy.

[Judd]

Looks fantastic, man.

Can't wait to see the bangs you cook up.

I'll be around to contribute, without a doubt.

[James_Nostack]

you know, the semi-official TSOY wiki now has a section for example worlds if you want to post this stuff.  if you're playing on-line, posting a log might make for a great example of play!

[Robert Ahrens]

Some beginning thoughts about Kickers:

This game is entitled The Pillars of Yarsht.  The basic setup:  Yarsht is a trade town near the south end of the Crimson Sands.  It stands on the flank of a south-facing hill, overlooking the Dune Sea - a vast mass of quicksand which is unnavigable by anyone save the Dune Sailors and their silken rafts.  There, the Dune Sailors come in to port with vegetables and fruits from the Vale of Brinn, spices and herbs from Farthest, and greater exotica from the distant lands of the south, or from fabled Zanat'lan -- the secret holy city of the Qarimi, rumoured to lie at the center of the Dune Sea.

The initial instructions to the players were that all characters had to be

a) in Yarsht at the start of play
b) not about to take the first camel out of town
c) motivated to be doing something.

The last one's the tricky one.  I told players that I "something momentous" was going to happen in Yarsht.  Their PCs should either be interested in doing something about it (ie. because they have a general interest in Yarsht -- such as The Key of Community Membership: Yarsht) or else have some other pressing matter they have to attend to during the crisis.

With that in mind, let's review what the PCs have:

Sajirah
Key of the Kicker: Rescue my sister.  
Sarirah's sister, Zala, came with her to Yarsht as a slave.  Sajirah worked her way out from bondage but Zala hasn't, yet.  Sajirah's activities as an assassin have been salting away money with which she hoped to buy her sister's freedom.  But before that could happen she has learned that the Iron Legion are receiving relief forces and that Lt Boran, who owns Zala, will be returning north to the distant (and terrible) city of Iron Gate in about 72 hours.

Key of Community Membership: Yarsht.
Sajirah has made Yarsht her home for several years (as yet unspecified).  As such, she has this Key and will be able to milk XP from it by doing anything about the upcoming catastrophe (see below).

Relationship: Servant of Zoran, the vicelord.
Not reinforced by an explicit Key, but Sajirah is indentured to Zoran, one of the six Merchant-Princes who effectively rule Yarsht.  Zoran is going to take advantage of the catastrophe to send her after some of his political enemies.  Of course, this is tough for Sajirah, who would doubtless rather be working on freeing Zala.

Ahsan
Key of Community Membership: Yarsht.
Although captain of his own Dune Ship, Ahsan calls Yarsht his home.  He also dreams of one day rising to prominence there, making it the foundation for his bid to reclaim the Timoran throne.  So he also has a direct interest in the Community's future.

Key of Enemies: The Dune Sailors.
Tim chose this because he thought it fitted his character's roguish lifestyle.  I'm a little worried by it because I don't know how to run it.  If he just has a big bunch of enemies then it's hard to imagine him being motivated to really move against them -- at least, in any way other than just getting into casual bar brawls and whatnot, which isn't terribly dramatic after a while.

My two thoughts for this Key are:
1) Encourage him to pick a specific Enemy amongst the Dune Sailors, someone whom he can have an active and ongoing conflict with that will add some narrative verve to the tale.
2) Make his Enemies varied and numerous, but allow Tim (the player) to control when they show up in scenes -- a kind of Director Stance that will allow him to complicate his character's life any time he wants extra XP juice.

Thoughts?

Amira, aka "Maari"
NB - I misspelt Amira's nom de crime above.  It's meant to be an anagram of her real name.  D'oh.
Key of the Bonded Soul:
Amira has undergone two out of the three rituals necessary to soul-bond her to her betrothed.  The bonding is a standard part of marriage amongst the nobility of Rama, and lasts beyond death, throughout eternity.  (I'll also point out that Sarah came up with this out of whole cloth; I think it rocks.)  Amira's main goal is to find some way to undo the effects of the two rituals and regain her independence.

Key of the Coward:
Amira is 15 and from a background where she rarely had to risk real danger.  She's in totally unfamiliar country and at the moment everything scares her.  This is a good, general Key which pertains broadly, and it's notable because I'm not sure any of the other PCs quite have one like it.  Sarah has already expressed her interest in having Amira "go beyond" cowardice.  I look fwd to seeing the scene where she conquers it and buys off this Key.

Relationship:
Amira has been staying for the last day or so with Ianos, an exile from Rama who lives in Yarsht.  Ianos is the lover of the Warden Of The Market, an ancient Qarimi (whose name I don't recall), who in turn is mixed up in some political shit in Yarsht.  So there's room for some stuff here, although quite what I'm not sure.

Ok.

That's all I have time for right now.  I'll get to Akantha and Chaloni in my next post.

- Scorpio should be working.

[Robert Ahrens]

The game "kicks off" with the rise of (what will become infamous as) The Pillars of Yarsht -- three massive cyclopean pillars of disgustingly weathered limestone, looking almost organic, bursting from the desert floor and shattering the desert town.

Player action begins in the immediate post-calamity:

Amira

Ianos, whom she is visiting, gets severly wounded by a falling pot in the quake.  He is bleeding out.  Amira must look for someone to save him in the chaos.

Ramanites are not well-received in the Crimson Sands.  The sight of one in such close proximity to a terrible disaster could easily provoke a mob.

Amira's father is with her.  He can probably sense the spirits of the Terrible Place beneath the pillars, calling to him.  This would cause him to bail, or even to get sucked away from her, at a time when she needs him most.

The same Krethaani mystic who (inadvertantly) kidnapped Akantha's lover, Vladimir, might recognize Amira as the same thing and attack her too -- or attempt to capture her for knowledge about Vladimir's possession of a host body.

If Amira goes looking for Ianos's lover, Phyton, Warden of the Market, someone has taken the opportunity caused by the confusion to bump the old fellow off.   Perhaps she'll get the blame (see above).

At some point, someone needs to mention Chaloni to Amira so she can begin looking for him.

Ahhhhhh.  These bangs are crap.  It's late and I'm tired.

- Scorpio going to bed in disgust.

[Judd]

Forgive me, man.  I am writing bangs from the hip here, not having carefully read your setting.  Let me know if these are at all useful.

Sajirah [Josh C]
Born a slave in the harems of the Yellow City, Sajirah has worked her way up to a kind of almost-freedom, as a courtesan-assassin serving the vicelord Zoran. Sajirah has just learned that the Iron Legionaire, Lieutentant Bothan, who owns the lien on her sister, Zala, is will be returning north in two days time, taking Zala with him.

Sajirah is sent to kill a favored slave of one of Zoran's enemies.  She notices that the slave is wearing a favor from her sister and when she approaches for the kill is writing her a poem/marriage proposal.

A group of household kitchen slaves come to Sajirah with a problem.  Their master is dead by poison and they know they will be killed of the assassin isn't brought to justice.  Knowing that she both worked as a slave and has her hands in the death trade, they hope she will aid them.

Ahsan [Tim]
One of the few remaining members of the bloodline of old Tan Silat, Ahsan was trained as a dune sailor by the Qarimi of the Dune Seas but now he has turned against them and raids them as a pirate. He is associated with Fathiel the Slaver and sworn enemies with the Dune Sailors. Ahsan dreams of one day making Yarsht his power base for an attempt to reclaim the throne of Timora and oust Goran Zuur.

A local friend tells Ahsan that his long time First Mate has been press ganged into service with Qarimi.

Ahsan's first captain in the Qarimi and his crew have taken the dock right next to his own vessel.  Their crews have been insulting each other all morning and finall knives are drawn and a fight breaks out.  The captain from the other ship is not present...what does Ahsan do?

Amira, aka "Mori" [Sarah]
A princess from one of the major houses in the Theocracy of Rama, Amira has fled from an arranged marriage. She has come to Yarsht seeking an old family friend, Ianos, who was exiled for political reasons. She seeks magic to undo the soul-binding rituals which link her to her betrothed. Ianos has told her (or may be about to tell her) of a Qarimi mystic named Chaloni who may be able to help her. She is watched over, and nagged by, the spirit of her late father.

The ambassador of Rama has had Chaloni arrested, claiming she put a curse on his embassy and her evil spirits are plaguing his home.

Ianos challenges a young buck who will clearly kill him to a knife duel for the honor of his love who was insulted by X.

Akantha [Mary]
Amira's aunt (I think) and old tutor. Akantha is a Priestess of the Ramanite faith and an accomplished Necromancer. When Amira ran away, Akantha lobbied her parents for the job of pursuing her; her motivation is a mixture of affection for the child and a curiosity as to what would make one break such a strong taboo. However, upon arriving in Yarsht, Akantha has lost her boon companion, the ghost of her lover, Vladimir, who has been stolen from her by an unknown Krethaani girl with strange powers.

A rumor crops up of a Kethraani girl who has been made pregnant by a dead man's spirit and none are sure how to midwife the pregnancy.  Akantha could be consulted.  Yes, it is the spirit of Vladimir, stuck in the body of a slave who impregnated the Krethaani girl.

Akantha realizes she has been followed to the city by an agent of the family from whom Amira broke betrothal with...

Chaloni [Josh M]
The Qarimi mystic Chaloni lost his tribe when they were betrayed and wiped out by other tribes of the Dune Sea, working in concert with agents of Goran Zuur. In the carnage, the tribe's most powerful artefact - an ancient torque which allows the wearer to bring the dreamtime into the waking world - was stolen. Chaloni wandered long years seeking the torque, but eventually settled in Yarsht after a vision revealled to him that the torque would eventually come there. He has struck up an acquaitanceship (perhaps a friendship?) with Ahsan, based on a mutual dislike of the Qarimi tribes and a mutual interest in important artefacts.

Chaloni learns that there is a duel brewing between a well known local knife fighter and an old man due to an insult in the market place against the Warden of the Market over a bidding war over mysterious Torque.

Everyone who has ever seen the Torque in the city find themselves drawn into the same dream, all gathered in the market place where all of the stalls are covered in blood.

[Robert Ahrens]

Judd, those are great.

I'm running tonight, so I'm in the wierd bind where I don't have time to post all the descriptions and thoughts I have -- it's better used doing more prep.

I will try and flesh out some of the commentary here and talk about stuff more tomorrow or Weds.

Definitely stealing some of your bangs though.  Thanks very much.

- Scorpio overworked.

[Judd]

It was absolutely my pleasure.  Bangs are fun, espcially with the rich backdrop you and the players have provided.  Great stuff.

Please post how it goes, in terms of bangs and system.  I'm thoroughly intrigued.

[Robert Ahrens]

Hoo boy.

Okay.  We ran last night for the first time.  Overall, I'd say it was a qualified success, although some issues came up.  

I'm just going to bullet point some things I observed, then get to Bangs, Kickers and the like in a minute.

Abilities
In play the limiting effect of Abilities became pretty readily apparent.  Most of the PCs only had 3s in their good Abilities and this meant most rolls were topping out at Good Successes (SL2).  The one player who'd invested in a 4 did get some Great Successes and used the extra dice (from rollovers) pretty well.

One thing that I found hard to know in play was what different Abilities could and couldn't be used for.  People kept wanting to use their Storytelling to convince others, or their Sway to influence a crowd (whereas the game text makes it clear that Sway is for influencing individuals and Orate is for crowds).  

What caused a disconnect for me was that the ability descriptions in the book are quite clear, and provide strong guidelines for what abilties do, but the rules for Contests and BDTP are much more loosey-goosey and seem to indicate that you can apply an ability in whatever way it seems pertinent to the conflict.  At least, that's my reading of them; it may not have been Clinton's intention.

In practice, I decided to just roll with it and let players use, eg. Storytelling to convince crowds, etc.  However, this irked me because of the presence of the other skills.  Moreover, it tended to mean that players were very keen to justify how their few good skills were pertinent to everything.  "Since I'm talking to another priest can I use Pray to influence him, rather than Sway ... I can impress him with my holiness."  This seemed related to the fact that the difference between an ability of 1 and one of 4 is so extreme.

I tried to allow people to use Abilities to generate bonus dice for secondary rolls, with the secondary rolls being more pertinent Abilities.  It worked ok.

Overall, I find I'm a little confused about TSOY's Abilities.  If it's not rude, I'd like to compare to the models of two other games:  In the Angel RPG there are only 18 Skills and each one is very broad and encompassing:  Getting Medieval covers all weapons fighting, Knowledge covers all Knowledge stuff, Influence rules social interaction, etc.  So it's clear what's what.  In Unknown Armies, by contrast, players make their own Skills up but the skills are meant to be very inclusive and the GM is encouraged to apply them to whatever they might fit with.  So I might use my Military Training to intimidate someone by being unflinching and having a steely glint in my eye, etc.

TSOY seems to have the kind of character-defined Abilities you see in UA, particularly the "cultural specific" abilities, but more of an Angel approach in the ability write-ups, prescribing specific boundaries between skill uses.

Specific things I had a hard call to make on were:

Can a priest use Pray to represent knowledge of his religion?

Can a trained knife fighter with no Aim skill use Struggle to throw her weapon?

Can Sway be used to calm a terrified mob, if you start using it one person at a time on those around you?

I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on the above.

Hazards vs Contests
The TSOY resolution mechanic is kind of pinched from HeroQuest.  But unlike HQ, TSOY makes a distinction between what I'd call a "hazard" (a static threat like climbing a wall) and a "contest" (against another active opponent).  Because it only takes a Good success to succeed against even a difficult hazard, it meant that some players did very well against the world and not very well against the NPCs.  This caused a bit of a disconnect for me, but I later realized I should've considered assigning the one penalty die for extremely hazardous conditions to the rolls I'd felt were "too easy".

Rollover dice
TSOY also has some of the functionality of Sorcerer in terms or "rollovers".  (As I've been thinking of them at least.)  I'm talking about the thing where your successes on the last roll carry over as Bonus Dice on the next.  Sorcerer, IIRC, is very specific in saying that you can use these dice even for unrelated actions -- so your successes on sneaking into the castle help your pick the lock on the princess' door, etc.  As far as I could tell, TSOY isn't so specific.

I went with a very inclusive use of rollovers, where characters could basically keep them for the entire duration of the scene.  In part, this was to encourage players to do stuff.  In part, it was designed to soften the "blow" of relatively low Ability levels and a lot of crummy rolling.  But it did mean that the player with the Ability 4 got an enormous chain of great rolls (on 5 dice a time) and kept steamrolling on, while other players felt they never "got off the ground".

Hmmmm.

The Gift of Dice
Everyone loved this, me included.

The best use of it was when Amira tried to flee from a bathhouse owned and run by the vicelord, Zoran.  Sajirah, Zoran's assassin, was present at the scene.  Sajirah's player, Josh, gave Amira's player, Sarah, bonus dice to help her get away, precisely so that Zoran would send Sajirah to track her down and bring her back.  This led to one of the best scenes of the session.

Fudging the rolls
Another player mentioned that he really liked that the GM gets Gift dice.  He said something like, "Instead of having to fudge rolls you can be really upfront about it and give the player bonus dice if you want them to succeed.

I tend to agree, but I have to confess that I did fudge one roll during the session:  A player who'd consistently had shitty rolls and was getting frustrated came up with a scheme to inveigle a priest into her schemes.  She rolled to persuade him and he got a really high Resist check.  I just decided "screw it" and pretended she'd won the check.

Is this bad play in a Narrativist game?  I can't figure it out....

All the above stated, we had a pretty decent session.  Most of the players were very enthusiastic about it and it seems the game is off to a decent start.  I'm glad to be playing but I want both to be more prepared, and more comfortable with rules calls by the time I come back to the table.

- Scorpio relatively pleased.

Next: My one big f***-up of the night.

[Andrew Norris]

It sounds like two of those problems solve each other. If a player wants to use Pray instead of Sway to convince a priest, perhaps he could roll against Pray, and roll over the victories into his Sway roll. I think something like that could work for all the examples you listed.

[Robert Ahrens]

Andrew,

That's actually how I handled most of those issues in practice.  But it didn't stop them as registering as "issues" in my mind.

Do you (or does anyone) have any more general comments about the Abilities which might be useful.

One thing that I'd like to comment on is that adding more and more bonus dice becomes progressively less and less significant.  Adding the first one makes the most difference, the second a bit less, etc.

That means that if I have Pray 4 Sway 0 I can reasonably hope to whip up a Good Success (SL2) on a Pray roll.  This will give me 4 dice to roll for my Sway roll, but even then I'll be extremely lucky to do better than a Mediocre Success (SL1).  This is why players want to use Pray directly, rather than indirectly.

I can't say I blame them.  My question is:  How much is intended that I should let/encourage them to do this?

- Scorpio still unclear.

[Valamir]

I can't say I blame them. My question is: How much is intended that I should let/encourage them to do this?

Thats always a tough question in games that use this sort of mechanic, and the answer is different by game and by group.

For instance in Robots & Rapiers the answer is 1) definitely encourage creative use of related high level skills to get roll over bonuses into the main skill that is lower or absent; and 2) the "you're not nearly as effective because you don't have the right combination of skills for this" is part of the game...a key part of play being dealing with the character you're stuck with until you can reprogram yourself with the skills you actually want.

Perhaps for your game the answer is to award the players a do-over.  Now that they've seen how the skills work and which ones they're actually needing to use maybe they would have chosen skills differently at the start.  Giving them the option to switch things around so they can obtain Sway because they didn't realize how the system was going to work at the time they passed on it IMO is often the best solution.  

Alternatively, I found that I needed about 10 level ups (I forget the SOY term) in order to design what I would consider to be a competant (but not munchkined) character.  So if you started with only 5, perhaps you might get them a few more now, contingent on them being used to buy the skills they've found they wish they had.

[Robert Ahrens]

Thanks for the advice, Ralph.

I started the group with 6 advances plus a couple of extra Keys, but I still feel like they're sightly under-skilled.  Perhaps I might just tell players to drop a few more points into skills.

It's at that point, however, that my brain switches on and says, "Well, while I'm tweaking the rules anyway, why don't I just overhaul the Abilities list entirely so there's less confusion."

I'm just not sure I should actually do it.

Anyway.  It's not that big of a deal.

The real thing I messed up in the session was wholly separate.  And I'll get to it as soon as I'm not working like crazy.

Later.

- Scorpio heading home for dinner.