[TSOY] The Adventures of Rightful King

[aplath]

Hello all,

I've been meaning to post this Actual Play for a few days now but I can't seem to find the time. So I'll try to post it little by little ...

It was the first TSOY game for all players including myself. It was really fun and it allowed as to experiment with things we've never done before in RPG.

The game uses TSOY with an alternate setting. The setting is very loosely defined as a "non-magical, medieval Kingdom going through a tense transition period just after the king's death". The King died and a distant cousin (the Evil Usurper) stages a coup to seize power and tries to assassinate the prince (and rightful) heir in the process. What else there is to it we'll find out during play.

Given this idea, here's what the players came up with (character names started as jokes but it was fun so we decided to go with them):

Rightful King - The son of the Late King and rightful heir to the throne. He starts the story not only loosing his father but also facing an attempt of murder himself. His key is the "Key of the Caring King", which basically earns him XP when he puts the kingdom and the subjects above his own personal interests or safety.

Rogue General - A general that found himself as the only commander against the coup. He has an elite unit (the late king's personal guard) under his command and faces the prospect of prision in the begining of the story. His key is "The key of Loyalty to the Late King".

Cool Mercenary - A powerful warrior and soldier of fortune. He once fought for the Late King in the Big Battles against The Other People but something bad happened there and he doesn't want to take sides in the current situation. His key is "The key of Mercenary" that only allows him XP if he acts for personal and material profit.

Maiden Not Quite in Despair - A young and spoiled princess to whom the Evil Usurper wants to marry to make himself legit in power. Hers is the "Key of Spoiled Princess" where XP is awarded whenever she manages to have things her way.

The first session was basically character creation and an introductory play.

The Rightful King is in a Distant Fortress when his father dies and barely manages to survive an attempt to murder him. There was an interesting fight between him and Lady in Black Leather (the assassin) where she used a dagger and he used a pillow. This was the first run of "Bring down the pain" and it was very succesful. The Rightful King barely won the fight after taking some damage (and receiving the Gift of Dice from other players) and managed to escape through the window and out of the castle with nothing but his underwear and his horse.

Back in the Kingdom's Capital, Rogue General learns of the coup in a meeting with all the other generals. He is the only voice against it and ends up arrested. The interesting thing about the scene is that the General didn't offer resistance when the guards were ordered to arrest him. However, he refused to be bound, rolled against it and failed. Bring down the pain time with the General using a "Troop Commander" ability and his reputation as a respected war hero as a weapon. His opponent, the Evil Pet General, uses the guards as a weapon and looses. So the guards actually refuse to bind Rogue General ("Sorry sir, this is Rogue General, one of the Kingdom's greatest heroes. I may escort him to prison but please don't ask me to bind him.").

In prison, Rogue General meets Cool Mercenary who is awaiting judgement after killing a noble man in a duel. It was quickly estabilished that they already knew each other from the war and Rogue General tells him about the coup. Cool Mercenary shows some interest in the story but refuses to help because "he's once done his share and what did it bring him but pain?". At night, the General is rescued from prison by his men and Cool Mercenary seizes the opportunity to escape too. After that, the General decided to go to Distant Fortress to tell the Rightful King what's happening and invites Cool Mercenary to go with him. Cool Mercenary refuses after a big argument with the General (first Bring Down the Pain between two PCs). Funny thing is that the General actually won the extended contest but after all things that had been said, the player decided that he didn't want Cool Mercenary joining him after all.

Maiden Not Quite in Despair learns of the coup when guards come to her house to escort her back to Kingdom's Capital to marry the Evil Usurper. During the journey, she manages to escape after seducing one of the guards (using her "really hot dress" as a weapon). This was a pretty cool scene because the player actually failed the roll and called for Bring Down the Pain. In the conversation that issued the whole sedution thing came out pretty cool from the dice alone. :-) And also it created an important NPC (Dumped Guard) who will, in the future, teach Maiden not to play with other people's feelings (GM evil grin) ...

This was basically it. Later I'll write another post describing the backstage stuff of how we used the system, and the dificulties we found.

Andreas

[Bret Gillan]

Sounds great! I really like the part where the general refused to be bound.

[BrennaLaRosa]

I would have liked to see more of the Maiden, just to see how much havoc a spoiled brat can cause. But that's a personal thing. There's not much a character like that can really do in that situation.

[aplath]

I would have liked to see more of the Maiden, just to see how much havoc a spoiled brat can cause. But that's a personal thing. There's not much a character like that can really do in that situation.

We've only played for a little less than one hour after character creation. The Maiden was the last character played so not much happened.

The idea of these first scenes was to make a kind of initiation for everyone not only to grasp the basic mechanics of the system but also to see what each character felt like.

In the case of the Maiden, it turned out that she actually has a good heart and most of her selfishness comes from not knowing a lot about consequences or the world in general.

In the specific scene that was played, the guard really falls for her and she convinces him that they will escape _together_. But at the last minute she tricks him and escapes by herself.

The player herself then suggested that the guard should come back later either for revenge or to somehow show the Maiden some unexpected consequence of what she did. And so he became a Named NPC.

Actually, most of what happened to all PCs in these first scenes will come back to haunt them later as several plot hooks were collected from them. :-)

And since I'm posting, I'd like to say that one thing that really impressed me was the ability of the system to keep everyone focused on what was happening even though most of the scenes had only a single PC in them.

The main reasons for these to happen were:

1) The way conflicts were resolved was either fast or, in the case of Bring Down the Pain, amusing. The later probably happened because resolution of the dice rolls was roleplayed adding much color to it.

2) The Gift of Dice rule is very cool because it got the players involved in other player's scenes. Not only by simply handing the dice but by actually giving suggestions as to what to do.

Other comments in no particular order:

1) Bring Down The Pain, when no weapons are used, can become VERY slow. But we only had one case of this because players became very apt to using just about anything as weapons. :-)

2) The Keys mechanic is amazing. It really drives roleplay and the results were very, very good. And the flexibility is also cool: the Maiden's player, for instance, already plans to buy back her Key in the future (when she learns more about consequences and the world).

Andreas

[Judd]

Players being able to hand each other dice is fantastic.  I am a huge fan of it.

Can you give an example where it happened during the game?

[BrennaLaRosa]

That's stinkin' brilliant, man!

[aplath]

Players being able to hand each other dice is fantastic.  I am a huge fan of it.

Can you give an example where it happened during the game?

When Rightful King was fighting Lady in Black Leather, the two of them became broken and there was this one roll that might finish the conflict. Up to that moment the King's player had been in "fight to the death" mode (even though the King was using a pillow as a weapon).

At this point he called for changing intentions and actually escaping through the window. Now, the room where the fight was taking place was high in the fortress. When I said this, the Maiden's (not the King's) player said "No problem, he'll jump through the window and use the branches of the tree to slow down his fall"

"Branches of what tree?", I asked.

"You know ... the tree that is just outside the window.", he answered smiling.

"Alright ... there's a tree outside, but it's not just outside so it'll be quite a jump. Dificulty Good, one die penalty."

At this, the Maiden's player said "No problem" and handed one of his dice to the King's player who actually made it to the tree (and the coolest thing was that the particular gifted dice, which was of a diferent color, rolled a 6).

Which reminds me of one doubt we had ...

In this roll, we had a contested action of Lady in Black attacking and King trying to evade the attack by jumping through the window. Since the King succeeded and the Lady was broken, the King's intention was fulfiled.

However, no damage was taken by the Lady because of this roll. But I guess that's ok because it's not like it's hit points, right?

Andreas

[James_Nostack]

However, no damage was taken by the Lady because of this roll. But I guess that's ok because it's not like it's hit points, right?

This is one of the stranger things about the Shadow of Yesterday: there are no Hit Points at all.  "Damage" in the rules does not mean physical injury--it basically means, "How unhappy am I?" or "How difficult will it be to continue?"  

In this case, if the Rightful King rolls well in his attempt to jump out the window, the Evil Lady still takes "damage" because his success makes it harder for her to carry out her intention of hurting him.  Even though she is not physically hurt, his success is an obstacle for her.

By the way, those are great names for characters!