[TSoY] I just ran Freebooters

[Doyce]

It's been over a year since I've done any serious gaming, due to a lot of things, but mostly my new daughter.  I come back and the world is all turned-round: all these great new games are out, and there's revised versions of the stuff I love, like Shadow of Yesterday.  I order a bunch of stuff (Mountain Witch and Don't Rest Your Head came into tonight too, which is cool), and start figuring out what I'm going to run first.

Anyway, I had the night from from parenting duties and had a chance to run a TSoY one-shot of John Harper's "Freebooters" with the revised rules.

The players consisted of a husband and wife (whom I met through the indie-rpg mailing list, and two bachelor-gamers with a lot of traditional RPG experiend in different systems (one is VERY hard-core Amber DRPG, and the other has a lot of... well, just about everything from Amber to Rolemaster).

The PCs:
Wester Verley, sneak thief -- Key of Greed -- played by DaveInDenver from the indie-list.
Canter Thop, deceiver -- Key of Conscience -- played by the long-time Amber player.
Arti Hollas, wanted voodoo woman -- Key of the Wanted Woman -- played by Dave's wife.
Gull Trecher, cutthroat -- Key of Bloodlust -- played by the many-systems gamer who really enjoys intrigue and subtlety and end up with the character who primarily wants to knife everyone.  THAT didn't last long.

Basic setup:

The demon in the bowels of their pirate ship wants to be free.  They owe the demon. To help free it, they need the brass key of Siotam, a device said to be able to open any lock. The key is on the island of Cloud, where they're docking.  Their captain ALSO wants them to fetch the key for some other reason.

So everyone has Key of the Mission, but for different reasons.  Plus they have their other keys to keys to hit.

I loved a LOT of what I was seeing in the session, but I want to focus on a chain of events that I really liked.  Gull Trecher, cutthroat, is off to kill the witch of Rope Hill, but this player is as crooked a thinker as I've ever met.  The chain of events went something like this:

Find out about Order of Lamplighters (who hate evil and black magic) -> Go to bar where some off duty Lamplighters are drinking -> announce he's going to kill the witch and ask them for a keg of gunpowder 'for the cause' -> Rake in a bunch of gift dice to win his unskilled check -> they drunks take him back to Mario's house to get the gunpowder (where he sees the other lamplighters gambling with a bunch of pretty silver -> get the gunpowder -> mug a rickshaw driver for the rickshaw to carry his gunpowder (get xp) -> mug some guy who tried to hire the rickshaw (more xp) -> sneak up on the witches hut, distracting the witches familiar with the unconscious body of the guy he just mugged -> plant the gunpowder outside the hut and set it off -> use all those bonus dice from that success to start bringing down the pain (his goal: kill the witch; her goal: make him succumb to a Love Spell) -> Four rounds later, he has her broken (6), bloodied (2), and is out of Vigor Points, so he can't pay the Vigor he needs to pay to attack, be HE is Broken (6 - Instinct), Bloodied (4), and bruised repeatedly.

His solution? He gives on the conflict, and the two of them tumbled into a torn-up, ravaging heap of sex in the ruins of the cottage, thus TOTALLY REFILLING HIS VIGOR POOL.  He uses that loss to buy of Key of Bloodlust and picks up Key of the Masochist and Key of Renown.  After Teh Sex, he marches down to the Lamplighters' main house (Mario's), walks in, announces "I'm Gull Trecher, and I just blew up the cottage of the Witch of Rope Hill and screwed her on the rubble, and now I'm back to beat the hell out of you lot!"  His goal: take their money and leave them beat up and repeating the whole sordid tale to everyone.  It goes into Bringing down the Pain (at the players' request, even though he won the opening conflict, because he ALSO wanted to rack up points for getting Bloodied).

By the end of the night, Gull had something like 4 or 5 advances. :)


Another brilliant bit?  Just before the Big Show Down, Wester got an advance he used to buy Sway at Competent.  When the group finally got to the Big Show down, he used his Secret of Contacts and dropped 3 instinct to establish that he was a ex-lover of Madame Pearl, come back to her after all these long years.  His goal in the opening conflict?  Based on his newly-minted Sway, Wester stays with Madame Pearl, and she loans them the Key for a while.

Gift dice (and supporting Deceit rolls) flowed like water, the group won the conflict, and opted to avoid BDTP.  Session over, with three character creeping out of the Bordello (Cantor using the key to free several ghosts), and Wester "Refreshing his vigor" (nudge nudge).


Great stuff. None of us had played Revised before, and I'd only run the old TSoY one time... this was a session to learn the system and have some fun, and we accomplished both brilliantly.

I love the TSoY Mechanics  The basic rules are terribly slick and fast. The new Bringing Down the Pain flows like water -- I wish extended conflict in Heroquest worked so smoothly -- Keys are amazing motivators.* I like games where the players have some control over their own success, because it lets the players tell me what conflicts are interesting to them, personally, or when they're more interested in the consequences of a contest failing. TSoY was good for this, and I think it'd be even better in a longer running game, rather than a one-shot, where folks really just want to win.

* I like games where any player can kick-in details of the setting -- especially when it's supported by the rules, because it really lets the players buy into the game. This worked out well a couple times during the session, especially when Dave used the "Secret of Contacts" to establish that Westen was an ex-lover of the main 'bad guy' in the scenario, and ended the evening in a conflict that didn't have any kind of bloodshed at all. Awesome.

Just in conflict, alone, the player-influence was so strong: I don't think there was one conflict in the whole evening that worked out how I thought it would. Most weren't even close. The player's led things along, found unlikely solutions, and pushed them through in a very satisfying fashion -- my god the game just flew at times.

* I like campaigns, because it let's people really get into their characters and the story and get some really solid satisfaction out of it. However, this session wasn't set up for that -- it was a one-shot with pregen characters, and we approached with a hard-hitting, learn the rules and have some fun, we're not coming back to this kind of attitude that played with the bang of a good board game. Very fun. I would totally run this again (and probably will).

* I like "starting-level characters" as a player, because I think that there's a kind of fun to come from seeing your character advance. I LIKE seeing that progression. I LIKE that rapid kind of change that you see most often in those starting characters with a lot of room to grow. Having maxed out characters is fun for a little while, but if they're already really good, there's fewer ways they can mechanically change, and I LIKE to see that change. TSoY is great for that payoff, even for experiences characters: advances let you change profound and meaningful things about even the very reasons for your character's existence. It's good stuff.

* Tonight was a good time with a new system that we were ALL learning, and learning QUICKLY -- by the end of the night EVERYONE 'got' the system and saw exactly how to play the mechanics, hit their keys, and just played the HELL out of the game.

* As a player, I like crunch. I like mechanics, and I like using the hell out of them to my benefit. I also like making a good story.  One of the things about TSoY that I love that most is that driving your character into the kind of stories you're interested in is one of the mechanically crunchy things you can do with the system... so you get bang out of the game mechanics by moving your character into the kind of story we already KNOW you like... because those are the kinds of Keys you chose in the first place. Great story-telling/gaming synergy. Awesome.

What do I think of this game?  How solid is the system?

Every single rules thing that came up, I or the group figured out the answer for in about 3 minutes.  They were the kinds of questions that, once answered, would never need to be asked again.

When the evening was done, I looked down and realized I didn't have even one rules clarification written down to ask on the forum later.  Not one.  I don't remember the last time I ran a game (let alone for the first time) and didn't have a question that needed answering afterwards.  Holy cow this is a good game.

[Doyce]

And... you'll have to pardon the exuberance of the post and all the typos.  What the heck is up with not being able to edit your posts anymore?

[joewolz]

I just recently got the game and I'm also digging it.  I haven't played it yet.  Do you remeber any of the questions youse answered in 3 minutes or less?  I will be abel to read said answers carefully when I decide to run the game.

[Doyce]

Do you remeber any of the questions youse answered in 3 minutes or less?  I will be abel to read said answers carefully when I decide to run the game.

Lesse:
- Exactly what's the process for players helping other players out in a contest with supporting rolls?  (I wanted to make sure I wasn't mixing up TSoY and Sorcerer, because the methods are pretty similar for that part of the rules.)
- Exactly what's the result of being Broken (broken used to have a very different effect in the 1st edition rules, and I wasn't sure exactly how the penalty dice was applied.)
- "Where's that list of keys? I wanna buy a new one with my Advance."  -- And that's not even rules; that's SHOPPING. :)

The fact of the matter is, the bonus/penalty dice mechanic is smooth and intuitive, the pools work seamlessly into the whole thing, refreshing pools works into the story in great and interesting ways, and Bringing down the Pain and taking Harm are so DAMNED easy to understand, compared to the old rules.

I think what I loved about it the most was the sense of nice crunchy, gamist mechanics (which I like) that encouraged eventful and interesting story-oriented play -- which I love.  At the end of the night, I could talk at length about EITHER (a) the little crunchy rules tricks that the players pulled off, or why the pool-draining from being Broken really affected one of the big Conflicts in the session in a great way *OR* (b) Dump the rules-talk entirely and just tell the story that came out of the session.

Good. Good. Stuff.

[Mike Lucas]

Doyce,
Great AP post. Thanks. It sounds like your players had a great time also, did they like TSoY's system as much as you? Do you think you'll be playing it again (maybe a longer campaign) soon?

Of the indie games I own, TSoY is definitely the one I want to try the most. My current group is playing Deadlands which has an interesting XP mechanic - you get XP for role-playing your Hindrances. This was a step in the right direction for us from D&D's "kill things and take their stuff". But there are two things missing - 1) it's still up to the GM to decide when you should get XP and 2) you have to PAY XP to remove a Hindrance, which discourages character growth. I love TSoY's key buyoff mechanic, those 10XP dangling like a carrot all the time, seducing you into growing your character.

Is the Freebooters one-shot available in a semi-complete form somewhere, or did you just piece it together from John Harper's previous actual play posts?

Thanks,
Mike

[Doyce]

Hey Mike,

Player comments after the game were along the lines of "this was an evening well-spent."  Got some IM congrats and compliments today as well.  I don't know if they liked it like I did -- some of them would probably want to say "Need to play it more with my own character", but love it or just like it, they totally "got" it and rocked the mechanics.

Run another game? You betcha.  I'll probably run Freebooters one more time for a totally different group out in NYC at some point, and I'll be reviving an aborted TSoY campaign I started over a year ago with the 1st edition rules.

I PM'd John and asked for his Freebooter material, which he graciously provided.  The scenario is ... John called it sketchy, I call it 'cruft-free' -- it gives you what you need to roll, with PLENTY of white space for the players to hare off on their own things.  The only changes I made to any of the material was that I added text blocks to the (very pretty) character sheets to detail the characters' Keys instead of simply listing their names (to provide reminders for the players and reduce references to the rules), and added a text block to explain the general uses for the Voodoo skill that Arti had. That's it.