[HQ] Dark Ages - The fog of war

[droog]

On Friday night we played the fourth session of our HeroQuest Dark Ages game. Reports on previous sessions can be found here and here.

For a number of reasons to do with my own performance, I wasn't very satisfied with this session. We hadn't played for four weeks and I felt flat and tired. I was low on cigarettes, too, which didn't help. I felt that I blocked players and could have better handled several conflicts.

Silvanius (Lev) and Mairead (Sue) took centre stage this week. I started with our first and only extended contest so far--Mairead against a 10M4 to win through the darkness enveloping the Otherworld. Here, I felt, was my first misstep. Mairead lost the contest and I just could not seem to parlay that into some new and interesting situation. It was, okay, you can't do it. D'oh! It looked to me like Sue was enjoying the contest, but the block was disappointing. Chalk it up to experience.

Meanwhile, several of the players had fallen back on their own activities, for which I was grateful. Lucius (Claire) tried to inspire the troops heading to battle, and after the battle began started healing wounded combatants. Quintus (Rafe) began with similar activities; continuing their rivalry for the hearts and minds of the Cymry. I then got a nasty surprise when Rafe passed me a note!!. Detailing a secret nefarious plan!

Notes give me the living shits these days. I was completely thrown. I find it pretty significant that I can't at this point remember what the plan was. Something to do with poisoning people he was meant to be healing to make the Christians look bad.

I still don't know what I should have done, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't stonewalling Rafe and not admitting his input. I stuck his plan on a very old GM shelf labelled 'Upstart Players' Plans' and went on. D'oh!

Meanwhile, I was throwing bangs at Erica, whose character Morgant is really a girl called Morgaine. She had told me she wanted M. to seduce Artos, so I put her in any number of positions to do just that. It seemed Erica had had second thoughts (she got friendly with Artos's main squeeze Gwenhwyfar last session) and we all got a fair bit of amusement out of Morgaine's struggles. Erica provides our game with a lot of quirky situations. Later on, after almost getting sacrificed or ravaged (or both!) by mad Artos under the great stones of Stonehenge, and being saved at the last moment by the timely entrance of Lucius, Morgaine stripped off and capered across Artos's field of vision. She says she's going somewhere with it....

Mairead returned and enlisted the help of Silvanius (Lev), who finally got to strut his stuff. By this time I was very worried about railroading; possibly to the point of overcompensating. I carefully explained my thinking on one particular contest to Lev and asked him if the stakes as I envisaged them were all right, or if he felt I was forcing the issue. Now, in theory this is fine, but I don't normally feel the need to be so explicit. Definitely rattled.

Anyway, Silvanius came through and gained three of the Four Treasures of Britain. They're missing a sword, which may or may not be the one Artos is carrying. The Cymry under Artos are fighting a vicious battle against the Saxons, and I expect next session will see some sort of climax. I hope I feel better about that one.

[TonyLB]

Silvanius (Lev) and Mairead (Sue) took centre stage this week. I started with our first and only extended contest so far--Mairead against a 10M4 to win through the darkness enveloping the Otherworld. Here, I felt, was my first misstep. Mairead lost the contest and I just could not seem to parlay that into some new and interesting situation. It was, okay, you can't do it. D'oh! It looked to me like Sue was enjoying the contest, but the block was disappointing. Chalk it up to experience.

Just the wrong stakes though, yes?  Easy to fix:  "If you win then you get through the darkness unharmed, if I win then you get through the darkness but a piece of it enters your heart and starts eating at your passions from within" or some such thing.

Meanwhile, several of the players had fallen back on their own activities, for which I was grateful. Lucius (Claire) tried to inspire the troops heading to battle, and after the battle began started healing wounded combatants. Quintus (Rafe) began with similar activities; continuing their rivalry for the hearts and minds of the Cymry. I then got a nasty surprise when Rafe passed me a note!!. Detailing a secret nefarious plan!

I tend to fall back on a (somewhat softer) version of grade-school teacher.  I look at the note quizzically, then look at the player and say "Is there some reason you don't want the other players to know about this?"  Not, like, super-aggressive ... just really, really skeptical.  I know, and you know, that the secret poisoning plan would be ten times more fun if all of the other players knew about it.  You just need to make sure that Rafe knows, and once he knows that he knows he'll just laugh at his own silly secretive instincts and tell you to read the note.  But if he doesn't know that then maybe that's a topic for a quick little conversation.  Maybe the game would be better off with secrets, as long as everyone's on the same page about what's happening.

Anyway ... sounds like a solid game.  Poison and ravaging and armies and Cymry?  Coool.

[beingfrank]

Meanwhile, several of the players had fallen back on their own activities, for which I was grateful. Lucius (Claire) tried to inspire the troops heading to battle, and after the battle began started healing wounded combatants. Quintus (Rafe) began with similar activities; continuing their rivalry for the hearts and minds of the Cymry. I then got a nasty surprise when Rafe passed me a note!!. Detailing a secret nefarious plan!

I tend to fall back on a (somewhat softer) version of grade-school teacher.  I look at the note quizzically, then look at the player and say "Is there some reason you don't want the other players to know about this?"  Not, like, super-aggressive ... just really, really skeptical.  I know, and you know, that the secret poisoning plan would be ten times more fun if all of the other players knew about it.  You just need to make sure that Rafe knows, and once he knows that he knows he'll just laugh at his own silly secretive instincts and tell you to read the note.  But if he doesn't know that then maybe that's a topic for a quick little conversation.  Maybe the game would be better off with secrets, as long as everyone's on the same page about what's happening.

It might help to spell it out.  Rafe and I have this rivalry going between our characters, my priest trying to spread Christianity, and Quintus trying to ensure that Christianity never becomes prominent enough to threaten his position as a official of the Roman pagan faith.  I've been trying to show through my body language, reactions and so on, that Rafe's attempts to thwart my character are creating no end of fun for me, and I'm rocking on the antagonism between the characters and the conflicting goals.  Particularly because I'm playing Lucius as a kind of holy innocent who sincerely tries to do good, who's actions ironically keep shafting Quintus without there being any malice on Lucius's part.  And I've also been talking about how I enjoy that Lucius is seen by most of the PCs as a bad guy, while he's genuinely trying to do good in his slightly-crazy-about-to-be-martyred-holy-prophet way, while most of the PCs see Quintus as a pretty good guy, while he's off psychologically torturing NPCs, stealing human organs from the recently dead he's supposed to be preparing for burial, and deceiving the camp followers roped into his healing corps into giving poison to the Christian injured when they think they're giving them healing herbs.

Hmmm, maybe I should be spelling this out more clearly too?  I thought I was being pretty obvious, but you never know.  And I think Rafe likes to have a cunning plan that the other players only find out about once it comes to fruition.

On another note, I think Lev really enjoyed the session and felt that he was getting in to things finally.  I suspect it's tough playing a character built for combat when there's a group of other character with much stronger political/social/religious/mystical strengths.  Jeff commented at one point that he was in the weird situation of about to have a battle in the game, when all but one of the PCs really had no combat ability.  But I got to do something I'd been hoping for, and had my slightly crazy priest spend the first part of battle screaming abuse at the enemy in a frothing frenzy.  I don't think I conveyed it well, but I got my moment.

[droog]

Just the wrong stakes though, yes?  Easy to fix:  "If you win then you get through the darkness unharmed, if I win then you get through the darkness but a piece of it enters your heart and starts eating at your passions from within" or some such thing.

HQ doesn't set stakes before rolling. But it would have been better if I'd had an idea myself. I think I expected her to win the contest and wasn't mentally prepared for the failure.

I tend to fall back on a (somewhat softer) version of grade-school teacher.  I look at the note quizzically, then look at the player and say "Is there some reason you don't want the other players to know about this?"  Not, like, super-aggressive ... just really, really skeptical.

Believe it or not, something like your tactic flashed across my mind, but I discarded it as I really dislike doing anything that causes people to lose face. Might be time for a relaxed post-mortem conversation.

Anyway ... sounds like a solid game.  Poison and ravaging and armies and Cymry?  Coool.

Thanks--basically I'm enjoying it very much, but we all have off days.

[droog]

Getting round to your post, Claire:

Hmmm, maybe I should be spelling this out more clearly too?  I thought I was being pretty obvious, but you never know.  And I think Rafe likes to have a cunning plan that the other players only find out about once it comes to fruition.

I've been enjoying the interaction between Lucius and Quintus and Medrodus and Artos. I think you're both playing it nicely, and from others' comments I think you're communicating just fine.

My feeling was that I didn't engage with either you or Rafe enough in this session. What do you think?

What's your personal experience with the sort of play that depends on keeping secrets? Having played this way extensively in the past (I used to take people right out of the room), I'm presently enjoying the sort of play that exposes everything for the entertainment and input of the whole table.

As GM I find it tiresome to have to take such a secret into account while keeping it secret.