Yet another IAWA Question and Love Fest

[Trevis Martin]

Well not a fest exactly, but it sounded more dramatic that way.

Vincent, thanks for this game.  My two friends and I had a great time playing tonight and it was a pick up and go experience pretty much.

We used the "God Kings of War" oracle and had:
The secret order of warrior Mystics, defending their relics.
An unspeakable demon of atrocity...aware of a sudden loosening of his bonds.
A genius of flame, imprisoned within a brass mirror
A high, many towered wall on a fierce border, and the soldiers left to hold it.

My friend Mike played the NCO who was leading the soldiers after all the officers ran away.
My friend Dennis played the demon.

In the end the Demon ended up being freed into the world as the NCO tried to control it to use against the warrior mystics.
The Demon is the character up for the next chapter.

It was quite good.

Here were my stumbling points:

I made up both the soldiers and the order of warrior mystics as "group" characters, i.e. one set of stats for each group.  I didn't even think about it.  Universalis exposure maybe.  I mean the leader of the warrior mystics was also an NPC as was the Genius of Flame.  I wasn't sure, afterward, weather that was the best way to handle it, or if we should have made soldiers and faceless warrior mystics as Particular Strengths instead or perhaps only made individuals as characters?  Any thoughts?

At the end of the chapter we had a conflict where the warrior-mystics and their leader were trying to escape the scene after the demon had emerged (the demon was described as looking like that one in the recent Dr. Who).  Anyway I was all "The warrior mystics and their leader run for their lives into the forests" and Demon boy was all "nope," and NCO was also "nope."  Demon boy won the toss and said he wanted to smash all the puny humans to jelly.  We agreed at first that this meant NCO too (he had to answer) so we all rolled etc. 

Hmn...  While writing this and recalling all the IAWA threads I just read I think I figured it out.  See we were thinking that the NCO vs the Warrior Mystic Leader conflict should have been a separate one from the Demon vs, WM and WM Leader because, well, at some point Mike was saying that his NCO wanted to kill WM Leader in revenge.  In other words I got muddled about who was acting and who was interfering.  I now realize that both of them were reacting to the escape attempt and, after that was resolved, they could have followed it up with another action sequence.

We need to work on the concrete action a little more, and including the detail was a little hard to remember.  But it was great fun and we plan to play again.  So thanks.

I figured the whole multi-person stacking advantage die stuff from the other threads I think.

- Trevis

[lumpley]

I'm glad! Thank you.

I don't have strong opinions about group NPCs for this game. How did it work? Making a leader + particular strength is how I typically do it.

-Vincent

[Valvorik]

In my one game so far we had the mutinous cavalry and a PC was the captain of this company, which had been assigned to the underdefended border because they questioned the ascension of the current king to the throne (this being their "mutiny").  Another PC was the bellowing champion, who was one of the tribesmen attacking the border.  Neither had soldiers/followers etc. as a Particular Strength (closest was the cavalry captain whose particular strength was that he was graduate of the Royal Academy of Arms, which made him effective when he was fighting with others whose actions he can direct and use his knowledge of tactics and strategy to good effect).

We played that both could script events with their groups with them (e.g., the cavalry running into a group of the tribesmen and trying to harass them) as long as the PC's were "front and centre for the action, the star of their side".  The PC's contested against each other with the actions etc. being what the cavalry and tribesmen were doing (along with the PC) but the stats and consquences etc. involved being the PC's.

This worked fine a couple of times.  We were playing out of Godkings of War at start and allowing "group conflicts" to be imagined seemed to fit.

Anything broken/abuseable likely about handling it this way?

Rob

[lumpley]

That's fine too. I expect it worked great.

The only advantage of making their armies as particular strengths is mechanical - then they're worth that third die.

-Vincent

[Valvorik]

Oh it was great, I've been reconstructing notes from owe lists etc. to post summary sometime.  It was a pick up game with some folks who hadn't RPG'd for a long time.  I hope to get my regular group to try IAWA sometime.

[Trevis Martin]

It worked okay, I guess, but I think the particular strength approach would have been more elegant.