[Storming the Wizard's Tower] Monastery of Crows

[Guy Srinivasan]

* I love the three core non-combat rolls.

Especially Controlling Others. The time limits are pretty sweet. "Of course he'll hide her from the caravan master while you're away adventuring... for 12 hours, anyway!"

[tonyd]

Just a quick observation today rather than a complete AP. We did a town episode last night, and it may have been the best session we've played yet. I love playing the various people in the town as they react to the PCs and the situation of the town. The players actually asked for more town play. Town play is also interesting because as the PCs become hugely effective at fighting monsters, their effectiveness in having conversations and giving commands doesn't got up quite as fast.

In last night's session, the heroes returned to town, only to find that Tufiq the renegade wizard had established him in town in their absence. Everyone in town seems to think he's wonderful (thanks to his magical charisma), and he's already maneuvering to get control of the local militia and get the town involved in a war! It's quite fun to watch the PCs runa round town trying to stave off the threat using their comparatively meager conversation and command successes. It was quite a lot of fun.

[tonyd]

We're done this game now, and I want to talk a bit about how we handled moving beyond level 1, since Vincent hasn't provided rules for this yet. Maybe this'll be of some help. We were playing an earlier version of the rules, before there was any balancing for party size. We had a big group (4-5 players most nights), and they were all really, really buffed with lots of good special abilities that work well together to generate mad amounts of dice.

Having moved past level 1, I also wanted to step up the challenge and narrative a bit. With the defeat of Tufiq, the Wizard's avatar, the threat of the Wizard was now clear and present to everyone in the town of Miltar. I decided that henceforth, the game would be more about the characters actively preparing to face the Wizard, rather than responding to individual problems in the town.

This seemed  to be a necessary move to me for a number of reasons. First, the story up to this point had the characters rising in stature from competent troubleshooters to, in some cases, literally become leaders of the town. Ilh Ram's story arc had him replacing his father as commander of the city militia, for example. Second, there was a sort of regional story evolving about how the Wizard was destabilizing the various towns, setting them against one another, and paving the way for his own conquest.

The problem with this approach is the implication that the characters now take matters into their own hands and come up with a plan for defeating the Wizard. However, the game is more slanted towards the GM deciding what the challenge is, preparing it, and then presenting it to the players more or less by fiat. In the end is exactly what I did, telling the players that their next job was to go to the neighboring city of Ikhraine, find out why it was turning away trade caravans, and get Ikhraine on board against the Wizard. I was shooting for a "gathering of forces" theme, in the style of The Two Towers. I think the approach was successful in addressing that theme.

Next, I wanted to present a challenge commensurate with the party's abilities. Here's the story: the City of Ikhraine has fallen under the sway of an avatar of the Wizard called the Crone. The Crone has the princess of Ikhraine in thrall and is summarily dismantling its defenses. The ancient order of Lion Knights is a potential ally, but they have been ordered to refuse entry to envoys from Miltar. The heroes from Miltar manage to win the respect of the Lion Knights and call upon ancient laws and treaties to gain entry as a diplomatic envoy.

I've decided that the "boss opponent" for a level two adventure will have a special ability that's one step beyond the special powers in the book. It'll be something that changes the fiction in a way that puts the onus on the characters to solve. The Crone will be able to project darkness at will. Under darkness, characters simply won't be able to do anything that would normally require them to see. The Crone, of course, isn't affected. The characters can make a roll (or, in combat, a "fighting while" action) to remove the darkness, but it's up to them to come up with a plausible way of doing this. I don't think up any solution to the problem before hand.

And I think the approach worked in this encounter. The party from Miltar managed to muscle their way (physically and diplomatically) into the presence of the Princess and the Crone. There's some maneuvering and some dice rolls are made. Things come to a head, and the Crone's hold on the princess is weakening. The Crone pulls out her kryss knife, and all goes black. Yata makes an amazing knife throw to pin the Crone's knife arm to the wall (in the dark). Since she needs 1 success just to NOT hit the Princess, it's a tense roll. Za Eli smashes the dome of the hall to flood it with sunlight (with help from a magic horn that lets him do feats of strength at a distance). It was a great climactic scene. The session ends with the Crone vanquished (but not, as they had hoped, captured). The Lion Knights sworn into the growing alliance against the Wizard.

[tonyd]

OK, I'm almost done with this thread, but I do want to be sure and post about how we addressed moving beyond level 1, as it may be useful to Vincent. I'm going to skip a lot of the narration because I want to focus on some of the mechanical stuff.

We wrapped the game up a bit abruptly (I'd planned a few more sessions, but the time just seemed right). Refugees and caravans arriving in Miltar carried news that the Wizard was assembling a massive army deep in the desert to crush the town of Miltar once and for all. It was time for the heroes to assemble their own forces and face the Wizard.

There's a great thing that happens with this game. As your heroes develop, their relationships develop, and along with them the town and their relationship to it. These relationships ultimately point the way towards the final confrontation with the Wizard. They tend to start out being based around needs: the town needs the heroes to do something to secure its future; the heroes need someone in the town to help them achieve their goals. But they tend to evolve into partnerships of a sort.

Here are some illustrative examples:

Ihl Ram the inexperienced knight in his father's shadow, by succeeding in quests replaced his father as the head of the city militia
This relationship began as a way for me to get the party oriented towards quests (by relaying requests from the father to his son). As the son achieved success (and gained the militia as an ally treasure), he also gains a responsible role within the community, becoming responsible for, rather than subservient to his father.

Yata the archer got in the habit of going to the library to talk to Milla the Librarian. This relationship was motivated in part by the two extra dice Yata was getting for arcane rolls in the library. Over time it turned into a sort of a partnership where Milla, the NPC, became a lesser partner in the PC's quest to save the town.

Sometimes these arcs didn't quite take off as I had hoped. I struggled with some NPCs, and sometimes didn't give relationships as much meat as I thought PC's wanted. That's totally my failing as a GM.

In order to defeat the Wizard's army, the PCs needed to assemble an army of their own. Even though they've already gained allies (as treasures), each alliance is tied up in the relationships between the PCs and some NPCs they've met in their travels. This led to some neat scenes as various bribes, commands, and heated conversations are required to get the Miltar army organized in good order. For example: Kezek is the NPC leader of the caravan folk, an ally gained when the PCs saved some of the caravan folk from a curse. But there's also the small issue of how one PC "liberated" one of Kezek's many wives from the harem. This little problem must be dealt with if the caravan folk are to fight alongside Miltar in the coming battle.

Each allied military unit must be led by a PC to participate actively in the battle, and also gives that PC a special ability (such as extra dice, or an ability substitution for the upcoming fight). Deciding which unit to lead into battle becomes a combination of tactical and narrative positioning. Some PCs elect for a particular ability, others just want to be near their loved ones when the battle comes down.

The Wizard's army is stattted as a terrain monster, bigX2, swarm, armored, with some additional damage boxes, attacks, white dice, and suspense. Suspense lets me threaten the welfare of NPCs in the Miltar army every time that the Wizard's army beats a PC's defense (heh heh).

For the battle, we put minis down on a map to reflect the locations of the units. Charging, bracing, and tactical constraints all mapped really nicely to this set up, with the line of battle shifting around quite a bit. We had units taking cover on terrain, executing pincer movements, and so on. Threatening NPCs was great fun, as PCs were faced with tough decisions whenever their relationships' lives were put into danger. In the last round of battle, Ihl Rem's father was struck down fighting in the forefront of the battle, tingeing victory with sadness.

As a side note, I think the final battle could just as easily have taken the form of a small scale quest (like Frodo's journey into Mordor, rather than the battle of Pelennor Fields). I would like to try this some time.

[Paul T]

Very cool!

Can you describe a little more in detail how you handled the battle?

Were the PCs leaders/generals on one side, issuing orders? Let's say they had a group of infantry attack. What would they roll, and how would the results be interpreted?

How did NPC death work, mechanically?

Thanks for the writeup!

[tonyd]

Rules-wise, the battle was played out as a regular terrain challenge. I always try to make sure that when the PCs take an action in the rules, they narrate an appropriate action in the story. So, for example, a charge or brace would correspond to charging the enemy, or taking cover behind a terrain feature, for example. I drew a map of the battlefield ahead of time to help everyone visualize what was going on. In addition, the Wizard's army had cover behind a ruined wall, giving them 3 additional blue dice. Each time a PC-led unit beat the Wizard's army, they could push them back off the wall, robbing the Wizard's army of one of their bonus blue dice. I used miniatures to show where the PC and Wizard units were set up. That helped to focus narration a lot, because it made the narrative options clearer. When a PC took damage from the challenge, I would also narrate them getting wounded in battle, their forces being driven back, and so on.

As for threatening NPCs, each time the Wizard's army scored a wound (but only once per round of battle), I would narrate one of the attacking units being forced into a dangerous position. If a PC came to the aid of that unit in the next round, then I'd have to threaten somewhere else. If I could threaten the same unit twice, I could kill an NPC in that unit. I didn't really explain this to the players ahead of time, which was a mistake. I got wrapped up in the battle so much that I forgot to do a proper free and clear phase (I do that a lot, unfortunately). Nevertheless, I think it worked out well.

So, for example, at one point the PCs left the Miltar militia (led by Ihl Rem's NPC father Furmiss) to guard the oasis. The PC's had more units than they could lead at once, so some were left in reserve. For my threaten move, I narrated a flank attack on the oasis led by sneaky arcane rat-men. Ihl Rem elected to rush to their aid the next round. This left the Lion Knight of Ikhraine (whom Ihl Rem had been leading) alone on the center of the battle line, making them a prime target for the next threaten. There was one round where I didn't get to threaten, which made me sad, but was luck for the PCs.

In the last round of battle, the Miltar militia were again fighting on their own, now in the thick of battle, so I used my threaten for that round to inflict heavy casualties, one of which was Furmiss.

I think it's very important, especially in a game like StWT, that as GM I can make victories costly and difficult. This absolutely must happen in a way that feels fair. StWT gives the GM the tools to do this. There were numerous points in this game where I was able to pull off maneuvers that I have long wanted to bring to the table. As a GM, that was very satisfying indeed. The rules really helped me do it.

Also, apologies to the players if I spelled their character names incorrectly. As anyone will attest, my spelling is wanting.

[lumpley]

This is great.

So you had a climactic battle and ended the game instead of going up to level 2? That's fun.

-Vincent

[Paul T]

Very cool!

I'm still not getting an image of who rolled what, and when. How many dice? Based on who's ability?

Did the number of hits mean anything?

Can you give an example of a maneuver from the battle, and how it went down, in terms of what happened at the table, who rolled dice, etc?