TROS: The Inception (Long)

[arxhon]

We played our first real game of TROS last night. I had a blast.

Most of the character creation had been done at the end of the last session, and all that needed to be done was selection of SA's for one of the players and some final equipment purchasing (horses and stuff).

The next bunch is a description of what happened. Following that is a more mechanics oriented discussion.

The characters are the handsome Caedmon ap Cen, a young baron in the far northwest corner of Cyrinthmeir, who hates the neighboring King of Hrothwulf for just being a general jerk, running border raids on the Baron's lands. In return, the King hates the Baron for killing his one of his sons.  The character also has a Destiny to become a King, and a passion: Revenge, Kill the rival noble who killed his family, and forced him to become take rule at a young age. He spent some time in New Cyrinthmeir city, learning the courtly styles of Cut and Thrust.

He is accompanied by Æthelwærd, his Champion and Captain of his Guard, (the equivalent of a High Freeman) of which there are 9. Each has fine weapons, and wore chain mail. He is an orphan, whose family was killed by raiding Hrothwulfinn soldiers, and was taken in by a man who taught him to use longswords and shields. One evening in his fourtheenth year, he got drunk and while trying to show off, accidentally killed his guardian. He feels quite bad about this, and will always try to pay back a debt. He also Hates invaders of the Barony.

In a similar vein to Ron Edward's Kickers, from which i drew the inspration, the PC's were given what i called "Wierdnesses", where i had written several surreal surreal events that had happened to the party in the last few weeks. I had written four, and handed them out randomly.

As a result, Baron Caedmon was recently confronted by a strange man, who lurched at him, then shrieked something inhuman and then collapsed. His bones seemed to have disappeared, as the Baron discovered when he turned over the man.

Æthelwærd woke up to something sitting on his chest and breathing in his face. As he was waking, the weight vanished and he saw only a shadow slip up the wall and out the window.

Both didn't really like the flaws in the book, and the Baron's player asked if he could have an Enemies major flaw. I decided this would be cool, and he chose the King of Hrothwulf. A flaw like that is instant conflict in any game, so I agreed.

The Captain asked is he could have a minor version of the flaw, and that also seemed suitable. Looks like the players want to have a war. Sounds good to me. :-)

Play got underway with a boy-with-a -stick scene. The Baron Caedmon and Captain were finalizing details for their trip to Aldwych for their leige-0lord's 49th birthday, two days hence. A young man named Ceornhelm arrived about supper time with only a walking stick, and challenged the Baron's greatest warrior to a duel, in return for a hot bath, supper, and a bed for the night.

The PC won, quite handily. Guess i need to work on my boy with a stick routine. I ruled that blows could be pulled in a duel, since they're not actually trying not to kill each other.

THe Baron graciously allowed Ceornhelm to stay for the evening, but posted a pair of guards on him, just to make sure nothing went missing. That night, the night doorman is murdered by a servant, who in turn lies mysteriously dead, with his eyes gone, seemingly sucked from the sockets.

The bodies were shipped off for Bodian Brysige, the local priest (or whatever) for the Three Gods-Become-One. The next morning, as people were slowly tricking in from out of the manor and its small accompanying village, the party visits the Bodian to find out what they can about this mysterious menace, thinking that maybe this is a local legendary creature that devours it's victim through dreams. When they arrive, they are greeted by the Bodian's wife. She then discovers that the Bodian is also dead, this time of a similar affliction to the man who shrieked at Caedmon.

The PC's investigated as well they could, while Ceornhelm asked permission to leave, which the Baron gave. A shout from the tower attracted their attention. A man coming from the road to the south had collapsed. Smoke was beginning to rise from over the forest. One of the guardsmen commented that it was nice to see that someone had "died naturally", for a change.

The Baron, the Captian and a handful of the Baron's guardsmen went south to investigate. A village had been sacked, and the women and children carried off, except for a screaming young girl, being toted by a couple of rough looking men. The village was burning, and a half dozen of the raiding force had remained behind to torch the place. The PC's quickly dispatched the tough guys, and through the billowing smoke came another half dozen barely skilled spearmen, poorly armed and armored with only a little leather to turn a blade.

A very quick fight later, the party defeated their enemies. I resolved the five guardsmen and extra raiders with a Tactics roll by the Captain. The determined that Hrothwulf was behind the invasion, with a force of about 30 men.

The baron delegated his men to take the prisoners and the girl back to his manor, and they rode off down the forest trail after the invading force, which looked like it was heading east towards the Baron's other village, instead of south and back towards the Kingdom. On their way out, they discovered that the gate hadn't been forced open. The bar was placed neatly on the wall, and the brackets unbent.

On the trail, they came across a pile of slaughtered children. The Baron and his Captain arrived at the second village just as the King's forces were reaching the outer walls. They could see someone opening the gate for the Kings forces, and a marked lack of participation from the village. Trailing behind the invaders was a chain of a dozen women.

One of the invaders looked back, made a shout, and 8 men were swiftly dispatched to deal with the new arrivals. Mounted, the Baron and the Captain made short work of the first two or three, but were dehorsed by stabbing spears.  On foot, they fought bravely, two or three to one, SA's firing away merrily, and destroyed their enemies.

In one wicked combat scene, Baron Caedmon, toting a captured spear, charged the line of enemy spearmen and skewered one. On the return pass, he was dehorsed and greeted with three furiously stabbing spears. Scrabbling about, he managed to stand and draw his weapons.  He then carried the attack to the foe, stabbing two in the first exchange, one in the throat, one in the face, killing both. The third one almost stabbed him in the groin and Shish-Kebab'ed him but Luck was with the Baron that day, and the spearman turned his ankle at the last moment and stumbled enough to throw the weapon out of line and just barely miss.

Enraged at the danger to his privates, the Baron runs the spearman through with a 14 die attack.

The Captain performed admirably. On his charge, he decapitated one mad while fending of the thrust of another, and then wheeling his horse around roughly, hacked the second down.  His horse took a spear in the belly and died, hurling the Captain to the ground. He then dispatched the two spearmen one after the other.

However they are now left on the outside of the village, with no mounts, as the forces of their enemy, the King of Hrothwulf, move into the village unhindered, apparently aided by someone in league with the King.

At home, they have two deaths that can only be described as horrific and the Dukes birthday tomorrow. Things are looking grim indeed.




Mechanically, the game ran much smoother this time. Having a second book helped a lot. Mounted combat ran decently, with the party gaining another 3 CP. Combined with SA's going off, one player had 21 dice at the start of mounted combat. Is this considered normal?

The multiple opponents stuff slowed us down somewhat, but when the Baron took out two at once using a sword and dagger Double Strike, things cleared up pretty quick. The combat system delivers death quite nicely.

The  Pc's outclassed their opponents by 4 or 5 dice, having combat pools around 13.  Seriously outclassed, i discovered. 4 dice is a lot. The only damage anyone took was from falling off their horse. This is fine. The combat system ensures that mook fights are over quick. The only reason the players got through these fights is because of the SA's. You could see  this little light in their eyes when they twigged what can SA's do in combat situations. I foresee many wicked little mini-duels.

One of my players looked at his fistful of dice while counting up his combat pool, then looked at me and said "I need more dice....SA's are cool!"

The players developed their own backgrounds together, which neatly avoids the "assassin and paladin" problem. I had provided them with a modified version of the character pack, and a 7 page setting write up, detailing what they knew about Weyrth, including local politics, current events, legends and tales of far off lands.....everything except the weather.

Thr Riddle of Steel delivers what it promises: great games. While marred at times by our inexpert grasp of the rules, this was the best first session of a game i've had in as long as i can remember, which is a long time. Usually first sessions kind of blow, in my experience, even with a game that is familiar. The game was about 4 hours, and could have gone on for somewhat longer, but it was late.

With the players' input into the game, we already have a tale of Hate, Revenge, and Honor, set in a background of looming war, and cast into relief with an element of surreal horror. Who needs poncy elves with bows +2? :-P The SA's have shaped the focus of the game. With Caedmon's Destiny, things will be quite interesting indeed.

[Brian Leybourne]

Cool stuff, thanks for posting. It's always fun reading someone elses writeup of their sessions, and seeing how they do things differently or similarly to you, etc.

And if there's one thing I really love when playing TROS with new players, it's that look (that you describe as well) that they get in their eyes when they finally "get" SA's. Most players think they get them, but really don't until their first SA fuelled conflict, and then it all hits them with an almost audible slam. From that moment on, they're hooked :-)

Æthelwærd woke up to something sitting on his chest and breathing in his face. As he was waking, the weight vanished and he saw only a shadow slip up the wall and out the window.

Quite sure you have not had an advanced peek at OBAM? ;-)

Brian.

[Jake Norwood]

Rock on!  That sounded like a great session. Just what I like to hear. "Blood Opera" is what we're calling it now. Cool stuff. I don't have much other than enthusiasm to add. I hope you keep on posting about your TROS games.

Jake

[arxhon]

Quite sure you have not had an advanced peek at OBAM?

Heh...I wish. Let's just say I'm trying to inject a little surreal horror. ;-)

Blood Opera, eh? How appropriate.

I have to say that the mounted combat itself worked out very well. I'm sure that if the PC's weren't mounted, they would have gotten killed, and the simple rules lent themselves to transparent mechanics.  Though i hunger for a "horse hit location table", making do with the ones in the MRB is easy enough.

I ran what i thought would be typical responses from poorly trained spear-armed footmen faced with armed and armored horsemen: kill the horse, then stab the knight when he's down, and it worked out fairly well, even with our (now cleared up) confusion on multiple opponents.

One thing i forgot to mention earlier was that the Baron botched a 2 die Full Evasion right after killing two guys with a Double Strike....which is how he got stabbed in the wang.

The size of the die pools for the characters shocked me. While mounted, one of the characters had 21 dice, and was running on 18 during the climactic battle (2 SA's going). The other had 17 mounted. I think this is awesome, actually. Both players wanted decent fighting characters, and now they've got them.

The SA's really helped in getting the players to visualize a character they wanted to play, and gave me great pointers on the kind of game they wanted.  Essentially what they allowed us to do is for me to say: "This is the game. This is the setting i'm using. What kind of game do you want to play?", with the players saying "We want a blood soaked tale of honor, hate, destiny and revenge." We probably wouldn't have come up with this concept if we had all sat around and talked about it; it came about as a result of defining the SA's.