Demo one-shot

[Irmo]

If you intend to participate at the TROS game at RPG.net's Dutch Tangency Meeting, this is where you stop reading......



















If not, I'd like to ask for comments and additional ideas. Here's what I had in mind so far:

Location: Cyrinthmeir, a fief near, but not next to the Gelure border.

Dramatis personae:

The holder of the Fief (NPC). Ambitious politician with the facade of a strong, but fundamentally decent man, with all the flaws human beings come with. Favors his secondborn over his firstborn, whom he considers not to have the strength to prevail in the sea of sharks that is politics.

His Firstborn Son (NPC) proves to believe in the ideals of chivalry too much than is good for him.... Sent to meet and greet his brother at a small inn at the southern border of the fief.

His Secondborn Son: (PC) was sent away on business to the Empire two years ago and is now returning to his home. Always looked up to his brother as the ideal he wanted to follow, with land or without.

The fencing master of the Lord: (PC) Sent for reasons he doesn't quite understand to accompany the firstborn. Glad that he can rattle his bones a bit before he gets too old, and thus, and out of loyalty, doesn't see too much in his being sent out. A deadly master of the blade in single combat, he isn't a soldier by any means, and a through-and-through honest and conscientious man. Loves the two sons of his lord like his own, who ran away years ago, a fact, that for all his love, the father hasn't quite come to grips with yet. Dislikes the new-fangled rapier stuff coming out of the empire and Gelure.

The fencing master's son: (PC) The same age as the secondborn, the two grew up almost like brothers, were it not for status. Status, however, it was that separated them when the liege lord had other ideas for what profession he was to take than the young one. He defied the liege lord and ran away, something that upset his father greatly at the time. Traveled around as a con man first, and when he had enough money, he made his way to the Empire and entered a fencing school and a career as a duelist, striving somehow to live up to his father's expectations. Ran into the Secondborn a year ago, who convinced him to come back.

PC 4 (not quite sure about this one yet, I am thinking about some kind of merchant character from the Empire, who out of friendship or love (depending on gender preferences) decided to follow the secondborn, striving to bring some culture to his homeland (a bit culturally arrogant) I am seeing this as a character stressing skills over proficiencies)

The Lord of the neighboring fief, which is set directly on the Gelure border. Greatly troubled by the developments on his doorstep.



The story begins as the brothers and the fencing master meet at the inn. It's late, and the master has the evening and night to tackle the reunion with his son. On the next morning, they are greeted by a messenger of the lord, who rode all through the night, notifying them of a small raiding party that allegedly attacked and looted a hamlet west of them and asking them to investigate. The raiding party allegedly coming from the neighboring fief, they should represent the proper authority of the Lord and, if necessary, enforce it, while the Lord levies troops. Given the degree of expertise all of them taken together have in arms, and the likelihood that the raiding party has long retreated, there shouldn't be a real problem unless they run into an

AMBUSH

The raiding party is still very much present, and very much prepared for their arrival. A rope on the ground making the firstborn's horse stumble, an arrow shot takes him fully out of the saddle, and ere the rest can react to the mayhem, there's two raiders hacking away at him, with others storming onto the road. Eventually, the raiders will be defeated, but for the firstborn, help comes too late. Since the dead won't speak, all that's left is to pursue two of the raiders who fled on horseback when the tide turned against them, using their sympathy for the killed brother and friend as a motivation to bring his murderers to justice, as well as making them pay for any injuries they incurred themselves. The two who fled headed westward at breakneck speed, crossing the border to the neigboring fief with the party in hot pursuit. I assume that they will follow them across the border and it will take them a while until they either catch up with them -in which case I intend to fix things to make sure there are no survivors among the raiders- or lose them. Since they are in potentially enemy territory all alone, there's two options for them -retreat or try a commando style thing against the Lord, possibl depending on how battered they are. In any case, they will soon find that there's quite a few highwaymen in the area giving them, tired and battered as they are, quite something to -hopefully- avoid getting in trouble with. It is as if the local lord would not or barely police the area at all, and there's certainly no sight of soldiers. If their neighbor is striving to start a feud, where is his army? If they need further help, they will either find the Lord on their commando raid or run into him on a hunting trip of his, giving him opportunity to tell them that he was concentrated his troops solidly on the Gelure border, considering threats from without currently more dangerous than threats from within. He denies having anything to do with any raiders, and having no inclination to have two fronts in case Gelure comes a-knocking on his door.

But of course....that leaves his eastern border largely undefended, and given that he still has to fulfill administrative roles away from the border, someone might come to think that there was a decent chance of rolling into his fief and taking him out before his troops can react -possibly forcing them to declare loyalty to a new lord without threatening the integrity of the outside border at all.

Once they realise that something's seriously rotten in the state of Denmark, the destiny of the secondborn is to be unveiled. I am not quite sure what it'll be yet, though. 'To slay his father', 'to end on his father's blade' (which may or may not mean his father is weilding it at the time), 'to plunge his fief into chaos' (as the righteous lord is taken out and the only heir is the one who killed him, hasn't been around for two years and is largely unskilled in politics)

Etc...

I think there's some decent possibilities to bring SAs into play....the love for the Firstborn, the conflict between the Fencing master's loyalty and his conscience, the conflict between his love for his son, and the latter's disloyalty and his having brought a brand new case of rapiers from the journey...and not the least the respect the secondborn had for his father vs. the realisation that he is not at all what or who he thought he was.

Comments? Ideas to flesh this out a bit? (It's supposed to be short, only a few hours). I don't intend to have the characters as true starting characters, rather, I intend to tailor them so that I can illustrate aspects of the game with them.

[Mike Holmes]

Why is the Firstborn not a PC? I think he'd be a cool PC. I think you're counting on too much GM force to accomplish things, and making too many assumptions:

1. No roll for the Ambush? What if they get the drop on their foes?
2. Assumption that the firstborn dies. Not rolling? Or just having everyone shoot at him in a tactically unsound way? IMO, its not neccessary for him to die, because of the problems with:
3. Assumption that the PCs will chase the bad guys.
3.a. Assumes that some bad guys will get away. This means that either you have enough baddies that they ought to win, or that you'll have them flee irrationally early.
3.b. Assumption that the PCs will kill all the bad guys. This is extremely unlikely given the TROS system. Unless there's some good reason why the PCs would kill all the bad guys, or why the bad guys would continue to try and fight when incapacitated, etc, then there are likely going to be live badguys. Or will you just use GM fiat to say that they all die?
4. No roll for pursuit? Just forcing the escape of the badguys?
5. Then, assuming all this, you take away the character's interest in the pursuit by having the pursued die anyhow. Just to preserve the mystery.
6. After all this, you then force the party to find out about the nature of the neighboring lord's situation.

You've got the players jumping through a lot of hoops just to find out what's going on next door. BTW, did the neighboring noble send the raiders or not? Would help if we knew, but you leave it ambiguous. There ought to be some resolution by the end of the scenario, no? So that fact needs to be established.

Also, why was the fencing master sent? If no reason ever comes up, it'll seem like it was contrived. Either have a reason at the start, or have one that can be discovered. It seems to me that there's some backstory here that you're not letting on about.

To me the crux of the conflict is that there's a neighbor who may be an enemy, and who may be open to assault, and who may be in trouble, etc. But as you present it, the whole adventure is just the difficulties leading up to finding out the information. The players never really have any options until the end. Go here, fight these guys, find this out.

Why not just get them to that point sooner? That is, let the ambush play out naturally. If the PCs have prisoners, or chase somebody down, then let them know what the deal is. Once then know who the enemy is, then the real choices begin. Do they go into the enemy terrritory and scout around? Do they return with the info to their liege, and get orders? And then what? If you don't have a point at which you're not sure what will happen, that says to me that you've planned too much. Leave it open.

Moreover, however, make sure that the PCs have SAs that pertain to the adventure. Why do they care about what's going on next door? Do they have any internal conflicts about what to do? I like the idea that the firstborn would not want to backstab the other lord because of his chivalrous nature, and that the secondborn and his father might see it as an opportunity.

I assume this is a one-shot? If so, we've noted that in demo play that a really good idea to keep things short and tight is to have the PCs have conflicts between them, ones strong enough that they might lead to blows. This makes for really intense play. And if at the conclusion somebody gets killed, so what? It's a one-shot. So give the PCs all sorts of potential conclicts that might arise from the various actions that they might take.

Some of this is kinda vague, so please ask for clarifications if you have specific concerns. TROS demos are really cool, IME, and don't take a lot of setup at all. Just a few cool characters and an event to spark things, and the players will make a plot for you.

Mike

[Valamir]

Jake ran a demo game for us at GenCon.  

He passed out a number of character sheets, saying:
"On your character sheet you will see that you have a Destiny.  Your job in the next hour of play is to make that destiny happen, Go"

That was pretty much the sum total of background for our player (other than the paragraph or so of character writeup).  As far as GM prep, near as I could tell he had 3 cool locations...the Kings grove, the field of blood lillies, and a nearby human village (we were fey); 4 actual NPCs...the king, some wisdom dispensing sprites, 3 nasty killer monster types who were inhumanly (inelvenly?) sinister, and the exiled bad elf (who I let back into the woods, thereby fulfilling my destiny to have my name cursed by all elf kind); and a couple of throw away generic NPCs to fill in the usual "we talk to that guy" spots.

The story line couldn't be more basic.  Our job...guard the woods against encroaching humans...bad guy wants back in...

That was it pretty much.  The sum toto of game prep.  An exercise in KISS.

[Valamir]

The other Gen Con demo I remember was similiarly abbreviated.  
1 Character was the Kings Son who really wanted to be the King
1 Character was a "trusted" noble who'd hired an assassin to kill the king, and take the throne for himself.
1 Character was the hired assassin
1 Character was a simple knight loyal to the king caught up in things bigger than he was.

The plot involved a invasion of the town during a jousting festival, by forces whom IIRC were actually hired by the King's son in order for the son to play the hero in driving them off.  Meanwhile the assassination is taking place.  It was a big raukus mess...all pretty much driven by the players with some aggressive scene framing, relentless paceing, and little to no hoops to jump through or McGuffins to find.

[Irmo]

Why is the Firstborn not a PC? I think he'd be a cool PC. I think you're counting on too much GM force to accomplish things, and making too many assumptions:

1. No roll for the Ambush? What if they get the drop on their foes?
2. Assumption that the firstborn dies. Not rolling? Or just having everyone shoot at him in a tactically unsound way? IMO, its not neccessary for him to die, because of the problems with:

It's one point of the ambush to accomplish precisely that. His death would achieve two ends: Take him out the succession of Lordship and providing a casus belli.

You've got the players jumping through a lot of hoops just to find out what's going on next door. BTW, did the neighboring noble send the raiders or not? Would help if we knew, but you leave it ambiguous. There ought to be some resolution by the end of the scenario, no? So that fact needs to be established.  

Sorry if I was THAT ambiguous. No, he didn't send them, but it was meant to appear that way.

Also, why was the fencing master sent? If no reason ever comes up, it'll seem like it was contrived. Either have a reason at the start, or have one that can be discovered. It seems to me that there's some backstory here that you're not letting on about.  

He was sent away because he, as mentioned, is an honorable and conscienteous guy who would, if he came to hear of it, interfere with his Lord's plans in one way or the other. However, he is too useful an asset to take him out himself. He was also sent to ensure that the number of victims would be limited, and not the entire line of succession eliminated.

Why not just get them to that point sooner? That is, let the ambush play out naturally. If the PCs have prisoners, or chase somebody down, then let them know what the deal is. Once then know who the enemy is, then the real choices begin. Do they go into the enemy terrritory and scout around? Do they return with the info to their liege, and get orders? And then what? If you don't have a point at which you're not sure what will happen, that says to me that you've planned too much. Leave it open.

Well, my concern was that I be able to push forward the event at key steps, if necessary, there being only so much time at the occasion, though I am sure surprises can happen -no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Anyway, so here's the backplot a bit more clearly: The local lord, as described, considers his firstborn not tough enough for leadership, and not worthy of the fief. He'd also like to use the occasion of his neighbor's attention being diverted by the problems in Gelure to make an easy grasp for larger territory. He can take care of both issues if the Firstborn has an unfortunate 'accident' while taking care of things. He is then free to e.g. let his secondborn learn the ropes administrating one of the territories as his representative once he has successfully seized the neighboring fief, using the demise of his firstborn as a casus belli. On the other hand, the character would be structured in his SAs in such a fashion that his love for his brother should weigh a bit more than his loyalty to his father, ultimately leading to conflict. The fencing master, at the same time, will have to weigh conscience and loyalty to his leige lord, and the problem of what decision his son might make (presumably he's leaning towards the secondborn due to their friendship, and his not having a lot of sympathy for the Lord to begin with). The neighboring Lord is really not much more than a scapegoat. Depending on the course of things, he might not even personally appear.

[Irmo]

Jake ran a demo game for us at GenCon.  

He passed out a number of character sheets, saying:
"On your character sheet you will see that you have a Destiny.  Your job in the next hour of play is to make that destiny happen, Go"

That was pretty much the sum total of background for our player (other than the paragraph or so of character writeup).  As far as GM prep, near as I could tell he had 3 cool locations...the Kings grove, the field of blood lillies, and a nearby human village (we were fey); 4 actual NPCs...the king, some wisdom dispensing sprites, 3 nasty killer monster types who were inhumanly (inelvenly?) sinister, and the exiled bad elf (who I let back into the woods, thereby fulfilling my destiny to have my name cursed by all elf kind); and a couple of throw away generic NPCs to fill in the usual "we talk to that guy" spots.

The story line couldn't be more basic.  Our job...guard the woods against encroaching humans...bad guy wants back in...

That was it pretty much.  The sum toto of game prep.  An exercise in KISS.

The problem with that is that my experience with TROS is next to zero. I led one game of Quickstart rules before, and my mastery of 'how things are handled' is far from firm. Which is why I'd prefer having some structure as support.

[Mike Holmes]

It's one point of the ambush to accomplish precisely that. His death would achieve two ends: Take him out the succession of Lordship and providing a casus belli.

If it's something that you want to force, have it happen off stage. That is, the PCs find him dead in the room in the morning as the game starts. With clues around the room for them to find. Which they should.

See the part I don't get is why you want to make it so hard for the PCs to get the information about what's going on. Until they do so, there's no real confllict. Just hoops.


Anyhow, it seems to me that it would be cool to have the character as PC survive the attempt. Start something like this:

The plan is for two assassins to kill the firstborn. Assassin A has been told to dress in the livery of the other noble in case he's seen. Assassin B is there to serve as a spotter for Assassin A, but also has a secret agenda. Once the attempt is made, successful or not, Assassin B is to kill Assassin A. That way they'll find the assassin in the livery for sure, creating the Cassus Bellum. Assassin B would then claim to just be a lucky passerby who saw what was happening and intervened to stop the criminal.

Anyhow, as play starts, tell the firstborn PC, "As you got up from bed to go to look outside at the sunrise, you noted that you dropped your amulet on the floor near the window. You bent over at the window to pick it up, and you heard a sound above and then behind you. Standing and turning around, you see an arrow stuck in the wall, right about where your shadow's heart would be."

If the character dives for cover, then have another arrow fly in a second later and strike just adjacent to the other one. Just for effect. If he looks outside instead, he sees a man in the window of the building across the street fleeing. Either way, a man in the street (assassin B) shout's, "Hey!" and runs around the building (which has no door on the side nearest the inn). Whatever the PCs do, they'll eventually find the assassin from the window dead just outside the building from which he was firing, with the man who chased him calling for the guard. The chaser will explain that he saw the whole thing, and ran to intercept the assassin at the door. He'll say that when the archer came out, they struggled, and he was forced to stab the assassin in self defense. He'll play like he's not sure if the assassin is dead or alive (but he's made sure that he's dead with a well placed surprise shot).

Anyhow, Assassin B is a good actor, but he's not infallible. Close questioning will determine that his story is a little dubious. He's not local, and claims to "just be passing through". You might even have an early rising stablehand from the Inn tell a PC that he saw the man hanging out in the street suspiciously. If the PCs think something is up, Assassin B may run for it. He's dangerous, but just one guy. If the PCs manage to question Assassin B once he's been exposed, he'll put up token resistance, but whatever tactic the PCs use to get him to talk will eventually work. He'll say that he was hired by Dralik, who is a courtier in the lord's court (and who he's unaware was working for the lord).

Other possible things to note about the situation:
- The livery coat seems cheap and uneven, not at all like the ones that the neighboring lord's men wear
- Assassin A looks familiar (he's a guard from one of the lord's outposts - a place where the PC making this observation had once been surreptitiously; a fact that few if anybody knows).
- The lodgings were arranged for them by one of the lord's heralds. The innkeeper will remember that the herald asked for the specific room that the PC was staying in.

Anyhow, try to make it some idea of the players' that discovers the plot. Whatever happens, don't just give the information to them once you've made them work for it (if you wanted to do that, you could frame past all this to the fact that they'd discovered the plot). Even if the PCs somehow don't figure it out, their best course of action is to go back to the lord's court, and tell him of the attempt. They won't attempt to take on the neighboring lord and his army all by themselves (and if they do, they deserve all the trouble that they get). Anyhow, once back at court, they can do more investigation if they have to, or find other clues that will lead them to the truth.

The point of all this is that you need to get to the point where the characters are aware of the predicament early in the game. So that they can address it somehow, and the whole two hours aren't taken up by trying to figure out what's going on. And it's not really important wether or not the attack succeeds, just that it happens as a precipitating event. I mean, if the PCs don't make a big stink and reveal the plot far and wide, then it's still possible that they can use the faked attack as a Cassus Bellum. There's still a body in the other lord's livery who tried to kill the son.

He was sent away because he, as mentioned, is an honorable and conscienteous guy who would, if he came to hear of it, interfere with his Lord's plans in one way or the other. However, he is too useful an asset to take him out himself. He was also sent to ensure that the number of victims would be limited, and not the entire line of succession eliminated.

Um, then why have this occur when the sons are together and it could get messed up? Why have the competent swordsmaster there when he might either A) mess up the assassination or, B) get killed by accident? How does the lord expect the assassins to be successful and get away but not have everyone there get killed?

Further, assassins value their own lives. So if the king knew that some of the assassins would be killed, they'd figure that out, and then be very angry with the lord. That sounds like a dangerous game. There seems to be some miscalculation going on.

Well, my concern was that I be able to push forward the event at key steps, if necessary, there being only so much time at the occasion, though I am sure surprises can happen -no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

The thing is that you want it to be a mystery, but then you want to take away the character's ability to determine the solution, except in the exact manner that you prescribe. That's just a tactic that's rarely satisfactory. Instead, just have the PCs pursue whatever line of reasoning that makes sense to them, and have it result in them finding out the facts. If they go in the wrong direction, they get clues that lead them in the right direction. Don't allow them to fail, or the game dead-ends. If they miss rolls, they still find out the information, but a complication occurs as well. Don't dead-end your mystery, and don't forcefeed it to them. Let them make the decisions, and make those decisions lead to the truth.

On the other hand, the character would be structured in his SAs in such a fashion that his love for his brother should weigh a bit more than his loyalty to his father, ultimately leading to conflict.

Good idea in general, but wrong assumption. That is, don't go with "should". Just have SAs on the sheet, and let the player decide. If he wants to betray his brother's memory when the truth comes out, that's his choice. But do make him have to make a choice at some point.

The fencing master, at the same time, will have to weigh conscience and loyalty to his leige lord, and the problem of what decision his son might make (presumably he's leaning towards the secondborn due to their friendship, and his not having a lot of sympathy for the Lord to begin with).

Excellent. That's the sort of situation that you want to set up with events.

What I'd do is to have another event ready to go. Something to make straightforward resolutions more complicated. Maybe the PCs lord is killed by an assassin. Somebody in court takes the first assassination attempt as a cue to assassinate the lord and blame it on the neighbor. Or on a PC who has declared that he's seeking vengeance. Or any likely target. That forces the issue of succession into the open.

Anyhow, these are just typical ideas. The point is to bring the characters to conflict, and them let them sort it out in whatever way they like. As opposed to just chasing the conflict all over the countryside. Anyhow, you can have a bunch of this sort of event ready to mix things up when things get slow. Anyhow, you'd be surprised how easy a style this is to GM. Just go with the flow and throw in a complication when it seems appropriate. As long as the players sense conflict, they'll create their own action.

Mike

[MonkeyWrench]

The other Gen Con demo I remember was similiarly abbreviated.
1 Character was the Kings Son who really wanted to be the King
1 Character was a "trusted" noble who'd hired an assassin to kill the king, and take the throne for himself.
1 Character was the hired assassin
1 Character was a simple knight loyal to the king caught up in things bigger than he was.

This got me thinking about something....
In about a month I will be running my first demo at my LGS and I have so far been at a loss as what to do about it. I liked the Destiny idea from above (btw did all the destinies connect? how did it play out?), but I wanted something a little more dynamic. So how about this...
- PC A is the target of an assassination (a friend of B's)
- PC B is the assassin (a friend of A's)
- PC C is a close friend/relative of A
- PC D is a close friend/relative of B

B knows that they have to assassinate someone, but for some reason does not know whom. C knows that A is the target of an assassination, but does not know who the assassin is. And finally D knows the identity of the target. Comlicated?

Does the game end in a blood bath? Do they decide to find out who hired B? How do C and D know what they know?

It seems like it would be good for a few hours of intense roleplaying with lots of opportunities to use skills, bring SAs into play, and possibly some amazing combats. I imagine the game set in a Machavellian style Italy (Seat of the Empire?). What do you think?

[Valamir]

This got me thinking about something....
In about a month I will be running my first demo at my LGS and I have so far been at a loss as what to do about it. I liked the Destiny idea from above (btw did all the destinies connect? how did it play out?),[/quote]

...I don't know...I don't know that we ever revealed what our destinies were to each other...

but I wanted something a little more dynamic. So how about this...
- PC A is the target of an assassination (a friend of B's)
- PC B is the assassin (a friend of A's)
- PC C is a close friend/relative of A
- PC D is a close friend/relative of B

B knows that they have to assassinate someone, but for some reason does not know whom. C knows that A is the target of an assassination, but does not know who the assassin is. And finally D knows the identity of the target. Comlicated?

Hmmm.  I'll tell you how I think this would play out 9 times in 10.  "Hey, you're the guy I'm supposed to kill?"  "Hey, you're the guy whose supposed to kill me?"  "Lets team up and figure this out".

I don't think you'd get the level of drama you're looking for.

[MonkeyWrench]

If it seems like it would be resolved to quickly then how could I get more out of it?

The idea is that the assassin does not know who set it up, nor does he know exactly who he is supposed to kill. Right away those are two reasons to investigate.

I'm trying to do something with a twist and with some sort of mystery involved, something to grab the player's attention and get them involved quickly.

Any suggestions?