[YGAD]2nd session - Fear, Loathing, Leaving the Healing Pool

[Tobias]

Ran the second session of YGAD yesterday. Had to cut it after four hours due to headache/sleepiness of one of the players. That's a second time this has happened.

There are some general issues with this group that are really rather beneficial for the playtest (as well as my getting back into the saddle with some more rule-crunchy DM'ing). But for the playing they are things I have to deal with. General tips I took from the game is: no lounging around the room during play - sitting around my big dinnertable will promore more active posture and wakefulness, and, a break every 1.5 hours or so is a good thing (we did have micro-breaks, but they were too short, I think).

Anyways, back to the session. The first session was a non-mystical murder mystery (say that 10 times fast), and I thought I'd give them a more open-ended more mystical 'problem' this time. The setup: healing pool, tended by druidic types, generally about 15-20 patients. Healing pool actually works (swimming in it or drinking the waters will activate contact for the players as well), but may have side-effects (mostly on the mental side). Previous patient with strong Dreaming contact has taken dip in pool, gone mad, freakily found contact with lots of power, and brutally made all the fears of those present come alive, tear them apart, and build a 7-meter high totempole of their bones. Que hint to players of healing powers of the pool, and off we go.

This session started with the unexpected appearance of Stephen (baddy from last session) trying to force some money out of the players by ambushing Dalena and holding a knife to her throat. Later, after a confrontation, Eugene threw a knife in his chest when Stephen was distracted by Dalena's struggles to get the ropes that tied her down off.

The session then went on with the players nearing the open area (but not close enough to see details yet). Dalena got a contact and a sense of fear and power from the pool. When Flemens and Eugene snuck up through the woods, her Dreaming power made her fear come true - a ghost-like hunter/bandit shot an arrow at Flemens and Eugene, who dove behind a tree. The arrow passed through the tree, over their heads, and they ran away.

The players retreated to a nearby village (well - 3 days travel), picked up another strong guy to have some extra muscle, and bodly drove their wagon into the open field (with some more hours of light to spare than list time). Nothing happened and they examined the totempole, some torn-up tents, etc. Eperimentation was done with dousing the totempole with water from the pool (bad plan - unconsciousness and massive fear) and feeding water from the pool to rabbits (yes, the rabbits have it bad in this campaign). After some wandering around and a period of impassiveness *
they decided to chop down and burn the totempole. After that, some drinking the pool water and swimming in the pool (which had its old refreshing effect). After that, they travelled away from the pool, but before they reached the village, they encountered some of the old fear again - something was returning to the pool and had crossed their path. Couldn't finish this due to headache of one player.

General DM notes: this group is ok with clear events happening around them, but is not overly brave in confronting unknown and strange fearsome things. That's ok, but the impassiveness noted at * was due to that - as a DM, I should be careful to not leave things too open and have a way to force the action when quiet lulls set in. Two of the players will adopt a 'let's just wait a bit more until something happens' approach, which leaves one player (who is more pro-active) to do a lot of talking and roleplaying. Which is ok, but they allow the spot-light to leave them, which leads to their own boredom - but at least they're being faithful to their characters actions. I will just need to tailor the adventures to this typical response of theirs a bit more. A lot of fun was had, though, and the roles of the characters are fleshing out well, with all characters getting into the spotlight (which was the basic reason for the setup of this session).

YGAD-wise:

1. The frequence of contact is good, but the reason for it is a bit sketchy. I will add an item to the charactersheet called 'Role'. In the first version of the YGAD I said contact would only activate if the player's description was vivid - this in an attempt to get creative descriptions and get a sense of commitment/immersion in the world. I removed this clause because it was - rightly - stated that this might create competitiveness/adverserialness between GM and players - instead players could earn 1 or 2 extra tiles for the evocativeness of their description. I plan to leave that in effect, but instead, contract will only activate if the action the players are performing is in line with either their Value, Goal or Role. (And they state why. Possibly only after the result if that improves streamlining).

2. I'm coming up with rules that make the 'settings' of society more explicit. More on that later.