One Day in Mu's Bed

[Judd]

We had our third Get Your Geek On-a-thon here in Ithaca, in a continuing effort to cross-pollinate our gaming groups and just game together apart from our weekly cliques.  Some adventurous souls turned out, enough to fill two tables and two other tables were empty.  *sigh*

My table was blessed as usual.  Two gamers from my weekly game and two who drove over an hour to game.

Weekly fellas:

Jim - a former roommate of mine, who played the Jarl of Spiders to great effect.  

Kolja - who played the Kid with a Rock

Out of Towners:

Brett - I know him from IM and LJ but until now, that's it.  We discussed the possibility of his joining the weekly BW game if he moves closer to Ithaca.  

Brett played the Primite Prince and I was worried that he didn't get enough table time.  Brett will no doubt post to this thread and we'll discuss the issue.

Bob - Brett's roommate, the Witch-King, a pleasant surprise.  The Witch-King is one of the first NPC's I ever thought of for the setting and it was great to see him played to such great effect here.  Its neat to hand over the iconic characters of the world to players.  I dig it.

I ran a convention type scenario for Sorcerer, the one that I'll run for Dexcon and Gen Con.  I wasn't sure what to do.  I dreaded running Sorcerer with kickers that I had written.

I read over the Dictionary of Mu manuscript.  In my last edit I put in every person mentioned as a fully statted starting PC, complete with kickers.

Wouldn't it be cool if I ran it right out of the book, complete with the kickers included for each PC?

Surely that couldn't work.  Surely I would need more precise kickers.

I'm not sure how well I'll hit my four hour mark, as I went over today but I'll get on that more intensely at Dexcon.  Today worked, though.

Here are the four PC's and their kickers:

The Witch-King of Stygia

Stamina: 3 Basalt-Hewn
Will: 4 Born to Rule
Lore: 3 Stygian-Schooled
Past: 4 Witch-King
Price: Paranoid

Humanity: 4
Appearance:

Bound Demons

Name         Type         Telltales            Need
History-Eater      Object: Sword      Faces in the reflection off the blade   To eat demons

Kicker: Your 13 High Warlocks are in Mu's Bed to pay their homage.  They have brought their demons with them and your demon, History-Eater, hungers...

Kid with a Rock

Descriptors
Stamina:  2 Whipped by Marr'd
Will:  7 Survive this Rock
Lore: 1 Angry Naiveté
Past: 7 Urchin Beggar  
Price:  -1 Paranoid

Humanity: 7
Appearance:  This child still has some remnants of fat on his face but no innocence is left in his eyes.  Under the coarse rags is a skeletal body created through poverty and hunger.

Bound Demons

Name         Type      Telltales         Need
Rock         Passer      Never chips or breaks      To break the skulls of living children

Kicker:  When you wake up in the lean-to that you call home your skin of water has been stolen.  You can make out sandaled foot-prints in the sand, leading to the slave-auctions.

Jarl of Spiders

      Descriptors
Stamina: 2 Whipped by Marr'd
Will: 3 Survive this Rock
Lore: 5 Waste-Schooled/Through the Epochs
Past: Wasteland Jarl
Price: Scarred (-1 to casual interactions)

Humanity: 5
Appearance:  From the face of the once handsome Jarl sprout long, thick arachnid hairs and extra red eyes are pushing out from his skull.  Some of his ribs are turning into extra limbs.  The Jarl is a gruesome sight, deep in the throes of his demon parasite.


Bound Demons

Name         Type      Telltales      Need
The Blood Spiders   Parasite   Tiny spiders in bl   To infect as many sorcerers
as possible

Kicker: After a days-long sandstorm the pond around which your humble village is shocked to see that on the horizon a pyramid has been uncovered in the sands.  None are sure what is within them but everyone knows the great and powerful of Marr'd make war and worse over these ancient structures, said to be homes to spirits who know mathematical magics.

Primite Prince of Olymon

Stamina:  6 Basalt-Hewn, Olymon Born
Will: 3 Born to Rule
Lore: 1 Angry Naiveté
Past: Olymonian Prince + Primite Slaver
Price: Cynical (-1 to all Humanity rolls)

Humanity: 6
Appearance:  You have black fur with silver on your shoulders as if adorned by the gods with moon-kissed rank.

Bound Demons

Name      Type      Telltales      Need
Dragon      Passer      Stars in their eyes   To destroy building blocks of Marr'd society

Kicker: You have just freed the slaves you were meant to take to the mines, having just now realized that these were creatures with their own destinies and it wasn't right for you

With each character came two entries from the Dictionary of Mu, places they would certainly know about from their history.  I was happy to see these entries were used in play quite a bit for juicy dice bonuses.

First I handed out characters by naming their titles and handing it to the first player who jumped.  Next time I believe I wll just read off their Kickers out loud and hand characters to the first person who jumps at said kicker.  But it worked out this time.

I talked about my feelings on Sorcerer as a con game, how much is lost without the players making up their kickers.

I also talked about how these kickers weren't tightly knit and how it was everyone's responsibility at the table to bring this game together into a coherent story.  I didn't let on that I wanted an orderly party out to destroy the monster but that crossing paths here and there in some fashion would be cool.  "So if you want a scene with another character, I don't care if you are halfway aroudn the globe from them, let's figure it out.  You are the Conan's, the Thulsa Doom's of Marr'd.  You are the movers and the shakers."

I had them run the binding of their demons as a kind of prelude.  I allowed the players to set the scene, really setting up owneership over the characters and gaining a familiarity with their demons.  I should have set up how the magic worked much, much better.

High Points:

- The Kid killing the slavemaster who took his water so that the Witch King could proclaim the child his new slavemaster.

Kolja:  Should I make a Humanity roll for killing the slavemaster?

Me: No, he was a slavemaster.  Fuck him.

- The Jarl of Spiders attempting to infect the Farrow-287 from the pyramid with his spiders and failing, then binding the Farrow to him as a Demon.  Neat.

- Turns out the Farrow can teleport with maths if he has enough blood.  Jim then had the Jarl's men round up every citizen in his oasis keep and murder them for their blood in order to take his soldiers to Mu's Bed.

- The Primite Prince the player dubbed Prince Adam, going before the Witch King and asking him to free all slaves so they may pursue their own destinies.  Rock, very Moses.

- Then they deliberated over what it was worth.  Adam was all set to feed his dragon to the Witch King's demon-sword when the Jarl of Spiders came through a rift rent in raelity with the horrible magic of maths to take Mu's Bed for its blood.  Humanity roll ensued.  

- Jarl of Spiders attacks Mu's Bed through a mathematically created rift in reality.  The Primite Prince walks away.  The kid hits the Jarl in the head with his mighty rock.  The Jarl was not amused.  The Jarl seizes the Witch-King's castle in a great battle of demon abilities.

- The Witch-King attempted to summon Mu's Bed itself, said to be a dead giant in its dictionary entry.  Extra dice gained for referencing the dictionary and for describing the ritual in fantastic detail.

Rolled failed, he summons Mu's brother, Lemur, who he fought in ancient times before the sun and moons.  Lemur goes on a Godzilla-like destructive rampage of Mu's Bed at the Witch-King's request.

- The Kid brains the Witch-King with a rock while the Jarl takes down Lemur.  Lemur's blood fuels the Jarl of Spider's Farrow who takes all of Mu's Bed to a far away planet, a soft green garden orb known as Urt with his astrogation.

I think I am really getting the Sorcerer system now.  For the first time I felt competent and Brett was cool enough to wait for a break in play mention a rules gaff I was making concerning the noticing of telltales.  Rock on.

I know I have run a slew of Sorcerer games by now but I've felt that I haven't been getting some parts quite right.  Now I feel its begining to gel.

More on this later.[/b]

[Judd]

Favorite moments:

Jim was about to describe the rounding up and slaughtering of the citzens of his Oasis Fort in order to fuel the Farrow's astrogate ability and just as he was about to begin describing the slaughter, a gaming buddy and his 5 year old son walked in.

Jim:  I can't do this right now.

We waited and then got the skinny on the slaughter.

Running the binding of the demons as a kind of prelude really allowed everyone to get a feel for the demons and the world.  They really grokked the setting.

Kolja's Kid with a Rock bound his demon by braining his parents while they slept, taking his time with his father.

Jim described the eight-legged pentagram that the Jarl of Spiders drew up and how the demon infected his blood.

Brett described riding the Dragon like a T-rex bucking bronco, destroying the temple where he found the creature in the process.

Bob described the forging of History-Eater and how he infused it with the power of a dead civilization, all but forgotten.

Good stuff.

[Judd]

One thing I would certainly do differently is I would not tell the players anything about the characters but have them choose the character by the Kicker.

This way, everyone will most likely be invested in their kicker, despite the fact that they didn't write it.

[TonyLB]

Oh wow, what a wonderful inversion of how to assign people to pre-generated characters.  I'm stealing that for... uh... essentially every game I ever run with pre-gens.

In fact, I think now that I'm going to make pre-generated characters for my Proton High School Capes game, just so that I can use that brilliant idea.

[Judd]

Thanks, Tony.

The idea came to me when I was talking to Thor about an adventure he had just run us on.  There was an Elven character who was essentially the conscience of the party.  He mentioned that the last time he had run the game, the player had gone psycho, really killing everything in his path.

The wonderful player whose name I forget who played the Elf to great effect wondered how anyone who read that PC's Beliefs and Instincts could go on a kill-crazy rampage.

We decided that it was because he heard Elf and wanted to go all Legolas on everything and was pissed when he couldn't.  Thor mentioned that he said, "Who wants the Elf," when he handed out characters. Aha!

At that point, it became clear to me that handing out PC's in a one-shot con scenario is a really important thing.

I suggested to Thor that the next time he runs the game, instead of saying Elf, he should just say, "Who wants to play the conscience of the party?"

Anyway, thanks, I'm glad you dig the idea.

[Bret Gillan]

One player's thoughts on the game:

+ Once the ball was rolling and all the players started getting comfortable with each other as individuals (joking with each other, making out of character comments) the amount of energy put into the game went way up.

+ Judd did a great job of reading our intentions with our characters, and letting us be as cool as we wanted to be. I'm used to a GMing style where the GM looks for chinks in the PCs armor and exploits it. Judd didn't do that at all. We were as awesome as we wanted to be.

+ Judd's a great GM, but I realized awhile after the game, and was somewhat startled when I realized it, was that all the "plot" of the game was all us - the players. Judd did an awesome job on the NPCs, and describing the setting, but the game in motion was the players. That's not a failing on Judd's part, either. That's a good Sorcerer game as I'd imagined it. Judd, did you actually use any Bangs in the course of the game?

[Judd]

Brett,

Good call, I didn't use many Bangs, just little subtle nudges in order to get you to do shit.

- Letting Bob know that the Witch-King's sword hungered for your character's demons' blood.

- Suggesting through one of the Witch-King's servants that Kolja's Boy with Rock be made into the slavemaster after he brained the former slavemaster with said rock.

- Instigating the flashback scene in which we set up that one of the Witch-King's High Warlocks had talked to the Jarl of Spiders and thus Jim moved on it and through his actions the High Warlock was infected with his funky spider disease.

- Having the thousands of slaves your PC freed bow to you in the open market (but you didn't DO ANYTHING with them!!).

- Having your second in command question your authority when you freed the slaves.

I think my GMing in this was very much inspired by my recent Burning Wheel games, in which I used the players Beliefs to force them to ping-pong off of each other.

I'm glad you had fun, Brett and hope to run a more traditional game at some point.  With the pre-made characters, I felt this was a strange Sorcerer game but somehow still one of my more successful.

[Ron Edwards]

Um, Judd, those are Bangs. If the GM is trying to tune into the player's aesthetic desires for that character, in short, to provide fuel for Creative Agenda* in action, then it's a Bang.

Best,
Ron

* specific to Narrativism, yes, I know, but that is given for this thread.

[Bret Gillan]

This is a bit of a definitional question, and I'm sorry if this is clearly spelled out elsewhere, but I was under the impression that Bangs by their very nature are prepared before play begins. "Not-so-random encounters" that the GM piles up before game and utilizes in play when the action slows down with adaptation to fit the circumstances. I guess I thought it was something a bit more than feeling about and facilitating the player's desires.

[Judd]

Bret,

I like to go into a game with about 10 Bangs.  When I do, I'll find that I use about 2 or 3 of 'em and the rest inspire entirely different Bangs that I make up during play, feeling the vibe of the game.

There's nothing random about it.  Its instinct, feeling the flow of the game, surfing the waves of the game.

Does that make sense?

If you have anymore questions, please ask.

[Bret Gillan]

Heh. Having actually run games using Bangs I understand what you mean. Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention, but it seemed like you were, if anything, using Inviso-Bangs during the session.

Could you rattle off a couple of the Bangs that you used?

[Judd]

Bret,

Here are the Bangs as I remember them.

- Letting Bob know that the Witch-King's sword hungered for your character's demons' blood.

- Suggesting through one of the Witch-King's servants that Kolja's Boy with Rock be made into the slavemaster after he brained the former slavemaster with said rock.

- Instigating the flashback scene in which we set up that one of the Witch-King's High Warlocks had talked to the Jarl of Spiders and thus Jim moved on it and through his actions the High Warlock was infected with his funky spider disease.

- Having the thousands of slaves your PC freed bow to you in the open market (but you didn't DO ANYTHING with them!!).

- Having your second in command question your authority when you freed the slaves.