In the Long Run: Hero Wars actual play

[Ian Cooper]

Following from the prep for play thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2154 here is what happened in actual play. My apologies as its long – I'll be interested to see how it relates to Ron's thread on running a Hero Wars game.

Hero Wars Actual Play

Brief Synopsis: The key elements to the back-story are that 9 years ago the community was torn apart by civil war, fueled by religious differences. The conflict turned kin against each other, the most terrible thing imaginable, following which one of the player-characters, Koschei, left his homestead, symbolically severing his relationship with his kin by becoming Humakti. His brother, Tostig, became Gagarthi, a bandit god whose worshippers believe might is right, following only the maxim "No on can make you do anything".

As the players enter the story, there is an uneasy peace within the community, which remains split on religious grounds (between followers of the traditional Storm pantheon and Yelmalio). Tostig is the self-styled 'Lord of The Long Run', a local bandit warlord who taxes the local people mercilessly with the tacit approval of Harvar Ironfist, the regional warlord. Think Seven Samurai or the English overlords at the beginning of Braveheart. The divided community does not resist for both fear of reprisals and because killing Tostig who is kin, even if outlawed, is arguably taboo. In addition, the Yelmalio faction knows that Tostig's banditry falls on the Storm worshippers (his former extended family) and that Harvar will call off 'his dog Tostig' if the stead swears loyalty and converts to Yelmalio.

The stead is evenly divided between supporters of the Storm and Yelmalio, with the balance of power held by a minority of Lunar converts (I wanted to see how the players would react to the possibility that working with the Lunars held the possibility of saving the community from destruction).

The crisis is the entry of the players with its outcome of changing the balancing power or confrontation with Tostig.

Premise: The working premise was 'Kinstrife Leads to destruction.'

While it was useful to have a premise in mind to determine the events that I thought would happen, in actual play the players moved the premise far more towards 'Unity leads to Survival' as they tried to stem the tide of destruction. I was fine with this as it fits the ideology of the hero band, which is very much about supporting community continuance amidst tumultuous events.

Relationships: I never fully used these apart from the immediate ones. I needed a couple of events to introduce the players to parts of the map they were not initially connected to. Next time I'll know to spend more time familiarizing the players with the map in the first session.

Events: I had prepared the following events before hand (or bangs if you prefer) based on the back-story and relationships.

Arrival at the stead –some notes on meeting Koschei's father who at firsts treats his son as 'dead' but warms over time, and some notes on bonding activities around the stead that would allow the players to learn about the events of the last 9 years – particularly about the Lord of The Long Run.

Moot – an event to be inserted if the players try to convince the community to act against Tostig as the community argues over the desired course of action.

Kinstrife –possible bad outcomes to the moot, which might spark of old hatreds leading to community conflict.

Confrontation – confronting the Lord of the Long Run.

I had one event prepared from a player's back-story, which was a murder bid by some of the Blue Moon Assassins who are hunting one of the players. Their arrival had bee foreshadowed for a few sessions with the player knowing how giant moths (20-30cm across) were attracted to him (the assassins mark their victims with moth pheromones). I decided to determine the impact of this event on everyone else at the time.

In hindsight, I should have made sure I had an event tailored for each player (effectively a Sorcerer kicker) that would draw him or her into the action properly. There were three players in this session two had 'kickers' one didn't and it took him longer to hook his way into the action.

We used up the first two events and the assassin kicker.  I could have done with a couple more pre-prepared events within the community to 'fit the players in' and generate an awareness of internal community tension. In play, I improvised these and the transition to the Moot scene with the murder of a local boy by the bandits.

The players played out the moot very differently than I had imagined, trying to unite the Yelmalions and Storm worshippers against the bandits by shaming the Yelmalions into defending the community.  (I had envisaged them trying to win over the Lunars, but their anti-Lunar feeling, despite the Lunars being the nicest guys in the stead was too great). Previously I would have found myself anxious that the players were deviating from the plot, but with no desired outcome to the scene I was able to play out the horse-trading, set resistances based on the players actions and let the results fall where they might. The players became very positive from this because they did not feel railroaded into choosing a course of action at this point.

We stopped at that point, because I wanted to regroup and prepare a new set of events reflecting this unpredicted outcome. We had about 2 and half hours play (that is a normal session lenght for us) and that felt about right though I was aware of Ron's comments on an early finish if required.

I liked using events. Some were under-prepared and I had to improvise more than I was comfortable with and missed some drama I could have included. I need to work on the balance between enough prep for me to be able to add the depth to events (I'm not always confident of that live), and being prepared to drop 'cool scenes' if the narrative does not move into them. However, events produced far greater player involvement as they became aware they were driving the story.

Interestingly in Hero Wars terms, we feel far less need to play an extended contest out. If I had used much more classic linear scene-by-scene prep I might have gone for an extended contest for the horse-trading at the moot. However, in play, it more naturally seemed to be a simple contest on route to a extended contest for any confrontation between the brothers (which looks like occurring at this point).

The players seemed to become much more involved in the story and participate in the story more intensely. Because I was no longer driving the story, just providing the framework around which it occurred and reacting they immediately felt their actions had more consequences. Events were critical to moving the game forward as it prevented the whole 'what do we do now syndrome' – as the players finished with the consequences of an event I was easily able to move the story forward.

It will take me time to perfect using these techniques both I prep and in play, but the results so far definitely suggest that this is a technique I intend to persevere with.

Comments or questions?

Ian

[Ron Edwards]

Ian,

It sounds wonderful. Here are some scattered reactions ...

1) Extended Contests should driven mainly by player emotional commitment during the run itself. I found that only about half of the Extended Contests in our game were expected/planned by me. They came into play about once every other session.

2) Relationships won't turn into serious augmenters until later in play. The players have to begin to care about NPCs and about their characters' extended social "family," and that takes a few scorching conflicts to settle in. You might also remind them that they can cement a relationship with any NPC they want by spending one measly Hero Point.

3) "Events" (or Bangs) are cool, aren't they? Remarkable how much happens when you simply ... have stuff happen, and move from there.

Best,
Ron

[Ian Cooper]

"Events" (or Bangs) are cool, aren't they? Remarkable how much happens when you simply ... have stuff happen, and move from there.

I think that the use of bangs made all the difference - it was the step I needed to move away from the 'What do we do now?" problem of setting and situation based scenarios without taking control of the story scene-by-scene. Bangs area really great insight.

Its fired me up to run Sorcerer and see them at work there too.