The Mountain Witch - First time playing it for us, first time GMing for me

[crowyhead]

I've posted some about this over at Story Games here and here in more detail, so please feel free to check out those threads, but I wanted to post some highlights and thoughts here as well.  It also seemed like it might be handy to have more AP posts about The Mountain Witch just in general -- I know the write-ups I found here were really essential in planning my game.

I'm going to preface this by saying that this is the first time I've ever GMed, and it was the first time any of us have ever played The Mountain Witch, although several of us had heard of it.  I basically bought it a month or so ago because I thought it looked cool, and kept telling one of my friends how cool it seemed, until he finally convinced me that I should just go ahead and run it.

First, the players, their characters, and their abilities.  The make-up of the group is almost all seasoned gamers, with the exception of Dave (who is also my partner) -- he played a little D&D in highschool, but hadn't gamed at all since then until very recently.  Josh M., Josh C. and Tim are in my usual TSOY game, but I haven't gamed with Shy and Hannah before.

Josh M.
Ichi, a rather old man
Abilities:
A family heirloom bow that never misses anything within normal bow range
Premonitions
ability to jump around in true wuxia fashion.

Josh C.
Sadako, a female ronin who was once beautiful, but is now very severe.
Abilities:
Stealthy & Silent
Acid tongue
Kinship with the unclean

Hannah
Yasunari, a middle-aged man
Abilities:
He is in thrall to a demon, which can sometimes offer information that he otherwise wouldn't have
He can shapeshift into animal shapes (thanks to the demon)
He can talk to the dead.

Tim
Yoshi, younger, but experienced and meticulous.
Abilities:
He has fabled armor that has never been pierced
Super-sensitive hearing
Walks through walls

Shy
Kenzo, a very young man, formerly was basically a cop
Abilities:
He has a sword breaker
He is an expert in rope bondage/torture/restraint
(he couldn't come up with a third ability, so I let him go with just two for now)

Dave
Shitake (yes, like the mushroom...), a very odd middle-aged fellow
Abilities:
He can pass into a shadow in one location and emerge somewhere else
He is friendly with forest spirits
He is a master carpenter

Several of the abilities are potentially problematic.  In the case of the bow and armor, I personally just didn't see the point in the players taking them as abilities, since they can't grant a mechanical advantage and struck me as just basically being color.  Even after we discussed this, they both wanted to keep them, so they're there...  Neither one's really been used in-play.  Yasunari's demon gave me pause, because I didn't want Hannah to use him to dictate knowledge and events outside of the scope of her Fate.  So far, though, this hasn't been a problem; she's restricted her narration of the demon to Fate-related stuff (as far as I know, anyway...), and in cases where she wants to gain information about other things (the nature of an attacking creature, for example) I have had her make a roll to determine the level of success, and then have taken on the character of the demon to answer her questions.  Similarly, Josh M.'s premonitions have thus far been restricted to his Fate.  With Hannah's shapechanging ability, for the most part I've required her to roll to attempt to change every time she wants to do so.  This means that if she wants to change into a fearsome beast in order to join in a battle, she has to spend a round doing so.  We've had some amusing results from partial successes, as well; I think my favorite was when she attempted to change into a large bird of prey, and given the partial success, she turned into a sparrow instead.  At times I've wondered if I'm needlessly requiring rolls, since it's not as though changing into another creature gives her a mechanical advantage, but I feel like if she's going to, say, change into a bird in order to scout out the area, there should be some challenge in doing so.

It took a little longer than I'd hoped to get through the explanation of the rules and character generation, in part because we were also eating and chit-chatting. Also, in some ways I was still clarifying the rules to myself, because I often have trouble grasping things completely until people start asking me questions. I think that all took about an hour and a quarter. I started out by giving an overview of the game, then passed out Dark Fates. At this point, I realized that people were still really foggy on everything, so I handed out the character sheets (so they could have the conflict resolution stuff in front of them) and started from the beginning, explaining conflict resolution, trust points, and re-explaining the basic bent of the game. One player in particular, Tim, seemed kind of confused about the boundaries of what he could and couldn't bring into play in terms of his Fate — what kind of NPCs he could introduce, etc. It seemed to help when I reminded him that the scope of the game is pretty tight, and thus he would probably want to try to relate everything back to the Mountain Witch and the other players as much as possible.

Something that was, I think, very advantageous for us was that we had a group discussion right off the bat about de-protagonization and how much people were willing to allow the other players to "mess with" their characters.  You know, would it be ok to have another PC as your love interest?  Would it be ok to suddenly reveal that you were related to so-and-so?  We decided that we were up for these kinds of soap opera revelations, even though in a lot of long-term campaigns they would be very frustrating.  The consensus was that we wanted the game to be as twisted and fraught with tension as possible, so this kind of thing was permissable.  It strikes me that this is probably a very useful discussion to have before ANY game, but it's particularly important for one like tMW.

[crowyhead]

First Session

After the explanation of the rules and chargen, the first session went quite well, I thought, particularly since it was my first time GMing.  I started out the game by having each of the players describe their characters' actions as they approached the designated meeting place.  I told them to imagine that it was the opening sequence of a samurai movie.  This was really effective for establishing the characters right away.  Hannah, in particular, made good use of it by using it to establish how her character communicated with his demon -- she described him lighting small fires along the way, each time tearing off a small piece of his sleeve and burning it, then moving on.

After everyone had assembled, one of the players asked how big the shrine was, how old, etc.  I said, "Someone want to tell me?" and Tim immediately jumped in and said it was a small family shrine, and belonged to the abandoned farmhouse some distance away.  Very nice.

The group split up almost immediately when they heard keening cries coming from the forest.  Yoshi/Tim and Sadako/Josh C. took the cries for those of someone in trouble, and ran to help, while everyone else remained behind.  Yoshi and Sadako were drawn off the path and very quickly ran into a kijo (and also into the first conflict of the game).  Yasunari/Hannah called up his demon and asked what the creatures were, and then transformed into a kijo and followed.  His intention was to communicate with the kijo, but of course when he ran into the clearing where Yoshi and Sadako were, Sadako simply mistook him for another attacking kijo.  This turned out to be an awesome three-way contest, as Sadako turned to shoot the new kijo, Yasu attempted to dodge the blow, and Kenzo/Shy (who had been privy to the transformation) dove for Sadako to prevent her shooting Yasu. It was very thrilling — Hannah totally blew her roll, but Shy rolled higher than Josh C., and thus disaster was averted.

Everyone regrouped except for Shitake/Dave, who was missing.  This predicated the first real conflict between PCs, as Ichi/Josh M. and Sadako entered into a social contest to see whether they would look for Shitake, and Ichi won.  Josh M. scored a Critical Success, and here, unfortunately, I misinterpreted the rules --- I allowed him to narrate that Sadako lost the argument, was cowed by Ichi, and had a permanent conditional wound against Ichi as a result.  I later learned (thanks to Tim Kleinert's advice) that there should be differentiation between narrated results and Damage.  Basically, Josh M. should have either narrated the success as above, OR assigned a permanent wound for all conflicts in the future.  Conflicts are serious stuff!!

The chapter (and the session) wrapped up with the group locating Shitake, and then meeting a kindly woodcutter named Jiro, who took them all back to his humble hut, where they spent a comfortable evening with Jiro, his wife Meguni, teenage daughter Emi (who cast many bashful glances at Kenzo), and the eight-year-old Hiroko.  Of course, all was not as it seemed...

I was initially concerned over how little ground seemed to have been covered in the first session, but the beginnings of some really good character interaction were laid, and everyone had fun, so overall I was very pleased and definitely considered it a success.  Especially when everyone insisted that we meet for the next session two days hence!

[crowyhead]

Second Session

I really felt like this session delivered on just about everything tMW is supposed to do.  I basically just wound up the players and let them go; they took care of pretty much all the tension and about three quarters of the narration, between one Fate and another.

I started out with the revelation that the kindly woodcutter and his wife and eldest daughter were goblins with detachable heads.  The players handled this nicely, tying up the goblins' bodies and promising a quick and painless death to them if they told them what they knew.  Hiroko, the youngest daughter, was missing, but Sadako discovered a child's footprints that turned into cat pawprints, and wisely decided not to follow at this point...  The players also decided to wait until dawn for the execution, which gave me an excellent opportunity to have the goblin-wife's head ask Ichi, the sentry, if he was the one who was allied to the Witch...  Ichi used this to trick the goblin into giving him information, but then expressed to the other PCs that actually, he was trying to learn more about Yuki-Onna, the Witch's consort, as he believed she had once been a woman he loved.

This was a very long session, so I'll try to be brief and just tell you about some highlights, and then get into the very last bit of the session, which was totally freaking awesome.

1) Josh C. revealed that the bundle that Sadako guarded so jealously... was a BABY!  That produced some real shock around the table.  I was like, "But why is the baby so quiet?" and he was like, "You'll see... *evil laugh*"  Of the PCs, only Yoshi knows so far.

2) Shitake/Dave used his slipping-through-shadows ability to slip through the shadows of Yasunari's sacrificial fire and speak directly to Yasu's demon.  What just delighted me was that Hannah described the demon as looking like Yasu, but completely naked -- except for the bits of clothing that Yasu had burned.  I have no idea what, if anything, this signifies, but it's just totally awesome and creative.

Through various means, it was revealed that there was a temple partway up the mountain where a forest spirit had been imprisoned by O-Yanma.  This was guarded by members of the Fujiwara clan, who had pledged themselves to the Witch.  There was rumored to be a brooch there that would offer some kind of magical protection against the Witch [I should interject that I didn't come up with ANY of this -- this was all player Fate narration, mostly Tim and Josh M.].

Things REALLY got going when they got to the temple.  It was guarded by two human sentries outside and a lion dog inside, all of which were dispatched easily, but not before the lion dog raised the alarm.  Inside the temple was the forest spirit, who was in the form of an old man, bound to a chair by iron bonds. His eyes flared when he saw Yoshi, who he seemed to recognize. Shitake explained that they were here to release the spirit, and also retrieve the brooch. The spirit said that he would welcome release, but stated that there was one among them who did not desire the Witch's destruction. He also said that the Fujiwara clan had removed the brooch and the rest of the treasure.

At this point, the group was attacked by members of the Fujiwara clan, some dropping through the ceiling, while others tried to enter through the door.  While the other PCs were busy killing samurai -- Yoshi attacked and killed the forest spirit! This conflict played out beautifully; I'd been rolling crap dice for most of the session, but this time I scored a six – and so did Tim. Tim took Ai-Uchi and narrated that Yoshi was successful in killing the spirit, but was incapacitated in the process — the resulting magical backlash blew him through the door and he was impaled on a broken timber. Shitake, Ichi, and Yasu cleaned up the remaining samurai (very nice narration of Shitake using Yasu in viper form as a whip...). Shitake then said he was going to "help" Yoshi. Once he got outside, Shitake announced that he was going to sacrifice Yoshi to the forest spirits, in the hope of averting their anger and saving Yoshi from a terrible afterlife when he inevitably died from his wounds. He and Ichi had a social duel over this; Ichi won and succeeded in convincing Shitake that they should wait to kill Yoshi until they had heard what he had to say. Shitake agreed, "But only because there is nothing he could say that would justify this."

There followed another battle with the Fujiwara samurai. Yasu attempted to transform into something fearsome, and Hannah and I both rolled critical success. She decided her Ai-Uchi would take the form of Yasu mistakenly transforming into a whale, crushing several samurai to death, but being gravely injured and incapacitated in the process. (We were all like, "Hannah, are you SURE?" and she was like, "Yeah, it'll be cool!" "Okaaay....") The rest of the ronin succeeded in killing all but a handful of the remaining samurai, who retreated, and the ronin retreated into the forest in turn to regroup (fortunately, Yasu turned back into a human when he lost consciousness).

The final scene of tonight's session was a very, very tense scene that left a lot of things tantalizingly unresolved. Ichi revived Yoshi enough to question him – why had he killed the forest spirit? Yoshi said that the forest spirit had killed his daughter and destroyed his family. Then he reached into his robes and pulled out three bones tied with thread (the Mountain Witch's token?), and mumbled something about O-Yanma promising to return his daughter to him. At this point, Ichi said that now he agreed with Shitake; the best thing he could do would be to grant Yoshi death and pray for his soul. Sadako stepped in and said no, saying that they were holding Yoshi to a false morality, a man's morality that destroyed lives. Ichi and Sadako had an amazingly intense social duel, and Sadako lost.  Unhappy with this result, Sadako lunged for Ichi. He pinned her, but backed off immediately when the bundle on Sadako's back let out a human squeak [I can't quite remember, but I think this was the result of a Partial Success roll.  Josh was also hilarious here -- he was so freaked out that he might have killed the baby!]. At this point, Yasu's unconscious body was animated by his demon [Hannah conferred with me beforehand about this, and I reminded her that everything was restricted to her Fate – she could narrate with the demon, but she couldn't do anything mechanically b/c she was incapacitated]. The demon told Sadako that she and her "spawn" were important and said that it was most important that she remain safe. He also implied that Yasu did not share this goal, and she should be wary of him. Then the demon retreated, leaving everyone staring at each other in consternation.

I decided at this point to end the chapter, and the session, since everyone was like, "Holy crap, that was tiring!" The thing about this is that it WILL allow Yoshi a chance to recover from his incapacitation and potentially resist his being sacrificed, which means I'm not being as hardassed as I maybe should be, but on the other hand, I think there's a lot more potential for drama if he lives than if he dies. Plus, it left everyone panting for the next session. :) I did have them make any changes to their Trust points before we broke, though, so that all of the betrayals and alliances would be fresh in their minds.

By and large, gameplay went much more smoothly this time. I explained how damage vs. narrated success worked, and everyone understood a lot better this time around. When we got to the big group conflicts in the fights with the samurai, we had to pull out the book and make sure we were doing it right, but other than that it was pretty seamless. Trust points have been deemed "freaking awesome!" by all involved. Something that very much pleases me is that despite the realization that more trust = winning more conflicts, everyone's decided to ignore this and truly assign trust the way that they feel their characters would, dropping peoples' trust to zero even though it might hamstring them later.

Dark Fates are really coming into play; Shy and Dave are the only ones who haven't brought theirs out (at least not explicitly). I THINK Shy has "greatest fear," so I should maybe check in and make sure he's not having any trouble with it. I suspect he's probably just playing things close to the vest. Knowing Dave, he also probably has something planned that he's just not letting on. I'm really pleased with how participatory he was today in comparison to the first session. The decision to try to sacrifice Yoshi was particularly excellent and made everyone really happy.

The level of action has, I think, been really satisfying, and the tension is cranked up almost unbearably at this point. Almost everyone has taken a turn at framing a scene in terms of their Dark Fate, and Tim/Yoshi, who initially seemed most confused by this device, has taken to it like a fish to water. I have a feeling, too, that the sustained level of tension and action is going to have a positive effect on our other gaming, actually, since it's gotten people used to deciding to do something and then going for it, rather than waiting.

Kirsten

[Jason Morningstar]

I'm so glad your game is going like gangbusters, Kirsten!  I know you were thoughtful about prepping for it, and it looks like you've been richly rewarded.  Now that all your players are in the groove, the rest of the game ought to practically run itself.  It's great to hear that the more active style everyone is experiencing with tMW might carry over into other games - that's definitely happened for my group.