[DitV] King's Marshalls - Part Two

[Pelgrane]

Second part of actual play. First part here.

After a slightly slow start, the conflicts began to flow nicely.
Mage Livius had a conflict with the NPC sage  Intially, the player suggested setting stakes which would establish objectively whether the sage was using dark magic. This became "Does the Sage admit to using dark magic in his divination" - about right, because it was something that the player would be able to give. The Sage had got Mage Livius on his own for this conflict, and after a raise which involved Livius having to look into the Sage's scrying glass, Livius gave.

There was a little too much emphasis on tax collection for my taste – my fault for formulating the laws as I did. It did lead to a nice conflict between the bookkeeper and Provost Gondry – the bookkeeper persuaded Gondry to let the latter replace the funds, and Gondry would say nothing. I was surprised by this – Steve was playing the character as a zealot, and he gave here. I expected a riot.

A couple of nice conflicts with the orcs lead one Marshall (John) to ride off on his own to the Orcish village, and the other (Ewan) taking orcish hostages back to the village where there are potential conflicts over whether the orcs will be lynched or not.

The analogy of sedition to demons seems to be working, although I'll have to be more precise about the steps to escalation. I had problems over what dice to use for demons, as it seems require me to make an objective judgment about the level of sedition/demons the players had experienced.

I made an error later in the game. In an orphanage, an NPC grabbed a child and threatened her with a knife as a raise, but it was such a teeny raise, I couldn't make the player accept the fallout. The stakes weren't that high, so it would have been cool if I had been able to do this.

We made extensive use of the Afraid "joining in a conflict" rule – I think the game would have been very difficult otherwise.

The atmosphere of the game was generally light-hearted, with the tension only raising if a PC was trapped on their own, ie in a situation where they could lose.

The higher fallout for magic works well.

A nice little cross-over rule for this system. You can treat one-shot magic (potions, scrolls, etc) as one-off traits. I've yet to try this.

Questions
Can two NPCs have their dice rolled if they are cooperating, or should I just add the 3d6 for cooperation? If not, any two Marshalls can beat all but a mass of NPCs.
The players appear to ignore small but interesting conflicts and go straight in at the top with the Lord, who naturally has to reveal all the problems in the village of which he is aware.  Anything I can/should do about this?
I found it tricky (with a couple of exceptions) to think of raises the PCs wouldn't be easily prepared to accept as take the blows. Any suggestions?

[GB Steve]

The zealot front that Provost Gondry presents is superimposed on a pragmatic streak. I thought he was more gungho but as the game goes on I feel that the Law is a powerful driver for him, but in a more abstract sense than anything deriving from the King.

He sees his purpose or mission as collecting the required amount of taxes and whilst the bookkeeper was obviously a criminal, Gondry figured that causing a fuss would make his prime mission much harder. It was also increase the level of chaos which Grondy always seeks to suppress, although he does understand its attractions.

So he'll be taking the same line with the High Priest, "I signed up for tax duty and whilst I understand the attraction of your offer to overthrow the rule of the Lord and King, these are not withing the scope of my current mission, nor are they in the Pentateuch five year plan. If you have a scheme for overthrowing the King and replacing him with a theocracy, please fill in the requisite forms at your nearest Bishopric of Pentateuch and report for execution for treason".

(Traits of "Crush chaos" and "I understand the attractions of chaos")

Give unto Pentateuch etc...

As far as the game goes I think you may have got a little conflict happy at one point but have succesfully reigned in the exuberence to focus on what matters. Part of the reason for saying something about my PCs motivations is so that next week I get an even thornier conflict than "Join Us".

[Pelgrane]

As far as the game goes I think you may have got a little conflict happy at one point but have succesfully reigned in the exuberence to focus on what matters. Part of the reason for saying something about my PCs motivations is so that next week I get an even thornier conflict than "Join Us".

You needn't worry on that account. I have some doozies.