[In a Wicked Age] A look at the "We owe" list after three chapters

[Christoph Boeckle]

We played a follow-up session to our two chapters with Zangdar's yellow gem.
My brother didn't play again, but my friend Julien joined in with Romain and Jérôme, while I continued to GM.

Zangdar the magician was on top of the we owe list, and Jérôme decided to take him back in. He replenished his character's dice as his come-back reward.

He chose the first of the following sentences:

• A new village, built on the the ruins of a forgotten people.
• The celebration of a day sacred to the city's chief cult.
• A knowledge-mad sorceress, delving into ancient secrets.
• An unsavory treasure-seeker, with an honest map.

These were generated from the Clinton Oracle, as I did not have an online connection to grab the new generator.

Romain played Hulk again (the unsavory treasure-seeker) and Julien chose to play the citie's chief cultist, Ted Grollimon. We decided that the city and the village from the first two sentences where the same thing. Hulk had the yellow gem (unique mastery) and restored his character's dice. Julien created a mastery to reflect his character's position in the cult and his ability to sway the zealots for offensive action.

The interests where:
Zangdar wanted to check out on the ancient people.
Ted wanted to kill any magician/sorcerer who would enter his village (and go on with the celebration).
Hulk was looking for said treasure (which we established was held by Shazra the sorceress).
Shazra, an NPC, wanted to participate in the celebration...


We had plenty of fun and whacky conflicts, while Shazra attempted to get married to Ted's god via the sacrifice of a goat, Zangdar was being annoyed by all the fuss in the village while he was excavating the foundations and Hulk kept changing camp between Ted and Shazra.
We interestingly established that Ted's god did exist after all (which appeared as quite a shock to the character), that the forgotten people would have been perfectly happy to go back to live with the new villagers, but Zangdard preferred to send the new villagers away, and make a new base for himself with the forgotten people as his servants and Hulk as his bodyguard.

See, that's the thing. Zangdar handed everybody's asses back to them, yet again.

Ted went thrice to the we owe list and Julien had to strike him off to survive some conflicts, while Zandgar ended up being twice on the list without having to cross off his name once.

Here is Zangdar's sheet for analysis:

Art: d6 d12, Grace: d6 d8, Guts: d4 d10
Asserting myself: Grace, Enduring Duress: Guts, Exerting myself: Art, Defending myself: Art, Influencing others: Guts
Cast fire-magic: Art (...)

He had a potent mastery in the Fire magic discipline, at 1d8.

Basically, he often found himself in non-magic conflicts, where his d12 d6 in Art could roll quite high, but yet he is lower than d12 d8 and d12 d10 (and can thus hope for some "we owe" appearances).
When things mattered, he could use his magic for a devastating d12 d8 d6 (plus his "we owe" bonuses if need be).

Now I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it. And I'm not quite sure we handled magic properly. Let's just take this as a point of data.


History of the list

Fonkin, one of my brother's character, did three touch and gos on the list. My brother rolled really crap quite a lot, so he needed those bonuses. The character had Art: d12 d6, Grace: d10 d4 & Guts d8 d6. Art was used everywhere except for exerting myself (guts) and defending myself (grace).
Zangdar made it on the list in the first chapter, to appear again in the second.

In the second chapter, only Zangdar made it.

In the third chapter, Ted did three touch and gos. Art: d12 d10, Grace: d6 d6 & Guts: d8 d4. He would Endure Duress and Defend himself with guts. He used Art for asserting himself, influencing others and a few specialties that didn't come up in play.
Zangdar landed twice on the list, never used the bonus dice.



I understand that the resolution rules are undergoing major overhauls, so basically what I'm saying is that it apparently ties very strongly with the "We owe" list, in a way that is not quite obvious to me yet.


Negotiating outcomes

When damage outcomes where not defaulted to, players would usually negotiate some advantage towards their goals. Zangdar for example would steal/take/receive curious items: Hulk and the city in this chapter, the falconer's birds in the last chapter, etc.
Loyalty was assessed a few times as well in this chapter and resulted in Hulk changing sides a few times (Ted - Shazra - Ted - Zangdar).
It's quite amusing to note to what extent some people will "prostitute" their character to save their hides...



Other than that, I found out that I hadn't understood the resolution rules quite the way they were written. This time, if the answerer rolled higher than the challenger, we kept the roll and the challenger immediately became the new answerer. This sped up resolution quite a few times of course.

We also didn't know how to apply the rules for the we owe list in case of two characters in conflict against one.
In one instance, Hulk and Ted had more total sides to their dice than Zangdar, but didn't actually have as high a die as Jérôme's character. Did Zangdar get to go on the we owe list? Even if he had good chances of "doubling" both the other characters in one roll?
We ruled that nobody would go on the list.


There, that's it for now. Hope this is useful, and feel free to ask questions!