[Trollbabe] First Adventure, First time GMing it, First time RPing with Wife

[skatay]

Hi, I had my first GMing experience in a long time, with my wife, playing Trollbabe. I tried to get some things down, and made mistakes along the way. I'm open to suggestions about gameplay.

My wife made Sonja (with an umlaut somewhere in there) A trollbabe with both sides of her head shaved and long silver hair done ala the Thompson Twins with intense green eyes. She sports small rams horns, a slingshot, a sealed vial of some sort around her neck (human item, TBD) and a trollish horn. She also carries a sling. Her stat is 3, her specialties are missle, troll magic and devious (tho she really hasn't the conscience to play devious). She also has a silver fox that follows her around that she wanted. This threw me, since it wasn't a relationship, so we decided he's sorta following her around and doing his own thing, maybe later they'll forge a relationship.

The situation I had prepped earlier involved this bastard, Ragnar (the 'stakes' character) who had built his house over a troll burial ground, drove the trolls off it, and set up his farm on it. He had previously killed the troll family except for two younger but still impressive trolls with his 'posse', including taking the hand of one of the trolls, Shrakl. Ragnar is also lying to his own family about his wealth from being some kinda previous liar conniver, tho this was added later (see later, how it unfolded). The trolls retaliated by first taking Ragnar's sheep, whcih sent Ragnar looking for them, then later catching Ragnar himself, which is where Sonja is 'entering' the scenario.

The scenario starts with Sonja picking the northern coast of Holgaard to start. She's hungry from travelling and her sometimes seen sometimes unseen fox isn't helping. She spies the farm in the distance and approaches. A boy outside the house sees her, and runs in the house screaming "TROLL, TROLL!." Sonja was thinking of getting some food and possibly some items to sell off this house, but asks if there's unchopped wood outside and an axe. I say there is, and she begins chopping wood, as the woman comes out, pitchfork in hand. I declare a social conflict, saying the woman just wants her to go, but Sonja wants to be offered some food for the work, she wins. Actually I declared this conflict, but my wife decided she wanted to use magic instead, kinda hypnotizing her 'these aren't the droids you're looking for,' so I let it ride. The boy (Hansel--I know, my names stink) stays outside while Sonja works, grills her on if she's a troll, tells her she's pretty, says his dad and his sheep were taken by trolls, etc.. I make a point of mentioning that the farm is up on pegs, comparatively new to establish no cellar (it's over the graveyard/burial ground). A fenced off pasture is near, with no animals. The snow used to be pushed back some there, but recently it's just snowed over (to establish the missing sheep). I also mention an outcropping of rocks near a cliff overlooking the sea.

Sonja makes short work of the wood, being trollbabe super material and goes inside to eat. I set up how poor they are, some dried fruits are around (no meat) and the woman is cooking some kinda stew. She sets a small plate for her, a smaller one for her child, and the serving plate (which has the emptied contents of the whole food bowl) set with a spoon to accomodate Sonja, who is hungry enough to eat it all. My wife has Sonja grab a smaller bowl and eat a normal serving, thanking them, even though I tell her she's hungry enough to eat the whole thing. This gives her a new friendly introduction from the women, who exchange names. In the house is a chest in the corner. I figure the wife tells Sonja what's happened as she knows it: Trolls took their sheep, and her husband. Also, I set that they aren't able to dig a cellar through some of the rock the house rests on. Hopefully the search party of their kin (who live down a ways) will find them all soon, I didn't call a conflict cause I thought the graciousness of Sonja merited the info, and I wanted to re-establish the stakes. So, food over with, She's ready to say goodbye to Sonja.

Sonja wants to stay the night, so this is a conflict I kinda 'coax' out of her (she's not sure when her cue is to speak, I tell her it's whenever she wants, lol--she also sometimes narrates other characters actions in her general responses, I say she really only gets that freedom during actions where she has narration privs. Right/wrong?). She decides it magical and tries to get the woman (kiri. generic names from the book) to be too scared to let her out. She fails, gets all the way to the door (discommoded?) checks off sudden ally, wins the reroll and has the fox be right outside the door and offer her a bed for the night.

They eat dinner from what's left of lunch, and she says Sonja can sleep below while she'll sleep up top with the child, Hansel in the loft. I'm really worried here, cause Sonja won't leave the house, lol.

That night she checks out the chest which has Ragnar's name on it. It's locked. I tell her she can easily heft it, but she does magic to open the chest silently. Inside are two small bags, which she takes. I say the lock slips off and won't go back to look right, but Sonja slips out into the night with the sacks.

I screw up here by having a scene with the fox near the house's pegs, and say he sorta wrote a word in his footprints, suggesting that he's offered her his name, my wife makes up the name, though I inform her that I did the relationship wrong (she would have to form the relationship scene, and he already was in the previous conflict.) I said it was a three letter name he wrote, and she could pick it (which took a while) before she decided on 'Web'. Now Web is her relationship.

Outside, she goes through the bags, after Web sorta tells her something stinks in her bag. One has gold coins. WAY too many for a poor farmer. The other, a stinky troll hand, which she buries. She investigates the cliff, sees the cave and explores it, finds its a burial site (by how the bones are arranged and the runes on the walls) and spends the night there. She laughs that one of them says 'Grog: hearty eater.' She sleeps with no fire to reveal her position.

The next day she climbs further down the cliff and follows coast to avoid family. She finds herself back in a wood clearing with a troll campsite. The site has a spit, some stumps for trolls sit on, footprints everywhere. And a twisting bag that has a man (Ragnar) in it. He's pleading saying 'we can work out a deal' or something, not sure who he's talking to. The sheep are also penned up not to far away in some kinda troll barricade.

Sonja frees him, he's not sure what to expect. She gives him 2 of the gold pieces 'for his lost flock' which he graciously accepts, telling her how his poor family will thank her name, and to whom should he pay thanks. She lies and says 'Freya'. She tells him the way to follow to return to his house. This stakes character is freed, but I have more planned with him.

Just after she frees Ragnar, Grenk (a two headed ogre, with one sorta smallish) and Shrakl return. Shrakl is missing his hand. Grenk suggests that their lunch merely switched, so I call a physical conflict. Sonja wants to pull a David and Goliath times two here to knock em out, as do the trolls to question her better, but her physical stat stinks, so she takes her two failures in a row (one shot bounces off Grenk's dumber head) and she scrambles and slips, losing her sling, knowing at least she's not really in immediate danger.

At this point, Grenk wants lunch, but Shrakl thinks lamb is fine but wants to know why she freed that evil human (Shrakl also thought she was cute since he first saw her). This prompts my wife (or maybe me steering a bit here) to call a social conflict to learn why Shrakl thinks he's evil, since her gut response was to yell "he's got a wife and kid!" She wins, and Grenk tells her Ragnar's a lying bastard who killed his family with his own human posse of relatives, and even would lie to his own children to save his skin. The trolls wanted the land of their burial ground, but Ragnar built his house right on it, so they stole the sheep and finally bagged him, to eat him and get the land back.

My wife is not sure what to do, when I say a posse comes, led by Ragnar. Ragnar's family will overpower the one and a half trolls, with Shrakl killed first. My wife says she will only attack if attacked. Ragnar wisely leaves her to last. Only after Ragnar personally kills the unconscious Shrakl and later Grenk does he tell them to kill her as well. She's surrounded by spears, and conjures a windstorm around her to mask her escape. They prod their spears further in, only to find when the storm disappears, nothing. From atop a tree branch above the fray, Sonja looks down. Ragnar tells his very poor looking kin that thank god he's going to get his sheep back, since he would be penniless and likely starve if he didn't have them.

At this point, my wife decides Sonja will just slip away. I figure the adventure is over then, with the possibility Ragnar may seek his money, or perhaps word will spread of her thievery amongst humans.

I'm not sure if I drove the stakes correctly here, but I think I did, I tried to keep pointing them towards consequences for Ragnar. I made up the money and the troll hand to 'boost' his two sidedness, since I had no clue what she'd find in the chest, she wanted to steal a chalice (which I hadn't mentioned, here I vetoed that, I wanted her to go through 'opening a chest', she also suggested a signet ring on the severed hand, which I vetoed, but I shouldn't have, since it coulda been used later for sympathy with shrakl maybe. live and learn?)

I initially thought of this as the guy in the sack in the troll camp which coulda started the adventure, or the search party looking for him. Only later did I decide on her finding the left behind family first which made things a bit slow for play for me, maybe due to the isolation. I hadn't planted enough hooks or conflicts maybe?

Thoughts on this?

[skatay]

Oh, sorry for the double post--but over a meal we were talking about the game, and even better than the signet ring would have been if somehow I used a ghost from the troll burial ground to push the story, perhaps hinting that a troll from that family would need to re-sanctify it or something.

And I probably could have done something with that signet ring my wife offered to see earlier...

The whole scenario seemed sorta 'stifling' imo, like there was only 3 possible encounters that I was cutting to, my wife was waiting for me to make scenes, maybe that's what's wrong. not sure. I feel like I sorta failed on the 'exciting game' front.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there!

There are a whole bunch of things to talk about based on your posts, but as it happens, my time is limited right at the moment. I'll start by saying, actually, that I think it sounds like fun and that you might start from the premise that you and your wife actually did a pretty good job with the game.

More later, probably tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I'm sure another Trollbabe nut or two will chime in.

Best, Ron

[skatay]

you might start from the premise that you and your wife actually did a pretty good job with the game.

Hehe, yes, I guess in my desire to blurt everything I could remember out that I should have stated that I think the game is a lot of fun. I tried to reinforce that she could really do anything she wanted, but I think the limits of the setting I had didn't inspire her enough to try some crazy stuff that would freak me out. I joked later that if the same house was set near a town and she decided to spend 3 months learning deep sea fishing from some local fisherman my jaw woulda dropped. Only now does it occur to me that I guess I woulda had to break it down day by day and bring the characters to near her somehow. maybe have one of Ragnar's kin on the boat?

My wife is still unsure of how she feels about RPing, she 'sorta' likes it, but she wants to know if she 'did' it right, and she was awesome for a first time player, imo. I don't think any of the old gamers I used to play with taking to this any faster. I was very happy that she wanted to 'feed' the story herself, and it was merely some slightly off timing that was preventing it.

Towards the end (I attribute this to my lack of GMing endurance) I was suggesting shorter and shorter conflicts series and she was as well, I think because our inside the series descriptions were a bit lackluster. I think this is correct: In a best of 3, for example, she narrates a bit about a single roll failure (I do the single roll success as the opposite), maybe not ultimately frustrating the goal, but adding some lead in for a possible failure? Like, if she was trying to hypnotize someone to let her pass I could maybe say the subject seems to be batting her eyes a bit, maybe something inside the subject is resisting your attempt. Something in the 'process' of getting that goal made that makes for some interesting drama.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

My apologies for the delay. Here are some things to consider, and bear in mind that I wasn't there and you'll have to filter or possibly disregard any of them if they don't apply.

1. I think you're right that your wife really got it from the start and you were the more uncertain one of the pair. I'm not surprised; Trollbabe and its near cousins Dust Devils and Dogs in the Vineyard often yield that result. For now, there's no need to dwell on it, except perhaps to realize that the usual mental state of "GM wonders how to get his players to role-play, dammit" is simply not necessary or relevant.

2. It's interesting you made a real stinker, the main instigator of conflict in the scenario, also be the Stakes. That's perfectly legitimate. However, in practice, the way I've seen people play it including myself would be to have made Hansel the Stakes. But really - it's OK. Just interesting.

3. A quick point about narration - when a player states an action or speech for an NPC, it's really saying to you, the GM, "do you want a conflict here?" All you have to do is review whether you think that statement is worth a conflict. If not, then say, "Sure, that's good," and run with it. You are correct that you have authority over that issue, but you shouldn't shut down the actual narration that you describe because it's a valid way of suggesting conflicts. People may freeze when asked to state the conflict in an abstract way (this happens a lot with Polaris and Primetime Adventures); stating actions and speech of NPCs is a good way to discover conflicts when the GM embraces them as such.

4. Here's the main thing, related to most of your points or worries along the way. Your whole job is simply to put Ragnar in more and more and more danger. But the trollbabe doesn't have to do anything about it. She could have stayed in that house forever and Ragnar would have been eaten or killed, adventure over, and Sonja would have been free to leave at that point.

But maybe that confused you. Let's stick with the house and see whether Ragnar could have been brought into play ... and yes, he could have! He had that troll hand ... maybe she should find it!

Oh wait, that's what you did. This is my unsubtle way of making my point that by and large, you did fine as GM. I think you're being a big worry-butt over nothing.

Same goes for the next bit, because I was wondering why in the world did she find and save Ragnar so easily. No conflict? But OK, the two-headed guy shows up - no problem. Again, good job.

At this point, Grenk wants lunch, but Shrakl thinks lamb is fine but wants to know why she freed that evil human (Shrakl also thought she was cute since he first saw her).

Now that is perfect Trollbabe GMing, including the social conflict you suggested. Remember, in Trollbabe, anyone can call a conflict within any scene. You are included in that rule. It has nothing to do with permission, ever.

6. Now for the part that does make my nose wrinkle up. Dude, when this happens:

My wife is not sure what to do,

... that's when you say, "That's why we're playing. Only the trollbabe decides. I absolutely cannot. It's on you."

Sigh. But you didn't. You resolved the conflict without her, didn't resolve the Stakes at all, and she left the adventure when by the rules she couldn't. That was your only goof, and it's a rules goof, nothing to do with vague-ass good/bad-GMing babble.

See, all that family stuff in the beginning was crucial. It was your wife's choice to focus on it that much, and it was key, because she was disposed to side with Ragnar. The conflict, when it occurred eventually, put her in a terrible middle situation, with the family on one side and the violent but rather lovable trolls on the other. I think the only thing you missed was to have Ragnar actually do and say stuff that displyaed his true nature, like trying to bully Sonja into killing the trolls.

Because it's not your job to make the game exciting. She was already excited. The trollbabe was tuned in, turned out, and totally there. You just have to remember that it's not up to you to decide when the real conflict of the scenario emerges from actual play; it's on you only to recognize it (i.e. for Ragnar to show his true colors then and there).

Does that work?

Best, Ron

[skatay]

Thank you, Ron. I think I can use a great deal of what you offered. I look forward to trying to use these suggestions for more efficient and perceptive play.