[Tensided] Knights of the Broken Sceptre

[arthurtuxedo]

I prefer teaching players their lessons in-game. Finding out that they just butchered a bunch of innocent, hard-working orcs who were sending money to their wives and children back home will teach them dilligence in their dealings better than my saying "You shouldn't have taken that guy at face value so readily." I won't change the story or the situation just to punish a group of players, but I won't alter the situation to save them from a mess their own carelessness got them into, either. I'll show you guys what I mean when I get around to recapping the "Red Beams Over Broadway" campaign.

[Callan S.]

Hi Arthur,

Is there a distinction? Between A: changing a game mid session to teach players a lesson, and B: changing the games next session in order to teach them a lesson? It's just waiting longer before you alter the game (in order to teach them a lesson)? Same thing but taking longer to do it, surely?

[David B. Goode]

Yeah, I totally get what you're saying, Arthur. When my group of high-level, high-powered "heroes" kidnapped the kings of the elves and killed the king of the dwarves, I didn't balk. I didn't raise an eye-brow. Okay, that's a lie - I totally raised an eye-brow. But I went with it, and they faced some unpleasant, guilt-inducing repercussions, and it was some great rp.

I guess I'm making a distinction between stupid-player-mistakes and stupid-character-mistakes. Sometimes a player misses the urgency of something. Just asking, "are you sure you wanna do that?" can get them to consider the situation for a second and possibly catch something they missed, something the character may not have.

In an early game with my wife, her first I think, her character was being pursued by goblins or some such, when she came upon a pool. She said her character wanted to take a bath.

"Are you sure?" I asked, not certain she caught the urgency of keeping away from the goblins.

She was sure, and she took that bath, and there were consequences. But she was clean.

[arthurtuxedo]

Game log starts about a quarter of the way down.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 8. Played December 16, 2007.

We started this game off minus three of six players. One had previously said he couldn't make it, and another has a habit of pulling disappearing acts for weeks or months and then coming back, so I wasn't about to wait. Three players is still enough to have a good game, although 4-6 is the ideal range in my experience. When someone doesn't show up, I try to come up with some kind of reason for their character to stay behind in whatever town they're in and then catch up later. With some player groups, I'd ask another player to take over the absent one's character, but I didn't get the feeling that anyone in this group (including me) really knew who the absent PC's were yet, so I had them stay behind. In past games, the guest player would often do a better job playing someone else's character than they did! I've been lucky enough to have many talented and versatile players who were capable of doing that. I try to avoid having the character stick around without a player. Unplayed PC's are dead weight that actively detract from the experience, IMO.

The first thing we did was reconcile the finances. Feeding horses is expensive, as a horse is a lot bigger than a person and eats a lot more, and the group had come into ownership of 4 of them. They also had to feed themselves, and this left most of them with almost no money. This hasn't been the sort of campaign where the characters collect loot, but they'll probably have to take and sell something soon just to continue feeding themselves and their horses. Even though a few almost went broke, no one had to borrow money from another.

In the hobgoblin lands, the group meets a raiding party from Dunsburough and travels with them. The plot is inched forward through dialogue with Sir Froderick, and Velkan's illusions about the inherent righteousness of Dunsburough are strained even further. The party breaks with the raiders and continues toward their destination, and Kogan (the captured hobgoblin)'s player shows up. Kogan catches up with the group on Conrad's old horse, but chooses to follow them hidden and not to reveal himself. He follows them until they come across a 5 meter long dragon on the hunt, searching the ground for prey. The group stays low and hidden until it passes, but Kogan makes the curious decision to start shouting and throwing rocks at it, then he starts hightailing it toward the rest of the party when it swoops toward him. He still doesn't have any weapons or equipment, mind you. As you might expect, the dragon swoops down and grabs Kogan, takes him to a hilltop and gobbles him up. I don't know what Kogan's player was thinking, but if he had survived the dragon, the rest of the group would have killed him instead.

One player later complained that the dragon was wimpy, at only 5 meters length and 600 kg weight. My philosophy on dragons is that the supermassive dragons you see in many fantasy settings are lame because realistically there's no way a party could ever kill one. So if they kill one it just means that the game system isn't realistic, so it's not really an accomplishment, since anything can kill anything in an unrealistic system. If the system's realistic then there's no reason for a party to ever fight such a large dragon, since the outcome is inevitable defeat. So for this setting I created dragons that I felt to be more realistic, large aerial hunters that use thermal currents to glide and hunt medium-large animals over a large territory. Basically like huge eagles.

Finally the group reached the fortress where they would be able to confirm or deny Sir Langard's theory of warmongering nobles manufacturing a causus belli against neighboring Ramelob.

[arthurtuxedo]

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 9. Played December 23, 2007.

We were still effectively minus three players in this session because the one whose character was eaten last session hadn't rolled up a new one until a few minutes before game start and there were some issues with the sheet, as it was the first he had made himself. I was running the session in one window while talking to him about his character in the other, which was a challenge.

The characters came upon the "abandoned" fortress and found it bustling with activity, just as Sir Langard had predicted, but they couldn't get close enough to see whether it was inhabited by humans or hobgoblins without being spotted, so they took up hiding spots on the hill and waited. Soon they discovered they weren't the only ones watching from a distance when they saw a group of Ramelobians doing the same. To determine which group saw the other first, I rolled Spot and Ninjitsu for the Ramelobians and then had the group roll the same and whoever had higher MoS won. This session I wanted to try a new concept where instead of taking the best Spot roll vs the worst Ninjitsu roll, I averaged them both. The rationale for Ninjitsu is that the worst ones will bring the group down, but the best ones will bring it up by saying "Don't hide there you idiot, everyone can see you!" I don't think there's much rationale to treat Spot that way, however, so I doubt I'll average Spot in future sessions. I may or may not continue doing it with Ninjitsu and Stealth. I like it, but it's hard to average mid-session outside of OpenRPG, and I want the game to be just as playable around a real table as a virtual one.

The group was spotted by the Ramelobians when the party tried to move to a new hiding spot, and the two groups met and conversed. Finding their goals to be similar, they decided to ambush the next supply wagon together and make off with a prisoner each, who they could then interrogate later. The fight was 6 Ramelobian missile cavalry and the group vs 4 men-at-arms, 6 mercenaries with sword and shield, and 4 mercs with crossbows. However, since it was a surprise attack, the crossbows were unstrung and useless. The Ramelobians stayed back and hurled javelins while the party charged in on horses. This was a bad idea, as the men-at-arms they were charging toward were much better equipped and better fighters.

Conrad took a lance point through the clavicle, reducing his left arm to Destroyed, and this was after he had used an Action Point to make his opponent reroll. Velkan took a mace to the leg that reduced it to Crippled. Destroyed means that a limb can never be used again unless its condition is upgraded (something that has to be done within 10 minutes of sustaining the injury). Crippled means that it will heal, but it can never be above Hurt again unless upgraded before 10 minutes. The group dispatched the rest of the men-at-arms and forced a surrender, and they took the surviving man-at-arms and tied him up to his horse. After losing their pursuers they hurriedly attended to the wounds. They managed to upgrade both injuries, Velkan's leg to Useless, meaning that it can't be used but it will eventually heal fully. Even after the upgrade, Conrad's arm was still Crippled, however, so his character will always have a Hurt left arm for the rest of the game, giving him -1 penalties to all rolls using that arm.

While I was running the battle, I helped our other player with his character. He had calculated the XP cost of his Skills by hand instead of using the character sheet's built-in autocalc, and so he ended up still having more than half of his starting XP left to spend. But once that was fixed, he decided he wanted to have some followers, and took the Posse merit, something no one had ever taken before. Excited to see how this would play out, I encouraged him to take it. Posse allows someone to have 4 to 12 additional characters with 4 times his starting XP split between them. They all have to have the Posse merit, as well, and starting cash is split between them. They all have any wealth merits, as well. He originally wanted 12 additional characters, but after Posse and Wealthy there was no XP left for them to have any Skills, so I changed the description to 4 to 8 additional and he decided to go with 4, all with equal XP to him. Even with Wealthy, however, he would be at a serious disadvantage in terms of equipment, his characters only being able to afford simple spears and cheap armor. His characters will be introduced next session, so we'll see how it goes.

The retelling of this campaign is now current. The session after this one hasn't been played yet. Next session will be played on Sunday morning.

[arthurtuxedo]

Session start is more than halfway down on this one.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 10. Played December 30, 2007.

This had the makings of a pretty lame session. I woke up about 5 minutes before it started, I had connection issues, three players were nowhere to be seen, and a lot of time was spent on character sheet issues before we could get started. I also had only the vaguest of ideas where I was going with the whole thing. This is not strange in itself, since I haven't made detailed campaign plans in many years, but as this was going to be a session where a lot of plot is revealed, I was afraid to just wing it.

It turned out to be pretty good. The characters met with Sir Langard, who heaped praise on them for a job well done and rewarded them with keeping the loot they found, plus gave a nice suit of armor to Velkan and 100 gold to Conrad and Cassie. I kept going back and forth trying to decide how much gold to give. On the one hand, 100 gold really isn't that much to reward someone with after a job like that. It equates to roughly $2,000 in today's money, or enough to have modest food, drink, and shelter for 100 days. On the other, Sir Langard is very much in tune with class issues, and he probably wouldn't heap great riches on people from the lower classes. I decided to be true to Langard's character instead of going with my instinct to reward the players.

After a feast in their honor, the mood turns grimer as the group learns that the reason behind the plotting is to stage a coup for the throne, and the boorish and psychotic Lord Kraylen was in on it. The group must now take the prisoner across the kingdom to the capital in Kingsvale so that the king can hear the testimony and put down the plotters before it is too late. Along the way, they will travel with Sir Langard as he goes to a tournament to joust Lord Kraylen and hopefully capture him there. A man-at-arms would be a good enough prisoner to convince the king, but a high-ranking plotter like Kraylen would be able to implicate the man who Langard suspects to be behind it all, Archduke Linus Tallbrook. The group prepares to set out on the long journey with their sire.

[arthurtuxedo]

Session start is about a quarter of the way down.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 11. Played January 6, 2008.

This session was fun, even if most of it was not really related to the main quest much. I got a rude surprise when I logged on, namely that my favorite server, OpenRPG Veav I wasn't up, so we used the Blackstar Games server. It went without issue, but Veav's server is the only one I've found to be consistently reliable. The players were smart enough to read the forum so they found the game quickly.

The group started out waiting for Sir Langard to show up so they could start on their long journey to the capital in Kingsvale, accompanied by their liege as far as the faire where they would try to kidnap Lord Kraylen, a high ranking plotter who would be able to implicate Tallbrook. They met the new character (or rather, the new 5 characters) of the player that had previously controlled the ill-fated hobgoblin prisoner. This one had the "Posse" Merit, giving him 4 followers with starting XP equal to his. I think he considered this to be a Merit that would allow him to gain an unfair advantage. He didn't realize that 150 XP makes a big difference, and given the fact that starting gold is not multiplied by the number of characters, it's hard to make 5 characters that are any better than 1 without the merit. He also didn't have the advantage of all the XP the rest of the group had racked up over the course of the campaign. These characters were just as full of vitriol as Kogan was, which can sometimes add and sometimes subtract from a game, depending on circumstances.

Langard showed up and they traveled to the faire, where three of the characters participated in a swordfighting contest. This was with real swords and fought until first blood. Conrad lost the first round, finding it hard to do enough damage to get through his opponent's armor and draw blood, while his opponent found it easy to hit Conrad. Conrad is built for offense rather than defense, so he'll shred an agile opponent, but he's an easy target. Velkan defeated the new character Le Tharget handily, then beat another opponent, before losing to a knight in the final round. His odds of winning the last bout were terrible given the differences in stats, but if he had managed to pull it out, he would have won a very nice sword.

Then the important moment came when Sir Langard jousted Lord Kraylen. The plan was that Langard would beat Kraylen into a pulp, which would make it easy for the group to abduct Kraylen afterward. The reality turned out rather different, and it was Langard who ended up fit for intensive medical care thanks to a blunted lance to the forehead at galloping speed. Now the group has to come up with a Plan B, since they could never hope to defeat Kraylen and his bodyguards while Kraylen has only a minor leg injury. Kraylen is a better fighter than the whole group put together, after all. So far, they've come up with poisoning him and hiring prostitutes for him and his men and catching them with their pants down (literally).

[arthurtuxedo]

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 12. Played January 13, 2008.

This was an enjoyable session, although it left the kidnapping of Kraylen for later. I was a half hour late for this one, since I got so caught up in my plans for afterward that I simply forgot about the game and slept in. This is the first time I've ever done that, or at least the first time in many years. Nobody seemed too put off, though, and we got started soon after I arrived.

The events of the session are a fairly brief retelling. Kraylen went on to win the jousting tournament and a magnificent destrier (the best and most expensive of knightly charger horses), and retired to his wagons to celebrate with his knights and subjects. With Sir Langard indisposed and Kraylen fully aware of the group's allegiances, if not the full extent of their plans, Kraylen sent some of his men to ambush the group. The ambushers struck when Velkan separated from the rest of the group to check on his sire. While the mercenary soldiers were skilled at keeping Velkan separated from the others, the difference in skill in equipment was large, and the group made short work of the mercenaries. I kept thinking about whether I should spice up the battle, but I couldn't come up with anything that would fit. It made sense for Kraylen to send some mercenary thugs to do the job, since even if they failed it wouldn't be obvious who had hired them and the players would at least be detained and questioned for bloodshed at the faire. It wouldn't have made much sense for Kraylen to send someone important, like knights, retainers, or squires, even though that would have made the battle more interesting. I had thought that having the players outnumbered and with Velkan cut off would make it at least somewhat difficult, but I hadn't really been keeping up with character sheet updates and didn't understand at first how much better at fighting the characters were than when the campaign started.

In the end, the group captured one of the men and is now trying to take him out of sight before witnesses can get close enough to positively identify them and before the guards show up to detain the survivors, which would ruin the group's plan. They hatched a tentative plan to use the prisoner to sneak into Kraylen's caravan party and kidnap him. Since Kraylen is a Lord accompanied to the faire by 3 knights, their retainers and squires, and his own retainers and soldiers and there are only 4 players, it could get really ugly next session if they're not stealthy enough. Whatever happens, it should be plenty interesting.

[arthurtuxedo]

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 13. Played January 20, 2008.

In this session, the group finally attempted their kidnapping of Lord Kraylen to make him squawk to the king about the coup plot and hopefully implicate Archduke Linus Tallbrook, the man who Sir Langard suspects is behind it all. Their plan was pretty harebrained, basically consisting of "sneak in, nab Kraylen, and fight our way out." They did dress it up with some good ideas about sowing confusion by shouting that their prisoner was the traitor, but it's still a pretty dangerous plan. Right now Cassie is alone with Kraylen, and although she's armed and he's not, he's a much better fighter. She had him at her mercy until she drew a knife and decided to start cutting him up for fun, at which point he decided to take his chances and fight. The outcome will be seen next session, and we'll find out whether they get themselves killed / capturing trying to get Kraylen out of his camp.

When I decided that the bodyguard had his helmet off, it made me think that there should be long-term fatigue rules regarding the wearing of armor for extended periods. If you've been marching all day fully armored in a hot environment, you're not exactly going to be in your best fighting condition, after all.