Tim Runs Trollbabe

[Tim C Koppang]

My first Trollbabe session is in the books.  After missing DemonCon I had an insatiable desire to run something indie (actually I always have that desire).  By the way, I haven't seen many DemonCon posts.  Did I miss them?  How did it go this year?  I wish I could have made it, but the powers that be scheduled me to work that weekend.  Boo!

Anyway...

I wouldn't say that the first session was a total success, but we had our moments.  There were three players and each one of them made a trollbabe with their "Number" at an extreme of the scale.  I must say that middle of the road characters are not encouraged necessarily.  Speaking of character creation, I've heard Ron say that players tend to grasp the concept rather quickly and produce characters with ease.  Not so with my group of players.  I gave them the lowdown on the whole Troll Human tension after going over just what a Trollbabe was, but even then it took them something like the better part of an hour to get things in order.  This seemed like an awfully long time to decide on one number and some colorful details.  I think they were looking to do some heavy character background generation.  When the rules didn't encourage it, they took it upon themselves to fill in the details.  Still, there wasn't much writing going on.

After going over some of the basic mechanics I showed them the world map and asked where everyone was headed.  This took them a bit by surprise I think.  They're typically the kind of players used to traveling as a cohesive party--all together.  From there I set up the initial scenes for each player and started cutting back and fourth fairly aggressively.  In the beginning, when they were all trying to deal with their own immediate conflicts everyone was interested, and even interested in what was going on in everyone else's scenes.  I hadn't done much prep work beyond these initial scenes as I was hoping that things would progress naturally.  However, I was a bit disappointed that the players didn't add more to the whole experience.  I felt like they were just waiting around for me to feed them plot.  Sort of like they were only reacting to what was presented to them.  I don't blame them entirely for this though.  I think for a large part of the game I was more concerned with getting the rules and mechanics out correctly then I was with advancing story.  To be honest, I haven't run many games wherein the party was split so far apart, not to mention the fact that I was running three different story arcs as opposed to just one.  This was much more draining than I expected.  During some of the slower scenes, when I normally would have been thinking about how to add to the story at hand I found myself just trying to catch up with what was going on in the other two player arcs.  It's a lot to keep track of.  My own multi-tasking deficiencies combined with the player's reluctance to invent story elements created a few awkward lulls where we were all sitting looking at each other with nothing to say.

By the end of the session they were, I think, getting the hang of requesting scenes though.  So that was good.  And they really liked it when I told them that if another player-character wanted to get involved in someone else's conflict then they could just do so.  I told them it didn't matter how much time and distance was in between, you could just pop into a conflict if you wanted to.  Their eyes lit up with amazement when I said that.  It created an intresting effect too, and I'm betting that I'll see more creative uses in next week's game.  Let me explain:

Unn, a human wizard had created a magical serpent and then let it escape into the local village.  Unn was then accused of joining forces with the local Troll tribe in an effort to wreak havoc on the villagers.  They were forming a mob to oust the wizard.  Enter the Trollbabe.  Does Unn live or die?  So Inge, the Trollbabe, spent some time looking around for the serpent and trying to calm the villagers.

Meanwhile, another Trollbabe, Cref, was busy trying to save the life of a stowaway Troll pup who had accidentally snuck onto a human merchant ship.  Well, after casting some destructive transformation spells on the Troll pup, the captain of the ship forbade Cref from using her magic.  Immediately Cref's player requested that the ship be attacked by a sea serpant so that the captain could see the benefits of having an active magic user aboard the ship (This was probably one of the most rewarding scenes of the entire session, and especially so because of the level of player involvement).  Well, Inge's player then wanted the sea serpent to be the serpent that Unn had unleashed on the village, and moreover he wanted Inge to enter the conflict riding the serpent.  I was feeling over the top so I said, "Right on.  That's awesome."

Neither Inge's player nor I knew any details about Unn's serpent, but it turned out to be Loch Ness monster sized.  Even better, this whole mess created a really cool opportunity for flashback scenes (a first in my GMing experience).  Inge's player was now present in Cref's story arc, but was constantly requesting scenes back at the village with Unn.  We both had a good time filling in all of the details about how Inge was able to locate the serpent and track it through the ocean until happening upon another ship--and then joining forces with Cref.  All good stuff.  Scene requesting rocks.

Onto some mechanics comments.  I was rather disappointed with the unstoppable competence of the Trollbabes.  My players never failed.  I was encouraging them all to set up conflicts so that they could have control over the action type etc., but this meant that they always set up conflicts that played to their strengths.  And in Trollbabe this means that they had a two out of three chance of having a 70% or better chance of succeeding (at least for my players).  They never failed.  We had a few rerolls, and even a few failed rolls, but the players never failed at their stated conflict goals.  They were just too good at everything.  And adding other action types made this problem worse.  Trying to roll a 3-10 on one of two dice just isn't hard at all.  I'm convinced that we were doing something wrong.  Does this problem seem weird, or have others had a similar exprience?

I also found that it's very easy to go from conflict to conflict, one right after the other without any down time.  This isn't so much of a problem as it is interesting.  Besides, we tended to do a lot of talking in between dice rolls in a series anyway.  It was just a lot more mechanics than I'm typically used to.

All in all things were slow-going, but we sure had some enjoyable moments.  I think now that everyone is a bit more confident with the system things will go much better next week.  I'll keep you posted.

[rafial]

Onto some mechanics comments.  I was rather disappointed with the unstoppable competence of the Trollbabes.  My players never failed.  I was encouraging them all to set up conflicts so that they could have control over the action type etc., but this meant that they always set up conflicts that played to their strengths.

Two comments from my own experience so far.  I two was a little alarmed initially by the competence of Trollbabe.  Part of my concern I realized came from the typical GM habit of viewing character failure as opportunties to take control away from the players and inject GM content.  But wait!  In Trollbabe, that is all reversed.  When the Trollbabe succeeds, the GM narrates.  Sure, the 'babe achieves the specific goal set out for her, but now as the GM you have all sort of opportunity to weave your own ideas into that.

The converse of this is that because Trollbabe failure = player gets to narrate, you'll find that once your players start to grasp this they'll want to fail more.  It's an amazing thing, but I've seen Trollbabe players regularly request conflicts which they are hoping to fail, and then be a little frustrated when they succeed!

Ron has proposed changing the way social rolls are handled.  Instead of the largest range including the number, success on a social roll would now be the smallest range including the number.  That is if the number is 7, social is 7-10, rather than 1-7.  When I first read this idea, I was dubious, but the more Trollbabe I play, the more I think he's on the money with this one.  The overall effect of this change is that any given trollbabe now has one area in which they excel, and two in which they are more challenged, rather than two in which they excel, and one in which they are challenged.

[Tim C Koppang]

Players requesting conflicts in which they intend to fail?  Hmmm... Interesting.

On making social the worse of the two ability ranges, I know someone somewhere suggested that this would encourage more middle of the road characters.  I think this is right on.  Alternativly, has anyone suggested making either Fighting or Magic the third ability as opposed to Social?  It's just that Social really should be the most important ability.  Making it the worst of the two ranges seems harsh.  If Magic, however (for example) was based on the best/worst of the ranges of Fighting and Social then at least a player could specialize in Social.  Just a thought.

[Alan]

Hi guys,

I've been playing in Wil's game and I just wanted to elaborate on players wanting to fail.  I think I'm one of the major failure hounds in the game, and I have two motivations: first, failure lets me narrate, and second, failure offers the chance to raise the story stakes for my character, getting her more involved in whatever is going on.  For example, I might narrate how my opponent kidnaps an important NPC, thus giving Yalla a motive to pursue him.

I think I'm also in favor of changing the Social roll.  If you look at stories, much of the mayhem results from social misunderstandings despite the hero's best efforts - so a lower social roll will generate this effect.
Since, conceptually, the 'Babe's numbers is not a measure of ability, but of the player's commitment to a style of problem solving, the reduction in Social doesn't really affect the player's game effectiveness.

[Bob McNamee]

Another possiblity concerning the Roll change would be to create the number N.
The Action type rolls would be Ron's modified type( with lower range plus N)

Roll ranges would be

1  -  (N-1)
(N+1) - 10
Low Range + N

Then each player assigns the Action-type labels as they like for that character.

So a number 8 character would have ranges of

1 - 7
9 - 10
8 - 10

Then they assign action types... so a Fighter centric looks like

Fighting 1 - 7
Magic    9 - 10
Social    8 - 10

or a Social Centric...lover not a fighter

Social   1 - 7
Fighting 9 - 10
Magic    8 - 10

or Magic / Fighter of few words

Magic   1 - 7
Social   9 - 10
Fighting 8 - 10

After creation, the characters action types & rolling ranges stay linked...so if you change your number later, you move along the scale you have chosen (no changing around ranges later)

As far as folks aiming for the middle of the scale. I just don't see this happening with most people. Taking an extreme number (like the 8 above) really lets you focus the character on their strong point. The level of success when rolling in their main category is its own reward!

The way things stand you are highly motivated to be out of one of the ends, with 2 high rolling ranges by definition.

Social is applicable to so many situations. I like the idea of being able to have Social your highest type, that's a big plus to me, a Relationship based that heavily leans toward Social conflicts.

That's one idea anyway,