[Burning Wheel] Frickin Elven Princes

[Luke]

We had another small and short session last night. We only had three players and we were missing one from the main arc of the "Tristam goes north saga", so i decided that we'd do a "side adventure" in the setting.

Rich and Drozdal had both recently made elves as alternate characters, so I thought it would be interesting to do an all elven scenario. We exhorted Danny to make up an elf and to do it quickly.

Forgive me for venting, but why is it whenever I ask for a "quick elf" I get a fucking Elven Prince? This, by FAR, is the cheatinest character in BW. "Elven Prince" is a very fruitful LP, and taking it without justification, story, reason, ties or ramifications is just plain bad form.

What's worse is that we were starting late and were waiting on Danny. He complained for the rest of the night that we rushed him and that he would have made a better character if we hadn't rushed him! GAH! Let that be a lesson to all budding BW GMs, when you want to run a one-nighter and you see an elven prince in the works, just say NO!  He'll be the whole night.

We got settled and had about two hours to play.  Now I am very traditional-minded as a GM, I believe it's my responsibility to entertain and challenge the players and their character concepts. So I wanted to present them with a scenario that was involving and quick, but I was determined to tie it to their BITs in order to get some satisfying play out of the night.

I also wanted to pick on Danny's Elven Prince a little. The character is just too egregious to be allowed to walk around unnoticed in his Elven Mail with his Elven Arms.

Hm...
Here's the Beliefs that I wanted to operate on:
Lirith, Prince: "Elven Society is the only civilized society."
Ëaran, former Sea Captain: "Men are my kith and kin."
Alatanür, Ranger: "No one, not even Elves, can be trusted."

I also had some variance in what the player's wanted. Danny and Dro had made Wilder Elves without too much more backstory than their lifepaths. Whereas Rich had a made a Sea Elf with a colorful background -- he had recently lost his ship and crew and was stranded on the far side of the world.

Hm...
I decided that I wanted Dwarves involved as well, and that I would use Lirith's station as a lever to get things rolling: The young prince had been charged to deliver a sealed message to a distant dwarven prince in the far northern wastes. He had been given his cousin, a Ranger, to accompany him. The journey and delivery was to be done with the utmost discretion.

And for the sea captain: Ëaran's ship was lost nearby and he encountered a party of dwarves who invited him up to their stronghold to recover his strength and wits.

Rich and I parleyed about Earan's situation, whereas I simply narrated to Danny and Dro the situation I wanted to put their character in.

We opened with the prince and his guard entering the Dwarven court and presenting themselves to the Prince Kronulf. The elven prince was in fine form -- in glittering white mail -- and quite adept at the ways of court. He made a quite an impression on the Dwarven Prince, Seneschal and High-Captain. A feast was thrown in the Elves' honor -- once again the elven prince impressed all with his etiquette and his singing ability (Danny actually took the Song of Merriment for the prince. A nice touch!)

Also at court were emissaries from the local mannish tribes. They were respectful of the Dwarves and fearful of the elves.

A week of rest passed while the Prince considered the message from the southern elves. I had decided ahead of time that this would become the crux of the evening -- the Dwarven prince would refuse the offer and grow dour and wrathful. The characters had no idea what the offer was, what would they do?

After an awkward scene at court where the Prince refused with a resounding, "No!", they decided to leave with haste. As they were leaving the gates, an Ardent from the Seneschal came running after them and bade them to stay one last night. He said it would be an insult to the court if the guests left without a feast.

The elves agreed, but Earan and Alatanur were both suspicious; the Ranger more so than the other two. These two decided to do a little leg work. A little Inconspicuous goes a long way, especially against characters without Observation training. Earan was able to make his way about the fortress with ease due to his skills. Alatanur followed his lead.

They discovered that the prince had issued no order himself for the feast. And that the Seneschal was the one who spoke out against them in the privy council with Kronulf. Alatanur also overheard a handful of the High Captain's Axe-Bearers grumbling about, "asking what he did, and not even offering a gift! And he's come wearing white mail! And no gift! It was us who taught them to makes white mail!" Grumble, grumble.

Uh oh. The player's discussed briefly: Would Lirith give up his white mail as a gift? His answer, "How about I give him this nice elven dagger?" Obviously that wasn't going to go over too well. They decided to keep their mouths shut and just try to get out alive.

The mannish emissaries were at this last feast and Earan tried to communicate with them, but found he didn't share a language with them. This was frustrating for Earan, but he took it in stride. As Prince Lirith entertained and the ranger watched for signs of trouble, the sea captain stole out of the party to have a look around the fortress to see if the dwarves were "preparing" anything else.

Now, as GM, I knew that the dwarves had asked the Elves to stay another night in order to send an ambush party out ahead of them. There was no way the High Captain was letting that mithril armor slip out of his grasp! I also decided that the ambush party would be leaving during the feast (the high captain was no where to be seen!). But Rich's action forced me to a decision: Rich did the exact correct thing by having a look around. I could by all rights have had him stumble on the axe-bearers as they were leaving. But I felt that would be too blunt and too obvious -- it would show the dwarves' hand and only serve to deflate tension. Rather, I decided on giving him some evidence in hopes of increasing the tension: He encountered about a half dozen Ardents (dwarven servants) returning from the gate house, wiping their hands clean of oil and grease. (They had just returned from the opening and closing the gateworks for the ambush party).

Rich couldn't figure out what the Ardents were up to, and he didn't want to ask them. He said, "I'm Patient (his character trait), I find a place to wait nearby and listen and look for signs of what's going on."

Hm, another completely appropriate action. And deserving another piece of the puzzle. He overheard the guards bantering during the changing of the watch: "Any word?"
"No, they must be 15 leagues out by now."
"That's a good thing. That's a good thing."

That definitely raised his player paranoia level, and he rejoined his companions to warn them.

Before they left, I gave Danny ample opportunities to present the Dwarven Prince with his coat of mail as a gift. I also planned on reciprocating. (Which I hinted at with narration like, "Not to be outdone, the Dwarven Prince..." ), but the elf consistently declined (as was his perogative!). The mood only grew more dour and forced as that beautiful suit of mithril walked out the front gates! (I had also determined that an honorable dwarf would NEVER spill the blood of his guest, especially not in his own hall!)


Once out on the road, the elves decided to take a different track off the dwarven road. This foiled the road ambush. But the dwarves were working with the mannish tribes who had scouts in the area.

The elves decided to push on through the night. During their march, they encountered a mannish village replete with armed patrols. As the patrols surrounded them, Rich spoke up: "I burst into song." He wanted to cause wonderment among the men, and was amply successful. Once they were dazed by the force of his siren song, he said simply, "We push on."

I decided that though fearful the men were enchanted and would follow at a distance. In addition, the women and children of the village rose up and dashed into the woods, singing back to and in imitation of the elves. This persisted for some time, and pleased Rich/Earan greatly. (His belief: Men are my kith and kin.)

Had the elves stopped for the night, they would have been set upon by dwarven patrols and mannish scouts. Had they stopped in the village, the village would have been raided by the dwarves.

As it was, party acted smartly and evaded their pursuers (as they should have, really) and managed to make it safely out of range of the patrols.

The mannish scouts, enchanted by Earon's voice, did follow for many leagues, but they were either unable or unwilling to warn their dwarven allies of the Elves' progress.

That's were we ended it. About 2 hours of play and I managed to present them each with situations that tied into their Beliefs. And provided room for social interaction and the possibility of serious action. While not the most exciting session, it was rather satisfying. It felt like a good set up for more travels of this odd trio.

-L

[Mike Holmes]

Forgive me for venting, but why is it whenever I ask for a "quick elf" I get a fucking Elven Prince? This, by FAR, is the cheatinest character in BW.

Has somebody told the designer?

;-)

Mike

[Luke]

Yeah, somebody should complain. There should be a rule about this or something.

Danny's choice to drop in the elven prince LP proved problematic for the whole night and the character still teeters on the edge of making the adventures unfun/unplayable for the other two.

First, Rich screamed bloody murder when I let Danny slip by with his Elven prince. He rightly pointed out that I would never allow him to do something like that. He's dead right. And I would never allow Danny to, either, but for the press of time. It would have eaten even more into our short game time if I sent danny back to the drawing board. And that was my prime reason for letting it slide -- i wanted to play.

The Elven Prince is 5 LP character and danny made sure not to really raise my ire; he took  all of his skills at 3 and 4 (only one B5 in Sword, of course). But the kicker was that Danny insisted on taking the Ranger lifepath as well. The other two characters had this area well covered with their skills -- in fact, Dro's character had the Range LP, too.

Thus in play, there was a lot of, "just let the prince do it" because he had so many diverse skills -- most of which focused on adventuring nonsense. His only social skill was Etiquette, while useful isn't everything a prince would need at court. And he lacked any history/academic skills which were sorely needed in this scenario. There is NO excuse for an Elven prince not to have skills like that -- I think he started with 13 General points.

To make matters worse, he refused to by land or an appropriate title for his prince. He purchased the basic noble affiliation, but wouldn't actually pay the RPs for the equivalent station of prince (land and title rules in the CB). He wanted his all of the little elven doodads and wouldn't be detered. That REALLY pissed me off. Hence the focus for this adventure.

Yeah, this definitely seems to descend into a little GM/Player adversarial tiff. Danny obviously wanted to play this character, why didn't I just let him without punishing him in play? Because I felt the character lacked depth and was a manipulation of the rules, rather than a legitimate concept. So I seek to use that against him in game and force him to add depth to the character or be killed or bereft.

Am I treading a dangerous path with this? Any suggestions for breaking the mold? Obviously, I want Danny to have good time playing and I want him to be able to play characters of his choosing... but....

-L

[anonymouse]

If it's such a cheater-cheater-pants-on-fire LP, why in the world is it available for players to take? That's what I can't get past.

[Luke]

Before i answer your question, I suppose I should define "cheating" in our parlance. In our slang, cheating is anything that benefits a player. Only winners cheat and only cheaters win. In the context of rpgs, cheating really just means "powergaming." Deliberately tweaking a rule in order to give a character a mechanical edge.

So all of my complaints are a bit tongue-in-cheek.

And to answer your question about the actual lifepath: In the Burning Wheel system, players have a very wide range of choices when building characters -- from beggars and urchins, to lords and princes. Players can start characters very small or very big. In certain circumstances, the Elven Prince lifepath is perfectly appropriate. In this case, I didn't think so.

-Luke

[Valamir]

Truthfully Luke, the problem seems to have an obvious solution to me.

"Danny, thanks for working that character up on such short notice, but before we play with those characters again, now that we have plenty of time, I'd like you to redesign him.  I'll let the Prince aspect go, even though you know I normally wouldn't.  But only if you design him full on bore as a prince and that means 1) spending the points on stuff you know full well a prince should have but you didn't want to blow points on and 2) making sure his skill don't tread on the niche occupied by the other two characters.  Otherwise make up a different character entirely"

Don't know if that fits with the social parameters of your group of course.  But that would definitely be my solution.

"No harm, no foul on the first iteration...it was a rush job on short notice.  But now we have time to do it right so we'll just "pretend" that this was the character you had from the beginning and go from there..."

[Luke]

yeah, i thought about this. I've done it in the past, but my players do get antsy. We're all pretty fair continuity junkies.

But this is definitely my leaning. Thanks for the support!

-L

[BirdMan]

Am I treading a dangerous path with this? Any suggestions for breaking the mold? Obviously, I want Danny to have good time playing and I want him to be able to play characters of his choosing... but....
-L

You know, with 5 lifepaths he's got ample hookage for your games.  So you "reward" him with lots of situations that play to those hooks.  You also make it almost impossible for him to resolve those situations without the help of his good buddies (the other players).

OR

You can let it ride if everyone begins having fun.  If not, just pull Danny aside and let him know he's blowing everybody's fun, and suggest ways you believe he can alleviate the issue.