[Trollbabe] Trouble at the Blood Gate

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

Got the opportunity to run a Trollbabe game on Friday, and boy was it a blast. Chargen and prep is as straightforward as it reads and after a verbal introduction of the system to the player we were off and running. The player went with 6 as his number for 'Audia,' a light skinned, raven haired, antelope horned Trollbabe with her trusty whip, and the bracers of trollish leather that mark acceptance into at least one tribe. She pointed to 'The Blood Gate' on the map, and I took a few moments for prep, which looked like this:

A group of three Trolls have kidnapped the son of the Duke and plan to roast him for dinner in retaliation for the Duke's defilement of their lands.

Consequences: Will the child be eaten, or won't he?

As simple as prep is in this game I have to admit I had a little trouble doing it. I kept coming up with consequences with the potential to be resolved in the first conflict. I had trouble thinking of things, which may be evident from what I settled on, that both adhered to the scale of the first adventure and yet would provide an interesting story. In practiced I worried a bit too much I think.

So Audia washes up on the shore of The Blood Gate, a pair of towering cliffs which provide the entrance to a natural harbor, from some unspecified previous adventure at sea gone wrong and play begins. We found out quite a bit during the course of play which included:

- The Trolls were a mountain clan who actually became the rock of the cliffs as they grew older, and the name The Blood Gate was actually a bastardization of the original trollish name for the area they called home.
- The Duchess was the real power player behind the Duke, who while being a dashing and cavalier gent didn't really have the mind for politics.
- The Trolls were on their last legs; their young having been hunted by the humans, in retaliation for raids on settlements, in retaliation for encroachment on the trollish homeland... ad nauseam. The end result being that the trolls were getting old and the humans successfully outbreeding them.
- The Troll leader was a bit too proud for his own good, and it was costing the clan their lives.

The player had Audia forge two relationships during the course of the story, one to the Duchess who had been brought into existence with a found ally reroll against the Duke, and one with the child of the Duke while escaping the Trolls. There were a couple of incapacitations, one which landed Audia in the human jail to be interrogated, and one which landed her in the lava pits with the child to be roasted for the trolls. We ended things with Audia and the child escaping the mountainous tunnels, successfully evading the trolls, and we stopped there, leaving the details somewhat unspecified for a few reasons. The child's fate was the focus of the story, and going any further would have started to make inroads into the actual relations between the Trolls and the Humans as groups. We flirted with some of that during the game, the player focusing somewhat on mending relations between the two peoples in order to recover the child, and I'm curious about other people's experiences with the scale of an adventure drifiting somewhat during play? I think overall we remained true to the personal level, but certainly the potential was there. What's interesting, is that the player decided not to up the scale after the adventure. Additionally he moved the six down to a five, with the intent of skewing more heavily towards magic as time progresses.

In terms of system I was resoundingly pleased. The mechanics were really quickly grasped by my player, and the narration exchanges are so clearly defined that we had none of the resistance or hesitation I've seen in other situations. Specifically I'd like to see my DD players try Trollbabe a couple of times as I think it will do great things for our narration during the deal, as well as general conflict resolution. I think the additional structure to the way conflicts are handled in Trollbabe will give the players something to latch onto that will hopefully engender some habits which will translate nicely to DD.

What a fun game. Questions and comments are as always, welcome.

-Tim

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tim,

Great post!

1. Only one player? Bummer.

2. You wrote,

There were a couple of incapacitations, one which landed Audia in the human jail to be interrogated, and one which landed her in the lava pits with the child to be roasted for the trolls.

And that's what incapacitations are for - in fact, they represent an extraordinary parallel to the Capture event in My Life with Master, now that I think about it.

3. Regarding "Scale drift," the important thing to remember is that the trollbabe's decisions can only really change the Consequences at her current Scale. Anything larger than that really is totally the province of the GM.

Dav Harnish discovered this in the very-first-ever Trollbabe game, when he successfully saved the white-cat child, but discovered that nothing he could do was going to help out the human town as a whole.

And if you think that any frustration or indignation about that phenomenon is very likely to be translated into an announcement to raise the Scale of future adventures, you're right.

Best,
Ron

[Tim Alexander]

Howdy Ron,

1. Only one player? Bummer.

Yeah, it's too bad, since I definately get a feeling that it really shines with more than one. Scheduling with folks has been tough lately, but I'd been chomping at the bit to get some play in so we took the opportunity of some free time.

And that's what incapacitations are for - in fact, they represent an extraordinary parallel to the Capture event in My Life with Master, now that I think about it.

Huh, yeah, that's a really good comparison. I think that both myself and the player found it to be one of the most useful things in the game to move the story forward.

And if you think that any frustration or indignation about that phenomenon is very likely to be translated into an announcement to raise the Scale of future adventures, you're right.

Yeah, exactly, which is why I was somewhat surprised at him not raising the scale. I think he felt comfortable that he could come back to this story though at any time. I think that sort of freedom of time and space is really concretely built into the game, and it makes it really strong. It strikes me that it just gets better over time too as you have more and more detail built into the game. I'm excited to play again.

-Tim