Black Company TROS

[Blankshield]

I've noticed a few mentions of Glen Cook's Black Company series in the forum here as a good potential setting for TROS, and figured people might be interested in seeing how someone is actually doing it.  If I post examples of play (probably not all that likely; I'm bad at those) I'll do it over in Actual Play, but will give an overview here of what I've changed from the rules to fit the setting, and if people seem interested, general comments about how well it's working down the road.

Major conceptual changes: Very few.  As has been noted here, the setting and rules mesh very well.  The only thing I've shifted is the consequences of magic, which I'll go into a bit more farther down.

Chargen changes: A few things here; most obvious is that I've reworked the prorities table a bit.  
Nobility was replaced by Rank, with A being explicitly classed as 'The Lieutenant', B as a significant officer (Croaker, as a rough example of senior officer), C as a minor officer or 'grunt with an ear in high places' D as 'grunt with a couple favours owed' and EF being just grunts.
Magic priority was shifted (again, more later) and was, effectively, 'lots, little, less, none, none, none'
Proficiencies I bottomed out at 4 instead of 2/0, as I reasoned 4 to be about the minimum competency for a mercenary in a reputed group like the Black Company.

Second, I required people to pick one of their SA's to be something less than noble, to reflect the "these are not nice people" theme from the books and gave it an SA catagory of 'Vice'.  It's worked out rather nicely, I think.  Vices have turned out to be things like 'Vengeful' or 'Bloodthirsty', or (similar to one of Raven's driving forces) "Past that won't let go".  It helped that character creation was done as a group, with active discussion about how these SA's would fire, and what circumstances would have them going up or down.

Third, on the suggestion of one player, to keep with the color of the books they didn't necessarily have veto over their own names.  They were able to make a strong preference known, but the group could overrule them if they found something fitting.  Thus the 20-year veteran Seargent is 'Sarge', the oriental foreigner is 'Slant', the tall emaciated guy with a cough is 'Gaunt' (although I was lobbying hard for Chuckles) and the blond blue-eyed Valhalla seeker is 'Hero'.  The Annalist (NPC), for no apparant reason is 'Hot Soup'.

Setting and background:I picked a specific deviation from the books, being the Battle at Charm from book 1 and said "The Tower fell, the Lady and the (false?) White Rose were buried/lost/killed?, and the remaining Taken and Rebel fought amongst each other over the pieces.  The Company hightailed it South before they became a target.  Several hundred years have passed."  With the explicit codicil that though the characters don't know it yet, the Company is headed back North.

Magic:
Here is where I've put the greatest constraints on characters both from a setting and a system perspective.  I have explicitly dissallowed people playing mages more powerful than protagonists as per the books.  Goblin, One Eye, Silent, Tom Tom levels of power are all allowed.  Harden, Whisper, Taken, Lady (early or late), even a Bomanz, all verboten, at least at start.  What priority A at chargen will get them is the capability to have up to 3 vagaries at level 3.  B gets them 2, and C gets them 1.  This is their "inherent capability" and pushing beyond it can't be done with SA's.  What it can be done with is Consequences.  These are not particularly well defined at the moment, but will involve things like collecting enemies, making pacts with greater powers or going insane.  In essence, the more you strive for the power level of a Limper or Soulcatcher, the more you will begin to resemble them.
The other sticking point is that I've had to do away with the aging consequence on magic, as it pretty fundamentally violates setting.  I've left the mechanic in place, but rather than an aging effect, it's a 'painted target' effect: the more a vanilla TROS spell would have aged you, the more clear and present a danger you represent - not only to the people who saw you do it, or saw it's effects, but to other mages; borrowing on the 'pebbles dropped in a pool' concept, the bigger a rock you drop, the more waves you will make.  Make big enough waves, and you will seem like a big powerful threat, and heavy hitters will notice you.  I think this fits with the theme of the books, as they go to some lengths to keep a low profile on their mages activities, and avoid big notice, but there is no noticable downside to Goblin and One-Eye's spats.

Play to Date:The first session we built characters and ran them through a mock fight as suggested; The second session rounded off chargen (including one guy who needed to shift his concept around to be less 'so much ground chuck') including the names, and introduced the game.  The Company is in service to the Deacon of Sienna, a sprawling, morrocan-inspired city on the edge of the Sandy Hell.  The contract has all but run it's course; the Company was hired on to deal with raiding nomads, and it's a decent paying but boring job of patrolling the nearby desert with no real action for better than six months.  The rest of the session was mood setting, with a reading from the Annals ("From the Book of the North, when Croaker was annalist, and the Company was in service to The Lady") that set the seed for the northern campaign-to-be, and a couple hours of sitting around playing Tonk, bitching about the contract and fleshing out the personalities a bit.  Next session will be the kicker.

Thoughts, comments, opinions?

James

[Valamir]

I can't comment on the Black Company specifically, as I haven't read it.  But the Vice aspect sounds intrigueing.  When your players were discussing how they'd work in play, what sort of things did they envision for the vices...say for when Bloodthirsty would fire, or what you'd have to do to earn a point.

It helped that character creation was done as a group, with active discussion about how these SA's would fire, and what circumstances would have them going up or down.

This, of course, is beautiful and should be mandatory for all TROS campaigns IMO.

[Blankshield]

I can't comment on the Black Company specifically, as I haven't read it.  But the Vice aspect sounds intrigueing.  When your players were discussing how they'd work in play, what sort of things did they envision for the vices...say for when Bloodthirsty would fire, or what you'd have to do to earn a point.

Points will be earned as per any other SA - if it is relevant to the story, it'll go up, with the caveat that I'm setting my "relevance threshold" at about 2-3 SA/player/session.  Bloodthirsty as conceived would fire in large scale conflicts, as well as in lead up towards them and choices made.  If a conflict is coming up and the char is pushing for a major battle instead of another route, then he's probably getting an SA point.  If he has to convince others or work the situation to get to the fight he wants, his SA will be kicking in before the fight as well as (probably) during it.
Vengeance, as another example would kick in *after* the fact - somebody kills your sister, or gives you a disfiguring scar and gets away with it, the SA would go up if the player made choices to hunt down the bastard, and would help in that hunting.  

The passage from the book that I used as an example to get Vices across is where after a major battle the protagonist Croaker (arguably the most humane character in the book) looks up and sees other soldiers raping and looting with a 'gotta let them cut loose sometimes' and 'boys will be boys' sort of attitude.  I would have tagged his Vice as Callous, and have it it go up when/if he actively dehumanized the people around him, considering them as objects, and have it apply whenever he needed that distance, and emotion would get in the way.

Does that give a clearer picture?  I'm hoping to use them not just to maintain the darker tone of the setting, but also as a vehicle for conflicting SA's, because my gut instinct says that that's where some of the best stories in TROS will come out.

It helped that character creation was done as a group, with active discussion about how these SA's would fire, and what circumstances would have them going up or down.

This, of course, is beautiful and should be mandatory for all TROS campaigns IMO.

There are very few games for which this is not beautiful and should be mandatory, IMO. :)

James

[ulfhiden]

Awsome i have been considering running a campign that is very much influnced by the black company with  a sprinkle of lovecaft and conan if i can make it work.

[Tash]

This sounds really, really cool.  Can't wait to hear more about it.  I'm going to be incorporating some Black Company style elements into my own campaign as it gets rolling.

I haven't read all the books yet, only the original trilogy, Silver Spike, and the first book of the South.  These are surprisingly difficult to find books )and I work in a bookstore), I would love to see them released in an anthology.

[Morfedel]

As a side note, Green Ronin has recently aquired the rights to do a Black Company D20 book. It is D20, but once its out, you might want to see what you can do to adapt ideas, if you feel it necessary.

Its going to be awhile before its out though.

[Blankshield]

As a side note, Green Ronin has recently aquired the rights to do a Black Company D20 book. It is D20, but once its out, you might want to see what you can do to adapt ideas, if you feel it necessary.

Its going to be awhile before its out though.

Yup, I saw that recently.  I'm looking forward to it, as Green Ronin has done some fairly solid work in the past.  I'm really (really!) curious how D20 will handle the Black Company universe, too, especially the strong leaps in power levels for magic.

It sounds like there's at least a few people here interested; I'll post an update after a few sessions to let people know how it's working.

James

[Tash]

especially the strong leaps in power levels for magic.

It seems to me that magic is much LESS powerful in the world of the black company.  Yes wizards have much more flexibility in what they can do (no "memorizing" spells, etc.) but there are so few of them....

How many characters in "The Black Company" novels have a magic weapon?  The only one I can think of is Croaker, who has the bow given him by the Lady.  Bozman has some trinkets and talismen, other than that the only other item I can think of with magical properties is the silver spike itself.

Of course the rarity of magic is a power boost as well, because of the lack of a way to counter it.  All told though I think Black Company has a much less magic oriented world than D&D does.

[Blankshield]

There's a difference between availability and power level.  There is very little in the way of magic "stuff" floating around, but those who wield magic come in roughly three steps: very dangerous/nigh-godlike/a god in all but name.  One Eye et al are very dangerous, the Taken and co are nigh-godlike, Dominator, Lady pre-fall and the Thing under the Plain of Fear are all effectively gods.  In the later books, there is strong implication that Kina et al. are just uber-mages from a really really long time ago.

James