[The Shadow of Yesterday] Violence in the wilderness

[Anders]

Hello,

Last night I played The Shadow of Yesterday for the first time and I thought I'd register to tell you about it.

It was great fun.

It was a short session, almost exactly two hours, but it really showcased the strength of the game.

The players were me, my wife Hanna and a close friend of ours, Karin. I was the Story Guide.

This was the third time we played together. Two sessions of Call of Cthulhu last year proved to be fun but not for us. For H and K this was the third time ever.

They'd expressed an interest in adventure and action and in an e-mail pitch I proposed TSoY, more or less giving them a short summary of the introduction and adding "Tim Burton's version of Lord of the Rings".

They were sold.

Two weeks ago we had a blast of a brainstorming and chargen session.

When I asked them what kind of style and theme they were going for they said "violence in the wilderness".

Looking over the cultures we settled for Khale.

Having heard their preference for violence and action I was slightly surprised by how their characters turned out, but as Hanna said: "We want violence and fights but that doesn't mean that we'll be the ones initiating it. It will be interesting to find other ways to deal with it."

Cool with me.

Karins PC is Karni, a Khalean craftsman and womanizer with a lot of social abilities such as Savoir-Faire. He has the Key of the Outcast and wanders from tribe to tribe, village to village, trading his pottery and wanting to belong, and in the meantime freeloading and flirting with the ladies.

Hanna is playing Rubello, a young ratkin from Maldor who has come to Khale with the Key of the Mission: Find moon-silver, but is looking as much for friendship and his first adventure. He's a scrounger and a story-teller.

We started out yesterday with a scene where these two vagabonds huddled around a campfire, having just hooked up a couple of days ago. Hanna described Rubello as relishing the company and it was decided that Karni was a bit more reluctant but not really minding the young ratkin either.

They were then joined by a threesome appearing from the surrounding bushes and we had our first conflict.

The three newcomers were Lorne and Fran, brother and sister and part of a small guerrilla band, and their goblin scout, Dro. Spear in hand, Lorne demanded to know who they were and what business they had in these parts.

Karin had her PC telling them what they wanted to know but said she wanted to use her Sway to make them satisfied with the answer and then leave the clearing and move on.

Hanna chimed in: "If she wins, I want to roll to make them stay!"

Karin rolled a failure against Lorne's superb Discern Truth and the three resistance fighters sat down by the fire according to the stakes we'd set.

The rest of the evening was really cool. Rubello laid eyes on a moon-silver dagger that the goblin was carrying in his belt and began asking him about it, raising Lornes suspicions again.
Meanwhile Karni was using his social abilities to chat up Fran – and succeeded in doing so.
We ended the night with a scene where Rubello sneaked up on Dro, took the dagger from his belt, eagerly eying it in the light of the dying fire, then putting it back wanting to find more of the mysterious metal.

The next day Lorne offered to escort them through the forest and the PC's accepted. Rubello saw a chance to learn more about the moon-silver and Karni was hoping for, well, sex and shelter seemed to be what he had in mind.

Before we ended the session they came upon two Ammeni soldiers and while Hanna had Rubello hiding inside a hollow tree trunk using his Secret of Rat Size, Karni faced one of the men alone and knocked him out with a stone hard piece of pottery while the gift dice flowed.

Now they're on their way to the Khalean guerrilla camp, Ammeni prisoner in tow, heroes of the day and having earned the trust of the Khaleans (though Lorne frowned a bit when Rubello started looting the unconscious body).

I'm just gushing. It was so smooth and all of the good things that happened in play were directly tied to the use of mechanics. The first time we rolled dice it was a bit slow because H and K didn't want to go through IIEE and such before the session, preferring to learn by playing.

They really took to conflict resolution, almost immediately calling for conflicts and setting stakes. Keys were hit from the first scene.

When I told them about using their pools for bonus dice their eyes lit up.

And there were some groovy use of the gift dice.

Talking about it afterwards both Hanna and Karin noted that they felt really in control of their characters and able to shape the story through their goals (and towards them!). We all agreed that Keys played an integral part in this, being player and character motivations at the same time.

They also liked the departure from the default investigative CoC mode of play, even though we really downplayed that during our two sessions.

I've been thrilled by this game for quite some time now by just reading it, and I'm still amazed at how well it actually played out. I guess a lot of it has to do with Hanna's and Karin's fresh approach to many of the ideas it presents.

(During chargen I read something aloud from the rules, can't remember what specifically now, and Hanna said "that's in the rules? Isn't that self-evident?" And I was like "Not to a lot of people, no.")

So, great game, and with us opting for a bi-weekly get-together, more on the way!

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Anders,

Wow! This blew me away with how much fun you guys had. I really dig that the system seemed to flow well for you and excited your players. It sounds like you're going in the direction that I wanted the game to support - a free-flowing travel-based game where the characters get to do really interesting stuff and get their goals out of life. I very much enjoy travel-narrative type games (see Trollbabe, by the way, if you want the best example) and so I can't wait to hear more about your game.

Serious question: were there any rules issues that you aren't bringing up?

[Anders]

Clinton,

Thanks for reading and replying.

Serious question: were there any rules issues that you aren't bringing up?

I thought about this before I posted, a bit worried that I would come off as too positive, but no.

We didn't Bring Down the Pain, but every other major element of the rules that came up in play worked really well.

That said, we took it really easy with me explaining as we went along but it seemed really intiutive to all three of us.

An observation: about 75% of what's on the sheets came to use - this in a two hour session.

We've got a new session scheduled for this friday and I'm curious to see if it will flow as smooth as the first one.

[pedyo]

Anders, what kind of prep work did you do before the first session?
Thanks
/Peter

[Anders]

Hi Peter,

Anders, what kind of prep work did you do before the first session?

I thought about a situation that would engage Hanna and Karin and involve their PC's in the fights, action and "violence in the wilderness" that they desired, while at the same time relate to their Keys and perhaps lead to conflicts of interest.

I settled for the warring with the Ammeni on the Khalean border.

I made a list of names; some Khalean, some Ammeni, some neutral. A few with descriptors.

Then I wrote up the NPC's that I knew I would want to use - namely Lorne, Fran and Dro.

I pictured Lorne and Fran as the Reed siblings from GRR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, maybe with a dash of Neo and Trinity. Dro is Gollum meets Samwise Gamgi. All of them got pool points and three abilities relating to each pool set at competent, adept and master. A couple of each NPC's abilities worked their way naturally into play.

Following Clinton's advice I also scribbled down the player characters Secrets, Abilities and Keys on a paper and drew a lot of arrows between them and potential ideas of how to hit them.

It was the most useful and satisfying prep I've ever done.

Anybody with experience from play with The Shadow of Yesterday for the first time and/or with first time players that somehow differs from or relates to mine?

[alejandro]

I'm looking forward to playing this game. I'm really excited about it.

You said
"Following Clinton's advice I also scribbled down the player characters Secrets, Abilities and Keys on a paper and drew a lot of arrows between them and potential ideas of how to hit them."

I was wondering if you could expand on this or if its more thoroughly covered in the book?

Thanks Alex

[Anders]

Hello alejandro,

It is part of the advice to the Story Guide, covered under "Know your characters".

The basic idea is that you should riff off the stuff that makes the characters tick and you've got your game moving.

Really easy, really fun, and the game engine supports that prep and makes it rock'n'roll.

Hope you have fun when you get to play the game!