[Shadow World] New high-flown adventures

[Fredrik S]

As discussed in another thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19985.0), I've been preparing a micro-campaign to introduce one of my two regular Shadow World players to HeroQuest. However, the game had to be postponed, and then fatherhood struck, taking him out of the picture at least for the near future.

Well, I didn't want to let work go to waste, so I called in my other Shadow World regular and two other gaming friends to put together a new campaign. I did not want to push my own campaign concepts on them and began by giving an overview of the setting. They like the situation I first presented (Rhakhaan, an old, well established empire eager to assert its dominance over the surrounding regions by both political and military means), but what they really latched on to was the concept of skyships. That is; sailing ships that fly thanks to anti-gravitational hull plating. While in common use for transporting luxury cargo and important passengers they are also quite rare, and very expensive.

The game concept then became as follows: They are the 'officers' on a skyship, acquired in some dubious fashion (details not yet established) that they use for smuggling and other semi-legitimate operations. The situation was further fleshed out by setting it in the immediate aftermath of a civil war that had recently torn  Rhakhaan.

Character Generation followed List Method used by Mike for his Shadow World game, with some adjustments. For simplicity's sake I dropped the race keyword. None of the players had much interest in magical abilities, so magic keywords also fell by the wayside. For special abilities, two of the players chose to boost their occupation keyword, while the third did something more interesting, which I'll get back to in a bit. I tried to encourage them be creative in picking abilites, but it was difficult, and I can't really blame them. A number of interesting abilities took shape, though I would have liked to see more unique relationships and personality traits.

Rip Jerrin Gwentaine (Jean) is an outlaw/smuggler/guerilla fighter from Bellarion, a formerly independent principality that was politically annexed by Rhakhaan some time ago. The cultural differences here are minor and it's not a case of hard oppression;  Rip and his companions see themselves as patriots protesting the imposition of central authority from a foreign government. Character goals are still somewhat undefined, but it looks like he'll fill the role of the tough guy with shady connections. However, the only relationships he has at present are the ones he got from Homeland/Occupation (Highwayman) keywords.

Kelain Kindagiir (Øyvind) is a Rhakhaani minor noble with taste for high living, but without any wealth of his own to support it. He or his family did not involve themselves in the civil war, but thanks to the tumltuous circumstances Kelain came across a skyship with uncertain legal status and promptly requisitioned it for his own purposes.
Most interesting abilities: Exert Authority 14m, Wine Expert 3m(skills) and Big Spender (personality)

Aldrek (Espen) is the skyship's master. Born in Sel-Kai, he grew up with a burning desire to see the world, and driven by that ambition he made his way into the airborne merchant fleet and quickly distinguished himself.
Most interesting abilities: Navigate 7m, Sail Skyship 10m2 (skills), Wanderlust (personality) and Brotherhood of Airmen (relationship)

Now for the question of what to do with them. For one thing, all of them could do with some adjustments to bring out the concepts, and their common backstory is also something that needs further work. The adventure possibilites for this game concept seems rich, but as of now I only a few idea fragments.

One idea is the begin the game in air. Not long after time after departing Sel-Kai for Kenezan they are hailed by Sel-Kai airguard, calling for an inspection. What they will only then discover is that their cargo really consists of slaves, who may well be destined for sacrifice to the serpent god Klysus. Exporting slaves from Sel-Kai is also highly illegal.

Two questions to sort out; how to form this into an interesting bang and how to involve everyone.
Alternatively; come up with something else entirely.

Thoughts, anyone?

[Vaxalon]

Have the slaves be crated, and in some kind of magical or drug-induced suspended animation, or else the players are likely to feel railroaded that they knowingly took the slaves on as cargo.

That being said, it's an interesting bang as it stands.

Here's a suggestion for this encounter: Aldrek finds that one of the slaves is someone he knows.  "They open the crate, and inside is someone you know.  Who is it?"  Reward the player for playing through with a free relationship trait with the person inside.

Other than that, I don't see a lot of ways to include the other two, not without going to Rakhaan or Bellarion.

[Fredrik S]

Have the slaves be crated, and in some kind of magical or drug-induced suspended animation, or else the players are likely to feel railroaded that they knowingly took the slaves on as cargo.

Oh of course, that's what I meant. I should have made been more clear on that. Man, if I'd been the player and the GM told me, "and by the way, you're carrying slaves", I'd have been pretty outraged too.

I like your other suggestion, but with a modification: It's Rip that finds an acquaintance in one of the crates, someone he had expected to be back home in Rhakhaan. How did he/she end up here here!? Aldrek can have his challenge up on deck, in the question of how to deal with the pursuers: Assent to be boarded or try to escape .. through the massive storm building up in front of them.

I guess that's enough for a start. Kelain can have his turn in the next scene.

[Vaxalon]

Yes, don't feel like everyone has to have a spotlight moment in every situation... as long as the players understand that too.

[Fredrik S]

And from that starting bang I see potential situations unfolding; a governor in Rhakhaan - that could be a relative of Kelain - cooperating with a slave trader in Sel-Kai to sell rebels to Kenezan/Lankanok; a zealous law enforcement officer eager to break open the illegal slave ring, corrupt officials opposing him; the legal status of the skyship being brought to question.. (I don't have any NPC tied to that yet)

And a mechanics question; The skyship ought to be listed as a possession/ability for one or more of the players, yes? The concept dictates that Kelain is the 'owner' of it, but what's the best way of handling the other players' relationship to it; as an actual relationship perhaps?

[Mike Holmes]

(Note, this is cross-posted with the one just above)

This is such a ripped off Traveller scenario. :-)

Actually I'm not seeing much of a bang there either. Yet. That is, OK, so somebody has paid us to take these crates, and it turns out that they're smuggling slaves. What's our options? Well, we claim ignorance (which is the truth), and hope that we're not negligent for not checking the cargo or something.

Now, if the bang is that we should have checked the cargo, and are now on the hook for not having done so? Yeah, this is a bang, but a seriously weak and cliched one. "Do we fight and become outlaws, or give up to go to court?" bang is hardly a choice. Unless the players relish a courtroom drama, or prison escape stuff - and we know that they want to fly around in the skyship, so that's not likely - they're only fun choice is to run.

Made worse by the fact that it seems that they are already, in some ways, outlaws. Or, rather, that seems to be what they want with the whole "shady circumstances" notion.

Here's how you make it a bang, have the customs official offer to look the other way if the players give him a bribe. This way it's "Do we pay up, or do we fight our way out and become enemies of the Sel-Kai port authority?" Still not great, but you get the idea.

Better is to make it about potential betrayal. That is, have the customs official offer to look the other way if Aldrek will tell him where the brotherhood's secret guild lair is (he's looking for certain members who he thinks head up smuggling rings entire, and is willing to let small fry go to get the big fish).


You need to work with Rip's player to figure out why he's onboard, yes. You don't have to work out anything stronger for the characters as a centralizing element than that they all need to be on the ship for some reason. The typical idea for Rip would be that he's currently wanted back home, and he's hanging out with the skyship crew until it's safe for him to return. The skyship allows him to get far away quickly, while also being able to check in near home intermittently to see if he can return. That might work. But the player might find something more interesting.

If this is the case, then what you want to do is to try to tempt the player into having the character forming long-term relationships with the members on board. Have some NPC crewmen take a liking to him or something. One idea that we can steal from the game "Run Out the Guns" (Rolemaster Pirates), is the idea of a "Mess." That is, the men on your character's shift that he eats with, and are his buddies. This could be taken as a relationship, or as retainers or even as a sidekick (in which case abilities could be added to represent specific talents of important members of the mess - a carpenter adds Carpentry to the skill list).

Simply choosing whether or not to get attached to somebody is a bang. If you really want to bring the point home, you offer the player the ability for free (which is technically allowed through a troublesome clause in the narrator advice section). If they do get involved, then, of course, you can use the new relationship as a source of new bangs.


The thing that needs to be developed most, however, is the background about how the ship was acquired. Oh, sometimes it makes sense to leave something like this unstated until later in the game...it can be suspenseful waiting for it to rear it's ugly head. But with a skyship...well everyone knows that it's Sel-Kai merchants who own the skyships, right? So the question of ownership is going to come up regularly, I'd think. At least I would make it a central source for conflict. Maybe it's technically legal, but the person they got it from in a drunken gambling session feels cheated and is out to get it back. Could be a good place to insert a recurring villain. Certainly a good lever for creating bangs. Somebody offers amnesty locally, or help getting away, in exchange for something. That sort of thing. If they turn them down, then we get fun chase scenes as the old captain comes after them in his other skyship ("If I can't have 'er, nobody can!" he says as his paid wizard mercenaries rain down fireballs on it).

I think once you have that, you'll be able to create events more easily.

Other things to think about are putting in relationship maps. The quartermaster has a girl stashed away in his cabin, and Ragnar has fallen in love (or something akin to it) with her, having discovered her one day. Ragnar's brother Erick is also a member of the crew, as is the quartermaster's son. Ragnar approaches one PC to help him escape next port (Reandor) with the girl. Erick knows about the plan, and doesn't want his brother to go, and approaches another PC to ask him help dissuade his brother. The quartermaster suspects something's going on with Ragnar, and asks another PC to try to get Ragnar off his back (without letting on that he's got a girl stashed below). The quartermaster's son knows about the girl, and has been told to keep quiet, but has since learned that she's a witch who has bewitched his father, and asks a PC what the right thing is to do - asking using a hypothetical. The witch is using the quartermaster to get to Kenezan (she has a date with the Khurtum's son who will act as an avatar of Akalatan in the temple of the moon), but in the meanwhile has decided that she's in love with one of the PCs as well, and will try to use magic to take him along if the player doesn't simply decide he wants to follow her. Inevitably, somebody (the son, if nobody else) kills the witch before she can take the PC off board, but now they have the khurtum's son to worry about.

Or something like that. Actually if you can entangle all of this with how they got the ship in the first place, you can really expand it all and tie things together.

Another typical ploy (right out of Traveller) is to have the ship have some malfunction and need to land for repairs. Then you can have a R-map or some conflict in wherever you ground them to hit them with. Some of the issues being "what lengths will we go to in order to get the ship going again?"

Other random thoughts.
- Being somewhat on the fringes of the law, somebody figures that they'd make a good way to contact pirates - perhaps the White Swan, or dark elves from Plasidar. Or marauders from Praeten. This could get them embroiled in the plots of all sorts of seaborn folks.
- The Honakh of Prateten wants a skyship for his fleet, and sends emmissaries offering all sorts of things to the PCs for it that can cause problems if you set up the situation right.
- Fred's bang is a good one. Especially if you also give the player a free relationship to the person for whom they are transferring the "goods." This has to be a powerful draw on the other side..."Slaves" in the Lankan empire are eventually sacrificed to Klysus, Dark God of Death at some point.
- Rip should, undoubtedly, have opportunities to strike a blow for his principality from afar. The son of a baron who was responsible for the invasion happens to be onboard traveling to Reandor (to study with the blind sage at the edge of the Voerken Mire). Turns out he's a really nice guy, however. Would murdering him make a difference - after all he's just going to become a hermit for years it seems? Maybe he's philosophical enough to be converted to the cause?
- For Kelain, people will offer him all sorts of creature comforts to do ethically questionable things. Keep escalating this. A merchant captain wants him to smuggle more things into Kenezan for lots of cash. A traveler wants to be let off on a roof so he can steal something from the building below and return to the ship to make a fast escape, and offers bolts of the finest Nuyani silk as payment. A politician asks him to kill a rival that he claims is corrupt (though there's scant evidence), and offers him the finest Danarchan vintage to do so.
- Aldrek - challenge his wanderlust. Give him reasons to stay at some place. A romance, or a great offer of a place to settle down. Build this slowly over several stops at said port. Give him a chance to help somebody he seems to care about, but only by admitting something untrue that will tarnish his reputation as an excellent skyship sailor. Like if he likes some crewmember, that person makes a big mistake, and cowardly asks Aldrek to cover for him (quartermaster's son makes a good candidate if Aldrek takes a liking to him first).

Random pressurizing elements:
- Storms are good, but flowstorms are better!
- The storm wizard's castle, dead ahead! Storm Heralds off the starboard bow!
- Essence barriers can be analogues for reef infested waters (or, to continue with the Traveller parallel, asteroid belts). "We canna go tha' way cap'n, that's dead inta the North Emer Barrier. No ship even comes close to it and comes out intact!"
- Voriig Kye, the silver dragonlord, decides to come up and talk with the owners (even better than Suthon Ni'shaang for making bangs).

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

And from that starting bang I see potential situations unfolding; a governor in Rhakhaan - that could be a relative of Kelain - cooperating with a slave trader in Sel-Kai to sell rebels to Kenezan/Lankanok; a zealous law enforcement officer eager to break open the illegal slave ring, corrupt officials opposing him; the legal status of the skyship being brought to question.. (I don't have any NPC tied to that yet)

You beat my post above to some of my ideas!

And a mechanics question; The skyship ought to be listed as a possession/ability for one or more of the players, yes? The concept dictates that Kelain is the 'owner' of it, but what's the best way of handling the other players' relationship to it; as an actual relationship perhaps?

The ship should be represented by a hero band. This is right out of the Men of the Sea supplement before anyone thinks I came up with this. The ship should have a guardian - likely an essence in this case, but you can come up with whatever sort you like - and the crew joins the hero band and gets the standard relationship to the guardian and other members of the band. Kelain, then, is simply the current leader of the band.

Note that, if it seems odd to you to say that the ship has a guardian (because you don't think of Shadow World as having such), think of it as metaphorical. The bonuses one gets from being a member are real and related simply to having a community of people supporting you. That said, this is a ship with a Xenium hull, and even in RM terms it's infused with a lot of essence. So I'd think that it'd be a perfect fit for this, even moreso than a typical sailing ship.

Mike

[Fredrik S]

Traveller? Who is this Traveller you speak of? ;)
But seriously; I know the game but I've never played it, so I can honestly claim innocense by ignorance. And speaking of ignorance...

I see what you mean about the 'run or stay' scenario. I think. Facing the storm, even if it the storm of the century, can be an exciting challenge, but is in itself inconsequential. So my suggested situation becomes more a matter of wether or not to avoid a difficult confrontation. And facing the authorities will not be a very tempting option. So far so good. And I can see how I can wort with your aleternative suggestions; I initially preferred the bribe scenario as a starter, but I can see that the betrayal angle is stronger. It's different if I direct the demand for a bribe at Kelain, as the ship's captain/owner, because in that case Money Matters. And also honour.

Now let me add that I'm very glad I beat you to the post, proving that I have done some thinking about building an actor network to play off. ;) And you know what; map making is complicated. First to create the interactions themselves, then to keep track of them in an orderly fashion. I don't suppose you can recommend a computer program suited for the task?
I had not thought about creating a sub-net for the other people aboard the ship, but it's a good one. You present a number of good ideas, and I'm going to steal at least some of them and plot them onto my map. Looking at the Eidolon book, I realise that its also a very workable idea; with skyships crews as small as 10-15 people, making everyone aboard a named character is simple.

Still, this relationship driven play is a new experience for me, and I wonder how the players will take it. For that matter, I'm not really sure how I feel about all this 'Dealing With Feeling'. I understand the principle of presenting unavoidable situations, I even think it's a very appealing one, I'm just not sure how I'm going to make it work in practice.
None of us have a habit of creating very extensive backgrounds, beyond what is needed to establish the character concept. Sometimes that means more than others, but in this case the basic game concept seemed to call for more .. independent roles, with 'Firefly' names  as one inspiration. As such, Jean (Rip) wasn't too interested in the details on how he got onto the ship. On the other hand, neither did he have any objections to the 'wanted criminal' scenario, leaving me free to make use of it.

Anyway, back to the drawing board. I think I'll refrain from summoning the players until I have figured out exactly who has claims on the skyship, and some clear ideas on how that will come into play.

[Mike Holmes]

But seriously; I know the game but I've never played it, so I can honestly claim innocense by ignorance.

Frankly, I often say that cliche is the RPG player's best friend, and I'm not being at all facetious. With the Traveller reference, I'm saying that you should, in fact, steal all the Traveller ideas you can.

That said, most of them are very "hook"-ish, and typically have little "grab." So if/when you do implement such an idea, you should give it a good flensing/adjustment first to ensure that it fits your game well.

Now let me add that I'm very glad I beat you to the post, proving that I have done some thinking about building an actor network to play off. ;) And you know what; map making is complicated. First to create the interactions themselves, then to keep track of them in an orderly fashion. I don't suppose you can recommend a computer program suited for the task?

Hmm. I use Excel's flowcharting tools, but anything in which you can make a diagram will work. Visio will be, of course, good for this, as are lots of free tools on the internet (there's a thread on Story-games.com about these tools right now).

But the key is to keep the "interactions" very simple. That is, family works good. X is Y's father. That's easy to remember and interpret in play. A is B's boss. That sort of thing. Any action that you want to note should go, instead, into a list of events. The map itself is just for follow-on actions. PC 1 kills X, so Y, being his son, decides to try to get revenge. You don't have to plan this event, it just becomes a pretty obvious thing to happen, once the player caused event happens first. Try to make the connecting lines between characters have one word describing the link if you can.

I had not thought about creating a sub-net for the other people aboard the ship, but it's a good one. You present a number of good ideas, and I'm going to steal at least some of them and plot them onto my map. Looking at the Eidolon book, I realise that its also a very workable idea; with skyships crews as small as 10-15 people, making everyone aboard a named character is simple.

Sub-net, hmmm. What I was proposing is an entirely additional map. But if you can make them intersect then, sure, so much the better.

Still, this relationship driven play is a new experience for me, and I wonder how the players will take it. For that matter, I'm not really sure how I feel about all this 'Dealing With Feeling'. I understand the principle of presenting unavoidable situations, I even think it's a very appealing one, I'm just not sure how I'm going to make it work in practice.

Only one way to find out. And, at first, actually, you might find that there are stilted moments, and ones that just don't seem to have any weight. Don't worry too much about that. Just stick to your plan and see what happens.

None of us have a habit of creating very extensive backgrounds, beyond what is needed to establish the character concept. Sometimes that means more than others, but in this case the basic game concept seemed to call for more .. independent roles, with 'Firefly' names  as one inspiration. As such, Jean (Rip) wasn't too interested in the details on how he got onto the ship. On the other hand, neither did he have any objections to the 'wanted criminal' scenario, leaving me free to make use of it.

Truth be told, that's all a good sign. That is, one of the things we warn against is "playing before you play." That is, making up a background that's so extensive that the character is already "played out" by the time you get to the table. Note that I regularly run HQ where the characters are made up entirely in play using the "As You Go" method. And it works just fine.

That's the goal about this sort of play, to discover what the characters are like and how they might change over the course of play. "Character Development" you know. As such, knowing less about them when you start is often better than knowing more about them.

Now, this said, it may be that your players don't like character development for some reason. What you want is for the player to say, "'Wanted Criminal'!" That's a great idea!" not just acceed that it's unobjectionable. Because it's stuff like this that the game is going to be about. What conflicts the character is going to face, and what we get to learn about him as he does face them.

Anyway, back to the drawing board. I think I'll refrain from summoning the players until I have figured out exactly who has claims on the skyship, and some clear ideas on how that will come into play.

I'd get together, and decide as a group. That's the best way. I wouldn't hold back on starting too long waiting for this stuff to appear. If you don't know the skyship's status, then play the first session through, stop a bit early, and then have a discussion of why it is. Or you could even leave it as a secret to be revealed later in play as a surprise. That's not my first recommendation. But if nobody is interested enough to come up with an idea for it quickly, then don't let that stall play. Instead play to what you do know.

What you should avoid is giving the players a complex about the game because you're asking too much of them in prep. It doesn't have to be that deep, it should be about what springs to the top of everyone's mind that would be interesting to play about. So if it comes down to a choice between long agonizing about certain details, and just diving in, just dive in.

Mike

[Fredrik S]

Okay! I finally got the game going. It's been a while, but I didn't feel I had a lot more to say before I'd had a chance to play. Now I have, and here's what I have to say: It rocked!
Getting Rip/Jean to find time to join was difficult, so I decided to start with just Kelain (Øyvind) and Aldrek (Espen). Four days ago we set sail

The initial chargen session had been a bit fumbling, so to begin we took some time to go over the sheets and fine tune the characters. Both of them had generic relationships changed to more specific ones picked from the source material ('Eidolon: City in the sky' in particular) and custom fitted a few of their abilities. Aldrek used his unspent bonus skills to get himself a pet monkey and a pipe that never goes out to cement his image as a crusty sailor, while Kelain further defined his haughty Captain persona by giving his set of Impressive Clothes an ability rating and adding a 'Prancing' skill. Very nice. Also, we spent quite some time trying to come up with a good name for the ship, eventually landing on 'The Storm Falcon'.

A storm was brewing as were heading out of Sel-kai, bound for Kenezan, the capital of Lankanok, with a cargo of fine wine and luxuries for the Khurtum's (the priest-king) birthday. Kelain got the contract through his contact in the Eridan Sky Alliance; the pay was very good and they were promised a handsome bonus if they could get it delivered within three days. As they were preparing themselves to brave the storm, they were hailed by a airguard ship. While Kelain (and his player) were pondering wether or not to waste time by submitting to an inspection, one of the deck hands came running up to Aldrek, anxiously calling for him to come down to the cargo hold.

First Aldrek had his scene were he discovered that two thirds of the crates actually held people! The first person he found was a person known to him, and as suggested I let him have free reign in defining him. And that he did: The guy in the crate was a man from Lankanok called Kylak, known as being a drunken layabout hanging around the dock bars in Sel-kai. Not exactly a friend, but certainly someone he was surprised to find hidden in his boat. Aldrek first thought him a stowaway, or a spy, but the deep undisturbable slumber of him .. and the other 20 so people in the crates quickly disabused him of that notion. This led to some frantic activity as Aldrek had his men cover up the evidence and stand ready to take the official hostage and make for a quick, quick getaway.

Meanwhile, the guard captain had come aboard and introduced himself to Kelain, who invited him to share a bottle of wine in his cabin. The official apologised for the interruption, but explained that the new anti-slavery laws forced him to investigate even the most unlikely rumours. He _obviously_ did not suspect Kelain of being involved in anything as unsavoury as slavery, and he would of course take Kelain's word as a nobleman for it .. provided he would pay a small, and completely outrageous boarding fee.

Cue the first test of the evening. Kelain tried to reason with him, using his 'Sel-kai customs, augmented with Court Etiquette (or Protocol, I don't quite remember) Wine Expert and Exert Authority. He rolled a 1! Rock! The result of this contest was a Major Victory, narrated as Kelain unfavourably comparing the official to the corrupt city police, forcing him to face his shameful behaviour and cutting back his demands to a much smaller sum.

The official disembarked and the next challenge was the looming storm between them and Kenezan. The second mate was nervous and remarked that it was too dangerous to go through what looked to be an Essænce storm without a navigator, but Aldrek Yelled him down and sent him up the rigging to ready the storm sails.
Next test: Aldrek uses his Sail Skyship, augmented by Endure Weather, First Mate of the Storm Falcon and Kelain's Captain of the Storm Falcon. (He insisted on staying on the deck, despite the danger). I set a very high resistance here, but they pulled through with a minor victory and a Hero Point spent for Aldrek.

After the storm, the big question was what to do with the cargo, and Kelain invited Aldrek into his cabin to discuss the matter. They clearly couldn't sell their 'friend' Kylak, but did they have any such obligation to the rest of the cargo?

What finally settled the matter was the real stowaway situation that surfaced soon after, as one of the sailors found the girl the cook/quartermaster had stashed away. A fight broke out between them and both were put in chains for the remainder of the journey. The girl tried to charm Kelain, but he resisted (another test) and were confined to the passenger cabin until her fate was decided. The crew was becoming restless, with talks of her being a witch, so the decision was made to put her off the ship as soon as they were over land. She protested wildly when told this, and begged to be allowed to stay; it was vitally important that she got to Kenezan before the full moon of Charon, in less than two days. (Knowing nods from the players at that point)

In any case, Kelain was cold to her pleads and gave the orders. However, as the ship were descending, the ship was hijacked. Teryk, cook's son held Andal, the second mate, at knife point and forced him to steer the ship back towards Kenezan. Aldrek tried to get him to step down, but his Yelling failed; Teryk merely laughed at him and pressed the knife harder against Andal's throat. (Aldrek tested with Yelling, but got a Minor Defeat)

With words failing him, Aldrek tried to wrestle him, but he was too late and Teryk cut Andal's throat before he was overpowered and beaten senseless. (Aldrek got a success against his brawling, but this time I rolled a 1 and won the tie.) A very dramatic moment.
Hmm.. I applied the penalty to the Aldrek's Yelling skill, but it occurs to me now that maybe I should have penalised his Brawling as well/instead?

They found the witch in her bunk, professing her innocence, but by now they'd had enough of her, and Kelain simply ordered her thrown overboard. She did not go willingly; kicking, screaming and cursing all the way. Teryk seemed to have been possessed by something, and when he woke up he was devastated to learn of what he had done.

Now there was no more talk of giving people up to be sacrificed by savages, there was only the question of how to fulfill their contract. The solution they landed on involved a bit of trickery. As soon as they put the ship down in the river, they quickly unloaded their cargo, stacking the now empty crates at the bottom, with the wine and delicacies at the top. When their contact arrived, Kelain hurried to settle the affair (another successful contest) and they managed to take off before anyone noticed that the whole cargo was not in fact delivered,


Whew... Long post this.
That's it for the session report. Now some other comments.

All of us were happy with how the game went, and both players were impressed with the system and how it encouraged roleplaying. I used Joshua Neff's Alternative Advancement system and that also went down well. As a side note, Øyvind commented the resemblance to the fallout system from Dogs in the Vineyard, a game he owns, but that we haven't had a chance to play yet.

I took Mike's advice not to worry about prestatting NPCs, and that worked well for this session. Of course, in this session there wasn't a whole lot of direct PC-NPC confrontation anyway, and having complete writeups of the customs official and the contact in Kenezan would have been rather silly in any case. (Though both of them may turn up again later) I could have have statted up the 'witch', but I didn't, and it worked like a charm anyway.
On the other hand I clearly need more practice in setting resistance numbers. I still need to get a feel for what the numbers need, and even during the session I realised that could reasonably have made some of the challenges more difficult. One of the charms of HQ is indeed that failure can be fun, especially coupled with the alternative Advancement system, so there's no need to shy away from setting hard challenges - if that makes situational sense.

The game was a success; no doubt about that, but was it a successful use of bangs? Not that it necessarily matters if everyone had fun, but the question remains valid.
The Big Bang of session was clearly what to do with the slaves. They could deliver them, or not. Both options were open, and both had consequences (though they may not have been entirely clear). The options probably weren't completely equal; delivering the slaves to be sacrificed is not a very appealing choice. Incidentally, I ruled that in their rush to get the transaction settled, they had to leave without the speed bonus. Some small immediate cost of not taking the easy way out.

What next? They still have a ship full of comatose would-be slaves. What do with them? Who are they? (I have some ideas for that) Not to mention the number of people they have annoyed. I sense trouble brewing.

[Mike Holmes]

Coolness. :-)

I think you'll find that, playing with these techniques, that incorporating players at a later date is pretty easy, and that you can actually play around missing players often. More easily than you may have experienced in other RPGs. So what I'm saying is that you made the right choice in getting going without waiting for the others, and that you should accept even tentative scheduling from the others to get them "onboard" (if you'll excuse the wordplay).

Anyhow, good report. You didn't get too into details that don't help with analysis. When making a play report, try to keep in mind that its pretty pointless to try to make it an entertaining story to read...instead just get the salient facts down so it's easy to talk about.

First thing I see...you allowed a player to "contest" his way out of a bang. Not terrible, but you want to avoid that in most cases. That is, don't allow a player to avoid making a decision by using contests. In this case, you had "Pay Up or Be Searched" as a dichotomy, which isn't much of a bang as we'd discussed. So not a big deal. It's interesting enough to know that the character is the kind who prefers to talk his way out of such situations. Not sure how reveleatory that is, but it's better than nothing. Hopefully the player felt creative in coming up with the actions that lead to the contest (or did he propose the contest)? Generally, however, if you have a dichotomy like this make sure that the set up is such that the player can't figure out the "winning move" (where he gets his cake but eats it too), but simply has to make a choice. In this case, you simply have the official refuse to parley at all.

Anyhow, I'm seeing another bang, too, whether or not to get rid of the girl. No? What do you think?

Mike

[Fredrik S]

Coolness. :-)

Yup :)

I think you'll find that, playing with these techniques, that incorporating players at a later date is pretty easy, and that you can actually play around missing players often.

Especially when using mostly simple contests. So far I've only mentioned the existence of extended contests, and I intend to keep them in reserve until the need arises.

First thing I see...you allowed a player to "contest" his way out of a bang.

I agree, but I'm happy with the way it played out. Especially in retrospect, I realise the weakness of it as bang.  In practice, this worked more as a challenge with possible complications, and probably was much more exciting than it would have been as a bang with forced choices. After the scene in the cargo hold, it was a fairly tense situation with both players certain that they might have to take the offical hostage and fight their way free. Also complicating the issue was the fact that Kelain the PC had no reason to feel nervous, showing only justified indignation at the suggestion that he was implicated in slavery. This way, the game opened with each of the players getting to test and succeed with their main ability, which was a pretty cool way to begin.
Oh, and yes indeed, it was the player who called for a contest. Should I have denied it? Certainly not!

Anyhow, I'm seeing another bang, too, whether or not to get rid of the girl. No? What do you think?

Ah, of course yes. That was another open question. The most interesting thing about that situation, as also the players acknowledged, was that the characters acted without any proof. She could have been just extremely charming and innocent of any real wrongdoing, though the apparent possession made the circumstancial evidence pretty damn solid.

[sebastianz]

Hmm.. I applied the penalty to the Aldrek's Yelling skill, but it occurs to me now that maybe I should have penalised his Brawling as well/instead?

I usually take a look at the conflicting interests at stake, that is the goals of the characters, to determine what kind of contests will get a penalty. If a fight is about honor, should really the combat ability be penalized? Or rather interaction with NPCs? It depends on the situation and may well apply in both cases. Or not at all.
But sometimes the goals are inconclusive in this regard. And this contest may well be such a case. It's possible to not penalize at all. Or you take a step back and look at the larger situation.
Picture this, the captain of this air ship has been resisted by one of his men. Furthermore, he was unable to save the life of his second mate. How does he look like in front of the rest of his crew? He probably lost respect, his authority weakened. This gives more leeway to question his decisions in the future, until he reestablishes his renown as a great navigator and captain. Or time passes over this episode. So, why not penalize his interaction with the crew?
Also, keep in mind that not just one ability gets the penalty, but all related abilities may as well. So it's best to keep the nature of the lost conflict in mind than trying to list every single ability that could possibly be reduced.

I sense trouble brewing.

Hmm. What a sweet smell.

Sebastian.

[Mike Holmes]

Well said, Sebastian.

The technique I use with conflict consequences is to list them as "Impediments" with names and ratings. So, in the example Sebastian gives,  You'd take "Losing Crew Respect -10%" or somesuch (penalty appropriate to the level of defeat).

The judgement on when to apply this penalty then is determined just like appropriateness of abilities in contests, and can apply to any contest that makes sense. This isn't an alterations of the rules in any way, just a means to keep track of the losses a character experiences. This is important because "healing" or otherwise removing these things should be a potential goal for players, and you'll tend to forget them (at least I do) if they're not recorded.

Mike

[Web_Weaver]

Just a theory note:

First thing I see...you allowed a player to "contest" his way out of a bang.

I agree, but I'm happy with the way it played out.

I think you are in danger of emphasising technique over agenda here.

To unwrap that statement:

It seems counterproductive to me, to worry about the actual method that players use to engage with presented choices, as long as they actually are engaging in said choices.

A bang is at heart just a choice, and an enforced method of dealing with that choice is just one possible technique. As long as the players are engaging with the choice and moving the story in a clear direction. And, as long as the Narrator is capable of taking that onwards and presenting further choices then everything is proceeding with a clear agenda.