Obsidian - The First Sunrise

[Dav]

Okay, I've got this Actual Play post, and I think it is actually actual play (as there was playing), but the questions that arise from this is probably more geared toward "Actual Publishing" but bear with me here.

So, a couple months ago, I had this idea for the big hurrah for Obsidian.  Specifically, taking the game to its rather inevitable conclusion.  The work will be tossed out there as a published campaign that should take about 11 sessions of 4-5 hours each.  The core idea is as follows (this will contain quite a few spoilers, so those looking to play said game and be shocked and awed, you may not want to glance at this):

The premise is that the group will consist of 1 Wasteland group and 1 Zone group (for those unfamiliar with the general concept of Obsidian, please refer to the website to save me time with the summarizing www.apophisconsortium.com ).  Each Chapter (the kewl Obsidian lingo for "session"), the players will swap between playing the Wasteland and Zone group.

Play begins in the Wasteland at this smallish town called Al-Falud.  The players are an ex-military man and head of the town guard who is a natural leader and expects to be obeyed (Kyle Dren), the strong but silent type whose family was tragically killed by daemons and now has this near-psychotic urge to hunt daemons and collect trophies (leaving his mark on them in some pseudo-serial killer manner) (Kasim Bakr), a divine regent who is layed over in the town because she is the simmering rage and holy fire type chick with a badass set of abilities and high-school crush on Peter Ferris and hideous scar on the face that makes her feel that she does not deserve to be loved (Tamryn Vell), the quiet violence-is-bad medical mystic and scholar who loves Tamryn but can't rbing himself to admit it (Peter Ferris), and trouble-maker 18 year-old with no parents that the town more-or-less adopted and is a jack-of-all-trades snotnosed punk with some fighting ability and thieving nature who is obsessed with Tamryn and thinks it is love and is jealous of the obvious attraction between Tamryn and Peter (Aaron Beckett).

The town is situated against Terraseverus (the land corrupted by the Circle of Avarice - think fire and brimstone hell with volcanic rock and pools of lava), just south of this rather large and famous city known as Velvet Corridor.  Velvet Corridor is a staple of the Wasteland, wedged in between two circles of Hell and surviving without incident due to fancy negotations and quick wit on the part of the rulers (not to mention plenty of Big Guns).  Kasim and Kyle are returning from a foraging mission, with little game to show for their efforts, when Family Unit A (mom, pop, daughter, son) are encountered, being chased by a near-dead daemon with a Big Sword.  The pair easily mop up the daemon, but unfortuantely, mom dies (throwing herself in front of the blade intended for daughter).  Kasim is upset at this, as it flashes him back to his own tragedy, and he is inwardly raging at "another family murdered by those fucking daemons".  They take Family Unit A back to town to get patched up, where they learn that Family Unit A is from Velvet Corridor.  Last night, it seems, Velvet Corridor was destroyed by an army of daemons from Avarice.  The army is moving southeast (right smack toward the Zone).

More interesting to the players, however, is this talk of a splinter group of a few humans guarded by some elite cadre of daemons that were lugging about this golden box that looked to all observers like a coffin.  The humans also had this bizarre banner that made the Family Unit A shudder just to look at.  This group split off and headed straight east (not toward the Zone, but along the northern border of the Wasteland).

The group decides to head on out to Velvet Corridor to lend a hand and search for survivors.  Good for them.  They do so.  It is a good time to be had by all.  The tension with the love triangle is set-up for some great character development and some liberal comic relief, and that work perfectly.  The strong, brooding daemon hunter broods and stays aloof, opening up only to Kyle Dren, which is perfect and worked perfectly.  Everything is hunky dorry.

In Velvet Corridor, there is a daemon that is masquerading as a soldier of the IAC (Intercept Auxilliaries Corp, a PMC for the Wasteland that rents by the man) and butchering the other soldiers one-by-one.  The group gists onto this pretty quickly, manages to investigate and rememdy the situation, which grants them some VERY nice gear and aid from the IAC as a reward.  After this, they do some looking into the splinter group with box and banner and decide that the five of them will make little difference in an all-out assault at Empire Oblivion (the next town between Velvet Corridor and the Zone), and decide to go after this splinter group, assuming (correctly) that the banner is, in fact, the Flagstaff of Conquered Lands (which is a Big Artifact of Magnificent Power that no person should ever see, let alone have).  Off they go, which ends session one.

Now, there were other minor encounters and little niggling bits, but the flow was just right, and I seem to have paced-out the adventure just right, having us start at 2:30 and end at 8:00 (providing the extra half-hour to get people used to the characters and such, as two of the players were new to the game (read the books, never played)). 

They even bit hard on the main plotline of the group with the box, rather than the army.  (Though the game is written up to allow players to choose to go to either Empire Oblivion or the Splinter Group, Empire Oblivion funnels the game back toward the Splinter Group after some tense combat in the city).  The only bits that the group missed were some good salvage of guns (which are rare in the Wasteland).  Now herein lies the rub. 

As the group missed the guns and good weapons, they were SORELY overmatched by the masquerading daemon.  The daemon normally has 18 armor (which, in Obsidian, acts as a damage reducer).  18 is a lot.  The average sword or melee weapon will do, on a nifty strike, about 10-12.  Them guns is the only hope (except for Kyle Dren, who has a gun, being ex-military).  There are other ways to dispatch this daemon, but it isn't easy.  It is meant to be hard. 

I quickly realized the group was screwed, and on-the-fly, without announcing it, halved the things armor rating.  It still packed a good whallup, but would eventually be beaten to death.  Anyone who has played with me, knows that I run a more "intuitive, responsive campaign", meaning that, except for setting up the initial board, I do little... I let the players and characters do it all and respond to them to make the tension ebb and flow, which makes the solutions more rewarding, and the threats more devious.  I'm nifty at that.  I'm damned nifty at that.  I can't plan or prep a game worth a damn, and I never bother.  I just jot down names with a couple of personality quirks as they come up and let fly.

Initially, I was concerned about pacing, but that seems fine.  Now, I am concerned about the idea of scaling (namely the bad guys), but I am wondering how many people out there would appreicate me giving stats such as: "Armor: 18 (if the group has Big Guns), 9 (is the group does not have Big Guns)" in the campaign.  Am I doing something that GMs will somewhat view as "cheating"?  Am I hedging too much?

Further, the game of Obsidian is based off of a reward mechanic called Motivations (you get one Motivation given to you by your character concept, the other 3, you make up).  In this campaign, I give a list of five motivations, from which the player chooses three for their character (a little customization is good, to my mind).  Then, a special 5th Motivation is granted by the GM each chapter.  This motivation is always an active, accomplishable motivation that will be present in the next chapter (for instance, Aaron Beckett's 5th Motivation in Chapter 1 is to "act bashful when Tamryn is around and stare mooningly at her when you think she is not looking").  In the next Chapter, the GM has the option of choosing from 2 5th Motivations, depending upon how Tamryn or Aaron accomplished the initial setup.  These two options are: "Be an scorned male or chauvanist man whenever Tamryn is around" or "Constantly try to show yourself as superior to Peter whenever Tamryn is around".  I like it because it allows me to make certain that there is character development and great hooks for good narrative play (with tangible reward), and let's the players grasp a strong idea of "characters are more than player-controlled plot devices for the story".

With the changeable stats for bad guys and motivational control, will this come across as railroading (which I am not entirely opposed to, but the thresholds for this behavior is usually pretty low for most gamers)?  Have I crossed the line, am I toeing it, or am I just be too careful and should just "go for it"?

Dav

[Ron Edwards]

Here are my thoughts.

1. In many other threads, for many other people, playing many other games, I'd say: If you're going to have deadly fights, then don't be a wuss and drop armor values because you want the characters to live and the fight to go a certain way.

But it seems to me that this doesn't apply to you at all. You do want the characters to live and for the fight to go a certain way. So the solution is to tailor any and all critters to fight exactly to where the characters are now when you prep. That way, finding weapons or whatever will make things easier and faster, rather than possible instead of impossible.

2. I suggest not writing up the fifth after-session Motivations at all. Just have the players do it. It'll give you something fun to deal with that you didn't write into the situation, and it won't be a deal-breaker in any way.

3. Admit it. You are railroading. You're improvising, yes, but you're basically doing "wave-front illusionism," deciding what you want to happen as you go along, and skating events/outcomes into those avenues as an ongoing, interactive thing. Now, if you want this to be fun in the long run, I suggest that you find a way to make it Participation instead of Illusion.

Best, Ron