[Mountain Witch] Under The Banner

[morgue]

[I've called this 'Under The Banner' because I figure it's marginally better to give an AP thread a title distinct from 'our game' or whatever.  And there's a banner in the game.  *shrug*]

A couple nights ago I ran a first session of Mountain Witch, which I've been keen to run/play since Tim demo'd it for me at Gen Con last year.

I recruited a new group for it, some knew each other, many were only aquaintances or complete strangers.  Two I had never gamed with before.  Some had experience with Forge-type games, some didn't.  Players were Steve (hix here on the forge), Ed, Sean, Jamie and Stephanie.

---

My two main goals with this Actual Play account are:
* relate my experiences running different parts of the game, a process that I think will help me understand it better
* note down the bangs/encounters I used and how they went, as a resource for other GMs

I'm not specifically seeking feedback on anything in particular - there weren't any problems as such.  But I would *love* feedback or probing questions or anything, if only because such questions get me to understand stuff more clearly.  So if there's any questions or comments out there, go for it.

---
PREGAME


Once we all got in we did some general chat and hang-out stuff for a bit and then got going.  I distributed character sheet blanks to everyone and explained in general terms about Trust, Dark Fates, Abilities and the role of the Zodiac signs.

Contrary to the book, I switched step 1 and 2 and asked my players to begin by choosing a Zodiac sign.  (I did this because I thought it was an easy decision to make that would serve as a starting point for coming up with a character.  Also I wanted the Dark Fates to *feel* like something that was being visited on a character, not something that was the starting point of that character's identity.)  I named all of the signs and players asked for a more detailed description of the animals they were interested in; most players went with that first animal, but some asked about others before choosing one.  We ended up with no enemy signs in the group, and one ally-pair (Steve and Stephanie).  We recorded trust points then.

Then I asked players to name their characters.  [Note: should have photocopied those name lists - finding that page, and handing it around, was a bottleneck here and later when players and GM both were introducing characters and needing names.]

Then we handed out the dark fates.  I gave people a chance to reflect on their choices, and explained about the players having narrative authority over their character's dark fate.

Then we did abilities.  Abilities did take a little while to sort out, as the book advised us to expect, but after I read out the examples from the pregens from Timfire's demo set people got on the same page.

Then the background questions.  This was really the first point at which the characters became characters, instead of collections of attributes.  We went around the room and people shared their backstories, which were an interesting range.  Players seemed quite happy to give their characters horrible backgrounds - Stephanie set a harsh tone by going first and saying she had become ronin after waking from a dream to find she had killed her husband and children in her sleep!

Only then did I flip the unused Dark Fate card and reveal what it was [desperately in love].  I then went through the other fates, to remind everyone what else was around the table. 

Finally I gave a potted account of the breakdown into acts and chapters, how the conflict rules worked (using a hypothetical example of 'crossing a fast-running river'), how aiding and betrayal worked, and so forth.  Some rules elements I left out, planning to explain these before session two, including buying narration of a conflict resolution for a trust point, the rules for duels, and character death.

And then we prepared to game.

---

ACT ONE

(Chapter One)

As it happened, I had an out-of-game interruption due, so we didn't start right away, waiting for the interruption to happen before getting stuck in.  While we waited, the players took it upon themselves to create an introductory scene of the five ronin preparing for their quest in a tavern, having just met.  It was only half-serious, and I missed a bunch of it as I went out to deal with the expected visitor, but I believe it set up a few things and allowed the players to get a better sense of each others' characters.

Then I returned and we began.  I set the scene in the forest before the mountain.

First encounter as it appeared in my prep notes:
The ronin encounter a wolfpack.  The pack leader can speak, and orders the ronin to turn back, for the way is closed to them.

I included in this encounter five ordinary wolves (weak) and the leader (able).  Mostly this encounter was intended to be a battle, to introduce everyone to the way the rules worked.  It turned into quite a long battle, but it was consistently involving, and the players got a handle on how winner-narration went, how damage vs. facts worked (one success was used to make the lead wolf unable to run rather than damage it), and how aiding went (there was a whole lot of aiding going on!).

* I had what I felt was a clever thought right at the start, and had the wolf's first words be 'which of you is the leader of your band?'  There was hesitation before Ed had his character step forward - all the players were primed on the trust/betrayal core of the game, and the question of leadership would obviously feed into that somehow.

* The talking wolf was killed about halfway through the battle - Jamie's character impaled it on his banner standard.  I didn't want the other wolves to flee, however, in order to fully test out the conflict system.  One of the players had previously asked something about whether a killed wolf was an ordinary corpse or if it disappeared, and I ran with that to have the lead wolf dissolve into a green mist spirit form that then split into three and plunged into the surviving wolves, forcing them to keep fighting.  The players reacted to that - it was very spooky.

[This, however, was the beginning of me writing myself into a corner in a small way.  The wolf was originally intended to be blocking the ronin specifically, implying that other ordinary people still had easy access to the road to the Mountain Witch's fortress.  However, the spooky wolf, mixed in with a few improvised bits of dialogue and business later, determined that the area around the Mountain Witch was incredibly heavy with spirit activity and normal people were few and far between.  This may prove a hindrance in the kinds of bangs I can play with later on, since any ordinary person on the mountain will draw suspicion just by being there.  This is a minor thing, but it does reduce my options; or, put positively, it gives me a clear direction for the kinds of encounters to place on the mountain.]

The ronin kept going into the night.  Jamie's character had a 'see in the dark' ability so everyone was following him - in my narration I framed this in terms of trust [you all trust him to lead you?].

Steve put the first bit of dark fate narration in the game, describing the ronin coming across two dead samurai.  They had been killed in battle against soldiers.  There was some discussion about what to do about the bodies - to leave them there to rot, or take the time to bury or burn them.  Sean had his character chop off their heads so they couldn't rise up and become walking dead. 

Jamie's character was the only one who could see, so he had to decide whether to stay or go.  He deferred to Ed's earlier self-appointment as leader, and Ed decided to keep going.  They left the bodies unburied.


Second encounter as it appeared in my prep notes:
Tengu Query: (from Ron Edwards) Some tengu stalk the ronin's camp at night, and since the ronin all look alike to them, they ask the sentry if he or she is the one who "made the deal."  Another ronin hears this exchange.

The ronin made camp and slept through the night.  I was going to use this encounter on the first watch, but Stephanie narrated that during the night the a cold wind came through and put out the campfire.  I decided this was at the conclusion of Ed's character's watch.  Steve was next in order, so Ed roused Steve, and after a bit of banter about 'how could you let the fire go out!' they decided to go out and collect more kindling to re-light the fire.  Steve woke Stephanie to take her watch early while they did this.

With Stephanie alone, I had the tengu arrive as a voice in the trees, asking her to come away from camp and speak...  She woke Sean's character, an older man, and I described the tengu fleeing the scene.  Sean's character was unhappy at being woken because of a bird, and at Steph's failure to keep the fire going.  He returned to sleep, very grumpy.  The tengu came back, and this time we established Ed and Steve were returning from their gathering so there wasn't much time.  Steph went to talk to the tengu, and I had it say 'the Mountain Witch has arranged everything according to the deal'.  Stephanie responded by asking for the specific details of what has been arranged, claiming to know what the deal was.  I had the tengu become suspicious and ask her her name.  She said (stroke of genius, this) the name of Ed's character. 

This was an interesting GMing bind.  I didn't know whether or not Ed had the Unhloly Pact fate, which this was obviously aimed at.  I played the odds and had the Tengu curse and leave, clearly Ed's character was not the one it sought.  (If it turns out Ed does have that fate, then we'll have to explain this exchange some other way, but I have faith something will work out :-)

Third encounter as it appeared in my prep notes:
The ronin are lost in a maze of tangled roots and dark trees.  A forest sprite offers to lead the Ronin to the mountain path, but only if he is given a token of the most personal significance by each ronin.

The next morning I described the ronin heading through the thick forest but constantly being turned around, each time the canopy of the forest opened the mountain was not where they expected.

I had intended, as noted above, this to be the setup for me to introduce a 'guide spirit' figure.  However, the players (particularly Steve, who was grokking the system really well by now) quite rightly jumped in and proposed a way to escape the maze of forest.  Steve's character, with the 'fleet of foot' ability, would run as quickly as possible towards the mountain, hoping to break out of the forest before the mountain moved.  Another ronin would watch from a tree his progression - he would carry Jamie's banner as that was the only thing that would reach to the canopy.   (The banner was an ability, and Jamie's entrusting it to Steve was quite significant.)  With prompting the others found ways to lend their aid - words of wisdom and support, mostly.  I gave the forest magic three dice and Steve, with aid, easily beat me.  He broke out of the forest at the foot of the mountain, and following his voice the others joined him.

End Chapter One/Act One.  We took a short break here and reassigned trust.  A lot of people built trust, some stayed the same, and the only loss in trust was Sean downgrading Stephanie for waking him up and letting the fire go out.


---


ACT TWO

(Chapter One)

We began with some more dark fate narration from Steve - he described a battlefield lying between the forest and the mountain proper, covered with signs of battle but no bodies. Stephanie's character could speak to the dead, and she looked around for a ghost.  I described a single ghostly figure she could speak with.

Now, this was an interesting point.  I didn't know where Steve was going with the battlefield or what he had in mind for it, so I wasn't comfortable roleplaying the spirit.  I considered taking Steve aside so he could share with me what he had in mind, but because I know Steve and his game style from some incredible Prime Time Adventures games I asked him/he offered to run this NPC for the scene.  Steve had the spirit reveal some of what happened, and ask for a message to be delivered to his home, which Stephanie pledged to do if she returned from facing the witch.  Then Stephanie asked for advice about the best way up the mountain, and Steve handed the character back to me.  I took over and responded, and we finished the encounter.

Following up on this, I had the characters reach the base of the mountain.  Steph told everyone to go along an insignificant side path 'because it's the right way'.  This led to some nice roleplaying as people queried her confidence and the source of her information, but everyone went along with it.  I described the route leading to a nice shortcut and everyone was happy.

Fourth encounter as it appeared in my prep notes:
Blind Man's Cottage: The blind man lives alone in a small cottage.  He will invite the ronin to take tea with him and spend the night under his roof.  He tells them the Witch can corrupt the weak, and any who are too weak will inevitably betray their fellows.  (Extra info censored because the players haven't finished with him yet.)

They reached a small stone cottage and a blind man invited them in to tea.  I decided I wanted someone else to be there too, so the ronin joined him and then another person came.  I asked the group who it was - I asked Jamie first, but he didn't have an instant response, and Ed jumped in so we went with his contribution.  The man was a foreigner, a barbarian, who was also going up the mountain.  Ed and I both figured I should be handed complete control of this NPC from the start, so we went into another room and Ed told me the basics of who he was and what he was up to.  Then I ran him - there was some shaky conversation across the language barrier, and the ronin left him to spend the night (he wasn't keen on facing the bad weather, while the ronin weren't deterred).

Fifth encounter - the other half of the third encounter:

I resurrected the unused bit of encounter three and had the ronin, on a mountain trail, meet a small spirit-critter, a kappa.  The kappa offered to show the ronin a short-cut up the mountain if they all gave it something of great personal significance.  They refused; it offered again, this time for a deep secret from everyone.  Again, refusal.  Finally it wanted one person to give it an object, but that object must be the most valuable thing in the person's heart.

As the ronin considered this offer, I had the kappa mention that the blind man was really a monster who lured people to spend the night with him and killed them.  Steve's character instantly began sprinting back down the mountain  - a surprising reaction to me!  The other ronin let him go, and Stephanie gave the kappa a locket depicting her now-deceased family.  The kappa showed them a hidden side-track shortcut in return.

The ronin split up, now.  Sean and Jamie (I think) followed Steve, while Ed and Stephanie waited for them all to return.  And that's where we ended the session.

---

There's a crucial thing I've let out here - a big, in-character discussion of honour,  I was busy using the free headspace to doublecheck rules and my prep, so I didn't listen to enough of it to relate it in any detail, and I can't even remember exactly where in the session it fell - I think it was right after they left the blind man's cottage?  But it was a good moment full of character exposition, and the bits I heard seemed to lay the groundwork for a lot of what is to come.

Everyone was pretty happy with the session, myself included.  Next one is in two weeks.

If I can think of any other points worth noting I'll add another post or two.  Anyone got any questions that could provoke more details?

[Stephanie]

>Stephanie set a harsh tone by going first and saying she had become ronin after waking from a dream to find she had killed her husband and children in her sleep!
Oh.  Well.  Um.  [blush] I figured that most of the Samurai movies I'd seen were really heavy on the angst, and that I'd enjoy the game more if I jumped right in, rather than playing a half-arsed character.

>the only loss in trust was Sean downgrading Stephanie for waking him up and letting the fire go out.
I thought that was funny.  :-)

>There's a crucial thing I've let out here - a big, in-character discussion of honour,  I was busy using the free headspace to doublecheck rules and my prep, so I didn't listen to enough of it to relate it in any detail
It was basically showing the spectrum on which the characters fell about what do you do when you lose your honor.  I think it was Jamie? - the character with the banner anyway, that took a very hard line of "Once honour is gone there is nothing", compared to Steve's "Honour ebbs and flows like the moon" which was offending everybody else.  The rest of us were more in the middle.

The thing that will need the most getting used to is the idea that I can jump in and write new elements into the story.  Steve seemed to thrive on that style, but I think the rest of us found it a bit harder, particularly with the "You.  Who is coming in the door" bit.  It's interesting, though, particularly knowing that there is all this important stuff going on with the characters which the GM doesn't know anything about yet, so we're all going to be surprised by the ending.

[hix]

I loved how 4 simple bits of information: the Zodiac, Dark Fate and two Why? questions (why did you become a ronin? why do you need the money?) combine to create a strong foundation for each ronin's personality.

I also love how, as players, we don't know the end-conditions for each chapter. It could be geographical (get out of the forest), or it could be psychological (first time a samurai betrays another) ... it could be anything.  We don't even know whether the rules regarding Trust will start to evolve as the chapters continue.  That gives the storyline a real unpredictability.

At the moment, I'm not sure how the Trust mechanic will escalate into situations where we'll want to betray each other - there seems to be so much mechanical benefit to building up Trust and aiding each other, but I'm betting there's a lot of implications about the building up of our knowledge about each other's Dark Fates (and our relationships with each other and the Witch) that I haven't grokked yet, and the next two sessions will draw out.

[Ron Edwards]

Not to sound all Myusashi and Zen on you, but ... trust the Trust.

Which is to say, at this point, you as GM are like a bunch of hamsters running on the conveyor belt, in the guts of the car. You aren't driving, you aren't navigating, and frankly, you aren't even in the seats-section with everyone else. In many ways, you're a second-class citizen in this game, although you are necessary, like the hamsters, for it to proceed.

Your job is to promote opportunities for the Dark Fates to be expressed, and to introduce savage adversity. If you want to push the dice mechanics a little, then use multi-conflict situations, in which doing X or doing Y can be goals for rolls, but doing both at once isn't available as an option.

But Trust? Betrayal? All that stuff, which generates whole scenes and whole stories on its own? That's them, up there in the cab of the car, with their steering wheel and pedals and windows. They'll get there. Based on your account so far, they're getting there like gangbusters.

Keep running, hamsters; so far, you're doing splendidly. Don't try to drive. The fun part, for you? You get to enjoy watching what they do, and to that end, and to mix my metaphor, you've got the best seat in the house.

Best, Ron

[morgue]

Your job is to promote opportunities for the Dark Fates to be expressed, and to introduce savage adversity.

Thanks for this particular sentence Ron - it's a nice reminder/summation.

My feeling with Mountain Witch is that the GM has to drive a fair amount at very first, but fairly quickly hands lots of narrative momentum to the players, and then hands almost all the rest over soon after that.  I think in this first session I held on a bit too tightly for a bit too long - a friend here in Wellington also ran a first MW session this past week, and it sounds like he went much faster into this, to the benefit of his game.

In any case, none of that is fatal - we're definitely going in the right direction.

[morgue]

SESSION TWO

Tonight we met for the second session.  We all sat down and went over the previous session's events.  I went over some rules stuff I had left out of the previous session: Duels, Death, and narration. For the last I pointed out there were three kinds of 'extra' narration rights available to players - Dark Fates, trust expenditure to narrate successes, and good conflict results (critical and double successes).  I made clear that it would be impossible to achieve the goal of defeating the mountain witch without using these powers, as I would not hand over character goals on a plate - they would need to narrate their way to where they wanted to go, which meant bringing in their dark fates.  Everyone thought this was very cool, and it was a major point of understanding for me about how this game hangs together.

There had been no communication about game matters in the intervening time (apart from this thread) except an email from Steve to me, clarifying what he had in mind with the battlefield he had narrated.  He didn't reveal his dark fate, just gave me enough to work with that I could improvise around his idea with confidence.


ACT TWO

(continuation of Chapter One)

The Blind Man
We joined Steve's character as she raced down the mountain to rescue the foreigner, Geoffrey, from the monstrous blind man.  Steve explained to the group his character's motivation - she was attracted to Geoffrey because he represented something apart from the culture and world she knew.

The blind man invited Steve's character in, and conflicts ensued to see if Steve could get Geoffrey out without raising the blind man's suspicions.  The blind man trapped Geoffrey in the cottage and faced off with Steve's character outside.  Sean's character came upon the scene around this point, as Steve's character prepared for battle and the blind man tried to leap inside and devour Geoffrey.  The blind man had a mixed success, so he made it inside with Geoffrey but his arm was sliced off.  Then Steve's character used a 'smashing through locked doors' ability to burst in, with Sean's character's help, and they trapped the kami beneath the door and impaled it, then raced away with the badly injured Geoffrey.

The Wolf
Up the hill, Steph's, Jamie's and Ed's characters maintained a watch from a cave where they were hiding and waited for the others to return.  On Jamie's watch I told him there was something on the path, and asked him to tell me what it was.  He decided that it was a wolf, like the one in the first chapter, heading downhill towards the other ronin.  The group decided to try and stop the wolf, succeeding in partially blocking the path.  Jamie then narrated the wolf asking advice of an invisible companion, echoing something Jamie had said shortly before, that there may be invisible servants of the witch!  (This sparked with something Steve had mentioned in his email, a possibility that the dead of the Tanaka clan had become undead servants of the Witch King; I decided then and there that they had become an invisible ghost army.)

The invisible soldiers advised the wolf that something was up, and stormed out looking for the concealed ronin.  Using teamwork, the ronin were able to evade the soldiers and maneuver to the pathway, cutting it off.  There Jamie's character planted his banner and ordered the wolf to turn back, which was an awesome moment.  (There were lots of other awesome moments, too, but I remember to mention this one - the group approved of this.)  This was a conflict - I said the wolf's intent was to snap the banner in half with his jaws, which was also well-received.  The coolness was amping up!  The ronin won the conflict with a double success, and Jamie narrated that the ghost soldiers hadn't followed the wolf into battle, and the wolf had lost its nerve and scuttled back up to the witch's fortress.  Jamie also asked that the other part of the success be a revelation of why the Tanaka clan soldiers were following the witch, and so I put the answer in the wolf's dialogue - the Tanaka clan had won, in the battle at the foot of the mountain, the right to serve the mountain witch, and the Tanaka general was now the mountain witch's general.  The key revelation was that this general was in fact the person Steph's character had pledged to communicate with in her conversation with the ghost.


The Night
The group re-united at the cave and made camp for the night.  There was much discussion at first, as the fate of the badly-wounded foreigner was debated, and the group noted that it was Steph's character's clan  that had lost to the Tanaka clan in the great battle.  Steph revealed that she had been married to the general of her clan, the predecessor of the general who had fought in the great battle, and refused to elaborate on what had happened after this.  [The players, of course, all knew that Steph's character had murdered her husband in her sleep, but this information was far from forthcoming in the game!]

This led, with only a tiny bit of prompting from me, of a conflict.  Jamie's character and Steph's character agreed to a conflict where success would force the other to inadvertantly reveal something of their personal secrets to the group.  Steve's character joined in on Steph's side, and Sean's character joined in on Jamie's side.  The dice gave a critical success to Steph, so she got Jamie to speak of his character's connection to the ghost soldiers (he had met one before) and Sean to reveal something of his inner life (he was severely prejudiced against women - not conincidentally, both Steve's and Steph's characters were women).

During Steve's character's watch, the feverish Geoffrey - his wound worsening - bonded with her.  Then, moments later, Geoffrey leapt to his feet and fled the cave.  Giving chase and kicking the others awake, Steve's character slid into the snow to face the floating severed head of the blind man.  (This was the other bit of that prepared encounter - at night, the blind man's head detaches from its body to hunt.)  They leapt into battle, which led to both of them being injured as the others came out to help.  Steve's character dragged Geoffrey into a crevice where the kami could not attack them, but the kami then controlled Geoffrey to take a knife and stab Steve's character.  This attack was turned back through overpowering Geoffrey both physically and emotionally.  The other ronin came to the rescue and through their combined efforts the kami was destroyed.  A double success was narrated to represent spirit energy passing from the kami into the ronin's sword - its effect to be determined later.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, save the fire going out at midnight (narrated, again, by Steph).  It so happened that Steve's character was put in charge of relighting it, so I announced that the sudden chill had woken Sean's character, and once again this character woke in the middle of the night to find a woman had apparently let the fire go out.


Reaching the fortress
Geoffrey survived the night but I said he was almost certain to die by nightfall if he had not received medical care.  This became Steve's character's overwhelming  focus.

I told the players that the next scene I would set for them was the arrival at the fortress, and gave each player a chance to narrate something to do with their dark fate as they climbed the mountain.  Sean took this opportunity to have the group encounter a young girl sitting on the path, unconcerned by the bitter cold.  He took me aside to tell me that this was the Mountain Witch's daughter, and that he thought she could be either good or evil as I saw fit.  I ran the encounter with her as a curious child, who knew the ronin were coming to kill her father, and acted as if she supported them in revenge for her father's strictness.  She let a wind gust carry her back up the mountain to the fortress, and she will no doubt appear again in a future chapter!

Then I used the only prepared encounter I had for this session.  I had the ronin reach the fortress, near a side entrance atop a slope that was hip-deep in human bones.  The ronin (through a map introduced earlier by Steve in dark fate narration - it was in the blind man's cottage) knew of other sneaky entrances as well.  As they watched, the door in the fortress wall opened and a slave was thrown into the bones, and ordered by a fierce oni to fetch out the skulls that belonged to warriors from Steph's character's clan.  I asked the players who this might be.

Steph immediately said it was her character's husband's successor, Goro, who was the defeated general in the great battle and had been enslaved ever since.  Goro was also Steph's character's brother!  The reunion turned ugly as Goro alluded to Steph's character's disgrace, said that he wanted nothing to do with her, and started calling for the oni to come out!

Conflict!  The ronin wanted to grab Goro and get around to another entrance before the oni could come out and see them.  Double success - not only did they do this, but the oni didn't even suspect anything was amiss with Goro disappearing ("he's probably tried to run away - well, he won't get far, we'll chase him down in the morning").  The ronin made it to a sluice beneath the fortress and disappeared inside.

=======END OF CHAPTER=======

This was the end of the chapter.  Trust was re-allocated and we had a break.  Trust really started to vary in this allocation, as the players found many good reasons on which to base trust and suspicion.

We decided to keep going a little longer and do the first scene of the next chapter.  I explained that for the first chunk of time inside the fortress I would be looking to them a great deal for guidance and encounters.  I particularly specified that I would not provide assistance for the dying Geoffrey - it was up to the players to narrate their way to things like that.


ACT TWO(?)

Chapter Two (?)
The ronin made their way along a covered drain.  Jamie narrated finding some moss, which he had earlier mentioned in character as being useful to brew a potion that would allow the ronin to see the invisible soldiers.  As he harvested it, Steve's character cornered the captive Goro and demanded to know how to find a physician in the fortress.  Goro said he could take them to him, but for wounds as severe as Geoffrey's only the mountain witch's mistress might be able to help.  They all recognised her name as a spirit of winter, and everyone thought it likely she was the mother of the child they had met earlier.

Then a swarm of deadly crab-spiders came scrambling out of the water to attack!  The ronin fended them off and found a way into the fortress (first conflict) then sealed the crabs out while preventing Goro from escaping (second conflict).  A double success had Stephanie add that they found in the kitchen they had entered a terrified young maid who could guide them where they wanted to go.  However, the group split up in the chaos - Steve's character took Geoffrey off, and Sean's character followed, while the other three stayed with the maid and plotted their next move.

And there we ended it.

=======END OF SESSION=======

Some thoughts and issues and questions and things:

* pacing!  After about five or 6 hours of play we are only just into a third chapter.  Everyone seems fairly happy with the pace of the game, and trust wasn't being blown through very quickly, but on reflection tonight I think my plan of having Act 2 Chapter 2 begin with entering the fortress should be revised, so that in fact Act 3 begins with entering the fortress.  Anyone out there have opinions?  How have other MW GMs handled the Act/Chapter pacing in their games?

* the importance of players narrating their way to key encounters, thus having to use their dark fate to achieve this, strikes me as an absolutely fundamental element of the game's ruleset, far more important than its status in the rules-as-written would suggest.

* Sean commented that he thinks abilities should be active, not passive - things that let you do things (e.g. smash through locked doors) rather than things that let you resist things (e.g. withstand great cold). Steve pointed out that passive abilities are really requests to the GM to put the character in situations where the ability is a factor.  Any comments out there?  Steve/Sean, care to clarify?

* I didn't remember to complicate conflicts with complexity, with multiple crisis points forcing the ronin to split their forces.  It didn't seem too problematic, but when I did remember it amped up the stakes massively - like an exponential increase.  Something to note for next time...

* There were a bunch of instances of Trust being spent to help in conflicts where the aiding character wasn't even present, usually justified by the character being aided having an inspiring or insightful memory of the aiding character.  I was perfectly okay with this, and it seemed to work just fine, although I wonder if there might be problems with it down the road?  Any advice from anyone?


(Also, Steve - a couple times you gleefully said 'fan mail!' to people (referencing a Primetime Adventures 'that was a cool moment' mechanic).  Can you recall when these were?  Actual Play posts always benefit from knowing the bits that everyone thought were cool, I reckon.)

I trust the players will add in any additional details or clarifications in separate posts.  This is turning into a good record of the game, so it'd be nice if we don't leave any of it out!

[Sean]

A really fun game last night (and the time before...)

I really like how the players' wish to get their own stories out there ends up creating the world, and often an intertwined world too (though I don't think this is necessary or even something to aim for... My own character's story seems more of a B story to the emerging Tanaka-Sasashi clan war background which seems to be forming a multi-player A story...  And I quite like both of those aspects.)

Some things I enjoyed in terms of players getting their dark fates and characters out there:
Ohichi (Steve) showing compassion for the barbarian Geoffrey, even to the point of abandoning the group...
Sasashi (Steph) introducing the member of her clan as the slave at the entrance to the fortress, thus giving us another opportunity to dig down into her backstory, and accepting the dare Jamie had laid down to investigate her past (which I supported), and that mysterious aggravating cold wind...
Tohei (Jamie) for introducing invisible soldiers and mysterious moss (and finding the moss in a very sensible place too...)
Ito (Ed) for his strange antipathy towards the barbarian Geoffrey.
GM (Morgue) for letting us get at it.

And there was plenty more cool stuff too...

In terms of active vs passive abilities - I don't think it's the role of the GM (in this game) to set encounters specifically tailored for individual players' abilities... I don't even expect the GM to know everyone's abilities... It's up to us to use our abilities in unexpected ways, which I think implies they should be able to used actively...  My point was also that passive abilities tend to only affect the character (for instance withstand the cold), while active abilities can be used for and against others. 

The game places the activeness of characters in the hands of players - one of the things I'm realising is that passivity is not a good option (whether in abilities or in general play).  Even when that passivity represents internal conflict... Better to externalise.

Thanks for a really cool game everyone.

Sean

[hix]

I really got into the game last night, but I saved "Fan Mail" for the big stuff ...

Jamie introducing the concept of invisible enemies, and in the later conflict, the moment where he planted his banner in the snow - challenging the wolf to attack.
Stephanie ... I know there were two moments - I think one was when she introduced Goro, and the other might have been when she had the wind blow through and extinguish the fire. Specifically that one was because I realised that that made the wind into a pattern that ties into her Dark Fate.

***
By about halfway through this second session, I could see how Trust will very naturally move up and down - as a combination of in-character actions and alliances + player assessments of who has what Dark Fate, how they're expressed, and how they might come back to bite you.

***
I've been trying to actively tie myself into other players' plots. The attraction with Geoffery buys into an element that Ed introduced; the Sasashi clan as the fallen enemy of the Tanakas gives Steph a chance to reveal her backstory; and Sean and I are playing characters who are such philosophical opposites (yet we are the ronin who have aided each other the most) that our relationship feels key to my enjoyment of the game.  Jamie, I've only - in writing this post - realised that you might be wanting to create an overall vibe of 'us being suspicious of your ronin'.  If that's the case (and that's how I've decided to have my ronin feel about yours), then that may work well as a connection between us.

***
I really enjoyed setting stakes for conflicts this episode - telling you to push harder in the conflict with the blind man, initiating our first player vs. player conflict, really pushing the idea that there are a multitude of ways to deal with any situation we're confronted with.

[hix]

Hey Morgue, can you give an example of a multiple crisis point conflict & how it escalated the stakes?

[morgue]

Hey Morgue, can you give an example of a multiple crisis point conflict & how it escalated the stakes?

I was specifically thinking of the final conflict with the crabs trying to swarm in and devour someone, on the one hand, and Goro trying to escape in the chaos, on the other.  Simply putting another dice on the table, and thus having two outcomes to avoid, forced the ronin to split their forces.  The choices in a straightforward us vs them conflict are simple - aid or not aid, act as a group or not - but in this the complications multiplied around the question, which conflict do I enter?  And, of course, a split force makes for a much more uncertain outcome.  If a group of four ronin are banding together and using trust, the only question is how great their success will be - but if those ronin need to split into two groups, the chance of disaster increases enormously.

[hix]

Sean and I work together, and we've worked on scripts and TV shows together in the past, so we're pretty comfortable challenging each other creatively. 

We were having lunch yesterday, and the conversation drifted onto this game.  We agreed that given how Session 2 finished (Sean's old ronin following my younger one into a meeting with the Mountain Witch's general), we could very well go into PvP conflict very soon next session.

1. That excites me.
2. I think it was good that we gave each other permission, out of game, to play hardball with each other.

[eddee]

Re: Pacing

I had for some unknown reason had a fixed idea that it would be in the final chapter where we would reach the Fortress and then it would be small and impenetrable and containing possibly merely the witch. All the dark fates and treachery having occurred long before the arrival at the castle - given this feeling I would press for an Act 3 entering the fortress, or a greater sense at the start that - 'it would take five days to get to the top if it were a normal mountain' or some such statement.

Re: Complicating conflicts

For me, the complication of multiple conflicts was a far better dynamic - forcing us to pick and choose how we aided and fought, especially since the trust dynamic makes it very easy to band together when there is a specific external threat.

Re: Absent Character Trust

I am uneasy with trust being spent without characters being there - or at least with a specific in-game character based prompt (a distant shout or a lock of hair previously given now is seen ) which allows the non-present character to instigate a memory or inspire another character.


On the whole I really enjoying it all.
ed

[hix]

I hear your unease, Ed, and shall work extra-hard to provide some sort of motivation or context for using Trust, if my Ronin is separated from the party.

Did my "You remember and are inspired by the way I leapt at the kami's flying cannibal head" work for you, or was it too abstract?

[Sean]

Actually Steve I had a similar reaction to Ed about the use of 'absent trust'!

Reason was for me that an absent character is focused elsewhere when the use of the trust occurs...  And it reduces the effect of the absence... I feel if a character abandons or leaves the group in some way, they're leaving the group and shouldn't be able to participate - that's what leaving the group means!  I know this is only one means of participation, and I also thought your means of explaining the use of 'absent trust' were very clever and in keeping with the game - I really liked seeing the imagination there in play...  I just feel when you're gone, you're gone.  Absent characters shouldn't be lending a hand in spirit, so to speak.  Because then the characters in the remaining group have more call to say - Where were you? We needed you!

Another observation about the use of trust is that it seems kind of forced on to the other player whether they want it or not... At least that was how we were playing it, don't know what the book says anything about this?  Can players reject the trust that another player is offering for an encounter?

Cheers,

Sean

[hix]

Interesting.

If there's nothing in the rules about this, we should have to have a bit of a conversation next Thursday. Where I'm coming from boils down to this:

1. Apparently the group is expected to split up (or at least the rules provide advice about that).
2. Trust seems like this resource that measures how much 'groupness' we built up before we started splitting up.
3. So I'd expect Trust to be useable, even though we aren't together - it's a way of measuring the impact we had on each other; it's a way of bribing other players to keep giving us Trust at the end of the next chapter; it's a way to keep using the central currency of the game all the time.
4. And splitting up can always be 'punished' by awarding less trust at the end of the next chapter, which gives the affected ronin less ability to participate in such absent-trust-giving subsequently.

OTOH, I just realised that a ronin that's split up from the group, like I am, is supposed to be less powerful and effective - so maybe no Trust awarding is a good thing.

Anyway, I want us to all be comfortable with how Trust's used, so I look forward to figuring it out.