The Forge Archives

Today was our third session of ROS, and this was the first session with a fatality.

Quick Recap:
 At the tourney, Thomas, a young boy turned sorcerer(also aged 10 more years...) with serious beef with the nobles, literally flies in and attempts to shank the king with a spear, missing by inches.  Jocelin manages to break Thomas' leg, but he still escapes.  The crowd of angry commoners who've had serious instigation by Gelurian(nearby nation) forces start to riot.  Then Baron Duval summons his mercenaries to "suppress" the rebels.  Tense moments...

Martin, the Baron's half brother, manages to look good in front of his lady love. Deanna Gregori, and at least get a bit of her father's attention(with mixed results).  Savaric suffered a broken arm last time, and gets carried by one of the lead "rebels", Artus.  Jocelin manages to tell the King,"Corrupt nobles use organized uprisings and assassination, commoners use banditry and tax evasion.  This was not the work of the people..." before running into the massive fray to try to hold the mob at bay.

The King manages to hold the peace, by ordering Baron Duval to halt his troops, and puts Artus, Jocelin, Martin, and Savaric under "house arrest" until he can straighten things out.  After questioning, Artus is placed under duty of heavy labor for 3 months, with freedom granted after that.  The Baron is put under question as to how he "foresaw" that extra troops would be needed, and the King takes control of the mercenaries and is wary of the Baron.

Our three heroes are asked to aid in capturing Thomas, and quelling the uprising...

Martin manages to meet again with Duke Gregori and his daughter, and is taken aside by the Duke, and given advice that is alternately encouraging and disparaging regarding his intentions on Deanna.  

Jocelin allows himself to be led outside of an inn to what he knows will be an ambush.  Using his staff to trip his assailant before he can get out of the door, he then slams the door into the poor man's face.  With a disgusting amount of successes, the man's neck is instantly broken,  on sheer accident by what was intended to be a distraction move.  

Jocelin, in shock at breaking his own vow of non-killing, drops to his knees just in time to avoid getting shanked in the back by one of the man's friends.  Savaric and Martin arrive by accident, ala Guy Ritchie moment.
Savaric uses his expert knife throwing skills to injure one of the two new attackers, and Martin comes in time for the oh-so-cool rapier through the heart from behind move.  

With one of the thugs left alive for questioning, the trio prepare to follow the trail to Thomas...

Things of note:

•I have to say again, beginning characters are definitely competent.  Jocelin has proven to be a general bad ass with the staff, only with a pool of 10, and Martin is insanely skilled with a Pool of 14.  Savaric being less combat oriented, is a master of all things social, slick, or shady, and is decent with the knife on top of that.

•The way spiritual attributes work causes a natural flux of protagonization and adversity.  When one of the pools is maxed, the character kicks ass at what they care about, when its empty, they try to play it safe.

•The need for explicit rules in RoS for pulling attacks.  While one can certainly use less dice, often the attack is designed to simply incapacitate or stun an opponent shouldn't make it totally easy to defend against.  One suggested rule was perhaps for each die spent out of your CP having the option to lower damage by 1 level.  For example, I spend 3 extra CP, I can lower a wound 0 to 3 levels depending on how severe it is.

•Using Luck for the little bit of Directorial power it gives, in that you can cause things to happen that are out of your control is probably its most powerful usage.  In this case, I wanted Jocelin to be in total shock that he broke his vow, so I spent the Luck point just to have him fall to his knees in time to avoid getting shanked in the back.

•Our first fatality was with a door, by the pacifist character.  This will be forever etched into my mind.  Absolutely priceless.  We used club damage rules, but Jake, if you want to come up with Door stats, let me know :P

Chris

Quote•I have to say again, beginning characters are definitely competent. Jocelin has proven to be a general bad ass with the staff, only with a pool of 10, and Martin is insanely skilled with a Pool of 14. Savaric being less combat oriented, is a master of all things social, slick, or shady, and is decent with the knife on top of that.

Don't I know it...people just don't seem to get it...

Quote•The way spiritual attributes work causes a natural flux of protagonization and adversity. When one of the pools is maxed, the character kicks ass at what they care about, when its empty, they try to play it safe.

Yeah! Woo-hoo! I want details!

Quote•The need for explicit rules in RoS for pulling attacks. While one can certainly use less dice, often the attack is designed to simply incapacitate or stun an opponent shouldn't make it totally easy to defend against. One suggested rule was perhaps for each die spent out of your CP having the option to lower damage by 1 level. For example, I spend 3 extra CP, I can lower a wound 0 to 3 levels depending on how severe it is.

That's an excellent way to handle it.

Quote•Using Luck for the little bit of Directorial power it gives, in that you can cause things to happen that are out of your control is probably its most powerful usage. In this case, I wanted Jocelin to be in total shock that he broke his vow, so I spent the Luck point just to have him fall to his knees in time to avoid getting shanked in the back.

You also could have used luck to not kill the guy...but I think what happened makes a better story. Oh, and Club damage for the door might have been a bit stiff...clubs are wicked!

Quote•Our first fatality was with a door, by the pacifist character. This will be forever etched into my mind. Absolutely priceless. We used club damage rules, but Jake, if you want to come up with Door stats, let me know :P

Sure... ;-)

Jake

QuoteYeah! Woo-hoo! I want details!

Regarding the Spiritual attributes...I had maxed out my Conscience at 5, but the scene was about preventing a massacre, so those extra 5 dice helped me out a lot.  On the other hand, I missed out on getting extra dice from Conscience because of actions I did during that scene.  It's a classic gamist juggle:  Do I spend the points now, so I might get more, or do I hold on to them cause they might save my bacon?

After that scene, I went ahead and spent them, but then I didn't have the dice to really shine, so I had to play it safe until I got it back up again.  Do you find this happens in your game as well?

Chris