[Storming the Wizard's Tower] Monastery of Crows

[Guy Srinivasan]

* I love the three core non-combat rolls.

Especially Controlling Others. The time limits are pretty sweet. "Of course he'll hide her from the caravan master while you're away adventuring... for 12 hours, anyway!"

[tonyd]

Just a quick observation today rather than a complete AP. We did a town episode last night, and it may have been the best session we've played yet. I love playing the various people in the town as they react to the PCs and the situation of the town. The players actually asked for more town play. Town play is also interesting because as the PCs become hugely effective at fighting monsters, their effectiveness in having conversations and giving commands doesn't got up quite as fast.

In last night's session, the heroes returned to town, only to find that Tufiq the renegade wizard had established him in town in their absence. Everyone in town seems to think he's wonderful (thanks to his magical charisma), and he's already maneuvering to get control of the local militia and get the town involved in a war! It's quite fun to watch the PCs runa round town trying to stave off the threat using their comparatively meager conversation and command successes. It was quite a lot of fun.

[tonyd]

[tonyd]

[Paul T]

Very cool!

Can you describe a little more in detail how you handled the battle?

Were the PCs leaders/generals on one side, issuing orders? Let's say they had a group of infantry attack. What would they roll, and how would the results be interpreted?

How did NPC death work, mechanically?

Thanks for the writeup!

[tonyd]

Rules-wise, the battle was played out as a regular terrain challenge. I always try to make sure that when the PCs take an action in the rules, they narrate an appropriate action in the story. So, for example, a charge or brace would correspond to charging the enemy, or taking cover behind a terrain feature, for example. I drew a map of the battlefield ahead of time to help everyone visualize what was going on. In addition, the Wizard's army had cover behind a ruined wall, giving them 3 additional blue dice. Each time a PC-led unit beat the Wizard's army, they could push them back off the wall, robbing the Wizard's army of one of their bonus blue dice. I used miniatures to show where the PC and Wizard units were set up. That helped to focus narration a lot, because it made the narrative options clearer. When a PC took damage from the challenge, I would also narrate them getting wounded in battle, their forces being driven back, and so on.

As for threatening NPCs, each time the Wizard's army scored a wound (but only once per round of battle), I would narrate one of the attacking units being forced into a dangerous position. If a PC came to the aid of that unit in the next round, then I'd have to threaten somewhere else. If I could threaten the same unit twice, I could kill an NPC in that unit. I didn't really explain this to the players ahead of time, which was a mistake. I got wrapped up in the battle so much that I forgot to do a proper free and clear phase (I do that a lot, unfortunately). Nevertheless, I think it worked out well.

So, for example, at one point the PCs left the Miltar militia (led by Ihl Rem's NPC father Furmiss) to guard the oasis. The PC's had more units than they could lead at once, so some were left in reserve. For my threaten move, I narrated a flank attack on the oasis led by sneaky arcane rat-men. Ihl Rem elected to rush to their aid the next round. This left the Lion Knight of Ikhraine (whom Ihl Rem had been leading) alone on the center of the battle line, making them a prime target for the next threaten. There was one round where I didn't get to threaten, which made me sad, but was luck for the PCs.

In the last round of battle, the Miltar militia were again fighting on their own, now in the thick of battle, so I used my threaten for that round to inflict heavy casualties, one of which was Furmiss.

I think it's very important, especially in a game like StWT, that as GM I can make victories costly and difficult. This absolutely must happen in a way that feels fair. StWT gives the GM the tools to do this. There were numerous points in this game where I was able to pull off maneuvers that I have long wanted to bring to the table. As a GM, that was very satisfying indeed. The rules really helped me do it.

Also, apologies to the players if I spelled their character names incorrectly. As anyone will attest, my spelling is wanting.

[lumpley]

This is great.

So you had a climactic battle and ended the game instead of going up to level 2? That's fun.

-Vincent

[Paul T]

Very cool!

I'm still not getting an image of who rolled what, and when. How many dice? Based on who's ability?

Did the number of hits mean anything?

Can you give an example of a maneuver from the battle, and how it went down, in terms of what happened at the table, who rolled dice, etc?