A Tale of Three Trollbabes [session 4]

[rafial]

Session 4 of our Trollbabe campaign was our smoothest yet (the players are of course free to disagree).  The only shortcoming from my perspective is that I went into this session a bit light on prep due to various RL interferences, and as a result, I ran out of steam at the 3 hour mark (we normally schedule for 4 hours).

Two of the 'babes had cliffhangers coming in from the previous session.  Kweli, who had been hucked into the hold of a pirate ship carrying a group of kidnapped trolls managed to teleport out of the hold into the Captain's quarters, where it was revealed that she and the Captain were old enemies.  Meanwhile Thanna was facing the Patchwork Creature, a Frankenstein's monster like creation of an evil sorcerer assembled from human, troll, gorilla, and sewer goblin bits among others.  Yalla picked up a new story thread by journeying to Port Scar to research the Ebon Hand, a maleficent entity whose workings had made themselves felt at the end of her previous adventure.

Thanna had an enjoyable knock down, drag out fight with the creature, and ultimately destroyed the lab in a big ball of alchemical flame.  She then pursued some pirates who had captured her street kid relation, and saw them carry him aboard one of three black galleys moored in the harbor.  Being the direct sort, she boarded the galley and demanded his return, and we had one of those great "only in Trollbabe" moments when the player decided it would be more fun if the character got into trouble:

"I want a magic action conflict to detect someone trying to cast a sleep spell on me."

"Okay.  What happens if you fail?"

"The spell succeeds and I fall asleep!"

I should point out that Thanna has an extremely low magic score...

Two, two, two Trollbabes captured by pirates! Mu-hahaha!  Entirely at their players' connivance of course.

Kweli's scene started out with the GM and player hurling vague innuendo at each other in the characters of the Captain and the Trollbabe (weren't they a famous musical duo?), until we realized that each of us was expecting the other to provide the backstory.  Finally the player broke down and outlined that Cpt. Ambree was the Trollbabe's previously-assumed-dead lover, and that there was lots of heartbreak and betrayal between them.  It turned out that the mandolin that Kweli carries once belonged to Cpt. Ambree (I knew they were a famous musical duo!)

Meanwhile, Yalla was conducting research at the Monastery of St. Aethelhild in Port Scar, where she foiled an attempt by one of the novices to burn up the very papers she was looking for, which novice of course turned out to be a plant of the Ebon Hand.  In the process of this we had some nice street chases, and magical divinations.  Oh, and her ward, Petrus the Werefox, who is forever getting into trouble managed to get himself captured by agents of House Blackborne, who may or may not be a pawn of the Ebon Hand.

Which brings us to the highlight of the session: the first joint action between the Trollbabes.

My prepped stakes for Kweli once her cliffhanger was dealt with involved an attack by a magically controlled Kraken on her ship.  Since Thanna had wrapped up her adventure by also getting captured by pirates, I decided to frame her into the attack by having her galley show up, carrying both herself AND her sorcerous nemesis.  Why is the sorcerer there?  To control the magical Kraken of course.

And just at this moment, Yalla's player asks to have a scene where Yalla has a dream that reveals more about what the Ebon Hand is up to.  "Okay," say I, "you have a dream about a Kraken attacking a ship at sea!"

The only problem I had framing this was that Kweli had engaged in some ill advised scrying that ultimately set off the Kraken attack, and that had pretty positively set her scene at night, while Thanna's galley arriving on the scene had been narrated as taking place during the day.  Minor detail  "To Kweli, it is night, to Thanna it is day, and to Yalla, who is present by magic anyway, it looks like both."  At this point, Thanna's player gleefully supplied backstory and justification by producing a letter Thanna had swiped from the sorcerer's lab just before blowing it up, that talked about a confluence of the spheres, and the rising of the great creature from the depths.  "All is in readiness my Master, yadda, etc."

The results are *so* much cooler than trying to make this stuff up myself :)

The scene was run as a set of interlinked Action by Action conflicts for each Trollbabe, with the players setting their goals and action types independently.  Yalla had a sorcerous battle with Ivveleth the sorcerer, Kweli engaged in various forms of fu to protect her ship from the Kraken, and Thanna engaged in an ultimately failed attempt to bring down Ivveleth from behind.  And we had the first relationship death, as Thanna's sidekick Jiri was sucked into the magical vortex over which Yalla and Ivveleth were battling.  Mechanically that was quite interesting, as I used a successful roll on Yalla's part to create narrative justification for a failed roll on Thanna's part.  I think this disconcerted Yalla's player initially, but ultimately it set up a nice connection between the two Trollbabes which I think we'll explore next session.

Note that I was able to describe the outcome of Thanna's failed roll because it was the result of a failed reroll on a dual action type series (fighting/magic), which took resolution straight to the final box of the diagram.

The next session will be our last as our Trollbabes at sea journey to Port Scar, where Yalla is preparing for a showdown with the Ebon Hand and whatever that might entail.

[John Harper]

This was indeed a very good session. The best yet, I think. The beginning of the session was a "do-over" for my character since Wilhelm and I agreed that the final scene of session 3 didn't go very well. I was a little leery of this retconn business, but it went off without a hitch and was lots of fun.

The relationship (Jiri) that I had been dangling in front of the pirates was finally kidnapped, leading Thana to a pirate ship and from there to the action of the other Trollbabes (which was the whole point of the pirate/kidnapping business). I was also interested in how Thana might react if someone she was responsible for got killed, so I once again threw Jiri into a very tight spot during the ship/kraken/sorcerer battle. His death there will let me grow Thana as a character -- from someone who cares only for the present moment to someone who finally understands that her actions have consequences.

I'm a big Firefly fan and the death of Jiri reminded me of the episode where Jane is a folk-hero and one of the locals gives his life to save Jane's. Jane just can't understand why someone would do a thing like that. Neither can Thana, but she just might figure it out.

As an extra bonus, my realtionship died indirectly as a result of another Trollbabe's actions, so now I have a connection to her. I've pointed my big, neon story arrow in her direction. Depending on how that encounter goes, we may get to see some trollbabe vs. trollbabe action.