Re: [Tensided] Knights of the Broken Sceptre

[arthurtuxedo]

Session start is about a quarter of the way down.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 11. Played January 6, 2008.

This session was fun, even if most of it was not really related to the main quest much. I got a rude surprise when I logged on, namely that my favorite server, OpenRPG Veav I wasn't up, so we used the Blackstar Games server. It went without issue, but Veav's server is the only one I've found to be consistently reliable. The players were smart enough to read the forum so they found the game quickly.

The group started out waiting for Sir Langard to show up so they could start on their long journey to the capital in Kingsvale, accompanied by their liege as far as the faire where they would try to kidnap Lord Kraylen, a high ranking plotter who would be able to implicate Tallbrook. They met the new character (or rather, the new 5 characters) of the player that had previously controlled the ill-fated hobgoblin prisoner. This one had the "Posse" Merit, giving him 4 followers with starting XP equal to his. I think he considered this to be a Merit that would allow him to gain an unfair advantage. He didn't realize that 150 XP makes a big difference, and given the fact that starting gold is not multiplied by the number of characters, it's hard to make 5 characters that are any better than 1 without the merit. He also didn't have the advantage of all the XP the rest of the group had racked up over the course of the campaign. These characters were just as full of vitriol as Kogan was, which can sometimes add and sometimes subtract from a game, depending on circumstances.

Langard showed up and they traveled to the faire, where three of the characters participated in a swordfighting contest. This was with real swords and fought until first blood. Conrad lost the first round, finding it hard to do enough damage to get through his opponent's armor and draw blood, while his opponent found it easy to hit Conrad. Conrad is built for offense rather than defense, so he'll shred an agile opponent, but he's an easy target. Velkan defeated the new character Le Tharget handily, then beat another opponent, before losing to a knight in the final round. His odds of winning the last bout were terrible given the differences in stats, but if he had managed to pull it out, he would have won a very nice sword.

Then the important moment came when Sir Langard jousted Lord Kraylen. The plan was that Langard would beat Kraylen into a pulp, which would make it easy for the group to abduct Kraylen afterward. The reality turned out rather different, and it was Langard who ended up fit for intensive medical care thanks to a blunted lance to the forehead at galloping speed. Now the group has to come up with a Plan B, since they could never hope to defeat Kraylen and his bodyguards while Kraylen has only a minor leg injury. Kraylen is a better fighter than the whole group put together, after all. So far, they've come up with poisoning him and hiring prostitutes for him and his men and catching them with their pants down (literally).

[arthurtuxedo]

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 12. Played January 13, 2008.

This was an enjoyable session, although it left the kidnapping of Kraylen for later. I was a half hour late for this one, since I got so caught up in my plans for afterward that I simply forgot about the game and slept in. This is the first time I've ever done that, or at least the first time in many years. Nobody seemed too put off, though, and we got started soon after I arrived.

The events of the session are a fairly brief retelling. Kraylen went on to win the jousting tournament and a magnificent destrier (the best and most expensive of knightly charger horses), and retired to his wagons to celebrate with his knights and subjects. With Sir Langard indisposed and Kraylen fully aware of the group's allegiances, if not the full extent of their plans, Kraylen sent some of his men to ambush the group. The ambushers struck when Velkan separated from the rest of the group to check on his sire. While the mercenary soldiers were skilled at keeping Velkan separated from the others, the difference in skill in equipment was large, and the group made short work of the mercenaries. I kept thinking about whether I should spice up the battle, but I couldn't come up with anything that would fit. It made sense for Kraylen to send some mercenary thugs to do the job, since even if they failed it wouldn't be obvious who had hired them and the players would at least be detained and questioned for bloodshed at the faire. It wouldn't have made much sense for Kraylen to send someone important, like knights, retainers, or squires, even though that would have made the battle more interesting. I had thought that having the players outnumbered and with Velkan cut off would make it at least somewhat difficult, but I hadn't really been keeping up with character sheet updates and didn't understand at first how much better at fighting the characters were than when the campaign started.

In the end, the group captured one of the men and is now trying to take him out of sight before witnesses can get close enough to positively identify them and before the guards show up to detain the survivors, which would ruin the group's plan. They hatched a tentative plan to use the prisoner to sneak into Kraylen's caravan party and kidnap him. Since Kraylen is a Lord accompanied to the faire by 3 knights, their retainers and squires, and his own retainers and soldiers and there are only 4 players, it could get really ugly next session if they're not stealthy enough. Whatever happens, it should be plenty interesting.

[arthurtuxedo]

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 13. Played January 20, 2008.

In this session, the group finally attempted their kidnapping of Lord Kraylen to make him squawk to the king about the coup plot and hopefully implicate Archduke Linus Tallbrook, the man who Sir Langard suspects is behind it all. Their plan was pretty harebrained, basically consisting of "sneak in, nab Kraylen, and fight our way out." They did dress it up with some good ideas about sowing confusion by shouting that their prisoner was the traitor, but it's still a pretty dangerous plan. Right now Cassie is alone with Kraylen, and although she's armed and he's not, he's a much better fighter. She had him at her mercy until she drew a knife and decided to start cutting him up for fun, at which point he decided to take his chances and fight. The outcome will be seen next session, and we'll find out whether they get themselves killed / capturing trying to get Kraylen out of his camp.

When I decided that the bodyguard had his helmet off, it made me think that there should be long-term fatigue rules regarding the wearing of armor for extended periods. If you've been marching all day fully armored in a hot environment, you're not exactly going to be in your best fighting condition, after all.