[In a Wicked Age] Of Ice, Slime and Unnatural Love

[Troels]

I just ran a session of IaWA at Viking-con, a danish gaming convention. And it was cool and weird and funny.

First, thanks to Vincent Baker for letting me have a peek at the new stuff. The article version of IaWA was the first forge game I ever played, some two years ago, so IaWA has a special place in my heart. And let me say, with the new version coming up, Vincent has made a great game even better. Both the forms and the conflict shortening rule are great.

Also, being a tinkerer with a rough game draft in my hands, I and my friends have tinkered a bit with the game in the past two years. Most importantly, "What you use is what you risk". We have a rule replacing the standard Injury/Exhaustion baseline for consequences of defeat with damage to whatever dice you were using in the conflict. As always, it's subject to negotiation. The fun part is that this will often force players to change conflict strategies in mid-game, which is all sorts of fun.

I ended up taking in a couple of homeless players, so the group was six players, plus me, which is rather quite a lot for IaWA, but we managed. After some argument, we settled on drawing from "The Unquiet Past", and got three locations and an event. With six players to characterize, we drew again.

BTW, I'm a fairly experienced IaWA GM, and one other player (Stig) had played before, with me, a year ago.

Anyway, enough talk, here goes:

Of Ice, Slime and Unnatural Love

...The passage of a ghostly army, dragging their slain and injured...
...The Captain of a foreign troop, sent to collect tribute...
...A serpent-demoness, malicious and venomous, seeking vengeance... (and boy did she get it!)
...A place where warring demons have left the earth churned, upthrust, and charged with occult forces...

So, explicit characters:

A ghostly army (actually dead or just night raiders?), ghostly soldiers
The foreign captain and the troop
The aforementioned serpent-demoness
Warring demons

Implicit:

A general of the ghostly army
Tribute-payers

Also, on naming conventions, we settled on "indian" names, names with literal meaning. I described the setting to the players as REH-Conan-esque fantasy, ie. without the austrian accent, lurid and vivid fantasy without a Grand Struggle of Good and Evil, just clashes of strong wills and strong desires.

Brainstorming a bit, here is what we came up with:

A serpent-demoness bent on domination through seduction lived in a swamp, and Ulf ( a grey-haired gentleman) wanted her for a character. Jesper and Kim (a guy) wanted to be warring demons, so they made up an ice demon and a slime demon respectively.  An army had gone against them, but had been ignominiously massacred on the demons favourite battleground (the battleground and the ghostly army rght there). Now they haunted the area, and Lars picked their general. Anja (a she) picked the captain. She (the captain was a woman too) was sent by a foreign wizard-king to collect tribute from the three demons that lived in the forest (oh, thats right, its a forest). She was the widow of the dead general, too. We thought that all those demons needed some civilian victims, even though the tribute-payers turned out to be demons. Stig picked a priest of the forest god, a champion of the villagers. Then we assigned dice to the forms, strengths and interests. I had all players pick a Strength (aka masteries, they are much improved too!).

So:

-The captain Silversword. Her strenght was the power of her love for her husband. Her interests were, collecting tribute from the demons, and bringing her husband back home to be immortalised by the wizard-king so they could be together always (think lichy warlord, not living again).
-The dead general Blood-Wolf. His strength was strength from beyond the grave, in a sneaky way. His interests were to be defeated honourably so he could rest, and having his beloved wife die on his grave so they could be together in death (and that's unnatural love #1 there).
-The Ice demon Brutal, living in a frozen and dead part of the woods. A great glittering minotaur, whose strength was Ice magic, and whose interests were covering the land in ice and snow, and killing the local forest god Thousand Oaks (NPC, but with a PC defender).
-The Slime demon Macabre, living in a filthy cave in the earth, in a sick and rotten part of the woods. Think  the Swamp Thing, only bigger and with serious attitude. Strenth: Fear, and his interests were stopping Brutal, and having people sacrifice people to him (preferably delectable virgins).
-The serpent-demoness Pretty, living in an overgrown mansion in a swamp. A no-holds-barred femme fatale. Her strength was magical powers of seduction, which allowed her to be attractive to anyone and to actually sleep with anyone and anything. Her interests were, using seduction to manipulate people to screw themselves (figuratively), and in particular, she wanted the priest to worship her rather than Thousand Oaks (and that's unnatural love #2).

The NPCs (played down due to the great number of PCs) were the local population as a collective entity, and Thousand Oaks the forest god. The god wanted to protect the forest and be worshipped, and the locals wanted to not get eaten, beaten or frozen.

After about an hour of preparation, we were set to go, and with 17 scenes in all, that's for another post. I'll be back.

[lumpley]

Most importantly, "What you use is what you risk". We have a rule replacing the standard Injury/Exhaustion baseline for consequences of defeat with damage to whatever dice you were using in the conflict. As always, it's subject to negotiation.

For the public record, I'm totally cool with this and barely even consider it a rules mod. Since you can get the same effect informally without deviating from the written rules, formalizing it doesn't bug me a bit.

I'm looking forward to hearing more!

-Vincent

[Troels]

Continuing:

Oops, I quite forgot an important character, Willow the priest and champion of Thousand Oaks and the villagers. The name is a pun in danish, as the same word, "pil", means both "willow" and "arrow". His strength was, "The woods are with me", and he was an all round nice guy with a big, fat d12 in "for others". His interests were getting rid of the demons and the ghosts.

Before each scene, we had a brief negotiation deciding who would be involved, and what they would be doing. With so many players, I was pretty strict about insisting that at least one of the players who had spent longest on the bench got a turn. A player would request a scene in which they could pursue a PC interest, usually to the detriment of some other PC. Then I would frame the scene, to form a level playing ground (actual scene framing in player hands would decide most contests in and of itself), the players would declare strategies, which would decide what dice they would wield in the scene, the dice would hit the table for initiative, and the narration would begin in earnest. This might sound a little cumbersome and combat-oriented, but it isn't. The dice don't decide "who hits and for how much damage", but who has narrative auhority. In most conflicts, the initiative, and hence the power to change the story, will change back and forth, and the battle is waged through the narration of the struggle. An important thing that takes a little getting used to is that every challenge consists of two parts, a description of the actions taken by the protagonist, which stays in the game and forms the foundation for the following narration, and the consequences, which can be negated if the challenge is succesfully met. This is the meat of the game, and it's quite the spectator sport. Afterward, you negotiate consequences.

Another note: The We Owe list was quite important in this game, even though the game was a one-shot, because crossing yourself off of it gives an advantage die, and they are really, really good to have. It is an important balancing feature as it tends to bring the underdogs back in the game.

Now, the story:

Scene 1: Brutal the ice demon attempts to spread ice and cold through the forest by freezing the streams. This is battled by the villagers led by Willow the priest, with dams and fire (mechanically, this is just Willow). The dams stop the ice, the firebrands break it, and the smoke and thaw turn back on Brutal, who is defeated and swept away down a stream when the ice cracks under him. Dicewise, Willow beats Brutal, but accepts a deal stating that Brutal will take no actual damage, but will have all die-sizes reduced for future attempts at direct aggression towards the forest and the villagers. Willow will rue this later! This conflict was large-scale and slightly abstract.

Scene 2: Captain Silversword arrives in the forest, camps with her soldiers near the battlefield, and goes to Macabre's dank and filthy cave to demand submission and tribute. Unwisely, she seeks to negotiate with the fearsome demon, but his dismal aspect and dismaller stench weakens her so much that she buys his filthy lie that the other two demons have agreed to pay his tribute for him, in order to get away. Defeated in the conflict, Silversword accepts reduced damage (one die-size instead of two) in return for buying Macabre's story.

Scene 3: The dead but restless general Bloodwolf comes to visit his wife in the night. His passage leaving frrost on the grass, he enters Silverword's tent, puts his hand on her head to enter her dreams, and sees her dream of Macabre mocking her as she flees. Enraged, he storms straight to Macabre's cave and challenges him to come out and fight him in the moonlight. The proud demon answers the challenge and comes out swinging. No wimpy negotiation this time, just lots of pain and humiliation as Bloodwolf beats the stuffing out of Macabre, who ends up crawling back into his slimy hole in the ground.

Scene 4: Brutal, dazed from his defeat at the hands of Willow and the villagers, is swept by the stream into the swamp where Pretty lives. She attempts to seduce him in order to make this great engine of destruction her champion (and on general principle), but he rebuffs her advances with an icy breath that leaves her whimpering and frostbitten. Feeling much better, he sets off for home. Again, no post-conflict negotiation of consequences, just punishment. Oh, and remember that oracle entry: "...seeking vengeance..."

Scene 5: In the dusk, captain Silversword seeks out the grave of her husband Bloodwolf, and with declarations of tender love, she convinces him to accompany and protect her. He wanted her to commit suicide to join him in the cold ground, but was moved by her pleas. Anyway, her actually killing herself was an outcome that Lars couldn't have forced on Anja's character at this point in the game. At the most he could have weakened her, making this eventual outcome more likely. As it was, he accepted strictures on future behaviour in lieu of damage.

Scene 6: Pretty dresses up as a pretty young damsel in distress, and goes to Willow's home to seduce him. In grand femme fatale style visiting the office of the Private Priest (err, Eye), she gets him to tend her wounds, gets into his bed, and makes him promise right there on the pillow to go after Brutal. He accepts reduced damage in return for making a promise he would likely have kept anyway, she gets to be the demon that he doesn't go after. And, they are now lovers, a rather momentous turn of events.

Scene 7: Kim (Macabre's player) complains that there aren't enough screaming virgins in this story, and to give him virgins and demonstrate NPCs in action, we set a scene where he attacks an outlying farm. Ripping the thatched roof right off the house, he demands that they gut their pretty young daughter right there on the table in his honour. They (the locals as a collective character) resist his demands with their (fairly pathetic) self defence dice, but eventually the farmer's pichfork slips from his fear-numbed hand and they accept. Because they attempted to defy him, he gives them the choice of either giving him the wife, too, or promising him one human sacrifice a week(!). They accept, and the villagers accept narrative consequences in lieu of actual damage. Don't set the cradle near the window, folks!

Scene 8: Together, Silversword and Bloodwolf go confront Brutal. Arriving in the icy mist of early dawn, they enter the eerily beautiful palace of ice crystals where he lives, figuring that they will be in a better position to demand tribute after they've humbled him. Bad idea! They are met, not with a horned ice-demon, but with a polar wind that encases them in ice. Then the demon comes for them, swinging a grat icicle as a club. He beats them until the ice falls off, taking ruby shards of frozen flesh with it, and they flee. At the suggestion of a negtiation of consequences, Brutal's player Jesper laughed a great guffaw and said something about damage being a good and beautiful thing. Also, note that this is the first conflict with more than two players involved. Theoretically, the odds were on Silversword and Bloodwolf's side, but Brutal had decent dice, got lucky in the first round, and seized the advantage. On top of it, he got onto the We Owe list (again).

Scene 9: In the daytime, Silversword is riding home, her dead husband in hiding from the sun. She is waylaid by Pretty, again disguised, who pretends to be stumbled upon by Silversword's horse. Pretty charms her way onto the back of the horse, and in the camp, she tends the captain's wounds, and seduces the poor lady who has gone so long without her husband's warmth. Demonic gay love, I guess that's #3 there. By the way, I'm referring to the demonic mind control part, in case the morality squad read this. Ulf, Pretty's player, tried to seduce Anja with a pact in lieu of damage to Silversword, but she was having none of it, accepting damage instead in the form of weakened resolve and a moral hangover.

Scene 10: Having learned of the horrible goings-on at the farm, Willow gathers an angry mob and goes after Macabre in his cave. Technically, the PC Willow was assisted by the NPC the locals, who sucked at self defence but did quite well in numbers, with torches and pitchforks. Throwing torches, rocks and taunts into his cave, they make him come out. He attempts to scare them off but is beaten, humiliated and forced to run, as his cave collapses behind him, and the mocking laugh of Willow and the villagers pursue him into the woods. Instead of damage, he accepts having his Strength weakened, and the inability to use the form Directly against Willow or the locals in the future.

Scene 11: Again, Bloodwolf comes to his widow's bed in the night, again he enters her dreams, and again he is enraged. She cheated on him! With a woman!! With a demoness!!! Recognizing the handiwork of Pretty, he draws his sword in fury, slashes the tent and storms out to punish the she-serpent. This time there are no honourable challenges, as Pretty cannot offer him the glorious end he craves, so he sneaks up on her in her bed, as a shadow in the shadows, materializes and beats her brutally. Ulf wanted pretty to try and seduce him, being magically omni-compatible, but Bloodwolf's sorry death had unmanned him, so, no smoochies.

Scene 12: The first downright non-combat scene. We moved straight to negotiation, as Macabre fled to Brutal's icy fastness. He argued that it was only a matter of time before the servants of the wizard king, the servants of Thousand Oaks and the serpent-demoness ganged up on them piecemeal, so they should set aside their rivalry, and strike first, together. Brutal agreed, being in rather better shape dice-wise but worried about the strategic situation.

Scene 13: Brutal and Macabre start with Pretty. Ulf, facing devastation, says that her lover Willow is with her. He agrees, as do I, as it makes sense and wouldn't be much of a fight otherwise. Willow is busy tending poor Pretty's wounds, when the terrible demons emerge from the swamp to attack Pretty's overgrown mansion. Holding them back with words of dire magic as the terrible demons emerge from the swamp to attack, Willow seizes the advantage in the first round. But Brutal, refusing to back down, is kindly aided by his human backer Jesper, who decides to even the odds by crossing himself off of the We Owe list for an advantage die. So, d12+d6 advantage facing d12+d6 advantage, a battle of epic proportions and very high numbers ensues. In round 2, Willow expands his advantage by facing down the demons, both once defeated by him, and mocking them with a solid 13. Brutal seizes the initiative and the narrative with a whopping 14, and stinky, icy darkness surrounds Willow and the demoness cowering behind him. Rising to this challenge, Stig rolls a total of 15 for Willow, and the darkness dissipates as the priest causes vines and creepers to emerge from the trees and the ground to grasp the demons. On the ropes now, Jesper rolls a grand 17 for the demons' side and the plants fall withered to the ground and spiky flowers of razor sharp ice spring from the ground to cut the lovers. Willow tries but fails to meet the challenge, and the lovers flee, injured and frostbitten, as the cold causes the damp stone walls of the mansion to crack and collapse...

It was getting rather late, and we decided that it was now OK for battles to have fatal consequences, even for characters not out of dice in any way.

Scene 14: Still seething with rage, Bloodwolf feels freed from his promise to accompany and assist Silversword by her shocking infidelity. He comes for her the next night, seizes her by the hair and drags her out to his own cairn to kill her. Anja could have decided to resist by struggling, but instead chose to have Silversword fight back with love. Standing over her with his sword drawn, Bloodwolf curses the fickleness of living women and says that he will take her to join him beyond the grave. She pleads for her life and claims that she was raped by magic, and entreated him to come home with him to the wizard-king. Seeing the light of the full moon illuminating the glorious, tear-streaked beauty of her face, Bloodwolf falters, but, still furious, he stands between her and the moon so that her face is in shadow. However, a star twinkles so brightly that it is reflected in a single tear on her cheek, and his resolve breaks. This was an eerily touching moment, truth be told. Anja tried to entice Lars with even further strictures on future actions, but since that would effectively cut him off from both his interests, dying properly in battle and getting his wife killed, he only promised to give up on killing her.

Scene 15: This was the main part of the epic battle. Silversword, Willow and their various nefarious allies finally allied to put an end to Brutal and Macabre once and for all. Leading a ghostly army, an angry mob and Silversword's soldiers, Willow, the captain, Bloodwolf and Pretty led a dawn strike on Brutal's icy home where the demons were holed up. The locals took part as a character, so this was a 7-way battle(!) The demons would have gone onto the We Owe list for surviving round one, and the fight would have been wide open, but Jesper and Kim rolled badly and got creamed in round one. Unsatisfied with such a short narration after having drummed up two hundred extras, I had the players tell the battle this way: Starting with the worst roller, the four winners told a cool thing that their character did in the battle. Pretty sneaked up on Brutal and Macabre and stabbed them with daggers poisoned with her own venom. Bloodwolf sought death at the hands of Brutal, challenging him (this turned into scene 16), but Silversword swept in on horseback, mortally wounding Brutal with a sword made red hot in the fire and kept in a pot of sand. Finally, after the troops had cornered the demons withs spears, pitchforks and torches, Willow whipped out a scroll bearing the words and power of Thousand Oaks the forest god, and stripped the demons of all the power that they had garnered over the centuries through their cruel acts, causing the dead and frozen forest to spring to life around the battle as the life was given back to it. Then the demon's players got to narrate the ends of Brutal and Macabre, as they were sucked back into the wound in the earth that was their origin and source of power. Brutal pronounced a curse on the villagers, that their villages would never be blessed with the beuty of ice and snow (he didn't actually say, but implied, "No white christmas, for evermore!").

Scene 16: Cutting back in time a little, we resolved whether Bloodwolf met his end in glorious battle. Note that in this conflict, Lars was actually trying to get to narrate Bloodwolf's defeat, whereas Anja, via Silversword, was trying to prevent it. She anticipated his attempt and had her men distract him while she swept in to fell Brutal (as aforementioned in scene 15). No way but the way home to the wizard-king for Bloodwolf and his loving widow.

Scene 17: Finally, some time after the battle, Willow sought out Pretty in the ruins of her home to tell her that by the will of Thousand Oaks, their alliance was too unnatural to continue. She sought to seduce him again, to weaken his resolve and make him his, but he resisted with the words "But, we can still be friends..." Fancy saying that to a notoriously vengeful demoness. That was the final scene deciding the fate of the forest, and I suspect poor Willow should be grateful that we packed up before scene 18!

In conclusion, it was, well, brutal and macabre and pretty. It was exciting, and funny, and sad, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer at her best. A lot of it had us shaking with laughter. But not all of it. The story of Silversword and Bloodwolf, in particular, was quite touching. Scene 14 was, IMO, the high point of the evening, and one of the few scenes that wasn't the slightest bit funny (along with scene 7). The importance of the GM creating level fields can hardly be overstated, as a narratively aggressive player can set up scenes playing to their strengths and the other player's weaknesses, if unchecked. All in all, the changes are good all around. The less abstract stats and the conflict abbreviation are really good. It is possible but demanding to play with six players. It takes a steady and experienced GM hand.

So, Vincent, get the damn thing published, please! It deserves it.

Yours, Troels

[Christoph Boeckle]

Wow. Need.

Very interesting points about the scene framing.

[John Harper]

What a wonderful AP!

We've also been playing a lot of Wicked. As GM, I've gotten some good results by specifically framing (some, not all) scenes to create an uneven playing field between two characters, in terms of their favored Forms. I find that it instantly creates good friction because one character is tilted towards being Owed and the other is tilted toward kicking butt. If the players have different desires, they have to get creative with the Forms, which is fun.

So I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on framing scenes to keep a balance between characters. It sounds like that works, too, and I'm keen to try it as a more intentional thing.

[Troels]

Thanks!

About the levelled field, I don't mean that I strongly frame every scene to create a strict mathematical equality of dice-sizes. It's just that if agressive players get proactive with the scene-framing, it can be utterly powerful. For instance, if Kim and Jesper had had the power to frame scene 13, in which Brutal and Pretty formed a hit team and went for Pretty, there wouldn't have been any kind of fight. Pretty had taken two beatings at that point, and wasn't worth much in a straight fight. If the aggressors had framed the scene, they could have started it with them kicking down the door and attacking her, leaving no chance to sneak or talk her way out of it, which was what the character Pretty could, at that point.

Now IMO, IaWA is way more fun if played hard. However if the contest is in setting sure-win scenes before your opponents get the chance, it isn't that fun. Instead, I try to run it so that people are rewarded for setting interesting scenes that play to their strengths and further their interests narratively, but the field is level so that they don't have to worry about holding back. That way the odds will often slightly favour the aggressor, but not so that it can be counted on. Then I make sure that it's not the same player or players who keep setting the scenes, which can easily happen if the game is left to it's own devices.

In a lot of cases, if the sides are not reasonably well matched, in my experience the underdogs will often get beaten in round one. So slight unequality is fine with me, but within limits. I can see your point, though. It must be a decent pacing tool too, doing it that way.

[John Harper]

Ah yes, I see what you mean now. That's pretty much how we do it, too. In fact, I'm pretty strict about the GM getting more-or-less exclusive scene framing powers, since that's one of the few things the GM gets to do. :-)

[Valvorik]

Were you using scenes = chapters?  (Assuming enough of public rules still apply that the question about applying chapter rules makes sense)

[Anders]

As I know the old rules and understand Troels here, chapters are the term used for sessions of play - i.e this was one chapter and 17 something scenes.

Anyway, I'm happy to see such a thorough account of play with the new rules. Interesting thoughts on scenes and owe-list use in one shots too!

In the other recent IAWA actual play Vincent notes something really interesting around chapter 3 or so; he mentions the struggle between civilization and the untamed forces.

Did you, during this one shot, feel that you had any similar themes, and any thoughts on them, emerge?

Thank you for sharing this, Troels. When this game's released I will play it like it's the end of the world.

[Troels]

Anders is mostly right about chapters and scenes. Technically a chapter is a consultation of the oracles, with picking characters etc. I've had two in one sitting, once.

On theme, well, you could read tamed vs. untamed into it, but that wasn't the issue that emerged as central in play. It might have been, with captain Silversword and Willow the priest on one side and Brutal and Macabre on the other, but that's the thing with Story Now, you don't quite know where the story is going to go. What came out of this sitting was more like Love vs. Death, most poignantly represented by Silversword and Bloodwolf and their confrontation on his grave. There was also the story of how the kind and loving Willow was seduced and manipulated by the demoness Pretty, who subverted love to the cause of death, and how at the end he broke free of her clutches, not with violence but for his greater love of his people and the forest. So what emerged in play was, Love conquered the **** out of Death. But it could have gone the other way.

I think, if there is one central theme that tends to come out in virtually all IaWA play, because the system itself supports and promotes it, it is "In love and war, all's fair".

[Anders]

That's a better answer than my clumsy question deserved. Still, exactly what I was looking for.

A question on the owe list and the central role it played in your one shot: did you take any extra care in making this so, or did it just sort of happen. Silly question maybe, but I'm curious, did you keep it in the middle for players to cross out and add their names or did the GM do this?

I like your mix of light and dark in this AP.

In my favourite fantasy this is often a central element and a feature, and also something that has been very prominent when I've played In a Wicked Age.

[Troels]

I kept the We Owe list myself, as GM, but I was careful in informing (again and again) people of the option of seizing an advantage from it, because it's an important balancing factor, in my experience.

I've seen a lot of IaWA play strike this balance between the funny and the gruesome, and I like it, but perhaps my best game ever was a tale of blood vengeance, ambition and mercy, and it was plain bloody awful. When that witch-blessed avenger was tearing the burning castle apart looking for his sister's three little girls to kill them, because they were also the daughters of the enemy lord that had taken his sister by force, while his sister's ghost begged him to spare them, it was in no way, shape or form funny, but it was great.