[Tensided] Knights of the Broken Sceptre

[arthurtuxedo]

Thought you might all enjoy a recap of a campaign I'm running using my Tensided system.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 1. Played October 28, 2007.

You'll have to scroll down about halfway to get past the pregame chatter and character tweaking.

This was basically an intro session and not a lot happened. I was surprised by how quickly people seemed to be finding their characters, even if they were mostly reacting to what Sir Langard was telling them. The basic plot is that Langard believes recent hobgoblin attacks are due to subversive elements in the nobility who would like to go to war with neighboring Ramelob. Velkan's player showed himself to be the standout player in this session, and that hasn't changed in the sessions we've played since then. All in all, I was impressed with this group from the start.

[arthurtuxedo]

Since the first session was so short, I'll post another one tonight.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 2. Played November 4, 2007.

This was the first session to feature combat, and it had been a while since we had done a fantasy setting, so there were a lot of new and updated rules to test out. The characters' personalities started to become more distinct, Velkan as the young idealistic squire, Conrad as the grizzled and self-interested vet, and Hill as one hammer short of a toolbox. Cassie's personality is hard to determine in this session, and I still don't really know who she is as a character, but sometimes it just takes a while to hit one's stride RPing a character. Aside from some confusion about setting background, the players also didn't seem to grasp distance instinctively, not having a good idea how far 300 meters was, for instance.

The conversation with the merchant was done mostly with whispers between Hill and the merchant and can be found pasted at the very bottom of the chat log. There were a few missed opportunities on the players' parts in this conversation, as they took everything at face value and didn't ask questions that should have been asked. As a result, they were duped, and I'll save it until next session's summary to find out how.

The combat was a lot of fun, although it ran ridiculously long, mostly because we had a lot of new players who were unfamiliar with the mechanics and because I myself was a bit rusty, not having run the fantasy setting for some time. It was also caused by a problem that's unique to chat based sessions, which is that some players seemed to be browsing websites or otherwise not paying attention when it wasn't their turn, and then there would be a delay of several minutes each time it was their turn. I've had good experiences with OpenRPG, but this problem combined with the slowness of typing has made me more and more eager to try out a campaign run over voice chat. With most of the adversaries not wearing armor, this fight really showcased the brutality of Tensided's combat, with two decapitations and several other gruesome deaths. The chat log would be a lot better for fights if there were some way to see the battle map as a companion, as it stands there's no real record of movement and positioning. The characters took only minor injuries on this one.

I awarded 50 XP on this one because the session went 5 hours. Everyone has their own methods of rewarding XP, but I find the simplest and most equitable is just to give 10 XP per hour played. This gets rid of thoughts of bickering and unfairness and doesn't reward unnecessary combat or unnecessary skill use. It's a bit bland, and it doesn't allow for rewarding players, but a group like this one doesn't need to be rewarded to play their characters well, anyway. They do it because it's enjoyable.

I'll post the next session log tomorrow night.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Arthur,

This is interesting stuff, and I have some questions for you. However, first, I'll do a tiny bit of moderation, one for you and one for everyone else.

1. Please remove the image from your signature. In general, images are discouraged at this site, although sometimes they're OK if you ask me first.

2. Everyone else, Tensided is a legitimately and fully published game, not in playtesting. Just in case anyone was a bit confused about that.

I'll be back for real discussion in a bit, and I hope others join in too. It is always a great day when someone brings their game to the Forge for everyone.

Best, Ron

[arthurtuxedo]

Hi Arthur,

This is interesting stuff, and I have some questions for you. However, first, I'll do a tiny bit of moderation, one for you and one for everyone else.

1. Please remove the image from your signature. In general, images are discouraged at this site, although sometimes they're OK if you ask me first.

Removed.

2. Everyone else, Tensided is a legitimately and fully published game, not in playtesting. Just in case anyone was a bit confused about that.

Well, I haven't actually finished the sourcebook yet. Should I move the thread to playtesting?

I'll be back for real discussion in a bit, and I hope others join in too. It is always a great day when someone brings their game to the Forge for everyone.

Best, Ron

Thanks! We've run a lot of campaigns, so maybe I'll start giving rundowns on the other ones once I've brought this one up to speed with the current session.

[arthurtuxedo]

Here's session three. The actual session doesn't start until about halfway down.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 3. Played November 11, 2007.

This one picked up directly after the fight with the orcs. The group set about healing injuries, and one player asked whether there was a "Take Ten" option outside of combat like in d20. I decided not to include such a rule on the basis that a person can still make a mistake even if they have plenty of time, and success should not be a forgone conclusion. Then she asked about a teamwork bonus, which I decided is +2 per helper as long as they have at least half the number of skill ranks as the primary, on the basis that incompetents would be in the way as much as help.

In Tensided wounds are determined by Damage States, which are determined by comparing damage to HP. A healer can upgrade someone by one Damage State, but only within 10 minutes of the injury being sustained. After that the injury has set and only time can heal it. Since it takes 1d6 minutes for each injury, the healers needed to prioritize. The group decided to try and resuscitate the "dead" merchant's bodyguard (dead in this case meaning that life signs had ceased, but resuscitation was still possible). Since resuscitation is very difficult, they were not able to bring him back, and this ended up being a waste of time that could have been used to heal others.

After they had collected some items and performed some healing, the merchant showed up with a group of constables and had the party arrested for murder. It turned out that the merchant had tricked the group by telling them the orcs were bandits and then sending them to their shack. The orcs had been mining the river peacefully for quite some time, and received multiple threats from the merchant, who wanted to take their land and their gold. When the orcs saw a bunch of armed humans approaching with the merchant's bodyguards, who were known enemies, they assumed the worst and the battle ensued. This misunderstanding could have been avoided if the party had been more observant and asked more questions when they talked to the merchant instead of taking everything at face value. There were several party members who had enough Empathy to detect the merchant's lies, but you have to suspect a lie before you can make a roll to detect it.

When all was said and done, the group was able to convince the guards of the truth, the merchant was hanged for his crimes, and the players (hopefully) learned a lesson. After the ordeal another PC, a dwarf named Mebzuth, joined the group. By this time, everyone had pretty well settled into their characters. Velkan showed his idealism by sending the gold dust to the families of the slain orcs, Conrad continued to show his callous indifference, and Hill continued to show that he's lost the marbles he never had. We learned a bit more about Cassie's personality this session with her brief interplay with her dog Nova and her statement of sympathy toward the dead orcs.

[arthurtuxedo]

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 4. Played November 18, 2007.
OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 5. Played November 25, 2007.

In these two sessions, the group was almost ambushed by a group of hobgoblin scouts, and the ensuing battle spilled over into the next session. The group rolled Ninjitsu and Spot and then I secretly rolled for the hobgoblins. I still don't have a finalized system of Ninj and Spot, so I winged the exact results, but basically whoever beats the other's Ninjitsu with their Spot by a higher MoS (Margin of Success) will spot the other group first. The hobgoblins won and so they set up an ambush, but the group spotted them before they sprung the trap. However, since the hobgoblin archers had been aiming the whole time the group approached unawares, they received the maximum aim bonus of +6. Mebzuth's player learned why the Unlucky flaw gives so much XP to those who take it. Anyone who takes Unlucky gets 60 XP, but they have no Action Points. AP's can be used once per session to reroll or to force an enemy to reroll. It's useful when someone gets a really lucky roll like the hobgoblin archer did against him. Conrad stepped in and used his AP, which forced the reroll but changed the target to the player who used the AP. The reroll was still a hit, and Conrad took the shot in the leg, which was a lot better than Mebzuth's shot to the jugular that would have killed him instantly. One of the players offered to try and resuscitate Mebzuth, but this would almost certainly have failed since the DF is 30 and Velkan's Healing Attribute is only 14. He would have to roll a 10 and then follow it with a 6 or better to pass.

The hobgoblins the group fought were pretty wimpy by hobgoblin soldier standards. In this setting, hobgoblins are not tribal brutes, but have sophisticated societies that produce warriors that are stronger, more skilled, and have better equipment than humans. They always lose wars to humans because they do not have the humans' ability to rally under a distant leader and therefore cannot form large nations, so they are always vastly outnumbered, but given equal numbers, a hobgoblin army will crush a human army every time. This group of hobgoblins was greatly toned down because the PC's were not good fighters, and hobs with standard stats would have butchered them. Even so, one PC would have died on the first round of combat if it weren't for the use of an AP, and several PC's were severely injured. The most amusing thing that happened during the battle was Conrad being thrown from the saddle of his panicking horse. Conrad's player has been playing Tensided longer than anyone, and like many longtime players, he doesn't read new rules with the same zeal that a newer player might. Since he only skimmed the new mounted combat rules, he didn't realize that his character's horse wasn't trained for combat and would immediately panick and buck him if he tried to ride it into combat.

I had to update the rules partway through the battle to include the possibility of making a galloping pass against one person while knocking over and trampling another. The rules previously did not mention one way or the other whether this would be possible. In the end, the group prevailed and took one prisoner, although one rider was able to ride away to warn the rest of his warband. The players were not nearly as concerned about this as they should have been, which made me think they never considered the possibility that the scouts might have been part of a larger group. They tended to their wounded and Hill subjected the prisoner to a slightly less than relevant 'interrogation'. The prisoner persuaded the group to leave the paralyzed hobgoblin for his companions to find, and Velkan agreed, speaking for everyone. Despite the invasion, the party never really bothered to interrogate the prisoner or see what useful knowledge he could tell them. They never even knew his name until he was taken over by a new player a few sessions later. The group set out for the town of Meadowgrass a few km away to rest and recover from their injuries, and faced new danger.

[arthurtuxedo]

You'll have to scroll down about a quarter of the way to get to the session start.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 6. Played December 02, 2007.

This session was pretty action packed. After gathering up the captured horses, the group set out for the town of Meadowgrass to rest. As they reached the gates, they noticed the hobgoblin warband the scouts were from approaching the town on their heels, but for some reason they didn't bother to let anyone from the town know. Failing to communicate vital information has been a recurring theme I've noticed with various groups of players, and this was no exception. In this case, I even reminded them with the line "The guards don't seem to have noticed the approaching figures," but they continued smilingly along their way without alerting anyone. They meet with the Lord of Meadowgrass, Kraylen, and discuss the fate of the hobgoblin prisoner. I had a bit of fun with the players' failure to ask the prisoner any information about the hobgoblin warband, but they managed to talk Lord Kraylen out of having the prisoner hanged once he had revealed the makeup of the warband, betraying his fellows.

At this point we were able to try out the new Large Scale Combat rules that I had just written a couple of weeks before as the forces of Meadowgrass squared off against the hobgoblin warband. I ran into some resistance as one of the players wanted to auto-resolve the battle, citing that she preferred character building to fighting, and didn't want to take the time on a fight that didn't involve her character.  Although a couple of players seemed to be persuaded at first, they eventually came back around and we had the battle. The first thing I noticed that was the casualty rules were set too low and that it would take too long, so I raised them before we even got started. I set the stats for the hobgoblins low again, this time not by design but because I didn't read what I had previously written before the session, so I set their Physique too low. On the human side there were 20 knights, 20 men-at-arms, 20 squires, 40 militia crossbowmen, and 60 militia spearmen. On the hob side, there were 20 elite cavalry, 40 cavalry, 40 archers, and 100 swordsmen. By all rights, the hobs should have walked away with this one, but because I set their Physique too low, they had a lot of trouble getting through the heavy armor of the knights and men-at-arms and once the knights had swept away the elite cavalry with a couched lance charge it was pretty much a forgone conclusion from that point. All the players said the battle was fun, so it seems that the Large Scale Combat rules were a success.

With the town safe from attack, it would be time for the group to try to talk a bloodthirsty Lord Kraylen out of mass executions, and time for the party to add a new member.

[Callan S.]

Hi Arthur,

Wow, that's alot of adventuring! Do you have any questions about it?

[arthurtuxedo]

Hi Arthur,

Wow, that's alot of adventuring! Do you have any questions about it?

Well, I posted about a couple of tendencies I noticed among players. One is that you'll tell one player or the whole group about some impending disaster, and they'll happily continue on their merry way and not bother to tell anyone. In this last session, they didn't feel it necessary to mention that there was a hobgoblin warband approaching. In a previous campaign, one player saw some hostile figures in the trees and just happily walked with the rest of the group right into the ambush without telling a soul. Have you noticed similar idiosyncrasies in your players?

[arthurtuxedo]

You'll have to scroll down about halfway to get to the session start.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 7. Played December 09, 2007.

This was a fun session where I got to try a preliminary version of some ideas about conversation I've been mulling over in my head and posted about in the "Can Talking People's Heads Off Be As Fun As Slicing Them Off?" thread in First Thoughts. A new player joined and took over the role of the captured hobgoblin, who we named Kogan. The players kept getting Ramelobians mixed up with hobgoblins, but that's partly my fault for having such a convoluted plot, I guess. I made an error of my own when Kraylen commented about not being surprised "they never saw fit to make Sir Geoffery a Lord" when I clearly said in Session 1 that he was both a knight captain and a Lord, so I can't fault them too much. I had a lot of fun playing the bloodthirsty, boorish Lord Kraylen and particularly enjoyed the way he dismissed the group. In the end, the group was able to convince him to spare the prisoners on the grounds that they could be exchanged for Dunsburan soldiers.

Our new player struggled with the concept that his character had betrayed his own people to save his skin before he took over the character, and tried to come up with ways to rationalize it into something noble. He came up with a rather silly idea about his character being a secret "war prince" that would lead the hobgoblins to mighty victory and that the warband threw the battle just to get him close to the humans. This is what he was hinting at to Velkan at the end, but when he told me I suggested he come up with a different idea. I encourage creativity, but that's a bit much. It ended up not mattering next session, as you'll soon see...

[Callan S.]

Well, I posted about a couple of tendencies I noticed among players. One is that you'll tell one player or the whole group about some impending disaster, and they'll happily continue on their merry way and not bother to tell anyone. In this last session, they didn't feel it necessary to mention that there was a hobgoblin warband approaching. In a previous campaign, one player saw some hostile figures in the trees and just happily walked with the rest of the group right into the ambush without telling a soul. Have you noticed similar idiosyncrasies in your players?

Well you have to admit, if the player simply repeats what the GM said, he's kind of being a glove puppet - it's just repeating the GM's words rather than the player making his own impact. So he'll react against saying it and also it's also a kind of GM power - the player can decide the group falls into an ambush, just by not saying anything.

But to actually answer your question, it doesn't happen in my group - but that's because the GM is given you your que to repeat that information. It's just a rule, like splitting the cost of a pizza might be a rule in the group.

[arthurtuxedo]

That's an interesting take on it. I'll have to see how I can structure things differently to avoid that. I'm glad your method works for you, although I can't really see myself mandating that a player read a cue card I've given them.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Arthur,

I'm enjoying the discussion of how specific rules interacted with the events of play. Here's my question for you: what sorts of magic do player-characters employ in the game? Let me be clear: I am not asking for you to describe every imaginable magical rule and roll in the whole rulebook. I'm asking about these player-characters in this game, as played so far.

The reason I'm asking is that I'm always interested in the distinction between (a) magic that is essentially just another sert of weapons and shields vs. (b) magic that re-writes or re-defines major aspects of a situation.

Best, Ron

[arthurtuxedo]

Hi Arthur,

I'm enjoying the discussion of how specific rules interacted with the events of play. Here's my question for you: what sorts of magic do player-characters employ in the game? Let me be clear: I am not asking for you to describe every imaginable magical rule and roll in the whole rulebook. I'm asking about these player-characters in this game, as played so far.

The reason I'm asking is that I'm always interested in the distinction between (a) magic that is essentially just another sert of weapons and shields vs. (b) magic that re-writes or re-defines major aspects of a situation.

Best, Ron

Great question. There are really two answers to that.

1. The magic system for the World of Hightower setting is a custom system partly inspired by Ars Magica's system. The main difference is that it's less cryptic. You can put any number of effects into a spell, so it's a pretty freeform magic system, although it's not quite a "do anything" system. You can't use magic to gain knowledge, since magic is a force that doesn't "know" things, so there's no divination magic of any kind, and you can't use magic to help you find someone or something. Spells also can't do things automatically, so you can't wave your hand to pick a lock. You can use magic to manipulate the tumblers, but you're still picking the lock yourself. We've used the system in two campaigns so far, and it's continually being refined, but it's worked brilliantly so far.

2. In this campaign, I specified that none of the PC's can be magic users. This campaign is about court intrigue, mounted combat, and noble skulduggery, so magic would be rather out of place. I also wanted to see how a fantasy game would go without the usual magical crutches such as instant healing of wounds. But the main reason is that I intended to rewrite a few sections of the magic rules, but didn't get around to it before the campaign start, and I didn't want to delay the start of the game since we had new players and new players tend to slip away if there are delays.

[David B. Goode]

Hey Arthur,

Just wanted to respond to this...

Well, I posted about a couple of tendencies I noticed among players. One is that you'll tell one player or the whole group about some impending disaster, and they'll happily continue on their merry way and not bother to tell anyone. In this last session, they didn't feel it necessary to mention that there was a hobgoblin warband approaching. In a previous campaign, one player saw some hostile figures in the trees and just happily walked with the rest of the group right into the ambush without telling a soul. Have you noticed similar idiosyncrasies in your players?

I haven't had a lot of issues like this. PCs not warning other PCs of ambushes or traps, the few times it's happened, has led to inner-party violence. But trust me, I have plenty of recurring troubles with my group.

I think it might be worth talking to your players about it. Some in-game problems need meta-game solutions. If you notice unhealthy tendencies that can cause in-game problems, get it out in the open. "Okay, Rathnar, are you really not gonna tell the rest of the party about the pressure plate?"
During the session, I don't think it's any kind of rail-roading to suggest that players might wanna consider a course which would seem reasonable from a character's perspective.
Between sessions is a great time for an "Okay guys, I've noticed a tendency in games for _____."