Moon Revolutions: The Celestial Game

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Joshua,

As for the Servants (that's yours, isn't it?), I see it like this: there will always be someone in the Lunar Empire who says, "We are all us? Well, that means this, too!" Even if most people are saying, "Dragons? Yikes!" or "Dragons? You bloody fools!", there will still be a Lunar faction that says, "Hey, dragons are cool...& useful." And any such faction would likewise see people who study draconic lore as...useful.

Yes, I agree. I was talking about the the various factions within the Servants. Suddendly this guy's hero band may demand that he changes his outlook on life as well as political allegiances for no good reason at all, which has a lot of game fun potential. :-)

Cheers,

/Peter

[Mike Holmes]

I like that I set up my character without a band. Because one of the points of play for me right now is to get into one. It'll be fun trying to find one to be involved with, and which side of the issues he comes down on. Right now I've got my character precisely on the fence between all three factions - the temple, the military, and the people practicing the unlike ways. In fact, I asked some pointed questions to determine just whether or not the Darjiini are against unlike ways. What we came up with is that the Darjiini, though under Lunar control, are not really all that Lunar. As such, their "way" is almost an "unlike way" itself. So I don't think my character is automatically predisposed to being against unlike ways. Making it an equal option in the end.

So I have three very interesting ways that the character can go in general, and many more in specific. I'm very much looking forward to playing it out.

Mike

[joshua neff]

We played our third session this Saturday. Rather than posting long recounts of what happened in the past two sessions, I'll just post some highlights:

* Krentius' aide, Centurion Darscion, is accused of possessing scrolls of draconic lore, implicating him in the Unlike Ways conspiracy (since Darscion's sister, Gwin, was the dead student's best friend, & Darscion himself was probably going to marry the dead student). Alaerin finds herself torn. She's extremely loyal to Krentius, but she argues with him in defense of Darscion.

* Thanks to his meddling & scheming, Warryt Dosh gets one of the senior professor/priest, Tarinum, temporarily removed from the High Priestess' council, due to the discovery that Tarinum is (or was) involved with the radical Fellowship of the New Wane. At the same time, Warryt is brought into the council meetings as Andikot's acolyte.

* Gwin stumbles out of the Temple, dying of poison, right in front of Alaerin. Dying in Alaerin's arms, she names Warryt Dosh with her last breath. Darscion, furious & distraught, orders Alaerin to prepare the troops to take the Temple. Alaerin goes to Krentius & tells him, hoping Krentius will order Darscion to stand down. Instead, the Tribune agrees with Darscion's plan, even though the Temple Guardian will bring the Temple down around everyone if they invade. Krentius orders the entire regiment to attack.

* In order to prevent the attack, Mike improvises a traditional Darjiini dance that Bevek performs, "the Dance of Woe," to show Darscion that everyone understands & shares his sorrow. Mike piles up the augments in a massive 2-mastery score & then rolls a 1. It was a massively kickass moment where the heroism of HQ characters came shining through. Bevek convinced Darscion not to attack, getting the Temple heads & many of the soldiers dancing & chanting along. It gave him later bonuses to convince Krentius to not invade & to allow him to investigate the goings-on in the Temple.

* After the session, Julie & I sat around, watching Saturday Night Live & decompressing. Suddenly, Julie asked, "So, what do you think's gonna happen next session?" I said I had no idea, it depended on what the players did. Then I said, "You're really liking this aren't you?" She said, "Yeah, I'm liking this a lot more than the last run."

* Ryan & Julie are both very interested now in coming up with heroquests that can fit into either this run or a sequel, which is cool, especially since both of them are newer to Glorantha & HeroQuest than Mike & I.

So, I'm very, very pleased with how this is going. Really good stuff.

[Mike Holmes]

* In order to prevent the attack, Mike improvises a traditional Darjiini dance that Bevek performs, "the Dance of Woe," to show Darscion that everyone understands & shares his sorrow.

Song of Woe, not dance! I realized that I had Lead in Song, and so went that way. I just used the dancing to augment. :-)

Anyhow, fun, fun, I got to keep up with introducing new traditions each session. This one was really very magical, as I released my Spirit of Tradition to give the song a big aura. Only later did Bevek realize his mistake, as Krentius was still on the warpath, and wanted to ride Darcion's anger into battle. So despite calming Darcion down (and Allarin subsequently getting him to call off his order to attack), Krentius was still going to invade. It was only by the intervention of the High Priestess that the fight was averted.  

* Ryan & Julie are both very interested now in coming up with heroquests that can fit into either this run or a sequel, which is cool, especially since both of them are newer to Glorantha & HeroQuest than Mike & I.

I'm kinda interested too, for a couple of reasons. For one, I'm thinking that at some point Bevek will want to go on a quest to find the truth about what's going on at the temple. That is, I'm thinking at some point that he'll have enough information to start speculating, but rather than do that, he'll take the info on a quest for the truth. This would be very similar to how, for instance, the Aztecs would go into trances to produce judgements on trials. I think that would be nifty.

Mike

[Peter Nordstrand]

Awesome! Why do you suppose the players like this better than your last attempt? What do you do different this time?

Cheers,

/Peter N

[Mike Holmes]

I think the idea is that it's more focused. The last game seemed, to the other players to wander a tad pointlessly.

Note that I liked the last game as much as this one, personally, but then I have a great tolerance for "wandering around." That is, as a long time GM, I tend to make up stuff for my character to do, whereas the other players like this game more in that they have a lot more situation to react to, NPCs to play off of, etc, etc.

Do I have that about right, Josh?

Mike

[joshua neff]

Yeah, that's right, Mike. Both Julie & Ryan have said that they liked the game more because it was more focused. Which is why I like it more, too. I've realized that unlike Mike, I have a very low tolerance for "soap opera gaming." I have always had a short attention span. Even as a kid doing my own superhero comics, I'd drop one after a few issues & start a new one. (While my best friend did 800 5-page issues of "LIzard-Man," one long continuing storyline. I envied him that, but just couldn't do it myself.) Going into the game knowing that the plan is to run 3-6 sessions (with an option for sequels) keeps me focused, which keeps me interested, which keeps me enthused. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to stop this--I want there to be sequels. I love HeroQuest & I love the Lunar Empire. And I love these characters. But I suck at running "wander around" games.

And the reason the High Priestess intervened & made sure Bevek kept his gig as impartial investigator was because of his success at the Song (not Dance) of Woe. Well, that helped, anyway.

[joshua neff]

We had our last session (which was session number six) this past Saturday. Rather than do an extensive write-up of the past few sessions, I'm just going to highlight what I thought went really well. (I'd also write about what went badly, but I can't think of anything.)

* Mike continued to improvise Darjiini customs, which is always hilarious & cool.

* Mike & Ryan entered into an extended contest against each other, as BevekSoo tried to discover the source of the forbidden lore while Warryt Dosh tried to evade discovery. There were some really cool moves in this contest that spanned 3 sessions. In an unrelated action, Warryt summoned the ghost of Vella, the first student who died. He asked her to tell Bevek that it was Tarinum, the scholar Warryt was trying to frame, who had given her the forbidden scrolls. He barely won the contest, so she agreed to do it, but only if he would go to her father the Tribune & tell him she committed suicide so as not to bring shame upon her family. Meanwhile, in another unrelated action, BevekSoo & his village shaman (who had coincidentally shown up in Jillaro) went into the Spirit World so that Bevek could make a fetish of a firefly Truth spirit. He got the spirit & bound it into a fetish, & then left the Spirit World--only to be confronted by the ghost of Vella. Thanks to Vella's misdirection, Mike was down quite a bit, so he made a desperation bid, which manifested as the cliche "detective brings all the suspects together in a room & eliminates each one until the true culprit is revealed" scenes. He released his firefly spirit to get the full bonus & Ryan actually botched the roll--complete & total defeat for Warryt. He was caught & could really do nothing about it. It was a very cool moment in a very cool extended contest.

* Alaerin had an extended contest duel with Septon Murzelm & changed her goal by the end to "get him to spill the beans about what's up with him & Centurion Laxaerius." She blew him away & I got to do a big ol' information dump of a Bang. Murzelm revealed that he was the one who had poisoned Gwin & tried to frame Centurion Darscion, on orders of Laxaerius. Laxaerius, it turns out, hates Krentius & seeks revenge against him, because he believes Krentius destroyed his father's career. Laxaerius escaped with most of his soldiers (of course), & Alaerin came out looking very capable & cool. She was able to convince Krentius to reconsider his surrounding of the temple. And then two more regiments arrived, ordered by Gwin & Darscion's noble father Bendrek, to take the Temple. The regiments were under the command of a Warlord, Kavenna. Alaerin defied the Warlord's authority & argued against attacking the Temple--Julie pulled out every augment she could think of, invoking the mythology of Yanafal Tarnils, employing Sedenyic Logic, & using her magic to make herself look more heroic. She failed, but it was this cool Iliad-esque moment as one soldier argued against a general with all kinds of myth & magic invoked.

* Failing to dissuade the Warlord, Alaerin broke rank & had her squad of soldiers stand in defense of the Temple. Seven soldiers and herself, against some 300 soldiers. It looked as if an epic battle scene was going to happen, & the players were all clamoring for it. But suddenly, Mike had Bevek throw Warryt onto the ground between the Temple & the soldiers, saying, "This is the guy you want. Leave the Temple alone." Bendrek showed up to oversee the invasion of the Temple, & was convinced to order the soldiers to stand down. Ryan decided to have Warryt try to bring the Temple down by provoking a soldier, but to no avail. Warryt then tried to use one of Bevek's sidekicks as a hostage to escape, but Alaerin stopped him. Finally, Ryan said, "Oh, I'm tired of this character & I want to see him get what he deserves." So, he had Warryt try to make a break for it & get pincushioned by many javelins hurled by soldiers. At the end, Alaerin walked up & beheaded Warryt.

It was a slam-bang group of sessions. Ryan told me he has fallen in love with extended contests. Everyone got to do some cool moves. We're now going to be prepping for a sequel (with a new character for Ryan).

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi,

Thanks for posting this! It is very inspiring. I especially like the different ways you use contests to emphasize and create a cool story.

All the best,

/Peter N

[joshua neff]

Oh, extended and simple contests rock. The more I play the game, the more I like them. I think years of playing RPGs stunts the way we think about running contests in HeroQuest, but actually playing it opens your mind up to ways of approaching conflicts. (At least, that's how I feel about myself. It's easy to think in theory, "Oh, extended contests can be used in all sorts of different ways." But when it comes to actually playing the game, I've had to play it a bit to get in the habit of considering whether or not a conflict should be simple or extended. I generally ask the players, too, depending on how they view the conflict. I'm getting better at it, but I still haven't shed a lot of preconceptions of when to roll dice in a game.)

[Mike Holmes]

Josh is being modest, his sense of the dramatic really meant that every roll was for something pivotal.

I think its cool to note how Alaerin's most dramatic moment, IMO, was set up by her failure. That is, in choosing to take the side of the temple and fight against the impossible odds, Julie really made that a cool moment.


There are several ramifications for future play (Josh floated the notion that we continue, and I think we're behind that wholheartedly). Bevek benefitted from the whole affair, long term, in that hopefully now he has the blessings of the noble Bendek, who he's hoping can get him in to see the Satrap (there's this issue back home with some Sylilan noble claining that Bevek's entire hometown is legally his). Alaerin now has a potential goal of chasing down the offending soldiers, and will probably benefit long term by getting noticed in the military (possibly leading to a promotion to Centurion?)

Josh gave us a huge pile of HP to spend (in part to mark the end of the adventure, and in part to represent some time passing coming up), and Bevek's currently at 21. I'm trying to goad Josh into letting us spend some of that as increases to our keywords ratings instead. Sort of a test of some of the theory on the subject that's been floating around lately. I don't think an exchange rate is sensible, but mandating one keyword increase instead of 10 of the rewarded HP or something would make a lot of sense to me.

Mike