I got the chance to play Trollbabe with my girlfriend tonight. In fact, I bought the game especially to play with her, since the game seemed ideal for one on one play and her first experiences with roleplaying were not that positive (severe de-protagonisation), and I wanted to reconcile her with my hobby ;)
Except for reading the rules I made little preparations. There was going to be a village, with the mayor and his brother estranged, the brother's son was going to be the friendly proto-relationship guy. There also was going to be a troll gone wild, killing sheep, and the chief and the shaman of the troll tribe in dispute over the best way to deal with the rogue troll. An unfaithful wife to either of the two brothers and family relationships between the rogue troll and either shaman or chief were optional (In case you didn't notice: this was my attempt at an R-map based solely on the bits I gathered on the Forge (yes, I know ... I'm about to order the sorcerer supplement, just be patient until then ;)). I decided to get the character involved by having children throw rocks at her, when she approached the village (is that a "bang"?).

My girlfriend played Ronja, a dark haired Trollbabe with small, pointed horns. Ronja's number was 3, making her a good magician. Her specialities were dirty tricks, troll magic and friendly/open/good listener. Ronja carried an amulet with a blue gem and an owl feather, wore white robes and had a small silver ring attached to one of her horns.

The adventure opened with ... Ronja looking for her lost sister (another Trollbabe), last seen in the company of some dubious humans. I was ... surprised, to say the least, since that was my girlfriends idea. I decided to shelve that plotline for the time being and introduce some leads for a follow-up adventure. Anyway, Ronja approached a small and nameless village, when the pleasant afternoon in spring unexpectedly took a nasty turn and stones started flying her way. A successful social roll later the kids were trying to hide behind each other, and then sent to fetch an adult. The impromptu named Arnulf approached with caution, but was quickly won over (successfull roll), explained about the sheep and the rogue troll and invited Ronja to his house to stay the night, to make up for his impromptu named son Olan's misdeed. He also mentioned his time in the army, the trouble between his father and his uncle, and the location of the mentioned mayors house. At the house, Ronja found the impromptu named Bran (In case it isn't clear yet: I _love_ the list of names), a hospitable wealthy farmer, accustomed to ordering others around, as his wife's (Inge) behaviour demonstrated. Still, he was friendly and another social conflict later suddenly knew, that Ronja's sister had been here three years ago, consulted with his brother's loathed wife Gretta, whom Bran considered a witch, and then proceeded to the "dead man's tree" to the north-east, where in ancient times the dead were exposed to the elements, and which was considered a bad spot to this day. Ronja declined Bran's offer to stay at his house, forsaking luxury for the hospitality of Arnulf. In the latter's simple abode she had a rather agonising debate about the honey she pulled from her bag as a present, whereas the slingshot she gave to Olan met less (actually no) resistance ;)
When she went outside for some wood-carving to pass the time 'til dinner, she was approached by Ansgar, a strong, drunk and unpleasant villager who expressed his displeasure with her presence quite clearly. Fortunately, those skilled in the arcane arts can win the hearts of anyone (provided they roll well), so Ansgar ended up vaguely remembering having met Ronja's sister in the town of Ransquan to the west about 3 years ago and parted with best wishes and the hope of encountering Ronja again some day or other.
Over supper Ronja agonised over whether to go west or north-east, Arnulf apologised on Ansgar's behalf and sacrificed the best his poor household could offer, revealed the loss of his wife and then everybody went to – separate – beds.
Teh next morning Ronja headed for the dead man's tree, where she failed to affect the magical aura and was surprised by Schrack, shaman of the nearby tribe who had come to consult the spirits of the dead. Schrack was not too concerned about personal hygiene, given to obscure rites and – most aggravating – prone to considering every utterance carefully ... but otherwise a terribly nice chap. He – eventually – told Ronja that her sister had indeed turned up three years ago, after her companions had perished in a ritual at the tree. Her sister, Washu, had joined Schrack's tribe, but suddenly disappeared two weeks ago and had since been seen briefly in the forest.
The two decided to consult the forest animals, but failed, since Schrack sneezed, which startled Ronja, so she hit the bird they were talking to. Schrack suggested examining a cave in the forest, which they did. Ronja made her amulet glow to provide some light, and together they entered a dark and mysterious cave ... only to be attacked by the thing/Washu. Ronja was grabbed by the throat and thrown down (failed first roll), tried to remember a spell but couldn't (failed second roll). When Schrack tried to help, he hit her instead (failed 3rd roll), leaving her alone in the dark with the beast at her throat and the last oxygen struggling to reach her brain. She attempted to use an item (failed 4th roll, I don't remember the item) and passed out.
When she came to, she was tied to the dead man's tree, and the beast was just starting to apply some carving (a skill apparently running in the family) to her lower leg. Fortunately Ronja found a knife Schrack had left, cut her bonds and used magic to smack the beast against the tree (a successful roll). She managed to tie it up before she passed out again, only to find it gone, when a worried Arnulf woke her up and took care of her wounds (her sister hadn't bothered to _carry_ her all the way to the tree). She initially wanted to return to the village to heal herself, but since that would have meant 1.5 days travel, she instead used magic to heal herself and followed the tracks. Wushu had apparently made it to the edge of the forest, gotten rid of her bonds there and disappeared into the forest.
Arnulf and Ronja went to the cave and set up a trap in front of it, but when Schrack's moans could be heard from within, Arnulf couldn't hold back and unfortunately landed in his own pit, breaking his leg (another failed roll). Ronja threw him a rope and went inside to rescue Schrack. She used magic to gain night vision and later to freeze the beast (a successful roll), which had started to carve into Schrack. Healing Schrack, getting Arnulf out of the pit and throwing the beast in was a matter of minutes (no rolls), whereas Schrack's suggestions – again – took time. Magically sped up by Ronja he eventually headed back to his tribe to gather his adepts for a ritual to remove the spirit which had apparently taken control of Washu – at least that's what Washu's desire to be helped, which she expressed amid growls and howls, was taken to imply.
The ritual, lead by Ronja, was an amazing success (roll), and in the end, the sisters were re-united, Washu got away with a gentle scolding and a bunch of apologies, and a human socerer was found to be responsible for Washu's predicament. He'd be very very well advised to move quickly, for now two Trollbabes are out looking for him, and when they find him ... it will be worth another tale.

Analysis:
what I missed:
– the rules on Pace (p.14f). My girlfriend didn't get the concept of the "number" immediately (I either explained it poorly or she's just not used to RPG mechanics) and so I decided to skip that, and later plain forgot about it. It would probably have made a difference occassionally, but in the scene in the cave she rolled on fighting and used all possible re-rolls anyway, so there wouldn't have been any difference AFAICT.

what we liked:
– the freedom to "make stuff happen" when there was no conflict, simply narrating along.
– the relationships: they add so much to the game, the mechanics put them clearly into focus, we simply fell in love
– I loved the list of names: If I could, I'd demand any RPG to have these, they're incredibly useful to me, when making up characters on the spot.

what we did not like:
– my girlfriend wasn't keen on narrating her Trollbabe's failures, in fact she tried to get away with minor inconveniences several times. This may be a leftover from her previous roleplaying experiences or a reflection of the simple fact that not everybody can take pleasure in their (or their characters) failures. In fact, I mostly ignored the rules and let my girlfriend narrate the outcomes whenever she seemed to want to. Which meant I got to narrate most of the failures and she narrated most of the victories.
– the injury system. As per page 20, injuries do not recover in game, only between session or in major breaks. Which means that a player has 3 re-rolls per session. We changed that to 3 re-rolls per conflict, provided there was sufficient in-game time to recover. Considering, that my girlfriend failed 6 rolls/re-rolls throughout the game, I can't see how one could do otherwise.

what I was not sure about:
– is it possible to heal injury by magic? It shouldn't be, but I allowed it nonetheless, otherwise recovering from an 3 failed re-rolls seems impossible, and so is continuing the adventure. (My girlfriend wanted to return to the village and heal up. Resolving this by having the rogue troll die/the stakes lost would have made for a poor story in our opinion.) Healing someone else did not require a roll IMO.
– when to roll for magic effects in general: I did not consider night vision and making her amulet glow in the dark a conflict, so no roll here. Both have the effect of possibly being able to see the enemy before they see the character OTOH, so one might have considered both to be conflicts.
– what to roll when the character builds a trap. An intelligence or dexterity stat would have been useful at this point.
– the limits of player narration: the player is sufficiently empowered (or at least my girlfriend was) to take Author and sometimes (re-rolls) even Director stance and at least my girlfriend tended to generalise that (or maybe it was me?). Anyway, she invented several objects she was carrying and a bunch of other stuff, which sometimes even lead to uncertainty about who was controlling a scene. I hesitated to exercise GM-power, since she was having fun and the story was moving along, but we felt the rules were not fully supporting our drift towards reduced GM-power.

Summary
We had a great time and will definitively play again.

Hi Markus!

I love talking about playing Trollbabe, so let's hope I can do your extensive post some justice. For this post, I'll stick mainly to your questions and a couple of your observations which reveal rules-confusions.

Before that, I'll point out that the game really shines with multiple-player and multiple-adventure play. I think you'll find the positive features you already experienced will be multiplied in unexpected ways.

I decided to get the character involved by having children throw rocks at her, when she approached the village (is that a "bang"?).

The adventure opened with ... Ronja looking for her lost sister (another Trollbabe), last seen in the company of some dubious humans. I was ... surprised, to say the least, since that was my girlfriends idea. I decided to shelve that plotline for the time being and introduce some leads for a follow-up adventure.

what I missed:
– the rules on Pace (p.14f). My girlfriend didn't get the concept of the "number" immediately (I either explained it poorly or she's just not used to RPG mechanics) and so I decided to skip that, and later plain forgot about it. It would probably have made a difference occassionally, but in the scene in the cave she rolled on fighting and used all possible re-rolls anyway, so there wouldn't have been any difference AFAICT.

I loved the list of names: If I could, I'd demand any RPG to have these, they're incredibly useful to me, when making up characters on the spot.

– my girlfriend wasn't keen on narrating her Trollbabe's failures, in fact she tried to get away with minor inconveniences several times. This may be a leftover from her previous roleplaying experiences or a reflection of the simple fact that not everybody can take pleasure in their (or their characters) failures. In fact, I mostly ignored the rules and let my girlfriend narrate the outcomes whenever she seemed to want to. Which meant I got to narrate most of the failures and she narrated most of the victories.

– the injury system. As per page 20, injuries do not recover in game, only between session or in major breaks. Which means that a player has 3 re-rolls per session. We changed that to 3 re-rolls per conflict, provided there was sufficient in-game time to recover. Considering, that my girlfriend failed 6 rolls/re-rolls throughout the game, I can't see how one could do otherwise.

Once established, injuries “heal" in precisely the same manner as re-roll items are “refreshed" – either at the beginning of the next session, or at a negotiated time in-game or out-of-game.

is it possible to heal injury by magic? It shouldn't be, but I allowed it nonetheless, otherwise recovering from an 3 failed re-rolls seems impossible, and so is continuing the adventure. (My girlfriend wanted to return to the village and heal up. Resolving this by having the rogue troll die/the stakes lost would have made for a poor story in our opinion.) Healing someone else did not require a roll IMO.

when to roll for magic effects in general: I did not consider night vision and making her amulet glow in the dark a conflict, so no roll here. Both have the effect of possibly being able to see the enemy before they see the character OTOH, so one might have considered both to be conflicts.

what to roll when the character builds a trap. An intelligence or dexterity stat would have been useful at this point.

the limits of player narration: the player is sufficiently empowered (or at least my girlfriend was) to take Author and sometimes (re-rolls) even Director stance and at least my girlfriend tended to generalise that (or maybe it was me?). Anyway, she invented several objects she was carrying and a bunch of other stuff, which sometimes even lead to uncertainty about who was controlling a scene. I hesitated to exercise GM-power, since she was having fun and the story was moving along, but we felt the rules were not fully supporting our drift towards reduced GM-power.

Hi Ron,
thanks for taking the time to respond and providing the links on rules-issues. Both helped a great deal.

– Concerning the bang, you "got" my intent to the point were I'm tempted to accuse you of mindreading.
– Concerning the sister, you either did not read the post carefully or it was to well hidden. I initially intended to provide merely some clues, but when it became apparent, that she was really interested in this I made her sister the rogue troll, which certainly spiced up the fight in the cave and made her way of dealing with her sister/the beast an interesting decision for her. Admittedly not an overly creative solution but it worked reasonably well in terms of fun and ... well, some ideas are better, some worse ;)
– Concerning the introduction of the "lost sister" element, I maybe should have added that I was going by her previous roleplaying, and that it was a pleasant surprise, but since I agree with your point on gamers the point is moot anyway.
– Concerning pace: The difference would have been an additional strategic element/opportunity (by choosing pace) for the player, which – as you pointed out – we missed. However, in the only crucial series (in the cave) my girlfriend was rolling on her poor stat and used up all possible re-rolls anyway, so for our particular instance of play the miss was minor. But of course we'll use the rule next time, and no, it is not complicated, I understood it quite well, I just forgot about it and wanted to mention that for completeness' sake.

– my girlfriend wasn't keen on narrating her Trollbabe's failures, in fact she tried to get away with minor inconveniences several times. This may be a leftover from her previous roleplaying experiences or a reflection of the simple fact that not everybody can take pleasure in their (or their characters) failures. In fact, I mostly ignored the rules and let my girlfriend narrate the outcomes whenever she seemed to want to. Which meant I got to narrate most of the failures and she narrated most of the victories.

Uh-oh. I see another alarm bell emerging from your standards & practices from previous play. The whole point of the "narrate my failures" is to permit "minor inconveniences." What's wrong with that? Trust me - (a) the injury and incapacitation rules are very clear about their game-mechanics constraints, and (b) when the player wants to see her character hosed (major inconvenience), she'll do it! Until then, your desire to manage how badly the trollbabe fails is 100% intrusive and wrong.
Frankly, it sounds as if your girlfriend was playing (narrating) just fine, and you were the one who raised objections, not her. And make sure to check out the thread Why I can't say "I had fun playing Trollbabe" to understand how narration is supposed to work.

– the injury system. As per page 20, injuries do not recover in game, only between session or in major breaks. Which means that a player has 3 re-rolls per session. We changed that to 3 re-rolls per conflict, provided there was sufficient in-game time to recover. Considering, that my girlfriend failed 6 rolls/re-rolls throughout the game, I can't see how one could do otherwise.

This is a pretty serious misreading of the rules on page 20, which say:

Once established, injuries “heal" in precisely the same manner as re-roll items are “refreshed" – either at the beginning of the next session, or at a negotiated time in-game or out-of-game.

What about "negotiated time in-game" is unclear to you? Say a trollbabe is incapacitated. Whoever narrates the next scene can say, "She wakes up in the healer's hut two days later, all better." Any negotiation about how acceptable that is can be handled and the buck stops with the narrator. A lot of your post indicates to me that you are unaccustomed to that kind of interaction between a narrator and the other members of the group, and even perhaps with the idea that a narrated event may be presented as a suggestion, quickly modified (or accepted as is), and then established - with absolutely no sense of "out of game break" whatsoever.

... cannot be used again. All these elements "refresh," becoming available again, usually waiting until the next session of play. A player may also request that this interval be an in-game lapse of time, or following a real-world lapse of time(e.g. one hour). In case of a disagreement regarding this issue, the GM is the final arbiter. (italics mine)

when to roll for magic effects in general: I did not consider night vision and making her amulet glow in the dark a conflict, so no roll here. Both have the effect of possibly being able to see the enemy before they see the character OTOH, so one might have considered both to be conflicts.

Arrghh, task resolution rears its ugly head. If you or the other person wanted to bring conflict into the game through the use of these effects, then it's a conflict. If neither of you do, then it's not a conflict. Whether the effects "would" cause a conflict independently of what you and other player want is a complete non-issue.

what to roll when the character builds a trap. An intelligence or dexterity stat would have been useful at this point.

You're kidding, right? Seriously, that's a bizarre statement. A trap is a weapon; it captures, kills, or otherwise affects someone else. Treat it precisely as a Fighting Conflict or a Magic Conflict if it's a spell. And if the trap doesn't present a Conflict (which I imagine most of the time it does), then it's not a Conflict and requires no roll.

the limits of player narration: the player is sufficiently empowered (or at least my girlfriend was) to take Author and sometimes (re-rolls) even Director stance and at least my girlfriend tended to generalise that (or maybe it was me?). Anyway, she invented several objects she was carrying and a bunch of other stuff, which sometimes even lead to uncertainty about who was controlling a scene. I hesitated to exercise GM-power, since she was having fun and the story was moving along, but we felt the rules were not fully supporting our drift towards reduced GM-power.

I find your phrase "who was controlling a scene" very interesting. In many ways, Trollbabe is absolutely clear about how the GM and players must interact, with absolute control going to no single person. I do think that the game assumes that the trollbabe is only carrying (a) her stated items on her sheet and (b) whatever gets invented into existence through the re-roll item "carried object." Those are constraints of play, and inventing stuff into the trollbabe's pockets on the fly is not recommended, as it disrupts the economics of the re-roll system.

I'm very, very glad the two of you enjoyed the game.

montag wrote: Our problem is mostly in line with what Michael S. Miller expressed (and which IMHO wasn't addressed properly in the other thread)

greyorm wrote:

montag wrote: Our problem is mostly in line with what Michael S. Miller expressed (and which IMHO wasn't addressed properly in the other thread)

Excuse the interruption, but I thought it was quite clearly addressed there...I mean, what's unclear about "you can describe exactly how your character succeeds, the buck just stops with the GM"? So unless the GM wants to change something, he can just say, "Sure, that's exactly what happens" and on the game goes.

Another technique that I find works well in Trollbabe is this:

Having the player describe their action as if they had already rolled successfully - up to the to the point where the action affects another character. Then have them roll. If they succeed, the GM ony describes the _effect_ of the player's actions, not what they did. If they fail, the player gets to revise his own previous description.

The retro effect may seem strange at first, but it soon becomes smooth. We deal with revision all the time in ordinary RPGs anyway.

Hello,

Sigh ... Markus, I could be wrong, but it seems like you're getting frustrated with the conversation, and I'm not sure what to do about that. To be absolutely clear, it is impossible when writing a game to know exactly what the readers will make of a given passage. What reads to me like, "Figure out the narration among yourselves but the buck stops with [person X]," reads to another person like, "[Person X] is now God." Or something in between the two, or whatever.

So my solution is to try to be as clear as possible on these forums, and to take everything, most especially posts like yours on this thread, as seriously as I can when re-writing for the print version.

I realize that's frustrating. "Why isn't the book perfectly clear before you publish it at all?" That's one of the reasons I consider the money you pay for the PDF to be a pre-payment for the print version, if you plan to get it. It seems to me to be abusive to demand full and separate payment for what is, essentially, a beta version (although in my view a very well-playtested one).

Again, it's feedback like yours that makes me understand what I've written or mis-written. The fun that you had was the most important thing, and maybe we should focus on that for more discussion. It seems as if the other side of things isn't working out well in the written medium.

Best,
Ron

Alan wrote: Another technique that I find works well in Trollbabe is this:
Having the player describe their action as if they had already rolled successfully - up to the to the point where the action affects another character. Then have them roll. If they succeed, the GM ony describes the _effect_ of the player's actions, not what they did. If they fail, the player gets to revise his own previous description.
The retro effect may seem strange at first, but it soon becomes smooth. We deal with revision all the time in ordinary RPGs anyway.

...for anyone looking at older threads by me on Trollbabe combat with the idie-netgamers...
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6020&highlight=

At first I was misinterpreting the injury rules resulting in very quick spiralling of injury. I was including the discommode as a 'permanent reduction'...treating it as Injury.

The 'split screen' files in the Yahoo indie-netgaming group File area that show both ooc and in-game narration in synched up columns have this fault.

http://f4.grp.yahoofs.com//Trollbabe/Trollbabe%20Pre-play%20%2Bactual%20play%20NAR%20%2BOOC%20logs1-8.doc

So be careful if using any of my advice/thoughts from the first game...which still came out well. But the split screen dialog is useful for seeing how our Trollbabe Fair and clear phase and our IRC game ran.

The Demigods game was run correctly