Let me first say: this game kicks ass.

Last Thursday, five of us gathered here at my place in St Paul for a game of Shadows in the Fog. None of us had played before; one of us hadn't even read the rules. I was the host.

We began with character generation. One player showed up with a fully typed up printout; no one else had advanced beyond the concept stage. I had expected this, and planned the schedule to accomodate it: we started as early as we could. We started the game with less than fully-fleshed-out characters; this did not prove to be a problem in play. The 4 characters were:
-- Henry Banford, a painter
-- Robert Braeburn, a biology professor who had spent time in India
-- Catherine Russell, the daughter of an upper manager of the East India Co
-- Elizabeth Montcliff, daughter of a merchant who spent time in Kenya

We held a quick "Group Creation Session," which was set at a ball hosted by Elizabeth's wealthy aunt, Jane Percy (she married into money), who was unveiling a painting of Henry's. I missed most of this, as I had to prepare dinner (previous dinner plans went awry).

After a quick dinner break, I decided to kick the game off with a Host-initiated Magic Resolution. I stated something like "someone has broken into the museum, and is using one of the artifacts in the Egyptian collection in a magical ritual." We used the resolution process simply as a way of generating more details about this event. As Host, I really had no idea where I wanted to go with this, so I simply let the players take it where they wanted to (with my input via the resolution process). It was really very interesting, and we quickly found ourselves with a set of five index cards representing the people involved in the ritual, their relationships and motivations. We all really got into this, and just fed off of each others' creativity. This scene energized the whole group, and we stayed energized for a while.

[Back to the PCs, involved in a conversation in the Percys' drawing room] I let each of the PCs know that they were somehow aware of an occult disturbance -- quite unusual for them to detect it without actively searching. Henry and Robert quickly excused themselves, and Catherine and Elizabeth decided to take a carriage down toward the museum "for a breath of fresh air".

Robert retired to his quarters, and (with the aid of some "biological enhancement" aka opium) wanted to see what else he could learn by studying the occult energy that was in the air. As Host, I decided to resolve this via Action Resolution rather than Magical Resolution for two reasons:
-- first, it was a passive rather than active use of powers
-- second, the scope of what he might learn was not large
We resolved this quickly and moved on to Henry.

Henry decided to retire to his studio, where he performed a ritual. His hand held no cards which might be used for divination, so he had to try an indirect approach. He summoned a spirit of the underworld, to get the information from the spirit. Time for Magical Resolution again. This time, the events in the resolution focused largely on the spirit he was attempting to summon, and a couple of other spirits that became involved in the ritual. The ritual didn't exactly go according to plan, but he did learn some useful information -- and the interaction of the three different spirits has left much fodder for future events. The Initiator of the ritual won the round and narrated.

Warp to the carriage where Catherine and Elizabeth are riding downtown. They each elect to use rituals to investigate the goings on, each hoping the darkness and noise in the carriage will hide their activities from the other.

We handled Catherine's ritual first. At the time, I wa very pleased with the Resolution. After talking it over later with Catherine's player, though I think we went astray. Specifically, we spent too much time on playing out the aftermath of the cultists' ritual and not enough time on Catherine's ritual. We added all kinds of neat events in the aftermath of the original ritual -- a gang of tipped-off thieves that raided the musuem at the same time, an altercation between a passing drunken baron and the detective, etc. The problem is that we spent too much time on this stuff and not enough time on Catherine's ritual itself. Catherine's player won the round , but we held off on the narration until Elizabeth's ritual was done.

Elizabeth's ritual did not go well for us at all. To start with, Elizabeth's player played the King (of wands?) and said something like "the King's a big effect, so I get a clear view of the ritual and learn everything I want to." Even after I pointed out that this was not how cards were supposed to be used, she did exactly the same sort of thing, only toned down a bit. I don't think I did a very good job of explaining how this was wrong -- and this was the player who had not read the rules. I had known that this player had some gamist tendencies that might not work well with the game and what I wanted to do with it. I don't know about the rest of the players, but this kind of took the wind out of my sails. I think we were all getting a bit tired anyway -- we had had 3 pretty intense Magical Resolutions almost back-to-back. During the rest of Elizabeth's ritual, there were lots of players passing -- passes were rare during the first two rituals, and uncommon in the third. Given that most of the background had been pretty well hashed out before, I was thinking that limiting the number of tricks in this round to 3 would have been a good idea. Chris, have you experimented with limiting the number of tricks based on the scope involved in the ritual?

Reviewing the game, there were a couple of rules we played wrong, and a few other glitches -- but, in the end, we were all pretty excited and wanted to know when we could play next. I'm very curious to see how it plays next time. I've got a few other observations as well, but they'll have to wait until I've got more time.

Lee Short wrote: Let me first say: this game kicks ass.

After a quick dinner break, I decided to kick the game off with a Host-initiated Magic Resolution. I stated something like "someone has broken into the museum, and is using one of the artifacts in the Egyptian collection in a magical ritual." We used the resolution process simply as a way of generating more details about this event. As Host, I really had no idea where I wanted to go with this, so I simply let the players take it where they wanted to (with my input via the resolution process). It was really very interesting, and we quickly found ourselves with a set of five index cards representing the people involved in the ritual, their relationships and motivations. We all really got into this, and just fed off of each others' creativity. This scene energized the whole group, and we stayed energized for a while.

[Back to the PCs, involved in a conversation in the Percys' drawing room] I let each of the PCs know that they were somehow aware of an occult disturbance -- quite unusual for them to detect it without actively searching. Henry and Robert quickly excused themselves, and Catherine and Elizabeth decided to take a carriage down toward the museum "for a breath of fresh air".

Henry decided to retire to his studio, where he performed a ritual. His hand held no cards which might be used for divination, so he had to try an indirect approach. He summoned a spirit of the underworld, to get the information from the spirit. Time for Magical Resolution again. This time, the events in the resolution focused largely on the spirit he was attempting to summon, and a couple of other spirits that became involved in the ritual. The ritual didn't exactly go according to plan, but he did learn some useful information -- and the interaction of the three different spirits has left much fodder for future events. The Initiator of the ritual won the round and narrated.

We handled Catherine's ritual first. At the time, I wa very pleased with the Resolution. After talking it over later with Catherine's player, though I think we went astray. Specifically, we spent too much time on playing out the aftermath of the cultists' ritual and not enough time on Catherine's ritual. We added all kinds of neat events in the aftermath of the original ritual -- a gang of tipped-off thieves that raided the musuem at the same time, an altercation between a passing drunken baron and the detective, etc. The problem is that we spent too much time on this stuff and not enough time on Catherine's ritual itself. Catherine's player won the round , but we held off on the narration until Elizabeth's ritual was done.

Elizabeth's ritual did not go well for us at all. To start with, Elizabeth's player played the King (of wands?) and said something like "the King's a big effect, so I get a clear view of the ritual and learn everything I want to."

this was the player who had not read the rules.

I think we were all getting a bit tired anyway -- we had had 3 pretty intense Magical Resolutions almost back-to-back.

During the rest of Elizabeth's ritual, there were lots of players passing -- passes were rare during the first two rituals, and uncommon in the third.

Chris, have you experimented with limiting the number of tricks based on the scope involved in the ritual?

Reviewing the game, there were a couple of rules we played wrong, and a few other glitches -- but, in the end, we were all pretty excited and wanted to know when we could play next. I'm very curious to see how it plays next time. I've got a few other observations as well, but they'll have to wait until I've got more time.

Maybe I'll have time tomorrow to fill in some of the details of play.

I let each of the PCs know that they were somehow aware of an occult disturbance -- quite unusual for them to detect it without actively searching. Henry and Robert quickly excused themselves, and Catherine and Elizabeth decided to take a carriage down toward the museum "for a breath of fresh air".

I suspect that this was a bit of a mistake. As you now see, too much magical resolution is very draining because it makes tremendous demands on player creativity. I think the more you do it, the easier it will get, but to start off this way you essentially forced there to be 4 magical resolutions in short order. Quite a lot to ask! I'm not surprised you ran out of steam by the end.

I suppose this ought to be point-blank in the "common problems"
section, now shouldn't it? Oops.

Henry decided to retire to his studio, where he performed a ritual. His hand held no cards which might be used for divination, so he had to try an indirect approach. He summoned a spirit of the underworld, to get the information from the spirit. . . The ritual didn't exactly go according to plan, but he did learn some useful information -- and the interaction of the three different spirits has left much fodder for future events.

I like the sound of this very much. One problem here, I think, is that by forcing the player into magical resolution, he was stuck with a situation in
which he didn't have the cards or a plan. But it worked out, so that's great. Again, I'd love to hear the details of what came out....

We handled Catherine's ritual first. At the time, I was very
pleased with the Resolution. After talking it over later with Catherine's player, though, I think we went astray. Specifically, we spent too much time on playing out the aftermath of the cultists' ritual and not enough time on Catherine's ritual. We added all kinds of neat events in the aftermath of the original ritual -- a gang of tipped-off thieves that raided the musuem at the same time, an altercation between a passing drunken baron and the detective, etc. The problem is that we spent too much time on this stuff and not enough time on Catherine's ritual itself.

Did the player feel he or she had been sidelined? Because sometimes the kind of thing you describe works very well, where the player ends up asking, "Hmm, now how did what I did have anything to do with that result? Because I know that there was a connection, but I don't see
how it worked." That's quite productive for developing character depth and so forth, by giving a personal mystery. But if the player felt sidelined, clearly that's a problem.

Elizabeth's ritual did not go well for us at all.

During the rest of Elizabeth's ritual, there were lots of players passing -- passes were rare during the first two rituals, and uncommon in the third.

That's the problem right there, I think. People were too tired, certainly, and the player was powergaming, yes, and didn't understand the rules, and so on. But the other players need to use their cards to mess up
things that are too easy.

This leads me to ask, how often did people play cards to confuse, complicate, or interfere with others' rituals? Not just in this case, but in general? I think either that needs to be happening a good deal more, or else people were just too tired to do that well and so passed.

Chris, have you experimented with limiting the number of
tricks based on the scope involved in the ritual?

A bit, yes. It does somewhat confuse the question of who wins the hand, though. I think this will get a lot faster and easier the more times you do it, and will become less of a problem.

Other issues:

1. We often had the Initiator or Opposition unable to follow suit to a trick, to a level that was undesirable. How many cards do your players typically hold in their hands? I'm curious, because it seems to me that just a few more cards in their hands could reduce the chances of this fairly notably -- by the beginning of the 4th trick, a hand that started with 9 cards is down to 6 -- while a hand that started with 12 cards still has 9. One partial solution to this problem would be to play with 4 decks and use 3 sets of trumps -- that would increase the number of suited cards in peoples' hands.

2. We played the kitty rules wrong, and I think that you could improve the presentation here in a manner that would help. Either include the rules on a cheat sheet (more about this below), or recap them at the end of the resolution section. It doesn't help that half the rules are in one place, and the rest are in another place. When we started our first MR, I was frantically looking through the rules for how to handle the kitty. I couldn't find them quickly, so I just used the rules as I remembered them.

3. We also played the Action Resolution rules wrong. Reading the AR section, it is unclear whether or not you have to follow suit. Only in the example following the section is this clarified.

4. A cheat sheet would be a great addition. You could put on it the meanings of the Major Arcana (Rider-Waite, at least, must be Public Domain), and the rules for both AR and MR in abbreviated form. I hope to be writing one of these before the next game; I could send you a copy if you'd like.

5. A simple character sheet would also be a great addition. Not that character generation is all that involved, but with a character sheet you could create a character without having to refer to the rules at all.

Lee Short wrote: 1. We often had the Initiator or Opposition unable to follow suit to a trick, to a level that was undesirable. How many cards do your players typically hold in their hands? I'm curious, because it seems to me that just a few more cards in their hands could reduce the chances of this fairly notably -- by the beginning of the 4th trick, a hand that started with 9 cards is down to 6 -- while a hand that started with 12 cards still has 9. One partial solution to this problem would be to play with 4 decks and use 3 sets of trumps -- that would increase the number of suited cards in peoples' hands.

4. A cheat sheet would be a great addition. You could put on it the meanings of the Major Arcana (Rider-Waite, at least, must be Public Domain), and the rules for both AR and MR in abbreviated form. I hope to be writing one of these before the next game; I could send you a copy if you'd like.

5. A simple character sheet would also be a great addition. Not that character generation is all that involved, but with a character sheet you could create a character without having to refer to the rules at all.

clehrich wrote:

Lee Short wrote: 1. We often had the Initiator or Opposition unable to follow suit to a trick, to a level that was undesirable. How many cards do your players typically hold in their hands? I'm curious, because it seems to me that just a few more cards in their hands could reduce the chances of this fairly notably -- by the beginning of the 4th trick, a hand that started with 9 cards is down to 6 -- while a hand that started with 12 cards still has 9. One partial solution to this problem would be to play with 4 decks and use 3 sets of trumps -- that would increase the number of suited cards in peoples' hands.

Interesting. My inclination is to raise the base hand-size. Did players generally end up losing cards over the course of magical resolution? The numerical balancing is pretty weak, one of the least tested parts. So whatever you find works will be very helpful to me.

The way I want it to work, the only people who really risk losing cards are the Initiator and the Opposition. I need to look over the rules again and see why this isn't working. Any suggestions?

Oh -- within a single resolution. I see.

Why did you find this "undesirable"? In playtests, this didn't come up that much as a problem, so I'm wondering what your experience was. From your comment, it sounds like more of a mechanical than a conceptual problem; can you explain why it didn't work so well?

clehrich wrote: Oh -- within a single resolution. I see.

Why did you find this "undesirable"? In playtests, this didn't come up that much as a problem, so I'm wondering what your experience was. From your comment, it sounds like more of a mechanical than a conceptual problem; can you explain why it didn't work so well?

I must agree with Lee; this was one of the most enjoyable games I've played in awhile.

CL wrote:
Lee said: Henry decided to retire to his studio, where he performed a ritual. His hand held no cards which might be used for divination, so he had to try an indirect approach. He summoned a spirit of the underworld, to get the information from the spirit. . . The ritual didn't exactly go according to plan, but he did learn some useful information -- and the interaction of the three different spirits has left much fodder for future events.

CL said:
I like the sound of this very much. One problem here, I think, is that by forcing the player into magical resolution, he was stuck with a situation in
which he didn't have the cards or a plan. But it worked out, so that's great. Again, I'd love to hear the details of what came out....

Lee wrote:
I certainly don't think that the player felt he had to go through with this plan; certainly Robert's player didn't feel he was forced into MR. My reading is that Aaron, Henry's player, wanted to. He didn't have the cards to do what he wanted in the obvious way, so he took the cards that he did have and found a way to get what he wanted out of them. In a fun way, too. That seemed to me exactly the sort of thing you would aim to achieve with a mechanic that makes you relate the tarot card to the ritual you are performing.

Comments, Aaron?

Kesher wrote: Obviously I haven't figured out how to do the quote-within-a-quote thing...

Oh no, trust me, I wanted the resolution. And I also agree that although the playing on my part wasn't really strategic, it was damn fun. Even when the other players were twisting my ritual like a chicken's neck, it was fun. You really pay attention when you don't know at what moment you're going to have to card-place your way around a major complication to your stated "achievement" at the beginning of the whole thing.

Right now I'm kicking myself for keeping a running account of all decisions made during all four MRs, but not the cards played! I'll list those out, if you'd find it interesting, but probably won't get to it until tomorrow.

One thing Lee didn't mention is the fact that we found ourselves using A LOT of trumps. We weren't sure if that was 'normal' or not, but I think we agreed that we were doing it because we liked how much more punch you could add to your complications.

Also, I myself didn't have any problem with not being able to follow suit. I guess I'm not actually clear on why that's a rule in the first place. Is it just to try to keep the actions proposed somewhat contained (within the domain of the suit)?

Any idea when your wiki'll be up and running? I've been reading some of your ideas over in Publishing, and I think it'd take the whole game to a new level. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I've been as interested in playing a character ('course, it's been a long time since I played instead of gm'd, but I still think it's a result of the game :))

CL wrote:

Kesher wrote:
Right now I'm kicking myself for keeping a running account of all decisions made during all four MRs, but not the cards played! I'll list those out, if you'd find it interesting, but probably won't get to it until tomorrow.

I would VERY strongly recommend that you at least keep track of any Trumps and how they were interpreted. That helps immensely in building the group's memory and thus developing the richness of the world.

CL wrote:

Kesher wrote:
Also, I myself didn't have any problem with not being able to follow suit. I guess I'm not actually clear on why that's a rule in the first place. Is it just to try to keep the actions proposed somewhat contained (within the domain of the suit)?

If one doesn't follow suit, it's just a matter of "high card wins." With the kitty exposed and a little careful play, you will soon spot who has what suits, and work with that. So for example, if you are the Initiator and play Swords, and the Opposition plays rods, you tend to play Swords for the rest of the round if you can. Then your only opposition is in effect the other players, who, if they play higher Swords, can take the trick and the lead away from you.

The wiki site is now up.

Check it out

I look forward to seeing you there -- and any comments you want to put there, or here, are very welcome.

Chris Lehrich wrote:

After a quick dinner break, I decided to kick the game off with a Host-initiated Magic Resolution. I stated something like "someone has broken into the museum, and is using one of the artifacts in the Egyptian collection in a magical ritual." We used the resolution process simply as a way of generating more details about this event. As Host, I really had no idea where I wanted to go with this, so I simply let the players take it where they wanted to (with my input via the resolution process). It was really very interesting, and we quickly found ourselves with a set of five index cards representing the people involved in the ritual, their relationships and motivations. We all really got into this, and just fed off of each others' creativity. This scene energized the whole group, and we stayed energized for a while.

That's quite a good place to start, yes. Can I ask what the story told was? And what fell onto the index cards?

Chris Lehrich wrote:

Henry decided to retire to his studio, where he performed a ritual. His hand held no cards which might be used for divination, so he had to try an indirect approach. He summoned a spirit of the underworld, to get the information from the spirit. Time for Magical Resolution again. This time, the events in the resolution focused largely on the spirit he was attempting to summon, and a couple of other spirits that became involved in the ritual. The ritual didn't exactly go according to plan, but he did learn some useful information -- and the interaction of the three different spirits has left much fodder for future events. The Initiator of the ritual won the round and narrated.

I like the sound of this very much. One problem here, I think, is that by forcing the player into magical resolution, he was stuck with a situation in which he didn't have the cards or a plan. But it worked out, so that's great. Again, I'd love to hear the details of what came out....

Good stuff, Lee!

Here are a few suggestions, mostly non-mechanical, just from the peanut gallery.

1. I assume this was the British Museum, which is clearly the best source for this sort of weirdness. The Museum website has nice maps and some historical background material. Just remember that the King Edward VII galleries were not yet built; the vast majority of the museum was laid out then just as it is now, and it's a dense maze of weirdness. A lot of old London guidebooks and things will give you walkthroughs of what you can find -- and that's just the public galleries. It's in the middle of Russell Square, which is also home to lots of other weird stuff. See this page of the wiki.

2. "Professor Gregory Higgins, the initiator" -- is he a PC? Is it known where he works? If he's an Egyptologist of some sort, it's worth asking whether he has -- or HAD -- a formal connection with the Museum, since that would certainly be the prime site for Egyptian artifacts within London. I wonder whether that might link up with his "high stakes" in the ritual?

3. "Lester Montgomery ... a rival for power with Higgins" -- this sounds to me as though Higgins and Montgomery have set up some sort of secret ritual magic organization, which might link up nicely with why Higgins isn't working for the Museum at the moment (see #2). I would tend to assume that such people, especially given their public status, are Freemasons; the secretary might be as well. So is this organization a Masonic splinter-group, or something unconnected? Do the mainstream Masons know about this? Is there any connection with, for example, the Societas Rosicruciana In Anglia (SRIA) of which William Wynn Westcott was a central member -- who was in the course of 1888 working to set up the Golden Dawn (with his fellow SRIA members Woodman and Mathers)? Might give you a nice connection there to the nascent ritual magic group, and also hook across to the Theosophists. But if this group is into things like human sacrifice, they keep that very secret or they're WAY outside the Masons these days....

4. "Billy Malone, the hired burglar" -- is he a PC? Was he handed out as an NPC to be played by someone in particular? This sounds like a recurring character. If I were you, I'd decide (if it hasn't been already) that he is both a burglar and a dockworker down on his luck -- a very likely combination. He lives in Whitechapel, Spitalfields, or St-George's-in-the-East -- again, very likely. This gives you some hooks into the Ripper murders, and into the 1889 dockworkers' strike (which essentially invented the British trade unions). You can also probably do some fiddling with Billy and the river linked up with the Nile and ancient Egyptian magic, etc.

5. "Lady X" -- I see that she hasn't been defined nearly at all. Good! I recommend staying away from the temptation to define her.

6. "I think it would also be useful to have a single notecard for each Magic Resolution, filled out after the narration. That would give you a place to put down items that are not attached to any one character." -- I agree. I'd write this down and attach it to your notes or cards for the Trump that started all this. Remember: the entire story you generated is now part of the meaning of that one Trump card, and can be borrowed and bent in the future whenever that Trump is played.

7. "Scotland Yard inspector Miles Stafford" -- if alert bobbies picked this up, they have to be City Police, not Metropolitan (Scotland Yard). It's a weird but important division, which gets sucked into the whole Ripper murder thing too (the second murder of the "double event" occurred just within City limits and thus was investigated differently). If the Yard got involved, they did so with the permission of the City Police, or they overreached (which is possible) and will have to apologize in the morning -- which raises interesting political questions (e.g. why the hell was the Yard paying any attention to the Museum that night, unless maybe Stafford knew something was up in advance, in which case how?).

8. "As more police arrived to put down the fracas, a drunken Baron Roderick Lancaster wandered by. A meddlesome sort, Baron Lancaster took issue with Inspector Stafford's handling of the arrest of the thieves, and took the issue as far as a short exchange of blows." -- oh God is that ever going to be a mess. By this point, the police, especially detectives, were increasingly trying to get the status of professional public servants, and it's quite possible that they would want to prosecute Lord Lancaster. That would cost him about 5 pounds, plus a little public embarrassment. But he sounds like the type to fight it, which might well turn into a bit of a cause celebre. Note that if Lancaster is a Baron, he goes by Lord Lancaster; he probably writes his name John, Lord Lancaster (Bart). Baron is almost never used as a title of address in England, and from the name he certainly sounds British.

9. "Billy Malone was given medical attention and miraculously survived massive bloodloss. He, Alice Wilkins, and Lester Montgomery were also given medical attention for their shock and questioned by the police (whether or not they were further detained has not yet been determined)." -- It might be worth knowing where they were treated, if they were in hospital at all.

----
Now the point of all this is emphatically not to tell you what to do. In addition, when I say "you" in all this, I don't mean you, Lee -- I mean the crew. But I always found that in between sessions, and as you go along in further sessions, the more thinking that goes on about the London-world implications that gets done, the more everything starts to hook together in a vast web of complex weirdness, which is of course the point.

On the police, by the way, there's some solid material up on the Wiki. See this page and its various links.

Hi gang,

I've uploaded a fair chunk of what you've posted here to a page at the wiki: http://wiki.trmfineart.com/bin/view/SITF/LeeShortCampaign. I'm hoping more will happen with this campaign, and you'll keep us updated.

I've posted the notes on the second session here at the Wiki page. I think this has probably gone beyond items of general interest to The Forge as a whole, and will stop posting about it here unless an item of more general interest comes up. So bookmark the wiki page if you have an interest in keeping up on this.