The weekly Burning Wheel group got together this week. It was quite different from the Grief-laden Elven court succession game last week. This one was called Blood on the Cobblestones, set in the human capital city.

The e-mail blurb was the following:

Hinimard is this continent's capital, the first city of humans by humans, founded by the High King back when being a human actually meant something. They're all converging here, making deals and deciding our fates on our own cobblestone streets without so much as a second look or a by your leave.

The sorcerers are meeting in their tower, the oldest human-built structure on the Vault's continent. The nobles are meeting in their palace, above the catacombs of the High King and his knights. The priests are meeting in the Thousand God Cathedral, discussing what the latest turning of the stars say about the going's on in the heavens.

But that don't concern us.

We're the scum of the city and while others see the great and the powerful converging, we just see a score.

There's taking's to be picked.

What's the con? What's the angle? What's the split?

PC's are:

Back Alley Prophet, Backstreet Sorcerer, Black Market Dwarven Outcast, Thief-taker, Killer without a Boss, Exiled Noble, and the Bandit Knight

If I can, I want them all to be 4 LP characters.

If any particular one looks juicy to you, call it out. If two people want the same one, we'll roll a Die of Fate for it.

Inspirations include: Lankmar, Thieves World, Black Company, Sopranos and Mario's Battlelords of the 23rd Century mini-campaign (but hopefully this crew won't be the heartless bastards that crew was...Jeesh)

I set up the Beliefs and Instincts to drive the game. They weren't as carefully crafted as the elven game, mostly just selfish bastards but that fit the feel of the game, I thought.

I started the game in the good ole fantasy tavern, with the players discussing the heist and what to steal.

Kolja, playing the Dwarf wanted to steal the High King's crown. They debated that for a while and I probably should have gone to Duel of Wits but the players seemed to be enjoying the banter, getting into the feel of the one-shot, so I let it slide.

Jevon, the Back-Alley Sorcerer, talked about how powerful an artifact the High King's crown was and created a whole mythology around the thing. I should have given him a Fate point for that, it was fantastic stuff.

The Killer Without a Boss and the Bandit Knihgt nearly killed one another after the knight gave the killer a cheap shot with a mug of ale. The Sorcerer stopped the brawl with a bit of Ugly Truthin' that the players agreed would stop their brawl from escalating at the moment.

Aaron, player of the Killer Without a Boss, proposed that they kidnap a noble and ransom him back to his family for money. They group quickly fell behind this idea.

He scoped out some good places to jump a noble using Guard-wise, FoRK'ed with Murder-Wise and another -wise skill I can't recall. With two successes I mentioned that there was a brothel that often drew a noble crowd.

The Bandit knight, played like some kind of steroid frat boy with a sword, used intimidation to get people off of that dead-end street. I gave Mario, the Band Knight's player, a Personna Point, for really playing his character to the hilt and helping everyone get into the gritty feel of the game.

The dwarf went to a nearby roof with his crossbow and they had begun to argue among themselves when a knight and his young lord walked up to the brothel's doors.

"My young lord, tonight you become a man," the nameless knight said. That was the bang, my only one of the night. It was all they needed.

Then the crossboy bolt hit him, not a killing blow.

The scripting went well. We took our time and looked up rules that we weren't sure of. BW's rules make sense but there are quite a few of them. But the learning curve is what these one-shots are all about. So we took our time and learned a bit about the combat system.

Two of the PC's got into a brutal fight as they dragged the noble boy into an alley with the sorcerer. After they knocked each other into unconsciousness, the sorcerer breathed fire on them both, finishing them off.

It was a very Resevoir Dogs kind of evening and a very short night, maybe three hours of gaming, total.

Next week, in the hopes of a more civilized evening, we'll be playing an orcish scouting party.

Paka wrote: Next week, in the hopes of a more civilized evening, we'll be playing an orcish scouting party.

Naturally. :)

abzu wrote: what happened in the fight? how did it turn into intraparty conflict? did you start with a DoW and then escalate to martial conflict? or what?!

-L

After a few DoW heavy sessions last week and the week before, I think we shied away from DoW's.

The fighting turned intra-party when the Killer Without a Boss started to knife the noble boy they were set to ransom. Kolja's Black Market Dwarf saw his profit margin going in the shitter, with only a dead kid to ransom and pushed the Killer away from the kid.

Without any real discussion, the Killer's knife turned on the Dwarf...just like that.

This kind of conflict was brewing since the beginning of the game. I think they were ready, willing and able to get their Fight! on with one another.

They took each other down in the same part of the same exchange, knocking each other out at the same moment, right in time for the Sorcerer to cast his Fire-breathing spell.