While I was in Cali I played a game of pseudo-Trollbabe with my brother Zach. It was short, intense, and a lot of fun. This is unusual, as games with Zach tend to be long, slightly flat, and often a little disappointing.

Zach is younger than me, has a speech impediment, and several learning disabilities. He sort of grew up in my shadow in a lot of ways (those of you who know me can probably appreciate how –not fun- it would be to be my younger brother). Not only that but he played with me as a GM in the very worst of my illusionist abusive whammy asshole GM days, and as a result turned into a classic example of several forms of abused player syndrome. He turtles, he always looks for the right answer, he only plays characters who are of the most white-bread middle class superhero morality, he freezes under pressure, and he waits for the GM to tell him a story rather than participating in creating the story himself.

Now, despite all of that he isn't a horrible player. But historically he functioned best in semi-gamist games with clear expectations, easy and obvious answers to most of the problems presented, and rather pre-prepped set-pieces that were designed to allow him to step on up without actually having to step up. Anything more than that, and anxiety sets in.

So of course I figured, "hell, lets play a nar game with no morals and no ability for me to tell the story to him." I'm just that kind of asshole.

We played using Trollbabe rules, but for various reasons (such as my personal inability to take trollbabes seriously, much less sell them to someone else) we didn't do the "trollbabe" angle. Instead we did a pseudo-Hyborean age game. To do this we looked at a map of Howard's world and I asked Zach what he thought of the names (he's never read much Conan). He liked Stygia, and when I said it was like evil Egypt, he proclaimed that he wanted to be a Stygian prince and necromancer.

This shocked the hell out of me. I jumped in to support, though, and a few minutes later we had his character sketched out and statted. He was a member of the nobility, looking for a way to lead his family to great power, and an initiate of the darkest and most ancient of Stygian arts. In every way this was a departure character from those Zach normally plays, and one that felt in a lot of ways like it came right out of Howard – the kind of guy that would be Conan's arch enemy.

For the game I used the setup stakes from the books about the shape-shifting cat being hunted by the brutal village warrior. I changed the cat to be a hot chick though, because romance and sexuality is another thing Zach normally shied from in games and I wanted to see what would happen now that he seemed to have some boldness behind him.

Sure enough as the game started up, Zach reverted to some of his bad habits. We'd set him up as being in the mountains looking for the magic of an ancient tribe who were said to worship snow cats and to gain connections with the local Afghuli tribe. But when I introduced a snow cat being stalked by the brutal Afghulis, his immediate reaction was to leave the area and avoid contact with either. When I asked why his answer was, "Because… it could be dangerous."

I decided to roll with it, and asked him if he wanted a contest to make something happen, or to say what he did besides just leave. Did he want to see if he could get away without the Afghuli's noticing, for example? He thought about this for a minute, and then said, "No, I want to talk to the Afghulis and find out why they're here, but first I want to scare the crap out of them."

We rolled, he won, we described his character stepping out from behind an ancient standing stone – right into the face of the leader of the Afghulis who was shocked and horrified to discover a Stygian who could sneak up on him in his own home territory. Zach then asked, very timidly, if he could make another roll to learn some information about why they were hunting the cat. I told him that he didn't have to, that his roll to intimidate the Afghulis covered the whole conflict of finding out what they were doing.

Something changed in Zach then, and he started getting aggressive. His character became domineering and frightening. He just about broke the Afghulis as men before letting them slink off back to their village. But once the scene was over he lost momentum again, and said he wanted to "scout the land." When I asked why, he said so he would know… and then stopped, not sure what he even wanted to know.

At that point I asked if he wanted to just skip to something cool. He said yes, that would be better. So we jumped to him tracking the snow cat into the mountains, and stumbling across an ancient burial mound that was full of wicked energy. When he went into the sacred ground, a beautiful woman confronts him and tells him he is not welcome. He says that he's going to make her let him in, and talk to him. I ask how, and he says, "I'm going to seduce her." I tell him to roll, and he fails, fails, and then on his third reroll manages to succeed. He seduces her alright, but only after falling in love with her – in his own description "for the first time his dark cold heart knows the thrill of life."

And from that moment on, Zach was on a tear. It was like he wanted to see how far he could push this stuff, like he finally saw something he'd always wanted and wasn't going to stop until he had it. He started calling for conflicts left and right. He'd push his rerolls when he needed to win, and let his character lose when he decided it would be cool to have a setback. He seduced the woman, who turned out to be the snow cat. When the Afghulis attacked he used magic to rip their hearts out of their chests People of the Black Circle style. He turned their corpses into zombies and used them to track down and murder their chieftain in an 8 roll long series that came down to a nail-biting finale. And when the dying chieftain told him that he could not protect the snow cat because his whole village would see her dead, Zach started a conflict that ended with him butchering their shaman in the main street of the village while the villagers watched on with horror, and then forcing the men of the village to tie up their women and children as he lead the whole village into slavery in Stygian labor pits.

At the end of the game, when I'd narrated the people walking down the hill with the nooses about their necks and the snow cat watching from the top of a mountain, Zach suddenly kicks in and says, "And he never sees the snow woman again, for she knows now that he is a monster and avoids him forever after. Thus it is that Amunku never knows of the child she bears, until the day when father and son finally meet in battle to the death."

And that's how the game ended, with my turtling, never makes a character statement, afraid of sexuality, morally upright playing brother taking over narration and putting in a statement about the stakes of the game and the story he had just told. The combination of conflict resolution, distributed narration, and the understanding that there was no "right" thing to do worked, and Zach and I had the most fun in an RPG we've had in at least a decade. 

Trollbabe rocks.

At the end of the game, when I'd narrated the people walking down the hill with the nooses about their necks and the snow cat watching from the top of a mountain, Zach suddenly kicks in and says, "And he never sees the snow woman again, for she knows now that he is a monster and avoids him forever after. Thus it is that Amunku never knows of the child she bears, until the day when father and son finally meet in battle to the death."

Ha. People who know me personally can imagine the expression on my face as well as roll their eyes with exasperation.

Thanks for posting this, Brand. I am extremely familiar with the crucial shift in behavior and engagement that you witnessed after the "you scared them, so you don't have to do anything else to find out what they know" moment. It's something I nurture across all the groups I play with, and when the campus club was active, I used to enjoy seeing it from student to student to student, over the course of several sessions.

Tell me about re-rolls. How risky did your brother get with them? Was the player-character ever incapacitated?

Best,
Ron

Dear God, this is awesome.  Thanks for posting this, Brand.  Extremely cool.

Best,

Blake

Brand_Robins wrote:

At the end of the game, when I'd narrated the people walking down the hill with the nooses about their necks and the snow cat watching from the top of a mountain, Zach suddenly kicks in and says, "And he never sees the snow woman again, for she knows now that he is a monster and avoids him forever after. Thus it is that Amunku never knows of the child she bears, until the day when father and son finally meet in battle to the death."

It's like some sort of ... redemption. Good on ya, Brand.

Ron wrote:
Tell me about re-rolls. How risky did your brother get with them? Was the player-character ever incapacitated?

A bunch of hypothesis's, just to be clinical.

Zach then asked, very timidly, if he could make another roll to learn some information about why they were hunting the cat.

But once the scene was over he lost momentum again, and said he wanted to "scout the land."

my turtling, never makes a character statement, afraid of sexuality, morally upright playing brother

And now I'm thinking, I'm just thinking, that play didn't work out because as the GM, as the leader of play, I didn't give a crap about exploring the games contents. I cared about exploring the players needs to make them happy, but not about exploring the game world itself (the game world I had made with their needs in mind). I suppose it's like if I was interested in flying planes, but noticed they liked it more when I taxied the plane around on the tarmac. In anxiety, I make them a monster truck…but I just don't drive it. Driving only happens when I'm really interested in the vehicle. When I have a passion for the vehicle. The anxiety only made me passionate about trying to look after their needs.

Having just talked to my brother, he remembers that he was incapacitated in the seduction contest -- he lost it but got to narrate falling in love with her, at which point she took him as a lover and didn't give him the information he'd wanted. Later, in the fight with the cheiftain he was discomoded in the second series and then again in the third, which I treated as an injured.

So looks like my recolections were a bit off.

I try to seduce you > I fail and am incapacitated > I fall in love with you

That is very, very cool.

Technical rules question from someone who doesn't have the rules in front of him:

Once you take damage in Trollbabe, doesn't it "stick" until next session unless agreed upon otherwise?  I don't see how you go from Incapacitated in one conflict to merely Discommoded otherwise.  Maybe I'm forgetting something.

Still, it sounds like an awesome session.  I'm looking forward to playing TB again sometime.  It sounds like it works really well for a sword & sorcery game, minus the whole trollbabe deal.

Hey, Brand ... how long has it been since the last time you played with your brother?

'cuz I'm not against interpreting this as a pure victory for Trollbabe over the forces of bad player habit ... but at the same time, something about this is making me think "Hey, maybe Brand's brother has also grown as a person in the interval since the games in which Brand formed his opinion of the young man's play."  Obviously you would have a better sense of that (on oh so many levels) than I.

Tony,

It was probably a little of both. My brother has grown up a lot in the 8 months since I'd last seen him, and even more than that in the 3 years since we've lived in the same town. However, he hadn't been RPing in that time, and still had all of the same bad habits showing up while we were talking about playing Exalted.

I think you're probably right that a lot of it has to do with his growing up and getting confidence. However, I think that Trollbabe can still claim credit for giving him the chance to actualize that change in play. If we'd played a more traddy game I feel pretty certain that all his new confidence would have faded before the weight of precident and tradition.

James,

It does. We had him heal after the chick took him to her tent for three days solid. Seemed like a good time for a refresh.

And I just cross posted a slightly fixed up (reflecting the things my brother reminded me of) version of the above to RPG.net: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=250634

Brand_Robins wrote: I think you're probably right that a lot of it has to do with his growing up and getting confidence. However, I think that Trollbabe can still claim credit for giving him the chance to actualize that change in play. If we'd played a more traddy game I feel pretty certain that all his new confidence would have faded before the weight of precident and tradition.