TSOY: Freebooters

I just ran a one-shot (sort of playtest) for a TSOY-engine-driven thing I'm calling Freebooters.

Freebooters is set in the same "gaslight, magic, flintlocks, and steel" world as my game Stranger Things. It's in the past, back before the Wild consumed the world and forced the last people into the great City of the Forgotten Gods. In the time of Freebooters, the world is wide and open, and men and demons rarely cross paths.

Anyway, the PCs are all crew on a pirate ship. There are four of them:

Wester Verley, sneak thief -- Key of Greed
Canter Thop, deceiver -- Key of Conscience
Artio Hollas, wanted voodoo man -- Key of the Wanted Man
Gull Trecher, cutthroat -- Key of the Drunkard

First, I'll briefly describe the setup, and then get to the specific stuff about TSOY and the player interactions.

Here's the setup that drove the game:
The ship is about to arrive at the island of Cloud for much-needed resupply and shore leave. The night before, the PCs did a foolish thing: they played dice with the bound demon-thing that lives in a coffin in the bilge of the ship. The demon powers magical stuff on the ship (summoning winds and such) and promised them great gifts if they could best him at a game of chance. Of course, they lost badly.

Because of their loss, they now must try to free the demon. To do so, they need the brass key of Siotam, a device said to be able to open any lock. As luck (heh) would have it, the key is on the island of Cloud.

But, before they can go ashore, the first mate pulls them aside and gives them a mission: The mysterious captain of the ship (whom no one has ever seen) wants the lads to fetch a trinket for him: the brass key of Siotam. The captain knows the whereabouts of the Lost City of Jewels, and with the key, he can open the city gates and plunder its fabled riches.

So, each PC has a choice: Take the Key of the Vow (to free the demon), OR take Key of the Mission (get the brass key for the captain). To no one's great surprise, two players chose the vow (Wester and Gull) and two players chose the mission (Artio and Canter).

Now everyone gets XP while going after the key, but when it comes time for the thing to be handed over -- well, there will probably be some "disagreement."

I won't describe all the events of the session here. There were many good moments -- including Gull fighting two city guardsmen who stood between him and his rum, Artio discovering wanted posters with his picture (invented by the player, of course) and fleeing from his jailers, Wester trying to collect a debt from the toughest bootblacks anyone has ever seen, and Canter proving himself to be the fanciest pirate to ever sail the seas (in no less than three waistcoats).

What I really want to highlight with this AP post is how much of a delight it was to play the TSOY system. Revised is a lovely piece of work. All the changes from the original are very well thought out and lead to a game with real depth of play AND very low handling time. The new Bringing Down the Pain is fast and intuitive, and makes for conflicts with immediate consequences when the Harm starts flowing back and forth. Every BDTP conflict ended with a give, which I thought was a very good sign -- both of good stakes and streamlined design in the new system.

But, all fanboy gushing aside, the interaction of related and opposed Keys really helped the game catch fire. There were some dull moments, mostly as I floundered a few times in keeping the pace brisk. But whenever the game hit its stride, it was because the players were grabbing the reins of their Keys and galloping hard toward their advances. And I actually managed to remember that Keys are player flags, and steered some scenes and conflicts at them to good effect.

The moment of clarity for me was in the ghost brothel. Canter Thop had conned his way into the brothel without paying because he knew that the Madame of the place had the brass key of Siotam that they were looking for. He'd finally been brought into the room and met his "date" when his charms and stalling (about the payment) finally ran out. The alarm was raised, and the zombie-like musclemen who guard the place converged on Canter's room.

Just before the zombies entered, I'm thinking, "Now they're gonna kick his ass and chain him up!" But then, Canter's key jumps out at me -- the Key of Conscience. The zombies aren't there to harass Canter. They're coming to drag off his ghostly companion. She let a deadbeat into the brothel!

The zombies went for the girl, Canter intervened, XP and gift dice flowed -- things got complicated, story wise. Ding. By the end of the session, Canter is all set up for his 5XP payoff when he sets the ghost hooker on her new life of freedom and redemption. That is some satisfying shit right there.

We played with a 5XP advance, which worked great. There were several conflicts in which players suddenly advanced and bought the thing that could save their bacon right at that moment. It had that great "Ah ha! Take that!" moment that a really sharp board game can sometimes deliver.

We kind of ran out of time at the end, but everyone discussed what they had planned when the key was taken back to the ship. One player was going to buy off his Key of the Mission, take Key of the Vow and a new Secret, and turn the tables on his former ally, with the bound demon below backing him up. So cool.

I could go on and on about all the cool bits, but I know how a long AP post can turn people off.

I'm interested to hear what the other players thought of the session. Great moments? Rough spots? Would you have done anything differently? I plan to package up this one shot as a PDF download, so I'd like to tune things for maximum bang if possible.

I'll also gladly answer questions about TSOY in general and/or this session in particular if anyone has any.

Oh, dude.

My current favorite game combined with my most eagerly anticipated one?

John, this is a great AP as the enthusiasm from the session really comes through and it really makes me want to take TSOY out for another spin soon. Like Judd's 1st Quest it shows how easily you can tinker with it; changing color, construct Keys and still contain the flavor and focus of the original game.

I also want to echo everything you mention about the merits of the system. I recently wrapped up a five session long TSOY-story, and it must say something about the strenght of the game that the stuff you highlight are the very same things that made our play such a success.

I dig the setup. How much of it was generated as a group, and how much had you prepared beforehand?

Anders wrote:
I dig the setup. How much of it was generated as a group, and how much had you prepared beforehand?

Dude. Stranger Things + TSOY = too much awesome. WE MUST FIND AN EXIT! CALL EMS!

Seriously, this blows me away. I'm glad you like the new system. I'm seriously thinking of writing a short essay on how to customize TSOY for your own setting, so I'll ask: what did you do, if anything, to make the TSOY system work for your setting? This sounds like a retarded question, but how'd you make firearms work?

Since this was a one-shot with limited time, I prepared a bit more than I usually would. Before the PCs left the ship, the first mate told them that the brass key was held by "Madame Pearl, mistress of the Black Veil, a brothel up on the hill." So they had a target to aim at right away. Of course, rather than making a beeline for the brothel, everyone first indulged in their personal keys: getting drunk, finding the wanted posters, trying to collect a debt, etc. The little side scenes generated XP that powered later advances used to get the key from Madame Pearl. Man, I love that.

Also, the characters were pregens. A couple people made little tweaks to them before play.

Clinton:
First, firearms. For this setting, I wanted to keep knives and pistols on pretty equal footing, so they were more of a choice of color than mechanical advantage. Because of their different uses, though, situational modifiers might apply. If you can arrange to fight at a distance with your pistol and your foe only has a knife, you get a bonus die (or a +1 weapon in BDTP, probably). If it's up close and personal, the knife guy gets the bonus die. If no one can clearly control the fighting distance, then your weapon just colors your narration. I don't sweat stuff like reloading and such.

I didn't do much to customize TOSY for the setting. It really worked as is. I did invent a few Keys and Secrets, but I consider that normal TSOY play. Here's a new Secret that I really dig:

The Secret of the Voice
Your character can speak to an inanimate object and convince it to obey a simple command with a successful Sway roll. For example, you might tell a door to unlock or a window to close. Cost: 2 Reason

If I develop the Freebooters thing further, I will probably customize the pool refreshment methods to be more piratical in nature.

I played Artio Hollas, magic man.  I instantly envisioned him as the dark and brooding sort, and as I told John over lunch today, as soon as the set up was done, I looked at the other players and thought to myself "how can I ditch these guys?" ;)  And of course the lovely thing about the Solar System (and John's GMing) is that it totally supports all the players making a beeline for "their thing" and no need for a party mentality.  And what made it even better was that the Key of the Vow/Mission provided a carrot that eventually drew us all to the Black Veil, which was where the action (and XPs) were.  As a player, I couldn't give a crap about the magic key, but I was quite content to follow the trail of XP in my own way.  So the end result was all the characters coming to the climax via their own twisty paths, which is far more satisfying fiction than a large clump of guys marching around town like some kind of demented enforcement squad.

So ... highlights.  First and formost, getting to see the Solar System in its up to date finely tuned form.  I had a bad experience with the original version of TSOY, and it had left me a little jumpy, but the new stuff with the fudge dice is perfect.  Currency flows between dice and success levels like water.  John did this cool thing where he treated the SLs in this "Donjony" kind of way, where each point of success represented a concrete benefit you could get out of the roll.  He also did a kind of BW like "Let it Ride" thing where SLs hung around and could be referenced later.  All it all, very smooth.  And the new BDTP procedure makes it very easy to relate the rolls to the action, and even rewards a little strategizing.

To illustrate the beauty of this all, I'll relate my dice hack that I'm still inordinately proud of.

In the final confrontation between the characters and Madam Pearl aka Black Magic Woman, she was trying to use a magic thread to tangle us all up and we were of course trying to prevent that and make off with the macguffin.  Artio had earlier used a "snap a cord in my hand to break another cord over there" gimmick as part of his voodoo magic, so I decided to do that again to break her spell thread.  Well, needless to say she kicked my ass in the contested voodoo roll, so I bring down the pain.

Now I'm rolling into the first round of BDTP, Madam Pearl already has more mojo than me AND she's got two bonus dice from her successes.  The other players at the table start shuffling like they are going to hand me gift dice and I say "no, hold on, sneaky dice moves afoot, I want to lose this first round big!"  And I announce I'm changing intention.  So we do the defensive round, and I describe it as physically grabbing the magic thread (React).  Thing is, Madam Pearl doesn't roll so well, and she only beat me by two.  I'm bruised, not bloody, which is what I want.  "Crap!"  As I'm pondering that, Phil grabs a gift die and THROWS IT TO JOHN for Madam Pearl.  John rolls it, and sure enough, it boosts Madam Pearl up, so now I'm losing by 4!.  I'm bloodied.  In Instinct.  And now I announce "I'm pulling out my pistol and putting it to her head, I'm just gonna kill her"!  Using Aim!  Which is Vigor!  My bloodied Instinct doesn't mean crap, and now we are fighting on MY turf. (whereas if I had been bruised, the penalty die would have been to my next ACTION, regardless of pool)

Then the second cool thing happened.  We did another round as a parallel conflict (she's still trying to use her spell) and I get bloodied again and so does she (but worse).  And John says "well I can't give, because I die" and I think "damn, my intent should have been to make her back down by putting my pistol to her head" and John says, "well I'll give to that intent."

And it's very cool.  Not in the rules, but cool.  "I'll back off on my intent if you give now."  It should be a rule ;)

The other nice thing was just how well the players were surfing off each others inspirations.  Early on, I invented a magic ring that West (Jason's character) had stolen from me, mostly as a gag, and later that ring becomes a crucial plot device.  While I'm running from the guards through the streets of Port Cloud, John is weaving in Cantor Thop being carried up to the Black Veil in a palanquin.  I narrate running up on a roof to evade the guards, and John says "you jump on the roof of the palanquin, right?"  And I'm like, oh yeah, of course I do ;)

Lowlights?  I dunno, this was a pretty hot session, at least for me.  Early on there were a couple flubbed rolls where good stakes didn't get set before the dice hit this table, but once things got moving, we all seemed to fall in line with that.  And we had to rush the ending a little since we were running out of time for a one shot, so we never quite got to the PvP showdown.  But we wrapped that up with some ending narrations, and it was actually quite satisfying.

Oh, and yeah, it'll be very good to have full writeups for the setting specific Secrets and Keys, because "I'm gonna buy off this to get that" is a key part of good Solar System play, but a player needs full information to do that.

So yeah, all kinds of awesome.  Bring on the sexy EMTs.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  John, had you outlined any key scenes and set their XP worth?  If not, you should definitely do that for the packaged version.

rafial wrote:
And of course the lovely thing about the Solar System (and John's GMing) is that it totally supports all the players making a beeline for "their thing" and no need for a party mentality.

How did you guys ensure that everyone was interested all the time, regardless of their character's presence?

I played West.

I have never played TSOY, though I had heard good things about it, and jumped on the chance.

Play smoked... conflict was fast, and resolution was quick...

Some one asked how we kept on target, Johb gave use a choice of Key of Mission or Key of Vow (which both involved follow the Mcmuffin). That meant that as long as we were chasing after our Keys (which was to chase a key) we were getting XP (which was fun). It also meant that we were in the thick of it, which was also fun. The action was there.. while you could do somethign else, you would be missing all the cool $hit that was going on at the Veil.

Worked really well, espeically for a Pregen game where it takes a while to buy in to your character.

rafial wrote:
For me, I'm constantly interested because there are these other players telling a great story that I want to listen to.  And yes, I can toss around gift dice if something cool happens, and perhaps just as importantly I can suggest "wouldn't it be cool if" and generally kibitz.

rafial wrote:
Aggressive cutting can be very helpful.  We had several points last night where somebody was in the midst of a BDTP and the action kept cutting away from them to feature somebody else.

rafial wrote:
Are the people who are worried about split parties people you are trying to convince to play the game or to run the game?  Because if players are concerned about splitting up, they can, um, not split up.

Me: Keys reward you for doing what you want to do!  And they can support inter-PC conflict, creating great character dynamics!
Them: Sounds cool.  But then why would the party stick together?

Sweet mercy, that sounds fantastic.

I'd love to see it bundled up as a pdf - I've been looking for an excuse to try TSOY, and a nice playtested scenario with pre-genned characters sounds like the perfect way to do it. Now I'm torn. I want to see this desperately, but if Stranger Things doesn't come out soon, I'm going to have to burn the world.

If have a couple of fairly basic questions: (1) How long do you think the adventure would take to play through to the finish? (2) It sounds like your PCs were apart for most of the time - about how long do you let the average scene run for before cutting away? (I've got four players, too, and this is something I'm trying to get right)  (3) Also, how many advances did people earn during the session (I'm curious to see how a focussed game and the 5xp advance translate into advancement speed)

Thanks!

Wilhelm:
Good point about key scenes. The only one in my notes was getting the brass key for 3XP. The final version of the one-shot should probably have one or two more.

Andrew:
Wilhelm makes a host of good points about non-party play. Hopefully you can get a TSOY group together and try them out.

Chris:
1) We only played for about 3 hours. I think a 4 hour session would be enough to play the thing from start to finish. 3 hours might have been enough, actually, if I hadn't let a scene or two drag a bit.

2) I kind of play it by ear on scene length between cuts -- mostly by watching the other players to see how interested they are. If everyone is grooving on someone's scene, I can stay in it a little longer. If people start to space out a little, time to cut. I'd guess we maybe go 5-10 minutes between cuts. 10 minutes with one PC would be rare, though. Towards the end of the session, all the PCs were together at the Black Veil so the cross-cutting stopped. Also, it's not necessary to "finish" a scene before cutting to someone else. In fact, it often works great to do a lot of cuts as each PC builds to a conflict, and then do all the conflicts at once and end all the scenes together.

3) Each PC was built with 6 advances. Everyone earned at least one advance during the session, and I think one PC earned two. I had planned for everyone to earn two, and with another key scene that would have worked out just right. I think Clinton says that 5XP advances mean 2-3 advances per session, which sounds right to me given the typical 4-5 hour session.

I'm going to bundle this one shot into a PDF before Forge Midwest, in case anyone wants to use it at the event. So expect to see it online this weekend or early next week.

The only one in my notes was getting the brass key for 3XP.

1) We only played for about 3 hours. I think a 4 hour session would be enough to play the thing from start to finish. 3 hours might have been enough, actually, if I hadn't let a scene or two drag a bit.

I had planned for everyone to earn two, and with another key scene

I'm going to bundle this one shot into a PDF before Forge Midwest, in case anyone wants to use it at the event. So expect to see it online this weekend or early next week.

Doh! You're totally right about key scenes, Wil. Specific outcomes are a no-no. And several 1-2xp key scenes would be better, yeah.

We actually started playing at 8PM. Let's call it three and a half. :)

I played Gull Trecher, drunkard cutthroat. Key of the Drunkard was my idea, mine! though not specifically for this character/scenario, it's just something I've been using to explain Keys and their goodness, ever since talking to a friend about his "drunk bard" character in D&D. When I saw that John had given this Key to one of the characters, I figured I had to play him.

The main problem I had was pursuing the key maguffin rather than pursuing my Key of the Drunkard. I tried to get in to the Black Veil by roughing up the majordomo, but he won the conflict and convinced me there was a better tavern nearby. I'd lost the conflict, and going to a tavern did hit one of my keys, so off I went, but that took me out of the action. And with the others seemingly on top of getting the key, I didn't feel that I had much motivation to go back after it. I could have used, but didn't think of proposing, some kind of scene at the other tavern with an overt supernatural reminder that I needed to pursue the key "or else...!" I didn't come back in until the other three were trapped in Madame Pearl's boudoir and seemed to need rescuing, and my reason was a rather lame "well I guess I should go try to find the key since the others haven't come out yet."

Of course, if we'd had more time, I could've just waited for the others to get the key and then (threaten to) kill one of them to get it for myself, what with being a dangerous cutthroat.

I also felt that Groffo's mission was a distraction more than anything, and that I too readily agreed to go along with West. That has me wondering now, was Groffo's mission tailored to each character? If he'd caught me instead of West, would it have been something to do with my Key of the Drunkard, rather than West's Key of greed? It did seem that you had that all prepared in advance.

It was definitely a fun game, easy to get into and easy to keep moving.

I totally fumbled that scene with Gull and the majordomo. It was a clear case of "say yes" not "roll the dice." You had the great idea of going into the Black Veil to raid their liquor supplies. I should have just stepped aside and let that happen. Oh well... live and learn.

Groffo's task was made up on the spot. It was a kind of distraction, intended to force a choice from the player: Pursue the brass key for your vow/mission, or go off on a side-quest of your own. Jason (playing Wester) made his choice, and kind of dragged Gull along with him. The "collect the debt" scene(s) did get a bit out of hand, though. When I write up the scenario, I'm going to make Groffo's tasks more clear and simple, and also make it clear that they're worth XP.

I did think the side mission had value in that it provided "more stuff going on" in the story, and more opportunties for cross weaving stuff.  And Jason am I correct in thinking you had fun with your mission?

I like Phil's idea of tailoring the mission to the character.  In the done up version, you could have a mission for each pre-gen that plays on their other key.  Because "collecting money" was certainly a big pull for Wester.  In fact, I wonder if the opening scene with Groffo should, instead of a "everybody rolls against Groffo" be "the players roll against each other, and the low man gets caught".  That way you'd always have a one (and only one) side mission.  Plus its always more fun to punk another player than it is an NPC :)