Last weekend at the EndGame Oakland Minicon I ran a modified version of The Mountain Witch in a 4-hour time slot for six players.  This was my first con game and my first time running the system, so I worried that I might not get to the good stuff in that short amount of time.  Boy was I wrong.  The session was explosive to say the least.

First a little back story.  I bought, read and played TMW and thought it could play really nicely using a WW2 "Impossible Mission" theme.  I based the game on movies like 'The Dirty Dozen', 'Where Eagles Dare' and 'The Guns of Navarone'.  It was May 1944 and the Allies were preparing to open a second front in Europe.  The Allied High Command identified an SS General who was resting at his castle in Bavaria.  If the general could be assassinated, the German General Staff might be able to persuade Hitler to sue for peace and end the war 6 months early.  But who would take such a suicide mission so far behind enemy lines?

The six characters were each US soldiers who had been court-martialed for very serious crimes and were currently sentenced to hang.  Their one chance for a parole was to complete this mission under the watchful eye of Major Spanner, a tough but blackballed US officer.

I started the players off in the air flying through the Bavarian Alps in a stripped-down B-17.  I brought pre-gen characters and I know that choosing abilities can take awhile.  But I wanted to use a technique called "Backstory" I had heard Brian Isikoff talk about in his podcast to get the players connected to their characters and to each other.  So I after handing out Dark Fate cards, I had each player come up with the following:
-A nickname for their character.
-A reason why their character is sentenced to hang.

And the one piece of TMW I didn't think fitted was the Zodiac system for establishing initial trust.  So I borrowed a page from The Shab-al-Hiri Roach and had each player write down:
-Why they trust the guy to their right
-Why they distrust the guy to their left

And based on this the initial Trust Points were given as:
-3 to the guy you trust
-0 to the guy you don't trust
-2 to everyone else

This seemed to create some nice player investment around the table and there were certainly lots of watchful eyes!

The character nicknames were:
-"Dogbone"
-"The Wraith"
-"Dirty"
-"Train"
-"The Rat"
-"The Carnie"

The group was supposed to parachute into a forest clearing near the castle, but the weather was getting bad and they had a hard landing amongst the trees.  I wanted to create a little separation at the beginning, so I noted that after collecting their chutes and readying weapons, they noticed that "Train" and the Major were missing.  At the same time they could hear dogs barking in the forest nearby.  I figured the group of five would stick together and try to find the others, but when they assessed that they were up against several guard dogs and their handlers, they split themselves up into two more groups to flank the Germans.  "Dogbone", "The Carnie" and "Dirty" went after one dog and his handler and were able to dispatch them by Aiding one another with Trust.  "The Wraith" and "The Rat" had a more difficult time as the former went after the dog and the latter after his handler.  They had a hard time Aiding each other and the dog jumped all over "The Wraith" before he was able to fight him off.  The German soldier took a shot at "Dirty" and rolled a 6 to "Dirty"s 1.  The rules say "Double Success" and that "The Rat" should be Knocked Out.  But we were only 10 minutes into the first scene and I chose to interpret the rules to give "The Rat" a Chapter Wound and take away an ability for that Chapter.

While this was happening, "Train" found the Major's body up in a tree with a broken neck.  He pulled the Major down and tossed him, finding a map which he pocketed.  As he was going to join the others (the shooting and barking dogs gave him a good beacon), something big happened.  The person who was playing "The Rat" (who was the only one at the table to have played the game before) chose to narrate a scene where an SS Major appeared in front of "Train", and the latter knew him.  In retrospect, this was very aggressive scene framing for so early in the game, and since it didn't directly affect "The Rat"s Dark Fate, I shouldn't have allowed it.  As well-meaning as the scene was, it quickly went downhill from there.  "Train" and the SS Major had words and started shooting at each other, but I don't think "Train" was trying to kill the Major at that point.  By this time the others had dispatched the others and wondered just why one of their "comrades" was talking to the Germans.  "Dirty" got suspicious and decided to start shooting at the SS Major himself.  "Train" stated that he was okay with killing the SS Major face-to-face, but didn't think he should get shot in the back, and tried to stop "Dirty".

The SS Major ended up getting shot and "Train" basically gave himself up to the others, who were very suspicious at this point.  I could tell the person playing "Train" was getting frustrated but I figured we would find a way out of his mess.  Twas not to be.  I thought I would try and distract the others and give the group a chance to bond again by telling them that they could hear several vehicles approaching them on a nearby road going towards the castle.  I asked one of the players to tell me what the vehicles were, and he responded that it was a German staff car with the flags on the hood followed by a half-track.  The others took this opportunity to tie "Train" up and slit his throat.  Oops.

The person playing "Train" said that he wasn't having a fun time anymore, and didn't think that playing this character as a "Ghost" would be useful since he wasn't trusted anymore.  So he chose to leave the table and go home.

I felt pretty bad as I was the GM and I felt that it was my job to make sure the players were having a good time.  Fortunately he is a friend of mine and we were able to talk through it a few days later.  But he had a crappy experience and I think it soured him on minicons.

After he left, the table took a break to talk about what had happened.  We all felt bad that someone didn't have a fun time, but some of the players felt like there was some room to maneuver within the scene at that all was not lost.  Unfortunately, "Train" hadn't seen it that way and felt like the others were ganging up on him.  After discussing this, we looked at the clock and realized we still had three hours left and the group voted to keep on playing.

I'll talk about the rest of the game in another post as I want to separate comments about this from what happened later in the game.

Chris B.