Trollbabe-Demigods starts tonight Tuesday May 13, 2003
#bobsgame_nar - in game narration
#bobsgame_ooc - Out of character and dice rolling

Trollbabe with the serial numbers filed off.
Fantasy Ancient greek style gaming.
Characters are Demigods in a world of humans and creatures with divine ties (satyrs, cyclops, nymphs, centaurs etc) -as well as the gods themselves.

characters
Nathan
Number: 8
Rathamentos is the son of a human woman and Acheron, a god of death.

Rod
Number: 6
Naia, daughter of Poseidon."She's like the inexplicably cool and charming girl from a family of freaky dirtbags "

Chris
Number: 3
Osphylon, the offspring of Morpheus, the son of a queen slain for her infidelity by her husband.

Josh
Number: 3
Bacchius is the son of the mortal man Achanaeus and the goddess Pulchrimas (a daughter of the Fates).

Looks good,

Due to the slower speed of net play, the first session was pretty much like the opening snippets before the credits of a mini-series or movie. Each character got enough time to show a bit of 'who they are'.

Josh and Nathan had less prep-time on their Starting scenes, but their in character interaction was priceless. The teamup of Rathamentos and Bacchius seems destined to be a never ending source of 'Odd Couple-like' friction and humor.

Osphylon has already picked up a girl with a problem. She believes he will help her, but his motives are unclear...

Naia has already developed friction with her half brother Triton and been expelled by him over his failure to do his duty. (well it was about her nagging him about it)...

There has been a couple of Relationships forged, and our first Character vs. Character Conflict.
Bacchius got Rathamentos to spring for a decent 2 person room, and got him very drunk...when all Rath wanted was to have a peaceful night, and he almost never drinks. When last we left him, his stomach was rising and the room was spinning, while Bacchius slept contentedly.
(should be good for all sorts of later grumpiness)

I had a good time!

Well the three remaining Demigods have now joined up for the first time at the end of last nights session (session #6).

They are in the Underworld having just avoiding the 3-headed dog guardian at the doors of Rath's father (Acheron ...a Death god) Fortress of Bone.

This was the first time the the characters made use of the ability to enter into a Conflict of another. Since both Osphylon and Bacchius had a mystical last scene, it didn't seem too big a stretch, and who says time runs the same in the Underworld. This allowed the other two to appear a long ways from their last scene.

We are still running at the Personal stakes level...things are winding up toward an adventure finish in about two session or so (I'm betting they up the Stakes level for next adventure).

The stakes involve whether Poseidon succeeds in co-opting the authority for the position of Deathgod (expanding from his traditional role of the sea dead). [the Players know the stakes]

I have no idea how this will play out, for the characters are right in the midst of this. THey could have great effect on the Deathgod status depending on what they want to do with Rathamentos' dad (Rath doesn't like dad much, but who knows?)...and there's apparently no love lost between Osphylon and Poseidon (plus, Os interfered a bit with some shipping Poseidons favorites like to control)
Bacchius is still running along on good natured partying and good reputation, we'll see how he tips the conflicts.

They also took advantage of the opportunity to make Relationships between one another where it made sense.

Funniest moment last night...
ReRoll by Bacchius ...
powered by Found item - "Chew Toy of the Gods" - to distract the dog.

Fun stuff for me!

Adventure #1 - and possibly the whole game -
has ended for the Demigods version of Trollbabe that we were playing on indie-netgaming.

Nine Sessions long.

Really enjoyed it, but it wrapped up with a 'final' feel to it, so we'll see if it gets continued for a second adventure in late summer / fall. I like the setting enough to try it again even with other characters.

I got too big for my own liking on the Stakes conflict. It came out cool, but, in the future I will try to keep the situation localized, concrete, and more focused than my fairly nebulous (conflict-wise) "Poseidon trying to take control of Underworld / become Death god".

The story log is posted in the indie-netgaming group Files area, within the Trollbabe folder.

Chris, Nathan, Josh... any comments on the system or the story?
Or on IRC play of it?

We've also kicked around the idea of continuing the Setting another time, using characters who are related to the original characters.

This would allow us to easily switch over to the alternate Social rolling method.

I enjoyed the game a great deal, the end was certainly full of unexpected events. There was one issue that was bothering me. I wanted to get my Relationships more involved in the story. Not necessarily in the same scenes as my demigod but going about and being involved in a few related intrigues. That really didn't happen and I think that the irc format was the culprit.

The game ran for nine sessions but that's probably only equal to half that many face to face sessions, at most. Irc play is obviously slower than face to face, we had one conflict that took about an hour to play out and resolve. Granted, all three players' demigods were involved but the slower communication and a tendancy to take advantage of the written format with long bouts of narration conspire to where playing out more than 4 or 5 scenes in session just wasn't practical. The sessions usually ran about 2-3 hours IIRC.

Basically, I think irc promotes the use of broad strokes in story telling. I know that I certainly felt the need to try and push events forward in an effort to make the most out of each session of play. Those broad strokes didn't really leave any room to insert Relationships most of the time.

Trollbabe works well for irc due to not having an excess of crunchy bits. We did alter the narration responsibilites slighty so Bob wouldn't develop carpal tunnel syndrome. Having the players add to Bob's narration also helped keep us involved and allowed us to portray subtle things about our characters that might not otherwise have come out.

All in all it was great fun. I liked how the game ended and I'm certainly amenable to playing again. I suggested to Bob that I'd like to play Protino, a young boy who was one of my character's Relationships.

-Chris

Thanks Chris!

Regarding the narration change.

It occurred to me that if we were playing this face to face then poeple would be describing more completely what they wanted to be doing in a conflict scene, the die roll and the GM feedback about what happened would be practically simulaneous.

The way we were going in the first game, where the general intent was stated, then I narrated pretty much the whole thing... made for lots of writing on my part, as well as 'sculpting' the actions of the characters a lot.

Example" Nathan' characters deflecting the thrown dagger into the scout. That was pretty much all my idea...although I did get Nathans ok on the idea.

It just never really felt right to invent so much myself. It also was another impediment to staying involved in the game, since Rolls are made so often in the original Roll method...the GM narrates a lot!

An artifact of IRC play I bet. GM narrating did allow me to drop hints and tie in character details (like the gem) when I remembered them.


Relationships
I had hoped for even more use of Relationships myself. But my deadline for finishing Adventure #1 really kept me from doing any cutscenes there, especially after the session #8 Conflict that took the whole Session. I was hoping that we would zip through that then either go to a finish, or set up for a finale...giving us extra time during a last session.

I was a little surprised that Josh didn't take Demeter as a Relationship (perhaps mentor) at some point, perhaps he would have.

IRC
I believe that the folks who are playing face-to-face have a great many more Conflicts in their games, which help mold things, since it takes very little time to say... the things that take us a while to type.

I also need to create much more focused games. A cast of interested NPCs, a problem that relates them, and actions(bangs) that could occur, closely related to the problem. Then introduce Chars into status quo, and see what way it tips, who comes out on top, and the consequences.

I honestly think that an adventure really shouldn't take more than 3-4 sessions, if I was running it better.