[SotC] AP description with GM commentary

[jetan]

I'm going to interleave the AP write-up by one of my players (http://codrus.livejournal.com/200075.html) with descriptions of my DM perspective while running it (written some time ago). Aspect references are in brackets.

So far in our game, I've deliberately been trying to stick to the rules as written, and so far, I'm very happy with that decision. We may switch to Landon's stress/consequences scheme, or I might just ratchet up the opposition. For issues I've encountered, the solutions I've found already addressed within the rules have generally been better than what I would have done winging it. Looking up rules occasionally to get clarifications has worked fine (it helps that we now have books and PDFs enough to go around). Incidentally, we do keeping wanting a version of the book that has the three per-skill sections (skills, stunts, and adjudication) grouped by skill. One of these days, I'm going to cut up and rearrange the SRD that way).

Wa-ping, the jungle princess Dr. Chance, scientist Blake Spade, investigator of dark mysteries. Capitaine Leclerc, the Demon of the Trenches The session will be light on some details, I was having too much fun playing to take detailed notes. (Or rather, I have a detailed writeup, but I know I'm missing some player actions here).

It was indeed a blast to DM as well. I had spent probably a total of an hour preparing a sequence of encounters, since I wasn't sure how long any particular encounter would take. I was inspired by Fred's zone sketch for his Dictionary of Mu game. That made an enormous difference in how fun, rich, and tactical the combat felt and how comfortable I was running this to-me new system.

BTW Wa-Ping's character is actual a Chinese martial-artist acrobat, raised originally in the jungle by Ta-Zhan (apparently, some git named Burroughs was inspired and wrote a revolting Westernization of his origin).

Wa-Ping recognizes the cries of villagers and those of large baboons. In a flash, she dives through the paper windowshade and up the fence to get a closer look. Blake heads out the door, while Dr. Chance goes out the window after Wa-Ping. While Wa-Ping's acrobatics serve her well as she tears across the rice fields, Chance and Blake realize that route will bog them down; they work their way to the road and towards the cries.

They were in a discussion with the local magistrate to find out what was going on at one Dr. Chance's labs. The fourth player couldn't make it, but conveniently, he has Stealth stunts; while they were distracted, he silently left. Wa-Ping went straight through the paper window rather than raising it, which was amusing. There were two zones of flooded rice fields between the magistrate's house and the silo. I treated crossing them as border 4, even though moving into or out of them was only border 1 for the fence. This hack sort of worked, but it meant that the players who took the road went almost as fast as the Superb athletics character crossing the fields directly. Now if she had said she was running along the fence, I'd have not imposed that additional +2 border.

Wa-ping is the first to arrive at the grain silo, perching on top of the fence. She finds a few villagers with torches trying to ward off the attack of wild baboons. Drawing on her knowledge of the jungle, she convinces one of the villagers to try holding the torche above his head to make himself look larger and more violent; sadly, the baboons rage burns past any normal fear they'd have, and the villager is quickly thrown to the ground and disarmed by the angry baboons.

Wa-Ping made a declaration. It started at +3 or +4 because it wasn't particularly interesting (pg 225) and didn't suggest heroics. Having it turn out to be wrong was very entertaining though. I then added +2 because the baboons were mutated by a drug so as to be unnaturally focused and enraged (but the players didn't know that).

Blake climbs over the fence and two baboons move to attack him, with two more climbing down from the top of the silo. The doctor draws one of his newest inventions, the Recoiless Revolver, and takes a firing stance outside the fence.

There were 15 or 16 Fair minions in all. This was one of the minion groups, and it was in a rear quadrant from the silo entrance.

The fence around the silo was minimal (border 1) to keep dogs out. The area around the silo was divided into 5 zones, one for each quadrant and one that was in the area right in front of the doorway (since it was shielded by the open doors and extended a little ways inside). The top of the silo was another a zone. I was vague in my head about how the top of the silo was connected with the group. Sometimes I treated it like a height border of 3 that needed a climb check to get up, sometimes like they were three zones apart, and sometimes like they were only two zones if you were throwing downward. I need to reread that section. In any case, I drew it out and we used miniatures, which we all rally liked a lot for its clarity. It was so nice not worrying about exact 5' measurements!

Drawing on her knowledge of the jungle, Wa-Ping takes her Demoralizing Stance and screams at the baboons, scaring off 3 of them. Blake tussles with a few of them and then dives out of the way at Chance's cry of "Blake, Duck!". The booms of Chance's hand cannon echo through the valley as splinters of wood go flying from the fence and silo, but the baboons avoid the shells. The baboons on the top of the silo fling dung and other bits at the good doctor, coating him with [slime].

Wa-Ping was in the forward quadrant, with a few minion groups. I missed the modifiers to intimidate that give opponents that are armed and confident a +2 bonus, so Wa-Ping's roll was against a defense of Mediocre (vs. social attacks). I let her use the stunt unmodified against the baboons because of her jungle experience and high Survival. Once she knew she had a good hit, she tagged [Jungle-vine style] martial arts to add +2 and thus take three fair minions in one shot.

Blake's gadget was potentially devastating, but he missed. We added the color to show off just how nasty it would have been if it hit. This was very nice because it was easy color to include later when I described taking out the baboons.

(Another round goes by where nothing happens; Dean was rolling well for mobs and all the players were rolling poorly).

At this point, a second band was attacking Wa-Ping, who was staying on the fence. She's got Acrobatics, and so is never limited by athletics, whereas they sometimes were. I described misses like they tumble over the fence, etc. This was looking like a dull slug-it-out combat. I wanted get some maneuvers going; so another band popped up on the roof and started flinging [slime] at Dr. Chance and Blake. I had plans for my free tags....

Wa-Ping dances on the the fence, drawing a set of baboons up and distracting them. Silhouetted against the torch and moon light, they make the first clear targets for the doctor; his shots send them tumbling to the ground. This is the turning point for the fight, the remaining four baboons are quickly dispatched. (Blake used his flashlight [dazzle] the baboons and Wa-ping lept in with a flying kick, that's all I remember).

The Wa-Ping setup was spin from her defence roll. Dr. Chance finally got a good roll, and that +1 meant he took them all out. It was a very nice combo. Blake is a mystic, not a brawler, and had been taking some stress. He did notice that the baboons eyes were glowing, though. His maneuver was the first maneuver to add an aspect. Wa-Ping's Flying Kick with that free-tag took them all out. One of the coolest realizations at this point was that "taken out" didn't have to mean killed. Thus, she leaped, kicked off the blinded one and into another one, taking them both out. The combination of the noise from the gun, the flaring light, and this new apparition was too much for the other two; (Alertness check) "you see the glow fade from their eyes, and with it the rage...they flee in perfectly natural terror". Dictating "taken out" let me drop story clues as part of the combat; very cool.

Interlude: The Recoiless Revolver is my (Dr. Chance's) least-subtle gadget, a straight +1 to guns skill for its recoilless accuracy, and a +2 stress on successful hits for the immense shells it fires. And it makes a resounding boom when fired. Very rude, and fun when it hit. Avoiding always taking the obvious gadget will be an issue, but for this first combat, I wanted to try the direct approach.

Apparently, the player has plotted out a variety of gadgets to surprise me with.... Damn that Dr. Chance!

With more baboons on the roof, Wa-Ping starts up the side of the silo with her jungle-vines style, while Blake heads around the building to the front where he can hear more cries. The doctor grumbles at the stench and sheds his [slimed] coat, reloading another huge cylinder into the revolver.

Here's where the vagueness about the top fo the silo caught me. Can Wa Ping do a flying kick? Use Acrobatics to drop the difficulty by 2? Dunno. I compromised and treated it as if her acrobatics meant she could move up it with Athletics as if it were 3 zones. I'll figure out a better answer for the future, because with an acrobatic character, and an inevitable battle in the rigging and superstructure of dirigible, I need a good answer to vertical movement!

The Doctor's maneuver was an aha! moment for me. I had worried that aspects placed by maneuvers would be as good as a consequence. With this simple action, I realized that aspects placed by maneuvers can likely always be countered by an appropriately clever counter-maneuver. It also was very cool because it came across as the character bringing his [wrong side of the tracks] aspect to the fore. We suspect that the "jacket coming off" might becoming a recurring theme (indeed in the next episode, he pulled it off and plugged a fuel line with it to prevent a furnace explosion, but that's another adventure).

As Blake rounds the corner, the bad feelings he had fighting the baboons are realized as he sees a huge Baboon whose bellows in rage as he beats a villager against the ground. The glowing green eyes are a clear indication that something is not right here. The baboon flings the peasant at him but he's able to dodge it {He actually did not dodge it; see below}. After he pops off a few shots, he flees back towards the doctor yelling "Trouble's coming!!!"

I probably should have given Blake an FP for his [Dogged Investigator] when he did this, since he was both beaten up and the least physical of the bunch. I edited the quote above: the peasant actually creamed him for stress 5. For the spin, I said he was [knocked to the ground]. I didn't actually think of this as a fragile aspect, though I probably should have. I treated this as a combat advantage (+1) that he could easily mitigate by taking the supplemental action of standing up.

The big boy was a "henchman": Great Might and Athletics, 4 stress, 2 consequences, 2 stunts (Wrestler, Body Toss), and two aspects ([pain just makes me angrier], and [must feed!], which loosely translated into "enraged by and focused on what's in front of him".

As Wa-ping deals with the baboons on the top of the roof, the King Baboon rounds the corner with some baboon minions and stalks towards Blake.

While he stalked towards Blake, he picked up that same hapless peasant and flung him at Blake again . This time, he missed.

The doctor is phased for a moment by the strange green eyes of the baboon; if this is the work of strange volcanic gasses, clearly taking the baboon in for study is paramount (compelled [Skeptic]). He point the revolver at the ground and kicks up huge clots in front of the baboons with his revolver, trying to slow them so that he has time to come up with a better plan -- maybe we can capture them in the silo. The baboons jump back for a moment, startled by the loud gunfire, giving Blake time to circle around the silo. (game terms: Dr. Chance used a blocking maneuver to keep the baboons from closing).

This particular compel was another aha moment. Up until this point, it had been a pretty simple, kill-the-monster fight. With this (restriction) compel, the whole game changed. I didn't dictate an action here, just stopped him from shooting this fascinating scientific curiosity. In some sense, it changed from a combat to an adventure surrounded by combat.

Meanwhile, Wa-Ping was clearing the minion group on top of the citadel.

The doctor follows Blake around to the front of the building, with the baboons in hot pursuit. There, he finds a terrifying sight...in the carnage the baboons wrought against the Chinese peasants, a number of torches landed inside the silo, which has begun to catch fire. Worse, he can see the semi-conscious form of a man inside. The doctor, having lived in the seedy side of Detroit, knows the danger of a fire that spawns out of control. He dives into the building, grabs a sand bucket and rushes to the nearer of the two fires. (IIRC, I tagged Wrong Side of the Tracks, but also got a fate point for it/heroic roleplayingh).

There goes Blake again. He ran around <I>into another group of minions</I>! And took more stress. The fire changed the stakes, and complicated the capture plan.

Meanwhile, Blake finally finds himself confronting the Baboon that has finally closed the distance on him. His eyes lock with the huge green eyes of the baboon and he freezes up...in that instant, he can't avoid the baboon, but he gets a deeper insight into the magical rage affecting this creature. (There was an aspect Compel here). The baboon grabs him and shakes him, tossing Blake to the ground and causing him to lose his gun (Minor consequence! Blake was already down a lot of stress here, but Dean tagged an aspect to get above his stress bar).

The big baboon attaches to the minions that are here, getting even scarier. Blake's compel was [haunted by the past]. He was out in the dark, alone, with a savage monster bearing down on him. "A mere gun cannot help him now" (restrict: don't shoot). I let him use Mysteries for an assessment instead, but I think lowered his defense for being distracted. He learned the [enraged by and focused on what's in front of him] aspect. Two small aha moments: yes, compelling to force them to take a more interesting action works well! and, FPs are a lot more effective when you spend them at the right time (e.g., to pop something from stress to consequences).

A few things happen in quick succession here: The doctor puts out the first of the two fires just as it begins to flare up into a serious conflagration. (I believe I had to tag [Down to Our Last Chance] to get into the building, which of course raises the stakes!). As the baboon is firmly [focused] on ripping Blake limb from limb, Blake recovers from being stunned and makes an active effort to distract the baboon. Seizing the opportunity, the jungle princess Wa-Ping dives down from her position on the roof, and grabs the baboon with both hands in exactly the way a baboon mother would soothe a cub. Her exceptional skills and from being [Raised by Ta-zahn] allow her to calm and remove the spell from the giant baboon. It coos like a baby and begins to rummage in her pockets for snacks. Meanwhile the giant baboon's posse continues to threaten and attack Blake.

I've describe Wa-Ping's baboon maneuver elsewhere (Survival to know what to do plus Acrobatics to get into position plus the [Here Kitty Kitty] aspect that she almost dropped from her character). He resisted with Resolve (Good) for invoking his [focus], but to no avail. What my description elsewhere did not note was that her maneuver, unknown to either the character or player, essentially operated as a compel against the [pain just makes me angrier] aspect; it broke the cycle of the rage fueling the mutation fueling the rage. Once he was out of that cycle, the glow faded from his eyes, and he was effectively a youngish non-angry baboon who's mama had just told him to settle down.

Wa-ping looks over at the growing flame and realizes just how devastating this will be for the peasants of the island. She rings the village alarm bell frantically to call the villagers. (There was a compel here, I think of her [I'm Chinese] aspect) Chance realizes that there's no chance to put out the remaining fires, so he moves over, grabs the semi-conscious peasant, and gets out the door just as the flames explode throughout the bottom floor of the silo. (tagged Dodged a Bullet to get out).

Another fun compel. She was ignoring the silo that was starting to burn right next to her, and was about to leap in and help Blake. Just <I>after</I> Dr. Chance had declared it was his [Last Chance] to put out the fire, I compelled her [I'm Chinese] aspect to realize that the village would starve without the food here. Suddenly it went from a terrain element to something that felt personal to her. Aspects rock! This was similarly a very loose compel: "the silo is crucial, do something about it". She declared the alarm bell and rang it!

The fire was fun. I treated the effort to keep it from spreading as a maneuver that would get more difficult each time the maneuver was failed. Spin would reduce the difficulty. By the time Dr. Chance got in there, I think I had two patches of fire at Average difficulty. He put one out, but the other was now Fair. At Fair, it was a Fire 1, which gives a point of stress per round. He could see that the guy was starting to get singed, and realized that he needed to get him out of there.

As the fires begin to spread, Blake continues to struggle with the remaining baboons. Deciding that Wa-Ping earlier assertion was correct ([Theory is sound]), Chance gets the babooon's attention and uses the growing flames to intimidate them and sends them fleeing into the jungle.

Perhaps I should have given him an FP for a self-compel. He was treating his aspect as giving him reassurance about Wa-Ping's bogus declaration. He got a good enough Intimidate with the tag and the fire at his back that he beat their mutation rage, so they turned back into normal baboons, and ran away.

Meanwhile, Wa-ping, having alerted the villagers, dives into the flaming building and grabs sand buckets, quickly putting out some fires. The doctor yells after her, "[The silo is going to explode!] You have to leave now! I'll replace the silo, but you gotta come now!". (In game terms, I used Engineering to declare this aspect, then free tagged it to help my Rapport attempt to convince her that the building was a lost cause. This was me following up on a series of other aspect tags -- Last Chance, Dodged a Bullet, etc....the building was gonna go, and nothing would stop it!)

I realized that he could afford to feed the village: he's Superb resources and his mobile Stately Pleasure Dome zeppelin is standing off the island. But Wa-Ping might not have thought of that, so until he said something, she was trying to deal with the situation directly. By the time he said something, she was now inside the even hotter fire.

Chance finally convinces Wa-ping of the danger...just as the peasant he is holding revives enough to call out for his daughter, still caught in the silo. Wa-ping begins to leap up into the silo, avoiding the growing heat and flames. The doctor gets the peasant's attention enough to learn that the girl is somewhere upstairs, where she had been told to hide. Relaying this to Wa-ping, she quickly works her way up the silo looking for the girl.

OK I have to enjoy this moment again. I waited until Dr. Chance used his engineering to declare that the structure was a goner, <I>then</I> the guy woke up and said "Where's Ta-ni? My daughter?" You could just see the realization dawn on the player's faces....

Blake grabs the other injured peasant and heads towards the village, where he finds the other villagers running towards the silo. While he is able to convince most of them of the danger (after all, [the silo is going to explode!]), many are not convinced and find Dr. Chance. (There was a compel of Blake's [Helpful Stranger] aspect).

They had not had quite all their aspects during the first session. [Helpful stranger] was an aspect that was added just before this adventure, so I didn't realize he had it until he self-compelled. That will be an easy one to compel. He also added [Your science can't explain this!] which will play nicely against Dr Chance's [skeptic].

Now that we knew that [the silo is going to explode!], I started the explosion ticker (for the powder explosion). I didn't want it to explode too quickly (you need quite a bit of heat on the stored grain), and besides, my players didn't realize just how bad an explosion was. I did something that was like the normal explosion rules, but a little slower. I started the doom counter at Mediocre, and rolled against the doom counter after each *action*. A failure meant the doom counter advanced (so future rolls would be more likely to advance it). At Fantastic, Kaboom.

Dr. Chance can see the fires expanding up, and realizes that Wa-ping isn't going to have an opportunity to get out through the main door....the only hope is to make a new one. Taking a two-handed firing stance, he puts huge shells through the support structures on the front wall, blowing the front of the building completely off the frame. Smoke billows out the side of the building, and the peasants, confused by his actions, tackle him to the ground.

Wa-Ping did her search on the bottom floor and then dashed up the stairs. Her acrobatics let her stay up in the framing and out of the flames, so she only took one stress from the heat.

The Doctor made an amazing roll on this maneuver, hence the much more extreme result than I had expected. Apparently the second floor construction was pretty simple! The peasants attacked because they were compelled by their need for the food. (Oh, and This crazy man is destroying their granary!)

Meanwhile, inside the silo, Wa-ping had been unable to see the girl through all the smoke and fire. But as the shells punch through the side of the building, she finally hears the girl cry out in surprise. She grabs the girl, pulls her in close and dives out through the new opening. Her appearance with the girl convinces the peasants that Chance is telling the truth about the fire. (I can't remember exactly how this went, I do know I used Rapport to convince them that I needed to blow the side of the building here).

The girl was in a complete panic. If you've ever had to pull a cat out from under a bed, you know how Wa-Ping tagged her [Here Kitty Kitty] to help her maneuver to pick up the girl and leap out through the hole that Dr. Chance had created. If Dr. Chance had just damaged the wall, she would not have been able to get away from the building in a single action. Without any help, she would have needed drag her up two more ladders and onto the roof. Good luck!

The popping and crackling as the building goes up tells the good doctor that it is only a matter of moments before the silo explodes. The peasants flee into the rice-fields. Wa-ping leaps over the fence with the girl. Dr. Chance pulls himself to his feet and drags the peasant with him. Moving to the fence, he has the sinking sensation he's simply not going to make it, but he's able to pull himself and the man over the fence and into the wet rice fields just as the silo explodes! He and the peasant are singed (minor consequence) but intact...he really [dodged a bullet!].

The building exploded just before his action. He tagged the aspect to succeed at his take cover roll.

Seeing the shocked impressions on the peasants faces, the Doctor is moved with sympathy to their plight. Having gone through a number of foodless nights on his own growing up [on the wrong side of the tracks] he calls out and gets their attention. He gives a rousing speech and says he will "make things right" for the village. This was, indeed, shameful grandstanding on my part to get a fate point, but it also really helped me define and think about more my character, so it was a win for the story. And I hammed it up.

And that's where we called it!

Implications and Thoughts

What a fun session! The entire session (4ish hours) was one extended running scene, but it went through three distinctive stages -- first fighting against minions, the second against the giant baboon and more minions, and the third a race to deal with the fires. The shifting nature of the scene really kept us all on the edge of our seats throughout the session -- it didn't feel like a fight that dragged on and on.

Dean, by the way, was just mean! He'd already planned on having a girl to save, and he introduced it right after I ratched up the stakes with [the silo is going to explode]. As he said it, the look on my face was worth it. On the other hand, I liked making that declaration. As a declaration, it wasn't really something my character "did" as much as something I the player declared. So while on the surface declaring it wasn't a "heroic" action, in practice it changed the nature of the scene in a great way. That particular element of gameplay felt to me to be almost the equivalent of good Whimsy Card play; as a player adding to the story.. While I originally did it to get a free tag (not wanting to spend more fate points), I did end up spending a fate point later on to survive my storyline.

Wa-ping is, by the way, really scary. With superb Athletics and great Fists (along with martial arts stunts), she's very difficult to hit in combat. Add in impressive Endurance, and stuff that will put down myself or Blake barely even phases her. In fact, almost all of the stress damage for our group in this fight was suffered by Blake at the hands of the giant Babboon -- the fact that we took the King Baboon out with a totally indirect approach was probably a good thing; prior to that, we hadn't done a single point of stress to either him or his attached posse of baboon minions.

As always in games with hero points, it is hard to resist the urge to spend the points to avoid failures. I think all three of us ended up down about 3-5 fate points over where we started (I went from 8 to 6, Stephanie went from 10 to 5, I don't know about Will). On the other hand, good roleplaying and good story development meant that we actually spent more than this with some points restored from compels. The bottom line is, it is probably better to suffer some stress than to blow hero points on defensive rolls. Stress, after all, recovers immediately at the end of the scene.

One discussion we had was on whether you, the player, should know whether you will fail a roll before you start tagging aspects to improve your totals. I know my take (and I think Dean agreed with me) was that spending fate points is tough enough that players should have some idea that they are gonna fail. More research into what the rules say is probably required here. I know another point we talked about was having the game master give appropriate feedback as to the urgency of a situation. That is, even if you aren't going to tell players after they've made their roll, it may help a player to make better decisions on fate point expenditures if they realize just how urgent the situation is. (An in-rules example, when I discovered that any explosion results in you being automatically Taken Out if you fail the Athletics roll, you can be damn sure I was willing to spend the necessary fate points to avoid it).

While at the end of the session Dean suggested that he should have done more compels ( to give us the chance to earn points), I think things were just about right. We had an appropriate number of compels that drove the story in some good ways; more than that could have resulted in us being caricatures. This was a warm-up fight, really, but I think it entirely appropriate that conflicts early in a story should pull fate points out of the party so that in the next fight (or the final fight), the players feel starved or desperate for fate points. As players, it also helps to offer possible compels to make the GM's job easier.

Many of the compels were nice to pull players out of the "safe tactical move" mindset of D&D and into much more cinematic behaviors. Stephanie's motivations changed significantly when it became important for her to save the silo and/or the girl.

So, to summarize, an awesome session! Rather than dipping our toes into aspects, this time we jumped in deeper with declarions, tagging, compels. For player-generated "story arcs", this was probably the best I've seen since the days of playing with Whimsy Cards. We really just plugged into the narrative, avoiding the "tactically sound" decisions and embracing the larger cinematic story. And really, we did a gritty, tactical combat without the minutiae of 5' steps and attacks of opportunity.

[Scurve]

Cool!

Shouldn't this be in the AP forums?

[jetan]

Originally Posted by Scurve

Cool!

Shouldn't this be in the AP forums?

Thanks. I posted it here because it's primarily about the adjudication and rule comments, not the AP part. I'm happy to move it if that's more appropriate (and moving it is possible).

[shockvalue]

Well, whether it's here or in AP, I wish every AP was like this one. I read APs to get a feel for how the rules handle and influence the situations in the game, but far too often the rules are ignored in the AP writeups. This was perfect. Thank you.

[jetan]

Originally Posted by shockvalue

Well, whether it's here or in AP, I wish every AP was like this one. I read APs to get a feel for how the rules handle and influence the situations in the game, but far too often the rules are ignored in the AP writeups. This was perfect. Thank you.

You are welcome! Sometimes I read APs just for vicarious enjoyment. When I want to understand how the game plays, though, that often not enough (that why this is in a rules forum). I would note that this was much easier because my player did the write up. He's got a few other write-ups on his site which I will eventually annotate and post (here or in the AP forum -- maybe a moderator will chime in). I'm hoping people will comment on the rule interpretations above.

[Corsair]

Originally Posted by shockvalue

Well, whether it's here or in AP, I wish every AP was like this one. I read APs to get a feel for how the rules handle and influence the situations in the game, but far too often the rules are ignored in the AP writeups. This was perfect. Thank you.

I concur. I'm looking at running SotC in a few weeks, and an AP like this is immensely helpful in helping to get a feel for how SotC should play.