AP13

by

4 Adventurers + 8 cultists + 1 priest +1 dinosaur demi-goddess + 30 mercenary musketeers =

It was only Jay and Rob tonight and they both forgot their characters. So, eff it, we rolled up new characters. Rob rolled up what turned out to be another cleric, Deacon Alia. He decided that she was from a different sect of the same religion of her humanity-worshiping cleric he rolled up previously. Jay ended up with a bad-ass fighter, a former city-guardsman with a gambling problem, Vassaly Kordor.

They were offered the possiblity of joining up with another duo to make a party of four if they were interested. They opted for a brother/sister pair of Specialists, Raya and Adam, who just got back from a crypt up north.

They took a job from Humberto, their union rep. Setting aside a pair of wizards who run rival gangs in the city, they decided on She Wears a Crown of Feathers, a dinosaur goddess with a cult of fallen nobility and crumbling upper crust types. They hoped that this would mean lots of money and they were right.

They knew that ‘Crown of Feathers has a small cult. They sent Adam to follow a pair of the cultists and then they broken into their house and threatened the shit out of them. I rolled their disposition and the husband got a 12, which means Helpful.  Fuck it, a law’s been passed that has declared their goddess a monster and he’s ready to roll over on them. He takes them to a fellow cultist family’s house and gets them past the gatekeeper just long enough for Vassaly to shoot the gate guard in the face.

Essentially, they broke into the family’s house and shot them both. They were using the original cultist’s as cover and the wife got shot, covering Vassaly in gore.

So, the back-story of the game that allows me to run city dungeon-y crawls is that the city of Marsui once had an open door policy for monsters. That law was revoked and now the Adventurer’s and Salvage Union has full rights to kill these monsters. Here’s where things get hazy. The monsters are otherworldly and inhuman (wizards, demi-gods, vampires, constructs) but the law states that anyone who aids them is also legally a monster.

This was hazy territory in a new, largely untested law that was only on the books for a week. They called their union rep and he called the union barrister. The barrister called a magistrate. The magistrate gave it all a green light, right there in the middle of the night.

They used the considerable silver they pulled from the cultist family to hire 30 musketeers for a day and armor up a bit. They also offered triple pay if the goddess falls.

They blew up the door of the dinosaur goddess’ temple with a barrel of black powder, attempting to drawn her out into the musket-fire. She was invisible in the middle of the temple and then she blew out one of her own walls, giving her a new exit that they had not anticipated  Raya and Adam got wounded and Alia had to heal herself a bit but other than that they were okay as the musketeers started to mobilize to take fire on the new side exit in the temple.

But Wears a Feathered Crown came around the other side and was in the middle of the musketeer mercs before they could fire and bit their sergeant in half. And in the critical roll of the game, they made their morale roll just as Vassaly hit her from a distance with a nat 20 rifle-shot, letting loose the battle-cry, “Triple-PAY!”

The Muskets were supposed to let loose their fire in 3 volleys of 10 but that was before a dinosaur goddess bit sarge in half. I rolled 30 d20’s on my phone’s dice roller app. She Wears a Feathered Crown fell dead, filled with musket balls, having taken a few shots from the adventurers on their way in and out of the temple.

I had rolled 4d20 x 100 for her money, as she come up as moneyed, so it was 5000 silver, along with a battle with an 11HD beast and there we were.

Deacon Alia leveled up and Vassaly surely will do so next game. With their XP from their crypt run up north, I bet their NPC Specialist friends leveled up too. I’ll keep them for future NPC’s.

That was fun.

crownoffeathers

Thoughts:

  • I looked over the summoning table more carefully and will use some bits from that for future Marsui-approved monsters.
  • They ended up with a ton of money, which is fine and fun. They took the risks, their plan paid off.
  • I want to put together some Union-approved equipment packages so that we can make chargen even faster.
  • Drawing all over maps is fun. I had a good map of her temple but I need to print out some city geomorphs for future games.
  • I like how we’re slowly making up these different sects of Rob’s Humanity Church. Alia’s holy symbol is an open palm, fingers down and there are different hand symbols for different philosophies.
  • Jay gave some decent weight to Vassaly killing people, which was nice. He wasn’t a cold, killing machine. Thank goodess because morally, this whole set up is kind of terrible and I’m just not thinking about any kind of metaphorical greater meaning that comes with declaring your neighbors as un-people for their religion and beliefs but…oof.
  • EDIT, two days later: The game really came down to two key roles. 1) the cultist’s reaction roll. The double 6’s that made him friendly changed the course of the game. Then the mercenaries made their morale roll and fired 30 shots at the Dinosaur Demi-Goddess. The players made good plans, took solid action and nickeled and dimed her, taking out her supporters for that key moment. Good stuff.
by

Image Inspiration for Marsui, Part I

The Dueling Oaks

“Go second breakfast yourself.”

Kukri!

It is a little late for the period but you get the idea.

From del Toro’s notebooks

 

Clearly a wizard of some kind, possibly a Crystal Wizard. By the law of Marsui, they are considered otherworldly and can be killed as monsters, not to be confused with Magic-Users who are still human, even if they do dabble in chaos forces best left untampered with.

Shoes are off; it is on now.

 

 

Could be any number of things, possibly a Refugee Deity, some kind of wizard-cursed beast or wizard’s creation run amok. It might even be a vampire of some kind with its coven. Francisco Goya; Witches’ Sabbath, 1798. Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.

 

Summoning gone wrong. El Infierno. Ilustración del manuscrito de San Agustín La Ciudad de Dios, libro XXII. http://iglesiadesatan.com/

 

A monster’s lair, municipal posting making the slaying legal has not yet been posted. Please wait for the posting to avoid murder charges.

Hand-and-a-Half Sword Dated: circa 1550 Place of Origin: Southern Germany Owner: Gustav I Vasa of Sweden Sidenotes: Gustav I of Sweden, born Gustav Eriksson of the Vasa noble family and later known as Gustav Vasa (12 May 1496 – 29 September 1560), was King of Sweden from 1523 until his death, previously self-recognised Protector of the Realm (Rikshövitsman) from 1521, during the ongoing Swedish War of Liberation against King Christian II of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Initially of low standing, Gustav rose to lead the rebel movement following the Stockholm Bloodbath, in which his father perished., Gustav’s election as King on 6 June 1523 and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later meant the end of Medieval Sweden’s elective monarchy as well as the Kalmar Union. This created a hereditary monarchy under the House of Vasa and its successors, including the current House of Bernadotte.

by

Adventurer and Salvage Union of Marsui

I had no idea what I wanted to exactly do tonight. I didn’t have any secclusia made up and hadn’t read any of the modules carefully enough to run them.

There was an old fantasy city that my buddy, Pete and I fleshed out years ago. It was a kind of fantasy-medieval New Orleans called Marsui with a Queen who had set up a system for monsters, demons and cultists to live in the city. I decided that Queen Moneille’s Law had just been over-turned in the city congress. This meant that their city-appointed watchers were pulled out and put back into the City Guard and a writ was posted declaring them monsters, declaring open season for licensed monster hunters to kick down their doors and destroy them.

Enter the Adventurer and Salvage Union. I started by calling it a guild but like the sound of union better.

I wanted a fast way to make up monsters and lots of random tables that would inspire.

Marsui Monster Creation Table

1) Wizard
2) Vampire
3) Golem
4) God Refugee

1) Fire
2) Shadow
3) Deep Sea
4) Lightning

1) Cemetary
2) Manor
3) Sewer
4) Tower

1) Poverty
2-3) Working
4) Leisure

I rolled 4d4 4 times and got the following

  • Vampire, Deep Sea, Sewer, Leisure – I named it Chton and rolled up its money.
  • Wizard, Lightning, Manor, Working – Named it Garred the Lightning Mage
  • Golem, Deep Sea, Sewer, Poverty – Corral
  • God Refugee, Fire, Sewer, Leisure – Pyre

For HD, I rolled 2d4 +2 but I think I will make it different for the different types in future games.

Monster’s Money Table

Leisure 4d20 x 100
Working 1d20 x 100
Poverty 1d20 x 10

I rolled 1d4 + 3 for Hit Dice for each monster and decided that Garred would have 3d4 +6 men at arms at his manor led by a 1st level Fighter.

City Random Encounter Table

1) Corrupt City Guard 1d8 0-level humans led by a 1st level Fighter
2) Toughs looking for their cut (1d4 0-level humans, 10% chance of a 1st level Specialist)
3) wizard’s creation gone amok (see Wizard’s Creation Table below)
4) Party of Adventures (1-2 coming back from their haul, 3-4 horning in on your haul, 5-6 setting up their own haul)
5) 2d20 0-level humans forming a mob to kill a monster in their neighborhood.
6) Monster on the run, looking to get out of here. 1-2 will pay 10d10 silver, 3-4 will offer money stashed outside of town, 5-6 will beg for help.

Wizard’s Creation Run Amok Table

1) Spiders
2) Flies
3) Octupi
4) Lobsters

1) Wolves
2) Deer
3) Possum
4) Monkeys

1) Swarm
2) 1 giant one
3) 1 humanoid, bi-pedal, creepy hands, a big mess
4) 1 herd

For some reason I also had a wizard-cursed monster table, which is what I used to make up Garred’s Pet.

Wizard-Cursed Animal

1) Alligator
2) Snake
3) Hawk
4) Ghoul

1) Fire
2) Shadow
3) Deep Sea
4) Lightning

I made a lightning snake.

Wilderness Random Encounter

1) Bandits, 1d10 + 3 0-level humans, 10% chance led by 1st level Fighter/Specialist/Cleric
2) Wizard Cursed Animal
3) Wizard Cursed village
4) Demi-human refugees, paranoid and scared
5) Adventurers on their way back from a haul 1, treasured, 2-5 wounded and in need of help, 6 on their way to a site
6) Back-story fodder from something a player had mentioned

The City Council had gotten rid of Moneille’s Law and had made it legal to hunt them. The union had existed already and was in a great position to take advantage of it. When entity’s are deemed monsters by law, the union often gets notified before anyone else knows. There were council-members who wanted to push the laws even further and make demi-humans, magic-users and even some religions monsters too.

The players all rolled up 3 characters.

I told them that wizards were always the union’s priority, so they would pick 3 to go after Garred the Sky-Mage. Their union rep informed them that the wizard had a manor out in the Overlook Ward. They asked if the city-appointed watcher was still around to answer a few questions. I thought that was smart.

Yeah, the watchers are absorbed into the city watch, so when they showed up, she was trying to get her squad in order. The rank-and-file guards didn’t like her and were giving her serious shit for having worked alongside monsters. She answered their questions and even passed along a bribe to the city guard patrolling in the area to check in on that street, a detail that would be important later.

Yeah, Garred is a paranoid jerk, always sure that some wizard was going to come take his shit. He hired a squad of men-at-arms led by a former soldier named Joshua, recently married who lived down the road from the manor. They paid a visit to the captain of the man-at-arm’s wife. She was pregnant and was overseeing the packing up of the house into crates. She said she was moving to the Pyramid Ward but that was clearly a lie as the goods were packed in dock-side shipping crates used to get stuff in ship’s hold with a ship’s name stenciled on the side.

It was interesting watching them ask around and investigate a bit with no mechanics to back that kind of thing up. I should have used the NPC Reaction Table and will do so next time.

They sent in a note to Captain Joshua, threatening the wife and when he road out like hell on a horse, that was when the fight started.

It was Mr. Aldriss the Specialist, Lafayette the Elf and Sooki the Cleric. I asked Jay why Mr. Aldriss did this for a living. He told me that it was all he was good at and he bored very easaily. I asked Joshua what Lafayette had heard about his faery otherworld homeworld from the elders in his enclave and I don’t remember what exactly he said but it brought out neat details about elves supposedly being here originally to elevate the humans to a better, elven way of being. I asked Witt what Sooki’s least favorite heresy was and he didn’t have an answer but it got him thinking and he mentioned some details about the religion, she worshipped Marsui itself. I didn’t want much of a back-story because I wasn’t sure who would live and who would die.

Key Moments:

  • Mr. Aldriss’ sneak attack was dropping mofo’s left and right and dropped the wizard.
  • Lafayette was not swayed by Garred’s Charm Person when he approached the servant’s entrance claiming to be a bard sent to entertain the troops at the behest of the captain’s wife; that would have changed everything.
  • Sooki recruited several members of the city guard to help assault the manor. They all died but they kept rifles off of her while she entered. When the city guard sergeant tried to muscle in on the haul, Sooki quoted all kinds of union by-laws at him and feeling the pressure, he backed off.
  • Sooki got dropped by a few men-at-arms but lived.

In the end, they gathered goods to sell and discussed it all with their union rep, Humberto. We all had a fun time and want to play again. That was neat and I want to make up more, more, more tables. I’d like to make a few detail tables for each type of monster. I think God Refugees will have cult members, wizard’s will have wizard-cursed beasts, vampires will have thralls and golems will have…something…maybe scholars/magic-users/engineers studying them.

Selling off a monster’s goods doesn’t earn them XP but even so, they are halfway to 1st level. They discussed keeping the wizard’s lab equipment and renting it out to magic-users rather than going for a quick buck. When real estate is on the line, the deal is the union gets to claim the real estate while everything on it is hauled by the adventurers. The union will send porters with a mule and a cart to move heavy stuff for sale.

by

Giant Spiders Settle in to the Sword Coast

From the BW forum post (but since they lost a bunch of threads a few months ago, I’m going to post the AP posts here too):

After the Siege of Waterdeep, we talked it over and decided that the Great Spiders Eat the Forgotten Realms game would be a campaign for just me and Witt. Rob had lost his character and Jason had gotten to the game very late; it felt like it was just me and Witt who were really bought in. So, the rest of the group gets togeter, Witt included, and plays AW, and me and Witt get together as we can to continue as a solo-campaign.

Tonight we just settled in to post-siege life. The spiders have settled down on the Sword Coast and apart from little pin-points of human infestation, there are no big threats this side of tne Aunuroch.

Lloth has joined the Matron’s Handmaidens, named Returning Holy Daughter, taking up some mountains in the High Forest with her retinue.

We played around with the Clashing Storm of the Sword-Kings bloody-versus battle rules. I need damage rules but I like the way it feels so far. More playtesting with that to come. We did a siege of Dragonspear Castle, filled with humanoid refugees…gnolls, goblins, some humans, a few trolls, all led by a Warlord keeping things together with a few giants. The Dragonspear was decimated.

Dragon-Heart Eater laid her eggs inside a dragon-egg, which her hatchlings will eat for sustenance once they hatch. She is going to have some funky, funky children.

The Matron has ordered that each Handmaiden send students to the other Handmaidens so they might teach their skills to others in the army/horde. 

Dragon-Heart Eater has leads on several dragons along the Sword Coast. Next game will likely be a hunt.

I can feel the NPC’s in the east, out near the Dale-lands trying to make some kind of fucking sense to a horde of giant spiders landing on Evermeet from an inter-planar portal, conquering it, then the Moonshaes and then taking down Waterdeep and every settlement of the North.

by

The rather dull Wizard’s Tower over the Chaos Knight’s Tomb

I’m getting together with a few friends to game during the week. We meet at a Starbuck’s in Manhattan, so Kevin can get back to Jersey at a decent hour and the rest of us can ride back to Queens on the train together.

We started by playing Torchbearer’s intro adventure, 3 Squires and it went alright. I fumbled us through the town phase and felt the grind of having the PDF but not the book. I learn better from print but enjoy referring to the text in play through my iPad.

Then it was time to make up my own dungeon. It sucked. I have never been good at making dungeons. As a kid, city adventures or sprawling, ridiculous political adventures made sense to me but making dungeons work never came naturally. The truth is, I need to make my dungeons like I do my cities and my political situations.

My dungeon had monsters that all wanted the same simple thing (to protect this area or that area), so there was not conflict occurring, nothing dynamic happening. When the players interacted with it, nothing about the ecology of the place was action packed or interesting.  The hell hound, crypt thing and golem were just fellas who did their job and didn’t have much to say to one another.

I remain intrigued by Torchbearer and want another shot at running the Wizard’s Tower over the Chaos Knight’s Tomb, a shot to spice it up and make it work but I will wait until the book arrives and I can give it another read-over.

It was even more frustrating because I was GMing for folks I hadn’t GMed for, so there was definitely the sting to my GM’s pride. It is stupid, I know but this is something I have done and done successfully since I was a kid and having a series of sessions go poorly was a bummer, a definite blow to my ego.

I wanted to write about a session that went lukewarm, didn’t want anyone to think that my gaming life was all backflips and high-fives. Sometimes I look over at Bret, John and Kevin and say, “Next time we get together to play, I’d like to play a dungeon that didn’t suck. This dungeon sucked.”

And that is okay, that is part of the deal sometimes.

by

Our Dances with Dragons: the map and the battles

Westeros is a really fun map, lots of castles and rivers and with folks who are fans of the books and/or show, lots of fun background. Also, making up stuff in Westeros history is a good time. I said something about the north still being made at the Starks over the King Who Knelt and had just put down the Bear Rebellion, in which the Mormonts rose up to attempt to take the north.

dadinwesteroswithnumbers

1) In which the Warden of the North quickly musters banner-men who can answer quickly and sets up camp in Moat Callin. He didn’t have the numbers he could have had but he had speed, aggression and a little bit of surprise at this point.

2) In which the Warden and his bastard brother take a segment of the army and go to the Twins in order to marry his brother to one of the Frey daughters while the bulk of his army, led by Lord Umber guided by a Maester to cross the river near Harrenhall, where an army loyal to the Princess is on the move. When the scouts note dragons on the horizon, they send 3 separate forces to draw them off. Two return but one substantial group of men is never heard from again.

Due to Riverrun being ruled by a child whose duties are seen to by an indecisive Regents Council, Lord Walder throws in with the North.

3) The Northern army overruns Silverhall and proceeds to pick the surrounding lands dry. Using the castle’s ravens and trickery, the Warden tricks the Lannister Army mustering at Casterly Rock into thinking that the northern host is moving down the Goldroad towards King’s Landing. They march hard to catch an army that is not there, leaving Casterly Rock open. When the Northern Host approaches Casterly Rock, the Iron Islanders are already burning and pillaging the city with plans to go right down the west coast of Westeros. The Warden convinces the leader of the raids to take him by boat to Dragonstone to break the siege.

At this point, they have around 7 dragons, picked up out of the westlands and from various Targaryen dragon-riders who have been cut off from other armies loyal to the princess.

4 – 5) The Ironmen’s fleet takes the Northern Host to Dragonstone where they break the siege and capture the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. When the commander insults the Warden of the North, mentioning the death of his son who had been squired to a knight who served the queen, the Warden showed restraint when the princess (the heir) ordered him to stand down and leave the hostage alive.

It was fun; we were hitting on beliefs and that is the crux of BW. Having huge battles resolved all in one roll wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped, particularly because the opposing side was not fully burned up, so I erred on the side of less dice, leaving the Warden outnumbering the Lord-Commander’s die pool in every conflict. Several key rolls needed artha to cause sixes to explode and my dad rolled 6’s very, very often that night.

I’ve begun work on a slightly expanded battle mechanic based on Bloody Versus. If you want to take a look at how it is going, you can look at Clashing Storm of Sword-Kings here or see it on the thread itself.

We were talking numbers at the table but they were hugely inflated and I have left them out so that any professional or amateur historians wouldn’t hurt their neck wincing. Going by GRRM’s numbers, the armies of Westeros, like the castles, are far more numerous and grand than the European counterparts.

Ravens are a big deal.  When the army is on the move, they can’t receive ravens and so they don’t know what is going on around the kingdom. My dad decided to keep things moving, mostly so no dragons could zero-in on them and decimate their forces. It was a smart gamble but they lost the ability to know what was going on in the rest of the war. When they take Silverhall, they learned what was where, where the dragons were and learned that half of the King’s Landing fleet had sailed north to sack White Harbor. It was neat and gave yet another advantage to those who stay behind their safe walls.

 

Other Posts:

Winter is Coming and the Dragons are Dancing

Visiting Westeros…

How we got to Westeros with BW

Clash of Kings: BW Thread about Big Battle Mechanics

https://shopofjudd.threadless.com/designs/what-do-we-say-to-the-god-of-death
by

How we got to Westeros via Burning Wheel

When introducing someone to tabletop role-playing games, I am of the opinion that genre is king. Finding a subject matter that they find compelling is the surest way to get them to sit around, roll dice and talk in funny voices.

My dad loves plenty of geeky media, as does his buddy, Charles. They both love military science fiction, so I considered Burning Empires but I don’t know BE very well. I know my dad loves westerns and samurai fiction but I wasn’t sure if Charles would be interested.

But Game of Thrones is media that they not only both know but that they had shared and taken in together. They discuss it and geek out over it. I know that Westeros was what I wanted to do.

Burning Wheel is my general go-to game when I’m playing with a group of folks who are down with its white-dwarf mechanical density. Charles had some gaming from his days in the midwest playing Diplomacy and Avalon Hill. Shit, he knew Dave Arneson! Crazy! But he had never gamed with him. My biggest worry, other than the thought that maybe my dad and his buddy might pick up dice in a fit of bickering and try to murder each other’s characters, was that BW was the wrong system for tonight.

First thing’s first, I tossed out the character sheets. The print is just too small for my dad and I didn’t want him to have to use his reading glasses or mag glass to read it. I wrote and labelled the Beliefs, Instincts, Relationships, Reputations, Affiliations, and skills. I offered two different reputations, allowing them to choose between two. The Warden of the North had Honorable or Brutal in Battle. My dad chose Brutal. The Bastard could choose either Dragon-fucker (meaning he was a lady’s man who often had romantic dalliances with Targaryen women) or Best Warrior in the North. To my intense relief, he chose Dragon-effer, though he gently chided me on my language choice.

When they were getting their dice together, I’d help them do so, which gave me time to let them know exactly what they were rolling for, what would happen if they failed and how many successes they needed. Witt was key to the whole process. He was the model of good role-playing and got to also show where they could get extra dice.

I totally left out traits, skill advancement, sub-systems, equipment lists, and everything else on the character sheet. If someone had been hurt, I would have explained the consequences and when they made Circles rolls, even though their Circles stat wasn’t on their cheat-sheet, I explained where the dice came from and how their Reputations played into it.

When they resolved a belief, I crossed it off their sheet and marked their Persona point. When my dad started musing about turning dragon on dragon and perhaps becoming King in the North again, I picked up his sheet and wrote it down as a new belief. And when they did something artha-worthy, I gave them their artha and explained why. The artha they got pretty much saved them game for them on two HUGE rolls.

I was pretty sure it was going to be a good night when I explained the situation over dinner and my dad turned to Charles and said, “Brother, I need some dragons; go get me some dragons.”

“I can’t get you dragons…”

“I’m your liege lord and if I say get me dragons, get some some damned dragons.”

And they started bickering over dinner.

“Save it for the game, guys. This is good stuff.”

I think in another session, I could have added Circles and Resources to their character sheet without a problem, another after that, I could have added stats and wounds. Then some traits and then skill advancement along with some Duel of Wits.

I needed to trim BW to just what I needed to convey their characters for a one-shot. The stuff I left out is vital for BW to work for long-term play but what I needed tonight was a large font and just enough fire on the wheel’s spokes to let them know what kind of character they were playing.

Also, I made it very clear that there were NO right answers. “I’m putting you in a tight spot and the interesting stuff will come from what you decide to do with it.”

My dad does this thing I love where he’d step away from his character and told me what other characters think and feel and how they react. “No, dad, you don’t get to decide that; that is my job. You just play lord Bertum Stark.” He was always doing this great stuff, pushing the boundaries of what he could and could not make up.

“I’m supporting the princess because the last time I saw the king, he told me he wanted her to be his heir, back when we went hunting together. She is the legal heir and so I’m supporting her; that is that.”

Awesome.

Burning Wheel system stuff aside, I loved at the end of the night when my dad jumped up, all excited and said, “That was really fun! I totally understand why you’d do this.”

https://shopofjudd.threadless.com/designs/what-do-we-say-to-the-god-of-death
by

Visiting Westeros with my dad, his buddy and a long-time, dear gaming friend.

I have always wanted to game with my dad but the hunger grew especially keen after he had his heart attack. He called me to let me know that he was in the hospital and getting a stent put in his chest right as my plane took off on my way back from a vacation. I spent the flight staring off into space, not sure if he would be alive when I landed and there was a thought that echoed in my head over and over until the plane landed and I called to find out that he was alive.

“I should have gamed with my dad, should have shared that thing I do with him because he’d enjoy it too and I want to show him what I have been doing all these years. I should’ve shared it with him and now I might not get to.”

Ever since, every time I see him or he comes to see me, I get a game together that I think will work and plan to game with him. Every time I come home with some bullshit excuse why we didn’t do it and that next morning I’d look myself in the mirror and say, “But there might not be a next time; we just don’t know.”

Finally, we got to game tonight.

A few months ago he told me about how he had been going to his friend’s house every week to watch the Game of Thrones television show. That friend was visiting this weekend, so I wrote up a scenario about the Dance of Dragons, in which House Targaryen is in the midst of a civil war over the heir to the Iron Throne. For the first time in Westeros history it is dragon versus dragon.

My dad was the Warden of the North, The Lord of Winterfell. His buddy was his bastard brother, the one who was willing to do the bloody deeds his Lord wasn’t willing to do.

I have so many favorite moments that I don’t know where to begin.

stark

My dad and his buddy in battle with a Targaryen who is trying to get his dragon into the air so that it can breathe hot death on them. The bastard brother kills the dragon-rider/knight/Targaryen prince and my dad wounds the dragon a bit and as they attempt to drive the dragon into the nearby archers’ fire the Targaryen squire runs up, crying. He’s a teenage boy and he begins begging, “Please don’t hurt the dragon! Please!”

My dad: “I cut him down.”

The table goes silent and his buddy, Charles expresses shock and dismay.

“Listen, I don’t like killing kids but if that kid started giving the dragon orders that would’ve the end of us.”

As the dragon got away, badly wounded, they bickered, covered in human and dragon blood.

stark

The bastard brother rushed up a tower of a castle with their Maester to stop a knight from burning the missives in the Maester’s tower. He guts the knight before he can burn the missives and while the knight bleeds to death he spits curses at him. “You will kneel to a queen!?! What kind of man are you?”

“What kind of man are you?”

“I’m bred from Andal-stock, men belong on thrones, not women.”

“Times change…”

stark

Witt was an important piece of that puzzle. He’s gamed with me for years and not only go to feed the key pieces of Westeros-lore but got to offer his own Burning Wheel-wise helping dice and prompt cool role-playing through his subtle depiction of the Maester.

stark

We marked up a map of Westeros, my dad sending his armies hither and yon. We had a wedding at the Frey’s place. Princesses, Iron Men, dragons, ravens, battlefields, some bickering, some death and loss and a Warden of North who started to hope that if enough of the Targaryens kill each other’s dragons, maybe there could be another King in the North.

I got to visit Westeros with my father, show him what it is I have been doing all of these years and see him do it too and do it well.

Now it is time to crash out, go to sleep and dream of dragon fire.

Our Dances with Dragons: the map and the battles

Westeros is a really fun map, lots of castles and rivers and with folks who are fans of the books and/or show, lots of fun background. Also, making up stuff in Westeros history is a good time. I said something about the north still being made at the Starks over the King Who Knelt and had just put down the Bear Rebellion, in which the Mormonts rose up to attempt to take the north.

dadinwesteroswithnumbers

1) In which the Warden of the North quickly musters banner-men who can answer quickly and sets up camp in Moat Callin. He didn’t have the numbers he could have had but he had speed, aggression and a little bit of surprise at this point.

2) In which the Warden and his bastard brother take a segment of the army and go to the Twins in order to marry his brother to one of the Frey daughters while the bulk of his army, led by Lord Umber guided by a Maester to cross the river near Harrenhall, where an army loyal to the Princess is on the move. When the scouts note dragons on the horizon, they send 3 separate forces to draw them off. Two return but one substantial group of men is never heard from again.

Due to Riverrun being ruled by a child whose duties are seen to by an indecisive Regents Council, Lord Walder throws in with the North.

3) The Northern army overruns Silverhall and proceeds to pick the surrounding lands dry. Using the castle’s ravens and trickery, the Warden tricks the Lannister Army mustering at Casterly Rock into thinking that the northern host is moving down the Goldroad towards King’s Landing. They march hard to catch an army that is not there, leaving Casterly Rock open. When the Northern Host approaches Casterly Rock, the Iron Islanders are already burning and pillaging the city with plans to go right down the west coast of Westeros. The Warden convinces the leader of the raids to take him by boat to Dragonstone to break the siege.

At this point, they have around 7 dragons, picked up out of the westlands and from various Targaryen dragon-riders who have been cut off from other armies loyal to the princess.

4 – 5) The Ironmen’s fleet takes the Northern Host to Dragonstone where they break the siege and capture the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. When the commander insults the Warden of the North, mentioning the death of his son who had been squired to a knight who served the queen, the Warden showed restraint when the princess (the heir) ordered him to stand down and leave the hostage alive.

It was fun; we were hitting on beliefs and that is the crux of BW. Having huge battles resolved all in one roll wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped, particularly because the opposing side was not fully burned up, so I erred on the side of less dice, leaving the Warden outnumbering the Lord-Commander’s die pool in every conflict. Several key rolls needed artha to cause sixes to explode and my dad rolled 6’s very, very often that night.

I’ve begun work on a slightly expanded battle mechanic based on Bloody Versus. If you want to take a look at how it is going, you can look at Clashing Storm of Sword-Kings here or see it on the thread itself.

We were talking numbers at the table but they were hugely inflated and I have left them out so that any professional or amateur historians wouldn’t hurt their neck wincing. Going by GRRM’s numbers, the armies of Westeros, like the castles, are far more numerous and grand than the European counterparts.

Ravens are a big deal.  When the army is on the move, they can’t receive ravens and so they don’t know what is going on around the kingdom. My dad decided to keep things moving, mostly so no dragons could zero-in on them and decimate their forces. It was a smart gamble but they lost the ability to know what was going on in the rest of the war. When they take Silverhall, they learned what was where, where the dragons were and learned that half of the King’s Landing fleet had sailed north to sack White Harbor. It was neat and gave yet another advantage to those who stay behind their safe walls.

Winter is Coming and Dragons are Dancing

I am jotting down notes on a Burning Wheel one-shot for my dad. He is going to be the Lord of Winterfell during the Targaryen Civil War, also called the Dance of Dragons. He will have children on both sides of the conflict, a son who is a squire to the queen’s brother and a daughter who is a lady-in-waiting to the princess.

And he will have intense pressure to not sit this one out. His grandfather was the King-Who-Knelt, who bowed down to the Targaryens and their dragons without a fight. If he sits out, he is going to have to do something intense or the other Northern Lords are going to start calling the Starks craven.

Based on the short excerpt to an upcoming short story about the Dance of Dragons, it is turning Westeros into a meat-grinder, with Queens folk on one side of the river and the Princess’ folks on the other side.

My dad is going to play the Lord of Winterfell, his buddy will play his bastard brother and Witt is going to play their Maester, a perfect role for a RPG veteran helping two newbies at the table.

I’m looking forward to it.

How we got to Westeros via Burning Wheel

When introducing someone to tabletop role-playing games, I am of the opinion that genre is king. Finding a subject matter that they find compelling is the surest way to get them to sit around, roll dice and talk in funny voices.

My dad loves plenty of geeky media, as does his buddy, Charles. They both love military science fiction, so I considered Burning Empires but I don’t know BE very well. I know my dad loves westerns and samurai fiction but I wasn’t sure if Charles would be interested.

But Game of Thrones is media that they not only both know but that they had shared and taken in together. They discuss it and geek out over it. I know that Westeros was what I wanted to do.

Burning Wheel is my general go-to game when I’m playing with a group of folks who are down with its white-dwarf mechanical density. Charles had some gaming from his days in the midwest playing Diplomacy and Avalon Hill. Shit, he knew Dave Arneson! Crazy! But he had never gamed with him. My biggest worry, other than the thought that maybe my dad and his buddy might pick up dice in a fit of bickering and try to murder each other’s characters, was that BW was the wrong system for tonight.

First thing’s first, I tossed out the character sheets. The print is just too small for my dad and I didn’t want him to have to use his reading glasses or mag glass to read it. I wrote and labelled the Beliefs, Instincts, Relationships, Reputations, Affiliations, and skills. I offered two different reputations, allowing them to choose between two. The Warden of the North had Honorable or Brutal in Battle. My dad chose Brutal. The Bastard could choose either Dragon-fucker (meaning he was a lady’s man who often had romantic dalliances with Targaryen women) or Best Warrior in the North. To my intense relief, he chose Dragon-effer, though he gently chided me on my language choice.

When they were getting their dice together, I’d help them do so, which gave me time to let them know exactly what they were rolling for, what would happen if they failed and how many successes they needed. Witt was key to the whole process. He was the model of good role-playing and got to also show where they could get extra dice.

I totally left out traits, skill advancement, sub-systems, equipment lists, and everything else on the character sheet. If someone had been hurt, I would have explained the consequences and when they made Circles rolls, even though their Circles stat wasn’t on their cheat-sheet, I explained where the dice came from and how their Reputations played into it.

When they resolved a belief, I crossed it off their sheet and marked their Persona point. When my dad started musing about turning dragon on dragon and perhaps becoming King in the North again, I picked up his sheet and wrote it down as a new belief. And when they did something artha-worthy, I gave them their artha and explained why. The artha they got pretty much saved them game for them on two HUGE rolls.

I was pretty sure it was going to be a good night when I explained the situation over dinner and my dad turned to Charles and said, “Brother, I need some dragons; go get me some dragons.”

“I can’t get you dragons…”

“I’m your liege lord and if I say get me dragons, get some some damned dragons.”

And they started bickering over dinner.

“Save it for the game, guys. This is good stuff.”

I think in another session, I could have added Circles and Resources to their character sheet without a problem, another after that, I could have added stats and wounds. Then some traits and then skill advancement along with some Duel of Wits.

I needed to trim BW to just what I needed to convey their characters for a one-shot. The stuff I left out is vital for BW to work for long-term play but what I needed tonight was a large font and just enough fire on the wheel’s spokes to let them know what kind of character they were playing.

Also, I made it very clear that there were NO right answers. “I’m putting you in a tight spot and the interesting stuff will come from what you decide to do with it.”

My dad does this thing I love where he’d step away from his character and told me what other characters think and feel and how they react. “No, dad, you don’t get to decide that; that is my job. You just play lord Bertum Stark.” He was always doing this great stuff, pushing the boundaries of what he could and could not make up.

“I’m supporting the princess because the last time I saw the king, he told me he wanted her to be his heir, back when we went hunting together. She is the legal heir and so I’m supporting her; that is that.”

Awesome.

Burning Wheel system stuff aside, I loved at the end of the night when my dad jumped up, all excited and said, “That was really fun! I totally understand why you’d do this.”

NOTE: This was originally a few different blog posts written in the afterglow of the game described above. I decided to put this all in one place. If that is confusing, my apologies.

https://shopofjudd.threadless.com/designs/what-do-we-say-to-the-god-of-death
by

Winter is Coming and Dragons are Dancing

I am jotting down notes on a Burning Wheel one-shot for my dad. He is going to be the Lord of Winterfell during the Targaryen Civil War, also called the Dance of Dragons. He will have children on both sides of the conflict, a son who is a squire to the queen’s brother and a daughter who is a lady-in-waiting to the princess.

And he will have intense pressure to not sit this one out. His grandfather was the King-Who-Knelt, who bowed down to the Targaryens and their dragons without a fight. If he sits out, he is going to have to do something intense or the other Northern Lords are going to start calling the Starks craven.

Based on the short excerpt to an upcoming short story about the Dance of Dragons, it is turning Westeros into a meat-grinder, with Queens folk on one side of the river and the Princess’ folks on the other side.

My dad is going to play the Lord of Winterfell, his buddy will play his bastard brother and Witt is going to play their Maester, a perfect role for a RPG veteran helping two newbies at the table.

I’m looking forward to it.

by

Torchbearer: In which I give thanks to Pete and Aaron

Tonight we played Torchbearer and Viktor, the human warrior and Seamus O’Burren, human thief died under the House of Three Squires. I can’t say how, because I will be running the same module on Thursday but I will say that I learned a whole lot.

And I will say, “Thank you, Aaron and Pete.”

These were my Burning Wheel buddies in Ithaca, the guys who learned that system with me and of the three of us, I think Aaron really mastered it. They were with me while we played games that were playing directly to my strengths, so it was nice to see their punams over Google+ Hang-outs and game again, this time in a game that was very much not to my strengths.

Truth is, I have never liked running dungeon crawls. I always loved sprawling fantasy cities with different factions feuding, city districts ruled by my favorite entries from the monster manual, trying to gain power and getting the players neck deep in a glorious political mess. Designing dungeons never made sense to me and modules never felt right.

Cities, castles, covenants of magi all made sense to me as a GM but dungeons were a mystery and still are. So, I’m turning a strength into a weakness due to the sufferance of my glorious friends. Thank you again, Pete and Aaron.

Tonight, I killed their characters, which is fine but I made some mistakes. I am running the module again on Thursday with some guys face-to-face, here’s what I need to do better.

I need to manager the transitions better, think about what sounds are floating through which doorways and what people are hearing as they go room to room. Thinking of each room as this fixed piece sucks and it was that kind of weak-ass GMing that got Viktor and Seamus killed tonight more than anything else. I need to ask my players what they are doing more, and how they are doing it. I need to ask where they are in the room and how they are standing, who is near the light and who is far away. In order to get that I need to describe and invoke a room worth standing in.

I need to highlight bits of each room that I don’t want to forget. I forgot one of the traps. That is easy enough.

There was a big moment, a few big moments, but one moment where I shifted into dick-dungeon-GM mode. They had captured two REDACTED in the dungeon but they didn’t speak REDACTED, so the REDACTED just barked at them in their language, not knowing what they were saying. There was no way to learn more other than going deeper into the dark with time running out.

I’m learning how to be a cruel GM with a little help from my friends.

Thanks, guys.

The bad news is that Viktor and Seamus are dead and I felt like we all deserved better GMing. The good news is that I get to refine this skill further on Thursday and try again.

EDIT, more thoughts:

GM’s, highlight room details and think about your transitions from room to room.

Players, STOP AND LISTEN, do not just stroll into the next fucking room! Stop and listen…

GM’s, when I let them know the room’s exits and they say where they are going, I need to ask more questions about how they are going, in what order and just more about how they are moving and what specifically they are doing. More personal descriptions about the environment and how it is effecting the character.

The dungeon isn’t personal, isn’t tailor made for the character, so I need to work harder to put them there.