Category Archives: Game Session Debriefing

Wayward Sons: Mansion of Madness

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The last time that I blogged about our ongoing campaign one of the characters was possessed by a demon and left to rot in the basement of a cabin. We followed up at the next time with the introduction of his player’s new character The Professor.

This time the introduction was successful. Introducing new characters might be a little problematic at sometimes (later on that matter) but this worked. I asked the players questions to tie the professor into their group and help to explain why they would trust in him. The players redistributed the Trust they had to his predecessor and some even gave the new guy some Trust.

During this session I was kind of hoping we would get closer to the goal of the campaign – finding the lost (and cursed) gold treasure of the characters’ ancestors. I was however prepared for a bit of side-roading as I knew there was an old manor between them and their goal.

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Wayward Sons: Love letters & Demonic possession

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WaywardSons13022013

Disclaimer: This post includes bad language and attitudes that really aren’t a representation of what we actually think. It only goes to show out we have bad taste.

As we grow more and more accustomed to this hack and how it works we manage to extend the game and bring in more interesting elements to the game.

This week I send two of my players a love letter. Now I am not sure I actually used them the right way but since this is after all our game I think the point was that they were successful. Or at least one was.

Due the first letter and the roll that followed one of the PCs got a prison tattoo. That was not too interesting. That taught me to be more considering when making the letters. Dull outcomes bring a little to the game.

The second letter was much more interesting. It bring out demonic possession and end up nearly killing the whole group.

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Start of a New WFRP Campaign

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Note to self – iPad is not for photos

After three year hiatus we finally returned to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition. We played a memorable campaign with the WFRP 3rd edition and a couple of failed tryouts in those three years. And while I still think it is an excellent system opening the corebook of 2nd edition was like seeing a good friend in a long time.

This time we have a one of my original WFPR2 players alongside with a WFRP3 player and a couple of new ones. The Old World is not as familiar to them (excluding the vet from 2nd edition) but that does not hinder us. In fact it might prove to be a good thing since we are decided to go with a different approach than your regular WFRP campaigns.

We decided to go with dungeon bashing.

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Wayward Sons – 1st Session & Playbooks

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So we started our campaign two weeks ago. I had written five playbooks with Aki with following the ideas of the players in our gaming group. We had got together earlier to talk about the characters and so most of our group had a good idea of what kind of character they were going to play.

The main point for designing these characters was that they were more “a” than “the”. As the regular playbooks for hacks deal with characters that are the movers and shakers of their worlds in Wayward Sons the characters start out only as regular men and women. They have the possibility of grow to be the most important people of their kind – as well as turn into monsters along the way.

We followed the basic structure of Apocalypse World during this first session. Playbooks were distributed, players fill them out (complaining about bits and correcting others) and afterwards we discussed about the characters and their shared past.

As the established fact was that all characters had had their first paranormal encounter they all decided what was their Angle. (This was something that we quickly realised needed to be presented in the playbook as a choosable option). Within a little over an hour we had created a detailed history for the characters and a horrible mind-map for me to use as a GM as the foundation of the campaign.

Following the advices of AW and told the players that this session was about their characters. We followed them around, used moves and got into trouble. We did not have a fight though. This was actually something a realised only later on. Another thing I noticed was that Wayward Sons probably needs a little more flavourful 1st session sheet for GM.

The summary for the events of the first session:

The characters had arrived the the city of Rapid Falls in North Dakota following the cryptic hint from a Well-Dressed Man. They searched a safety deposit box to and found a large set of papers, photos and 8mm video. While going through the material they realised they were all connected to it and to each other somehow. It all seemed to have something to do with what their fathers and their fathers had done.

Following the leads from the documents the party searched the city archives and tried to make contact with the manager of the bank where the documents where held.

I confess I actually had a basic storyline in mind before we started the session (this actually being a part of a campaign we have been playing for almost two years). Nevertheless the players had a huge impact on the flow of the story and the clues found. It was all in all an excellent starting point for the campaign.

We are getting together to play the second session tomorrow. Hopefully we can work out even more problems with this hack and still have a good time.

The first five preliminary and “this needs some serious editing” playbooks as pdfs:

Notice – Yes. They are all pretty much work in progress. I shared them for feedback.

The Guild Sealed Tournament, Theros Edition

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Couple of days ago, we had our guild Theros sealed tournament. We got eight players, which was pretty good, although the number of players also meant it took quite a while since we play round-robin. I was home after 2AM, but I did win with six match wins and one match loss.

[cardlist title=My card pool]
[White]
1 Cavalry Pegasus
1 Decorated Griffin
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
3 Ephara’s Warden
1 Favored Hoplite
1 Observant Alseid
1 Scholar of Athreos
1 Setessan Griffin
2 Wingsteed Rider
[/White]
[Blue]
1 Bident of Thassa
1 Crackling Triton
1 Fate Foretold
2 Mnemonic Wall
1 Nimbus Naiad
1 Thassa’s Bounty
1 Triton Shorethief
2 Triton Tactics
1 Voyage’s End
1 Wavecrasher Triton
[/Blue]
[Black]
3 Asphodel Wanderer
1 Boon of Erebos
1 Cavern Lampad
1 Dark Betrayal
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Insatiable Harpy
1 Lash of the Whip
1 Loathsome Catoblepas
1 March of the Returned
1 Mogis’s Marauder
1 Pharika’s Cure
1 Read the Bones
1 Returned Phalanx
2 Sip of Hemlock
1 Tormented Hero
[/Black]
[Red]
1 Borderland Minotaur
1 Deathbellow Raider
2 Demolish
1 Ill-Tempered Cyclops
2 Lightning Strike
2 Messenger Speed
1 Ordeal of Purphoros
2 Portent of Betrayal
1 Purphoros Emissary
1 Rage of Purphoros
1 Rageblood Shaman
1 Spark Jolt
1 Titan’s Strength
1 Wild Celebrants
[/Red]
[Green]
1 Artisan’s Sorrow
1 Centaur Battlemaster
1 Defend the Hearth
1 Karametra’s Acolyte
3 Nylea’s Presence
1 Savage Surge
2 Sedge Scorpion
1 Shredding Winds
1 Time to Feed
[/Green]
[Gold]
1 Daxos of Meletis
2 Kragma Warcaller
1 Sentry of the Underworld
1 Shipwreck Singer
[/Gold]
[Colorless]
1 Burnished Hart
1 Fleetfeather Sandals
2 Guardians of Meletis
1 Prowler’s Helm
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Temple of Abandon
[/Colorless]
[/cardlist]

I try to keep the blog free of profanity, but yes, I got a fucking [scryfall]Elspeh, Sun’s Champion[/scryfall] in my pool (being white, I’m not sure she would approve either). That actually may have influenced my deck building process a bit too much, to be honest, but I couldn’t just leave her out, now could I?

The thing with Elspeth is that she can win the game on her own, but she has a CMC of six, which means it takes time to cast her. Therefore, I needed to make a controllish deck, which could keep the opponent in bay until I can get Elspeth online. Of course, the probability of drawing Elspeth in a given game is not enough to rely on her alone, so I needed other routes into victory.

If I hadn’t needed other wincons, I would have probably gone with black, since black had the best defensive cards. Actually, even the [scryfall]Asphodel Wanderer[/scryfall]s could have been wincons on their own, if everything else failed, but that’s just not the style I like to play. I like being more proactive. Not necessarily much, but somewhat.

Therefore, I decided to go with blue. Ok, Daxos had a lot to do with it. According to the lore, Daxos is Elspeth’s friend, so they must go well together. Also, I had ways of making him hard or impossible to block.

White and blue had only 25 cards. I didn’t have much room to take out anything. After taking out the creatures which had activated abilities requiring mana of color I didn’t have ([scryfall]Setessan Griffin[/scryfall], [scryfall]Scholar of Athreos[/scryfall], [scryfall]Crackling Triton[/scryfall]), I was down to 22, which was a good number, but since I wanted to play a couple of the artifacts, I needed to take out a couple of cards. I decided on [scryfall]Triton Shorethief[/scryfall], which is kind of useless, and a [scryfall]Ephara’s Warden[/scryfall], which is actually great, but little on the expensive side and I already had two of in the deck.

I did weigh [scryfall]Guardians of Meletis[/scryfall] against [scryfall]Mnemonic Wall[/scryfall] quite a bit, but decided on the blue option, even though I didn’t have very many instant or sorceries (only four all in all). I probably should have gone for the mix, because I did end up chumping with them in many cases where the Guardians would have been able to take the hit. Also, a couple of times I just couldn’t get value from them, because I hadn’t drawn an instant or sorcery, or I didn’t want to play one just yet (although, I did bluff with this once).

Other artifacts I ended up playing were [scryfall]Burnished Hart[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Fleetfeather Sandals[/scryfall]. I chose the latter over [scryfall]Prowler’s Helm[/scryfall] because I wanted to be able to block fliers more frequently, although it was soon clear I had more fliers than anyone else, which also made the choice better because flying pretty much equalled unblockable.

The deck felt pretty light on creatures, but gladly there wasn’t much removal being played and the removal that was played was often negated by [scryfall]Triton Tactics[/scryfall].

I didn’t sideboard once. I just didn’t have anything to sideboard, unless I was ready to rework much of my deck, which might have actually been a good idea in some cases.

[cardlist title=The deck]
[Creatures]
1 Burnished Hart
1 Cavalry Pegasus
1 Daxos of Meletis
1 Decorated Griffin
2 Ephara’s Warden
1 Favored Hoplite
2 Mnemonic Wall
1 Nimbus Naiad
1 Observant Alseid
1 Wavecrash Triton
2 Wingsteed Rider
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Bident of Thassa
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
1 Fate Foretold
1 Fleetfeather Sandals
1 Thassa’s Bounty
2 Triton Tactics
1 Voyage’s End
[/Spells]
[Land]
9 Island
9 Plains
[/Land]
[/cardlist]

Now, I don’t know how the others felt, but I liked this. It was a very different experience from the prerelease, where everyone had huge monsters to play with (from the seeded booster). Here, two players put their eggs in the monstrosity basket (one of which caused my only match loss). Granted, the monsters were fun (and might have appealed to the players in this sealed tournament as well), but I enjoyed the feeling of these heroes going out and finding a way to win through cunning and support from gods. My deck was probably the one which most resembled this, as often I would pull out a win by using [scryfall]Triton Tactics[/scryfall] properly.

I liked it. Hopefully so did everyone else. Every card in my deck had a moment where it just rocked. I would have preferred other cards in my deck, but I can’t complain (who could with Elspeth).

Elspeth was very, very good, but often just a win-more card, meaning I already had things under control when I drew her. She did outright win the game on three occasions. On two of those she needed outside help from flying blockers, but on one occasion she just came in and kicked ass.

Playing a Cybernetic Space Gorilla Scientist

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Last Wednesday a random group of players from our forum gathered to try out the new version of FATE. We knew it was going to be a tryout session and hoped it was going to be fun.

FATE01

As a player I am not that much into rules-heavy games (and as GM even less). So what I had heard from FATE was actually quite promising. A simple system that allowed the players to contribute to the story and events of the game by creating defining terms.

I read through the first half of the rules (for a “rules light game” it has quite a number of pages) and got quite a good grasp of them. The GM had done the same so luckily we had the combined forces of two players who had almost read the entire rules.

Our GM had prepared an adventure and characters for us beforehand. The basis for the adventure was “Forbidden planet” type of space slipstream. I got to play a gorilla scientist enhanced with cybernetic implants. And damn it was fun.

As MustaJumala said in his earlier post I too like oneshot because the offer you a chance to get crazy. My Aspects (the defining phrases that are the core of your character) were easy to play. Krakatou was deeply concerned about his appearance as an intelligent being while on the other hand he still had his animal side. So I made sure we had a proper tea time after going all [scryfall]Gorilla Berserk[/scryfall] against a hideous space monster.

Our group consisted of the crew of Attila’s Court – a spaceship owned by MustaJumala’s character Captain Attila Moon. In addition to our characters there was a fungi that was living inside a dead crew member and the first mate who was actually a killing machine robot. Your basic crew all in all.

We followed the notorious space terrorist Gorgon (“GORGON!”) to a forbidden planet in hopes of rescuing the princess he had taken captive. Naturally we crashed and had to walk through all kinds of perils to reach the ancient temple of the artificial intelligence that was the reason this planet was off-limits. We fought snailmen and a lovecraftian horror and competed for the affections of the fungi infested colleague.

Just at the brink of epic showdown we got derailed into “conversation” about gaming mechanics.

I’m first to admit that it was mainly my fault. The challenges we had faced had been so demanding and the Fate points we had gained so few that we argued for awhile of what should my character do to get some points. It almost ended up destroying the game but luckily we got it under control. GM gave us some fate points just to keep the game going and to see how much difference they did (this was a try-out session after all).

As my gorilla had an aspect telling me that I had “saving the entire crew almost cost me my life” (or something along those lines) I ended up in a mortal combat with the A.I. Entering the matrix of the planet I wrestled it long enough for my friends to escape the perilous planet.

And just as they exited the atmosphere and thought they were safe a door opened behind them. “Captain Attila MOON!” cried out the space terrorist Gorgon.

Even if we do not get back to these characters it was a marvellous adventure topped with an excellent ending.

Though hopefully next time we are more experienced with the rules…

Oneshot Report

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In case you haven’t read the first part, read this first.

Ok, that didn’t go quite as planned, but that’s fine, since we didn’t really plan it.

The situation: We had just finished a game and there were people hanging around with nothing to do. Since I was going to cook some food, and others as well, I thought it would be better to use this idea right then, so players can participate as much as they want or are able to.

With seven players, I knew it was going to devolve quickly, but as a small “side event”, it would be fine. I decided against NPC-jurors, because there was already seven people pushing things around and I was hungry.

Therefore, I asked the players the following questions (one question per player):

1. What was the crime? Apparently it was arson-rape-murder. Don’t really know what that is, but that’s not my problem. Its the players problem.

2. Where are we? Medieval times.

3. Our world? With a twist (which was apparently that there was a werewolf among the players, as well as strange edits to the Bible and strange artifacts used in the process)

4. Who’s the accused? The bastard son of the king, which was later changed to the king of Francs.

5. Who was the victim? A local barmaid / prostitute named Hulda.

6. Did the accused do it? No.

7. Why do you want the accused convicted despite his innocence? To keep the royal blood only part of the royal family.

Then I pretty much left the players on their own devices. I actually left the area where the players were. So, once in a while, I’d get all these weird tidbits like one player decided he was the actual guilty party, the player who was the king (who was for some reason on the jury), wasn’t the actual king, some characters may or may not have been brothers of the accused… you know, stuff out-of-control players come up with.

I can’t really say this experiment was successful, but I did manage to eat and everyone was occupied for about an hour. I can’t say I’d run a game quite this freeform again, but maybe close to it. I might even try the jury thing again. Probably will.

NOTE: Just noticed that one the players had already commented on the previous posting. You should probably read that too.