Here my report, sorry for my english, who is obviously not my natural language.
First Session for me and my friend – 9:00 hours to create the characters, the crew and playing 2 missions.
My players chose the cultists crew template. They have decided to play old wandering souls who have found a way to possessed some Deathland Scavenger and found a way to trespass the Duskwall borders.
Half crazy, they think they are The Old Death God’s servants, their big project is to rebuild the gates of death and find a way to allow the souls to find the path to oblivion . They consider the souls disintegration with electroplasmic tools an error and a folly.
They have chosen as Patron Skurloc the vampire necromancer, decadent noble form Duskwall, who live in the mansion at the southern end of the Crow district.
the characters are: A Hound / a Lurk / a Whisper
First mission: after agreeing to serve the lampblack, they were send to steal a list of Bluecoats informer who have infiltrated the lampblack. They have chosen a infiltration plan into the local Bluecoats city watch station.
Highlight: when the Whisper disguised himself as a Bluecoats and diverted the attention of some guards, to give an escaping opportunity to his two fellow crew members.
Secret discovered: The cult of the “Path of Echoes” natural enemy of their faith, seems to have followers in Bluecoats and in the Red Sashes.
Second mission : Skurloc who lost control on the Crow since Roric death, asks the PCs to infiltrate Crow’s headquarters and put three Spy Ward to allow him to spy Lyssa and her minions.
The PC succeed in placing a ward at the HQ Gateway, in the meeting room and in Lyssa’s chamber.
Highlight: the Lurk who uses his Silence vial in front of Lyssa’s door, which allowed the Hound to blow its lock with his gun and shoulder ( in total magical silence), then the Whisper to put his ward while Lyssa was sleeping in the same room.
Secret discovered: Lyssa is currently recruiting from the Skovlander refuges to rebuild her gang, in exchange she close her eyes on their political scheming and uprising project against the governor in place.
the systems have worked fine for me and my players, it does very well what it is supposed to do. I tried to roll separately for the first mission, and roll in the same time the action and effect dice for the second mission. And it is clearly better to reduce the numbers of rolls.
I had a problem with the way to manage trauma. All my players took 1 trauma point during the session. It happened during a mission and I do not know how to handle this. Does the PC have to”disappear” from the mission or continue, having just lost “1 life”. It was hard to put a PC out of play when the full team was still in an enemy building.
Excellent AP!
With trauma, whatever makes the most narrative sense ‘when left for dead’.
Don’t forget flashbacks can be very useful in this case.
I don’t see how flash back could help me to handle the trauma things. Can you give me exemple ?
My problem was to let the player, who has just gain a trauma point, continue to play his part ( roll dice and be on point) or not.
And if not what to do with his characte.
In our game, my Lurk took trauma while attempting to crack open the Red Sashes treasury vault. I decided to keep on going, despite the trauma. However, the trauma still affected the fiction because we agreed she would never again attempt to crack a lock of this kind (Ice Turn Ball lock). This added more pressure to my rolls, because if she abandoned her attempt now, the crew would have to abandon the whole score.
The Hound was also involved in this score and took trauma by assisting the Lurk in her final desperate life-on-the-line Action roll to crack this vault or die in flames of the alchemical inferno they’d started. Taking this trauma, the Hound decided to be ‘left for dead’. So the player narrated him just walking out the Red Sashes, arm-in-arm with the moonlighting Bluecoat (he bribed him to ignore their robbery) and wearing his old Bluecoat badge. We figured that was legit without an Action roll. He’d taken permanent trauma so he’d already paid a hefty price, he was with someone hired to protect the temple so could have been easily ignored, the temple had a major fire inside so there were other more pressing things for folks to worry about, and it was just too cool.
Ollie has the best examples ever!
In terms of flashbacks, I would just allow the player to keep engaging with the fiction despite the trauma, then retroactively flashback to why that was possible? Maybe they planned something behind the scenes? Had insider help? Some amazing new invention?
This doesn’t negate the trauma or its effects, just narratively justifies their ability to keep engaging with the fiction
I like that spin on flashbacks Noofy. Rather than be about how well prepared the crew is, it’s about what’s happened to them in their past that drives them and gives them the strength to keep going. Very cinematic. I’ll keep that little beauty up my sleeve for next session.
fine i like the idea to give a narrative “madness” to the player related to the action which given him a trauma. My Whisper will now be afraid of the Crow tower “Soul” and my Lurk will never crack in a city watch tower by the roof again. something like that.
You don’t have to take stress.
In this kind of situation, the player had a hard choice to make. He could avoid a bad outcome, take a level of trauma and be useless for a while, or suffer the bad outcome, but then he still could help the crew to complete the score (except if the bad outcome is his death).
In the former case, the character says “I can’t do it anymore, I am slowing you, go on without me” and in the latter “I’m fine, it’s just a flesh wound” and at the end of the score he collapses.
I’m ok with that, but some time it is just not possible to say “i can’t do it anymore, go on without me”. For exemple my Whisper has taken his trauma point in the Lyssa room, in the center of the crow’s Den. “go on without me, i stay there and i’m gonna sleep for a while and wait for lyssa to wake up”.
After the trauma, the crew had to escape, the whisper player had to move with the team to get out. So what now ? I have choose to let the player continue with his trauma point and fresh clean stress bar, roll his dice and take some other stress point. And now with the “madness” rule, i will tell him that he his afraid of the Crow Tower.
In this case, the Whisper will be a deadweight for the crew. It could be great for the roleplay to see how the crew will react, who will carry the Whisper, how it will affect the crew after the score.
Maybe the Whisper gets ‘left for dead’ with Lyssa…. That is full of all sorts of wonderful questions to me. Does she offer them a bargain? torture them? Heal them and turn their allegiance?
true. I’ve could played the “carry me brother” moment.
A little bit tricky when my Lurk got his trauma point on a lockpicking…
What was the danger?
That could be a metaphorically “carry me brother” where the Lurk is shaken or drained and the other characters need to watch him to avoid he does a misstep or have to motivate him to go on.