The Porcelain Dolls: Session 6 (March 16th 2016)
Aftermath of The Frame Lord Brogan Job:
+5 Rep (because they technically took on the City Council ,Tier V), +2 Coin, +2 Heat. Shade spends actions to heal and relieve Stress. Constance spends both actions to relieve stress. Yanth Agog directs her to Silkshore, where she meets Kasson (nicknamed Gloves), and brings him into the crew. Boots reduces Heat by 2, and trains Prowess. Constance spends 1 Coin to train Prowess. +1 Crew XP for contending with an opponent above their station, which gets them an advance, which they spend on Slippery. Boots drops off the radar for a bit (Gloves is now active).
So, a bit about Gloves. He’s a Slide, he’s from Iruvia (which we’ve decided is a lot like pre-Islam Arabia), he’s used to living in luxury (it’s his Vice, in fact), and up until very recently, he was the houseboy of a Lady Polonia who resides in a very nice townhouse in Silkshore. He’d become disillusioned with his living arrangements when he realized he was no longer the lady’s favorite, and her head had been turned by a newcomer (who happened to be possessed by Nyryx at the time). So he was in the process of looking for something better when he was discovered by Constance.
[Gloves is being played by the same player as Boots.]
There is some discussion regarding ongoing stance concerning the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes. It is agreed that the crew should keep both of them as neutral as possible, with a slight bias on the side of the Sashes. Boots brings Gloves to meet Mylera Klev, who is suitably impressed. She gives them a job to spy on the comings and goings of Bell & Birch, a small gambling house controlled by the Lampblacks. Job is to scope the place out, gather intel on the regulars, an at some point rob the place blind. Mylera has promised a minimum of 4 Coin for the job.
Notes:
This was a short session. The main action was the discussion of how to proceed. There was a moment where there was a disagreement between Constance and the rest of the group, and in the end I put it to an opposed roll. I’m not sure that was the right thing to do, and at least one of the players (the guy who plays Shade) wasn’t quite comfortable with the dice potentially taking away a player’s agency (related to his dislike of social mechanics in general).
We also have started to play around with multiple characters. My ruling at this point is that a player can have one character active per job, and that character gets the downtime actions at the end of the job. If a player brings in another character that has been absent for more than 2 sessions, they get a downtime cycle to explain what they’ve been up to since we saw them last (and they come back in with no Stress or Harm). We would eventually end up modifying these rules (only a little bit), but more on that in a later entry.
#dontmesswiththedolls
What I see John do on his videos when a disagreement comes up: He asks the players if their characters can be swayed to another PC’s opinion. If so, they roll to see if they are, in fact, swayed. If not, then the players continue to roleplay and have their characters talk it out until they come to some conclusion or the conversation changes. This takes away the worry about player agency. It seems to work well for the Bloodletters group, at least.
I really like this idea. I’ll make sure to run it this way when this sort of conflict comes up again (we’re already starting to see the emergent theme of more money bringing more problems).