My Crew Failed for the First Time.
So I’ve had a group of people play blades for a while now and they have a very notorious tier 2 crew. However, some times not everyone can make a session so we started a new campaign as a bunch of Skovland Refugees which we could play when someone wasn’t available.
This happened during the second session for the crew, they are all tier 0 Vigillantes and have played before (obviously). We have a Leech, a Slide and a Lurk playing and I wanted to do something a little different for them.
I started a sort of “murder mystery”; some serial killer was going around murdering Skovs for some reason, and the Grinders asked the crew to find out who and try to put a stop to it. This part of the session went down super well! They started an investigation clock and went to town on the gathering of information to solve the case, eventually finding out that the Red Sashes were murdering Skovs with a strange drug which destroys their ghosts, and most had the body taken. A little more digging and some awesome RP with Lord Skurlock later and they found out that the Sashes needed the bodies for their dead members, killed by the original group, to get revenge on them. Skovs in our game are naturally muscular and are therefore the perfect hosts to make some strong vampires to have their revenge.
So alls good so far, they investigated well, found their lead, solved the case, and found out people were coming for their original crew because of complications. Now all that was left was exacting justice by shutting them down. They found an entry point of an open plan roof for the dojo and decided on a stealth plan where they would gather the evidence needed to get the Bluecoats/Inspectors on their trail. But thats where things went tits up.
4 engagement dice were rolled and we landed on a 3, desperate position to start off. So as the crew were getting ready to absail into the dojo at night, the light turns on and a medium gang of Red Sashes enter the room, starting to perform a ritual on a corpse. The Lurk, unbeknownst to anyone, didn’t like his character very much, and wanted to kill himself off to make something new. So he cut himself loose and dove in, alerting everyone to the crew’s presence and surrounding himself with 8 master swordsmen. The crew try to help him, not realising he wanted to die for some reason and roll very badly to say the least. After several roles, some explosive napalm, and the lurk suicide bombing 2 sashes, the other 2 escape with their lives and use the crew ability to pin it on someone else.
Everyone was pretty bummed about the situation and that they actually failed to do what they set out to. The Leech player saying “I knew we weren’t ready for that score yet! We should have waited and tried a different approach.” But in my eyes what lead to the failure was not a lack of preparation (they preped more than they ever have before), but a series of bad rolls and a suicidal Lurk.
Was their anything I could have done differently?
You? Nope. The Lurk player? Maybe just tell the other instead of acting like a bad player.
I’d say that they saw a bit of “reality.” One of the team went rogue with devastating consequences for the team. The team didn’t abandon the score when things went sour because they felt loyalty to the one that ruined the plan. There might have been a way to salvage this through a creative flashback, but I also think that failure is good — there are consequences and risk!
Yeah, it’s not fun being saddled with a character you’re not into, but that’s not a situation you should address fiction-first. If everyone was clued in, you probably could have amped up the pathos and made that run (successful or not) memorable for good reasons, not bitterness.
BTW, it sounds like an awesome night!
Eric Brunsell “Everyone was pretty bummed about the situation” Apparently not.
The Lurk player is the only person in the wrong here. They should have spoken with you like an adult if they wanted to play a different character instead of blowing the whole score for everyone else. It sounds like you handled it as best you could, and that’s great. Have a talk with the Lurk player about proper behavior in the future and how they should handle out-of-character business outside the game with you rather than derailing the game.
Leeeeroy Jenkins!
Jakob Oesinghaus True — but I expect that it can be turned positive & add more drama to an ongoing campaign.
So someone “Leeroy Jenkins” your group?
(Skip to 1:00)
https://youtu.be/mLyOj_QD4a4