Author: Ben Morgan

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 20 (June 15 2016)

Aftermath of The Church Merch Search & Lurch:

* Payout: 6

* Rep: 4

* Heat: +2 (3 total)

* Entanglement: The Usual Suspects. Spogg gets nabbed in a raid of his gambling house, and the crew pays 2 Coin to get him out before he says anything that might incriminate Boots or the rest of the crew.

Downtime Actions:

Gloves reduces Stress by going shopping again, this time for the perfect pair of shoes at Auberto Finelli’s (“Purveyor of Fine Footwear for the Distinguished Gentleman for Over 30 Years”), and trains Prowess.

Gears reduces Stress by dissecting the dead body that Constance brought from the fire. He still has a day or so before it becomes dangerous, and preserving the vital organs in jars is fine, as long as the bulk of the body is dissolved with electroplasm. Once that’s done, he finishes the construction project to build crew quarters. Constance gets on everyone’s case to move in, as she wants them close at hand from now on.

Boots (coming off of a gambling binge) helps reduce Heat (by 2), and trains Personal.

Kamali reduces Stress (she’s staying away from the Veil for a while, so she takes advantage of having her own room for once), works on healing her gunshot wound, and spends some time making Frake a friend. She wins the chess game this time, and shows him sketches of the Turner 302. Frake asks if she will take him along the next time she goes to visit Clermont’s house.

Constance works on healing her burns, and reduces Stress. Yanth Agog tells her to go to Coalridge, where saves a pregnant woman from being trampled by a carriage by standing in the middle of the street and staring down the charging goats, who stumble all over themselves while skidding to a stop, and end up on their knees in front of her. She helps the woman gather up her groceries, and it turns out she’s a believer.

Notes:

The meat of this session was downtime stuff. I think players are really doing themselves a disservice if they treat this phase as strictly bookkeeping, dealing with their actions in a perfunctory manner. These actions (and the scenes that result from them) are your chance to see how your characters live day to day, how they spend their time.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 19 (June 06 2016)

Shade goes to infiltrate the Skovlan refugees. We decide that this is going to take some time, so Shade is Lost for the time being. When he comes back, he will have a story to tell. Boots is also still Lost due to gambling (he’ll be back at the end of this job).

The Church Merch Search & Lurch:

Everyone else convenes to go over Gloves’ info. There are several promising points of entry. It’s decided that Constance and Gears will go in through the sewers and drill their way into the wall of the vault. Gloves and Kamali will disguise themselves as acolytes and enter the basement from above. Gloves will act as lookout and create a distraction if necessary while Kamali attempts to locate and open the vault.

Gears crits on a Tinker roll to build a hydraulic drill, mounted on a raft in the sewers and powered by a foot-operated bellows pump.

I gave them 3 dice on the Engagement roll, because the Church was not at all expecting this incursion, but they are a higher Tier than the Dolls. Wouldn’t you know it, they rolled three 1s.

So everything starts off perfect. Gears breaks his drill down to serveral main components that can be carried around and assembled later. They head down into the sewers and Gears locates the tunnel that adjoins the basement of the church. They put the drill together and start it up. It’s loud, but not as loud as a combustion engine would be. They start drilling exactly at noon, in order to use the sound of the bells pealing out across the city to mask the sounds from below. They start drilling into the ancient brickwork, and not too long after, there’s a loud whine, and the drill stops. They pull it out, and find that behind the brickwork of the wall is a solid metal plate.

Gloves and Kamali have acquired acolytes’ robes, enter the church, and head to the side hallway that leads to the basement. Kamali heads downstairs while Gloves stands lookout. She hears him talking to someone as she heads down the hallway in the basement. She finds monastery-style meditation cells, and around the corner the hallway branches off in a T-intersection, at the end of which is an iron door with a heavy lock on it. Bingo. She downs a silence potion and gets to work with her lockpicks, noticing the intricately drawn ritual circle on the ceiling above her. The moment she touches the lock, she hears a faint whispering which she realizes that if it had not been for the potion would likely be an ear-piercing shriek, centered on the circle above her.

Gloves is approached by an acolyte who tries to get past him to go downstairs for his daily meditation. Gloves engineers a pratfall, and fakes an injured leg. I offer him a Devil’s Bargain to make the injury real, but he declines. It’s alright, as the roll is good enough to convince the acolyte that Gloves needs medical attention.

Constance and Gears do some probing along the wall, and come to the end of the metal plate. Turns out only the wall facing the sewer was reinforced, so they are able to dismantle the brickwork and start bending the metal back and are able to peer into the vault. This is also fairly loud, and they don’t have the bells to cover it up any more, so I throw down two opposing clocks, one for their efforts to expand the breach, and another for the acolytes to hear something. The gap is widened enough for Gears to squeeze past, and he lights a lamp and begins looking for the statue.

The dice are not on Kamali’s side tonight. Try as she might, she can’t get the lock open, and her attempt to set up a trip wire in case anyone comes around the corner also fails. Fortunately, just as she’s about to leave, she hears movement from inside the vault. She gives the secret knock, and Gears responds and opens the door (it having only a latch on the inside) just a crack. Kamali slips inside, and they find the statue in one of the wooden crates. They pass it back to Constance, who is waiting at the breach. There’s a short debate as to whether they should take anything else. Constance decides against it, as there’s only other works of art, and no actual cash around. Kamali locks the vault door again, and they drag one of the larger crates into the corner to cover up their escape. As they make their escape down the tunnel, Kamali moves out range of the magic circle, and it begins emitting its alarm at full blast.

Gloves is having his leg bandaged when there’s an ear-piercing shriek, and the gathered acolytes drop what they’re doing and make a beeline for the vault. The ranking acolyte unlocks the vault, but they don’t notice anything amiss. Gloves assumes that Kamali ran into trouble and aborted the mission, so he heads back upstairs to make his way out the front door. Kamali meets up with him outside, and they head back to the factory.

The group reconvenes, and Constance is there with the statue (she’s using it as a hat rack when Gloves and Kamali arrive). No one is happy about how the job went, but they console themselves with the fact that they got what they came for and got out, and the Church doesn’t seem to know that the statue is missing yet.

Constance and Gears meet with Karstas in one of the now abandoned buildings in The Drop, and he pays them 5 Coin. When Constance mentions how difficult the job was, he gives them another Coin for their trouble. Constance asks about the statues, and Karstas tells them the story of the Twins Who Are One, who figure centrally in a creation myth from several thousand years ago, two siblings who are aspects of the same being that created a sculpture (there is a school of thought that this was a metaphor for a more ‘physical’ act), and in so doing made the world. Many centuries ago, they were locked in a desperate battle with an adversary whose name is lost to time, and they were banished beyond the boundaries of the world. Karstas states that his plan is to attempt to bring the Twins back from wherever they are, in hopes that they will be able to repair the damage caused by the Cataclysm (apparently this isn’t the first such event that has happened in the long history of the world). Karstas assures Constance that the Twins are not in opposition to Yanth Agog (which is technically true, they are from different pantheons).

The group meets with Merrill Brime, who has been in their custody for several days now. Constance orders him to turn over the identities of all of his informants, with the implication being that if he doesn’t, she will decide he’s too dangerous to let live. He begins listing names, which Kamali begins writing down. This lays the groundwork for the Informants claim.

Among the junk that Gears leaves all over the factory is a book which is several hundred years old, but tells the myth of The Iruvian Humunculus, a mixture of machinery and living flesh, inhabited by a human soul, that was supposedly built thousands of years ago. Gears believes it’s just a fairy tale, but that he can make it a reality.

Notes:

I’ve relaxed my rules on multiple characters a little bit more, since we were down two PCs, so Kamali and Constance were technically on the same job, but on different teams.

I’ve also decided that Hulls do not actually exist yet in my game, and that is what Gears is working on. The difference between his Vice and a Long Term Project is one of scale. It basically moves at the Speed of Plot (much like Yanth Agog’s Grand Design).

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 18 (June 1 2016)

Constance instructs Kamali to go put her hand in Clermont’s cookie jar again, in order to gather more information on the Skovlan refugees. Shade will attempt to infiltrate the militant Skovlan community.

Constance sends a message to Karstas to set up a meeting (we stipulated that he had left instructions to send a messenger crow anywhere, and simply include his name in the message, and it will reach him). They meet at the Leaky Bucket. Karstas wants to hire the crew to steal an artifact from the Church of the Ecstacy of the Flesh, a statue that is the mate of the one he bought from Fitz (his exact words are that the two “fit together”). Karstas cannot himself enter the church, for reasons he won’t say (but everyone can guess). Gears takes a Devil’s Bargain to make a Study roll to look over the contract, and enlists Constance’s aid by reading several clauses out loud. They find a loophole that Karstas put in regarding not being able to back out of the arrangement, but decide not to close it. They have a reputation to maintain, after all.

Constance is about to go see Prichard, but there’s a giant explosion. Gears can immediately tell that it’s the coal warehouse. Constance and Gears rush in to try and rescue any survivors. I gave them a 6-segment clock to for the rescue, and there were several other clocks that would advance automatically at regular intervals. One of these was for the building to collapse, and the others were for the arrival of the fire brigade, the Bluecoats, and the crematorium’s corpse cart. Gears uses Survey to search for anyone who’s alive, while Constance uses Wreck to smash anything that’s in her way to get at people who have been trapped behind debris. Most of the rescues are suffering from smoke inhalation, but at least one of them, Brock, has had the presence of mind to tie a wet cloth over his nose and mouth. Constance learns from him that Baszo and Prichard are not in the building, and Brock makes a beeline for the 2nd floor office to retrieve Baszo’s daughter Aleira. Constance helps herself to the cash in the now exposed vault (8 Coin). There is also one more unconscious gang member here, but Yanth Agog instructs her to leave him to die in the building. Brock and Gears get Aleira out of the office just before the 2nd floor structure collapses. At Gears’ request, Constance manages to drag one of the dead bodies out for later dissection.

Gloves goes to the Church of the Ecstacy of the Flesh and speaks to one of the acolytes, who is happy to give him a tour of their rather impressive art collection. The statue in question is not on display, but Gloves gets a good idea of the layout of the place, including several promising points of entry for an infiltration. He also can make a fairly good guess as to where the statue is being kept.

Kamali goes to Clermont’s safe. She botches the forgery attempt, and so doesn’t take any Coin, but instead concentrates on copying important bits out of Clermont’s notes. She learns the name of the prime suspect of the Skovlan Refugee uprising (Maldor Williamsen), and that the Consulate also suspects that they are planning something in retaliation, but are currently hanging back to observe.

Notes:

Everything involving the coal warehouse on fire was completely 100% improvised. All I started with was “you hear a huge boom from across town, and the ground shakes slightly.”

There was some amusement to be had when we realized that Gears’ player was considering taking a Devil’s Bargain while dealing with a devil’s bargain. The upshot is that Karstas has taken a personal interest in Gears, as he is fascinated by Gears’ completely logical and scientific mindset and world view.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 17 (May 25 2016)

Aftermath for The Sash Stash Crash & Smash:

The Payout is 10 Coin worth of Trance Powder, but no actual cash. Heat is high, it was a fairly standard job, but killing was involved. For Entanglements, they had a choice (because of Slippery) of Demonic Notice or Flipped. They went with the former.

Downtimes:

Constance, Boots, and Gloves all dedicate actions to reducing the crew’s Heat, eventually managing to reduce it from 7 to 1.

Gloves follows upon the property owners in The Drop, and tracks down the last of the holdouts to a pub called the Old Rasp. He strikes up a conversation regarding the ongoing war, hinting that a fair amount of cheap real estate is likely to become available in the near future (most probably in Lampblacks territory). That gets them talking amongst themselves. This completes the crew’s project clock for gentrifying the area around The Drop. Mechanically, this raises the Quality of their Hunting Grounds by 1. They will start seeing the results of this in short order.

Constance goes to Six Towers to meet with Basran. He’s happy to see her, as business has been good lately. He’s able to buy 7 of the 10 Coin worth of Trance Powder, and the crew gets +2 Coin due to Basran being their luxury fence (technically, the job they pulled was a robbery, and not a burglary, but I ruled that it applies since we’ve established Trance Powder as a high-end drug). The resulting 9 Coin for very long immediately starts getting spent on extra actions.

Kamali goes to The Veil to indulge her Vice. Rolan allows her to do so (she is a paying customer after all), but insists she allow the Veil’s personal physician look at the bullet wound in Kamali’s shoulder. Kamali is exceedingly reluctant to allow anyone to touch her, even another woman, but eventually agrees when Rolan points out exactly how bad it will become if Kamali allows the wound to fester. The operation takes place while Kamali is unconscious, and she wakes up to find her shoulder bandaged, the bullet sitting in a glass of whiskey on the table, and some very detailed instructions on keeping the dressings clean. She also meets Alice, the woman whom Rolan has entrusted with the care of the workers at The Veil (healing clock has started). Kamali is extremely uncomfortable interacting with someone that she knows has touched her, especially while unconscious, but the doctor picks up on this, and quickly excuses herself.

Shade trains Prowess, and goes to visit Setarra. She mentions that Karstas was looking for him (or more accurately, his associate, “the tall one”). Shade makes a joke about a threeway, and Setarra warns him that he doesn’t want to go there. Shade reminds her that he doesn’t like to take no for an answer.

Kamali works with Shade to examine the information gained from Clermont’s safe. What they end up with at the end of it is a list of names of people loosely connected to Skovlan (mostly refugees), and an emergent pattern seems to indicate that the refugees are gearing up for a major offensive somewhere in the city, spurred into action by various racially motivated assaults.

Boots goes gambling, and overindulges. He gets lost for a bit, and will likely have an interesting story to tell when he resurfaces.

Constance calls a meeting. Kamali and Shade present their findings. The crew decides that they will need to go after another Claim. Going by the map, Informants is the next one up, if they want to claim Drug Dens at some point.

Notes:

There was a question of earning Rep if they did a job against a faction, but no one knew it was them. The answer to this is that the crew is reporting everything to The Crows (and giving them their cut), so that’s when the Rep is awarded. If the crew ever decides to pull a job without reporting it, they won’t earn the Rep (and if Lyssa finds out after the fact, they’ll have much bigger problems with worry about).

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 16 (May 15 2016)

The Sash Stash Crash & Smash:

The crew decides to hit the Moon’s Daughter and pin it on the Lampblacks. Shade suggests hitting them where their supply of Trance Powder is stored. Constance reasons that the main stash would be somewhere other than the restaurant. She considers asking Lyssa to call in the Bluecoats on the Sashes. Boots confirms that the Sashes don’t currently have any protection agreement in place with the Bluecoats.

Constance decides that someone will enter the restaurant and arrange for a large purchase, one that they will not be able to fill with what they have on hand. Boots will follow the Sashes’ man to the location of their stash. Once the product is delivered to the Moon’s Daughter, the Bluecoats, who will have already been tipped off, will raid the restaurant to provide a diversion. Boots will then inform the Lampblacks of the location of the stash, who will of course hit it, and the Dolls will receive a cut of what is taken.

Boots volunteers to assist the Lampblacks in their raid, as does Kamali. Shade is reluctant to be seen making a direct move against Mylera, but he says he knows of a way to lend aid.

Constance wants Gloves to make the buy, and allow himself to get arrested along with the Sashes. Gloves asks for hazard pay, but Constance is not amused.

Constance goes to see Lyssa, who was aware of the Sashes’ drug operation, but not that the Moon’s Daughter was one of the distribution venues. Because she’s miffed at the Sashes for apparently holding out on her, Lyssa agrees to arrange for the intervention of the Bluecoats, as well as protection and an expedited release for Gloves, should he be caught up in the raid. Lyssa also resolves to speak to Mylera personally regarding the matter, and thanks Constance for bringing it to her attention (Faction status goes up to +2 with the Crows).

I ran this as two linked jobs running more or less concurrently, and the crew split up again so most everyone will be able to take advantage of the Downtimes afterward.

Part 1:

Engagement roll for the first one is not great (3). Gloves goes to the Moon’s Daughter, speaks to the maitre d’, asks for the special, and is ushered into the back room, where Branon Avrathi is waiting to deal. Gloves names a quantity that he expects will be more than what the Sashes have on hand, to prompt them to pay a visit to their stash. However, he underestimates how much the Sashes keeping on hand when Branon produces the requested amount with no fuss. This is good news for Gloves, who will not be around for the Bluecoat raid, but bad news for Boots, who now has a harder time tracking the Sashes’ bagman, now that they don’t know when he will go to re-up. Eventually, however, he does, and while Boots is able to keep up, he is spotted just as the man is going into the building where the stash is being kept.

Constance meets with Prichard and Lady Drake. Prichard acknowledges that Baszo is being reckless, and that he has tried to dissuade him from this war, but Baszo holds Mylera responsible for the death of his wife. Constance recommends that Baszo be removed from the equation, sooner rather than later, and makes her intentions to take over the Lampblacks known. Prichard says that he and Baszo have been close friends for many years, but admits that an overabundance of sentiment is what got them in the current situation.

Constance also informs Prichard of the location of the stash, and recommends hitting it while the Sashes and the Bluecoats are distracted. She gives them a time (around noon the next day) and a place (about two blocks from the antique store where the drugs are being kept). The Lampblacks will assault the place, assisted by Boots, Shade, and Kamali.

Part 2:

The next day, Shade performs a ritual that will swap his appearance with another, grabbing a random passerby from the street. Kamali and Boots were warned of this beforehand, but are still nonetheless startled to see a complete stranger approach them for the job. The Lampblacks are late, by nearly half an hour, and look as though they’ve already been in a scuffle. There are five of them, two of which are Coil and Vale from the Bell & Birch (now demoted to footsoldiers), but they don’t recognize Kamali.

Shade performs his cloak of invisibility ritual, and envelopes himself and the Lampblacks in the Ghost Field so they can approach the front of the antique store unseen. In the process, the Lampblacks and Shade all take Level 1 Harm in the form of mild frostbite (no Resistance roll, and even if I did permit it, Shade was now at 8 Stress). Meanwhile, Kamali is in the alley by the back door, setting a tripwire before climbing up on a perch, and Boots is on the roof of the building across the street, with a good view of the alley and the back door.

Shade drops the cloak as the Lampblacks rush the front door of the shop. His Stress is dangerously high, so he decides to back off. Kamali and Boots hear the commotion in the shop, and the back door flies open. Three Sashes emerge, the first hitting the tripwire and falling flat on his face. The second tumbles over his buddy into the alley, while the third manages to parkour his way over the both of them and begins sprinting down the alley to get help. There are now two clocks: The Survivors (6 segments) of the fight inside, who are running to go get reinforcements, and They’re Getting Away! (4 segments), which is the countdown.

Kamali drops down and stabs the first Sash in the back and attempts to attack the second, but he has gotten his footing and now whirls to face her (2 segments filled). Boots takes a shot at the third, and hits him right between the eyes. The bullet exits his skull, ricochets off the brick wall of the alley, and wings the second (3 more segments filled, bringing it to 5).

The problem is that Kamali is not nearly as effective in a straight fight, and the dice seem to agree with this assessment. She narrowly avoids serious Harm on more than one instance, but the Stress is slowly piling up. There’s only so long she can keep this up. Boots has the choice of taking the time to reload his rifle, or make a Desperate shot with a pistol. He decides to go with the latter, and gets a 5. The result is that the remaining Sash trades swings with Kamali for a bit, then Boots hit him right in the back of the neck, his throat explodes, and Kamali is hit in the shoulder (Level 3 Harm reduced to 2 by a Resistance roll).

Three remaining Lampblacks emerge from the shop to see Shade arrive and use his electroplasm to dissolve the three bodies in the alley. Unfortunately he doesn’t have enough for the four bodies inside (two of which are Lampblacks). They grab the stash and make a run for it. Kamali refuses to let anyone touch her, and manages to limp home on her own with a bullet in her shoulder.

Notes:

A couple of house rules: First of all, I’ve decided as a matter of principle, I’m not going to try and squeeze in Downtimes at the end of a session any more. It encourages everyone to kind of rush through it before they scatter for the evening. Instead, they can take the time until next session to decide what they’re going to do, and it allows me to zoom in on certain actions if it’s necessary, especially indulging Vices, which too often get relegated to “Okay, you take off 3 Stress”. I want to see more of what actually happens when they’re doing this stuff (and there are opportunities for more story there). So next session we’ll see Payoff (I informally promised them 10 Coin worth for this job at the end of this session), Heat (this will be a noisy one), Entanglement, and Downtimes.

Second, I clarified (for our group) the difference between Resistance rolls being able to lessen or mitigate incoming Harm, and being able to eliminate it entirely. The two examples with Kamali above illustrate it quite well. The first time she was actively dodging a melee attack, so it was kind of an all or nothing deal. The second time, it was an incoming bullet. The best she could hope for is to weather the hit.

I had to make a choice at some point as to whether or not the Sashes’ business at the Moon’s Daughter was known to Lyssa or not. Either one would have been equally interesting to me, so I let a die decide (even/odds). If it had been, the conversation with Constance and Lyssa would have gone very differently, with Lyssa demanding some form of compensation for the loss of income from their cut of the Sashes’ drug trade.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 15 (May 9 2016)

We spend some time detailing what it looks like when Kamali and Gloves indulge her particular Vices. Kamali rents a private room at The Veil and gets comfortable with the Blue Cloud and a glass of blackberry wine, while Gloves inspects his wardrobe and decides he needs some new neckwear, and heads to Dunridge & Sons, spending more on a cravat, a jabot, and an ascot than most would spend on an entire suit. We already know what it looks like when Shade indulges his Vice.

The crew discusses the results of the Turner 302 Job. Constance is in favor of Kamali’s plan to use Clermont as a periodic supply of cash. Shade is of the opinion that the crew is not in a position to be able to effectively take advantage of the political information directly, and is looking to sell it to someone who can. Constance is reluctant to give it up so easily, and wants the group to study the information and report back to her before making a decision on it. This is hampered by the fact that most of the group cannot read Skovlan.

Constance discusses her intention to hit the Red Sashes, and frame the Lampblacks for it. This will hopefully cause the Sashes to be in a more emotional state when they strike out at the Lampblacks, and as a result they will be on less certain footing. It is Constance’s hope that the two gangs will end up wiping each other out, leaving only the Crows and the Dolls.

Marlane brings a note delivered to her by Lade Drake, informing that she has a meeting with Prichard at 8pm the following evening. She will bring Boots, as he is currently the only one who knows anything of her plan.

The crew gathers info on what the Sashes are up to:

Constance goes to see Merrill Brime at the Hooded Fox, but he is currently in hiding due to the Sashes coming around recently (with possibly ill intent). Constance talks to the bartender Booker, convinces him she’s not with the Sashes, and arranges a meeting with Merrill, who is hiding out in a nearby tenement building. He talks about some friends of his who have been approached by the Sashes, and the only thing they all have in common that he can think of is that they all were at the Bell & Birch recently. He also details what he knows of the Sashes’ drug business. Their primary sources of income are Trance Powder and Dream Smoke, two fairly high-end drugs. They deal them out of several reputable establishments in Crows Foot (a couple of restaurants, a massage parlor, and a bookmaker who takes bets on the dog races in Coalridge). Constance offers him sanctuary.

Gloves heads to The Moon’s Daughter, purported to be the best source of authentic Iruvian cuisine outside of the Iruvian Quarter in Silkshore (and some might even go so far as to say it’s the best source of Iruvian cuisine outside of Iruvia itself). Mylera and some of her underlings happen to be dining there at the time, and she invites Gloves to join their table. She thanks him for the list of names from the Bell & Birch, informing him that some of them have been useful, while others were deemed dangerous, and at least one is being targeted for assassination. Conversation amongst the underlings turns to dealing with the Lampblacks. It’s agreed that while they have been doing well in the small altercations that have been occurring of late, they need to do something decisive, and soon. Gloves also learns how to inform the staff of the Moon’s Daughter that he is in the market for Trance Powder.

Shade visits the Path of Echoes and sells the occupied spirit bottle (4 Coin). Then he hangs around near the Temple to see if he can find the ghost of a dead Sash. He ends up summoning a ghost named Kelyr, and after a brief battle of wills, gets some useful information. The Sashes’ drug business is run by Branon Avrathi, whose father is a high-ranking member of the Iruvian Consulate. The Sashes and the Consulate enjoy a working relationship. Shade shows Kelyr the spirit hook to let him know who’s in charge, but then asks what Kelyr wants in return for keeping quiet about their exchange. Kelyr reveals that he is unable to possess anyone, and is jealous of ghosts that can. He wants to learn Nyryx’s secret.

Notes:

I was very happy to have the opportunity to drop some fairly big bits of information on the players this time around. I’ve been trying very hard to present a world that reacts to the players’ actions, and show them that everything they do creates ripples in the rest of the world.

I also love it when two or more characters attempt to gather information on something from different angles, and I can give each of them different pieces of the puzzle.

I’ve also made it a point that every time Shade interacts with a ghost, I build up a little more of the mythology surrounding them. Also, he’s had a very easy time of it, but all that’s going to come back on him soon.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 14 (May 1 2016)

The Turner 302 Job:

Edward Clermont has boasted that his new safe, a top of the line Turner 302, is invincible. Kamali has decided to accept the challenge.

The crew gets a 5 on the Engagement roll. Kamali and Shade get inside the house with no incident, while Gloves keeps watch outside. The maid is nowhere to be seen, due to the butler deciding he needs to take a more direct role in his niece’s care, and so the basement is clear. However, Clermont does have an unexpected visitor from the Skovlan Consulate, who shows up right when Kamali is about to get to work on the safe. He is demanding information from the papers in the safe, in relation to a recent incident involving Ulf Ironborn (the words “arson” and “terrorism” are mentioned).

The Turner 302 is a 6′ by 4′ free-standing safe, made of a combination of solid iron and steel, painted a tasteful dark forest green with the company name and model number in elegant gold lettering on the door. There are three combination locks, and several glass plates inside designed to shatter if someone attempts to drill into it or open it by force, dropping secondary bolts into place, rendering the entire thing inoperable until it’s brought back to the manufacturer to reset. I rule that opening the safe is (for Kamali) a single 8 segment clock. More on this in the Notes.

Kamali commences work on opening the safe using Finesse, as her plan involves not damaging the safe in any way, or in fact leaving any evidence that it had been opened at all (in contrast with someone like Constance, who would not think twice about using Wreck to simply force the door open, or even just try to knock a hole in the side with a sledgehammer). I rule that Kamali’s position here would be Risky, but having acquired and studied the blueprints allows her to bump it back up to Controlled. In the first recorded instance (in our group) of a player using the fill-in line at the bottom of the Gear list, Kamali produces the stethoscope that she has thoughtfully decided to bring along in order to assist in hearing the turn of the tumblers.

As Kamali is working on the safe, Shade is on lookout at the door to the room, listening to the commotion coming from upstairs. He realizes it’s only a matter of time before Clermont and his guest come downstairs (this is a 4 segment countdown clock). Before too long Kamali gets through all three tumblers, and the safe is open, revealing (as the ghost said) a leather binder stuffed with papers, and a very large amount of Coin. She and Shade manage to copy important information from the papers (an additional 6 segment clock which they make short work of using Group actions), close the safe again, and get into a good hiding spot before Clermont and his visitor come down to the basement to retrieve the papers from the safe (a wooden bench hastily laid across the door buys them some time). Once Clermont is gone, Kamali easily opens the safe again, now that she has the combination.

I offer them the choice:

A. Shade’s Plan: Take the whole stack of cash now (10 Coin) and earn 1 XP for reinforcing their Reputation for being daring (for cracking the Turner 302), or

B. Kamali’s Plan: Only take an inconspicuous amount (2 Coin), and have the option of coming back on a regular basis to skim off of Clermont’s petty cash fund, and that will result in 2 XP for being extra daring. One detail is that eventually the money taken will be missed (and there is now an ongoing 4 segment clock for that, but if they can pull off a job to infiltrate and doctor Clermont’s ledgers, that will reset the clock).

In the end, Shade agrees to go with Kamali’s plan. There is some speculation that both Boots and Gloves will object to this plan, for completely different reasons. Boots will think it’s a bad idea for the group to press their luck, and Gloves will just complain that he didn’t get paid.

Downtime actions for the Turner 302 Job:

* The crew earns enough Rep to go up to Tier 1 (Hooray!).

* Kamali, Shade, and Gloves all reduce Stress.

* Kamali trains Prowess, and spends a Coin to a project to make Frake a friend.

* Gloves talks to the remaining property owners in The Drop, advancing the gentrification project (1 segment left). There is some idle talk about renaming the neighborhood to make it sound more upscale, and “Drop Heights” was jokingly suggested.

* Shade spends some time with Nyryx, completing the project to make them a friend.

Downtime actions for The Unmarked Crate Job (session 12, but happening simultaneously with this job):

* Gears and Constance both work more on clearing the factory floor, which opens the way for a smaller clock to set up living space.

* Gears works on an addition to Constance’s anchor (a spring-loaded launch tube for a crossbow bolt), so she has a bit of a surprise for any enemy with whom she hasn’t yet closed into melee range.

* Constance and Boots reduce stress.

* Boots spends an action healing, which clears up his broken nose.

* Constance spends a Coin to reduce Heat.

Notes:

It was always Kamali’s plan to completely ghost this whole job. She very deliberately set things up in such a way that there would be no evidence that anyone had ever been there, much less robbed the place. The fact that the Turner 302’s reputation as uncrackable remains intact is also valuable, as does the as yet unspecified diplomatic information copied from the papers in the safe. We’ll see what that leads to in future sessions.

Following on from my notes on the previous session, I hit upon something that I don’t believe is specifically mentioned in the Quickstart, but everyone running the game should keep in mind: The consequence It Takes More Time should be used specifically in conjunction with some kind of countdown clock. Otherwise, it lacks bite and ends up being a cop out. In this particular session, I used it with the Unexpected Visitor clock. By judicious use of It Takes More Time and Reduced Effect to exert some control over how quickly each the opposing clocks were filling up, I was able to keep the tension ratcheted up quite nicely during the job.

Also, during this job, there was some question as to how the Turner 302’s legendary difficulty was being modeled in the game. I said that the short answer is that there are several factors at work to represent that.

As the GM, I have several dials that I can utilize to tune the difficulty of an obstacle: The number of segments on a clock, the possibility of multiple linked clocks, opposing clocks, the position of the roll.

Cracking the safe was a single 8 segment clock. However, I said that this was specifically for Kamali, and specifically for the method she used for opening it. Kamali has been presented in the fiction as a talented safe-cracker, among other things. If someone else had approached this particular task who had not been characterized as such (Boots, for example), the mechanics would look much different (perhaps a separate clock for each of the three tumblers).

There’s also the not insignificant point that the Turner Security Company is very likely overstating their ingenuity and innovative design in order to sell a product. Doesn’t mean it’s true (as Kamali has proven).

One additional note: I ran this 1 day after the previous session. This is the first game I’ve ever run where it doesn’t cause me stress (see what I did there). I could probably run this several times a week without a fuss if my schedule permitted it, I have so many ideas for what’s happening next.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 13 (April 30 2016)

Gloves and Kamali, left to their own devices, decide to go get some real food, and head to the Iruvian quarter in Silkshore. Over kebabs and a hookah, Gloves expounds on his family history at length; his father was a Court Philosopher, whose job was to be a sounding board of sorts, one of many advisors to the Sultan. Kamali, for obvious reasons, gives very little information about her background.

Shade is in a bookstore in Silkshore with Setarra. She is arguing with the shopkeeper over the price of a particular book when Shade notices Gloves and Kamali walking past outside. Setarra greets Gloves respectfully in Iruvian (“A thousand blessings upon your House”), but Kamali keeps her distance, and once Shade and Setarra excuse themselves, spits on the ground.

The next morning, Shade finds himself at a loose end, so he and Gloves and Kamali nose around for various rumors. They find the following:

* Edward Clermont boasts that his new safe (a Turner 302) is invincible.

* The Path of Echoes are willing to pay top coin for inhabited spirit bottles, no questions asked.

* There is a new drug called Lure made from leviathan blood that turns people into demons.

* The Ministry of Transport is taking over the Gondoliers

Kamali decides that cracking the safe is an opportunity too wonderful to pass up, so she takes Gloves and Shade to meet Frake, a locksmith who has a shop in Nightmarket. Frake is a dwarf who is very skilled at his trade. He knows about the Turner 302, a new model of safe from the Turner Security Company, that has a reputation of being uncrackable due to several new advances. He doesn’t have one in stock yet, but he does have the blueprints for it. He loans them to Kamali in exchange for the usual price: a game of chess, which she loses. He critiques her performance afterward, saying that she plays too defensively. “Chess is a game about armies advancing on one another on a battlefield, not about withstanding a siege.”

That evening, the crew sets about gathering information on Clermont’s townhouse, located in Six Towers. Shade attunes to the ghost field, and discovers the bum he killed way back when has been following him around this whole time. They make a deal; if the ghost goes in and scopes out the house, and in return Shade is supposed to end his suffering by dissipating him. The ghost holds up his end of the bargain (learning the location of the safe and the fact that it contains lots of cash and some papers), but when the time comes for Shade to do his part, instead of keeping his word and discorporating the ghost, Shade uses his spirit hook and stuffs him in a bottle. And thus we are reminded (much like in Sons of Anarchy and Peaky Blinders), the PCs may be the protagonists, but they are not nice people, and they are NOT the heroes.

Gloves hangs out near the side door to Clermont’s house, and seduces his maid. After some clever conversation and no small amount of flattery, they adjourn to the maid’s bedroom in the basement of the townhouse.

Later, Kamali sneaks into Clermont’s house, gets the layout and scopes out whatever’s valuable, but doesn’t take anything. She learns that Clermont works for the Skovlan Consulate.

Shortly after Kamali leaves, Gloves is still in bed with the maid when her uncle, Clermont’s butler, knocks on the door demanding to know why she hasn’t been about her duties around the house. There is some tense conversation while Gloves hides in the wardrobe, but it isn’t long before the butler becomes suspicious, barges in, and proceeds to search the room. Finding Gloves in the wardrobe, he orders his niece to go call the Bluecoats, and plans to detain Gloves in the sitting room (aided by a hastily grabbed fire poker) until they arrive. After about half an hour, when it becomes obvious that the Bluecoats aren’t coming, the butler is left in the unfortunate position of not being able to do anything about it himself without letting Gloves out of his sight (Gloves graciously offers to go summon the Bluecoats himself, but the butler is not amused). He ponders simply shooting Gloves, but decides that will cause more problems than it would solve, so in the end, he lets Gloves go, warning him that he will kill Gloves if he sees him near the house again.

Notes:

This was originally intended to be a fill-in session with just Gloves and Kamali, as Shade’s player would be out, but he was available at the last minute, so it was the whole group after all, and we got to see the B Team doing a side job away from the rest of the group.

Also, that last scene with Gloves and the butler actually happened at the beginning of Session 14, after a discussion regarding 4/5 results. The roll for Gloves to seduce the maid was a 5, and it was pointed out that I didn’t really inflict any kind of consequence on him for that roll at the time. I have resolved to take 4 & 5 results as opportunities to make things more interesting.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 12 (April 26 2016)

Downtime after the Luxury Fence Claim:

Boots gets his broken nose treated and goes to play cards for a while.

Constance works on clearing out the machinery from the factory, and trains Prowess.

Gears helps Constance with clearing out the machinery and goes to spy on the Docks. In the late afternoon he sees a ship crew bring an unmarked crate off the ship and into Ferros’ warehouse as surreptitiously as possible.

The Unmarked Crate Job:

There is a particular warehouse in The Docks, controlled by the Seaside Dockers. The crates that come in and out of this warehouse are all marked with a series of 10 digit tracking numbers. However, recently a crate came into the warehouse with no visible markings on it. This has piqued the crew’s curiosity.

Gears gathers info by visiting an old friend named Milos, an ex-docker who retired with a bad back. Milos explains the numbering system. Certain pairs of digits denote what shipping company is moving it, its port of origin, the destination port, and other miscellaneous information. Once a crate is brought into the city, the local warehouse has the corresponding paperwork to inform its final destination within the city, and whether it’s to be delivered or picked up.

Boots watches the warehouse while walking Valter, keeping track of the comings and goings, and notes some consistency to the pattern of numbers, as well as when and how they are updated or removed as the crates move through the warehouse (crates are frequently reused, and the old numbers are just painted over). He also collects samples of fur from the goats used to pull the delivery carts and stores them for later use in tracking.

Constance and Marlane go to The Black Tree, a pub in the Docks where Ferros’ dockworkers hang out. They pick a fight with the dockworkers, and injure a number of them enough that they will miss work. The next day Constance watches the tenement building where some of the injured workers live, and sees the shift supervisor Frost come to check on the workers who have failed to show up to work. She ambushes him and ties him up, questioning him about his home address and correctly guessing that he has a wife. She visits his wife (and infant son) at home, and strong-arms Frost into giving up his paperwork. She brings it back to the crew, and they locate the line indicating when the unlabeled crate is to be delivered (day after next) and where (Shade, passing through, recognizes the address as belonging to Lord Scurlock). Gears forges a change of address to have it delivered to The Hive, and Kamali returns the papers to Frost’s wife.

A day and a half later, Boots is walking Valter near the warehouse again when the crate is loaded onto a delivery cart. When he sees which goats are being used to pull the cart, he has Valter track by scent, and sure enough, the cart goes to the warehouse owned by The Hive. Boots arrives just as the cart is leaving, and finds Corville & Lady Casslyn in the entryway with the crate. He informs them who it belongs to and how it arrived there, and she immediately has Corville get a carriage ready so she can deliver it personally to Lord Scurlock. She thanks Boots, and informs him that this certainly fulfills their obligation, and pending Lord Scurlock’s reaction to the Dockers, she will release Basran from his contract.

Notes:

There was some nifty foreshadowing of the force of nature that is Lord Scurlock. The mere mention of his name was enough to make a senior lieutenant of the Hive extremely nervous.

Another house rule we instituted was that I am allowing the crew to gain certain upgrades through the completion of long term projects, rather than XP and crew playbook advances, since those have been coming fairly slowly. The first item on their agenda is Quarters, so the first project is to clear out all the machinery from the factory floor, and divide that space up until smaller rooms.

#dontmesswiththedolls