Author: Oliver Granger (watergoesred)

Session 5 of #theHulls

Notes

The crew seemed to get in their groove a bit more here. This score was a more straightforward burglary, in their hunting ground, so that might have helped. No factions to tip toe around, no grand plans to fret about.

The info gathering was much smoother and cleaner. Good rolls helped, but also I think I pulled back on how many obstacles the crew had to face to actually get to the info roll. That is part of what made the Red Lamp info gathering session so difficult.

I think I set the danger clock with too many segments; if I set it again I’d probably have gone with 4-segments instead of 6. In part, I set it high because I wasn’t sure how the engagement roll might have screwed up the clock. We haven’t finished the score yet so it may still cause problems.

I also think I failed to establish the patrol danger clock properly in the fiction, which I think took away some sense of its urgency.

A tricky bit was coming up with complications that didn’t reflect poorly on the Lurk’s burglary skills but more on happenstance and bad luck. I had to correct myself a few times before I got the tone right.

I’m also not sure about how well I set the position of the rolls. Most of the initial rolls were dominant, but on reflection I may have not emphasised the danger of the patrol enough, either from noticing the break-in or at least the time pressure of the patrol passing by.

Still, Rat ended this session with eight stress, one shy of trauma, from starting with 2, pushing himself once on entering Hagtrees and then taking 4 stress from avoiding level 1 harm: strain. So there’s pressure enough on the players for what is a pretty small job.

Gameplay

After considering a few options, the players decide they need coin to splash out on Rat’s (the Lurk) long term project to shore up Dust’s (the Slide) fake identity as a Customs Officer. The unquietness of Ashlynn Daava, the war in Crow’s foot, the bigger play against the losers of that war, all got ignored for the simplicity and directness of getting more cash.

For fortune rolled in their favour. A good opportunity for a spot of burglary has appeared in “the Drop” their hunting ground. A Fight Club is setting up tonight and only tonight in Painter’s Court, which has a fair view toward Brightstone in the North. The Fight Club moves around the city, all fights are to the death so disliked by Bluecoats, Spirit Wardens and the like. By the same token, the brutality attracts many, and the betting flows like butter all night.

Which brings us to the score: the Fight Club tries to run a tidy, quiet operation, relatively speaking. Once the fights are over, the money is usually sat in nearby shop or warehouse overnight, then moved during day trade under the cloak of the legitimate business. The crew plan to infiltrate the safe house overnight before the cash is moved. However, there are several artisan supplies and collectibles stores around Painter’s court that could be the safe house. So the crew go gather info to establish necessary the entry point detail for the plan.

During the day, Dust goes shop-to-shop in disguise as a foppish merchant, stirring up the shop attendants and keeping for unusual activity. These goes well (a five), but takes most of the day. This set up move help Talon (the Hound) to track any unusual characters that Dust points out with his Spite, his mind linked fine flying serpent hunting pet that he has a mind link with. This gives them good info about the safe house, though Talon takes a Devil’s Bargain that someone in the Fight Club crew is someone he knows from his past.

The entry point is Hagtrees, named after a desiccated ancient wood that looms over the entrance of this mirror, glass and crystal shop. It has barricaded shopfront, which is no doubt why it was picked, in large part to protect the valuable breakables inside from errant rocks or vagrants. Dust noted a large, obvious wall-mounted safe at the end of the shop.

Three clocks

o Entry into Hagtrees: 4-segments

o Painters Court patrol notices break-in: 6-segments

o Get your hands on the loot: 6-segments

The engagement roll is excellent, so there’s no surprises at the start of the score.

The crew saw the fights, Talon on nearby rooftops, Dust as a beggar in a dirty alley, and Rat mixing with the crowd. They easily follow the money through the various switches and subterfuge, and confirm it’s locked up in Hagtrees.

Hiding with his shadow cloak, in the dead limbs of the hagtree, Rat waits till the Painters Court clears out and calms to a whisper. Using Talon’s rooftop perch and Dust’s slovenly corner to time his entry best against the patrol, Rat cracks the hinges of the narrow venting window above the shop door. 2 ticks down on entering Hagtrees.

Unfortunately a new guard stepped out from a doorway, stretching and yawning after obviously having a nap, directly opposite Hagtrees, putting Rat into a more difficult position. In danger of spotting the Lurk carrying a windowpane or just the missing window, Dust used his beggar disguise to sway the guard into sharing a drink, laced with trance powder, which knocked the guard out and left Dust a slight confusion. Improved position for Rat and 1 harm on Dust.

Rat athletically manoeuvres himself through the long window, sliding the window pane after him since there was nowhere to leave it on the tree. Rat gets stressed out though, (4 stress, bringing him to 8) from the strain of dodging all the crystal and glass, keeping quiet, and carrying the cumbersome pane. But that’s the last two ticks for the Hagtree clock, so they’re in.

Rat moves straight to the wall safe, passing the mirrors covering the left wall and the crystal and glasses shelved on the right. But the big, obvious wall safe is fake, a chunk of welded metal. Not wanting to burn too much time searching by himself, he signals Talon. In swoops Spite, Talon’s mind-linked flying serpent. Leading a survey of the room, Spite and Talon quickly uncover a trapdoor under the Iruvian carpet. Rolling it back, Rat reveals a shining safe with a clip goblin triple wheel lock. Crack goes his knuckles. 2 ticks down on getting hands on the loot.

Downtime – Session 4 for #theHulls

Payoff: 0 coin

Heat: +7

Player actions

Dust (the Slide) ended with 7 stress from the info gathering last session. So she indulges her Vice by going to her good friend Nyryx, in nightmarket, and listening to some of the bizarre and controversial secrets of Nyryx’s clients. Dust erases 6 stress.

Word is that it wasn’t the Red Sashes but the Hulls who garrotted a Red Lamp guard. Dust digs up truth that the dead guard actually enjoyed deflowering maidens, Iruvian and otherwise. This, along with bribes for a couple of prostitutes (found with Nyryx’s help) to spread rumours that embellish on those truths, Dust reduces heat on the Hulls by 2.

Talon (the Hound) spends time gathering info on Ashyln Daava, the occult collector and Talon’s last bounty hunt before the Hulls, and why her ghost might be back haunting the Wrecks (the Shipwreck graveyard within which the Hulls have hidden their lair). Talon meets his friend Fitz of Dunslough, who is collector himself. A good details result on the info roll means Fitz finds in his ledgers that, around when Ashyln had a bounty placed on her from stealing from the Hive, there was an item withdrawn from a black auction, the Sexton of Shadows. Fitz guesses if she nabbed it, and stowed it their when on the run, she might have come back to retrieve it. When asked how, Fitz describes how it is know the Sexton can be held by either a body or a spirit.

Talon also reacquires an asset, Vixen the ex-railjack Whisper. In the case of reacquiring the services of someone already known, we agreed the quality determined by the roll would be interpreted as how motivated and interested Vixen would be in continuing to work with the Hulls. The roll in this case shows she’s remained standard quality Whisper.

Rat (the Lurk) decides to starts a long-term project to shore up Dust’s false identity as Officer Strathmill, in part to help the Hulls hold on to the turf they took from the Seaside Dockers. So an 8-segment long-term project clock: Plant records to establish the identity and life of Customs Officer Strathmill. Rat marks a tick off the clock by breaking into the office of a money lender and planting a forged credit history for Officer Strathmill.

Rat also reduces heat on the Hulls concerning the brawling and break-in at the Red Lamp. Rat bribes some nurses at a hospital burn ward, establishing an alibi that Rat was bed-ridden for days after the Red Lamp inferno and certainly in no fit state to strangle a swarthy guard in broad daylight. Heat drops by another 2.

Entanglements

They rolled gang trouble, but they don’t have any gangs or other cohorts so that meant no entanglements.

NPC factions

The war between Lampblacks and Red Sashes. A Red Sashes drug den and manufactory burns down, rumour has it was demon fire. This brings down the ire of the Inspectors, normally allies to the Red Sashes but growing increasingly agitated as the war escalates. 3 ticks toward the Lampblacks destroying the Red Sashes, boosted thanks to the help of the Whisper Twins.

Word has got out that the Lampblacks pulled strings with Ironhook Prison and secured early releases for some of the Lampblacks’ heaviest, including the Bathos Brothers and Melindra Waneheart. This much needed boost to the Lampblack rep came just in time, because they took a heavy blow when their ‘Bitter Talent’ brewery was found tainted after civilians and gang members started losing body parts after drinking the popular performance-enhancing beer.

The Foghounds tick down their Find a patron clock: 6 to 5. The Foghounds have been working on building trust with some of the ship captains the smuggle from, and it’s finally paying dividends. Word has it they got an invite to a party in Whitecrown. No doubt they’ll be spruiking tax avoidance services to the nobles that own man of the Leviathan and merchant ships.

Session 4 of #theHulls

In contrast with the drawn out, stressful info gathering last session, the score was neat and quick.

Rat (the Lurk) was the bait the unquiet dead Mr Posselthwaite into crossing Brightstone bridge. Then Talon (the Hound) was in position on top of building and, when the ghost finally appeared for a final taunt, dispatched the spirit with a single electro plasmic-charged bullet.

The efficiency of this was definitely in part to the particular skills of the Hound, the canny rolling of the Hound’s player, and a unfamiliarity on my part with how to handle ghosts fictionally and mechanically. Nevertheless, this efficiency was helpful to balance out some of the misgivings from last session, that it was all swings and roundabouts and that the game wasn’t death spiralling away from the big picture—a fear raised because of the feeling the crew was beginning to deal with entanglements within entanglements.

The rule I had missed applying was Stress & the Supernatural (p7):

A close encounter with a spirit or demon is a harrowing experience. By default, the standard effect is to either paralyze a person with fear or panic them into fleeing from its presence. A PC can choose to roll to resist the effect. Characters with lots of exposure to spirits, such as Whispers, Rail Jacks, and occult weirdos become less susceptible and only face fear or panic from exceptionally powerful entities.

This slip had two immediate effects. One, the Hound wasn’t really sure why they had bothered hiring a Whisper; he was the one with the electroplasmic bullets afterall. Two, Rat conversed with the ghost and Talon aimed and shot the ghost, and neither suffered any stress or risk of freezing/fleeing. We’ll definitely be applying that rule in future though.

But we’ve come up with a fictionally satisfying explanation for the rules mishap. How it went down last session is how the Hulls retell it, not how it really went down. The experience was actually nightmarish, so much so the crew only remember fragments, their minds painting over the harrowing details to make themselves look better, and feel better too. Of course, Vixen the NPC Whisper knows the truth of the matter, but it’s unlikely the crew want to hear it.

After some info gathering went badly in Session 3 of #theHulls, my table had a discussion about the game and their expectations.

One player hadn’t expected the info gathering and the action rolls to be so arduous. Further, they felt that the crew sheet promised all kinds of high stakes, strategic factional play, but the game was drawing them into brawling in the dirt on the street.

There’s a few things to unpack here. I think it’s clear that as soon as an action roll is called for, the story can take nose dive into complications. If it’s just a fortune roll for info, then its pretty clean, but if you action roll with a trait then in some ways inevitable you’ll land with 7 stress before the real score begins. That’s all cool.

Part of my players’ expectations were set I think by the crew creation and how I paced introducing scores. You know the step where players pick the factions they are friends or enemies with, I think my players got a sense that the game would focus on strategic, goal-orientated play, setting faction against faction, and expanding the crew. That’s obviously an interest of my players, the Hulls are Ambitious. They also started playing the high-stakes strategy game from the outset, by cleverly avoiding Baszo’s question, and then manoeuvring control of a Tier 3 factions turf without attracting too ire. This may be why this info gather session felt like such a slowdown for them. They felt they were struggling in the weeds, fighting to survive on such small fry and the big game where they thought they were playing was so far behind. After all the actions by NPC factions, I think they felt like the big game was go to leave them behind just because they couldn’t open a door to find out how to nail a ghost who’s taunting them.

Part of this might be because of how I paced the initial score options. I probably didn’t emphasis how insignificant it is being Tier 0 compared to say Tier 2 of the Lampblacks or Tier 3 of the Seaside Dockers. It makes me wonder if focusing the first score or two on some basic burglary or robbery might have given them a better sense of their place in the criminal world. Maybe slowly building introducing the effect of their activity on other factions, more slowly revealing what other NPC factions are doing during their downtime. In part I think the players have felt overwhelmed by their options for scores and lack a sense of what activity is above their station. The turf grab was interesting but perhaps gave them a sense of momentum before they had established their roots. Again, by allowing them to wiggle out of Baszo’s question, I may have done them some disservice here.

I don’t know these are issue with the rules so much as about how I might have paced and set expectations better. Any tips on that would be welcome.

There was also questions about when Downtime can be triggered. The game gives the impression that the phases are a clear procedure, but in many ways there’s lots of wriggle room and space for captain’s calls. As the text describes, an info gather might be too big to do in one go. I also think that, like our session 3, info gathering might leave the crew in such a sorry state they need to recover before tackling the score or they’ll get squashed. Or, if its a time critical score, they much just have to walk away.

I’m also not really using the effect system, just calling standard effect almost all the time. Part of the problem is I don’t really understand, when I’m faced with a roll, why I would call something other than standard, especially when I’ve already decided what position they’re in. It kind of feels like I’m double punishing them if I set effect low as well position difficult or desperate.

Session 3 of #theHulls  

Info gathering:  what could’ve been a single attune roll, or even a two roll distract and pick pocket, turned into a eight-roll brawling, murderous, stressful, heat-attracting mess.

Here the players had a few options for their next score. There was a rather ripe burglary in their hunting ground, as a well appointed household seemed to be leaving the premises unoccupied. They had further ideas for progressing their plan to steal Baszo Bas’s whisky supply and sell it back to him. But the immediate problem that drew their attention most was Rat (the Lurk) being haunted by the ghost of a Duskwall Councillor, killed when Rat overindulged his Vice for stupor and almost destroyed the Red Lamp, and taunting Rat with revenge. Plus they acquired a Whisper for the next score so ghost hunting made the most sense.

They decide on an assault plan, but haven’t any idea on the detail: a point of attack. Mainly because the ghost hasn’t materialised or been spotted. So they decide to go to the Red Lamp to gather info on the ghost, it’s death and other peculiarities like how Rat did not die in the inferno. He was so stupid at the time, he cannot recall.

The Red Lamp is an opulently appointed four-storey circular building with a golden red roof. After the leviathan blood inferno, it is only operating on the top two floors, accessed by external stairs guarded top and bottom. The lower floors are gutted, burnt by the caustic fumes and effervescence of the leviathan blood that infamously flooded its lower basement and crawled uncontrolled over everything up to two floors above ground.

It’s dangerous for the crew around here because the Spirit Wardens are seeking the spirits that escaped this inferno, as well as someone to pin the blame.

To gather info, Vixen, the hired ex-railjack Whisper, tries attuning to the ghost field here, but it’s dirty and hazed grey. She finds prints of the Councillor here and there, matching those on Rat, and clear signs that the Councillor is lost and looking for his way somewhere, but nothing more. A poor roll result meant incomplete info.

Players decide to try another approach, to survey the scene within the basement for more info. Unfortunately the windows are boarded up and the main doors locked. However, they spot keys on the guard at the foot of the stairs and decide to steal them.

Dust (the Slide) assists Rat’s pick pocketing by distracting the guard by requesting access to the burnt interior as railjack cleanup crew. Or something similar. Rat finesses the key, but the guard doesn’t buy Dust’s shit and calls two guards down to prod the three scoundrels aways away from the premises.

Once those guards eventually return upstairs, and only the single guard remains on street-level, Rat leads a group action to prowl into the alcove where the main doors are in shadow and off the street a little. Unfortunately, it goes poorly, and things get desperate as the lone guard is still alert for their return and comes to investigate “a noise” and Rat is fumbling to find the right key on the ring for the door. Dust quickly flips her cloak and becomes her Red Sashes disguise that she prepared earlier and leaps out to confront the guard , accusing him of deflowering her younger sister. In fact the guard doesn’t seem surprised and rather knocks Dust over with a vicious thrust to her neck. Dust resists a wound and ends that foray with 7 stress.

Instead of using the distraction to continue the unlocking, Rat ambushes and garrottes the guard, dragging him into the alcove. They get extra heat, as a baker putting out old bread locks eyes with Rat as the Bell Tower rings the guard’s death.

They now enter the ground floor of the gutted and burnt Red Lamp, hiding the dead guard, and survey the place. They find a ledger, with pages hastily torn out. With a bit of charcoal rubbing, they identify the patronage of Nigel Posselthwaite, hailing from Brightstone. Rat recalls the name and they settle on the Brightstone bridge, north of Crow’s foot, as (the plan detail) where they will jump the unquiet ghost.

Phew.

Next session, the execution of the plan is dramatically more straightforward, thanks to the appearance of the Hound, and they recover from this info gathering in a much needed downtime.