Hi all,
Thought someone might be interested in how a oneshot I ran over the weekend with some friends went. Fair warning though this is a train of thought writing piece and I used a homebrew setting and gave each character a unique ability and changed a few of the character specific items. I in no way stand by these unique alterations as being remotely balanced or a good idea for other campaigns, I made them specifically to suit the individual tastes of a group that I’ve played with for several years and know quite well.
Ok, warning over. Some general background info on the campaign: it’s a modern fantasy setting that draws from a lot of differing influences (the Dresden files, WoD, various games, classic fantasy tropes, and my own ideas). It wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously as the players generally prefer a lighter campaign. The basic premise of the setting is that reality is a mundane place with no magic, but is a nexus of portals to other realms which have their own universal laws, some of which do allow for magic. The mundane world is protected from these other realms by the ‘shroud’ an effect whereby forces and effects that disagree with the laws of our reality are slowly purged from existence. As a consequence, entities from other worlds are unable to spend enter our reality for any kind of remotely long period without dying. The same effect causes human’s who DO witness supernatural activity to quickly attribute it to something understandable. In order to enter our reality and occasionally use their powers interested entities have a come up with a variety of ‘veils’, various methods and magics that create a mundane cover for the supernatural entity to exist in our reality. Temporary veils are easy to organise but only last a short while, so in order to have a permanent presence various factions have come up with methods of creating more permanent agents in reality: Vampires accomplish this by inserting part of themselves into a corpse, fae and elves use powerful magic to swap another baby with a member of their own race at birth (changelings), wizards are created by various factions by giving a regular mortal a part of their power. However these veils are fragile to a degree and can be damaged if the user channels too much magic. Due to this, trauma in game was replaced by ‘tears’, as in tears in the veil (like a shirt). Characters acquired too many tears in their veil were forced to retire as they could no longer spend large amounts of time in reality.
The other factor that keeps the various supernatural forces from getting too much leverage on reality are the so called ‘reality enforcers’. Reality enforces are immune to the effects of the shroud, have an intrinsic understanding of the rules of reality (leading them to have advanced technology) and are able to lessen the effects of magic used in their presence. This combined with their innate hatred of supernatural forces, makes them extremely dangerous foes. In addition, they seem to have an almost intrinsic capability in leading mundane humans and seem to gravitate towards integrating themselves behind the scenes into existing power structures. As a result almost all modern countries have intelligence and black ops splinter groups run by reality enforces with large amounts of power and little oversight. The supernatural has a number of theories but little facts about the reality enforcers, the two most common theories are: that they are another group of super-naturals who have somehow managed to meld themselves fully into their reality; and they are somehow this realities natural defence mechanism against the ongoing scourge of invading supernatural forces.
Below are the changes I made to the character, these changes replaced the class specific abilities and items of the characters. Character 1 was a slide. Player 2 was a whisper, and Player 3 was a lurk. Each player was given an ability based on the Tempest ability from the Whisper class, as I found the balancing of stress as both damage and resource pool interesting. Also it allowed the players to have some extra tools to player around with:
Player 1:
Winter’s Breath: Channel energy to summon Winter’s effect through your very body. Costs stress equal to the magnitude of the results (0-6).
Subterfuge: You get special armor vs. persuasion or deception. When you roll a critical while using subterfuge, clear 1 stress.
Espionage: When you use a disguise or cover, you get +1 effect.
Winter’s Breath Effects Possible Effects:
0: Surround your hands (and attacks) with life-sapping cold or create weapons from ice.
1: Cause a single room to be filled with fog or arctic temperatures.
2: Transform into a swirling cloud of snow flakes.
3: Unleash a rolling cloud of fog covering a city block.
4: Fortify yourself with the full strength of winter’s fury, for this scene you are considered to be wearing heavy armour and wielding a fine large weapon.
5: Unleash a flurry of shards of ice across an entire room that are sufficient to shred anyone not protected or able to block them.
6: Unleash a furious and deadly blizzard covering several blocks.
Items:
Fine clothes and jewellery: A series of outfit of such fine make as to pass as a variety of wealth personages.
Fine disguise kit: A magical make-up kit equipped with an impressive array of expert appliances to fool the eye.
Fine loaded dice, trick cards: Gambling accoutrements subtly altered to favour particular outcomes.
Trance powder: A dose of alchemic powder, which induces a dreamlike and obedient state.
Fae-spider Poison: A vial of dark blue tasteless venom, taken through ingestion or via the blood. A drop will cause someone fall into a deep dreamless sleep within an hour, the entire vial will cause the same in 5 minutes, swiftly followed by death.
Player 2:
Force Mage: Channel energy to produce and control fire or telekinetic effects. Costs stress equal to the magnitude of the results (0-6).
Ritual: You can invoke an occult ritual to summon a supernatural effect or being. Costs stress based on the magnitude of the results (2-6). Answer the GM’s questions to create the ritual (page 41).
Beyond: You get special armor vs. supernatural effects. When you roll a critical while dealing with arcane powers, clear 1 stress.
Force Mage Possible Effects:
0: Move a small object with telekinesis, create a small force missile.
1: Move an object an average man could lift with telekinesis.
2: Bind someone’s movement with telekinesis. Create a momentary shield which can halt bullets from one direction.
3: Levitate yourself, others, or objects.
4: Fly at speed. Create a momentary shield which can stop cars from one direction.
5: Restrain everyone in a room. Crush a room shaped area with force from above.
6: Crush an entire building with a massive telekinetic blow from above.
Items:
Shroud Manipulations Wards: A set of wards that take time to set up, but once done so will draw on the shroud to make all mundane mortals ignore anything happening within them.
- Summoning Materials: A variety of magical equipment which allows a creature to break through the shroud in a set location for a short period of time(depends on the strength of the creature, but usually up to ten minutes).
Fine spirit mask: An arcane item which allows the trained user to see arcane energies in great detail.
Dragon-blood vials: A small set of tough crystalline vials, containing the faintly luminous blood of a dragon. Useful for empowering channelling, imbuing effects with fire, or summoning, but dangerous to imbibe.
Gate key: An arcane device which can open or (briefly) seal gates.
Player 3:
Jupiter Thunder Crash: Channel energy to produce and control electrical effects. Costs stress equal to the magnitude of the results (0-6).
Brian: Your border collie Brian is imbued with spirit energy. It gains potency when tracking or fighting the supernatural, and gains arcane abilities: mind-link and arrow-swift.
Shadow: You get special armour vs. consequences from detection or security. When you roll a critical on a feat of athletics or stealth, clear 1 stress.
Jupiter Thunder Crash Possible Effects:
0: Wreath your hands in electrical energy, allowing you to stun or kill.
1: Shoot electrical energy from your hands. Sense the electrical charge in items surrounding you.
2:Shutdown all electronics in a single room for half an hour.
3: Summon a bolt of untraceable lightning from the clear blue sky
4: Perceive the electrical makeup of an entire building.
5: Prevent all electrical items for working for a single building for 10 minutes.
6: Prevent all electrical items for working for several blocks for a minute.
Items:
Fine lockpicks: A finely crafted set of lockpicks.
Fine shadow cloak: A cloak made of rare Iruvian shadow-silk that blends into the darkness around it.
Light climbing gear: A well-crafted set of climbing gear which is less bulky and heavy than a standard set.
Silence potion vial: A vial of golden liquid that negates all sound within 10 paces of the drinker for a span of several minutes.
Dark-sight goggles: A mechanist device that allows the wearer to see in pitch darkness as if it were day.
Potion of Darkness: A vial of obsidian liquid that renders an area within 10 paces of the drinker pitch black for 60 seconds.
Man that was a lot of info. Anyway, the chronicle was set in modern day London. The players were a Tier 1 gang of thieves (partially because that’s the only crew currently available). The player’s themselves were elves from an unknown fantasy reality (the session itself was a surprise party for one of the players and the players opted to skip straight to playing rather then spend too much time filling out their background). The foremost supernatural power in the city the Summer Knights, who kept all the other factions in line have recently had their leaders assassinated. They are scrambling to keep control of the city but are in disarray, what do you do?
For the record, here are the factions:
Tier 3: Human Authorities: The Human Authorities, Cops may not be too bad, but screwing with them will quickly ramp up their threat levels.
Tier 3: The Panopticon: A group of reality enforcement agents.
Tier 2: The Black Council: The controlling, noble vampires. Second only to the Summer Knights in power. The strongest group in the city. Expect Necromancy. Specialise in influence with mortal society.
Tier 2: The Summer Knights: The previous controllers of the city, their leader and some of their most powerful members has been assassinated. A powerful group of fae who controlled the major gates. They are now struggling to control the city
Tier 2: The Winter Cabal: A group of dark fae, they are few in number but individually quite powerful. They prefer subtle methods of dealing with their foes. They specialise in organising veils and experiences for visiting powers.
Tier 2: Spoiler: The Svartálfar. A powerful group of dark elves from Norway. They are making a play on control of the city. They are individually quite weak, but are very adept at magic and making magical items. They are using a large force of magically brainwashed thugs to scout out the defences of the city whilst assassinating those they can with forces of magically armoured trolls.
Tier 1: The Bloods: A thuggish group orcs, lead by some ogres. They run protection rackets, undertake violent crimes, and traffic people to those that pay enough.
Tier 1: The Roses. A group of Vampires who specialise in the mortal drug trade.
Tier 1: The Mercuries: A group of information brokers and guides.
Tier 1: The Hedge Wizards: A group of wizards who specialise in low level magical items gleaned from a variety of portals.
Tier 1: Ulf Ironborn. An ancient man of unknown powerful origin. He owns a store at which he sells magical items and information.
How play actually went:
I purposefully left the situation open ended so that the players could decide how they wanted to take advantage of the chaos, I wasn’t disappointed.
For their first mission they launched an assault plan against a local Bloods outpost (one of the players instantly decided he disliked them and the Roses due to their drug dealing and people trafficking). The original plan was to wipe them out at a local restaurant run by the Bloods as a money launderer. All would be killed but one to send a message. However player 3 rolled a critical whilst firing lightning to kill and the orc tried to block it with a gas bottle whilst a fire raged behind them (I mean Orcs, right). The resulting explosion neatly killed all the orcs. For the record, the description of the orcs was that they were gangsters wearing ill-fitting suits with green skin and tusks who carried hand guns.
Following their unexpectedly efficient destruction of the Bloods outpost, they changed their mind and decided to spark a gang war between the Bloods and the Roses. What followed were several deception missions as the players attacked both the Bloods and the Roses whilst taking pains to make it look like it was the other Gang who was attacking them. Possibly my favourite mission was the one where they disguised themselves as Bloods Orcs and attacked a Rose owned drug den whilst chanting “ORCS! ORCS! ORCS! ORCS!” (they passed the Sway roll though, so apparently the Bloods DO do that). They also spent time seeding rumours about the ongoing conflict in order to further ramp up tensions.
Unfortunately for them, the Bloods had hired the Hedge Wizards to try and work out what happened in the initial attack and, due to a very good fortune roll, the hedge wizards managed to do exactly that. Unfortunately for the Bloods however, the Hedge Wizards decided the more profitable course of action was to blackmail the players with this information. The players were able to weasel themselves out of the situation however by doing some quick (and desperate) information gathering and finding out that the leader of the Hedge Wizards (unknown to his own gang) was a pawn of the Winter Council. Consequently, they were able to blackmail him into keeping his knowledge secret saving them 4 coin, but making an enemy in the process.
Entanglement rolls also served to spice up the game progress and shape the story. An early entanglement mishap had the gang tangling with the Winter Cabal. One of their gang members (who had the Principled disadvantage) objected to the actions of one of the Winter Cabal at a party and had ended up insulting them. After some debate the players had responded by giving the offending gang member a stern talking to, thereby losing face (due to their unwillingness to rectify the situation by either properly disciplining him or hand him over). This played into a later entanglement as the Mercuries decided that they were weak (due to the aforementioned incident and their successful covering up of their warmongering) and started throwing their weight around with them. The players were irritated by this, but decided that it would be better to just pay the Mercuries off rather then get involved in an altercation that may interfere with their plans.
Finally however, all their patience paid off. The Roses’ leader(not wanting a war with the bloods) organised a peace summit with the leader of the Bloods but then miserably failed his fortune roll, resulting in the Bloods’ leader beating him to death. War at this point was inevitable. After doing some investigation on some possible causes of the chaos in the city, and finding out that there were a bunch of Scandinavians around the city spying on the supernatural community, the players decided that the time was ripe to finally strike.
The player’s snuck through the outer patrols surrounding the Blood’s headquarters (an abandoned warehouse in the dockyards where they hosted bloodsports and gambling). It should be noted at this point, that each gang’s headquarters was centred around an area of thinner reality, allowing them to create a portal to their home dimension allowing themselves to call in reinforcements (and justifying how they were able to act as a gang in the first place). Rather then bothering to deal with the lockouts or assault the building himself though, player 2 instead decided to use his stress 6 forces ability to instead crush the entire building. He succeeded and, passing out from the effort and gaining the first tear in his veil, left the other two players to ensure their escape from the enraged lookouts nearby. Following some successful prowl rolls, the other two players were able to do so. The PC’s gang of Shadowkillers were then sent in to secure the area.
Striking whilst the iron was hot, the PCs decided to quickly move against the Rose’s headquarters as well, though this mission went much less smoothly. It started innocuously enough, the player’s showed up at the Rose’s headquarters to realise it was a rave. Using disguises, they managed to bluff their way into the rave itself. The building iself was a large open function area (where the rave was), with a large corridor leading to an extremely big metal door that would be far too heavy for a mortal to open. The metal door itself was being guarded by 2 more vampires. The original plan was for the whisper and the lurk to subtly (using sway to disguise their intentions) approach the two vampires and quietly kill them whilst the whisper used his force magic to open the door. This was not what happened…at all. The whisper and the lurk BOTH failed their rolls, meaning that not only did the vampires notice them a mile away and yell out a warning, the vampires ALSO used some sort of supernatural ability to cause the ravers (many of whom were on drugs) to freak out, causing a struggling sea of humanity for the PCS to deal with. The whisper responded to this new situation by running to the toilet and locking himself inside, planning to summon some backup in the form of an Iron Golem(coincidentally leaving his allies to deal with the Vampires now coming from both ahead and behind them [the two who were on guard duty outside]). The whisper then managed to fail his initial roll (and several later ones) on the 8 dot clock to summon his chosen backup, causing the Vampires behind the door to realise someone was using powerful magic and prepare some supernatural support of their own. The lurk and the slide managed to deal with the four vampires, although not without a cost in harm and stress (during which time the rave was quickly abandoned). Once they had achieved this however, they discovered that they were unable to open the door alone however, and could only wait for the whisper to complete his spell as they were told about the increasing power they sense coming from the room behind the door.
In due time the whisper finished his summoning ritual (spending 5 stress to do so), only a round after the Vampires had completed theirs. This meant that the PC’s iron golem was only just emerging from the bathroom when the metal doors swung open and a vampire covering in glowing red blood sigils emerged flanked by two other vampires. Behind him the PCs could see a sumptuous VIP room marred by a large amount of well dressed corpses. The iron golem and the empowered vampire went to battle against each other whilst the whisper and lurk swiftly dispatched the other two vampires. Even once all 3 PCs were able to turn their full attention on the Vampire along with the iron golem, it was an extremely tough fight. By the time the fight had concluded the entire party was closed to trauma and sporting harm.
Because the game was a oneshot I allowed the players to use an expedited version of the advancement rules. Destroying the headquarters of two other tier 1 factions and securing their areas of control was considered sufficient to allow the PCs to turn themselves into a tier 2 faction (as they used their increased access to portals to bring in more reinforcements from their home plane). Their quite public destruction of the headquarters was not without consequences however. By this point of the game their heat was almost maximum and they had acquired a level of Wanted. This represented the fact that the human authorities were at an extremely high level of alert and the Panopticon was mobilizing. They also acquired a second gang of shadow socialites.
At this point of the game the PCs rapid rise had gotten the attention of every major faction in the city, causing the Winter Cabal to throw a party in their honour, allowing the big whigs in the city a chance to meet the upstarts. The players, though extremely suspicious, did attend the event. A entirely social event was also a nice break from the frenetic violence of the previous few sessions and allowed the Slide a chance to really shine. The players initially decided to try their luck separately at the party until the lurk almost crashed into a waiter whilst checking the body language of the guests and the whisper almost got caught in the massive social faux pas of attempting to gauge the magical powers of the guests. Both instead chose to resist the consequences, taking stress damage instead. After these initial failures they were happy to fade into the background and let the slide take charge.
This was the first time the PCs had access to the leaders of the higher tiers of supernatural society in London, and was a valuable chance to gain information, a chance they took full advantage of. Meeting the remaining leaders of the Summer Knights they learnt that their most apt magic users and spies had been targeted in the initial attacks, crippling their ability to effectively identify who was attacking them and effectively respond. However the most interesting information of the night came from the black council, whom the slide rolled a critical against. Although the Black Council member lied through his teeth, implying that the black council was behind the attacks and that they were poised to take control of the city, the slide was able to tell that the vampire was lying, they had no idea who was responsible for the attack and indeed were now beginning to be attacked themselves. They also discovered that the Black Cabal, the least ambitious of the tier 2 groups, had yet to be attacked, leading them to believe that whoever was launching the attacks was interested in ruling London. After some deliberation the PCs decided to provide the information about the Black Council to the Summer Knights, winning themselves a small modicum of trust and beginning to align themselves with the previous rulers of the city.
Following the party the PCs decided that their priority was now to discover who was behind the attacks. As a result they now devoted themselves to finding out who the Scandinavians were, and whether they were involved in the attacks. They spent some time tracking the Scandinavians before setting up an ambush to capture one. At the last second however, one of the few they were planning to capture got a phone call at the last minute and split off. They responded by commanding their Shadow Killers to ghost the Scandinavian that split off before continuing the ambush alone. The dice were on their side in this scene and they managed to easily subdue two of the Scandinavians before trance powdering the last one and taking him to their lair. In addition, their Fine Quality Shadowkillers managed to effectively ghost the Scandinavian all the way back to a pristine building in one of the more prestigious London neighbourhoods. They noticed however, when he opened the front door, that there was a short corridor followed by a reinforced electric door protected by some strange looking guns bolted into the roof. The Shadowkillers were instructed to set up a stakeout to observe the building whilst the PCs sought to learn what they could from their tranced Scandinavian.
The first thing the Whisper learnt was that the Scandinavian was being controlled by some delicate and complex form of magical brainwashing. The brainwashing seemed to severely restrict his independence, allowing him to only take on short term missions and causing him to forget everything he had previously done. When the Whisper managed to break this subtle control he discovered that the Scandinavian had no memories of the last 6 months, his last memory being walking home from his bakery in a small Norwegian town. Needless to say he was quite panicked by the whole situation. They put him into a dreamless sleep using the Fae Spider poison and plotted their next move.
Now that they’d discovered the Scandinavians were innocent brainwashed civilians, they were less interested in going through the front door and being forced to assault the place (a fact reinforced by a desire to avoid the strange guns in the door way). They looked ‘acquired’ some plans for the building and found that like many London houses in wealth areas the building had been expanded several stories underground. Consequently they came up with a plan to breach into the building from the sewers. I was initially sceptical that such a thing would be possible, but was told to check and found out that many parts of old London actually DOES have large sewers you can walk through, so allowed it. As a result the players decided on a plan in which the mage would use his force powers, combined with the dragon-blood vials, to create a flaming drill to breach the lowest floor. Unfortunately he rolled a 4 on his attune roll, and consequently was delayed by a few moments, allowing the inhabitants to prepare very slightly. As a result, when they did bust through the wall they were greeted by two angry looking trolls with axes wearing exquisite armour and, behind them, a short thin elfish looking creature with very dark hair, pale skin and large eyes (a Svartálfar!). After a brief (but hard fought) battle, in which the trolls did some damage and the Svartálfar almost got away (he used his own magic to resist the force-mages attempt to bind him and ran for the door before getting clobbered in the head with a thrown potion). In this room they also discovered a powerful magical artifact which they believed was being used to brainwash and control the Scandinavians. Following their glorious victory they were able to get the Svartálfar to talk, and as a result were able to identify 3 more sites around London that were being used as staging grounds and even get the location of the Svartálfar’s home base, a large barrow outside London where they had constructed a large portal to their home territory.
After gaining this information, the PCs went to the Summer Knights, seeking their aid in dealing with the invaders (while at the same time hoping cement themselves as irreplaceable allies and restore the Summer Knights rulership). The Summer Knights agree to their plan but insisted on being in control of the assault on the enemies home base to which the PCs agreed. In addition they hatched a plan to distract the three staging grounds (to prevent them from coming to the aid of the Barrow): the PCs gang would deal with one, the Summer Knights would send a small force to deal with another, and the PCs would tell the Black Council about a third (allowing for more troops to be devoted to the attack on the Svartálfar Barrow whilst hopefully scoring a few brownie points with the Black Council). It was decided that the Black Council would only be given information about the location of the third staging ground, not the entire plan, unfortunately the Slide did not roll well on her Sway roll and let slip more then she believed to the canny member of the Black Council she approached.
Finally the player’s approached their final mission in the oneshot, seeking to end the threat of the Svartálfar to the local order whilst at the same time cement their position in the hierarchy. Unfortunately by this point, some of the players needed to head home. As a result it was decided, after some initial forays against the Barrow (which had been protected by extremely powerful shroud wards), that all three players would use the 6 stress abilities (all of them gaining Tears as a result) in order to finish up the game quickly. Unfortunately for them, two of the three players completely failed the attached roll (leading to a very interesting ending for me). As a result, the summoned lightning infused force enhanced blizzard COMPLETELY obliterated the surrounding country including the Barrow AND the assembled Summer Knight forces. Due to the obliteration of the majority of the Summer Knights forces the Black Council, who had been made suspicious due to the Slide letting slip more then she ought to have and were hoping to knock off the Summer Knights after they’d been weakened by the invaders, were able to smoothly gain control of the city. They went so far as to claim that the PCs had been working for them the whole time. The PCs were able to partially salvage their reputation with the Summer Knights, claiming that the entire incident had been done by the Black Council and they had only blamed the PCs for political reasons. As a result their last action in the game was to form a secret alliance against the newly ruling Black Council
This ended the game on a really interesting bittersweet note for me. The players were able to rise to prominence and cement their place in the city but were ultimately unable to restore their chosen faction to power. I find the situation the game ended in very interesting and am planning run a follow up if the players are interested: The Black Council is in control and has a publicly friendly relationship with the PCs but both sides know it’s based on a lie. Meanwhile the PCs had a secret alliance with the Summer Knights against the Black Council, but this is ALSO based on a lie. Lots of interesting cloak and dagger opportunities.
Overall it was a great great time for all involved and I’m really looking forward to the full rules.