Tag: Jeff Johnston

The Continuing Adventures of the Gaffers

Session 3: Demon Spit Can’t Melt Ironborn!

previous adventures of the Gaffers can be found here:

Session 1: Red Sash Rumble

https://plus.google.com/105179574276953345976/posts/LjfcRMS3bBw

Session 2: “Wait, we spent all of it?”

https://plus.google.com/105179574276953345976/posts/bjYfpCrAsvm

With the Cutter and Slide back we started out the session updating them to the new rules and doing their downtime. The Cutter woke up happy and stress-free (but without his pants), but he failed to recruit any more thugs for the gang. (The Sashes and Lampblacks have been hiring everyone of that sort.) Meanwhile, the Slide has been working his ass off at the Bucket setting up for a traveling troupe, which he told me was a Skovlander skald and actors. He’s also trying to get an “in” with the other local merchant types to increase his influence there.

Last time on the Entanglement table I had rolled that someone was muscling in on their territory, and they did mess up the negotiations between the Red Sashes and Ulf. Unknown to the Gaffers, the Sashes had ceded a couple of blocks to Ulf in exchange for his help, the tavern was in the area, and Ulf came to collect his protection money.

Well, the Gaffers weren’t about to let that happen. The Slide cast aspersions on the Skovlander’s manhood (and got a broken nose for his trouble), the Whisper used her new channel ability to borrow power from her demon friend to spit fire and set Ulf’s face aflame (“Beard braids look stupid.”) and the Cutter (who is Not To Be Trifled With) led the gang in routing Ulf’s minions. Ulf tried to flee, but the Hound’s fine shooting dropped a chandelier on him (and set the bar on fire a little bit, but what are you gonna do?)

While Hound and Lurk put out the fire, the Slide slit Ulf’s throat. The body was disposed of with more demonic flame.

Advancement-wise, the crew leveled up and took Expertise, since everyone has two dots in their particular specialties and is feeling constrained. Slide and Hound took extra Effect, Cutter took Battleborn, Lurk took Shadowed, and the Whisper was obviously showing off her new Channel.

Dangling plot threads: 

* Everyone remembers the Whisper, the Lurk, and the Hound being involved in the massive fight. (Everyone’s keeping quiet about the Cutter, though. That guy is scary.)

* The Whisper owes a favor to her demon friend, Setarra.

* Nyryx has a new body thanks to the Whisper and Lord Scurlock. Who did it belong to before?

* What’s going on with the alchemist? They still don’t know.

Rules:

The rules are going more smoothly now. I think one of the biggest rough spots is the background – maybe it’s just our setup, but taking Underground as a background seems like a lot of free dice if you’re going into a gang war situation, while stuff like Labor comes up far more rarely. Also, my players have a tendency to want to play it similarly to background in other games, like “I should be better at this because I have Bluecoat background”

I think the PCs absolutely need ways to get dice but I’m not sold on that one.

Should long-term projects get the background die? The Slide was schmoozing with merchants as part of his long-term projects, and he has Merchant background…but the LTP roll doesn’t have Background die as adding anything.

It all started when three of that plucky band of thieves calling themselves the Gaffers headed out to relieve their stress through their various vices. The Hound found himself kicked out of his favorite restaurant for running a massive tab, the Whisper paid a great deal of coin to cover the costs of a sybaritic orgy, and the Lurk wound up in the dust-dens of Nightmarket. And then they realized that between the three of them, they’d blown all the profits from their last venture.

Hoping to make some coin, the Whisper accepted a job from her lover, Lord Scurlock. A particular alchemist he patronized had been less than forthcoming with the expected results of his research and the ancient lord was impatient.

What followed was perhaps the most stupendously failed Gather Information roll ever.

Spying on the alchemist’s workshop from the rooftops, the Hound saw little except zealous guards and a window left ajar. Hoping for more, the Lurk slipped through, accepting the bargain that the window would be closed the next time they came. A series of poor rolls escalated the situation from Risky (as he precariously balanced on the rafters) to Desperate (as he dove into a bin of unknown chemicals) and beyond (as he attempted to convince the guards that he was a ghost). With the help of some well-timed aid by the Hound (in the form of distracting fireworks set up in a flashback) he was able to escape with a nearly full load of stress and an 8-point “exposure to powdered leviathan bone” recovery clock.

The actual score went far more smoothly, despite the extra guards laid on by their earlier failures. The Whisper used her Ghost Key to open a spirit path, and while the Lurk lit up like a beacon, attracting packs of foul spirits, the Hound was able to fight them off with his electroplasmic pistol rounds while the Whisper turned them on each other. Using the weak spot created by the concentrated leviathan bone they were able to slip back out of the ghost roads inside the facility.

Some stealth got them into the catwalks, where they were forced to knock out a suspicious guard. Turns out that unconscious or sleeping people are easy prey for possession, which is why everyone wears spiritbane charms, but the guard is easily divested of his and the Whisper’s ghost ally takes the body downstairs where it convinces the other guards to go out front for a smoke.

After all of that, the safe was comparatively easy, and the alchemist’s ledgers and notebooks were theirs. The alchemist is unhappy, to say the least, but Lord Scurlock is pleased…

The group has rolled exceptionally poorly on all their development rolls and been forced to choose between coin and hold each time. I guess keeping such a low profile has its issues…

Next time, though, it sounds like they’re going to run into some serious opposition in the form of another criminal gang. Maybe the Fog Hounds, who they framed for the job they pulled against the Red Sashes?

Ran the first session today with a full crew (one of each of the base archetypes). The crew is based out of a tavern/theatre, and call themselves the Gaffers. They have a sort of low-level connection with the Red Sashes (mostly as friends of friends) but agreed to help Bazso Baz out to score points on that side of the conflict. He had heard the Red Sashes were building up a war chest to hire mercenaries led by Ulf Ironborn, and needed someone not connected to his group to take care of it.

My group really wanted to fight the rules on the planning. They could (and have) planned for days. Finally I wrestled them into going with it.

The group’s plan was to take in some counterfeit coin (a prop from the theater) and swap it out for the real stuff, angering Ulf and destroying the bargain. But they kicked it off as an Arcane plan, letting the Whisper call on her friend the possessor ghost to take over the guard at the Sashes’ back gate to let them in.

I set up the Red Sashes Temple with the following clocks: guards-8 (I figure manpower is their thing), ward-4, lock-6.

I think my big misstep here was not mixing things up. I had it in my head that the wards were at the vault door, so they progressed through all the guards first instead of interspersing them with other things. We had the possession, a Prowl to get up on top of the internal walls to avoid a patrol, a Deceive to steal uniforms and get past some guys inside, and lastly some Mayhem to eliminate the guards at the vault.

There was some rockiness on the early rolls, where we wound up with the Action roll, an Effect roll, and another Effect roll to resist the danger. Rolling Effect twice seemed to be confusing for my players. There was also a perception of a high failure rate, which may have been my fault at establishing danger—I should have gone more orthogonal to the players goal of getting past the guards but I was having trouble coming up with dangers that were not “you get spotted”.

Anyway, the coin switch was made, and several things were stolen to cover up the break-in, and the Gaffers beat feet after implicating the Fog Hounds in the crime. We didn’t get a chance to do downtime or entanglements.