FORUM

Welcome Guest Search | Active Topics | Members | Log In | Register

Another Actual Play w/(75% complete) "full version" rules Options
YcoreRixle
Posted: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 5:48:28 PM
Rank: Administration
Groups: Administration

Joined: 3/12/2008
Posts: 234
Points: 569
This will have to be somewhat abbreviated because I couldn't stop myself from posting a long reply in the other thread. :)

This is a game that I played pre-Gen Con with friends in Michigan and my wife (and daughter, but she mainly just tried to eat the dice, dice bag, table, cat, anything she could get in her mouth :) ). This is an adventure that I'd love to release, if I ever cobble my notes together into something cohesive.

The PCs are hired by a Rithaign trader, William Orleve, to rescue his daughter Joan from her school, the Harnad Aerie for Children. Her school is on a remote mountainside and resembles an armed monastery or fort more than a children's meeting hall. But that is because the most talented kids are taken there in order to be taught the evils of loving too much, or becoming too involved with any worldly concern.

The PCs begin by sliding down cords from the Orleve yacht zeppelin onto the deck of a school supply zeppelin. They are to take over the zeppelin, fly on to the school, and, having been welcomed into the hangar as a supply vessel, proceed to find the daughter and bring her back alive.

Our PCs were an outlaw Windhover Valley wizard (main inspiration: master as many spell schools as possible), a warrior princess of wolves (main inspiration: recruit a human or troll sister into her pack), and a rogue from Rithaign (main inspiration: gold!, emphasis on the !).

The first battle on the zeppelin deck was a ton of fun. The wizard didn't descend all the way to the deck; he used a first round trick to swing to an unoccupied spot in the rigging. Safe there, on subsequent rounds he used cataclysm rays - even compounding the cataclysm once - to rain fiery death on the supply vessel guards. But those guards were much tougher than the party was led to believe, and the warrior and rogue (fighting in guardsman and dagger-and-wine... guardsman is very good when you have a partner!) kept fighting the guards coming up from the decks below. I made it obvious that more guards were going to be on their way, and the warrior used her Repel maneuver to great effect to block the stairway. Fun!

Then they discovered that the school supply was carrying something very magical and very grim, presumably to be delivered to the headmaster of the school. There was a nice social scene where the fixer who was sending the magical flask communicated via spell with the party, trying to convince them to deliver the flask without revealing its true nature or its purpose. Much mood was lost during this heated exchange, and there were some great insults.

The party landed at the school. Here scene order play started. I had a list of objectives: 1) Find where the daughter, Joan, is; 2) Find out the guards and wards placed on the school; 3) Find any secret exits from the school; 4) Incapacitate the human guards in the school; 5) Defeat or restrain any magical guardians; 6) Learn about who might be expecting a taking flask; 7) Dispose of or deliver the taking flask; 8) Rescue the daughter and escape with her." For my GM scenes, I knew I wanted to run: 1) A scene where an agent of the headmaster approaches the PCs and asks them for the taking flask; 2) a scene where a friend of the Joan's who has no capacity for love or affection approaches the PCs and asks to be saved along with Joan; 3) Agents of the king arrive and search for the illegal taking flask, of course blaming the PCs whether or not they intended to keep the flask.

We ended up doing 1, 3, 4, and 8 from the player's scenes and 1 from the GM's scene. Just didn't have enough time - but far, far better to have more scene ideas than time. So we pushed a bit at the end, and eventually the party made it out of the school, riding a wagon careening down the mountainside while the remaining school guard blindly chased the zeppelin piloted by a duped teacher (one PC made a great scene where she found a conniving, power-hungry teacher and promised him the world if he would pilot them out to freedom).

Tons of fun! We used the updated rules for Mood and Inspiration. They're pretty much the same, but Mood gives you max (without exploding) on your current die, rather than letting you roll your heart die (thus taking some power away from heart... it was very powerful). Often, mood can also be used to absorb damage in a physical fight, as can armor quality points (this is a big way that the game is a little more dungeon-crawl friendly... styles do more damage now, too, but with mood and armor soaking up some damage, dungeon crawls are possible). So mood is very important now. Inspirations now give you max. on your current die and your heart die, with an explosion. The point all along was that an inspiration was very powerful, but too many times people rolled 1 on their inspiration rolls. So this avoids that - now, an inspiration is really an inspiration! Also, back to mood - charisma types love it that their insults can now take away points that would otherwise be used to keep an enemy alive.

Ok, back to work!
MacLeod
Posted: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 6:56:04 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Member

Joined: 5/8/2009
Posts: 182
Points: 258
Location: Morgantown, WV
Sounds like a lot of fun. =D The tidbits about the altered mechanics has me pretty excited!

/*~Matthew Miller~*\
Arkat
Posted: Thursday, August 12, 2010 12:07:32 AM
Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Member

Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 47
Points: 141
Location: Norway
Awesome! I know I've said this before, but I love how the setting combines the utterly horrifying (fortified schools to strip bright kids of their capacity to love) and swashbuckling heroics. It is one of the things that make SK stand out IMO.

Interesting new way to apply mood and inspiration. This will speed things up I think. You can still decide to use mood after having rolled, I hope?

And speaking of inspirations. I just saw the movie The Princess Bride, and with a bit less silly this is truly the perfect SK movie. Fencing styles, attacking left handed to build your reputation, true love conquers and a swordsman with an ungodly rating in the inspiration "My name is Inigio Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die". What a fantastic movie.
YcoreRixle
Posted: Friday, August 13, 2010 12:20:01 PM
Rank: Administration
Groups: Administration

Joined: 3/12/2008
Posts: 234
Points: 569
Oh yeah, Princess Bride is absolutely fantastic. No doubt the inspirations in that movie - Westley and Buttercup's love, Inigo's vengeance, Humperdinck's lust for power - are a prime example of what SK aims for.

Yes, the mood and inspiration rules are faster now. They also don't fail as much. It was annoying watching people use an inspiration and then roll a 2. Also, now you don't have to count up die sizes. And you bet, you can still use mood and/or inspiration after the roll. Too frustrating otherwise!
MacLeod
Posted: Saturday, September 18, 2010 9:56:24 AM
Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Member

Joined: 5/8/2009
Posts: 182
Points: 258
Location: Morgantown, WV
It has been about a month now... Anything new to report, sir?

/*~Matthew Miller~*\
YcoreRixle
Posted: Thursday, September 23, 2010 4:31:33 PM
Rank: Administration
Groups: Administration

Joined: 3/12/2008
Posts: 234
Points: 569
Closing in, closing in. I know it's agonizing, or at least it is for me, but we're getting really close now. I've done all the revisions on the mechanics chapters except for the organizations. So basically, it's just organizations and fluff (ie, setting) that have to get done. So we are close!
MacLeod
Posted: Thursday, September 23, 2010 5:41:11 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Member

Joined: 5/8/2009
Posts: 182
Points: 258
Location: Morgantown, WV
Sweet baby jesus!

Sounds good. =) I'm assuming revisions include all the stuff in the errata thread as well...

Anyways, I thank you for your hard work! Doubly so considering that school is in and the new child must be keeping you busy (hopefully in many good ways!).

/*~Matthew Miller~*\
YcoreRixle
Posted: Friday, September 24, 2010 7:21:50 AM
Rank: Administration
Groups: Administration

Joined: 3/12/2008
Posts: 234
Points: 569
Yep, I am checking through the errata thread. Basically I cut-and-pasted it to my "To Do" list and I'm finally at the point where that list is shrinking rather than growing. :)

My daughter is great, thanks! Yeah, she is keeping me busy, but in good ways. My wife wants her to be a pumpkin or a flower for Halloween, but I am holding out for a kobold. :P
MacLeod
Posted: Friday, September 24, 2010 8:28:20 AM
Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Member

Joined: 5/8/2009
Posts: 182
Points: 258
Location: Morgantown, WV
YcoreRixle wrote:
Yep, I am checking through the errata thread. Basically I cut-and-pasted it to my "To Do" list and I'm finally at the point where that list is shrinking rather than growing. :)
Good to hear. =) Those sorts of accomplishments are always encouraging!

Quote:
My daughter is great, thanks! Yeah, she is keeping me busy, but in good ways. My wife wants her to be a pumpkin or a flower for Halloween, but I am holding out for a kobold. :P
Haha, good luck with that! My girlfriend and I took a walk through a couple of Halloween stores and I was pleasantly surprised to find that we agreed on a lot of stuff for our hypothetical children. =D

/*~Matthew Miller~*\
Users browsing this topic
Guest


Forum Jump
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.

Main Forum RSS : RSS

Spellbound Kingdoms theme based on SoClean Theme Created by Jaben Cargman (Tiny Gecko). Spellbound Kingdoms styles by Quire Graphics
Powered by Yet Another Forum.net version 1.9.1.2 (NET v2.0) - 9/27/2007
Copyright © 2003-2006 Yet Another Forum.net. All rights reserved.
This page was generated in 0.162 seconds.