I'll post this in two parts, 'cos its fairly big. Tonight will be character creation and Awakening, tomorrow will be the game and what it threw up. That sounds bad, but you know what I mean...
Character Creation:
Having had a bit of a think, Rich wanted to create a soldier character but in a pulp/ Boy’s Own Adventure vein. He couldn’t decide between WWI and WWII and asked for my opinion (as the acting GM). I thought WWI might be a more interesting starting point, what with odd battlefield occurrences like the Angels of Mons (maybe the glowing lights that were mentioned in some “reports” were actually his star falling).
Rich knew how he wanted his Awakening to happen, but was having difficulty with his Fall. He didn’t really want it to be a fascination with war and death, because that would be a bit grim in a pulp type adventure, so I suggested that maybe what had drawn him was the human spirit and its ability to survive even the grimmest situations. He quite liked that, and felt that fed in to a couple of nice Ties, Camaraderie and Duty.
Then we tackled Talents (the skills section): going back to the whole battlefield angel theme, his Unique Talent would be “Guardian Angel”, really a sixth sense of imminent peril that helped to keep him alive in dangerous situations. He decided only to take one Normal Talent to start with, “Pack Up Your Troubles”, which we decided covered the basic skills a WWI soldier would have (rifle use and basic survival). Anything else that comes up in play would be open for negotiation. (Yes, we grew up watching Sapphire and Steel and that one in the Railway station left deep impressions).
Key points from this:
• Actually coming up with a reason to fall can be quite tricky. An alternative character creation path could be to decide upon the initial period setting and type of character, then work back to why they could have fallen.
• A check sheet for character creation would also be really handy, either at the end of the section on that, or as an appendix.
• It should cost two points of Brass for a unique talent, not one, as potentially they are actually quite powerful.
• What a Talent name actually covers in terms of abilities should be determined by discussion, with the GM’s word being final. If there’s no GM, it should be a group decision with a vote if all else fails. If that doesn’t resolve anything, toss a coin.
Awakening:
Seeing as this was a one-on-one session, we went straight to the Awakening. Rich narrated that his character woke up on the edge of what appeared to be a huge shell crater, his uniform tattered and his head swimming with all sorts of weird feelings and understanding, the colour of the battlefield oddly leeched by what he at first thought was the smoke from the shelling. Bodies were all around, but he was fairly certain that someone from his unit was still alive under the corpse of a comrade.
He made his way over to the soldier and checked he was alive, then struggled to pull out his compass to work out where his own lines were. Due to the “concussion” he was suffering, I called for a roll (just to get that side of things going) and he got a minor success; his hands were shaking too much to use his now rather battered compass but he figured it out when he saw the medical corps coming over the top to collect the dead and wounded. Quite wisely, he decided it wasn’t worth altering this roll.
I started to lay on how people’s reactions to him had changed (something I kept up through the game); the orderlies with the stretcher weren’t being rude to him, but no-one actually asked him if he was injured and they wanted to be away from him as soon as possible. The fact he was completely uninjured was really spooking them, seeing as he appeared to have been directly under the shell when it hit. He walked stoically back to barracks at the side of his injured comrade.
If there had been more people involved, I would have stopped this scene here and moved on to someone else’s Awakening.
Key points from this:
• You can’t take mortals through shadows, only other Fallen and inanimate objects
o I had said that although he couldn’t have described it to anyone had they asked, the character just sort of knew about how to use his Talents, like a memory.
• Character creation and Awakenings should make a decent convention strategy
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More tomorrow
--x Lynne x--
And here's the second part:
Submitted by Lynne H on Mon, 12/01/2009 - 08:33.
So, into the game itself, which is even longer!
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The Game
I shall condense this or it will go on for pages: basically Tommy Atkins (I know, I know) was selected for a mission behind enemy lines to recover some sort of weapon that was allegedly about to be tested on the British Forces. We ran it pretty traditionally and not as set pieces, but I can break it down roughly into those for this write up:
1. Flash of Light:
Whilst Tommy was on guard duty, there was a huge flash of light and a bang. No-one else saw it, but as he was diving for cover Tommy saw a farmhouse, a well and a distinctively shaped tree (Flash of Inspiration). As far as everyone else was concerned, this just added to their discomfort – Tommy was obviously not quite right.
2. The Mission Briefing:
Sent by his Captain back to HQ (in a nearby town), Tommy found himself in a room with 9 other regulars, a sergeant, a handful of paper pushers and a very commanding figure
“Sir!” – Mission Officer: Brass: 21, Talents: Butter Wouldn’t Melt (confidence, grace under pressure), Sharp as a Box of Knives (quick thinking, intelligence), Air of Authority (command skills). A dapper man who exudes authority in a no questions asked sort of way. Plays his cards very close to his chest and reveals only what people need to know when they need to know it.
The briefest of outlines was given (we’re going to get the weapon, we leave after lunch, any questions?). Tommy dared to ask a question and duly got himself noted. (I know this is all probably a bit WWII rather than WWI, but we were doing Boy’s Own Adventure, after all). Although he was hungry to find his Starlight, one of his Ties is Duty, so he felt obliged to go and not desert.
3. The March:
Sneaking through woodland to get behind enemy lines to the unknown target location (well, unknown to Tommy), the unit have to hide from a German patrol. Tommy decides to get his gun out ready for action. I asked for a roll, which duly botched up as a catastrophic failure. This time Rich decided it would be a good idea to spend Brass to alter the result. Not sure how long the game was going to take, he only lifted it by three points to a minor success. He narrated how, as he was trying to get the rifle off his back, the strap caught on a branch. Fortunately he realised just before the branch snapped and although the gun wasn’t in a position to use, he at least hadn’t alerted the patrol as to their presence. “Sir!” saw it all, but said nothing.
4. Arrival
The unit arrived at their destination, a farmhouse nestled in a quiet valley. Rich decided to use Song of Ice to see if his Starlight was anywhere near by. Although he couldn’t see it (meaning it was hidden), he could hear it singing to him and could catch the scent of carnations on the night breeze. In the moonlight, he also recognised the tree from his vision. However, there was something very wrong with the scene below – there were no lights, no animals and no sound of farm work.
5. The Farmhouse
The plan of attack was somewhat spoiled by a German soldier coming round the side of a barn in the farmyard and seeing half the unit sneaking along the edge of a wall. Rich decided that Tommy should fire and rolled a normal success. I argued that it was pretty dark even with a full moon, so the shot wouldn’t be that accurate, spending three of the soldiers rather hurriedly assigned 14 Brass, bringing the result to a failure. Rich argued that a break in the clouds briefly illuminated the soldier (spending two Brass of his own to increase the roll back to a minor success), which I agreed was a mighty fine excuse and let him have it, so he winged the soldier as he shouted the alarm. Sir got him in the chest and floored him, but of course the element of surprise was lost and all hell broke loose.
As Tommy attempted to sneak past the downed soldier, it turned out there was still some fight in him and he attempted to stab Tommy in the leg with his knife. Here was our first contested roll! We both rolled and got a minor success. As a tie, that means Rich got to bid on changing the roll first, spending one Brass to lift his roll to a normal success. I spent three points to drop that to a failure for Rich (leaving the soldier still on a minor success). Rich spent three more Brass to go back to his success, but the dying soldier still had plenty of fight in him, so I spent 3 more Brass to get him back down to that failure again. Rich decided that he didn’t really want to get stabbed in the calf muscle, so burned another three points to get the success back. He had to have a success or he couldn’t beat the soldier’s original roll.
We narrated this as we went, with the soldier lunging at Tommy, but Tommy getting his gun in the way, the soldier trying to get his knife in behind the stock, but Tommy moving to smash the soldier in the face with the butt of his rifle, which the soldier blocked before Tommy managed to crush the soldier’s wrist under his boot before finishing him off with his bayonet.
6. Akustich
Tommy used Shadow’s Veil to get into the cellar of the farmhouse and managed to find the well from his vision. As he was looking at it, the door to the cellar opened and he had to hide as a soldier came down into the cellar and into one of the storerooms down there. Tempted to go in and off the soldier, he felt a tug on his sleeve, pulling him back into his hiding place (me basically activating his Guardian Angel ability as I knew he’d been burning through the Brass). Of course, there was no-one there when he looked round.
After discovering a hidden way in to the building, the remaining British soldiers crept up into the farmhouse. Unfortunately they did this just as two technicians carrying what looked like a large, ornate wooden box came out of a room opposite them. Rich decided to use the Talent In a Heart Beat, stopping time because he could see his Starlight glowing within the box. Because of the range, he had to spend Hope and Brass to take care of the whole cottage. Sadly, he didn’t roll well when trying to get the front off the box and had to adjust it to a minor success. This was narrated as he did get the lid off and grab his Starlight (nestled in the heart of the box in amongst a whole jungle of wires), but the release of energy caught him by surprise and blew him backwards, cancelling the Talent (as well as regenerating all of his Brass and Hope, and increasing his Hope permanently by 2 points as well).
Rich asked if he could trigger the Talent again. If he hadn’t just recharged his batteries, I’m not sure I would have let him (he was pretty low on Hope and Brass just before hand) but I made him roll for it, seeing as regaining part of his being would have been a bit of a shock. The jammy bugger got a spectacular success. Needless to say, there wasn’t a German soldier left in the building by the time he’d finished, leaving the three technicians gibbering wrecks as people fell down dead in front of them without anyone having apparently touched them.
The unit got the technicians and the remains of the Akustich weapon back to base and Tommy was sent back to his platoon with a stern warning to keep his mouth shut.
Key points from this:
• We just sort of ran with this, but you really need to sit down and sort out major non-focus characters (NFCs) and their Talents before you start playing so you don’t get caught out. There’s not much pre-prep I could do seeing as I didn’t really know what Rich was going to come up with in terms of character. Running it on the fly was fun, seeing as I know what he likes in game terms and could make it up off the cuff, but there was one sticky moment when a major NFC needed to do something and I needed to think of some stats very quickly. I also created an NFC that never came into play. This could happen, but I think it was more because I forgot about him; I suspect that if he had been assigned as an NFC to someone, he would have made an appearance. Anyway, here he is for completeness (all names made up after we’d finished):
o Captain Ansel Waechter, Project Commanding Officer: Brass 21; Hard as Nails (fighting, stamina), In the Right (command ability and confidence), Crack Shot (gun skills, but also observation). A competent CO chosen to guard the last stages of the Akustich weapon development, prior to its first tests on the British front line.
• In terms of what other players would have done during this (if we’d had any), I think the other soldiers on guard duty, Sir!, other special unit members, Captain Waechter and the technicians all spring to mind as NFCs.
• NFCs probably need to have ranked Brass points: no-name grunts who are there to make up the numbers don’t get any (it would be terribly embarrassing to get tooled over by a grunt); major NFCs should have 14 (enough to put up a struggle, but not enough to derail things) and minor ones 7. Well, that’s the working theory for next time at least, anyway.
• NFCs can only oppose a character’s roll twice to avoid never-ending contested rolls. And once a result has been reached, the NFC can’t start off essentially the same struggle again.
• Shadow’s Veil: if there isn’t a shadow where you want to be, you’ll turn up in the next nearest one, sort of like walking into a locked door in the dark, then shuffling round until you find an open door you can go through.
• We had a huge debate about In a Heart Beat. It is very powerful, but we did settle on it being a static effect with time stopping for everyone else (we did wonder about the character speeding up and it being a localised effect). It has a boundary that if you cross it, time snaps back to affecting you in the normal way. Still not sure we’ve sorted it, but we’ll see.
• Yes, it was the old sonic weapon (powered by a very early crystal radio, the “crystal” being actually a piece of Starlight and the only reason the thing would have worked)
Satisfying session as it ironed out a few creases, but I did get a bit lost towards the end with what was happening due to the distinct lack of any form of planning on my part. It can be winged, but we were no doubt horribly historically inaccurate as we decided not to do any research.
--x Lynne x--
Rules written somewhere?
Submitted by Carl C. on Tue, 20/01/2009 - 22:15.
Do you have the rules for this written down somewhere? Because this looks interesting.
Another willing victim...
Submitted by Lynne H on Wed, 21/01/2009 - 08:26.
Hi Carl,
If you contact me via the contacty button thing at the top of the page somewhere, I'll send you a working draft. Any comments and suggestions (especially if you could try testing out some bits) would be great
--x Lynne x--