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Commentary thread for that “Describe your game in five words” thread.
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<blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9312042" data-attributes="member: 70468"><p><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/describe-your-last-rpg-session-in-5-words.679952/post-9312043" target="_blank">Sneaky thief stole nothing. Shazbot.</a></p><p></p><p>After some delays, we got to play again. This session was focused mainly on two things: Dingo (the thief’s infiltration of Léon’s quarters and the party’s negotiation with “Maria”.</p><p></p><p>Dingo’s infiltration was first. He had opted to exploit the patrols in the afternoon during the changing of the guard. That gave him three 10-minute turns of activity. Overall, it was pretty uneventful. He successfully scaled the wall then entered the room. There was a discussion about how he wanted to hide the letter, which affected the consequences that were offered. Things like whether he started investigating sympathizers or even took is seriously. Dingo ended up rolling well on his Manipulation check though, so Léon will be heading north after a lead.</p><p></p><p>After that, Dingo went digging for more information to see what Léon knows. He rolled <em>really</em> well on his Investigation check, so he established quite a bit about what he found in Léon’s notes. Léon knows about what vampires look like and the habits of a certain friend of theirs (seen at Sugar’s Place). He also has a list of people who have disappeared, which includes Josette and the other (now dead) spawn but also a few more previously unknown to the PCs. Dingo also found treasure along with the journal, but he stole none of it!</p><p></p><p>The negotiation was the rest of the session. It was a mixed success (and not in game mechanic terms).</p><p></p><p>The party went to the warehouse where the meeting was scheduled. They knocked, and one of the freelancers with the raiders answered. The PCs had hired a group of their own. (Freelancer being a warrior class.) Inside, there were several more freelancers, a magician, an adept, and “Maria”.</p><p></p><p>The PCs entered with their own freelancers and sat down. The conversation went back and forth with everyone. I liked the interactions with the PCs, but the experiment with playing the NPC as if I were playing her as my PC felt bad. It’s too much cognitive load to be in charge of adjudication, scene-framing, and playing character. One of those will suffer when you try to do them all. I have more to say on that later.</p><p></p><p>Early in the negotiation, Deirdre managed to tease out there might be something wrong with Maria. Something was off about her appearance, and that established a tracker for when the jig was up. There was a lot of back and forth and discussion about what Maria wanted. She was trying to convince the PCs her group needed their help to take down a usurper (“Sona”). The PCs found holes in this story. If taking down “Sona” would let Eric assume his rightful role as the leader, then how could Maria be the boss? What do they get out of it? Etc.</p><p></p><p>I was particularly pleased to see the players making use of Investigation to tease out and establish new details in the scene. They noticed the other raiders weren’t exactly into it. They were kind of lounging around. The façade eventually fell apart. The final straw was when Deirdre picked up Dingo and chucked him into some shelves. He could have resisted but took the damage. It was just too dumb, and “Maria” lost her composure finally.</p><p></p><p>As it actually turns out, “Maria” was Sona. Eric wants to take over the raiders and was trying to talk the PCs into taking out Maria, who is (as they understand it) the leader of the raiders. They are worried about her because she can “kill with a pencil”. Not literally like John Wick. She’s the face, but she handles a lot of operations stuff and has made previously problematic parties disappear. (In the absolutely worse case, Lady Emma steps in.)</p><p></p><p>Sona was going along with Eric’s plan because of a romantic triangle between her, Eric, and Urf. She doesn’t care about Eric (like he thinks she does). Sona wanted to spite both him and Urf. Since everything kind of went bad in the negotiation though, she’s hanging out with the PCs until they go to see the raiders, which they’ve promised to do, but they need to take care of the fire dragon situation first.</p><p></p><p>Overall, I’m not happy with how the negotiation played out mechanically. There were cool moments, but I don’t think playing the NPC as if it were my character is going to work. That’s fine. That’s why I try things to see how they work. It beats doing a bunch of theorizing only to find out what you have designed is crap. I’m going to focus on polishing up the conflict rules. One issue the players noted is there wasn’t an obvious loss condition to the negotiation (which would make it a a form of complex conflict).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kenada, post: 9312042, member: 70468"] [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/describe-your-last-rpg-session-in-5-words.679952/post-9312043']Sneaky thief stole nothing. Shazbot.[/URL] After some delays, we got to play again. This session was focused mainly on two things: Dingo (the thief’s infiltration of Léon’s quarters and the party’s negotiation with “Maria”. Dingo’s infiltration was first. He had opted to exploit the patrols in the afternoon during the changing of the guard. That gave him three 10-minute turns of activity. Overall, it was pretty uneventful. He successfully scaled the wall then entered the room. There was a discussion about how he wanted to hide the letter, which affected the consequences that were offered. Things like whether he started investigating sympathizers or even took is seriously. Dingo ended up rolling well on his Manipulation check though, so Léon will be heading north after a lead. After that, Dingo went digging for more information to see what Léon knows. He rolled [I]really[/I] well on his Investigation check, so he established quite a bit about what he found in Léon’s notes. Léon knows about what vampires look like and the habits of a certain friend of theirs (seen at Sugar’s Place). He also has a list of people who have disappeared, which includes Josette and the other (now dead) spawn but also a few more previously unknown to the PCs. Dingo also found treasure along with the journal, but he stole none of it! The negotiation was the rest of the session. It was a mixed success (and not in game mechanic terms). The party went to the warehouse where the meeting was scheduled. They knocked, and one of the freelancers with the raiders answered. The PCs had hired a group of their own. (Freelancer being a warrior class.) Inside, there were several more freelancers, a magician, an adept, and “Maria”. The PCs entered with their own freelancers and sat down. The conversation went back and forth with everyone. I liked the interactions with the PCs, but the experiment with playing the NPC as if I were playing her as my PC felt bad. It’s too much cognitive load to be in charge of adjudication, scene-framing, and playing character. One of those will suffer when you try to do them all. I have more to say on that later. Early in the negotiation, Deirdre managed to tease out there might be something wrong with Maria. Something was off about her appearance, and that established a tracker for when the jig was up. There was a lot of back and forth and discussion about what Maria wanted. She was trying to convince the PCs her group needed their help to take down a usurper (“Sona”). The PCs found holes in this story. If taking down “Sona” would let Eric assume his rightful role as the leader, then how could Maria be the boss? What do they get out of it? Etc. I was particularly pleased to see the players making use of Investigation to tease out and establish new details in the scene. They noticed the other raiders weren’t exactly into it. They were kind of lounging around. The façade eventually fell apart. The final straw was when Deirdre picked up Dingo and chucked him into some shelves. He could have resisted but took the damage. It was just too dumb, and “Maria” lost her composure finally. As it actually turns out, “Maria” was Sona. Eric wants to take over the raiders and was trying to talk the PCs into taking out Maria, who is (as they understand it) the leader of the raiders. They are worried about her because she can “kill with a pencil”. Not literally like John Wick. She’s the face, but she handles a lot of operations stuff and has made previously problematic parties disappear. (In the absolutely worse case, Lady Emma steps in.) Sona was going along with Eric’s plan because of a romantic triangle between her, Eric, and Urf. She doesn’t care about Eric (like he thinks she does). Sona wanted to spite both him and Urf. Since everything kind of went bad in the negotiation though, she’s hanging out with the PCs until they go to see the raiders, which they’ve promised to do, but they need to take care of the fire dragon situation first. Overall, I’m not happy with how the negotiation played out mechanically. There were cool moments, but I don’t think playing the NPC as if it were my character is going to work. That’s fine. That’s why I try things to see how they work. It beats doing a bunch of theorizing only to find out what you have designed is crap. I’m going to focus on polishing up the conflict rules. One issue the players noted is there wasn’t an obvious loss condition to the negotiation (which would make it a a form of complex conflict). [/QUOTE]
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