ZEITGEIST Chapter 5, The B-Team [SPOILERS!]

Shimrath · Apr 22, 2018

I think i may have made a mistake. . .

Instead of the NPCs presented in the adventure, i had my players make 7th level Constables to represent the B-Team. It's been fun, and a nice break from their regular characters, but. . .i'm a little worried about their inevitable slaughter at the hands of Lorcan Kell (certain players might consider deadly opposition with no escape route to be a real bummer, something that's offset in the adventure as written by B-Team pre-gens).

I've thought about talking to my players about the potential loss of the B-Team ahead of time, but that would really lessen the narrative impact, i think.

I'm not sure i'm keen on allowing them to run both A-Team and B-Team characters in later chapters, but i suppose it's not out of the question.

Did anyone else allow their players to create custom B-Team characters? If so, how did you deal with the "slaughter" and how did your players react?

Any and all advice is appreciated.

-Shimrath.

gideonpepys · Apr 22, 2018

I'm not sure how much this will help you, because the first element is a little bit late for you.

Early in my campaign my players tried to help the Family (and another faction unique to my campaign) take out Lorcan Kell. Because this was very much 'extra-judicial' the characters themselves could not be involved so we generated a group of hitmen and I moved the 'no-win, massacre' scenario forward a few adventures. The players liked their temporary NPCs but hadn't grown to care about them over a long time. Still, this had the effect of making them hate Kell even more, and also be rightly terrified of him. (I mention this only because, if you employ the next part of my suggestion, those elements might be absent.)

The bit that applies to you is this: when it came time for the 'ambush/slaughter' of team B, I timed the climax (Lorcan Kell's arrival) for the end of the session. (Actually, it was also our last session before our festive break, so I had Kell greet them with the anachronistic, "Merry Christmas".) They went away thinking team B was about to be slaughtered.

When we reconvened a few weeks later, having quickly summarised their situation (placing team B, Kell and his henchman on a battlemat) and allowed them to commiserate a bit, I asked them what 'team A' would have done if only their inside man, Dester Rathtine, or another mole, or turn-coat, had informed them of Kell's plan to avenge himself on the RHC by ambushing team B?

"We'd have used the ambush to set him up," one of them shot back immediately.

With that, I drew the surrounding buildings on to the map, placed Kell's retinue and carriage in the street, asked the players where they would like their Unit A characters to be hiding, and told them to roll initiative for them too. I added that Harkover Lee was somewhere close by, suppressing Kell's escape route with a dimension lock ritual.

The players were overjoyed.

"Happy New Year!" I said.

Odysseus · Apr 22, 2018

I had my players create their own B team characters, and only one survived. You have 7th level B team constables so they should be stronger.
I looked at my notes post adventure. And I wrote make the B team stronger, and let the party mix and match all the characters as necessary.
As too the slaughter. This had been the most deadly campaign I have ever run. So I think you should be talking up how deadly it is.I've been doing that from fairly early on, so the players have been expecting some death and slaughter.
Also Locan should be letting at least one character go, just to let everyone know what a bad ass he is.
I also had the 2nd PC death of the campaign at the end of this adventure. So I wouldn't be too concerned about running both A and B teams together, assuming they all survive.

Andrew Moreton · Apr 23, 2018

Interesting so far I rate the encounters in the first few adventures as being fairly low on the threat curve, and none of the higher level stuff looks too worrying. I have already started upgrading most npc's so they challange my players but I have to do that in every AP.

The problem of the OP comes down to your player's and how well you know them , I expect my players to be quite happy with the death of temporary characters at the hands of a villain. I won't rig the fight but stacking the deck against them before the fight will be ok. Essentially though it comes down to what is most fun for the players and if it will anger or upset the players then don't go out of your way to kill the B-Team. On the other hand if the B-Team survives then I recomend not letting the players use them in later battles alongside their main pc's let anyone who wants to swap characters even let them choose which character they are going to play every time they reach a convenient point where the group could recieve reinforcements but players running two characters particularly as levels increase slows down the game a lot. I recently finished Way of the Wicked were I gave each player a main character and a cohort and except for the final battle I never allowed them to mass the full group for any battle I always made sure there were jobs the space characters needed to do