Commentary thread for that “Describe your game in five words” thread.

[aramis erak]

Thanks. I have read the book. I just haven't gotten to play it. I was hoping from some actual play insights.

Should have made that more clear.
I have to be careful, because a lot of my play of Dune has been under an NDA... and the tested materials are not yet out.

As a GM, remember that most things in game are just traits. Even your guards are just traits. Traits that you can use either as modifiers to a character's abilities, or be expanded into game stats.
Remember the 7 uses for traits (4 are explicit, two are buried in the equipment mechanics, and one is in the complication specific):

• D+1 per rank
• D-1 per rank
• Usually allowed task prohibited
• Usually prohibited task allowed
• +1 effect per rank
• -1 effect per rank
• Complication range expands by 1.

Remember that Complications and Advantages are nothing more than traits with only half the outcomes disallowed... but if they make sense in the story state, you CAN use them for positives - do this sparingly.

As with Fate or Cortex Plus/Prime, a good bit of system mastery is knowing when a character needs to make a trait (F= temporary aspect; CP = asset or complication). Remember that a temporary trait can be used in the same way as a Fate Compel - but without the payoff.

The other vital warning: make certain your players' drive statements are broad enough to be useful and narrow enough to limit them a bit. I've seen a lot of players shoot for too narrow; a few (mostly those prone to rules lawyering) go WAY too broad. This is really the key thematic enforcement element in the rules.

You can use players' drive statements for "defining what I want to see dramatically" if your players are good at putting that in, but you're better off asking explicitly..

Nearly every conflict can be reduced to a single roll if desired, or expanded to, at the least, a race to finish on extended tasks. It's a matter of taste and story state.

Be generous with regaining Determination. Generous, not pushover. Same for applicability of traits, especially scene and story specific traits.

Don't hoard your threat-pile. SOme players will feel like you went too easy on them if you end with a huge pile.
Don't feed the snowball - when you notice they're running on zero momentum carried, don't add to the complication range, and find excuses to not apply any increases of it you've used.
Keep complication traits short lived for the most part. If not short lived, fairly narrow. (Sucking Chest Wound is neither short lived nor narrow. But I did have a player suggest that as a triple during a defense roll botch...) If players suggest ones that fit, all the better - trim them back to suitable.

The book's lack of mention of architect mode will become a major issue in some later materials. Be aware of it, and remember that the warfare and espionage both work really well in architect mode.

(for others: In Architect mode, traits are used as pieces in a conflict; the rolls are made by the creating/owning/controlling character. In agent mode, you turn a trait into one or more minor NPCs, using their stats. Both are supported by the rules, but the semi-open playtest had a much clearer direct explication)

One thing that worked really well for me was apparently irrelevant to current conflict scene PC's being allowed to trait build by use of information and/or remote traits. The fremen handing a supply of bats to the warmaster, for example, in a straightup hunt for harkonnen saboteurs. The BG using the voice at start to create the trait "Focused on task" for the house troops for that mission.
The Doc having "previously" given the men exertion supplements so that they don't suffer electrolyte losses while on the search. Yes, flashbacks for generated traits... Or even for a unit of goons in mufti hidden at the starport.

 

[Yoh-01]

Swords of the Serpentine: Prepping up a cookbook heist

Session 1 for our Bookhounds for Hire, from the same clan. Our heroes, a teenage sorceress, a young ex-mercenary-turned sentinel, a non-binary thief and a drug-addict sentinel own a herbalist's shop called The Spry Linden with a secret library inside.
It's Fall, with the festival of the Running Leaves about to start, with its many competitions and races, like the gondola race.

They receive the visit of a servant from the House Farina, an influent Mercanti family who rose to power by importing from the shores of the Serpentine dry food made from wheat with my funny forms (basically, pasta). They are given the mission to recover a cookbook: Aunt Farina's Tasty Pots which would contain a recipe that could secure the Farina's victory on the "Eel in the pot", a famous culinary contest for the best eel bisque with its rouille.

To cut a long story short, Donatella Farina, head of the family, suspects an old lover of hers, Romero Ferrati, an influent noble, to be in possession of this book that actually belongs to her family. Our heroes negotiate their fees, then go and see a contact at the Land Registry to get the Ferrati's manor's plans. They bribe the clerk with a painted winged seahorse miniature.

Finally, they discuss how to infiltrate the house during the week-long reception held at the old manor. The thief even spends a Scurrilous Luck point to find and steal some Architect Guild's clothes in at a laundry opposite the Land registry office.

And that's the end of the session.

In this group, there's a player who is brand new to tabletop RPGs, and she told us that the simplicity of the system and of the open-ended aspect of the setting was really helping her to get into the game and that she had a great time. The three others did as well by the way (and so did I, but that is quite obvious actually).

Next session in one week.

 

[thullgrim]

Wednesday WHFRP 4e
A Pink Horror manifests and…

 

[glass]

Thursday: Session cancelled due to two holidays.

Quite simple this one. Our standard practice for our Thursday groups is to go ahead if one player is missing (with someone else controlling their character), but cancel for two. And we had two players on holiday (since we are all online these days anyway, one was going to join us but then his family organised a bit meal out for tonight).

_
glass.

 

[Gradine]

What's in the box? Law

Specifically, the base of Rod of Seven Parts

 

[John Dallman]

Elegant Harpy becoming opera singer.

It's taken a bit of work to set that up. Decades of real time ago, a bard character of mine staged opera productions, including creating a cycle of four operas based on the story of Beren and Lúthien, which is part of Tolkien's The Silmarillion. He founded a bardic university in the world of Aelos, and since then has mostly been in retirement.

Last year the Monday night party, exploring "The Caverns of Adamant" in the world of Avalon, met a most unusual harpy, Elise. She's highly intelligent, well-mannered and generally a rather nice person. She is regarded as a monster by most people she meets, so she's pretty shy. She enjoyed perching on the roofs of opera houses and listening to the music, but when the orbital strikes destroyed most of the cities of Avalon, she could not do that any more. She asked us if there were any opera houses in accessible other worlds. The character I'm playing in that campaign has no connection with the bardic university, but was willing to do some investigating. During 2022, the party have been up and down the road that passes closest to the Caverns at least five times, but have always been in too much of a hurry to take a day off to climb the hills to get there and tell Elise. Tonight we actually got to do that. She decided to go to the university, rather than either of the commercial opera houses, and I'm rather pleased this has happened by fair means.

 

[overgeeked]

"No one's free from consequences."

This seems to be a reoccurring theme with my players. Somehow they think they can do whatever they want and that any kind of logical consequences are me being a jerk as the referee. No, sorry. If you get caught stealing in town, the guards will have a word with you. If you light a building on fire there is a good chance the fire spreads.

 

[thullgrim]

My Friday game: New Game! New Setting! Excited.

So for my Friday game I’ll be running a savage pathfinder hack for Symbaroum. I’m super excited for the setting and I’m pretty happy with Savage Pathfinder so we gonna give that a shot. I committed to running the Copper Crown so basically three adventures. We’ll see how it goes.

 

[glass]

Sunday: Whole session played in rounds.

The end of the previous session (which was two weeks previously due to the GM going on holiday), we accidentally sounded the alarm in the dungeon/thieves' guild we were infiltrating - we tried to knock out some sleeping guards so they stayed asleep (well, my character was knocking them out - the other PC was stabbing them). Anyway, the stabbing failed, one of them woke up, and woke his remaining friends. A couple of them made a break for it while the remainder - we won that fight (for small values of "won") but the warning guys escaped an basically warned the whole base.

Fast forward to this week, and all the remaining bad guys were either attacking us or maneuvering off-screen. So the entire session was about 3 minutes of in-game time!

_
glass.

 

[Yoh-01]

Swords of the Serpentine:

Session 2 for our Bookhounds for Hire, from the Réamon clan. They manage to infiltrate Romero Ferrati's mansion through the kitchen, observe and set their heist in motion. One of the sentinels, Néhanda, with a mercenary allegiance, manages two get two of her contacts to start a fight outside the manor to create a diversion. When the bookhounds get to the vault, they try to sway the guards but fail with tartlets, so they fight their way in, and when they open the door, they see somebody getting into a vent with the book they want, smiling and waving at the group. The other sentinel, Drinn, climbs to the roof and chases the thief while the others are actually looting the vault, stealing jewels and a little magic book. Drinn catches them and notices that they don't have the book anymore, and that he knows them, an old rival / ex-lover at times, from a rival clan. The sentinel learns that they're not alone, that other members of the Cassini clan are here, with the book, running away to the gondolas. After delivering the thief to the guards, the bookhounds gather in the gardens, ready to run after their rivals to get the cookbook, wondering if their client, Lady Farina, hasn't hired the Cassinis to double-cross the Réamons.

End of the adventure next week.