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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8078646" data-attributes="member: 42582">We played another session of our Cortex+ Heroic LotR game.We started with a Transition Scene. XP were spent - Nehar the Dunadan equipped himself with a dwarven sword (stepping up his weapon to D8), Dwalin stepped his Combat Expert specialty up to Combat Mastery, and Gandalf swapped Alone and Company affiliations (to give him Company D10) and also stepped his Mind Control up to D8.Actions were also performed: Dwalin, alone, sang a song (Performance specialty) to help him recover his emotional stress; Gandalf failed to help Nehar recover his physical stress; Nehar himself was able to recover a little, down to d8 physical stress.Mirenlea the Elf, who had been stressed out with Emotional Stress (ie wrath and grief) in the previos session, was nowhere to be found (ie we only had 3 players).I narrated that Gandalf and Nehar could hear Dwalin's singing. Dwalin was happy to be reunited with them - his Alone Affiliation being D6 - and Nehar was happy to join up again despite his Company Affiliation being D10 and his Company D6 - and so I told Nehar that a D6 effect die on an attempt to rejoin the 3 PCs would be enough. So this was the first action of a new Action Scene, and succeeded.Once they rejoined, Gandalf decided that he would lead them deeper into Moria to find the veins of mithril to try and reforge Dwalin's armour (which had been rusted by Saruman in the previous session). He succeeded in establishing a D12 Mithril asset. I can't remember what Dwalin tried to do, but in any event around now I introduced an Unearthly Heat Scene Distinction, and not long after a Drums in the Deep Scene Distinction. By activating an opportunity on one of my rolls, Gandalf was able to establish a D6 Dwarven Forges Resource.And the PCs were attacked by a Troll.Dwalin took the first action, so that he could get an XP for leading the charge. His attack failed, and instead he took a D12 complication as his arm was shocked by the collision with the scaled hide of the Troll (which lets it inflict the effect from a successful reaction against a hand-to-hand weapon attack as a weapon-related compliction).Nehar attacked next, but also failed, ending up with a D8 Notched Blade complication.Gandalf decided that the only option was to try and take advantage of the mithril, and the forge, to place a blessing on Nehar's sword. This action was a great success, generating three effects: a D12 Blessed by the Ainur Asset for Nehar (which also earned Gandalf 3 XP), and elimination of his notched blade complication, and Gandalf also removed his own physical stress as the power coursed through him.The Troll then attacked, being able to attack all three PCs (Breaking upon their lines like a storm SFX) and stepping up physical stress inflicted (Beat upon helm and headSFX). Gandalf and Dwalin suffered d10 physical stress. But not only was Nehar able to defend himself (buffed by Gandalf's blessing), he spent a plot point to inflict his D10 effect die as physical stress against the Troll. I stepped it up to grow the Doom Pool (Black Blood limit: step up physical stress resulting from a magic blade to grow the Doom Pool), so the Troll now had D12 physical stress.The Troll passed the action to itself at the top of the next action order, and I decided that it would try to retreat. Dwalin was determined that it wouldn't, and so I checked against him. I got a d10 effect die, which I was planning to use to add a new Awaken that which Lurks in the Deeps Scene Distinction, but the Dwalin succeeded on his reaction and was able to spend a point to inflict physical stress with is reaction, which defeated the Troll and also earned 10 XP for defeating a superior foe.That was the end of this Action Scene, and we moved to another Transition Scene. Dwalin spent XP to step his armour (Enhanced Durability) up to D10 (Superhuman Durability) but it was still shut down. And his attempt to recover it failed, as he was rolling against a Doom Pool that had grown to 5D10.Gandalf spent his remaining XP to further step up his Mind Control, to D10 - in this version of MIddle Earth it seems that he, as much as Saruman, is a threat to the free peoples. And he successfully recovered his phyiscal stress.Nehar decided to try and find a path out (ie creating an Asset) but failed on the check, and I inflicted D10 mental stress to reflect this (influenced by Gandalf's player narrating Nehar's realisation that there's no way out).So when the Action Scene commenced I established that the Unearthly Heat and the Drums in the Deep were continuing, but now there was also a Lost in the Pits of Moria Scene Distinction. At least the Doom Pool was down to 3D10 due to my spends during the Transition Scene to maintain the Moria pressure.I decided that Gandlaf, as leader of the company, would start at the top of the next Action Scene. He tried to use his Sorcery and Lore Mastery to create a map that woudl guide the group out of Moria, but this too failed. When I spent a die from the Doom Pool to inflict D10 mental stress he used his Subtle but quick to anger SFX to change it to emotional stress instead, worried that mental stress was a liability if trying to leverage mind control.He passed to Nehar, who finally succeeded on a check to try and eliminate the Lost in the Pits of Moria distinction. This was not a complete success, but did step it down from D8 to D6. Nehar then decided to pass to my (as yet unspecified) NPCs, whom Dwalin's player conjecturd were Orcs.This conjecture was correct, and so I didn't add any sort of advantage for an ambush (ie using Nehar's mental stress against him). The Orc Chieftain attacked Nehar but the latter was able to successfully defend himself. And that is where we left things - with the Orc Chieftain's underlings (a 3D6 mob of Orcs) and Dwalin still to act.The Doom Pool is 2D10. Nehar has D10 mental and D6 phyical stress. Gandalf has D10 emotional and D4 mental stress (the latter was D8 at the start of today's session but has stepped down due to two Transition Scenes)/ Dwalin has D8 physical stress and still has not recovered his armour.***************************We were playing via Zoom, using a dice rolling page with shared screens to manage and resolve dice pools. This was not ideal from the point of view of play speed, and we didn't get through as much fiction as I would have liked. But it was good to play!</blockquote>

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