We were inquorate for our session today, and so didn't pick up any of our ongoing campaigns. Instead I GMed a session of The Dying Earth for two players.
It's quite a while since I read the rules, but we worked through PC creation and then played through the sample adventure in the rulebook, and worked out the action resolution rules as needed.
My pitch for the game was failry simple: your most important stats are Persuade and Rebuff; and you earn XP by deliving your assigned taglines so as to make people laugh. At first there was some scepticism, but the character creation process started to generate a degree of investment. The players liked that they could get extra PC-build points by rolling for, rather than choosing, Persuade, Rebuff, Attack, Defence and Magic styles (both made the 5 rolls, effectively increasing their build points by 50%); and the fact that you have to pay for Resistances to Arrogance, Avarice, Gourmandism, Indolence, Petifoggery and Rakishness made the tone of the game clear from the get-go. One of the players also liked the fact that he could be a spell-caster, and allocated over a quarter of build points to that end.
Dying Earth characters are not terribly distinctive from one another (and the game makes a point of this), but there were a few differences: one was a magic-user who was Glib, Lawyerly, Cunning in attack and Intuitive (? I think) in defence; the other was Charming, Penetrating, using Finess in attack and Sure-Footedness in defence. And in play the differences were further developed: the first was an upper-class lady though short of groats (and hence had arrived in town at the point where the stage coach dropped for lack of further funding for a ticket); while the other started with nothing but her underwear and her rapier, having been left in a bedroom after her lover had had to jump through a window when the law arrived looking for him.
The starting adventure involves parallel cooking and eating competitions, but it took us a while to get onto that: the initial scene in the adventure invovles a local swindler getting the PCs into debt (envisaged in the adventure design as motivation for participating in the competitions), and I had the swindler approach the lady when she disembarked from the stage coach. I got the agreement of the other player that he was her (now ex?) lover, on the make for some terces but - as it turns - outwitted by the PC, who used her spells to swindle the swindler (including the system's version of a Fool's Gold spell) and thus was able to set herself up in the town's best hotel (paying for several days food and drink, and several night's board, in advance ie before her magically conjured money vanished).
The NPC realised he'd been swindled, although was not sure how - and so he persuaded the other PC to join his conspiracy to humiliate and perhaps rob the lady. Which had the second PC trying to seduce another NPC who figures in the adventure as a participant in the cooking competition, the goal being to have his overly-rich dishes so sicken the target PC that she would humiliate herself with publich vomiting.
Subsequent hijinks included the second PC having to spend the night hunting down an escaped Zanaax, a reptilian beast of burden (which had been released and sent running under magical enhancement as part of the swindle) so that it's eggs could be given to the NPC to form part of his cooking. An attempt by the NPC swindler to persuade the lady PC (who were reunited after their initial conflict in a mutual seduction endeavour) to assist in the process of egg extraction failed, and so the job had to be done rather brutally by the NPC and the second PC (both of whom succeeded at their Wherewithal rolls to complete the rather cruel and brutal process).
It was only after all this that we got into the competition proper. As the adventure suggests, one of the PCs - the lady, again - was recruited by a local noble to be her champion in the eating competition, aided by a magical Amulet of Gustatory Transgression that, it turns out, has some unhappy side effects. These included heaving up a large amount of previously-consumed food (especially when the player rolled a Dismal Failure on the healing spell she was using to try and soothe her stomach upset) and also a small blue humanoid.
Meanwhile the second PC was trying to organise a party (so as to refresh her Persuasion pool - the game has some quirky recovery rules!), including by pressuring yet another NPC, who was also participating in the eating competition and seemed to have some sort of creature inside him helping with the eating, to fund it. The NPC first tried to fight (or, rather, the tendrilous parasite living inside it tried to stab the PC) but when that was unsuccessful tried to run; but the PC succeeded in the Athletics contest and so caught him.
Time in the real world required us to break at that point, so we had cliffhangers for both PCs rather than resolution. We may get to pick this up again in due course, depending on who can turn up to which future sessions.
In a comment on this RPG, Ron Edwards first quotes from the rulebook and then interpolates his own observation:
I certainly found that whenever there was no particular reason for one of the PCs to get involved in some immediate hijinks, it was easy to (i) either have a NPC try to persuade them otherwise, or (ii) frame things so as to force a resistance role - over the session we had checks on Resist Avarice, Resist Gourmandism, Resist Petifoggery and Resist Rakishness.
I've never read The Dying Earth, but the tone of our game seemed pretty consistent with the tone set by the rulebook. And both players delivered two of the three taglines each had been given, the lady for 3 than 1 improvement points (laughter for the first, but largely unnoticed for the second) while the second PC's two delivered lines got 3 points (for laughter) both times.
I don't know that I could envisage an ongoing campaign in this system, but for this sort of episode-oriented play it was pretty fun.
It's quite a while since I read the rules, but we worked through PC creation and then played through the sample adventure in the rulebook, and worked out the action resolution rules as needed.
My pitch for the game was failry simple: your most important stats are Persuade and Rebuff; and you earn XP by deliving your assigned taglines so as to make people laugh. At first there was some scepticism, but the character creation process started to generate a degree of investment. The players liked that they could get extra PC-build points by rolling for, rather than choosing, Persuade, Rebuff, Attack, Defence and Magic styles (both made the 5 rolls, effectively increasing their build points by 50%); and the fact that you have to pay for Resistances to Arrogance, Avarice, Gourmandism, Indolence, Petifoggery and Rakishness made the tone of the game clear from the get-go. One of the players also liked the fact that he could be a spell-caster, and allocated over a quarter of build points to that end.
Dying Earth characters are not terribly distinctive from one another (and the game makes a point of this), but there were a few differences: one was a magic-user who was Glib, Lawyerly, Cunning in attack and Intuitive (? I think) in defence; the other was Charming, Penetrating, using Finess in attack and Sure-Footedness in defence. And in play the differences were further developed: the first was an upper-class lady though short of groats (and hence had arrived in town at the point where the stage coach dropped for lack of further funding for a ticket); while the other started with nothing but her underwear and her rapier, having been left in a bedroom after her lover had had to jump through a window when the law arrived looking for him.
The starting adventure involves parallel cooking and eating competitions, but it took us a while to get onto that: the initial scene in the adventure invovles a local swindler getting the PCs into debt (envisaged in the adventure design as motivation for participating in the competitions), and I had the swindler approach the lady when she disembarked from the stage coach. I got the agreement of the other player that he was her (now ex?) lover, on the make for some terces but - as it turns - outwitted by the PC, who used her spells to swindle the swindler (including the system's version of a Fool's Gold spell) and thus was able to set herself up in the town's best hotel (paying for several days food and drink, and several night's board, in advance ie before her magically conjured money vanished).
The NPC realised he'd been swindled, although was not sure how - and so he persuaded the other PC to join his conspiracy to humiliate and perhaps rob the lady. Which had the second PC trying to seduce another NPC who figures in the adventure as a participant in the cooking competition, the goal being to have his overly-rich dishes so sicken the target PC that she would humiliate herself with publich vomiting.
Subsequent hijinks included the second PC having to spend the night hunting down an escaped Zanaax, a reptilian beast of burden (which had been released and sent running under magical enhancement as part of the swindle) so that it's eggs could be given to the NPC to form part of his cooking. An attempt by the NPC swindler to persuade the lady PC (who were reunited after their initial conflict in a mutual seduction endeavour) to assist in the process of egg extraction failed, and so the job had to be done rather brutally by the NPC and the second PC (both of whom succeeded at their Wherewithal rolls to complete the rather cruel and brutal process).
It was only after all this that we got into the competition proper. As the adventure suggests, one of the PCs - the lady, again - was recruited by a local noble to be her champion in the eating competition, aided by a magical Amulet of Gustatory Transgression that, it turns out, has some unhappy side effects. These included heaving up a large amount of previously-consumed food (especially when the player rolled a Dismal Failure on the healing spell she was using to try and soothe her stomach upset) and also a small blue humanoid.
Meanwhile the second PC was trying to organise a party (so as to refresh her Persuasion pool - the game has some quirky recovery rules!), including by pressuring yet another NPC, who was also participating in the eating competition and seemed to have some sort of creature inside him helping with the eating, to fund it. The NPC first tried to fight (or, rather, the tendrilous parasite living inside it tried to stab the PC) but when that was unsuccessful tried to run; but the PC succeeded in the Athletics contest and so caught him.
Time in the real world required us to break at that point, so we had cliffhangers for both PCs rather than resolution. We may get to pick this up again in due course, depending on who can turn up to which future sessions.
In a comment on this RPG, Ron Edwards first quotes from the rulebook and then interpolates his own observation:
When creating an adventure, dream up a bizarre rule or activity on which a community's existence depends. Figure out at least one way in which the PCs could wreak havoc on the community by disrupting the activity or subverting the rule.
Then create a reason for the PCs to do so ... [actually, the entire character creation process for this game takes care of this detail - RE]
Then create a reason for the PCs to do so ... [actually, the entire character creation process for this game takes care of this detail - RE]
I certainly found that whenever there was no particular reason for one of the PCs to get involved in some immediate hijinks, it was easy to (i) either have a NPC try to persuade them otherwise, or (ii) frame things so as to force a resistance role - over the session we had checks on Resist Avarice, Resist Gourmandism, Resist Petifoggery and Resist Rakishness.
I've never read The Dying Earth, but the tone of our game seemed pretty consistent with the tone set by the rulebook. And both players delivered two of the three taglines each had been given, the lady for 3 than 1 improvement points (laughter for the first, but largely unnoticed for the second) while the second PC's two delivered lines got 3 points (for laughter) both times.
I don't know that I could envisage an ongoing campaign in this system, but for this sort of episode-oriented play it was pretty fun.
