Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8815396" data-attributes="member: 42582">We got in another two-player session yesterday. This time the PCs were Korvin the Skald - who turned up at Megloss's house to find out what was going on! - and Golin the Dwarven Outcast. Fea-bella, we inferred, had fallen into a dream fugue while taking a rest in the back room of Megloss's house.Nearly all the action of the session took place in Megloss's house. After the recap and the account of Korvin's arrival, the players decided that getting from the back room of the house into the front sections, while the occupants were there asleep, was too hard, and so decided to leave, but to grab the papers from the front room that had been mentioned in the previous session.The Scout tests to get to the front of the house without awakening anyone with the light of Korvin's lantern were successful. So was the Criminal test to pick the front door lock. But the Scout test to look around before actually entering was not: and so they suffered a twist - the Cinder Imp who lives in the fire place came to the front door to speak to them, wanting their lantern.They decided to turn this into an opportunity, luring (ie tricking) the Imp outside with the lantern, so that Golin could sneak in and snatch the papers. The players succeeded at this contest of trickery but owed a significant compromise (having lost nearly half their own hit points): when the Imp tried to snatch the lantern from Korvin, as Golin grabbed the papers, it fell to the ground and was smashed.The angry imp then decided to try and set fire to the timber house. The players (and their PCs) didn't want that at all, and so decided to drive it off. In numerical terms this was a more difficult conflict (the Imp has 9 hp for drive off, vs 5 for trickery) but the PCs fared better, and succeeded with slightly fewer than half their own hp lost. The fiction that unfolded in the course of the conflict also established that they had managed to put out the fire that the Imp had started (a successful Manoeuvre by Korvin).The rules give as a suggestion of a drive-off compromise that the PCs' opponents sound the alarm or summon reinforcements, and so I decided that the kerfuffle with the Imp awakened Krystal the housekeeper, who remonstrated briefly with the PCs before waking Megloss to further remonstrate with them. Megloss was not impressed that they had driven away his hitherto-friendly Imp.What the players (and their PCs) wanted was for Megloss to let them leave in peace - given that they had stopped his house burning down - and so this is what they tried to persuade him to do. As they were being sincere to that extent at least, I decided that this was a Convince conflict. In the first round, when performing Megloss's Feint, I revealed what he wanted from them: namely, to explore underneath the house. This caught the PCs (and their players) by surprise (as a good Feint should!) because they didn't know there was anything under the house to explore, beyond the small area where Glothfindel had been imprisoned. But Golin in particular was quite enthusiastic about the idea of exploring underground rather than all this town adventuring.So the players agreed that they could do this, but only if they resupplied first. Megloss offered them some food baked by Krystal (in mechanical terms, he had equipped himself with a promise). But in the end the players won the conflict, owing a half compromise. So they agreed to explore as Megloss wanted them to, but he agreed that they could reequip first.During one of the conflicts with the Imp, Golin had collected a camp check, and so the PCs left the house and entered camp phase - Golin's player wanted to cook food to extend their supply of rations. The camp event roll, including a +1 for keeping watch, was a 7 - a fresh corpse near their campsite. Narratively, they had gone back to their previous campsite on the edge of the village, but in avoiding the hideous stench of last time had parked themselves next to the dead body. They have a -1 to future camp event rolls in the settlement until the body is removed.Golin's player failed the Cook test, and so the food was successfully prepared but Golin was angry that it took so long, and that he'd had to endure unhelpful comments from Korvin who knows a bit about hunting and butchery but little about how to make kimchi from preserved vegetables!Hunger and thirst abated, the PCs then entered town phase, Korvin staying with his friend Jan the publican and Golin staying with the alchemist Vaccin. The town event roll indicated a fire at the premises of the Hedge Witch - the cause of a fire at a minor magician's house, given the events at Megloss's house, was taken as too obvious to need dwelling on; but Golin lamented the loss of the ability to buy explosives.Korvin decided to read the papers, and succeeded on the Ob 2 Scholar test (for weird inscriptions). The papers mentioned Celedhring, an Elf who abandoned dreaming and the West and turned instead to the powers of the Outer Dark.The players then decided they should do more research in the library of the Wizard's Tower, and Golin's player decided to do this - with his Will having improved to 4 during one of the conflicts, and with help from Korvin, and one point of persona left, he had a better chance of success than Korvin did. He succeeded at the Ob 4 Scholar test, and learned that Megloss's house had originally been the house of the wizard Pallando, who had built the house around a post from an Elven Dreamhouse that had been stolen by Celedhring.We had to finish the session at that point. We did a quick awarding of Artha: Golin got one Fate for pursuing his goal (trying to get valuables or leverage out of Megloss's house, to help intall the NPC Gertha as an alchemist in town) and a Persona for teamworker (he did the cooking and the research); Korvin got a Fate for pursuing his belief (he followed clues to try and track down the wicked) and one Persona for achieving his goal (of getting information from Megloss's house) and a second for MVP (he made the key rolls for victory in a couple of the conflicts).I anticipate that next session will see the return of Fea-bella, some re-equipping during town phase, and then an expedition into the shadow caves beneath Megloss's house.</blockquote>

Verification