Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9472033" data-attributes="member: 42582">We played a session on Sunday. We had three players and, therefore, three PCs: Golin the Dwarven Outcast, Fea-bella the Elven Dreamwalker, and Telemere the Elven Ranger.Fea-bella's player provided the prologue, and got to remove Hungry and Thirsty (yay? she only had Angry, Afraid, Exhausted and Sick left).Telemere's player filled us all in on what had happened to him <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9236423" target="_blank">since he was last seen</a>: he had been captured by the Gnolls (everyone knows that Gnolls hate Elves!) and put in a barrel, to be sold as cured meat! But the pickling process had not taken (Elves require more salt than that to be pickled!) and so he was still alive when the Dwarves in the Dwarven Hall opened the barrel - and out he stepped!He took a failed test in Health for his troubles, which resulted in his Health increasing to 5.Having no conditions, Telemere opted to stay in the tavern (for 1 Lifestyle) and pick up a rumour on the Tavern Rumours Table. I rolled a 7:Your friend, bedraggled and disheveled from the road, bursts into the tavern with an incredible tale to tell.The complicating factor, for this result, is that Telemere has no friends - he is a loner with an enemy (his brother) and no friends either as part of initial build, or established in play. At first I decided that a mostly innocuous rival - <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9124469" target="_blank">the bandit Turner</a> - had turned up, and I said as much. And then, as I was thinking it through a bit more and trying to decide on some incredible tale for Turner to tell, I announced that I was changing that - in fact the bedraggled and dishevelled friend who came into the tavern was Korvin, the fourth PC, whose player was not present.This change worked better, both because Korvin is something of a friend of Telemere, and because I knew what tale Korvin would tell: a tale about the river pirates getting ready to assault the Moathouse, in violation of their arrangement with Lareth the Beautiful.Telemere's player, looking over his PC sheet, noticed that he had Singing Nature. So he decided to sing a song in the tavern, helped by Korvin's Oratory. I resolved this as Telling Tales - but the telling tales obstacle for the dour Dwarves is Ob 5, and so the test (with 4 Nature dice +1 helping die) failed. I then rolled snakes eyes on the unsuccessful telling tales table, and so Telemere was run out of town and barred from returning! This prompted the question Do I still need to pay for my lifestyle to which I naturally answered Of course!. This was now Ob 2 (tavern accommodation + telling tales) and Telemere had only Resources 1 and didn't want to spend his loot. So he failed automatically. I reviewed the options/suggestions presented to the GM, and decided that his hand-held items (a sword and a large sack) had been left behind in the tavern when he was run out.We then resolved the rest of Golin and Fea-bella's town phase. Both stayed at the hotel, so Golin automatically recovered his Hungry and Thirsty, and both automatically recovered Exhausted. Before making their further recovery tests they went out and bought some wine (or, as I put it, some Dwarven Nog), to get +1D to recover from Angry and Afraid. This ended up being successful, although not without the need to spend some artha despite being 4D (Resources 3 each, +1 from the other's help) vs Ob 1 for a draught of wine (the spend was on Dwarven Chronicles-wise for Golin - where is the Nog-vendor again?; and on Herbs-wise for Fea-bella - I only want the most potent, flavoursome, herbs-infused Nog!).They then finished their recovery, succeeding vs Angry (both of them), Afraid (Fea-bella) and Sick (both). As this was a 3rd recovery roll for Fea-bella, it took her Lifestyle from Ob 3 to Ob 4. Luckily her Resources had gone from 3 to 4 with the successful roll to purchase Nog.Fea-bella also re-memorised Wizard's Aegis and Lightness of Being.They then did a lot of shopping, buying food, more booze, replacement tools for Golin (except for Armourer, which was too expensive), a helmet and leather armour for Golin, a dagger for Fea-bella (to use as an improvised weapon, given her lack of proficiency), a hat for Fea-bella, a scarf for Golin, and of course shoes for both of them! At a certain point into this shopping spree, when he decided that the risks of failure were outweighed by the possible benefits of success, Golin made his free test to Haggle at the market, and succeeded (his first Haggling success during a town phase), which gave him +1D on his subsequent tests, which helped him with some of the higher-Ob purchases.Fea-bella did get a failure at one point, however, and so I (cruelly) taxed her back down to Resources 3.Golin also got a failure when buying rope, and I opted for a twist. Golin was wearing <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9183845" target="_blank">the Dwarven Ring given to him by the prisoner in Lareth's dungeon</a>, and a Dwarf at the market asked him about it, in rather suspicious tones. Golin explained to the inquirer, and the other assembled Dwarves, the circumstances of its acquisition, and succeeded on the Oratory test (+1 Lifestyle). He reiterated his commitment to rescuing the imprisoned Dwarf, and the initial inquirer therefore bought him some rope and Dungeoneer's tools.At some other point during the shopping Golin failed, and so became Hungry and Thirsty. (The failure also took him to Resource 4.) So he had to consume one of the portions of purchased rations to alleviate that. And he failed one final test too (I can't remember what that was for - maybe some lantern oil?) and so I taxed him back to Resources 3.When it was time to leave, Golin had only Resources 3, and no artha, to try and meet his Ob 4 Lifestyle test. So he was allowed to leave, but his cousin Aldric was caught up, explaining to Golin's creditors that he is really a heroic Dwarf and not a deadbeat. I assured Golin's player that Aldric would turn up again in due course . . .Fea-bella was in a similar position - Resources 3, and no artha, vs Ob 4 Lifestyle. The guards at the gate put it to her that she was an associate of that other Elf they had had to evict, and so she was also barred from returning to the Dwarven Halls.Leaving in this degree of ignominy, Fea-bella and Golin were able to meet up with Telemere and learn his tale. Fea-bella also cautioned him that, next time, he probably shouldn't sing the song about the funny little fat Dwarf. "But it went down so well in the Elfhome," responded Telemere . . .At the start of the session Golin had set his goal as Shoes!, and had already achieved that. But now Fea-bella and Telemere took on goals - Telemere to get to the Moathouse, and Fea-bella (whose player hoped for Fate rather than Persona) to confront Lareth. They wanted to use the impending pirate assault, that Korvin had told Telemere about, as cover to allow them to rescue the prisoners from the dungeon.I rolled for weather, noting that it was now early spring. The result was Clear and Cool (-1 Toll). The Toll, therefore, was 3 for the journey, -1 for the weather. They decided to make a raft so they could sail down the river (-1 Toll) rather than trudge through the marsh. The necessary Survivalist test (Ob 4 to jury-rig a boat) succeeded, and off they sailed. The Trouble on the Road roll indicated rough travel (+1 Toll), and Telemere's instinctual Scout test didn't alleviate this: rather (a twist on failure) they had to abandon their raft and hike through the swamp after all. Golin cooked, though, and this reduced a lot of Toll. His galoshes protected him, too. So overall they were not too badly off when they arrived at the Moathouse.They knew, from their time in the dungeons, that there was some sort of way out - a tunnel or similar - other than via the Moathouse stairs. So they Scouted for that, but failed. Another twist: they did find a way in, through the rubble and damage on the south-west corner of the Moathouse, but it led them to the lair of the giant lizard, which attacked - initiating a kill conflict. The PCs started with disposition 8, and the lizard with 11, and at one point the PCs were down to 2 hp left; but Fea-bella used Wizard's Aegis and they scripted some clever and successful Defends, and so they finished the conflict with no hp lost and so no compromise owed, while the lizard was dead.They then scavenged in the lizard's room, but this failed to and so they suffered another twist - a giant tick dropped from the ceiling and started sucking Fea-bella's blood! This was another kill conflict. Unfortunately for the players, their scripting worked against them - they won the conflict in a single round, but the final volley was Attack vs Attack, and so while Golin handily killed the tick it also got in some good licks of its own, so that a half-compromise was owed. The PCs were all Angry, Exhausted and Injured. Golin also failed a Health test for exposure to disease from the tick, and so became Sick.They then camped, and Golin recovered from Angry (a free test, due to Fea-bella's Song of Serenity) and Cooked some food to alleviate everyone's Hungry and Thirsty (from the Grind). The camp event roll was quite a good one, and they did find something useful in the lizard's room: some old cord and timber, supplies for Survivalist. Telemere took those.After camping, they started looking for the way down to the dungeon. Unfortunately players' memories were poor, and given that they had not bother to do any mapping (ie no Cartographer tests at any stage) I wasn't going to help them. They did remember there was <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9365828" target="_blank">a bat colony that could cause a lot of trouble if disturbed</a>, and so they waited for night to fall and most of the colony to fly out (via the arrow-slit) hunting. I also told them that they could see a light on the river in the distance - they inferred this was probably the approaching pirates.They then checked out various rooms, including (cautiously) the bats' room, but opted not to do any Scavenging, so as to spare the ticking of the Grind. But none of the rooms had the stairs they were looking for.Telemere then made a successful Scout test to try and spot something familiar, and realised that the way down to the dungeon was across the entry-way from where the PCs currently were. They therefore snuck across the entry-way to get there. At which point I asked for Scout tests from each of them - the bandit on guard had also seen the pirates' lantern, and was running back into the Moathouse to raise the alarm!Golin's player worked out that with Scout 2, -2D for Sick and Injured, he was guaranteed to fail, and so opted to use his Cynical trait against himself to get a camp check. This produced a general pile-on of failure: Telemere the Loner could hardly sneak across accompanied by these two amateurs; and in the dark and oppressive surrounds the Dream-haunted Fea-bella suffered flashbacks to her nightmares.So they were all well-and-truly spotted. And we stopped the session there, with the PCs about to spend their last turn on this ratchet of the Grind Fleeing the guard to get to through the door and down the dungeon stairs.When it came to handing out artha, Telemere got 1 Fate (he had acted on his Belief, that things should be seen through to the end) and 2 Persona (he had achieved his goal, and had been the workhorse for the session - as the only player with artha for much of the session, the group had been configuring things so that he could test and the others help, given his supply of artha to pay for rerolls and the like). Fea-bella got 1 Fate (she had pursued but not attained her goal) and 1 Persona (as MVP, for saving the PCs from the lizard). Golin got only 1 Persona (for achieving his goal).Our next session will begin with the flee conflict (PCs vs bandit lookout).</blockquote>

Verification