A Game of Shops, final part

Greetings, dear guest!

My exams are over since yesterday, so Steamagination will once again have regular updates. Today it’s time to finish Game of Shops.

 

Addicting addition

The last thing worth writing about in a Game of Shops is a major subplot that started as a joke and turned out to be really, really serious, probably more serious than anything else in the campaign. When a halfing scoundrel, Tomek Bugajło (Bugaylo) allied with the PCs they not only gave him promised shelter, but also tried the black lotus he was selling! At first they were very wary about using this drug, but soon they began to indulge in it.

And it was quite a surprise for me. Drugging themselves is something that positive characters certainly shouldn’t do and while nineteenth century knew less about addictions than our times the lotus is not just any drug, it’s the opium of Urda – and Urda probably already had its Opium wars. I must honestly admit that I haven’t read much about opium usage while I was running A Game of Shops but now I know that while it was used as a medicine in the nineteenth century selling it to people who didn’t really need it was a crime in victorian England. Even before I knew that it was clear to me that such an addiction must have some consequences, but I didn’t want to simply disallow using the lotus. It would be treating my players like children, something too similar to “sledgehammering” described in Drugs are bad at TvTropes.

There’s nothing wrong (period-wise) with a character smoking a pipe. Opium, however, is a more serious matter.

At first I’ve decided to demonstrate how inconvenient it is to smoke lotus. It looked like an innocent joke – every time somebody smoked lotus he rolled expression and his thoughts materialized with intensity based on the result of this roll. TN 15 gave a single picture while rolling 25 or more created something real and lasting.

The one who smoke the most was Zdzisław Nowicki (Zdhyswav Nowitsky), an ogre athlete always dreaming of battles with worthy opponents so his lotus dreams were various powerful boxers – trolls, ogres and so on. Sometimes a single test was enough to defeat them and make them vanish, but with good rolls they were so durable that Our Ladies and Gentlemen had to fight them for several rounds. Lots of things in their estate got demolished, but strangely they found it amusing rather than distracting and continued to smoke.

Amoral and shocking, isn’t it? But now as I think about this addiction it seems to me that the whole story became better because they didn’t stop. You know – drugs are such a danger because they are tempting. The PCs liked the “trips” they owed to the lotus so they indulged themselves with one drug-stuffed cigar after another and that allowed me to consider them real addicts and serve them a real nightmare trip. Courtesy of a sandbox-liking Game Master.

Black lotus is a fantasy drug[1], so getting addicted to it has very peculiar effect. It is strongly associated with writers who can’t tell the difference between their creations and the real world, so I’ve decided that the PCs who smoked lotus regularly – Zdzisław and Kevin, a sniper from Avalon – were losing their grip on reality. Zdzisław was haunted by a hallucinatory Szkudrycki (you know, the policeman who arrested him before) while Kevin, who at the moment of the first hallucination was spying in an inn like a Hooded Stranger from a fantasy setting met a group of three typical D&D heroes: a halfing thief, a dwarven warrior and an elfen mage. They asked him to give them a quest and later to protect them from a mysterious undead Warlock.

Both Kevin and Zdzisław were attacked by their hallucinations, but only Zdzisław resisted. It was a fun to hear him talking to Szkudrycki: I wasn’t guilty! You can’t arrest me! Wait, why am I talking to you? You don’t exist! Kevin, however, gave in. not only did he cooperate with his newfound friends, he also took later the side of the Warlock and began to believe the words of this wraith more than those of his existing companions.

Others tried to persuade him to turn back from this path leading nowhere, but when he decided to listen to their advices it was too late. When the campaign came to an end, a devil attacked Vidlice. The rest of Our Ladies and Gentlemen were fighting with him while Kevin hid himself with an artifact the devil was after, but then the Warlock approached him and persuaded our poor addict to enter his astral realm. A realm of ice and undeath, in fact created only to be an eternal prison for naïve Kevin. There was probably no higher-staked discussion in the entire history of my Wolsung sessions.

However, it wasn’t a va banque confrontation, so Kevin had a chance of escaping – Daphne Fatestring, a True Artist from a session long ago had a dream of his prison and drew a painting which was a gate to this remote astral realm. His friends managed to get him out of there, but the lesson was well-learned: now every time somebody mentions black lotus at the table the rest tells him to stop at once. I don’t want to boast myself but I think that it was such a good lesson because I’ve designed it not as a lesson, but simply as a logical consequence of PCs’ actions. I haven’t told even once something like “don’t do this” or “lotus is dangerous”, I’ve just allowed the players to do as they please and then I made them face the consequences.

 

But enough of my stories of myself! Next time we’ll look at Operation Wotan, the first Wolsung supplement released in Poland. And next week I’ll post here a three-part mini-campaign about a great expedition to the North Pole with lots of mysteries, villains and, of course, tentacles. For what good are arctic regions without a little bit of At the Mountains of Madness?

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[1] I saw it in Baldur’s Gate II and in stories about Conan, so it may in fact be the most generic fantasy drug ever.

 

City in flames

As I’ve promised, here’s an adventure about trolling. Sorry to keep you waiting until today – I’ve had a few exams at the university so I had less time for Steamagination.

 

 

A mad scientist has kidnapped a group of trolls used them to power a doomsday device: an emitter that magnifies his prisoners’ fiery nature and corrupts everybody with it, filling the city with turmoil and violence!

Genre: science fiction pulp

Duration: 2-3 hours

Best for: daredevils, investigators

Setting: any large city, by default Ujście (Ouyshchye, Wiienmünde in Wotanian) – a seaside Free City under Slavian protectorate and with Slavian, Wotanian and Torburg influences.

I’ve chosen this city because it’s multicultural and thus ideal for a session about riots and turmoil, besides it may be your only chance to struggle with the pronunciation of Slavian words 😉 Changing the setting to any other place on Urda is mostly the matter of changing NPCs’ names and forgetting about “patriots” mentioned in the middle of the adventure.

 

Introduction

The famous Old Crane Gate in Gdańsk. The one in Ujście probably looks similar, only with a modern steampunk arm. A photo by Rafał Konkolewski, used under the CC-BY-SA 2.5 licence.

Our Ladies and Gentlemen are having a leisure walk in the old, picturesque part of Ujście’s port. Suddenly something strange happens: they begin to feel irritated for no obvious reason. Ask them to make a TN 15 notice test. Success allows them to see that other people on the coast also became nervous but it takes a raise to notice the most important thing: a gigantic crane is trying to pick up one of the PCs!

If they notice it, they can easily evade the attack. If not, the character is picked up. There are many possibilities of setting him free, for example he can wrestle himself free (athletics TN 20, failure: loss of Constitution point) or one of his friends can climb up the crane (athletics ST 10) and chase off a young troll who’s operating it (intimidate or expression TN 15, failure: the troll sets fire to the crane).

In fact the PCs will probably climb up the crane even if the attack was unsuccessful, to check what madman is operating this device. The little boy seems to think that what he did was a great fun – it’s strange to be so mischievous even for a young troll.

 

City in flames

            After this action our Lady and Gentlemen see and hear how strife is spreading through Ujście. Everybody is irritated, everybody argues with everybody about everything and all the old enmities are awaken: between the rich and the poor, Slavians and Wotans,  Dualists and Reformists, sailors and landsmen and so on. The trolls are the worst, acting in a completely non-gentleman way: shouting on the streets, fist-fighting and even treating others with firearms.

Our Ladies and Gentlemen aren’t free of this sinister influence, but they are too strong-willed to give in as easily as others do. However, trolls among them roll one die less on academics, bluff, empathy and hide – they’re definitely not in the mood to be wise or subtle. In return, they temporarily get an additional racial trait chosen among those they don’t have yet.

 

What is happening?

            Witold Duwacki (Vitold Doovatsky) – a mad scientist – has taken control over the radio station of Ujście and connected two dozens of captive trolls to the radio emitter to create Dr Duwacki’s Fantastic Furyfier: a doomsday device that makes everybody behave like trolls – and makes trolls behave even worse than ever! Young trolls go naughty, adult trolls go berserk and the ones already growing old are suddenly transforming into complete monsters…

The workers of the radio are held captive, but Widold has prepared lots of recordings from their earlier auditions and now he is airing them to evade suspicion. Of course he couldn’t record any news of the turmoil, so they are improvised by Doris Grummstein, his right hand.

There are many ways to find out that the radio is the source of the trouble. Below are some hints that your players may find:

• If they listen to the radio in search of the news about the riots a TN 10 empathy test allows them to notice that the speaker (in fact, Doris Grummstein) is not a reporter – she can’t modulate her voice and sometimes she stutters a bit.
• Furthermore, if they pay attention to what is said on the radio a TN 20 technics test will tell them that other programs are not broadcasted live despite they claim to be so.
• A mage with the second sight power may make a TN 20 notice roll (TN 15 if he is a technomage) to see the Furyfier’s broadcast as a wave of ethereal flames in the air. They’re erratic and colliding, but analysing the direction in which they flow (analysis TN 15) allows to find out that their source must be the radio tower.
• At a police station or an another place that gathers data of the turmoil the PCs may analyze the distribution of crimes (analysis TN 20) and notice that atmosphere is hottest around the radio station.

Of course your players may invent a different way of investigation – then you’ll have to improvise the TN of appropriate rolls. However, if they don’t know what to do, show them one of above methods – say, for example, that a safe police station is nearby.

 

Troll means trouble

During the investigation the PCs won’t be left in peace by the furious trolls of Ujście. When they travel the city streets describe robberies, fist-fights and heathen arguments and allow them to interfere – this will take time, but they can find some friends in Ujście this way. Ending one problem requires a TN 15 test of appropriate skill and is rewarded with a token – but remind Our Ladies and Gentlemen that they should learn the truth about the unrest, not just help with small problems.

Besides, Our Ladies and Gentlemen are not safe themselves! Some troubles they can run into include:

• An aging troll turned into a monster! Use him when the PCs are inside a vehicle: he suddenly charges out of a small street, picks their vehicle up and climbs with them up a eight-floor building like King Kong! If your PCs are travelling by foot only, he may instead appear from the sewers and pick up a fragment of the street on which they are. He has the stats of a troll right after the transformation, but with 3d10 dice pool.
• A troll priest praying for self-control! He kneels before the door to Ujście cathedral or another church and fights with his fiery instincts. Mechanically, he rolled 11 on a “self-control roll” but the TN is 20. If the players help him reach this TN by playing cards and backup rolls, he’ll regain full control of himself. His name is Fabian Ortling and once he is in full control of himself he’ll go out to the streets and try to calm the others. If the PCs won’t manage to help him, he’ll soon go mad and begin to desecrate his own church (-1 Reputation for the PCs).
• An alvar poet reciting epic sagas of the far North! His stanzas makes everybody around even more furious, so he has to be stopped. Attacking him would only make him more passionate, so the PCs have to discuss with him. In the case of failure they will also be affected and lose a point of Reputation due to their behaviour. The poet’s name is Xawery Maklicki (Xavery Maklitsky) and he uses the stats of Dick P. Kindred from the core rulebook.
• Some “patriots” are willing to beat anybody who seems to be spreading foreign influences in Ujście. It means trouble with Slavian people if somebody is publicly speaking Wotanian and vice versa, while a PC speaking a different language will have trouble with both sides! However, those nationalists aren’t a match for Extraordinary Ladies and Gentlemen, so a TN 15 test of an appropriate skill is enough to drive them off. Failure costs a point of Constitution for being hit or getting bruised during a narrow escape.

Use this encounters as you see fit, moderating the pace of the adventure and not allowing the players to forget that their Ladies and Gentlemen are in a city gone mad.

 

The finale!

      When the PCs find out that the radio station is the centre of the trouble they see that the park around it begins to burn! When they arrive there, they see a troll woman with steam-powered arms tossing around the park and using her Wild Talent to set it on fire.

That’s how Witold may look like. He still needs some work, however, before his spider vehicle looks so impressive.

The woman – Doris Grummstein – mocks them to attack her. However, one of the PC notices that it’s a bad idea – one of Doris’s hands contains a self-destruction device that would blast them if they attacked without careful aiming. But how can she forbid them from aiming carefully at her?

She can’t, but Witold can. The mad scientist knows that the PCs are outside the station and focuses his Fantastic Furyfier on this area. Our Ladies and Gentlemen begin to feel extraordinary angry on Doris and wish to kill her – hand to hand! – despite the consequences. It’s a discussion in which their opponents are both Doris and Witold, but only she has to be defeated – he attacks using the Furyfier, but has no Confidence or challenge markers. He simply doesn’t hear what the PCs are saying and once Doris is defeated they can run from the area affected by his mad invention.

If the PCs lose the discussion, they attack and Doris’s arm explodes, making everybody badly hurt (-1 Constitution) and unconscious. The troll villain is largely fireproof and was prepared for the explosion, so she recovers quickly and takes the PCs captive. They awaken, bound, in a storage room below the radio station. Witold and Doris are nowhere to be seen – they have fled Ujście.

However if the PCs win, the troubles are still not over. They resist the power of the Furyfier and Doris flees inside the station. There Witold begins to flee on his spider-legged platform while his troll right hand attacks the captive trolls to divert Ladies and Gentlemen’ attention from him. If the players want to gain absolute victory over the villains, they’ll have to split up – part of them will be fighting Doris while the rest chases Witold. Of course Doris’s arm is still explosive, but this time Witold isn’t here to focus the Furyfier on them so they can avoid the explosion by aiming carefully.

Play this out as a single confrontation, dealing initiative cards to everybody at once, but remember who is fighting with who – those who decided to fight Doris can only attack her and vice versa. If one of the villains is captured sooner than the other, the PCs fighting him need one round to return to the rest and assist them in their part of the task.

 

Aftermath

If the PCs succeeded at the radio station, the Furyfier was turned off before anything really terrible happened. Some buildings are destroyed and a few people will spend some time in hospital, but nobody was killed – save for the trolls that changed into beast, but the sad truth is that they’d had to die anyway in a few months.

If Doris won the combat, she killed or badly injured all the trolls in the radio station and escaped. Her victims still connected to the Furyfier, so their agony sent a final wave of fury through Ujście, making some trolls kill their enemies or set fire to their houses. If Witold fled, he would soon be recruited by the Monastic Order or a different organisation willing to use his Furyfier for even more nefarious ends.

All these bad things happen also if the PCs were defeated during the discussion in front of the station. What’s more, then the Furyfier worked longer and the city is really devastated, making it an ideal target for an invasion.

 

Villains

Below are the stats for Doris and Witold. Their motives aren’t important to this scenario – they did what villains do in pulp stories – but they may become important if you wish them to return in the future. To make this easier for you I haven’t assigned them any single, obligatory motive, instead I’ve prepared a list of most probable reasons for their deeds so that you can choose the one that most suits your plot.

 

Witold Duwacki

The infamous Monastic Order… could Witold be its pawn?

There are two most probable reasons for which Witold attacked Ujście. The first is that he was working for some organization, most probably the Monastic Order of Torburg Knights which was, is and will be interested in conquering Ujście. The Knights may be willing to take the city by force or convince the League of Nations that Slavia’s protectorate over Ujście doesn’t protect the city properly and they are better candidates.

Alternatively Witold may not work for anyone – yet. His action was aimed at showing the Furyfier to the world so that all the villainous organizations on Urda will do anything for him in exchange for the plans of this doomsday device.

Default conflict: chase

Opponent, human, dice pool 3d10, challenge 5

Abilities:

Dr Duwacki’s Fantastic Furyfier: this apparatus is so powerful that it either attacks all opponents during a discussion or takes an extra challenge marker for every raise if it attacks a single person.

Gadget – spider-legged platform: brawl +3*, drive +3*, raise on a drive test takes two challenge markers.

Technomage: powers: control machines and telekinesis (Remote Glove).

Skills: technics 9/8+.

Combat: brawl 9*/10+; defense 14.

Chase: drive 12*/9+; endurance 14. Spider-legged platform, technomage.

Discussion: Furyfication 12/8+, intimidate 9/10+; confidence 16.

 

Doris Grummstein

Doris surely is or was a Knight of the Monastic Order – that’s the only possible way she got her artificial arms. So if Witold worked for the Order she was probably assigned as his bodyguard, but if not? She might be a gift from the Order or she may be a renegade, willing to enhance her own battle fury through Witold’s inventions.

And finally she may owe her sanity to him – she might be already aging and still be a normal troll only thanks to his inventions. Why should a villain fear being a troll witch? Well, a really proud villain sees a huge difference between being evil on one’s own will and being a member of an evil race!

Default conflict: combat

Opponent, troll, dice pool 3d10, challenge 4

Abilities:

An explosive lady: in combat any attack aimed at Doris that isn’t a called shot activates the self-destruction mechanism on her arm, hitting anybody on close and medium ranges with a  12/8+ attack (dice pool 3d10) that takes an additional challenge marker for every raise. Doris loses only one challenge marker and the ability to trip enemies with two raises.

Racial traits: fireproof, flame of passion

Steel fists: takes an extra challenge marker with a raise, trips with two raises.

Wild talent: smite (fiery fists).

Combat: brawl 9/8+; defense 16. All abilities.

Chase: athletics 6/8+; endurance 16. Flame of passion.

Discussion: expression (mocking) 3(9)/9+, intimidate 6/9+; confidence 16. Flame of passion.

 

Yes, Witold is this minor villain from A Game of Shops. I’ve used him here because I’ve run this scenario to the same players who played GoS with me.

 

A Game of Shops, part three

The whole campaign got complicated like a map of The Tube. Mind the gap!

A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago that George R. R. Martin wrote A Game of Thrones as a book that could not be made into a movie (do TV series count?). Then she began to talk about the plot, but she didn’t explained the events – instead she focused on how does Martin tell this story. And it convinced me that A Game of Shops is a really good title for my campaign.

Because honestly, I can’t simply write the events down. There were too many subplots, too many small events, too many things that began as an improvised element then developed into a two-session intrigue… I can, however, write abouth the way in which the campaign developed and give a few examples of such development. Such an approach should be more interesting than a simple chronicle of everything that happened.

 

Power has its consequences

As I’ve written in the last part of the series, my main idea for creating NPCs was to make them versatile in reactions to both the PCs and other non-playing characters. Similarly, my first rule for running the campaign was to allow my Ladies and Gentlemen to do virtually anything, but always with interesting consequences.

It means that I haven’t prepared everything that could happen, instead I’ve listened to what my players want to do and then I’ve then either allowed them to do so or created a complication. Let’s see how it works…

During the first session players stumbled upon Tomek Bugajło (read as Bugaylo) – a halfing scoundrel seeking to expand Scylla’s influence in Vidlice. One of my Gentlemen (Lady wasn’t playing with us yet) offered him a deal: he’ll help Tomek in the future if the halfing tells him something about Widnacki. I haven’t planned that Tomek knows anything, but having the PCs in halfing’s debt sounded like a good story hook. And so I’ve decided that the halfing knows that Widnacki doesn’t exists but doesn’t know whose plot is this. The deal was concluded.

Later Tomek tried to sell some lotus and was spotted by the police, so he sought refuge in players’ house – and they hid him. There simply had to be consequences, so I’ve sent a policeman on them. Inventing policemen is very easy because nineteenth-century literature is teeming with them: Javert from Les Miserables, Porfiry from Crime and Punishment etc. My adamant vigilante – Damian Szkudrycki – soon became a major NPC and a constant nuisance for the players. He finally arrested them when they were returning from the Free City of Ujście (not under Slavian jurisdiction) and to break free they had to escape from a prison in Gniazdo – the capital of Slavia – and then flee from the police and the press through the streets of the capital, finally arriving at the royal castle and proving their innocence in front of the king. In a va banque discussion with overpowered Szkudrycki. I’d die to replay this session as a LARP on the streets of Warsaw!

This shows another method of GMing really useful in Wolsung, one I’ve learned from a Polish blogger DeathlyHallow: you can run this game as a sandbox, but keep your eyes wide-awake! As soon as an opportunity for cinematic, fast-paced, pulp action arises, use it! Make up a scene and don’t care too much with probability – you’ve got a chance to run a game that your players will remember for a long time.

To sum up: it works well in Wolsung to allow the players to change the arrangement of the setting because their characters are to be powerful and because your players don’t know precisely what is this arrangement so they don’t feel that you’re distorting the setting. When doing such a thing, however, you have to plan some interesting (not necessarily mean) consequences – that will make your game run really smooth and generate a lot of action. I know that it’s not my idea and many GMs talk about this approach for decades, but in Wolsung it works especially well.

 

Our old friend

Vidlice after the fire burnt down.

I promised to write something about Witold Duwacki – and he clearly deserves a mention. He was the main attraction of the first session and it used up all of his roles I’ve written about last time. Our Gentlemen met him in the villa of a respected noblewoman and employed him as an engineer, additionally using his knowledge about Vidlice to learn a lot about the city. However by employing him they provided him with all the chemicals he needed to recreate his “mr Hyde formula”, so he soon ingested it and used his newfound brutality to set fire to one of Brulnicki’s factories. The PCs rescued a lot workmen from this facility, argued with Brulnicki who ordered to evacuate machines in the first place and finally caught Witold. It gave them fame, enmity of Brulnicki (remember – he was the one who wanted them to succeed, so their relation became complex) and an interesting information about him: Witold told them how it really was with his exemption from Brulnicki’s factory.

 

Pros and cons

Running a campaign in this way is really interesting and doesn’t take much time between sessions, which was then a really important thing to me. The main drawback is that when most of the plot is improvised, it usually isn’t as awesome as a carefully prepared scenario. It wasn’t a problem during the first few sessions because they were running on these precious few notes I’ve had prepared. However, later same scenes were a little bit disappointing.

Despite this problem the whole campaign was a really great experience both for me and for my players. I won’t return to such a model of play for some time because now I want to run a few really well-prepared sessions, but I’ve learned a lot in Vidlice and I’ll surely use these experiences in the future.

 

As there is no point in writing the whole campaign down, there’ll be only one more part of A Game of Shops. There I’ll describe the most important and most ridiculous addition to the plot: an addiction to black lotus that some Gentlemen developed! But this report won’t be my next post. First I’m going to post a one-shot adventure about trolling – not strictly in the modern meaning of this word, but… you’ll see. It should appear here on Friday evening or Saturday morning (European time).