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.

 

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). 

 

A Game of Shops, part two

Greetings, dear visitor!

Just to remind you: the campaign developed like a picture, starting from a humble concept and becoming a complete story.

Let’s go on with the story of designing Promised Urda – a campaign I’ve finished to run a few days ago. As I’ve written yesterday, it was “a Game of Shops” – a mix of maintaining a colonial store in the Sims-like style and investigating complex intrigues that took place around our Extraordinary Ladies and Gentlemen. Yesterday I’ve written about the Sims part – new rules that made business more exciting and challenging. Now it’s time to write about the plot.

Despite the “complex intrigues” I’ve mentioned above the campaign started as one A4 sheet of paper with a few names and sketches of single scenes. I knew that I couldn’t predict all the ideas my players might have – assuming I could do it would be foolish – so I wanted the plot to shape itself according to the players’ actions. And it shaped into a really good story.

Why did it shape so well? I think that’s because I’ve created NPCs and situations that could be interacted with in many ways by the PCs and that could interact with each other. It’s a very important thing in Wolsung, where players are powerful and able to change the world around their characters in many ways. Let’s see an example of how does it work.

Two powerful gentlemen

One of the few things I’ve prepared was a Big Mystery designed to draw the players’ attention every time they would get bored by their enterprise. It was the mystery of how did they acquired their store. For they hadn’t bought it by their own money, instead it was given to them by a mysterious benefactor – Florian Widnacki, a recently dead businessman from the Free City of Ujście. Widnacki lived and died in very strange circumstances – nobody ever saw him face to face and he died a few days after moving part of his fortune from Ujście to Vidlice (the city where the campaign took place). Players knew all that from the beginning, but they had to investigate a lot to find out the truth. And the truth was: Widnacki didn’t existed – his last will was forged by Maurycy Segitbaum and Nikodem Brulnicki, two most wealthy men in Vidlice.

Segitbaum earned his fortune by hard work and great knowledge of economics while Brulnicki used his charisma and boldness to become filthy rich thanks to a few daring investments. The two gentlemen always argued whose business methods are better and finally they decided to check it by means of a wager. They forged Widnacki’s last will and thus gave the PCs an opportunity to gain a fortune, wondering if inexperienced persons could handle such a chance – Segitbaum believed that they’ll fail while Brulnicki was counting on them.

Besides this base outline of the plot I’ve prepared a few ideas on how Segitbaum could thwart our Gentlemen attempts – for example he knew how to send an unexpected and pedantic inspection from the tax office to their stole. I supposed that my players would want to investigate Ujście and find out more about Widnacki, but I’ve not prepared any actual clues. I’ve simply noted that getting to the bottom of this mystery requires “three TN 15 tests in Ujście” – for me such a note is an elegant and simple way to prepare a sub-plot that allows the players to be creative and use their PCs’ talents in any way that pleases them. Of course each of those tests has to be logically explained.

This “benefactor plot” worked well for a simple reason. From the very start Brulnicki and Segitbaum were very interested in players’ progress, but the players didn’t know why. They knew, however, that the two are powerful and wealthy. So my players did what probably every group of Ladies and Gentlemen playing Promised Urda would do: become interested in Brulnicki and Segitbaum, trying to earn their favour or be better then them at business. Those two businessmen simply had to be interacted with and this ensured that when the players learn the truth their relationship to both “benefactors” will already be complex.

Lots of small plots

A single intrigue, no matter how good, is not enough for a good session – especially when this session claims to be somehow inspired by A Game of Thrones. So I’ve spiced everything up by adding a few minor NPCs. The main idea guiding their desing was the same – every one of these NPCs must be able to play many roles in the plot and to interact with other NPCs in some interesting ways. Writing about all of them could bore you, so I’ll describe only one of them – Witold Duwacki, my variation on Dr Jekyll.

Witold swears not to have read Jekyll&Hyde, so he probably took inspiration from venrierists’ Wehrwolf SS.

Witold worked for Brulnicki, who wanted to expand his offer of military products with an elixir that would make soldiers braver and more dangerous. To satisfy his employer Witold prepared a drug that relieves an individual from any moral constrains. It worked, but when Brulnicki tasted it, nothing happened – this businessman was already too amoral! He got terribly afraid that somebody may find this out and ruin his reputation. To prevent this he fired Witold and destroyed all his research. So now Witold holds a grudge against Brulnicki, looks for a new employer, tries to reconstruct a dangerous substance and use it on himself to become dangerous for Brulnicki… there are lots of ways in which he can become important for the PCs as an ally, enemy or somebody ambiguous.

What happened to Witold during my sessions? Quite interesting things – and you’ll learn them soon. Next time I’ll write about how the minor NPCs became major NPCs… and about a policeman whom I’ve invented in five seconds during the second session and who became more important than any of these NPCs. This story should appear here on Friday. Stay tuned!

Or maybe you want to read about something else? Maybe my gaming experience bores you and you’d like to see an NPC, an adventure or a review of one of Wolsung supplements? If it’s so, just write it below.

 By the way, Witold should be read “Vitold”. English “V” sounds much more like polish “W”. Vidlice is also written “Widlice” in Polish, but I’ve decided to change this spelling because that’s what usually happens to names of cities in foreign languages.

 By some another way, today I’ve accidentally stumbled upon an article by Ed Greenwood that covered a very similar topic. If you have time it surely won’t be a bad idea to read it.