So, Friday night I ran the second half of the group through the conflicts to test the system. Now that I have no more secrets to keep from the players, I’ll give you some more detail on how things went.
For the Mental conflict, I chose trying a case before the Triumvirate of the Council of Ghosts. The set-up was that the ghost of a woman was released from the Vaughn Street Jail after evidence came to light that she was wrongly convicted of murdering her children back in the 1930’s. Citing this release as precedent, four other executed murderers were suing for release, with the aid of a ghost lawyer. The characters had certain knowledge that the four would take vengeance on the city, rather than move on as the woman had done, and so had to convince the Council not to release them.
For the Social conflict, I had five einharjar from Gimli come into town and start tearing up the local bar where the characters were gathered. The characters had to convince the einharjar to leave. Simple and straightforward.
And for the Physical conflict, I had the daughter of one of the lead detectives of Operation Clean Sweep kidnapped by the Mad Cowz, and held in a drug house guarded by a dozen gangbangers led by a hyena lycanthrope. Straightforward, but not so simple.
Because of time limitations, we only got to run two of the three conflicts with each group. For the first group last Monday, I ran the social and physical conflicts. For the Friday group, I ran the mental and physical conflicts.
We got off to a slow start, mainly because I had to teach the conflict rules to people in both groups. There was also the expected learning curve delays, as people tried to get their heads around some of the concepts and options they had available to them. Both those factors are to be expected in any system, so we knew they were going to crop up.
Once things got rolling, it was fun. Everyone got to try doing interesting things, and events flowed in a fairly interesting manner.
We did run into a bit of trouble because of the restrictions I put on each conflict, forcing players to stick to either mental, physical, or social tactics. Of course, in a real game, I wouldn’t restrict things this way, but the idea was to test the systems independently of each other.
Anyway, I’m compiling my impressions and reports from the players to send to the Evil Hat folks to let them know how things went. In the meantime, here are a couple of moments that really worked nicely:
- Anne using her skill at chemistry to spike the einharjar’s drink, making him talk in a squeaky voice, and embarrassing him to no end.
- Crazy Iris realizing what a huge combined advantage a shotgun and surprise can be.
- Artemis deciding to use his Lore skill to bluff the einharjar with the threat of Odin’s wrath.
- Boniface, so careful not to kill any Mad Cowz, accepting a compel to kill one who had almost killed him with a gunshot.
- Sydney using a combination of Conviction and Lore to stand up to a ghostly lawyer, while Jim’s police training allowed him to lay out the evidence to undermine the case, and Boniface kept the lawyer off-balance with his knowledge of the hidden crimes of the past. Good uses of declarations by all players, filling in details of the Accord of Two Waters, the lawyer, and the criminals.
All in all, we had a good time. The more we try the system, the better things look.