13th Age: Conclusion of the Case of the Missing Grimoires

Session 2, Mission 1: Case of the Missing Grimoires

When last we left our heroes, they had more suspects than they had facts on the ground, and they were going nowhere fast. Aurora had an in with Sarvag, seeing every book he chose, and what sections he needed copied down for his notes. Mairenne and Antis were getting along swimmingly. Annel and and Mercillina had decent successes connecting with their targets of inquiry, but nothing too insightful had come forth. Let alone the possibility of it being the cleaning staff.

The next day arrived and various groups met up. Aurora and Merci were the first of the PCs to arrive, while Sarvag was waiting till dawn's light touched the door, that being the signal that they were open for business. Everyone else rolled in slowly through the morning. Nadezhda started to make friends with Sarvag's soldier's who had set themselves up in the tavern across the way from the library.

Little directly occurred in the morning; however, Sarvag, Crito and Kinarao Epukena all managed to present compelling letters to force Antis to open the vault (i.e., they had sufficiently powerful patrons where it would be unwise to anger) - where the most sensitive of histories and stories, as well as the most powerful of grimoires.

You know, the type that were stolen and recovered well on their way to the Diabolist? Yeah those.

Antis, realizing that he had been outmaneuvered, agreed to open up the vault to all. However, as it would take time to unlock the ensorcelled locks and restrictions on the vault, it would be this afternoon. Antis draws Mairenne aside and asks her for a favor - could she ensure that her vouched for persons (i.e., the party) annoy and disrupt the studying of the other three individuals.

Meanwhile, soldiers are soldiers, and Nadezhda quickly ingrates herself with them. What can we say? Even the Crusader's troops like to bitch and moan. They are here on a detached detail because there are various regulations that state that commanders are not allowed to travel alone. Apparently, all of these rules are in the little black books that every Crusader's soldier carries with them and is expected to have memorized and be able to recite at all times.

Mairrenne spreads the word to the rest of the cadre, and Nadezhda convinces a local stray cat to act as a look out in case action is required on her part on the large meat shield.

Once the vault is opened, sigils pulsing through the green and gold spectrum, the true research for Sarvag, Kinarao and Crito begins. Sarvag and Kinarao make a beeline for the grimoires of summoning, and thus banishing, the demons; while Crito heads to the histories. The Cadre sits and watches while making pretenses to be loud, annoying, and intrusive.

The afternoon passes, and Annel sees Crito, the young priest of the Gods of Light attempt to hide a book on his person. She forthrightly confronts him, and he panics, driving a knee into her abdomen knocking her to ground gasping for breath and he begins to make a break for the exit.

And it is here that I ask for a initiative roll as the Cadre starts unleashing hell upon the poor priest. Aurora zaps him with a massive lightning bolt, and Merci hits him with blast of sound and with the two blast combined, they send books, pages, and paper everywhere, some a bit toasty with the side effects of throwing lightning in a library.

Wielding primal forces of the universe is like that.

Crito, deafened and staggered, continues his mad chase; the party, barring Aurora, pursues at a high rate. She suspects that Crito is a distraction and stays behind to watch Sarvag and Kinarao.

Outside Nadezhda gets involved; while the Crusader's forces in 'hostile' territory and not sure what's going on, are content to watch from the sidelines. Crito is hammered by a holy blast from Mairenne, and Nadezhda finishing him with a massive swing of her axe, though turning it to Crito with the flat of his blade. The poor priest flies about 10' landing in a crumple of flesh on the ground in front of a man dressed in dark leathers, flanked by a massive hulk of a man as well as several other thugs in the crowd.

"Well, I guess I didn't need to come looking for him after all," says Marcus, taking the book from Crito's satchel.

And the cadre, minus Aurora who is still inside, takes the fight to Marcus. And it is a bloodbath, but mostly on the thieves' side as party members drop as not only does Marcus' crew have thugs, they also have archers.

Combined forces? So not fair. Speaking of not fair, let's return inside where Aurora is alone with Sarvag and Kinarao and all the rare and powerful books. Nothing could go wrong, right?

Exactly. Aurora quickly notices that Kinarao is pocketing grimoires and challenges her, praying to the gods that Sarvag isn't in on it with her. There's a brief exchange, and Kinarao calls out "Uzbek, come to my side" and dark flames erupt around her as a demon begins to emerge from another world.

This is so not a good time to be outnumbered and outgunned.

Switching back to the to street fight, Marcus does eventually fall, and the big lunk is on his last legs, but the party is gravely injured (Merci had to make death saves) and the archers are by and large untouched and with better positioning, so it doesn't look good for the home team.

So I, in my benevolence, offer the players a choice, we can continue the double battles, or they can accept a campaign loss to be left alive, but the bad guys get away to fight another day. The players, after a short deliberation accept the loss....

And Sarvag, a massive sword materializing out of one arm and shield from the other arm, charges in, sending Aurora flying out of the way to impact with the wall and lose consciousness as the demon, summoner and forgeborn do battle.

Outside, the lunk grabs Marcus and the book and make a fighting retreat down the street, and plunk a few arrows into Crito to ensure that his story is never told.

The cadre recombines and it has been a war zone - the vault is scorched and damages, the smell of sulfur and brimstone are heavy and rank in the air. The city's militia arrive and begin to assess damage, and Mairenne begins to try and find a story that is something close to the truth, but keeps the party's unacknowledged status of Sigil Bearers intact for a bit longer.

Because as Sigil Bearers, they can just materialize the sigil and all this goes away for the good of the empire. Antis, understanding what happened pulled the young captain to the side and explained the facts of life to him, utilizing his long history and experience with the city to great advantage. (Hey, Mairrenne's schmoozing had to pay off....)

The case was closed, the noblewoman demon summoner escaped, the thieves got the book of demonic history for whatever purpose they wanted it for, and now the cadre has to write an after action report to explain this all to Vasorious Sicam.

Good ole Uncle Vaz.

---

The session went fairly well except for two things - the PCs split the party AND kicked off the two toughest planned encounters simultaneously. The two fights - between the thugs and the PCs and the summoner and the PCs were both designed to be Level +1 or Level +2 fights, because as a rule I run fewer fights and make them more critical and tougher. The loss of the sorceress's artillery really hampered the PCs, because it turned the archers into a massive force multiplier because while they were mooks, they were mooks who weren't being effectively attacked.

And I think with this fight I'm done with rolling for initiative unless it adds something to the game, I think I'll be switching to "popcorn initiative" as used in other systems, where whoever just went picks the next character to go (NPC or PC) and the round ends once everyone has a turn.

Inaugural Mission: Case of the Missing Grimoires

Our first session was last Friday - and I'm going to try and be good to write a short summary of each game here and on the wiki just as a system of record.

Session 1, Mission 1: Case of the Missing Grimoires

Our session opens in Santa Cora, the city of churches. The newly minted cadre of Sigil Bearers have finished their orientation training (that involved infiltrating the restricted area of the Elf Queen's palace, numerous bar brawls, some of which had their origins in fights over the origin myths of the world, stopping thieves who were too foolish to keep their voices down, and numerous other hijinks and shenanigans). They have been set up in various cover jobs - well Mairenne, the High Elf Cleric is back to her old job as curator of the Cathedral's archives, Annel, Elven Paladin is there as a researcher, but the rest have been set up in roles that suit them - Aurora, half-elven sorceress as bar wrench, Mercillina, the Trueblooded human bar as the inn's resident bard, and Nadezhda, the Dragonspawn Warrior, is the inn's biggest stable boy.

No one fucks with the horses anymore.

No one.

It isn't long before they receive their first summons, and make their way to the safehouse that has been established for them. There they wait in an inner room with no windows and only a single obvious door until Vasorious Sicam makes his appearance - the acknowledged leader of the Sigil Bearers, he has the Emperor's ear. He's a severe, stern, rigid man with the weight

And Aurora knows him as Uncle Vaz.

The mission is simple infiltrate a location and eliminate a thief. The Empire found a merchant smuggling tomes to the Diabolist, and it was obviously not the first set of tomes that the bitch in the north had received. The tomes were all related to Demons, and some of the most sensitive of the tomes contain actual rituals for summon specific demons.

With some preliminary legwork, they were able to trace access to the tomes to four individuals:

1. Antis Dias - High Elf Head Librarian - With his access he'd have no problem pilfering.
2. Crito Valunus - a young human priest
3. Sarvag Steelheart - A Forgeborn soldier of the Crusader.
4. Kinarao Epukena - Highblooded Human who's family is a minor nobility in the northern regions of the Empire.

With that Vasorious disappeared as quickly as he appeared, with nary a sound nor shadow flickering. Plumbing the depths of her memory, Mairenne recalls that Antis had, once upon a time, an issue with the rar purple Ryllae blossom, an Elven drug - which got him into a bad place, taking bribes to sell books. But he cleaned himself up, and the Priestess forgave him and gave him a second chance.

The cadre quickly divided up the targets - Mairenne would go in her official capacity, and focus on Antis, while getting the others the necessary credentials and access privileges (what happens when you game with a bunch of gov't contractors, it is ALL about the indoctrination briefings) Nijadja will be working oversight outside of the library, mostly because there's little for a 6'+ Dragonspawn who has little interest in studies. Annel will pursue Crito, Merci will speak to Sarvag, soldier to soldier, and that leaves Aurora with Kinarao.

The group quickly and easily infiltrates the library. And pursues their targets. Contact is easily made - Antis seems happy to have company, albeit a bit beleaguered with the larger than normal crowd; Crito is obviously stressed about something, Sarvag is very angry about not being allowed to take books out of the library and nearly knocks over a shelf (apparently nearly knocks over a shelf again) and Kinarao is mysterious and coy about her reasons for researching the demons.

Yup, all suspicious.

Time passes somewhat uneventfully, Nija explores the outside with the help of small critters. And takes note of the heavily armed soldiers of the Crusader occupying a restaurant within eye shot of the front doors of the library.

There's one small crisis point where Sarvag rants at Antis again, and Merci offers up Aurora's use as a scribe for 11 shillings a day. A bargain is struck, and Aurora is somewhat intimidated by 7' of hulking metal with a soul but no face.

Merci quickly moves to establish the friendship with Kinarao, who is definitely eager to get into the most restricted area of the vault where the grimoires of true power lay.

Crito hearing the clock ring out races out of the library and Nija pursues him; however, she eventually loses him in an alleyway.

At the same time, the cleaning staff comes in as dusk falls and the library begins to close. One of the cleaning staff is a halfling who stumbles and knocks over the pile of books that Aurora has been carefully taking notes from, knocking lose Sarvag's book marks and ruining her work.

Sarvag is very much. Not pleased. Not pleased at all. Ulan, the halfing janitor quickly learns that being small and quick is little help when you are in the monster's grip and several feet off the ground. After a brief confrontation with Antis, Ulan is hurled into the ground by Sarvag who takes one look at Aurora's work, tosses her a silver and commands her to attend at dawn the next day. 

Ulan picks himself up as Antis berates him soundly for his clumsiness. The party is almost instantaneously suspicious of Ulan and whether he is a plant for Sarvag or another player in this little game.

The session draws to a close with the group meeting back up to work over the first day of case notes.

GM Notes: For a first session things moved quickly. People eventually fell into their roles and seemed to have a lot of fun with what went on. Game sessions are only about 2-2.5 hours long, so they'll be short and hopefully information dense - I expect several chickens to come home to roost quickly next session.

13th Age: Character Creation and Initial Thoughts

I am GMing again, and yesterday evening was character creation for 13th Age. I'm excited about the potential, and I'm thrilled that my players, as they look at the system and the world are getting excited as well.

It is going to be an interesting game - variety of skill and "intensity" levels at the table, but I billed it as a "beer and pretzels" level of gaming for a reason - I just want to sit down, have some fun, and roll some dice and engage in hijinks. Not to say that I'm not going to interject drama and the occasional hard decision - but I'm trying something different than my usual style. 

It was fun watching one of the players go through the book, laughing at the personal moments in the book, "At the GM’s option, the drama requirement can be waived if the table joins in a group hug," or, much as I did realizing, "I believe you've picked a perfect game for the way you run, and this group."

My wife is working through the setting material and loved the bit about the Koru Behemeth migration pattern and how it trails across the entire map and then some.

Right now the character list stands at the following:

• Aurora, a half-elf born of human parents (it can happen on occasion), who is a Sorceress without any heritage that anyone can determine.
• Mairenne, a High Elf cleric, who bears a tear of her goddess around her neck as her symbol to fight against the injustices of the world.
• Mercillina, a Trueblooded Human (cause why should Elves be the only one to get fancy bloodlines) Bard, who has stood and looked across the demon-wracked Red Wastes and warded humanity against the inhabitants.
• A Dragonspawned fighter who can speak to the animals as if they were people and has learned in her years that the animals are far kinder and more reasonable than people.
• A Wood Elf Paladin/Courtier/Scholar who fights the good fight.

As a GM, I am loving how easy the system is to adapt and change. I've created a new talent for the Sorceress as she was struggling to find ones that worked for how she envisioned the character. I created races that give some different flavor to the past age.

Heck, I'm tempted to write up a psionic class, just to see if I can as I was inspired responding to something on Google+ about how psionics is different than sorcery, wizardry, or divine magic.

I am using Obsidian Portal again to host the game information, and the world is slowly being fleshed out.

Cultures In Review: Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Ogres

Handling classically "evil" races that have generally existed to be slaughtered by valiant PCs is always difficult. However, as I'm trying to make them viable PC races and cultures, which means that they can't just be classically evil and malevolent marauding bands of miscreants (yes, occasionally I write simply to amuse myself).

However, I do want them to fulfill their more traditional roles, which leaves me with having them been cast-out, exiled, and without a homeland, they are functionally refugees, filling in the gaps of other nations, living in ghettos and their own small clusters.

The fallen of Krenn wandering the Empire and surrounding nations, some looking to find a new homeland, others looking to just survive. While they all share similar personality traits being of the same culture, they are expressed differently.

Hobgoblins

Behaviors (5)

• Every year we remember what we have lost with those closest to us, Krenn and non-Krenn alike.
• We celebrate the victories that our people have wrought in these dark times.
• All debts and charities shall be remembered and repaid in kind.
• We are the Chosen to leads the Kren into the brighter future.
• [Player Chosen]

Archetypes (3)

• Mercenary Captain
• Destitute entrepreneur
• Political Mover and Shaker

Johari Traits (10)

• Able
• Assertive
• Clever
• Energetic
• Observant
• Organized
• Proud
• Sensible
• [Player Chosen]
• [Player Chosen]

Goblins

Behaviors (5)

• Every year we remember what we have lost with those closest to us, Krenn and non-Krenn alike.
• We celebrate the victories that our people have wrought in these dark times.
• A Pyrrhic victory is no victory at all, survival of the Krenn is the only true moral truth.
• We must live in the world that is, not what could be, or what was.
• [Player Chosen]

Archetypes (3)

• Shadowstalker
• Priest of the Old Gods
• Craven Lickspittle 

Johari Traits (10)

• Accepting
• Adaptable
• Clever
• Observant
• Patient
• Quiet
• Searching
• Sensible
• [Player Chosen]
• [Player Chosen]

Ogres

Behaviors (5)

• Every year we remember what we have lost with those closest to us, Krenn and non-Krenn alike.
• We celebrate the victories that our people have wrought in these dark times.
• If we sacrifice what we were, what will we become?
• Not confronting problems allows them to fester, and infect the community.
• [Player Chosen]

Archetypes (3)

• Linebreaker
• Neighborhood Mother
• Mason

Johari Traits (10)

• Bold
• Clever
• Dependable
• Energetic
• Giving
• Patient
• Powerful
• Sensible
• [Player Chosen]
• [Player Chosen]

Okay this I think is a workable solution for the goblin races of the Krenn. I'll probably sketch out history later at some point, but really, the point of this is for my players to go "Ooo, I want to play this, what do I need to do?" and not hand them 10 pages of notes regarding the history and interactions.

Cultures in Review: Elves

Where once there were three distinct races of elves, only one remains a viable population today, that's not to say there may not be a remote pocket of High Elves or Dark Elves, only the Wood Elves remain a viable force in the Eastern Nations, and even there, they are diffused over a wide territory and prone to infighting.

The Osani as they call themselves are a conglomerate of several different tribes of Wood Elves loosely bound together by family ties and agreements. There are five distinct major tribes of Wood Elves: Ashur, Hanisi, Kiya, Missun, and the Zan

The Osani, or Wood Elves,

Behaviors (5)

• Are honest to fault, preferring a direct conflict to deferential politeness.
• Honor the gods openly in public, and adorn with jewelry in their honor.
• Warriors earn their place only after leaving the tribes for a year and a day and returning to the tribe.
• "Me against my brother, me and my brother against my cousins, me and my cousins against the enemy."
• [Player Chosen]

Archetypes (3)

• The Unnamed
• Hedonistic Shaman
• Thief of the Flames

Johari Traits (10)

• Athletic
• Extroverted
• Confident
• Loving
• Religious
• Spiritual
• Idealistic
• Complex
• [Player Chosen]
• [Player Chosen]

Culture in Review: Dwarves

There are two distinct cultural grouping of dwarves current in existence. For sake of analysis we will call them "Northern" and "Southern" dwarves. The northern dwarven kingdom, Thale, has been assimilated by the Empire approximately 100 years ago, so the stories of what was still ring strong. The southern dwarven kingdom, Garne, stands free, but eyes the Empire of Dragons warily.

I've set up the following using Quinn's gameable culture idea, doing about 80% of the outlining, while leaving some space for the players, when I finally do run this game, to add flavor of their own to the cultures.

Thaleans, or the northern dwarves:

Behaviors (5)

• Maintain the Old Ways in the face of a changing world.
• Understand that personal relationships and favors are how the world truly works, no matter what the laws say on paper.
• Act in ways to maintain the dignity of the clan.
• Honor those who came before and lifted us to where we are today and lift those who follow us.
• [Player Chosen]

Archetypes (3)

• Soldier of the Line
• Apprentice Ritualist
• Traveling Merchant

Johari Traits (10)

• Spiritual
• Dignified
• Persistent
• Humble
• Helpful
• Insightful
• Caring
• Clever
• [Player Chosen]
• [Player Chosen]

Garnessians, or the southern dwarves,

Behaviors (5)

• Set aside personal need in order to follow the law.
• Know that how an object looks is of equal weight to how it performs.
• Prepare for the unexpected, else to invite misfortune into one's home.
• Worship the gods on their day, but no other.
• [Player Chosen]

Archetypes (3)

• Noble Guardian
• Manipulative Courtier
• Failed Craftsman

Johari Traits (10)

• Adaptable
• Able
• Energetic
• Observant
• Sensible
• Precise
• Assertive
• Proud
• [Player Chosen]
• [Player Chosen]

I hate naming things.

So I suck at naming places, people, things. Absolutely horrible at it. Linguistics was never my strong point, and while onomastics was always a good way to write a quick five or ten page paper in undergrad, I think it may have broken my ability to come up with syllables that sound "acceptable" to each other.

So I'm never sure what to do - I can go with nearly purely descriptors for names, and keep everything fairly fairly straight forward, or if I want alien, I can open up a translator with a particular language and start translating terms until I find one I like. As long as I avoid common languages, I will probably be okay with anyone at my table saying, "Um, that's totally the wrong variant/intent behind that word," because my only defense is "It may be, but it is the one that I can pronounce the easiest!"

So folks who name characters, places, things something other than good English names, how do you go about doing it?