[The Mountain Witch] Weight in gold
Jaakko Koivula:
Got a brand new group together. I have never played with them and think none of them have played forge-inspired games before. Decided to test The Mountain Witch and after the first session, think we are all quite hyped. This is the first time Im actually GM:ing this kind of game, so Im very open to suggestions, opinions and hints about how to run. Play-report first though!
Characters:
Red ronin - Umiroya: in his thirties, always slightly gleeful. Banished after he killed another servant, sent to redeem himself by killing O-yamna (and bringing the reward back to his daimyo)
Blue ronin - Takayama: Young and handsome ronin. His family was rell respected in the area, but an upstart-merchant family tricked them out of their wealth and honor. Takayama is out to restore his family's good name.
White ronin - Imai: Sturdy, stout, maybe even fat ronin. From far away provinces. Banished for hitting his daimyo in anger. Needs money, for who would hire a samurai that has raised his hand against his master?
Black ronin - Matsushita: a drunkard who always wears his armour and mask. No-one knows much about him, but it's rather easy to guess why he propably is a ronin and why he needs the money: the drink
Green ronin - Kanamaru: Old ronin, whose daimyo died by choking on a rice-ball. So dodgy, that poisoning was suspected and his samurai banished for failing to protect their master. Also a very famous poet.
Pink ronin - Shinta: Very young, ugly and dirty ronin, keeps his weapons in excellent shape though. Always accompanied by a dog, Renshin.
We start by a flashback from Daimyo Ono's castle. Daimyo has gathered all the ronin in the area to hear about the mission. (Btw. Im using some theme-songs/styles in the game for some NPCs and situations. Daimyo's themeband is Arcturus. Moody, dark, mystical stuff. Theme song: Deception Genesis.) I played the Daimyo as a pretty sinister type himself, raspy old guy who wants O-Yamna down. The reward will be the dead Witch's weight in gold. Pretty odd, but still. Gold's gold.
Now: the ronin are hanging at the bar. Matsushita has been collecting other ronin for the team. Sort of popping up all over the place and asking ronin to come and join the hunt. There are four people at the table. Imai makes an appearance by just barging into the company and sitting down.
Imai: "Right, I want in too."
Kanamaru: "What? Who invited you? If we take you we could as well take that little kid with us also!" (Points at Takayama)
Takayama: "Im honored to be called to partake in this noble quest, I accept!"
Matsushita: "Eh, wat?"
Short haggling and bragging ensues, Imai and Takayama get in on the gig. Ronin discuss strategies for a while and Matsushita tells that he knows a temple of crazy monks, that can lead them to the Witch's castle by secret waterways. Suddenly everyone notices that the inn has gone very quiet and that a great big shadow looms over the whole table. About 2m tall black-skinned gaijin looms over Matsushite:
"The temple of crazy monks, Good to know. O-Yanma will be pleased to hear this."
(Theme-bands: Skindred and Dub-war, ragga metal gangsta tough-guy stuff)
"Im Bwaddene Chipo and O-yanma is my master. If you are going after him, you WILL come face to face with me. Remember this."
Chipo turns to leave, but Takayama springs up and puts a blade to his throat trying to ask more questions. Chipo just chuckles and pushes the blade down with two fingers. Takayama notices a ring on Chipo's finger and startles a bit, letting Chipo leave in peace (first use of dark fate here!).
Ronin decide to leave also, but first they will pray and do some ceremonies at a nearby shrine. They get there and naturally get ambushed by some thugs lead by a bandit. Ronin are getting along nicely and spend lots of trust around, taking care of the thugs easily. The leader of the thugs tries to run, Matsushita and Takayama stop him. Matsushita bought the narration here: Takayama was giving the leader a chance to surrender, but on seeing Matsushita, the bandit leader screamed "NEVER!" and tried to draw his sword. Takayama cut down the bandit instantly, which seemed to shock Matsushita a bit.
The ronin spent the night at the shrine, which was also the end of the first chapter. Some trust was handed around and some was taken away. Nothing drastic. Next morning they head towards the village of Moreko, the last spot of civilization before the forest at the mount of Mount Fuji. Village is in sorry shape. The walls have been burned and in generally bashed in and the guards of the village are terrified about everything in general.
There have been raiders that raid the village constantly and also wolves from the forest have started to attack the village nightly. Ronin argue about if they should save the village or just carry on to kill the witch. Then they argue if they should go after the bandits, or split up and take care of both of the dangers. Conflict! Matsushita wins and suddenly sobers up and shouts everyone down. "We're splitting up, now stop bickering and get moving!" The younger samurai are dead impressed about this sudden change and they agree instantly.
The group splits into two. Three go to kill the wolves, three to face the bandits.
In this session we didn't have time to handle the wolves. The ronin just managed to spot the leader of the wolves, a huge snow-white wolf. At this point they also remembered the guards mumbling something about the wolves behaving rather peculiarly lately and.. before being interrupted by Kanamaru: "SHUT UP VILLAGER, Warriors are trying to talk here!"
But at the bandit camp, conflicts! Takayama uses his dark fate to notice that the bandit leader is actually an old esteemed family retainer. They go into an extended conflict on can Takayama persuade the bandit to redeem himself by committing seppuku. When it starts to look that Akira is actually going to accept, the bandits try to join in on the conflict: "Come on chief, what are you talking about, come on!" But Kanamaru and Shinto stop them. They intimidate the poor bandits so badly by their show of sword drawing-badassery, that the bandits actually turn tail and flee for good.
Akira (the old retainer) agrees to commit seppuku and Kanamaru surprises everyone by pulling out a complete ceremonial kit for the occasion. Dark fate at play again, the old man is carrying around everything one needs for seppuku for some reason, odd. Akira dies with honor, but the second-in-command Konoha arrives just in time to see three odd ronin at his camp and his leader dead. "What the.. KILL THEEEEEM!"
Konoha and his men manage to separate the ronin. Kanamaru and Shinto stay and fight with one group of his elite-men and Konoha goes and rides (he actually had a horse!) and manages to wound Takayama. Next he manages to get the rest of the bandits (who had been just standing around, not taking part in any of the combat yet, so dumb-struck about their leader suddenly committing touching and perfect seppuku) to attack Takayama too. Konoha manages to get the bandits fighting again and even lands a solid kick on Takayama while doing it. Single samurai against three dice of bandits now, ouch.
Shinto and Kanamaru fight off Konoha's elite bandits enough, that they manage to close off their formation with Takayama. Ronin burn up trust like hell and fight in perfect unison, making short work of the bandit. Konoha tries to run, but the three ronin catch him. Konoha realizes that there's no escape and swiftly kills himself before any of the ronin manage to stop him. (Matsushita's dark fate) But just before cutting himself open, Konoha makes a quick series of hand-signals of unknown importance.. that Shinto (dark fate!) still seems to know. Matsushita's player narrates that Shinto knows that the hand signs were the signal of some unknown group of trained assassins, working in the area.
The camp is already burning behind them (the fleeing bandits hat set it alight) and wind is picking up. It's slowly starting to rain and Kanamaru is just reciting a improvised haiku for the fallen Honoka, when a huge bolt of lightning strikes across the sky, interrupting him.
*End of session*
This felt like a pretty brilliant session. Pretty much everyone was visibly hyped and excited about the game. We're still all getting used to setting conflicts, but those seemed to go pretty much ok still. Dark fate was used somewhat often, in tiny flashes of recognition. They really spiced up the thing, but I don't yet have any idea at all, what the actual dark fates might be. I'll start throwing up more hooks in the next session for players to grab and use their dark fates on more explicitly.
What was curious and rather cool, was that even when we used nearly 45minutes for the bit with bandits in the end, the three players that weren't participating in the conflict, still were interested and followed the story. Normally at this point the other guys would've been somewhere ordering pizza or reading comics. This time everyone seemed involved, even when their character weren't around. Nnnice.
Still, I'll try to start playing more simultaneous conflicts later on (as Eero suggesion in the finnish version). This time I just plain run out of dice, so didn't try to do the wolves and bandits at the same time. Lucky that no-one seemed to get bored.
So far we've had really trusting ronin in the group and they've made mincemeat out of everything I've thrown at them. Which is all well and good. This means that they now also nearly out of trust and the going is just going get tougher :)
I might have a pretty skewed view of the challenge so far because of that. 6 enemy dice really didn't seem like much, when a ronin throws a bucket of dice and add those all up. Some rules clarifications still that I could use, if anyone has managed to get this far on this wall of text:
If you spend trust to help another ronin, can you still fight yourself? Example: I help my friend to fight off wolves. Do I give my one dice to him, or do I give him an extra trust-dice and roll my own dice for myself?
Also: I get helped in a conflict and roll 15. Other guy rolls 3. I beat him by 12. I propably still get one double-success, instead of 4 normal successes? The end result scales down to 5+ always?
Oh, 5+. That rather explains it actually. Oh well.
Really looking forward for the next session. Hopefully we already get to back-stabbing then!
Eero Tuovinen:
I like those characters, quite colorful!
Quote from: Jaakko Koivula on October 09, 2009, 03:40:28 AM
I might have a pretty skewed view of the challenge so far because of that. 6 enemy dice really didn't seem like much, when a ronin throws a bucket of dice and add those all up.
The odds in TMW are very interesting, it's a very intricate design. For instance, the expected result of the GM's roll has a sharp upper limit at 6, no matter how many dice you roll. Therefore it doesn't really matter that much if you roll 6 dice or 20 - with six you'll get that maximum result 66% of the time, while with twenty it's a virtual guarantee, but the actual outcome isn't influenced nearly as much as it is by what the players decide to roll. Even two (uninjured) ronin rolling together have a 50% chance of rolling seven - better than the NPCs ever can. Perhaps even more illustrative is to look at the expected variation in results you get with different amounts of dice - with one die half of your results ranger over 3 dice values, while with five dice over half of your results will be at 6: therefore we might say that your choice of using a number of dice will usually only mean a two point swing in your final result at most.
What messes up this seeming PC strength is the wounds mechanic, which is quick to reduce the strength of the characters. Even so, the fact remains that the number of opponents only has a slight effect on the amount of danger, and the trust among the ronin, as well as injuries, play a much more important part in determining what happens.
This all amounts to a very curious feature: the GM doesn't have to care one whit of the amount of challenge he is proffering to the characters. The mechanics are built to handle the numbers, so the GM can just concentrate on the imagery and choices. Once the situation turns into a conflict, just count the number of opponents and use that many dice, without ever having to care how difficult the conflict is - your choices aren't determining the difficulty of the conflict anyway, as the choices the players make play a much bigger role.
Two things related to that, now that I'm writing:
Don't downplay the tactical choices in combat. I at least get a lot of mileage out of careful in-fiction interactive positioning wherein we determine who exactly fights whom with the players. For example, if you have ten wolves, you could narrate how they split up into two groups and attack from different directions, perhaps inspiring the ronin to split up to face them in separate groups. The rules on who gets to decide how the conflicts are grouped are woolly, it's basically a negotiation and narration vs. counter-narration - the GM can strongly suggest solutions and encourage interesting set-ups, but ultimately the players have a word in it, too, and if they want to have their characters express ultimate trust, then it's always going to go down with characters going shoulder to shoulder against the common enemy.The book has lots of text about how the GM needs to encourage the players to take charge of their characters' passions, betraying trusts if necessary. This sort of thing is important for the conflict system as well, as the ronin will really only be truly vulnerable once you get in some wounds - which won't happen as long as the characters have enough trust for each other. This is, in fact, another form of implicit negotiation, as the GM can't force the characters to suspect or betray each other, the players need to want it. And it will only happen if the players feel that their characters can genuinely be protagonists, whose passions elevate the play instead of ruining it.
Quote
If you spend trust to help another ronin, can you still fight yourself? Example: I help my friend to fight off wolves. Do I give my one dice to him, or do I give him an extra trust-dice and roll my own dice for myself?
You only get one die per round of conflict, so if you're helping another, you can't have your own separate conflict. You'd rather combine the goals of the two characters - if they're helping each other, then by definition their goals are compatible as well.
Jaakko Koivula:
Ah, thanks for clearing up those things for me. Good to have basic stuff like "1 dice per combat" -thingie right.
And yeah, actually the system seems pretty ingenious. If the ronin stay together, they can tear up most anything that the GM can throw at them, but when the group starts to crack apart...
Add the wound mechanic on top of that, nice. Very well put about the expected results Eero, I think I get it a lot more now.
We've been enjoying the tactical choices a much in the game actually. We've been using dice as miniatures and it works beautifully. All sort of manouvering and trying to get into range etc. I think it also breaks the fall from traditional RPGs to indie-games. Even when players can't optimize their character stats and weapon bonuses, they still get to tactic away and think up strategies.
Next game on thursday. I was sort of thinking of just throwing more dice at them since they've pretty much run out of trust for this chapter already, but maybe I'll just try to plant opportunities for players to betray each other. Propably easier to get wounds in that way >:)
Jaakko Koivula:
Right! Now I know there are some of the players here, so get registering and add-up on the bits that I miss!
Report for session two!
Black ronin Matsushita and Red ronin Umiroya are chasing the great white wolf into the forest. Just when they reach the edge of the woods, a huge storm breaks out dramatically. After stumbling a bit in the forest, the ronin notice that they're missing one person. White ronin Imai has disappeared completely. There's no sign of him anywhere. Maybe eaten by the wolves, maybe something more sinister.. (Imai's player pulled a disappearing act, so Imai did too).
Suddenly the ronin manage to catch up to the white wolf. He's standing on the path ahead, while the rest of the pack ambushes the ronin, jumping out of the woodwork everywhere. The wolves are trying to separate the ronin, and the ronin are trying to get a clear line of sight for the white wolf so Umiroya could take it out with his throwing weapons. Ronin beat the wolves.
Matsushita throws an explosive on the ground, scaring most of the pack away. The wolves escape to the forest and Umiroya manages to lodge a shuriken in the white wolf's eye. *spoink*
On the next round the whole pack all-out attack the ronin, trying to shred them to bits. Umiroya and Matsushita courageously climb into a tree, leaving all the wolves down on the ground, unable to reach them. Matsushite lights another bomb and shoves it to Umiroya. After wondering a bit, Umiroya realizes that the thing looks pretty much like the thing that Matsushita threw on the ground before half of the wolf-pack exploded, so he lobs it at the white wolf, scoring a perfect hit.
The big wolf is totally shredded by the explosion and the rest of the pack flees. The weather is getting really crappy, so the ronin decide to camp for a bit in the woods. They chat for a bit, before being interrupted by the decapitated white wolf.
"You bleeding monkeys, you come waltzing in here, kill me and now disgrace my body." (Matsushita had been using the head as a puppet or something)
"My father is the lord of this forest and he WILL find you, you chimpanzees, you will never find your way through this forest alive!"
"Oh forest spirit, can we not talk about this?"
"To think that I have to listen to this kind of drivel as the last thing I do on this Earth. My father will find you and kill you." (presence fades, head goes silent)
Meanwhile the other group has found shelter from the horrible storm in a peasant's house. They boot the peasants out to sleep in the shed and spend a rather restless night themselves. Green ronin Kanamaru dreams about the days he was still a young man: He remembers a sword-fighting tournament that had a participant that looked exactly like the Pink ronin Shinta. But that can't be, as the participant would be like 80 years old at the present time and Shinta is a total youngster.
After that, the rest of the group is awoken by a horrible screaming in Kanamaru's room. They barge in just in time to see something dark and grey and long-haired leaving the room, after scaring the living crap out of Kanamaru.
In the morning everything is ok. The peasant is fixing the broken wall in Kanamaru's room and the ronin are having morning tea. Kanamaru confronts Shinta about the tournament. Shinta is rather visibly surprised and uneasy about the whole subject:
"It was propably my father, yeah. Yup. That's it. But what was that thing in your room that scared you so badly, Kanamaru-san?"
"What? Have you been having a nightmare? There wasn't anything in my room. But did you father look a lot like you?"
"Umm, yeah. He must've been the guy you saw. But I'll say! I wonder how the rest of our comrades are doing?"
At that convenient moment, Renshi arrives. Renshi had been helping the other ronin with the wolves, but now he is back, splattered with blood to boot. Kanamaru, Shinta and Takayama decide to make their way back to the village with best possible speed, after burying Akira (the seppuku-bandit) honorably.
Matsushita and Umiroya had found their way out of the forest surprisingly easily. After taking about three steps, they find themselves out on the plains, near the village again. The villagers are naturally overjoyed that the white wolf is dead and throw up a huge feast. Surprisingly the old drunkard Matsushita doesn't partake in the festivities, but rather demands that guards be put up, in case the wolf's father decides to come after them.
Next morning everyone is back in the village again. Matsushita and Takayama go and have a private chat about the bandit-chiefs, while Shinta is approached by a creepy wizard's minion. He is invited to a banquet at the Witch's castle, in a couple of days. The invitation was addressed to Shinta specifically, but from the form of the invitation it seems ok if the the whole group attends.
Arguing ensues about this obvious trap and about what route they should take. They practically have two options: Through the forest with the angry spirit, or through the temple of the crazy monks, that according to common knowledge, has no route up to the Fuji-mountain.
The ronin decide to head for the temple of the crazy monks after much pushing and pulling. Matsushita wants to meet up an old friend at the temple and even though the spirit lord might come and try to take revenge on the villagers, well.. that can't be helped. He's anyway propably more interested in the ronin who killed his son, than the villagers.
They get to the temple without any troubles, as it is a pretty often used and well kept road. At the temple they bump into the giant black gaijin again. Chipo is just checking where the ronin are going and reminds them that they have three days until the banquet. (Meanwhile all ronin are squinting like hell to catch details on the ring that Chipo has, that interested Shinta earlier so much). While leaving he does some odd greeting at Shinta with the ringed hand and then buggers off.
Other ronin are slightly suspicious about how all Witch's minions seem to know Shinta by name, but Shinta explains that it's propably because Imai's betrayed them and told the Witch everything about their group. The ronin approach the castle and Shinta again stays behind, not wanting to enter temple-grounds. Kanamura just manages to answer Matsushita that he hasn't been here before, when a robed figure shouts up from the temple-walls:
Kanamura and Matsushita! Now what the devil are you two doing here!?"
*end of session*
Trust was given around again. Can't remember these so well. Most stayed same, but some ronin don't trust each other at all anymore. Some have already 4 trust. kanamaru seems to be the most trusted, no-one hates him and some have high trust towards him.
At the rate we're going, I think we'll have propably two sessions left. Now just gotta squeeze those fates out of the players :>
If you're here, add up on the things that I forgot or skipped over. Also, how have you been enjoying the game so far, eh players, what? _o/
Ville Vuorinen:
I play the green ronin Kanamaru and I've enjoyed playing Mountain Witch. I have been mostly playing traditional rpgs but recently our gaming bunch has tried games like Zombie Cinema. And since most of my friends also run games the storytelling games give more freedom to everybody to bend the story to one's whim instead of just absorbing everything that the gm throws at you.
Gaming reports are damn usefull given my 30 sec long term memory... Anyway, I'll correct one small thing and add one small scene that I arranged in order to reveal (actually quite a bit) about Kanamaru's destiny: When Kanamaru was asked by Matshushita if he had been on the mountain before the old man stayed silent instead of denying anything. The scene that I came up with was about a learned merchant who insisted Kanamaru to recite his earlier poetry. This happened right after Takayama, Shinta and Kanamaru had buried Akira-bandit. Kanamaru first tried to send the merchant politely away but the man was way too determined to hear something from the famous Kanamaru. Old poet lead the merchant some distance away from the other ronin and recited some of his earlier works. The merchant was amazed by the ingeniousness of Kanamaru's haikus and rushed of tell his wife of the lucky incident. Just when the man was in front of village gates a horse bolted due to something on the ground and stampeded the poor merchant to death. Horrified Kanamaru lowered his head in shame and made his way into a nearby tavern.
Since this is my first MW game I didn't quite know how much to put effort into the history of the character. I ended up with pretty much prewritten history but with enough gaps for other players to throw in their ideas. However, I still feel this setup has made it more difficult to come up with ideas that link my character to others. This feeling has been emphisized by the fact that almost everyone the ronin meet is an old friend/foe/relative and that can feel a bit corny. On the other hand the game is still in progress and I can't wait to know the destinies of other ronin.
Speaking of destinies it seems that some of the players are more willing to reveal their destiny than others. This is of course perfectly natural since any of us hasn't played MW before and no example was set. This can however lead to a stark difference between in-game and off-game knowledge but it serves better drama in my opinion. The other approach seems to be misleading and harbouring the destiny until the shit hits the fan so to speak. This method may work as a genuine surprise for the other players and in some cases it may be the only way to have some trust when the backstabbing starts (backstabbing tends to have a snowball effect...).
One request concerning the future sessions: I hope that the last two sessions will be longer than the last one. More like the first one we had. I kind of felt like I was just getting warmed up and I think others would have also liked to play a bit longer. After all when the destinies start to unfold it can take some time to “solve” them. One way or the other *grin*
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