[Trollbabe] Dungeonbabe & Dragons (Actual Play)

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John S:
My wife and daughter bought me a D&D 4th Edition "starter kit" for my birthday, and we had more fun playing the intro adventure with its pre-fabricated characters than I ever remember having with Dungeons & Dragons when I was a kid. The rules seem simpler and more consistent than before, and the powers listed on each character's sheet provide an easy menu of cinematic actions.

Anyway, my daughter, almost nine, picked the "Eladrin Wizard", whom she gave the Tolkien-style moniker "Silwen", and my wife picked the "Dwarf Fighter", whom she named "Skah", a name I read from the Trollbabe names list. After playing the first encounter and realizing how much a balanced party was needed, we added in the "Halfling Rogue" and "Dragonborn Paladin" as supporting characters. When their team faced the Big Bad, I decided to throw in a minor moral choice for them-- the boss offered them a bag of loot to leave dungeon and the town and enjoy the rest of their lives. He also said that if they chose to stay he would utterly destroy them.

They chose to stay and fight, but it was the most vicious battle of the game, and their two supporting characters were brutally killed by the boss's big wolf. The town held a funeral for them, and gave them the Palladin's family crest, so that they could return it to his people.

After that, I asked them if they'd be willing to continue the adventure with different rules, and I suggested Trollbabe. My daughter played Trollbabe with me before a few years ago, but my wife always avoided roleplaying until now. She had fun playing D&D, apart from the frustration of being on the brink of death so many times, and she said she was willing to give Trollbabe a try.

Converting their existing characters was no trouble: Skah was definitely a "fighty" type, and Silwen a magical type. They chose 8 and 3, respectively, for their numbers. To ease the transition, I decided to let them pick one power or concept from their D&D character sheet as a reroll item, replacing one of the five standard-issue rerolls.

Here's my report on their first adventure, which took place over two sessions.

Cosmology: One of cosmological assumptions of D&D is that the PCs are a party of adventurers that travel from town to town, delving into dungeons in order to fight monsters and help the yokels. This assumption is missing from Trollbabe: Trollbabes are lightning-rods for conflict because of what they are, not because they follow some adventure hook to explore the local Caves of Doom. Since Skah & Silwen are both Fey, I figured that might contribute a similar tension-- I decided that in this world, there's an ancient intractable cold war between Elves and Dwarves, and both peoples regard humans as vermin. I suggested that the PCs be some kind of changeling, broadly defined. I also decided that Elves in this setting live largely solitary lives in moonlit cloud-cities; while the Dwarves live in sprawling labyrinthine tombs, ruling over the damned. This led me to think of relating Elf magic to dreaming, glamour, illusion, and transformation; with Dwarf magic deriving from necromancy, crafts, architecture, and wealth. I think there's an unstable truce giving way to mounting tension and rumor of war. These issues were indirectly connected to the stakes of the first adventure, but they aren't yet resolved into anything like a canonical history.

Background: I started out with the destination they chose on the map that came with our D&D starter kit: Fallcrest, a dot surrounded by hills near a major crossroads. The Stakes conflict had to do with a Dwarf princess held captive by a human sorcerer in the ruins overlooking the village. The townspeople look at him as their protector, and the Dwarves are planning some kind of war council to discuss options for freeing their princess. I wanted to blur the lines between different magical peoples in the setting, showing their presence and magic to be similar, with the distinction being culturally enforced-- so I knew I would present "orcish" and "trollish" characters mixed in among the others.

I started with three lists of names:

Names for Fey characters: Grilig, Vaadish, Rung, Rugor, Vulo, Guushnak, Gagar, Kriol, Kaarag, Eruugdush.

Names for Human males: Adrian, Anghel, Bogdan, Claudiu, Damian, Demetri, Cristofor, Dorinel, Henric.

Names for Human females: Adelina, Brigita, Corina, Doina, Dorota, Estera, Lorea, Marica, Natasa

Using these, I decided the sorcerer was Lord Dorinell (which I inexplicably added an L to in my notes), and the captive princess was Adelina. The sorcerer was away on a journey. The consequences would be either that Adelina remains captive or she is freed.

In the first session, we had five scenes:

Scene 1: Skah and Silwen are traveling on the road toward Fallcrest when they realize that there is someone behind them on the road. Skah creeps through the woods to see the person from behind, and possibly gain a combat advantage by surrounding him. Silwen hides behind a tree. It's a misshapen little man on his way to the war council. Silwen jumps out and says "Who are you?" Creeping up on people this way causes a conflict, and she states her goal is to find out whether he is a good guy or bad guy. She fails her initial roll and narrates that a squirrel has thrown a nut at her from the tree while she was talking, blipping her in the head. The little man starts cackling, and she doesn't reroll. Skah comes up from behind and tries to question the dude further, but he doesn't give any information. No one presses for another social conflict, or anything else. So I narrate that the man lopes away. My feeling is that the players aren't really sure what to do; in D&D, the what to do was obvious: kill the monsters. This is a lot more open-ended. I end the scene.

Scene 2: Skah and Silwen see chimney-smoke from Fallcrest several miles off around sunset. They also see the ruins, which I tell them appears to be standing stones on a hilltop. It begins to rain, and they see the windows of the castle light up-- it isn't ruins after all. The path forks: one path goes up to the castle, one down to the village. They choose to go to the castle and ask for lodging for the night.

When they arrive, a small, beautiful woman opens the door and welcomes them in. She dines them in a lavish hall with a warm hearth, and they notice an iron chain on the floor near the fireplace where the woman sits. She leads them to their lavish rooms, and whadaya know, they'd like to share a room, and they see that the chain is attached to their hostess by the ankle. Dang. They sleep in shifts, and when the sun comes up, the lavish castle is gone-- they are in a ruin again.

Scene 3: They go back to the dining hall, which still has a roof over it, and they find the woman still chained to the fireplace, only now she has grey skin and matted hair. She tells them that she is being held by a cruel sorcerer, and beg them to free her.

Silwen touches the chain and the iron burns her hand. Skah hits it with her axe, and feels an electric shock, so Silwen uses her magic to summon up a fire elf to break the chain. Fire elf appears in the hearth and says he needs some whiskey to break the chain, so the player characters decide to visit the town.

Scene 4: Silwen and Skah arrive and survey Fallcrest, a small village with more livestock than people in the center of town. They go in the tavern, and Skah immediately asks "What is the deal with the old woman in the castle on the hill?" Her specialty in Social is "blunt". The people are very suspicious of an Elf & Dwarf traveling together, and trespassing on their protector's property to boot. They find out that the town knows the sorcerer as Lord Dorinell, a holy man, and D is currently on a journey, but they don't know anything about Adelina. Silwen tries to buy some whiskey, and the price is two eggs. But Silwen isn't carrying any poultry products, so we have a social conflict. She fails the initial roll but uses "a carried object" for a successful reroll and pays in gold. Just when they are about to leave, Skah thinks out loud what she thinks of these rednecks, and a brawl almost ensues, but she succeeds in her social conflict roll and they get out of there without fighting. Two characters in this scene got names from the list: Henric, the bartender and de facto leader of the guys in the bar, and his boy Claudiu, a pimply teenager with a cracking voice, who called out "That's what I *thought*!" as the player characters exited.

Scene 5: How would you feel if you've been chained up by a sorcerer for a couple decades? Silwen summons up fire elf again and he blasts one of the links, breaking the chain. Adelina rises up to twice her previous height, stretches out tree-like hands, and says: "Thank you sisters. Now I will tear that town apart!"

At this point, we broke, and I knew I hadn't thought through the stakes well enough, especially making it clear what everyone wanted and how they were connected to the stakes. So before we played again, I made a relationship map and made a few further notes.

Background, Round 2: Dorinell derives a lot of magical power from holding Adelina captive, and he probably has other such wives elsewhere, which accounts for his journeys. Years ago, Adelina bore him a son, but Dorinell took the child to the village where he was raised by Henric and his wife Natasa, who named the child Claudiu. They know nothing of the child's true origin, but have loved him as a son. The ruins come from an earlier, more chivalric age, but the earlier castle was destroyed by Adelina's clan, whom the town fears. Since Lord Dorinell came, taking the Dwarf princess captive, there have been no attacks on the village. Now Rugor, Adelina's consort, and their son Vaadish, have gathered forces-- not knowing that two strangers would free her before they could act. But Adelina will not leave town before she finds her estranged son.

The second session had four scenes:

Scene 1: Picking up right after they set Adelina free, the players immediately say that they want to go warn the town. But as they turn to leave, a raven perches on the ruins, Vaadish in disguise, and speaks to them. Since the townspeople had been so unsympathetic, I decided to give Vaadish a friendly voice: "I deem that you are not enemies. I come with a message to the Princess Adelina. Where is she? [...] That is very good news! Etc." After a very brief conversation, Vaadish cuts them off-- "You have company!" -- and flies away. Silwen and Skah hear voices approaching, and hide behind a boulder adjacent to the castle ruins.

Scene 2: Angry men from the tavern arrive, holding wood-axes, pitch-forks, and other farm tools, grumbling. They think the strangers may be in league with the Rugor clan and they don't like Silwen and Skah poking around the ruins unwelcome. When the men fan out around the ruins, Skah comes out of hiding rather than be found, and when Henric tells her to get out of town, she agrees to leave; Silwen then comes out of hiding too. But Damian, another dude from the bar, is ticked off-- he wanted a chance to pick a fight and blow off steam and he got the others all riled up-- against Henric's pleas, he rushes Skah. I was weak on the "fair and clear" here, and I let them announce their goals and roll simultaneously to see who goes first, using the "lowest roll" rule to determine initiative.

Silwen rolls 7, and Skah rolls 9-- both their goals were to subdue opponents, and they fail. For Silwen's failure, my daughter narrates that Silwen was trying to lasso Damian, and her lasso gets caught in the tree. The branch brakes off, and failing her reroll on "geographic feature", she narrates that it lands on Silwen's leg, fracturing it. For a second reroll, she uses "Fey Step", an ability she got from the D&D character sheet. Third roll failed too, and she disappears, reappearing at the top of the tree, where the same squirrel blips her with another nut, and she falls out of the tree, and knocked out. Looks like my daughter has no problem making failure narration dramatic, but she tends toward failures that are embarrassing & funny rather than cinematic or heroic. She chooses not to use a third reroll.

Skah wasn't so unlucky-- my wife narrates that the initial failure was that she was distracted by the lasso mishap. Upon a reroll, she hits Damian with the butt of her axe, knocking him six feet through the air, to the ground unconscious. Then two other villagers seized her arms from behind--

Wife: "You don't have to roll for that?", she says.
Me: "No, I'm narrating. If you don't like it, you can set a goal and *you* roll."
W: "Okay, my goal is to scare them away. I want to intimidate them into backing down."
M: "Alright, roll Social."
W: "But I'm using my axe to intimidate them--"
M: "What matters is your goal, and compelling them to change their behavior is Social."
W: "Screw that-- I suck at Social. I'm cutting someone's foot off!"
Daughter: "No, you can NOT roll to cut someone's foot off! This is all your fault for getting them all riled up in the bar! You should make peace!" Then to me: "She doesn't cut anyone's foot off!"
W: (Whispering) "I cut his foot off."
M: "Okay, so your goal is to *incapacitate* them so they are no longer a threat?"
W: "Yes."

After these two are down, I have a guy charge her with a pitchfork, whom she dispatches in one series, and then I announce that two other guys run up to her in blind fury as the sun sets. This is where I realize my mistake in omitting "fair and clear", because my wife says: "You need to tell us how many people there are in the beginning. You can't just keep making more and more people appear!"

Just then, there is a cry from the village-- a squeaky teenager's voice, and Henric shouts "Claudiu!" They see a large black hawk rising from the village carrying something that might be a person, and Henric dashes down the path toward the village. The remaining villagers look at Skah to see what she is going to do, and she heaves Silwen onto her shoulders and follows Henric.

Scene 3: Skah arrives in the village just after Henric. Henric is talking to a tall woman with dark hair-- his wife Natasa. Natasa says she was drawing water from the well, when a strange little woman approached her and asked if she had seen her child. Then the woman saw Claudiu and transformed into the hawk and carried him away. Henric runs off into the woods with full panic on his face. Skah wants to follow, but not with Silwen like this, so she asks Natasa for a wheelbarrow! I narrate that Silwen wakes up when placed in the wheelbarrow, but by this time Henric is gone and there is no path.

Natasa has talked to the men who are just limping back from their battle on the hill and she is visibly livid at their antics. She offers Skah and Silwen her hospitality, but Silwen tells her that they all have to leave town because Adelina threatened to tear the village apart. Natasa is more afraid about what may happen to Claudiu than the village, but she remains calm under duress. She is obviously the town's true leader.

Henric reappears, shaking his head. There wasn't a path or any sign of where the hawk had gone. Henric and Natasa tell about the Rugor clan's terror on Fallcrest before Lord Dorinell arrived, and they also admit that Claudiu isn't their true son, but was brought to them by Dorinell. Silwen figures out that the boy is only half-human. Henric and Natasa describe the Rugor clan as "Grave Trolls", a concept I hadn't thought of before. Silwen pressed for details about them, but they didn't know much and I knew less. Natasa gives Silwen a poultice for her leg.

My daughter asks for a scene to form a relationship with one of the villagers in the scuffle, whom I had described as having red hair and a scar on his lip.

Scene 4: Skah and Silwen sleep in the loft of Natasa's barn, and Natasa wakes Silwen in the morning saying she has a visitor. Bela, the red-haired boy whose pitchfork was shattered by Skah's axe the night before, leaving a flesh-wound in his chest, has come to apologize, and he brought flowers. My daughter was embarrassed: "He has a crush on me!" She puts Bela down on her card, and writes "human" next to his name.

Natasa invites Skah and Silwen in for breakfast. Henric apologizes on behalf of all the village men, and pleads with them to find his son Claudiu. He says the Grave Trolls live in some ancient tombs deep in the woods. Skah accepts his apology and they agree to go rescue Claudiu.

End of session. I tell them that the stakes have been resolved, and the next session will be a new adventure. I'll put my reflections and questions in another post.

John S:
The main challenge I face now is developing meaningful stakes for the next adventure that arise directly from the consequences of this one. The players have chosen a destination, albeit not one on the map, and they seem to think they know who the good guys and bad guys are at this point in the story. I'm thinking that Adelina's return, and especially bringing this pimply human teenager and asserting that he's her son, may create a new stakes conflict among her people-- but I'm not exactly sure what. I don't think we'll see Dorinell in this adventure, since I don't picture him visiting the so-called "Grave Trolls" out of kindness, and the player characters would get there before he found out about Adelina's escape-- but I could be wrong. It would make sense for him to feel the chain break...

I have some rules-based questions too; in no particular order:

After playing D&D, my wife and daughter found the lack of snap-shot magic outside of rerolls disconcerting. My wife argued that Silwen should be able to use unprepared magic in combat since magic is what she's good at. On page 22 of the PDF, there is a rule that suggests that different characters may use Magic and Fighting in the same conflict-- the dice hit the table at the same time, and the one who rolled lowest has her actions resolved first, which "dictates that successful magic is slower than successful fighting". I'm wondering what circumstances might allow this? Is it only when one character has the luxury or watching the conflict without being under the same immediate threats as the fighting character?

I see Trollbabe as providing scope for much more cinematic magic than the standard D&D-style snap-shot spells, but that hasn't been easy to demonstrate to my girls. Since they don't have a menu of abilities like those listed on the D&D sheet, they're not sure what to do. I think this is aggravated by my failure to provide concrete thematic examples in the setting-- which gives me ideas for some magical conflicts in the next adventure. Since my daughter and I just read Funke's Inkspell together, I framed it in terms of that story:

Quote

Magic is *very* powerful in this setting, but it takes time to prepare. Remember when Fenoglio created the book that made the Adderhead immortal? It took him time to find "the right words", and it took further time for Mo to gather the materials and bind the book. Remember the scene in the mill where Dustfinger was cornered and Farid used his magic? [Dustfinger and Farid both have the power to speak to fire and command it.] Since Dustfinger was already cornered by the bad guys, he couldn't use his magic, but Farid, who was looking in unseen, had time to kindle the magical fire.

How do you usually set the tone for Trollbabe magic for new players, particularly those who don't have any background in role-playing? I admit that my background of reading the magic rules in dozens of role-playing systems might be detrimental to GMing a Trollbabe-style game. I'm used to the magic rules providing a lot of technical structure to "spellcasting", and so I'm tempted to create more arbitrary guidelines, like "any magical act comes from making a covenant with unseen forces, either fairie spirits or the dead" or "magic requires creating some kind of symbolic object or setting that represents the spell".

Since we're Quakers, my daughter doesn't have any experience with ritual in worship, and she's more likely to think of magic as "something Silwen can just do" rather than any kind of ritual trappings or color. We have read Lord of the Rings, the Golden Compass series, and a lot of other fantasy novels, so she can connect to those experiences. I guess I'm looking for guidance on how to set the stage for colorful in-game action during magical conflicts, rather than just announcing "I use magic" and "my magic fails". Maybe I shouldn't worry about this at all, but I'd love to hear your experience or suggestions.

--
One thing we found very helpful: after the first session, I copied the possible goals by action type lists (pp12-13 of PDF) onto an index card for quick reference. I found that guide inadequate compared to some of the in-text examples though. For instance, the skulking thugs example on page 12: what action type would it be to watch out for enemies, with the goal of making sure nothing is there? What if the goal was "to avoid anyone who's trying to bushwhack me?"

After the first session, I told them that there were two ways they can influence the direction of the story as authors: setting goals, and narrating during failure. I explained how if they set a goal to find hidden doors (to steal an example from Donjon), success means that they find one, regardless of what I had in mind previously. My daughter was particularly excited about this: "If you say your goal is to find a bridge across the chasm," she told my wife, "he *has* to make one if you succeed!" I also explained that failure was their chance to introduce facts into the story, and this got my daughter excited too: "If you say that you fail your roll because you recognize that the enemy is your brother, he *has* to make the enemy your brother!" But in play, no one took much advantage of either of these opportunities for authorship. Yet.

The goal-setting part may be due to our perception of ambiguity around the appropriate action type for these conflicts-- is watching out for enemies a magical conflict since the goal is to get information-- even though the declared action isn't magical?

These questions are a pleasant reminder that Trollbabe is not GURPS, where every possible action is covered by a specific skill. Thanks for your guidance and wisdom! I hope that I can afford the new Trollbabe book sometime after Christmas!

warmest regards.

Ron Edwards:
Hi John,

There is a whole ton of possible discussions to come out of playing Trollbabe in this fashion. I'd like to follow up in any way you'd like, so don't let this single reply define the possible range of the thread as a whole. Bring up whatever you'd like.

Anyway, for this post, I do have one suggestion aimed toward your second post's questions. It is: take some time to share sources which aren't gaming, and probably a little older, which led to Trollbabe. Comics and fantasy novels with a strong mythic/fairy vein, as well as Celtic, Norse, and Baltic myths. A lot of that has strong female voices and characters too. I think it'd help for them to get out of "Let's play D&D as even-better D&D using this Trollbabe thing" mode.

Best, Ron

John S:
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Anyway, for this post, I do have one suggestion aimed toward your second post's questions. It is: take some time to share sources which aren't gaming, and probably a little older, which led to Trollbabe. Comics and fantasy novels with a strong mythic/fairy vein, as well as Celtic, Norse, and Baltic myths. A lot of that has strong female voices and characters too. I think it'd help for them to get out of "Let's play D&D as even-better D&D using this Trollbabe thing" mode.

Thank you for the spoon-full of gold. I will pull out our Bone comics, including the prequel Rose which deals with the warrior-woman who was central to the story and remained central as the innocuous grandmother two generations later; I'll also and dig up some mythology and folklore that we can digest together.

Quote

Bring up whatever you'd like.

Maybe I could break it up a little. For the skulking thugs example on page 12 of the PDF, what action type would it be to watch out for enemies, with the goal of making sure nothing is there? What if the goal was "to avoid anyone who's trying to bushwhack me?" In the forum discussions, I see that action type is usually determined by goal, regardless of methods used-- i.e. a fight with the goal to protect the companion would be a Social conflict, whereas if the goal was to decapitate the king would be Fighting.

But in the cases of "making sure nothing is there" or "avoiding anyone trying to bushwhack me", I'm guessing the action type would be derived from announced actions, rather than hinging on the stated goal. So if I use magical sight, it's a Magic conflict, but if I survey the area using my military training it's a Fighting conflict. Is that right?

Meanwhile, I think I've got the beginning of a Stakes for the next adventure, the relationship-map part:

Quote

Adelina has returned to Trowehaven, the Dwarven tomb city, but things are not all well. Her husband Rugor is the thrall of Dorinell's rival, Faurumahd, who gave him a nose-ring that gives him the power to touch and weild iron weapons, but enslaves his mind to the wizard's command. Faurumahd's objective in freeing Adelina was to weaken Dorinell's power base. Suspecting something was amiss when approaching the gate to Trowehaven, she created a magical ward over Claudiu by transforming him into a stone pendant with his name engraved as a stylized rune.

There are about six pairs of Dwarves in the city (about half of whom are couples), and an small army of damned souls (50ish) who normally toil in the mines, but Rugor has outfitted them for war in service to Faurumahd. Vaadish is there too, and he'll probably be disposed in a friendly way toward the player characters, but openly defiant about his mothers imprisonment.

I was having trouble picturing the Dwarf society, until I got the idea of barrow-wights living in a hive, with great treasure hoards, and grim hospitality. The actual stakes will depend on whether they choose to escalate the Scale to "small group".

John S:
I realized after re-reading my last post that I left out something when describing the new conflict: that Rugor, by Faurumahd's command would imprison Adelina upon her return. But never mind that-- we played a sort of inter-session series of scenes last night† that unexpectedly amped the conflict up to a new level! This was partially afforded by the players finally allowing their characters to be in separate scenes. Here's what happened:

My daughter asked for some recovery time before beginning the new adventure so that Silwen's leg could heal, and my wife asked for a scene to cement a relationship with the dude whose leg Skah had cut off in the battle, who got the name Demetri.

It turned out Demetri's wound was badly infected, and he was in pretty rough shape, and even after Silwen healed him he was pretty surly and fatalistic, so they decided to carve him a new leg out of wood to magically restore him. Silwen got successes on her roll to formulate the right runes, but Skah's search for the right wood led to disaster-- she used and failed all her allowed rerolls. This led to great narration about how Skah found a special stream with a great old Rowan tree, but she gashed her leg on the rocks; then she found a potent healing herb for her wound, but it turned out to be poison, and she passed out swollen up, lying in the stream. And of course, she was carried away by a scavenging beast.

Like the rules say, this critical failure has shaped the story in a big way. When Skah didn't come back by nightfall, Silwen went out to investigate. She found the Rowan and the stream, but no Skah. She gathered a sturdy branch that could be used for Demetri's leg, but she decided to continue searching for Skah with the aid of a night Elf she summoned, who changed her into a wolf (the Goal of the conflict was to gain information). She used her heightened senses to follow Skah's scent through the woods, which was mingled with the scent of a fell beast.

Skah had been dragged away by a big spider, but it was quick work getting herself untangled and dispatching the beast; on the final roll, I narrated that an arrow came out of the darkness and hit the spider's abdomen at the same time that she dashed it's brains out. Thus, Skah met Vaadish again, now in his true form, and they set off together. I allowed Skah to take Vaadish as a relationship, which gives her a stake in the Stakes and a chance to learn more about the conflict from his perspective.

Silwen found the dead spider, but the spray of guts that covered Skah in the battle has masked her scent, and Silwen decided to return the wolf-cload to Mooram-Ah, the night Elf. She asked Mooram-Ah to change her into a blackbird, but Mooram-Ah warned her that in that form she might be mistaken for one of the Rugor clan Dwarves. Silwen took Mooram-Ah as a relationship. We ran out of time, so we ended there.

At this point, I realized that the primary conflict is now the feud between Mooram-Ah's people and the Rugor clan. The night Elves see evidence that the Dwarves are forging iron weapons (for their chief and their undead army), and they see this as a blatant violation of the treaty and a dangerous threat. Faurumahd's lust for power that I hinted at earlier is now grounded more vitally in concrete stakes related to real things that character's want, as outlined in the rules. Power itself, I realize, doesn't make for compelling stakes in Trollbabe.

What is the etiquette regarding actual play reports? What information is useful and what information is overkill? It's lucidly clear to me how the rules have given rise to the direction and content of the story, but I don't want to be oblique about that if there more mechanical detail is needed.

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