[Annalise] Pompeii and the Cult of Blood
Gregor Hutton:
Yes, Nathan, I think that spending the coins was exactly what we had missed. The effect that had was not seeing the drive to split out Core Traits into Satellite Traits (which I now totally do see!) and that we wondered how Traits would get low enough for Holds to ... err ... take hold. I now see that too.
Our Achievements and Consequences from our scenes were:
(A) Sons to stop bothering Lucius, (C) Gain power of attorney for sons. [Neither side got their way here!]
(A) Rekindle "friendship" with Maximus, a former love; Get a mystical vision, (C) Fire at the house is malicious/arson; Catto is crippled in the fire. [Catto was injured but not crippled, the fire was suspicious, the vision didn't happen, but the friendship with Maximus was rekindled] ... and further in the use of Claims a further Achievement (A) Maximus will confront Mr Catto [he did from what I recall]
(A) Glaukos gets his Freedom, (C) Pendant is stolen from Glaukos [he doesn't get Freedom and he loses the pendant, but to Lucius' daughter, who he knows] ... and two further Consequences appeared as a result of rolls/Claims (C) Cult gains influence over Glaukos, Glaukos is delayed returning home [both partially happened]
We then got to the Confrontation. It looked to me that this Cult we were forming in the Fiction had a hold over all of our stories. So, we called them the Vampire and got to the Confrontation. We had time for one scene and it was Lucius, played by Joe, who had the one scene with the Cult.
(A) Claudia breaks free of the Cult, Soldiers attack the Cult, (C) Lucius gives in to the Cult (the free Consequence of facing the Vampire), Sons are revealed as Cult members [Joe revealed his secret, which I won't repeat here for spoiler reasons, and that set all the scores of Achievements and Complications at 3 or 4 as he choose].
The outcome was that Claudia ran back to her father, soldiers under Maximus attacked and drove off the Cultists, the brothers appeared quickly thereafter, but were not revealed to be in the Cult.
We ended it there as it was about home time for me to get back to Edinburgh (lest I burst into flame).
The creation of further Achievements and Consequences "in the Moment" was very enjoyable and I particularly liked the "beats" of play around the table as we used Claims. In fact, I should post about our Claims too (for another post). The Moment Record Sheet doesn't record the scores next to the Achievements and Consequences (curses!), but I'm glad we have the record of what they were. I'd like to have a record of how they ebbed and flowed to share with you too.
I think the only concern we had was about the reduction of Traits and that has been simply answered by re-reading the book and Moment sheet!
Gregor Hutton:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 01, 2010, 10:28:01 AM
It's pretty clear what happened with you guys missing the required Satellite Trait spending. If I'm not mistaken, your Confrontation phase was not particularly economically constrained, and might even have been more like story-conferencing.
Yes, we were awash with Reserves, Secrets, Vulnerabilities and hearty Claims for the Confrontation phase, so we just went to see what a revealed Secret would do on our one scene in the Confrontation phase. We also did some re-organizing of our Claims going into that phase, which highlighted the Claims that we had found most interesting/resonant in play. I'll try to get to a post about our Claims tomorrow or the day after.
Adam Dray:
Fantastic diagram and analysis, Ron! I wish we'd included something like this in the text. <=)
Eoin Keith Boyle:
Quote from: Gregor Hutton on September 01, 2010, 10:29:56 AM
Yes, Nathan, I think that spending the coins was exactly what we had missed. The effect that had was not seeing the drive to split out Core Traits into Satellite Traits (which I now totally do see!) and that we wondered how Traits would get low enough for Holds to ... err ... take hold. I now see that too.
Quite agreed - this, combined with confusion on players taking over as story guides, was at the core of what killed my "Lovecraftian Annalise" game at the last Chicago GameDay. Once we got over the "this isn't how it's supposed to go," it wound up still being quite a bit of fun: we just went with "you're your own GM" and "you can do what you can do" as guidelines - but kept Secrets and Vulnerabilities. Having "I enjoy the taste of blood" around a demon-possessed sawmill = instant conflict. Unfortunately, the goal was to develop the idea of rotting NE backwater town-as-Vampire with sawmill as key Vampire weakness/strength - something that just didn't happen.
Ran the same set-up with the new moment sheet without any issue. Far more interesting than what I'd written originally, as a matter of fact.
And Ron's Diagram is most helpful. I even see one more thing that I wasn't quite getting...
Gregor Hutton:
Our only stumbling block was my inability to read a clear thing in the text (at a couple of places too!) at the table. I sadly don't have the excuse of drink either, as I was driving.
Anyway, I've been busy today but managed to transcribe all our Claims down.
INITIAL CLAIMS
Claudia, Daughter of Lucius
Smoke
Married to Marcus Cato
Mountain
Children
Alcohol
NEW CLAIMS
Gold
The Library
Forum/Market
Festival
Legate Maximus
Greek Fire
For the Confrontation I'm sure Russ dropped Children, and I dropped Marcus Catto (he seemed to be less relevant to my character's life by then!).
Claims were bolstered by our Reserves quite regularly. As Ron notes on his diagram they are cheaper to improve than Traits. (If we'd been reducing the traits as we should have then I think the effect would have been to send some Reserves to improving Traits and we'd have been tempted to bring in more Claims. But that's a hunch.)
As you can see we didn't bring in the full number of Claims on each scene, typically 2 per scene rather than 3 or more. Also some of the pre-generated ones were the ones we felt less strongly about (I think this is natural and they're there as a crutch to get you started.): Russ seemed uninterested in the Children one, I used the fact I was Marcus Cato's husband once but he was soon well down my list of interests! While Joe did make use of both Claudia and Smoke he also took a keener interest in the Forum/Market.
I wish I'd noted down how many coins we had on each one for the Confrontation. I feel mine were mostly on Mountain and Gold. Russ' were mostly on Alcohol and had he grabbed the Forum/Market from Joe when it became a free Claim? Joe's were on Smoke and Greek Fire, with a couple of Coins on Claudia too from what I recall.
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