[Trollbabe] VoIP Play - character Creation and First Session

[Chris Gardiner]

So, desperate to run something and filled with unholy impulses after reading Trollbabe, I finally mustered up the courage to give VoIP gaming a shot. One of the players, whose technical expertise exceeds banging two rocks together to hear the pretty noise *by some considerable way* hosted a Teamspeak server, a session of Gametable for dice-rolling, and we were off.

Some technical difficuties (note to self, expect this when using VoIP in future) meant that the first session was just character creation, with us actually starting play a few days later.

It was the most fun session of character creation I've ever had. I swear there's some sort of witchcraft going on with Trollbabe - you start with a bunch of faintly suspicious players looking at the character sheets and thinking "how do I make an interesting character from *that*?" and end up with a faintly riotous gang frantic to play these kick-ass characters they've produced.


The Characters

Fire-Eyes: (number: 3) a red-haired, ram-horned scary trollbabe steeped in human magic she learned from an old spellbook she found, who is searching the Silent Forest for the caerns of the long-dead wizards said to be buried there. Specialities: Unarmed, Scary, Human magic.

Breaker: (number: 5) a sexy pirate/sea-witch trollbabe who strode, fully-formed from the sea one day. Her ship has just been scuppered by pirates, and she's been washed up under a hive of scum and nautical villainy called Rottenmere. (One of her personal items is a large shell through which she hears the voices of the sea). Specialities: Athletics, Sexy, Troll magic.

Mountain-Cloud: (number: 3) a perky, musical trollbabe steeped in troll blood-magic, who grew up with a carnival. This one scares the crap out of me. She carries a bag of dripping intestines - always full, always fresh - from the people who got over-excited and aggressive after watching her dance at the carnival one night. Their spirits are still attached to the organs, which she uses in her rituals. Sometimes she talks to them, for company. Specialities: Athletics, Perky (which contrasts with the whole entrail/blood magic thing in a deeply sinister way), and Troll Magic.

And another player is going to be joining us, too. Four's a bit more than I expected - I can't find any actual play examples with more than 3, but they're the most fantastically civilised and helpful bunch of players, so I don't foresee any problems.

It was great asking people to point out one the map where they wanted to start and what they were doing there - everyone started throwing out setting details like crazy.


VoIP peculiarities

Our first session went pretty well. It took a while to get into it, partly because I haven't GMed in months, partly because we were all new to the system and the setting, and partly because role-playing over Teamspeak is really weird. The lack of non-verbal cues makes a big difference, and the 2-second delay messes with my head. You say something you think is funny and you're greeted with complete silence, and go through 2 seconds of abject terror while you try and work out if you've made some horrible social faux-pas, and *then* everyone laughs.

The biggest impact it seemed to have was that people were reluctant to comment or engage with other people's scenes, because it's so easy to accidentally talk over someone or come in at the wrong time because of the delay. We talked about this after the session, and came up with a couple of potential solutions:-

1) Suck it up and chip in anyway, accepting that there's going to be some awkwardness.

2) Allow other players to take over the GM's roleplaying duties for characters that the starring PC has as Relationships. Then the secondary player's input will be anticipated and a little more directed.

If we do get more players in the game I'm a little worried that this problem will grow worse. On the whole, though, roleplaying over VoIP wasn't as troublesome as I expected. It feels like something we'd get better at with practice.


The Session

We had two situations in play: the two trollbabes in the Silent Forests discovered that a magician was digging up the ancient bones of the sorcerers that were burued their, making them into soup and bread, and consuming them in order to acquire their secrets. This had disturbed the sorcerers' ghosts, who were causing trouble for the trolls that lived in the forest.

Breaker, meanwhile, was looking for revenge against Yorick the Blue, the pirate captain responsible for sinking her ship, and while setting fire to his tavern got involved in a struggle between Yorick and Silver Barbatos (another pirate captain) over a girl called Meg. Barbatos claims Meg's his daughter, while Yorick has tattooed her back with a treasure map (as a brthday present, so everyone would know how precious she was...)

Breaker's player had a nasty bout of flu, and had to step out after a while, but the other two players contiued. Everyone said they had a good time and were looking forwards to the next session (neither of the situations concluded that session).

Personally, I love Trollbabe like my own firstborn. Every time the rules came into play, the game gathered place and took a turn I hadn't expected. The very process of setting stakes enforces useful thought about what happens next, and the reroll mechanic is the cause of ten different kinds of coolness.

What was especially notable was that the players (1 of whom is pretty well-read in indie games, but I don't think has played any yet, the other two of whom I would describe as being faintly suspicious of this New-Age, hippy shit) got into it very quickly. There's still some fairly cautious play, but it's starting to fade away, and we haven't had much in the way of scene suggestions yet (which I think is my fault - I let scenes run on too long) but they've grasped the concepts of stakes-setting and conflict resolution with both hands and zero complaints.

We had six or so conflicts in the game. Two of the ones that stood out were:-

Mountain-Cloud being called on at a troll-moot to prove she was troll enough to speak there, and using a Social/Magic roll. Her Social roll failed, but her magic succeeded, and we narrated her voice booming out of the mists and the trees and the ground and the great leaning stone around which the moot was held, as the troll-lands themselves spoke with her voice. After that she took one of the trolls who had stood up for her in the debate as a relationship.

Fire-Eyes summoned one of the sorcerer-ghosts to interrogate it, and realised it was speaking the language of ancient Vuhl (a sort of occult Atlantis-equivalent). The player then called for a Social/Magic conflict in which he swore a magically binding oath to rid the ghosts of the magician who was disturbing their rest.

"Ok." I said. "What do you get if you win?"

"If I win, then the ghosts accept me and teach me all their magic."

I'd painted the ghosts as pretty sinister, unpleasant things, and this was the first time a player really upped the intensity of the stakes - it was a great moment.

The player went on to lose the resulting conflict, badly. The first failure dropped Fire-Eyes to Injured, which we narrated as the spirit mocking her arrogance and art. he player called for a reroll using "A Remembered Spell" calling upon the authority of the line of wizards from which she had learned her magic...and failed again, dropping her to the last box of the conflict flowchart. We agreed that the ghost came from a sorcerous tradition more ancient and appalling than Fire-Eyes, and wasn't impressed. It attacked and possessed her, leaving her as a disembodied spirit.


Some stuff I did wrong

Too much "um"ing and "er"ing. Out of practice and a bit thrown off by the medium, I think.

I should have had a conflict ready for each character near the beginning of their first scenes in order to really get things moving.

On the other hand, I think I was a bit too free in calling for conflicts, but I wanted to give people a low-pressure chance to get to grips with the rules. Also, when I was floundering earlier on, a conflict gave me something to work from. Every single time we had a conflict it pushed the game forwards, often in a way I hadn't expected.

We took too long discussing conflicts when they occurred. Again, since we're new at this, we wanted to ensure everyone was sure what was going on before the dice were rolled (or, actually, the dice macros button was clicked. It's not the same). It broke the pace a bit.


Some player comments

One player noted that she really liked the VoIP role-playing, and found that she'd taken game notes for the first time in years and years. I think this was because we were all hooked into laptops and PCs, so Notepad and Word were only a click away. I found myself taking more GM notes than I have previously, too.

Another player commented that for a system-light game, Trollbabe was pretty system heavy. We talked about this a bit, and I think he meant that when you call for a conflict the rules are very robust and complete - there's no winging it. And that one core mechanic has a lot of permutations to it. The player wasn't complaining here; he was impressed.

The same player pointed out how brutal bad rolls on conflicts were when you're using 2 action types. A failure, and then a failure on the re-roll put you sraight to the last stage of conflict resolution as the GM's chew toy. He didn't object to this, or anything, but it came as a bit of a shock.

Really looking forward to the next session! Anyone got any VoIP- or Trollbabe-related advice that might help?

[John Harper]

Seems to me that you guys totally nailed it. Excellent characters with some great conflict material flying around. Keep on keepin' on.

Did you talk about raising the scale?

[Chris Gardiner]

We didn't finish either of the adventures, so I didn't ask if people wanted to increase Scale. Am I right in thinking you do that after an adventure rather than after a session?

[James_Nostack]

Another player commented that for a system-light game, Trollbabe was pretty system heavy. We talked about this a bit, and I think he meant that when you call for a conflict the rules are very robust and complete - there's no winging it. And that one core mechanic has a lot of permutations to it. The player wasn't complaining here; he was impressed.

The same player pointed out how brutal bad rolls on conflicts were when you're using 2 action types. A failure, and then a failure on the re-roll put you sraight to the last stage of conflict resolution as the GM's chew toy. He didn't object to this, or anything, but it came as a bit of a shock.

These are both very true.  I don't have much to add, except that the damage system is pretty unforgiving, and imposes a pretty fast pace on the players.  (I'm guessing that, assuming an even distribution of social/fight/magic conflict types, you're going to take damage about 60% of the time.)  Since there are only four "damaged" states, every conflict is important.  Which means that players ought to think big, and GM's shouldn't get too persnickety about calling for rolls when it's not important.

[Alan]

Conflict damage may be unforgiving, but you almost always have two options:
- back off and accept a failure.
- after getting beat up, call for a recovery scene and get healed up.

- Alan

[Jon Hastings]

Trollbabe players (especially new ones) often want to try to win every conflict, but as Alan pointed out, backing off is always an option.  I'd add that since taking a failure gives players control of the narration, they can soften the blow of any failure through clever narration. 

[Chris Gardiner]

As I recall, we had two failed conflicts. In one of them, the player bowed out at the Discommoded stage, and the other was the two action-type one, so it went all the way to "GM's chew toy" really quickly.

I'll keep an eye open for players being reluctant to accept a failed conflict, and point out their authority over failure narration if it crops up.

Thanks!