The Forge Archives

Yesterday my play group was missing the key player for our in-progress adventure, so I suggested we give Trollbabe a try. I had read through the rules, and was excited to see some of it in action. The others (two guys in their thirties) were OK with the idea, but were not sure what to make of a game called "Trollbabe".
I read the introduction to them pretty much verbatim and we went right into character creation.

Keith came up with Lady Grignak (the name is a reference to another character) whose number is 2. She fights with an obsidian dagger, practices troll magic, and is intimidating.

Henry made Ogrillina whose number is 7. She uses a large mace and has an affinity with animals. Henry didn't have a specialty for magic defined.

Because this was all on the spur of the moment, I used an example situation from the rules. I chose the situation where a were-cat child is being hunted by the nasty son of the local chieftain.

We started with Lady Grignak walking through the mountains. She became aware of a group of men in the forest. Keith declared a conflict: Lady Grignak and the men were involved. Her goal was to call upn the nature spirits around her to conceal her presence from the men. Easy success.
The men crossed the path. They were obviously on the hunt, but weren't particularly skilled hunters. Keith began to initiate another conflict, under the impression that Trollbabes eat people. I told him that Trollbabes do not feed on human flesh as a general rule, and he backed off. Lady Grignak continued down the path.

Cut to Ogrillina, also walking through the mountains (as it turns out, they picked destinations that made their paths intersect). Out from the woods leapt a great white mountain cat, right onto the path in front of her. The cat was obviously scared of something and quickly darted off into the woods on the other side of the path. Ogrillina decided to follow the unusual creature, whose like she had never seen before. As she approached a small clearing, she thought she saw a humanoid form out of the corner of her eye, but then caught sight of the cat again. As the creature stopped to take a drink from the stream running through the clearing, Ogrillina approached cautiously, speaking soft words.
Henry called for a conflict, Ogrillina's goal being to befriend the cat. Success, and soon the cat had revealed its true nature. Henry wanted to take the young chageling boy as a relationship, which I had no problem with.
The boy (now dubbed "Felix") told Ogrillina about his tormentors. We established that he knew no thers like himself and that he had been raised by kindly shepherds until Skel (the evil chieftain) learned his true nature and took the couple captive for harboring the "freak".
Ogrillina knew she must help, so she had Felix get into a nearby tree while concealing herself in some heavy bushes.

Cut to Lady Grignak, who saw a shadowy form sneaking across the road at the edge of her vision. Keith initiated a conflict, her ladyship's goal being to call on the spirits of the plants at the border of the forest to grapple the person. Another easy success. Lady Grignak questioned the hunter (for so he was) and found out that he was tracking a white cat at the behest of his master. Lady Grignak decided that this man needed to die, so she killed him, and walked on.
Very soon afterward, she saw a group of men crossing the path near where the body was. She again made herself invisible to them. After listening long enough to establish that these men were the ones hunting the mountain cat, she identified their leader. Keith initiated a conflict, stating that Lady Grignak would try the same vegitative entangle trick to kill their leader. Yet another easy success. Chaos overcame the reat of the group and they bolted in all directions.

Cut back to Ogrillina, who heard men coming quickly toward her. She leapt from the bushes. Henry initiated a conflict of fighting, during which Ogrillina's goal was to kill one and capture the other for questioning. He wanted to handle this conflict exchange-by-exchange, so he made one roll which succeeded. I told him how Ogrillina had crushed the first thug's leg with her mace. He made a second roll, causing Ogrillina to take the other guys head clean off. She didn't get much out of the surviving guy, and he soon perished.

Meanwhile, Lady Grignak dispatched all but one of the remaining thugs. This guy was told that he could live as long as he served her faithfully. Keith took the guy as a relationship, and I got to have fun playing him toadying to her for the rest of the adventure.

The two Trollbabes discovered the location of the evil chieftain and sent the toady ahead to convince the sentries not to challenge them (we established that the villagers didn't like the chieftain, and were largely not loyal to him).

The plan worked fine. Lady Grignak and Ogrillina made it into town, and identified the house of Skel without difficulty. Lady Grignak summoned a thunderstorm inside the house to flush Skel out. This conflict was modified because of the out-of-character weather behavior, but Keith made the roll no problem. People came rushing out of the chieftain's house, and his faithful door guards rushed in to get him out. When they returned with Skel, they immediately initiated a fighting conflict with both Trollbabes.
Here I let Keith add social to the conflict (which I think was a mistake) as he stated his intention was to frighten the guards away. Ogrillina just started swinging to take them down.

Henry failed the first roll, telling us how the guard slipped out of the way at the last minute. Then he checked off a geographic feature and told us how the guard had lost his footing because of a jutting rock. He failed the re-roll, telling us how the guard's shield had swung out and smashed Ogrillina's mace arm. Then he checked off a found object, telling us how Ogrillina's off hand came across a brick. Henry rolled again, finally succeeding. Ogrillina chucked the brick at the guard, catching him in the face.

Keith succeeded in scaring away the remaining guard. Leaving the heroes facing Skel. Keith immediately called another conflict during which Lady Grignak's aim was to change the chieftain into a mouse. Keith failed the first roll, describing how her Ladyship was unable to master the spirits for such strong magic. He checked off a carried item and told us how Lady Grignak took out her dagger and drew it across her arm to offer blood to the spirits. He re-rolled and failed again. The cut hurt Lady Grignak without helping her spell. I don't remember what he checked off for the final re-roll, but he succeeded, and Skel turned into a big fat mouse. They talked about letting Felic have him, but decided Ogrilina would just squish him.

The rest was clean-up. The village was brought around to accept Felix the changeling, and they were happy to have Skel gone. The Trollbabes went on their way.

*** Observations ***
I had a great time with Trollbabe. The players (neither of whom are used to this sort of thing) got into it very easily.

I thought it was very interesting that all of the early conflicts were easily successful, but both characters had to burn through re-rolls during the last scene.

Moderating the use of multiple types of conflict for Trollbabes is still a bit hazy to me. But everything else was clear enough in the rules that it went smoothly.

I certainly want to play again! This was the first game from my recent Forge acquisitions that turned out more good than not. Woo hoo!

Hi Jay,

Great news, and thanks for posting. Every single Trollbabe thread helps me out with the fairly extensive re-write for the upcoming book version.

First observation: bloodthirsty pair of players you have there.

Second observation: the two ends of the Trollbabe play-spectrum are

a) A person starts with a string of good rolls and then runs into dramatic failures after they're already deeply embedded in a situation; and

b) they start with one really disastrous situation and then manage to work their way out of it.

Both work well, as well as whatever intermediate variants crop up (or the far-end possibility that all the rolls go well throughout). The same pattern is evident, for similar dice/risk reasons, in playing The Pool.

I think the most important part of the re-write, in this section, is going to concern making a GM aware of this spectrum, and how to work his or her NPCs and situations accordingly. Without adversity, there's no adventure, and I'm beginning to get the idea that many GMs aren't really sure how to provide adversity outside of a "run the story I want to tell" framework.

Anyway, it was your comment about your "a" experience that prompted me to think about a text section to help people get ready for it during play, so many thanks.

You might be interested in some of the rules changes I've discussed in the Adept Press forum:

1. The Social roll is now based on the lesser end of the number scale, not the greater. So Tha, with a number of 3, would have Fight 1-2, Magic 4-10, and Social 1-3, not 3-10.

2. Magic, as a principle Action Type, is constrained in its application to long rituals. In other words, it's lousy for snap-shot spells in a moment-to-moment crisis situation, and gets penalized. Snap-shot spells are now accounted for only by the re-roll item (remembered spell).

So, did either of the players name a new place to go following this adventure? And did either of them feel inclined to raise the Scale?

Best,
Ron

It'll be easiest to address this point by point. Sprry for the inconvenience.

Quote from: RonFirst observation: bloodthirsty pair of players you have there.

This was nothing compared to our failed attempt at Donjon! In that game they went actually evil on me, without provocation.
The interesting thing about this session is that I told them at the start that there wasn't a "right" solution to the situation. Yet they both immediately chose the stance that was socially appropriate from a modern American viewpoint: they defended the weak changeling from the strong villagers--and they took the strange werecat at his word, no questions asked. This is more interesting because of these two: they have both used previous games to cut loose with unacceptable behavior.

Quote from: Then RonSecond observation: the two ends of the Trollbabe play-spectrum are

a) A person starts with a string of good rolls and then runs into dramatic failures after they're already deeply embedded in a situation; and

b) they start with one really disastrous situation and then manage to work their way out of it.

Both work well, as well as whatever intermediate variants crop up (or the far-end possibility that all the rolls go well throughout). The same pattern is evident, for similar dice/risk reasons, in playing The Pool.

I think the most important part of the re-write, in this section, is going to concern making a GM aware of this spectrum, and how to work his or her NPCs and situations accordingly. Without adversity, there's no adventure, and I'm beginning to get the idea that many GMs aren't really sure how to provide adversity outside of a "run the story I want to tell" framework.

Anyway, it was your comment about your "a" experience that prompted me to think about a text section to help people get ready for it during play, so many thanks.

Glad to help. As you say, both of those ends of the spectrum are dramatically valid and interesting.

<snip rules changes, both good to know>

Quote from: Finally, RonSo, did either of the players name a new place to go following this adventure? And did either of them feel inclined to raise the Scale?

We didn't specify whether either of them wanted to play another adventure. I think they might go for it, and our third would probably like it as well.

Here are some comments about the book, now that I know you are revising:

1.) I have been saying this all over the boards: please include a detailed example of play. I must say that the Trollbabe rules are the clearest about "how you play" of all of the Forgey games I have read and played in the past few months, but I am beginning to realize that unless you beat people over the head with rules about *how* to play there will be confusion.

2.) I listened to your interview with Thor the Barbarian after playing the game. In that interview you described Trollbabe as a wandering yojimbo style game. I may just be dense, but I didn't make that connection until I heard you say it. Then, a giant lightbulb came on. I think bringing that out in the rules somewhere might really help players get a grip on what they are playing.
I have to admit that all of this makes me want to rip off some of your ideas for an actual wandering ronin game, which would be more accessable to my regular group than the Trollbabe theme (Nipponophiles, all of them).

3.) I am impressed with the clarity of the writing in the book. The only thing that I think is sorely missing is a page that summarizes the rules. I found myself flipping around looking for things during play--but with a game this simple, literally all of the rules can fit on a reference page.

All-in-all a great game. I look forward to the printed version!