As promised, here is the report on my running of
Desolation at CanGames. This is going to be quite long, so be warmed.
I ran two sessions of the
Desolation post-apocalyptic fantasy rpg, to be published by Greymalkin Designs, at CanGames this past weekend. There were a few really great moments in the game, but there was a lot of very weird and bizarre roleplaying. Thus, I'm covering both sessions of the game here in one post.
The scenario for this game, "A Few Good Men", is a playtest scenario that the folks at Greymalkin Designs created for the
Desolation rpg, and has been run at demos the company has done for the past year or two. The scenario is very much a self-contained adventure, and there are seven pre-generated characters for the adventure. I'm still not sure that it's a good introductory adventure for a group of players, as it provides an interesting set of encounters but doesn't offer a truly strong look at the post-apocalyptic world that makes up the game world of
Desolation. I ran the game from 7-11 pm on
Friday night, and in the same time slot on Saturday night. (Yes, that means I had only one hour between the Saturday
HEX game in the afternoon and the
Desolation game that evening.
The Friday night game was full with six players, but only because I did a little bit of recruiting ahead of time. The Saturday night game attracted a full complement as well, as well as a bit of an overfill, but one of the players walked out on the game about two hours in (more on that later). None of the players for the two sessions of
Desolation
pre-registered for the game, not surprising since the schedule did not add it to the list until the first week of May. Several people watched during the course of both the Friday and Saturday night games, but again, I was using the
HEX GM Screen for it, so that may account for that.
So, let's start here with the basic plot for the scenario, and the player characters created for this adventure.
The Plot
Travelling through the wilderness, the player characters come upon a crossroads, where a man and woman are hanging in separate gibbets, being attacked by large vultures. Saving the two, the characters learn of the town of Ridge River that lies nearby. In Ridge River, the player characters learn that the town is being menaced on two fronts - a warband out of the Warlands, and a mage in a nearby tower. The town has been looking for a few good men to go and deal with the mage, but are also concerned about the warband. The characters visit the mage, and then return to the town in time to help them deal with the warband. The only question is can they deal with the mage and the warband without bloodshed - preferably their own...
A very nice, somewhat complex plot.
The pre-generated player characters created by the Greymalkin folks for this scenario are:
Menelaris Covanalar
Elf. A defiant Elementalist. He's motivated by power, considers himself superior to others, but is grateful, even respectful, towards Esther and Lem.
Tarl Ishrak
Human. A farmer with faith. Motivated by his religious beliefs, he's too easygoing at times, doesn't tolerate fools, and is honest to the extent of annoying his companions. He rescued Krek and nursed him back to health during the Long Winter.
Denner Khent
Dwarf. He's a scavenger and a thief. He desperately wants to find his clan, and is afraid the Night of Fire will repeat itself. He's somewhat rough around the edges.
Krek of Kharhut
Mongrel. A forester who is rather practical. Has a phobia of fire, and very little surprises or repulses him.
Esther LaVore
Human. An Ascondean noblewoman who lost it all. She is poised and full of dignity, no matter what the situation, and finds Lem a bit too protective and clingy. Oh, and she's a Sorceress.
Lem Ollender
Human. A former Legionnaire in the Ascondean military who is strong-willed and makes it clear that he's in charge. The protector of Esther, whether she wants him to be or not. He grudgingly has come to respect the others.
Sasha Veng
Rover. A wandering performer. While the consummate performer, she is starved for attention. She wants fame, but that's a tough commodity in a world where people are struggling for survival.
*****
I ran the two games of
Desolation with only six players. The Friday night game had only one female player, and she chose to play Esther LaVore, so Sasha didn't get played in the first game. The Saturday night group consisted of all guys, and they chose not to play Esther LaVore, with one of them taking on the role of Sasha. Really weird. Both games were marred by unfortunate incidents. The Friday night game had a couple of the gamers get a bit too drunk on beer that was available as part of the Curling Club's bar. That spoiled the enjoyment for a couple of the players, and made the game a bit less serious than a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting should have been. In the Saturday night game, none of the players drank to excess, but one of the players got really frustrated with the game, and walked out on the game about halfway through. He stormed off, after saying that he was expecting a hack 'n slash kind of post-apocalyptic game, and it was obvious that he didn't understand the character of Krek of Kharhut from the start, despite having a pretty good written story of Krek handed to him at the start of play. The irony was that there was one attack that was going to happen after they became friendly with the villagers, and there was the final battle with the warband, of course. So he missed the violence and the like that he was hoping for. My friend, Steve, came over to the table about fifteen minutes after he left, and took over the character, but to be honest I was a bit sad the player left the game like that. I wonder how many other GMs out there this has happened to...
Insofar as amusing or interesting incidents are concerned, there are only a few moments that really struck me as standing out about the two games.
1. In the Friday night game, the lady who was playing Esther LaVore had never played the Ubiquity system, but liked the mechanics. However, she was intimidated by the Burn mechanics (she told me this later), especially after her first experience with it, and didn't use magic all that often. In contrast, the guy who played Menelaris had a blast with the magic, at one point failing spectacularly on a spell with 15 dice, and took 11 Burn, nine (!!) points of which he negated with Style points. The Elemental Fire sword was his favourite tactic, especially against the winged vulture-like creatures.
2. The Friday night group faced their first challenge in the very first encounter of the scenario, trying to figure out how to cross a bridge spanning a chasm that had been broken. The lady playing Esther chose to levitate up, failing to take into account that she would drift with the breeze. Fortunately, Lem hooked a rope around her leg, but then had the audacity to literally pull her across the bridge gap by the rope, making the entire party laugh at the image of the noble lady being hauled along like a balloon! I still smile about that one!
3. In the Saturday night game, when the characters attempted to free the man and woman trapped in the gibbets after they routed the large vultures, Lem the ex-Legionnaire, beat the man to a pulp after he insulted him, until Tarl stepped in, preaching tolerance. The man's offense was when he said, "I'm sorry, *Mr. Ex-Legionnaire*, but the noble woman will never see you in a romantic manner. But I could sell you a potion that--". He never finished the sentence.
4. In the Saturday night game, the player characters alienated the villagers of Ridge River, and never gained access to the town. However, the guy playing Denner Khent, the dwarf, told the guards that he was a blacksmith, and Sasha was obviously female, and the villagers weren't going to let them get away. So after the characters left the village and made camp for the night, they get attacked by the villagers and taken captive. It was during the scene when the
characters were trying to figure out how to get on the villagers' good side that the player in question quit the game, unable to handle all the roleplaying that was going on.
5. In the Friday night game, when the party arrived in Ridge River, Lem and the other male player characters were very protective of Esther LaVore when they saw all the attention that was being paid to her by the eligible menfolk of the town. Wonderful stuff to watch.
6. Both the Friday and Saturday players were surprised at how different the encounter with the wizard at the tower was, especially when he first comes out of the tower and greets them. Friendly, open, glad to talk to the first visitors he's had in a long time. Pure delight on my part to see the players taken by surprise that way. The best line was on Saturday when the guy playing Menelaris said, "Nuts! Does this mean I *can't* fry him with a spell?"
7. The Saturday night group did a lot of roleplaying with the wizard at the tower. So with time running out, I did a neat thing where I had the wizard transport himself and the player characters to the town in order to help them prepare to defend against the warband. Were the players totally freaked or what when they appeared between town and the warband, who were besieging the place! That said, they did the heroic thing and took on the warband, encouraging the townsfolk to come out and aid them in the fight. It was lovely stuff.
The Friday night session was pretty enjoyable for the most part, marred only by the beer drinking, and all. The convention was a lot quieter that night, since the full crowd wasn't there yet, so I didn't have any real vocal strain. Saturday night was different, being marred only by the player walking out, and by the fact that the vocal strain was pretty tough, given the sheer amount of noise at the tables that day and the fact that I had run
Hollow Earth Expedition for four hours previously.
Overall, I think that both sessions of
Desolation went rather well, other than the incident with the player leaving the game. The players in both sessions complimented me on my running of the game after it was over, and told me that they all liked the simplicity of the Ubiquity system mechanics. They were impressed with the snippet of the world of
Desolation that they got to experience, and said that it was certainly different from most of the other fantasy rpgs they had played before. The guy playing Menelaris on Saturday night said that he had played a lot of elves before in various rpgs, but that he found this one to be the most interesting elf type to date. The players who played the spellcasters also said that they liked the relatively free-form magic system, and liked the Burn stuff, even if it was rough on them at times due to slightly poor dice rolling. Several of the players asked me if I was planning to run the game system at CanGames again next year, so I must have done something right.
