Category: Wheel Tree Press: Actual Play

SCUP Playtest Session #3

Since PCs are not supposed to go on Quests, and I had ended the last session inadvertently sending the Spur and Bloodletter on a Quest, I decided to advance time a week, give everyone a Love Letter, and bring everyone back to Castle Stormwrack.

Yessta took a wound on the return trip protecting Terrence Torrent, Sasha discovered that her fiance is intelligent and useful, but old and feeble, Helena got some juicy information about Iron Bandha (he has a sister, an innkeep), and the Old One got its sanctum cleaned up, but is on the Duke’s wrong side.  Additionally Helena has been keeping an eye on Fione, feeding him prisoners from the dungeons.  Pretty soon she’ll have cleaned them out.

Sasha and Terrence investigated Fione, and learned that it is possible to reverse the effects to his body, but his soul is tainted.  Sasha got Yessta patched up.  Squire Tobias came to the infirmary, and revealed his problem to Sasha.  She got a 10+ on her diagnosis, so we came up with a procedure using some prisms and refracted light to repigment him.

Meanwhile the Old One dropped eaves on the Duke’s council, and learned that the King will be coming to visit Stormwrack.  The Old One returned to his quarters, and found Princess Rhala, there to study the dark arts from him.

The Duke’s court was assembled; Yessta’s obligation was in play, so she had a message from Lord Entworth that at some point, someone was going to challenge the Old One to a duel, and Yessta was to answer the challenge.  As promised, Sir Jace, the Castellan of Stormwrack accused the Old One of cursing the castle, so challenged him.  The Old One laughed, asking for proof.  Yessta stepped forward to serve as the Old One’s second, and with her force of personality got Jace to back down, securing her promise to Lord Entworth but avoiding a duel against a member of her Order.  Sir Jace compromised with a trial for the Old One.  The Old One was released to his own parole.

During this, Helena gazed into the Unspeakable Power to try to figure out who was pulling the strings here, and her attention was focused on Lord Entworth, who seemed unsurprised by all of this.  (Later she’d use her faction move to see what her informations could find out about Entworth- he was the seventh son of the previous Lord, whose elder brothers all died in the war or in the plague that ravaged Entworth.)  But the price was that she was drained, and fainted in a heap.

Also, the Duke announced that he was going to ride out to meet the King’s party, and wanted Yessta to accompany him.

The Old One, back in his Sanctum, used Dreams Of Unknown Kadath to see how he could transfer the curse on Fione to Sir Jace- a blood transfusion would do the job.  He summoned up his mastery of illusions to cloak himself as a servant to sneak back into the castle, and then, seeing Helena with the cursed Tobias, used his mastery of illusions to restore the color to the poor lad.  He succeeded, but in doing so rended his original illusion, leaving him revealed where he was forbidden to be.

The webs are being laid, and the screws are being tightened.  The pace of the plots are still pretty slow, although the Old One is pretty active which tends to throw a curveball into everything, which is great!

Procedurally, all of the players have complained about the size of the text on the character sheets, especially the advancement and experience checkboxes.

No one has used any Pull yet- the Old One was thinking about using it on Princess Rhala, but he didn’t need to.

SCUP Playtest Session 1

So I got four friends together to playtest SCUP.  We’re all seasoned AW veterans.

Our mythology told the tale of Hildebradnt and Ravencall.  Hildebradnt wanted the crown, so he made dark pacts and sacrifices to summon up a giant fire breathing behemoth to defeat his enemies… which it did, and then he lost control of it, and it defeated his own armies.  It was only stopped by the self sacrifice of legendary hero Ravencall, Hildebradnt’s own sister, who was given a heavenly steed and mystic arts by the ancient sage Treeroot.

Our protagonists all live in the city of Stormwrack, ruled by Duke Calder.  Duke Calder was a great war hero in his youth, but finds himself troubled by the concerns of peacetime and his squabbling bannermen.

The characters are:

Dame Yessta, the Spur, played by +Sabe Jones .  She is a formidable warrior and Captain of the Castle Walls.  She has control of the Castle Armory (her place) and is a member of the Knights of Ravencall (her faction).  In addition to directly serving her patron, Duke Calder, she owes obligations to Lord Entworth, one of the Duke’s Bannermen.  Entworth has provided coin and skilled soldiers for Yessta, as well as his own son to serve as her squire.

Helena, the Screw, played by +Moth Chan .  She is the sister of Sasha (see below), and bastard sibling to the King.  She is small and pretty… and secretly serves as the Duke’s hooded executioner, and has the run of the Catacombs (her place), including a small sealed room that no one knows about.  She has a “guild” of young Lowtown thieves who do her bidding.  (Her faction)

Sasha, the Bloodletter, played by +Shari Corey. She is Helana’s sister (and also the King’s bastard sister).  She studied at the Arcanum Phlegum in the city of Torrent (which is her faction), is master of the castle infirmary, but is most comfortable in her herb garden (her place).

The Old One, the Adept, played by +Tim Jensen .  (S)he is an ancient wise person, imbued with powerful magic, serving on the Duke’s Council of Sages (his faction) and living in the cave system beneath Stormwrack (his place).

The Old One is kept alive by a monthly blood transfusion laced with quicksilver provided by Sasha, which is fatal for the donor.  Helena is sometimes involved in procuring bodies.  There is some sort of thing going on where the three of time know different things about who knows what about this arrangement, (like so and so doesn’t know that so and so knows that so and so knows such and such), but honestly I couldn’t keep that straight.  I think everyone knows the whole truth of the relationship but thinks that someone else is in the dark.

The session started out pretty slow, setting up future stuff.  I think a slow boil suits AW games, but this felt particularly slow.  Yessta was the only one with a Patron or start of session move, which I usually go to inform the initial reaction.  She got a 10+ on the Patron move, indicating no tasks from the Duke, but botched the Militia move, suggesting that Lord Entworth will have a task for her.

I let that simmer for a while, and prompted the other characters for some scenes.  We saw the Duke braving the caves to get the Old One’s advice for who he should marry to his son, Fione.  (Fione was originally going to be a daughter, Fionna, but I decided to make him a guy to have possible love/marriage interests with the mostly all female PCs.)  The Old One used his Dragon’s Eye relic to scry into the court of the King, and determine that the King has two daughters of marriageable age, the younger of which has a magical gift.

Meanwhile Helena was shamelessly flirting with Tobias, Yessta’s squire, making the lad quite uncomfortable.  Later Yessta and Sasha chided her about it.

Sasha decided it was the Dark of the Moon, so it was time to make the Old One’s Immortality Potion.  She was looking at Blood for Blood as a template, but I ruled that since no harm was being done, she just needed to get the blood sacrifice and do it.  Helena provided a man from the dungeons, who had been sentenced to hang after stabbing Fione in a brawl.  The man pleaded for mercy.  Sasha tried to speak pleasantly to him to shut him up… and botched the roll.  He began screaming for help, attracting the attention of Officer Artabran of the Keep, who needed to be distracted with a roll in the hay by Helena.  Afterwards he confided to Helena that as a watchman he learns all sorts of things… like how Councillor Abes secretly likes to bugger young boys.

Since it was established that Fione had been stabbed, Sasha went to check on his wounds, and rolled her Diagnosis… and botched the roll.  I revealed that the wound is mortifying, and he is unlikely to live out the week… not the speedy recovery that she had promised the Duke.

(Shari asked me if she could use Blood for Blood on an NPC, and I told her I’d make a custom move for it.)

Yessta took a few picked men to do Entworth’s dirty work, and tonight’s task was a bit dirtier than usual, asking her to pick up some cargo in a smuggler’s cove and deliver it to a warehouse in the city.  I had her Act Under Fire to get there without incident.  On a 7-9 they encountered a watch patrol, and I suggested the possibility of trying to evade them, talking, or fighting.  Yessta tried to talk her way through and pull rank, but botched the Manipulate roll, drawing the interest of the watch even closer.  She then tried to threaten Violence, and botched that too, causing the watch sergeant to go for his cudgel.  Superiorly armed and trained, he and her men joined Battle, and drove off their foes… but one of her men killed a watchmen.  Yessta is not looking forward to the fallout from this.

The Old One gave his council to the Duke, that he marry his son to a princess.  The Duke liked this, but balked when the Old One offered to deliver a proposal tonight, with magic.  The more the Old One talked it up, the more the Duke did not like it, eventually fleeing in terror when the Old One used his illusions to appear as Fione.

The Old One used his teleportation power to rip a hole in reality and walk to the younger princess’s chamber, and beckon her to come seek him out for instruction.  He used the Unspeakable Power to summon a book of power and give to her.

Some pretty cool stuff going on, and I have lots of ideas for looming consequences and events.  Some things I noted

*Some playbooks seem like they inspire more immediate conflict than others.

*It’s weird that the Bloodletter doesn’t have a Patron or an option for one.

*All four of our characters are technically member’s of the Duke’s court, but since only the Spur has him as a Patron, he’s the one most beholden/connected to him, as I read it.

*Nobody used any Pull or Faction/Place moves.  Part of this is probably the shorter first session and slower pace.  A few people gained Pull on new characters.

*I wanted to have my MC moves in front of me.

*I don’t care for the default names list.  Most of them seem too gibberishy to me.  I’ll probably end up using a list out of the SGNP.