Running Prodigal Son

And 3.5 hours later, we’re done running Prodigal Son. Sir Tatton is reunited with his son, Ariadne has the Knife of Lethe (yikes!) and our heroes took out two vampires.

Here’s how it went. Look out, spoilers ahead!

(Note, this is the third of three posts. Start here.)

First session

The session started at Northcott House in Sledmere where Sir Tatton asked the PCs to find his son and retrieve his books. There was a slight stumble when we discussed why the PCs would agree, but Sir Tatton was prepared to pay and we agreed that that was how it normally worked.

At the abandoned farmhouse (second scene) the PCs killed the two vampires (in two combat rounds—an enraged werewolf is really tough), rescued Omar and found the missing books, and directions to Castle Market in Sheffield.

In fighting the vampires, the difference between the fighters and non-fighters quickly became apparent. While Ygraine created the illusion of a sunbeam to distract the vampires, Naomi found herself sidelined. In future I will take a leaf from Fate’s book and allow characters to “create an advantage” (distracted, blinded by sunlight) that can be a +2 bonus by one of the combat specialists.

We ended the first session with the vampires dead.

Second and final session 

We started second session with a brief recap, and then the players questioned Omar and headed to Castle Market. (I had hoped they would return to their base in between as I had an encounter with a representative from the Council of Merlin planned to make this and the following scenario seem more interwoven, but it was not to be.)

At Castle Market the players met persuaded the two Jaeger watchers to show them around the site, and Ygraine created a distraction so they could sneak into the ghost realm.

In the ghost realm they confronted Mark, who handed over the knife for help in exiting the realm. As they returned to Castle Market, they encountered Ariadne and her brood (who had taken out the two Jaeger watchers).

Mark (minus the knife) launched himself at Ariadne, while the others face the vampires. Ariadne beats Mark, and the PCs trade the knife for Mark. Ariadne accepts, and lets the PCs leave. Mark is broken, and the PCs return him to Northcott Hall and Sir Tatton’s gratitude.

How was it running someone else’s adventure?

I’d thought about Prodigal Son so much (much longer than the 3.5 hours we spent playing it!) that I’d internalised it and running it wasn’t too hard. I found I had to create a lot of the detail (the names of the stolen books, how the knife worked, how you access the ghost realm). I don’t mind doing that, but I might have resented it if I’d paid for the scenario.

The situation at Castle Market could be clearer in Prodigal Son. I’m pleased I put the Jaeger watchers in as site security, as otherwise the PCs would have just gone straight to the ghost realm and bypassed them.

I had to think on my feet in the ghost realm. I was trying to decide how to play it—I knew Ariadne and her brood had to make an appearance. I was tempted to bring her into the ghost realm, but I was hoping she would survive the scenario as a potential future foe. (I hadn’t expected her to walk away with the knife—that was a nice surprise.)

I enjoyed running Prodigal Son. I would have written it differently, but I liked having a scenario that I could adapt and flesh out. It will be interesting to run a scenario that doesn’t require so much work.

And how was Liminal?

I found Liminal fiddly, but that may be my unfamiliarity with it. It’s crunchier than I am used to—my favourite system is Fate Accelerated and Liminal is much more granular. There are a few mistakes (a few errors made it through proofreading), and the writing could be clearer.

I’m not a fan of having both dice modifiers and Challenge Levels. If it were up to me, I’d have a constant Challenge Level of 8+, and then everything else is a modifier. (Page 199 explains how to set different Challenge Levels when climbing down the wall of a house—but it’s as easy to assign modifiers as it is to change the Challenge Level.)

The changes I made to the stat block (see this previous post) worked well, and really sped combat up as it saved everyone from having to work out what to roll during combat. However, it didn’t work so well when I had two NPCs fighting each other, so I've made tweaks.

I wasn’t familiar enough with Liminal to want to run a big combat with it, so I hand-waved the big fight with Ariadne and her brood. Luckily the players didn’t mind and were happy for me to take a more narrative approach (particularly one where they didn’t all die). Re-reading the rules, I’m not sure Liminal manages such battles well—there are rules for ordinary mobs, but a mob of seven vampires is somewhat different.

I’d like to see examples of social challenges in the rules. While a social challenge is an opposed skill test, it’s not clear which skills are used on either side. On at least two occasions I wished Liminal had a Persuade skill. It has lots of other social skills (Charm, Conviction, Empathy, High Society, Rhetoric, Streetwise and Taunt) but not Persuade.

Player feedback

Player feedback was good. They were invested in their characters, and they want to continue. They enjoyed playing a game set in Yorkshire (and one player knows Thornhill well).

Most players had a copy of Liminal, and two had played it before. I took a collaborative approach to running the game, asking them to look things up when I was busy.

What next?

I ended with the start of the next scenario (The Haunting), with a letter from Sir Tatton delivered to Naomi. However, that’s in the future and we will do some character stuff first. The PC’s drives are all from the book, and a lot of questions need answering (such as exactly why was Naomi’s master thrown out of the Council of Merlin?). So I asked the players to think about what they want for their characters.

I also want to bring in a few factions—so P Division will be interested in the bodies in the abandoned farmhouse, the Council of Merlin are already interested in Sir Tatton’s library, and Omar (the rescued werewolf) will join the Jaeger Family.

Plus I need to decide what to do about Ariadne and Mark Northcott…

Session Zero: Liminal Characters

Last time I talked about Prodigal Son and the changes I made to it. This time I’m talking about Session Zero and getting ready to play. I recruited my players Liam, Thomas, Alex, and Daniel from GoPlayLeeds (which hasn’t met this year due to lockdown).

Although I was using the four pre-generated characters from the Liminal rulebook, we spent 45 minutes in Session Zero getting to know them.

For me, the most important bit of an RPG character isn’t their statistics, skills or attributes—it’s the relationships with the other characters and the world. Like most RPGs, Liminal doesn’t cover this well so this is what I did.

Crew questions

The “Crew” is one of the most important parts of Liminal. The Crew is Liminal’s equivalent of the adventure party. It’s the group that ties the PCs together. 

Liminal is a game of solving cases (at least, that’s what the published scenarios so far would have you believe). And so the PCs need a good reason to be motivated to investigate and solve those cases, and that’s where the Crew comes in. The Crew’s reason for existence is to allow the PCs to solve cases.

A Crew can be many things—such as an investigation business, a group with a powerful enemy who have banded together for protection, or group allied to a faction who provides support in exchange for services. (I do think Liminal’s section on creating a Crew could be stronger, but that’s a subject for another day.)

I wanted the players to have some ownership in the crew, so I use this to frame a discussion:

Crew Concept: Who you are and your reason for taking on cases and engaging with the world.

• An investigation business.
• A group with a powerful enemy who have banded together for protection.
• A group allied to a faction or powerful individual who provides support in exchange for services.

Crew questions: Why does the Crew investigate cases? How do clients get in touch? Who formed the Crew? Is it an established Crew, or formed with the PCs? Is being part of the Crew full-time? Does the Crew have a reputation?

We had an interesting discussion about the Crew. Was it the day job, or is it on top of the day job? We decided that each player could decide. We liked the idea that the Crew could provide deniable services, and that it would have a patron.

The group chose several assets, including a base below the Impact! Art Brigade art collective in Leeds.

Character questions

We then moved to the character questions:

• How did you join the Crew?
• Which faction to you admire, and why?
• Which faction worries you, and why?
• With which faction do you have a positive relationship, and why?
• With which faction do you have a negative relationship, and why?

The question about admiring and fearing factions revealed interesting views that the PCs had—and a common admiration of the Queen of Hyde Park. I’m sure she’ll be pleased.

Contacts

Finally, I asked each to choose a contact from the list below (or they could invent their own) and determine their relationship and how trustworthy they are. I almost always do this in my games as I find it so useful as a GM: it gives me a ready supply of NPCs linked to the players that I can use to create drama and provide information.

• Michael Fraser, young magician being groomed for greatness by the Council of Merlin. (Academic Wizard)
• Mina Cotton, not the frail old lady she appears, but a formidable fae knight loyal to the Queen of Hyde Park. (Knight)
• The Deacon, leader of a fae criminal game, loyal to the Winter King. (Clued-up criminal)
• Meera Stone, untrained wizard who married into the Jaeger family. (Gutter mage)
• Lynden Grant, bodyguard to the Order of St Bede (Bodyguard)
• John Cooper, P-Division liaison officer (Investigator)
• Jet, pavement artist and street urchin with links to The Mercury Collegium (Changeling)

What is your relationship to them?

• Childhood friend
• Lover
• Immediate family - spouse, parent, sibling or child
• Distant family - uncle or aunt, grandparent
• Flatmate
• Colleague
• Team player
• Schoolmate / university friend
• Mentor or teacher
• Rescuer
• You share an interest
• You shared an experience

How strong is your relationship? 

• I trust them with my life
• I can rely on them in a time of trouble
• I owe them a favour
• I find them unreliable at best

We ended up with a friend, a couple of mentors and an unreliable lover. One of them already appeared in our opening session, and I’m looking forward to working the rest into the story.

Session Zero Feedback

Player feedback was that they appreciated the chance to explore their characters before diving straight into the case. The challenge I have is to make sure I keep drawing on the Session Zero material we go along—I know I have to work at that.

Next time: running Prodigal Son.

Running other people’s adventures: Prodigal Son (Liminal)

This is the first in what may be a series of my thoughts in running other people’s adventures. As I've mentioned, it’s not something I normally do as I prefer to run my own. So this is a departure for me, and I’m probably overthinking it.

(As this has ended up being three posts long, I'm definitely overthinking it...)

This time it’s Liminal’s Prodigal Son, written by Sheffield’s own Dr Mitch (and Liminal author).

Spoilers ahead!

Making it my own

Prodigal Son is a short, three or four scene case for Liminal. The Crew are given a case, fight vampires, and enter a ghost realm. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the broad outline.

In terms of running the adventure, I need to make it my own. So I printed it out and went through it, making notes as I did. And as I did, I realised that I had a handful of questions I needed to resolve so the case made sense.

I am sure I could have asked the good Dr Mitch for his thoughts on these, but I’m sure he’s got better things to do than answer my pedantic questions. More important, answering the questions myself gives me some ownership. It means I will internalise it more, making it easier for me to run.

So, I have questions…

Why doesn’t Sir Tatton realise who took his books?

Sir Tatton has noticed that some books have gone missing from his library—but his guardian spirit didn’t react to the thief and it would react to anyone other than a family member. As the players will immediately put two and two together (because they’re playing an RPG if for no other reason) and work out that Mark Northcott took them, it makes sense for Sir Tatton to know that as well.

So when I ran it, Sir Tatton knows that his son took books from his library (he doesn’t know how many). Prodigal’s Son doesn’t name the books, but the players will probably ask, so I made them up: A History of Sheffield Castle, Wolf Legends, and Bronze Age Myths.

The books aren’t mentioned again, but I dropped them in the ruined farmhouse that the Heirs of Osbehrt use for their base. If the vampires wipe everyone out, then they’ll take the books back to Ariadne (but if that happens then it means the investigation is already over). If they don’t then they’ll end up in the hands of the players—which is as it should be.

What was the deal between the Mark and Ariadne?

Before the case begins, werewolf Mark Northcott has made a deal with vampire Ariadne. His gang (the Heirs of Osbehrt) are being pressured by the Jaeger family to join them, and they want to remain independent. So Mark makes a deal with Ariadne to put the Jaeger family “in their place”. (I imagine this is done by Ariadne killing the Jaeger Face that has been negotiating with the Heirs—that saves me inventing a character…)

But what does Ariadne get from the deal? The case notes don’t say, so here’s what I decided:

• In return for protection, Northcott offered Ariadne a powerful ancient knife he knew he could get.
• Northcott had no intention of giving Ariadne the knife (the Knife of Lethe). Instead he intends to use to raise the Wolf’s Head, which he can use to see off both Ariadne and the Jaeger family.
• When Ariadne realises that she has been tricked (she has access to Diviners), she attacks the Heirs, trying to find Northcott and the knife.

What are the watchers doing and do the watchers know about the ghost realm?

Jaeger watchers

Prodigal Son isn’t clear what the two Jaeger watchers are doing in Sheffield. They’re watching… but how? Are they in a car, just hanging around, or do they have some kind of cover? Do they run a nearby newsagent? I made them security guards for the derelict site, which adds to their nerves (they are nervous because they know Ariadne and her gang are around) because they can’t just leave.

And do they know about the ghost realm? While the adventure suggests no, I decided that one of them does.

(And I renamed one of them—Sean Daley is also the name of Sir Tatton’s butler in The Haunting and if all goes well I’ll run that next.)

What happens if Mark Northcott raises the Wolf’s Head?

And what of the Wolf’s Head, the mythical werewolf outlaw gang that Mark Northcott is trying to raise? What happens if he succeeds? What does that look like? Prodigal Son is silent, but it feels like an own goal not to summon the Wolf’s Head, so…

Knife of Lethe: If the wielder of the knife kills another being, then they draw the spirit of the Wolf’s Head into them. This costs 2 Will and happens automatically unless they don’t have enough Will. 

This gives them +2 Melee, +2 damage and +4 Endurance. However, it also drains 2 Will.

A wielder may do this multiple times, providing they have enough Will. Each time they kill, the spirit of the Wolf’s Head gets stronger and they get more powerful. The effect lasts until the following sunset—at which point the wielder drops unconscious for 48 hours. (And given this may fall into the players’ hands, there’s probably some awful long-term effect if the knife is used often.)

What is Ariadne’s plan

I decided I needed a countdown clock for Prodigal’s Son—events that will take place whether the players are present or not. It all hinges around Ariadne…

1. Ariadne’s vampires attack the Heirs, but Mark is no longer there. (At this point the PCs enter and thwart their final attack.)
2. Ariadne tracks Mark to Castle Market in Sheffield.
3. Ariadne kills one of the Jaeger watchers and tortures the other to learn about the ghost realm.
4. Ariadne and her gang enter the ghost realm.
5. Ariadne and Mark fight—Mark wins, using the knife to kill one of Ariadne’s vampires and summons the Wolf’s Head into himself. He becomes the legendary Wolf’s Head and destroys Ariadne. As he continues to kill the vampires he becomes more and more powerful—but loses more and more Will. By the end of the fight he has no Will left, and eventually passes out.
6. With no Will remaining, Mark fades and becomes a ghost in the ghost realm himself...

Why are Mark’s stats so high?

Finally, for someone who has been in a ghost realm, Mark’s stats need adjusting so I dropped his Will to 6 (from 12). I also found his drive, vengeance at all costs, confusing as I wasn’t sure who he wanted vengeance on. The Jaegers? Ariadne? So I changed it to Summon the Wolf's Head and make the Heirs of Osbehrt great which is clearer in terms of gameplay and his objective for the scene.

Can I make fights more interesting?

Recently I talked about using scenario design to make the fights better. As Prodigal Son has several potential fights, I considered how I might make those more interesting.

The vampires: Prodigal Son’s first battle is with some vampires picking on a young werewolf. That’s their objective—if outmatched they will flee and report back to their boss, Ariadne. (And if they can’t flee, they will surrender.)

Ariadne and her brood: Ariadne plans to be a player in the Hidden World, and will not risk her life foolishly. Her brood isn’t indispensable either—so she will retreat and regroup if things don’t go her way. (She may not even attack if the odds aren’t in her favour.)

Mark Northcott: Sadly, Mark has gone crazy and is driven by his lust for power. He wants to summon the Wolf’s Head. He will fight to the death.

Next: Session Zero

Even for a one-shot I like to do some Session Zero stuff, and I’ll cover that next time.

Fighting in RPG scenario design

I regularly listen to two podcasts on RPGs, The Grognard Files and What Would the Smart Party Do. Both are interesting and thought provoking, and sometimes they both cause me to want to respond in more detail.

Smart Party Episode 128 was all about fights, and it got me thinking about how scenario design can help make fights more interesting. I’m not going to cover whether I think fights are a good or bad thing, but instead think about what scenario designers can do to make their fights more interesting.

A few things caught my eye.

Not to the death

In my experience, many RPG fights consist of a long slog of dice rolls to slowly whittle away a creature's hitpoints. I know I've been guilty of doing that—but I am also aware that in a fight I’m often too busy thinking about the rules and mechanics that the foes don’t always act in an intelligent manner. (The fun combats are when players act intelligently and set things up to succeed—which is one of the things I really like about Fate's use of create advantage.)

So not all fights should be to the death, and sensible foes should surrender or flee when outmatched.

This has (at least) two advantages.

First, fights should become shorter and more memorable.

Second, your foes will seem more intelligent. No longer will they continue to fight even when clearly outmatched.

Third, dealing with prisoners gives the PCs some interesting decisions and roleplaying opportunities.

Objectives

In real life, fights usually happen when two sides have conflicting objectives. If you're playing a wargame you normally have a missions to achieve--take that hill, knock out those 88s. You are rarely expected to kill absolutely everything in your path.

Similarly the opposition has their objectives.

So when you have NPCs that the PCs are likely to fight, it's worth clearly stating what their objectives are.

For example, in the Liminal game I am running in a couple of days, the PCs encounter vampires intent on taking out a werewolf gang. So the vampires want to kill the werewolves. But they shouldn't be suicidal, and the scenario isn't clear either way.

So if I were writing this adventure up, I would describe their objectives as:

Vampire Objectives:

• Kill all the werewolves
• If outmatched, try to flee and return when stronger
• Failing that, surrender.

Now I've never done that before. I like to think my foes have had a modicum of intelligence, but I'm probably flattering myself. For example, when I think back to The Crasta Demon, the first battle is a razorlin raid on a caravan that the PCs interrupt. It's a straight fight to the death, the razorlins don't act sensibly and simply try to attack the players. 

Razorlin warband objective:

• Attack the caravan and raid it for booty
• If outmatched, retreat to den, using archers and spear-throwers to cover the retreat.

That's much better! I even have time to think of some simple tactics for the razorlins—something I probably would have time to do when I'm running combat.

I've got plans to revisit The Crasta Demon, so maybe I need to include the razorlin camp in it. (It's possible I've already done this by the time that you read this.)

(Monster of the Week has a similar approach and gives its NPCs, monsters and locations motivations, which is the story-purpose for that NPC, monster or location. I've talked about Monster of the Week previously.)

Dialogue and Clues

My final takeaway is to remember that even though combat is a highly mechanical part of the game, we’re still playing a roleplaying game. While fighting, what information can the bad guys blurt out while trading blows? This might be clues as to who they’re working for (Ariadne sends her regards!), what their motivations are (Give us the books now!) or a clue to the next scene (Fall back, fall back! We’ll get them at Skull Rock!).

But as I can never remember that sort of thing in the heat of the battle, it’s worth thinking of them in advance. And if you’re designing a scenario you can clues for the monsters to say in battle.

Next steps

And now to put it into practice—first by revisiting some of my old scenarios…