Act ThreeError #1
Thinking back to the previous FollowUp phase we realized we did things wrong...
By the book we had 2 options:
- to play a
normal FollowUp... so after Ivan conquered the last VP we should have wrapped up the final part of the mission (bring the King's Brother to our mysterious contractor) and then
go safely home, and then play out the FollowUp scenes to refresh our resources.
Then, in the nex Intel, we could have expressed interest for the idea of revolution... for asking ourselves if we did the right thing delivering the King's brother to the mysterious man... etc...
- to play a
Continuous FollowUp... so after Ivan conquered the last VP we should have played out the FollowUp scenes to refresh our resources right
there and then (incidentally an easy situation, being the new masters of the turtle-island), then going right on to the next Intel (maybe agreeing to help the King's brother re-take his rightful throne).
Then in the new Action phase maybe we could meet with our mysterious ex-contractor and discover if he was a friend or an enemy... or maybe we could play something completely different... etc
Error #2
We often forgot to roll the Nemesis die... it is now fixed thanks to an updated Framing procedure
...
In the end we ret-conned for the 2nd option...playing the already established "betrayal" scene as the first scene of our new Action phase.
The result was very interesting...
Up till now I had only played in Easy or Medium difficulty missions.
The results were quite consistent.
At Easy difficulty a single PC can usually beat an Obstacle by itself, with no help needed.
At Medium difficulty a bit of help avoids a lot of headaches, but one PC alone can manage the challenge alone if it puts enough energy into it.
Up to this point the game resources seemed abundant and no particular tactic was needed... most times the Obstacles were faced head-on, with little use for special game options.
Then we tryed how an Obstacle at Hard difficulty level felt.
Oh boy, how it was different!
Co-operation among team members became a necessity, almost mandatory.
Lots of game resources (Effort, Mementoes, etc) got burned just to face one Obstacle.
Players started grasping for extra help by using usually neglected mechanics such as Goals and Clarity.
As more and more dice got rolled, more and more Opposition started piling up, twisting the plot in unexpected ways.
In the end we paid a steep price for being too simple-minded... but let me explain this...
In the "betrayal" scene out party got ambushed by some misterious "black soldiers" that had beein disguised as a patch of dark bushes by an illusion.
As the King's brother was taken away by our mysterious contractor, and his leutenant was supposed to pay us off, it turned out the "pay" was death... and the brawl began.
As players we thought this fight should be fairly difficult, and we also wanted to cash-in some extra Influence, and we also felt quite bold having done so splendidly in the previous mission.
So the "Black Soldiers" were tagged as an Obstacle and we added +2 Complexity to it (meaning we needed to beat it 3 times, at Hard difficulty... meaning we had to score 15 Hits with a single roll, three times, to overcome this Obstacle).
People also started adding extra Details to the Obstacle, describing their prowess, their magical equipment, etc.
The challenge starts and we co-operate to defeat them, it's hard, and in the process the previously mentined leutenant turns out to be quite a powerful opponent, earning Nemesis status (thus becoming a second Obstacle in the same challenge, adding even more Danger dice to most of our rolls).
We manage to land a solid blow on the Soldiers when a Pitfall effect happens... they are "too strong" to be defeated directly, and the Scene closes.
We described this by allowing our PCs to discover, with dread, that the fallen soldiers were actually healing back and getting up to fight against us... they looked like... some sort of... clay golems, rapidly regenerating every wound we inflicted!
Next scene could have allowes us a timely strategic escape... but we wanted to beat those fuckers, so instead the scene portraied our party performing a tactical retreat on a nearby cliff in the middle of the forest, were high ground and some good ideas would help up defeat the threat.
Our magician basically invoked an inferno of flames to "cook" the clay and stop it from regenerating, while we others dished ridiculous amounts of damage ... Claudia's PC torn the cliff down invoking a typhoon ... my PC invoked dark tendrils of shadow and pain to lash at the golems ... Carlo's PC blasted our enemies with infallible magical projectiles.
Mechanically we spent a Memento to remove the Pitfall tag, then joined forces to score a second blow to the Obstacle's Complexity.
Too bad we also got another Pitfall! (and some Hurt to boot)
So ... while the plan to "cook" the clay golems seemed to work at first, we found out that the "pot golems" we were smashing to pieces appeared lie... pot jars... containing a sort of incandescent magma... that once free from its ceramic container re-formed into magma golems and kept attacking us, more fearsome (and regenerating) than before!
New scene, new opportunity to just walk away, but we decided to keep our stubborn course.
This time no one offered to spend a Memento to un-tag the Pitfall, and sucking up 3d6 points of Opposition seemed even worse, so we opted to spend a few Scenes building up a plan to once again stop the golems.
We split the pary, and everyone had a scene to implement a piece of the plan we concocted...
So we run away, deep into the woods, always cahsed by the relentless magma golems, while their passage spread a fire through the trees.
We found a river... and we set our trap... Carlo blasted the river banks so that the water will invade the whole area... Ivan cast an illusion to hide such water filled terrain... and my PC acted as bait to lure the golems right into the water.
It worked.
As soon as the golems reached the water a sudden steam-fog arised from the illusory ground, but thanks to Ivan's magical deception they kept marching on.
Claudia used again her typhoon fan, this time to provoke a wave in the river water... and as soon as it submerged the golems, Carlo used a freezing ray to solidify the already cooling magma and then blast it to pieces with his other explosive gun.
With this we FINALLY vanquished the golems... but not before a Twist happened... and we saw, in the now petrified faces of the golems, the visage of the King.
What could this mean?
Is the King part of the conspiration against his brother?
Is the King a powerful socerer, and now our true enemy?
(this also added +1vp to the mission objective, making it a bit longer)
It felt like a LOT of fun.
It felt exausting.
It felt damn challenging.
It felt EXACTLY like in the old days of D&D, when the DM threw an impossibly difficult enemy at the PCs because,
of course, they will test its strength and then be savvy adventurers and find a way to
avoid it... and instead the ox-minded Players kept stubbornly charging on and on again, depleting most of their resources for just one single obstacle right at the beginning of the (long) quest XD
Amazing!