A player's view of Kakabad

In lieu of a post about contemporary gaming, what with the sunny weather, afternoons in the pub, and the odd barbecue - and for anyone not in the UK, we get so few really sunny days these must be seized upon - I thought I'd dig out some old player maps and let you see how one of my players interpreted our journey across Kakabad in pursuit of the Crown of Kings.

  Khare

The Baklands

Mampang

Sorcery! 2 (Inkle iOS app): I Khare more

Last year I bought Inkle's first Sorcery! app, which turned out to be a reasonably faithful adaptation of The Shamutanti Hills gamebook. There were a few flourishes here and there that, as far as I can remember, were not in the gamebooks (for example, the motivation for the goblin activity is fleshed out), but aside from the gorgeous map and the nifty, but straightforward mechanics, this was The Shamutanti Hills. If you liked the gamebook, you'd like this. But if not, this would fail to satisfy for similar reasons (unless you have something against books as physical object, but then...).

Sorcery! 2, based on Khare: Cityport of Traps, is, however, a totally different beast - though it wears the same skin. My memory of gamebook Khare is of a city that defies reason, filled with fantastical encounters (but little else) in which Bizarre Search Behaviour (as described by Murray of Turn to 400) is the order of the day. And it is fun, for sure, and very 'Fighting Fantasy', but as is the case for many of the gamebooks the only way to collect the information necessary to make meaningful choices is to die. YOUR adventure ends here. 

In the Inkle app, Khare feels like it has some real life to it. Part of this is down to the technical possibilities presented in by an app that would be impossible in a gamebook; it is not so difficult for later 'sections' to be subtly (or not so subtly) tailored in light of previous choices - certainly without doubling or trebling the 'section' and page count of the equivalent physical book. But Khare has also grown. What appeared, in the gamebook, to be disconnected encounters have grown into the spaces around them, producing meaningfully interlinked choices. But there is also more to Khare - political intrigue and underground plots practically beg YOU to investigate. It feels much more like a sandbox setting.

All of this is managed by an automated clue 'inventory'. This records bullet points of information that you gather through your searches and conversations. On the subject of the latter, at various points in the game you have the option to play 'swindlestones' (liar's dice) against a number of different NPCs. While you can try to use this as a way to make some gold, its true usefulness comes in the conversations that you have with the NPCs as you bluff and bet. Different bets produce different dialogue options, meaning that sometimes you just have to bluff big (and likely get called) if you want to ask a particularly probing question. This is a really good mechanic, introducing risk and reward (and a degree of transparency about both) into the information game. 

As far as the other mechanics go, swordplay is still, as it was in the first Sorcery! app, a 'blind auction', in which you try to use just more of your strength than the enemy, or none at all if you suspect that he will 'bid' higher. While there are some clues as to what the enemy will do each round in the text description, it still feels pretty formulaic - thought it allows for some player choice, the meaninfulness of these choices is minimal, once you have your PC settled into a strike-block rhythm. It is certainly appears to be more interactive than 2d6+SKILL, but I feel that adding a couple of choices to modify this roll (as in Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e) would have produced more genuine choice into the fights. Each fight can be endlessly refought until you have achieved a level of STAMINA loss with which you are happy, which feels a bit 'fingers in the page' to me. Nevertheless, I have used it...

The sorcery mechanic has been revamped across both apps. If I remember right, in Sorcery! it involved a mildly annoying mini-game in which you lined up the three letters of the spell. This was nothing more than a time-sink hurdle for the player - you would line the letters up eventually, and it didn't matter how long it took. Well, it didn't matter for YOU - as in your PC - but it mattered to you, the player. This was a mild example of what I was talking about with regards to the consequences of failure in RPGs and computer games. The new version retains the same visual charm - the letters being written in the stars - but the mini-game is gone. Just tap out S-U-S and burn on point of STAMINA to work out if Steve Jackson has set a trap for you. That really is the most important spell any adventurer on Titan can learn!

I was really impressed with Sorcery! 2. It looks fantastic, plays smoothly, and the new material adds extra life to the city, though I'm still in two minds as to whether the extra stuff included by Inkle dilutes the Titanesque. Regardless, I do wish that I had played this before running the Khare section of the AFF2e Crown of Kings campaign. I guess that is the highest praise that can be given by a GM! 

Player Notes #1 - The Crown of Kings

I guess it is is going to get a little monotonous if all you read here are the fairly ordinary modelling and painting experiences as I work towards my DBA project. See here's something else. But don't worry if you wanted to see what I put together for a forest, or a road, or a Saxon village, etc. etc. You have all that to come!

But back to roleplaying, for a moment. As a referee, I enjoy watching players scribble down notes. Players committed to taking notes, are, I presume, engaging with the game in both the short and long term. Can a player sort one improbably named NPC/location/monster from another? If they can't, their experience of the game can only ever be superficial. But who expects either players or referees to hold all this in their head. The referee orders the world with piles of notes and index cards, unless the players adopt something fractionally similar, it will be difficult for them to make their decisions meaningful, and therefore, in one sense, make the game as arbitrary as Snakes and Ladders. Of course, not all players are into noting down NPC names, rumours, clues, etc., but unless they have a very good memory, those who are not taking notes need to understand, and accept, the limits this places on their ability to act in and engage with the game world. Roleplaying games are information games.

All that aside, the purpose of this post is to show off some pictures of the ways in which players in my games have made sense of the game world. The most ardent note-taker and mapmaker in our group is my wife. Here's some of her notes from our Advanced Fighting Fantasy Crown of Kings campaign.  

Addendum: A dense transcription of names, places, hint and clues. But because she was the only player taking notes, rather than having three players, each collecting and organising the information that they think is important, for all of the players the game was refracted through these notes. It is not so much of a problem in a linear 'quest' game, or even a 'straightforward' mystery, in which the decisions are mostly short term and the goal is shared by all the players/characters. But it occurred to me that this delegated approach to the 'information game' is very bad for a sandbox game, in which each player is expected to make short, medium and long term decisions that are not determined by the pursuit of a simple, predetermined collective goal.

Wham-bang, thank you Mampang! [part two]

Yo, ho, ho, me trumps!

I've been spending a little too much time playing Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. I could be reading good fiction, or painting miniatures, or... Or anything. But instead I am cruising around the Caribbean trying to collect every last sea shanty and hidden treasure chest.

But back to Mampang for the final session of the Crown of Kings campaign.

The party ended the last session captured by the Mampang Guard and brought to see Captain Cartoum. Their Adventure Ends Here. Or well, it likely ought to have done. But as we broke up the penultimate session I said to the players that they needed to think very hard about how they were going to get out of this very sticky situation. Following the between session conversations on Facebook, I was not optimistic.

BUT, many sessions ago I had allowed Ho Lee to spend Experience Points creating a new Sorcery spell. The AFF2e rulebook explicitly advises against this, but in the context of a one-off 'adventure path' I figured, 'why not?' And so Ho Lee's magical experiments had added COR to the Sorcery spell book, an analogue to GOB and YOB. Where those created GOBLINS and GIANTS from the teeth of those creatures, COR brought forth a MANTICORE. When word had reached the Archmage that Ho Lee had very publicly and effectively demonstrated this novel sorcery, he was interested in seeing the innovating wizard for himself.

And so, despite Mopsy's quite frankly hopeless plan to convince Captain Cartoum that this was all a dreadful misunderstanding - that despite killing quite some number of the Archmage's minions, disguising themselves are guards, and refusing to surrender, they were there to enter the service of Mampang - the party were not summarily executed a mere flight of stairs from their goal. No, like any good villain, the Archmage demanded that they were brought to him, and, in his genre-appropriate arrogance, dismissed the guards.

[This bypassed a number of interesting encounters, but the party were not going to have a chance to see those. It was this, or a game-ending consequence. I am very happy allowing players to run themselves into TPK. And with these players, TPKs and near-TPKs are not uncommon! But then I do not normally run a linear campaign.] 

The party were in the Archmage's library-cum-observatory with just the villain and his manservant, Farren Whyde. The Archmage offered the party the Crown of Kings, if they would tell him the secret of the COR spell. Mopsy was up for taking the crown that floated in the air before them, but saner heads prevailed and the Archmage grew frustrated. With the party hesitating, on edge, ready to attack the Archmage, there was a wet ripping noise behind them. The 'Archmage' cowered behind his desk as the body of Farren Whyde split in two to reveal a NETHERWORLD DEMON.

Boss Fight!

But Boss Fights can be boring. They are not a point in the game - most of the time - where the players are able to make any more significant, interesting choices. At this point, it is No Retreat, No Surrender! D hovered his finger over the Big Red Button - as the Demon began to whittle away the PC's STAMINA reserves the ZED spell was readied. What would it do?* But in the end some rather lucky Critical Hits from Cramer and Mopsy snicker-snacked off a couple of points of the Demon's SKILL, and the foul thing fell under the swords of the Heroes of Analand.

In the gamebook, the players could either summon the Samaritans of Schinn (the 'good birdmen', which the party bypassed - to be fair finding the good birdmen rather than the bad birdmen is a 'left or right' decision), or resurrect Farren Whyde and have him summon the birdmen. Anything else necessitates the player fights his way through the now alert Mampang Guard - an impossible task. Not wanting this adventure to play out like the end of Return of the King, I had two options, 1) present the party with wave after wave of Guards, a pointless, hopeless battle that would demand another session of play that would contain no reward and little in the way of meaningful decisions, or have the Samaritans of Schinn show up at the window of the Archmage's Tower. 

Flap, flap. 

"Squawk! Need a lift?" 

Epilogue

Deciding this would be the end of line for these adventurers, I asked each player what they planned their character's long term future to be.

Ho Lee, with the benefit of a few armfuls of the Archmage’s books and paraphernalia, secluded himself in a tower in the wilderness and delved deeply into magical secrets. He was killed many years later by a party of adventurers, who then sold his library in the book markets of Gallantria.  

Cramer, still driven by Slaang, God of Malice, decided that he would seek the leadership of the KLATTAMEN tribe of the Baddu-Bak Plains. By force of violence, Cramer became chief, but his rule was short-lived. Mistaking a hearty respect for violence for a tendency towards cruelty, Cramer abused his subjects, and was lynched after just a few months.

Mopsy, who the spirit of Khare declared to be the new Hidden Lord, was ever the good and noble(?!) knight. Conscious of his duty to his sworn lord, he returned to Analand and persuaded King Arkle to raise an army to allow him to annex Khare. As the pennants of Analand approached the walls of the Cityport of Traps, SULPHUR GHOSTS boiled from the walls, scattering the army. Mopsy was never heard of again, but legend has it that a blind beggar claiming to have once been a famous knight now lives in the slums of Khare. 

*I was set to have the ZED spell transport them to The Pit, where they would continue the battle with the Demon. If they won, I might have been tempted to run an 'Escape the Pit' campaign. If they had lost, well, at least the Demon had been banished.

Wham-bang, thank you Mampang! [part one]

And so, sometime before Christmas, we came to the end of Mopsy, Cramer, and Ho Lee’s adventures. We left them with Naggamenteh the Torturer mutilated lifeless body at their feet. Heading deeper into Mampang, the party encountered the obligatory independent trader.

I swear, there are more independent shops in the citadels of Titan’s Tyrant-Wizards than there are on the average British High Street. Ooh, there’s topical for you.

Nylock offered a variety of odds and ends for sale, and the Party quite reasonably assumed that at least some of these would prove useful in ways that are impossible to anticipate. [This is one of the legacies of the gamebooks – designed to be replayed, the reader accumulating knowledge on each attempt – that works against meaningful player choice in a tabletop RPG] Ho Lee bartered for some spell components, and Cramer bought the two candles, one apparently ordinary, the other a BLOOD CANDLE. According to Nylock, that is.

The party then, perhaps a little gullibly, followed the signs for the ‘Inner Sanctum’. They passed through a room that magically deadened all sounds and dimmed all light, before arriving at a, well, bedroom. The bed, table and other furniture was covered in a thick layer of dust. The party ignored the warning signs and headed straight for the wooden chest that they spotted.

A heavy portcullis dropped down, and ALL the party are trapped inside the room. The release lever was in a different room. By the book, this was the end of the line for Mopsy, Cramer, and Ho Lee. Aww.

Consider the ‘Responsibilitiesfor Failure’ and the ‘Consequences of Failure’. In this case, while the mistake was the Players, but the consequences of their failure was game ending (one of my complaints with linear adventure paths), not something to be experienced as part of play - if we had played this as a mission within the context of a sandbox we could all have had fun rolling up new characters and playing out the Archmage’s conquest of the Old World. So I fudged it…

In the style of Indiana Jones, SNAKES began to pour through the crumbling mortar between the stone of the far wall. The Party defeated the snakes, not without cost, and began to explore the hollow behind the wall – a Snake Nest. This involved some suitably paranoid, tentative exploration, ropes tied round waists and all. If only they had been that careful when entering the room…

Some impromptu demolition later and the Party had engineered a deathtrap-cum-shortcut straight to the third set of Throben Doors. What was it that Naggamanteh told them about the doors? That the danger was not as it seemed, but it would burn those who believed it was? Or something like that. D, playing Ho Lee, correctly inferred that whatever they saw when they opened these doors would be an illusion, and that they had to betray no sign of doubt in their conviction of the illusion’s unreality. Bravo! Pity not everyone in the party was listening to the wizard.   

Ho Lee threw open the third set of Throben Doors. The room beyond was filled with a raging inferno, a door visible on the other side. At this point, the book advises, “You should at this point ask each player in turn what they are doing. If the player says they will run or walk through, they will be safe. If a player asks a question back, says ummm, err etc or otherwise prevaricates, that Hero will be burned by the flames.”

Referee: Ho Lee?

Ho Lee (D): I walk through the flames to the door.

Referee: Cramer?

Cramer (A): I follow Ho Lee.

Referee: Mopsy?

Mopsy (C): Ummm. Errr. I try to protect myself with my shield?

Referee: Errr, okay…

“Hesitating Heroes will take 1D6 STAMINA damage immediately, and another 4D6 STAMINA to reach the far side of the room.” 5D6 STAMINA damage? Oh my. Oh, hang on, there is more, “In addition, the Hero will be ignited.” Hahahaha!

Mopsy suffered 2D6 STAMINA damage. His wavering disbelief was strengthened as he watched Ho Lee and Cramer walk unharmed to the door on the far side of the room. See, this is why I prefer sandbox-ey games to adventure paths – let the PCs suffer the consequence of their actions in a context in which those consequences can be enjoyed by the Players, even as the PCs are burned to a crisp.

With one slightly charred knight, the Party opened the door to the next room. There was no light. The room was not just dark – the light from the inferno did not penetrate the room at all. Cramer lit one of the candles that he had bought from Nylock. The room was illuminated, and the party saw that the room was filled with sharp blades, spinning saws, scything pendulums and razor-sharp wire. I think that it is safe to say:

Thing is, the ‘blood candle’ is a trap too, being named for its thirst for blood. As Cramer - Cramer the Fortunate, a thief with LUCK 13 - attempted to cross the room the candle flickered. The room went momentarily black at a crucial moment. Ouch! To say the least. The Party was more than slightly bloodied before they tried lighting the other candle, and found a steadier source of light. Still the blades taxed the Party’s STAMINA, before they reached the next door.

“We open the door.”

And I was thinking, “Don’t you want to listen at the door first, or come up with a plan of action, or…” But they threw open the door. And were faced with a room full of GUARDS – fifteen of them in fact. Five per PC. Spears were levelled inches from the Party. The Sergeant ordered them to put their hands on their heads and surrender.

“We fight.”

“What?! Haven’t you seen how dangerous it is to be outnumbered? You are all wounded.”     

“We fight.”

“Okay. As you reach for your sword you are immediately jabbed with a spear.”

The book says that Heroes who do not surrender will be immediately wounded by three spears. I had them wounded by one. A little pointer. I don’t like ‘plots’ that *require* the PCs are captured, but Players should also realise when their PCs are outmatched, and not bank on the Referee saving them… oh, hang on, that is exactly what I am going to do!

Again, the Sergeant calls for the Party to surrender.

“We fight.”

Bloody hell.

Well, the fight then. Ho Lee summoned a MANTICORE (many sessions ago, I let D spend a lot of Experience Points on creating a new Sorcery spell – let’s call it COR) that immediately began laying waste to the Guardroom. Cramer was driven, bloodied and unconscious, to the ground and the Party, dragging Cramer, retreated back into the Chamber of Night. That being the magically dark room filled with sharp objects. Ho Lee poured a POTION OF STAMINA down Cramer’s throat while Mopsy held the door shut. They had only a few moments to think of a plan.

They realised that they were still wearing the uniforms of the Mampang Guards. But embryonic plans to argue that this was all just a terrible misunderstanding never really developed. After all, a Manticore was still tearing Guards to pieces just beyond the door that they were desperately holding shut. C started to describe a plan that seemed to involve Mopsy taking all his clothes off, but that was quickly vetoed. The Guards were about to burst through the door. There was no way back, over the blades of the Chamber of Night.

They were trapped.

Didn’t we have a lovely time // the day we went to Mampang

A beautiful day, we had lunch on the way // And all for under a pound, you know

Actually, the PCs had lunch in the kitchens of the Fortress. Despite the quite frightful possibilities, Ho Lee’s adventures in evil cuisine passed off with disappointingly little consequence. The luck of the dice sometimes does fall the way of the PCs. And for under a pound? Now that would be a bargain, given the price gouging rip off merchants that pass themselves off as traders and innkeepers in the Shamutanti Hills.

How on Titan did the PCs get into Mampang? Well, the last we heard from the party they were about to try the 'Chewbacca Gambit'. In fact, I’m pretty sure that D, playing Ho Lee, did utter the line, ‘We’re fine, how are you?’ and, ‘Boring conversation anyway,’ during the three sessions it took the party to reach their fate deep in the Fortress. That said, my memory is sketchy these days – despite my ‘it were better in my day’ shtick, that’s probably the multiple concussions more than it is age.

The first session involved negotiating the three courtyards of the Fortress of Mampang. The first courtyard is mostly empty, with the first set of magical Throben doors requiring merely requiring a key. Easy peasy; the party searched the rooms around the gate, made mincemeat of some Dark Elves for no reward, but found the key nonetheless.

The second courtyard is a much more interesting place, filled with the kind of colourful encounters that are the essence of the early Fighting Fantasy books. Gambling guards, a pathetic beggar, a mysterious column, aggressive Red Eyes and treacherous Sightmasters. The PCs had been told by the guards on the main gate that they needed to go straight to Valignya, First Assistant to the Lord Treasurer of Mampang, to pay the tax on their ‘booty’. I’m not sure that Cramer would appreciate being described so…

Throughout this game the party never really acquired the ‘world sense’ required to adventure in Titan. Set a goal – whether it was cross Kakabad or find NPCX – and they would pursue it single-mindedly. That's probably a very good strategy when given a mission in the real world. Unfortunately for them, Titan is a *very* strange place. Dismissing a wretched beggar or a strange shop as unimportant with regard to the pursuit of goal might work in the logic of the real world, but on Titan (not least because of the legacy of the gamebook structure), YOU can never know what might be found pursuing those little diversions.

Death, quite possibly. As a legacy of the gamebook structure it is often the case that, on Titan, players must make decisions without sufficient information, and the decisions are therefore meaningless. Do YOU open the door? Do YOU go left or do YOU go right? Do YOU approach the beggar? In gamebooks it is often the case that acquiring the necessary information necessary is achieved by way of (repeated) failure. And I don’t care what you all say – in a game failure can be fun.

YOUR Adventure Ends Here. Roll up a new YOU. See my adventures in failure here.

That works... for a gamebook; as much as some of the ways to fail in a FF book are 'unfair', I am pretty confident that I would feel cheated if gamebooks were routinely 'won' on the first play. But then,when playing a gamebook there is just YOU, so playing again is simply a matter of grabbing a new sheet of paper, rolling four d6, and returning to section 1. But in a multiplayer tabletop RPG (for which you have assembled your friends in the face of the demands of real life) there can be only one attempt to recover the Crown of Kings, else the success or failure of the quest, in having no consequence, has no meaning. If there is one thing that the Arion Games version of Crown of Kings needs, it is a GM willing and able to saturate the adventure with the kind of information (clues, hints, foreshadowing, and the obligatory confessions extracted by torture) necessary for the players to make informed, meaningful decisions and avoid (though good play) the multitude of possible TPKs. I got better at this as we played, though I did swallow my principles and ‘rescue’ the party a few times, something that I would not have done in a living sandbox. But then my living sandbox would never involve the kind of deathraps with which the Archmage had peppered his Fortress.

Scan of picture, by John Blanche, borrowed from Fighting Fantasy Project, which, coincidentally has just finished its own playthrough of the the Sorcery! gamebook series.

First though - Valignya and the tax. Curiously, his room is found off the second courtyard beyond the chambers of a monster trainer. I redrew the map somewhat, to make it possible for the residents of Mampang to pay their dues without having to get past a murderous MUCALYTIC. Despite the utterly unhelpful monster trainer, the party made it to Valignya's room unmolested. Valignya was a fat man living in superficial opulence, with ornate fabrics and elaborate trinkets on every surface; the accumulation of tax paid in kind. He demanded a cut of the value of the 'prisoner', which the party paid, but the taxman then demanded the prisoner herself; he would either add Cramer to his retinue of slaves, or he could use her to enhance his credit with those who reside deeper in the Fortress. The party resisted, naturally enough, demanding the honour of turning her over to the master torturer in person. Valignya surreptitiously tried to poison the PCs, but failed (never underestimate high Luck scores). Shifting nervously, he decided to take the profit where he could find it, and demanded a 'door tax' if he was to give them the information they needed to pass the second set of Throben Doors and find Naggamanteh.

"Alaralatanalara!"

A GM should always change the names found in a published adventure if they are unpronounceable. Alara-whatnow? Few things are worse for immersion in a fantasy world than a GM who needs ten attempts to pronounce a word. Ahem...

But at least this was a magic word, not the mangling of an ordinary name that looked good when written down. And with that magic word, the second set of Throben Doors opened harmlessly and the party found themselves in the third (and final) courtyard of Mampang. From this courtyard the party enjoyed a diversion in the kitchens of the Fortress, before heading straight for the torture chamber. Opting not to open doors unnecessarily, they managed to avoid meeting the good BIRDMEN, the Samaritans of Schinn, and a crowd of bad Birdmen, loyal to the Archmage. They managed to avoid an amusing romp in a room full of mutants. Instead, confident that the goal that they had set themselves was, without question, the necessary next step in the adventure, they made straight for the torture chamber of Naggamenteh.

He looks bashful. So they bashed him in. Scanned image again borrowed from Fighting Fantasy Project, by John Blanche.

An OGRE - and an unusually ugly one, even by the standards of his species - Naggamenteh is not used to bargaining when he doesn't hold the whip hand. Literally. This encounter descended into a fight pretty quickly, but facing three hardened adventurers, the Ogre didn't stand a chance. Begging for his life, the party did as all good adventurers would do - they improvised, employing the material at hand. The material at hand was some of the most sophisticated torture equipment on the surface of Titan. They soon had one dead, mutilated Ogre and a warning that the magic that guards the third set of Throben Doors is not what it seems.

Next session: the party meet an obligatory Fighting Fantasy trader, avoid three deathtraps (just, well, kinda), before engaging in a most ludicrously futile fight.