Toast of the Town
Today I ran @S. John Ross 's adventure Toast of the Town, partially to understand what he means by "high-trust trad", and partially because it's simply a really well-written adventure and I needed a one-shot. It was perfect.
Spoilers in a comment below.
We used the Risus system it was written for, which was a first for us. Risus is super lightweight, and has a few oddities could be unbalancing or metagameable, or the GM has to work to balance it. But it encourages creativity, and that worked great.
Martijn Vos
Als Antwort auf Martijn Vos • •spoilers for Toast of the Town
The players chose Morgain, Manciple and Gin Giria, so they were super stealthy, and ended up saving the Huzrael without anyone (except the Huzrael and Max) realising what had happened. So no fame for them; just the knowledge that they quietly did good..
As the PCs arrived in the town, I almost forgot to have Alderman Calway welcome them and point them in various directions. Actually, I did forget, and as they entered the square and started looking around, I realised I forgot and retconned them back to the docks for their official welcome.
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This adventure has a lot of interesting NPCs that can be hard to keep track of, but the Alderman is easy; I had no excuse to overlook him. But the PCs weren't that interested in asking him information, so I might as well have skipped it.
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They headed straight for the inn, but when they saw the demon on display, they immediately felt sorry for him, and almost wanted to free him right there and then. But they saw no way to do that with the crowds on the square, so they went to the inn, talked to Max, who spilled some of the beans, but not all. (The PCs didn't ask for the location of the Nest, and Max had already volunteered enough info.)
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Then they examined the smoking ruins, and this is where it became obvious that having an intelligent cat in your group is practically cheating. Sure Bascombe won't let them into the shop, but is he going to notice a cat? So Morgain examines the ruins, find the tunnel, the impressions of the moved crates, etc. while the others talk to Bascombe. This would soon turn into their standard strategy.
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After that, they visited the temple. Convincing the priests to let them visit their dead friend, and perform some farewell ritual on him that they claimed meant a lot to him, took some convincing, which I handled as social combat. Works great. In the end, the priests were somewhat relieved that the PCs offered them an excuse not to display the bodies in the square.
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They also snuck around the catacombs a bit, and I let them have a locked door that connected the catacombs inside the temple to the ones outside that had been turned into the town's sewer system. They located a convenient grate entrance for their next plan: freeing Hirash.
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The plant mage used alchemy and plant magic to create some hallucinogenic spores to daze the guards (no idea how to do this against multiple opponents, so I made the guards a grunt squad, which made this pretty hard, and the mage used several lucky shots to defeat them), then more plant magic to have the big oak tree grow and drop lots of acorns, while Morgain used some illusion magic to make the sound of the dropping acorns a lot louder. With both the guards and the crowd distracted, the plant mage used more plant magic to loosen the ropes, and Manciple caught Hirash. They quickly hurried to the grate behind the temple to disappear into the sewers, while Morgain create an illusion of a flying demon in the sky to make it look like Hirash flew away. Amazing plan. I had no idea how they could possibly free Hirash under so much attention, but they pulled it off.
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Then a lot of searching through the sewers where they wasted a lot of time. Originally they wanted to take Hirash to the Nest, but they had no idea where it was. I could of course have let them find it anyway, but decided the sewers and catacombs were a maze and they had no idea where they had to go. And neither did Hirash. So instead, they took him to Max. Aranged a hand cart with a tarp to disguise the sewer exit, and hid Hirash in the cellar of the inn.
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Max explained how they could find the Next, and here they split the party! Morgain headed to Drakeshall to check it out, saw lots of goons, but who cares about a cat wandering around? Found an open window to the kitchen and headed down. The rest headed into the sewers, found the Nest, talked to the Huzrael, discovered the secret door had closed behind them, so they had no choice but to head towards Drakeshall, just when Morgain came from that direction. Morgain headed back to the kitchen just to see Drake and his little army leave for the square (a bit earlier than originally planned, because their demon had escaped and Drake wanted to get the others before Hirash could reach them).
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The Huzrael stayed in the cellar of the kitchen while the plant mage spent half an hour growing roots through the cracked dome of the Nest to collapse it. Meanwhile Manciple and Morgain climbed onto the roof of Drakeshall to open a window to the attic. (Then I discovered that the text explicitly says there's no window there, but I figured a small window is a cheaper way to give the servants some light than constantly burning candles there.) They soon found some Emerald Oil, didn't explore the rest of the house, but immediately headed back to heal the Huzrael. The description of Emerald Oil says it takes 5-7 hours before they're healed but that felt too slow for me, so I let it take effect quicker in the Huzrael because it's their life force in there, after all.
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They then helped the Huzrael flee the city through turning trees into stairways to get over various walls, including the city walls. It was twilight already, so I figured they could do this without getting discovered.
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When they finally got back to the inn, Hirash had disappeared (his foolish bravery playing up). For a moment they considered it his own stupid fault if something happened to him, but decided to look for him anyway. Finally Whisper the Wonder Dog got to shine: his nose picked up the scent, and he jumped onto the roof and lead them to where Hirash had found Jaina.
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They didn't see any need to expose Drake or claim any fame, content that the victims were safe. Nobody needed to know of their sneaky heroics.
#toastofthetown
Martijn Vos
Als Antwort auf Martijn Vos • •Martijn Vos
Als Antwort auf Martijn Vos • •Content Warning button seems to do nothing, but manually adding a spoiler tag works, but only hides a single paragraph instead of everything between the tags; empty lines break the spoiler. I added a dot on every empty line to keep some formatting. My spoilers look different from those from Mastodon users.
Looks like Friendica's handling of content warning/spoilers is inconsistent and buggy.
Martijn Vos
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • •@S. John Ross
spoilers for Toast of the Town
Gin's player originally thought her plant magic was a bit useless in a city, but then they saw the big oak, and realised there's always small plants everywhere..
I've got to admit I had no idea how to handle the power level of the cliches. They did get away with a few big effects, but I thought the plan was awesome, and I figured that's what counts.
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And yeah, they saw Drake only from a distance. I didn't get to perform any over-the-top hero wannabe theatrics.
Martijn Vos
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • •@S. John Ross
Gin was female, and played by a female player. Morgain didn't care. Was a demon, after all. Played by a male player. I like the flexibility.
Martijn Vos
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • •@S. John Ross
Yeah, no need for revenge, and they were content to do good without public recognition. I like it. Drake can continue pretending to be a hero.
Not only did I not get to play Drake and only very little Gravas, I also completely forgot to introduce Firemaster Yosh. But they didn't really need him.