The setup for "Goblins in the Stacks," our first adventure, was rather simple. The player characters were all Friends who were going to the Mall of America to a comic book shop to purchase Issue 1 of a Japanese Manga called "The Magical Land of Yeld." All of them had heard the comic was incredible, but no one knew any more about the book. So the session began with the kids standing in a long line waiting for the store to open and worried that by the time they would make it inside, all of the issues would be sold.
I made a mistake early on by deciding the proprietor of the comic book shop was a former-hippie-artist-turned-comic-book-g
Anyway, the players all had different ideas on how to up their chances of getting inside the comic book shop, and most of them involved some sort of action that would either get all of them thrown out of the mall or cause harm to the people in the line. At one point Cody (playing the Baby) said "Fire makes for a good distraction." With my character Chase, I tried to steer them in a less destructive path, and as GM reminded everyone they were kids and relatively good ones.
In the end the group decided to get out of line and work their way around to the back of the mall and to the back door of the comic book shop. It was a known fact Dirty Gary had a storeroom in back called The Stacks, an area reserved for back stock, rare comics and piles of memorabilia collected by Gary over the years (including a monster-mask collection that would come into play later in the game).
As GM I spent the first of my Action Dice to set up a challenge for the players: To sneak into the back storeroom without being noticed. The two smartest characters, Rainbow and Davey, put their heads together, so I allowed Davey to make a Smarts roll of 3 (2 for his Smarts and an extra die since Violet was helping) against a relatively minor challenge of 2. I'm not sure this is how it was laid out in the rules, but in order to keep things moving I decided not to search through the rulebook and instead allowed the extra die. Davey made the roll fairly easilty, ending up with an 11 versus my 6, so I decided the back door hadn't shut properly after the last delivery and there wasn't anyone watching the back door. The kids slipped in and began to search for the comic books.
Throughout the session I allowed players to name small items their character might carry, so long as it seemed within reason (no shotguns or bolt cutters). Davey pulled a small Hello Kitty keychain light out of his fanny pack (he is the Princess after all) to give them some light, and they slowly worked their way through the stacks of old comic books. Eventually, in the middle of the room, they found a small thick cardboard box with Japanese writing on the lables. The top had been opened. A thick velvet curtain hung over the doorway to the front of the shop, and they could hear Dirty Gary arguing with someone on the phone about a shipment being delayed and receiving too few comics. Convinced he was talking about "The Magical Land of Yeld," Violet the Brat, played by Rachel, reached into the box and pulled out the top copy of MLY. It was a rare chromium cover and was thicker than the other comics in the box, with a note that it contained a limited edition full color map of Yeld.
The group then argued over what to do with the rest of the comics, whether they would steal them, destroy them or somehow ruin them. I'm not sure why our Friends suddenly became such hooligans, but as the GM I told them they could hear noises and voices coming toward them from inside the stacks. The Friends split, with most of us diving behind some boxes and accidentally into a pile of Dirty Gary's monster masks. Violet and Mac, the 10-year-old Bully and oldest of the group, went behind a pile of Little Lulu back issues and watched as three Goblins came out from between several bookcases. One of the Goblins carried a twisted branch that glowed blue at the tip. They were talking about the Yeld comic book and searching for the box.
Mac decided to cause a distraction and tried to fire his slingshot (I decided a Bully could have one of those as a level 0 weapon) into the darkness, but ended up hitting Chug, the large, slow-witted Ogre following the Goblins. The shot did not damage, but there was a moment when the Friends thought they had been found. The Goblins called for Chug, and the leader, CrackTooth (a crooked-jawed Goblin) told the Ogre to "store" the case. Chug unhinged his lower jaw and swallowed the box.
Violet and Mac, with the Goblins and Ogre between them and their Friends, decided to cause a distraction, and together overturned the table they hid behind, sending Little Lulu comics scattering everywhere. They yelled "Door!" and ran, pursued by two of the three Goblins.
Carey, who plays Davey, came up with a cool idea: He grabbed a goblin-like mask, put it on, stood up and did a Smarts test against Chug. He yelled that "the little green kid" (CrackTooth) stole his wand. Chug, with a Smarts of 1, rolled a 4. Davey added in a Special Die of Monster Knowledge (that Ogre's are stupid) and rolled 3 dice, getting a 14 total. Chug turned, grabbed CrackTooth by the head, and as Davey and the other Friends ran, he made a Strong challenge against the Goblin (each rolling one die and winning with a 4 to CT's 1) and stole the wand.
Violet was pursued by the Goblin FinHead (who had a fin on his head) while Mac was pursued by OneEye (who had only,,, well, you get the idea). Violet grabbed a limited edition replica lightsabre, complete with sound and light up action, and spun to confront FinHead. She failed her Brave challenge and FinHead attacked, but failed in his attack (Strong 1) versus her defense (Tough 3). We decided the two of them squared off, and Violet attempted another Brave challenge, this time winning the die roll, knocking out FinHead's Brave of 1, and sending the Goblin running in terror.
OneEye lept up on a bookcase and Mac turned and used his Special Die of Trip to make a Strong attack of 3, knocking the book case over and crushing OneEye (Tough 1). The Goblin dropped a piece of Loot, and I ruled it was a Serrated Goblin Blade (Weapon 0). Mac grabbed up the sword and ran.
The Friends found themselves in the wrong part of The Stacks, unable to find the door out. Davey noticed the harder he gripped the wand, the more light it shed, so he suggested all of the Friends take ahold of it, and the blue light blazed forth, illuminating an old iron bound wooden door. Hearing Chug and CrackTooth coming toward them (CrackTooth having seeing the comic book in Violet's back pocket as she ran) the Friends opened the unknown door and lept through.
They all fell in a heap on the dirty ground outside, with sunlight streaming down on them. A booted foot landed beside them, and an armored guard in medieval gear told them to "get up, get moving." Other people in similar dress milled about, and the Friends realized they had fallen through the door, which hovered and rotated several feet above a large dry fountain. An old woman warned the group they had better move along, because the Whirr-Clicks that guarded the door certainly would come to see what had come through. No sooner did the Friends ask what a "Whirr-Click" was, then two large steam-driven robots came clunking around a corner. Everyone in the town square darted indoors, and the old woman beckoned the friends to hide in a small inn.
That was pretty much the end of the adventure. We talked a little bit about the direction of the next session, and everyone said they enjoyed the game and were eager to see where it led from here. One a side note, we did come to one decision concerning the theme of the game. We decided all future sessions would be based on the names of songs by the Canadian band Rush. So the next session will be appropriately named "La Villa Strangiato," the Strange Village.
Anyway, the players all had different ideas on how to up their chances of getting inside the comic book shop, and most of them involved some sort of action that would either get all of them thrown out of the mall or cause harm to the people in the line. At one point Cody (playing the Baby) said "Fire makes for a good distraction." With my character Chase, I tried to steer them in a less destructive path, and as GM reminded everyone they were kids and relatively good ones.
In the end the group decided to get out of line and work their way around to the back of the mall and to the back door of the comic book shop. It was a known fact Dirty Gary had a storeroom in back called The Stacks, an area reserved for back stock, rare comics and piles of memorabilia collected by Gary over the years (including a monster-mask collection that would come into play later in the game).
As GM I spent the first of my Action Dice to set up a challenge for the players: To sneak into the back storeroom without being noticed. The two smartest characters, Rainbow and Davey, put their heads together, so I allowed Davey to make a Smarts roll of 3 (2 for his Smarts and an extra die since Violet was helping) against a relatively minor challenge of 2. I'm not sure this is how it was laid out in the rules, but in order to keep things moving I decided not to search through the rulebook and instead allowed the extra die. Davey made the roll fairly easilty, ending up with an 11 versus my 6, so I decided the back door hadn't shut properly after the last delivery and there wasn't anyone watching the back door. The kids slipped in and began to search for the comic books.
Throughout the session I allowed players to name small items their character might carry, so long as it seemed within reason (no shotguns or bolt cutters). Davey pulled a small Hello Kitty keychain light out of his fanny pack (he is the Princess after all) to give them some light, and they slowly worked their way through the stacks of old comic books. Eventually, in the middle of the room, they found a small thick cardboard box with Japanese writing on the lables. The top had been opened. A thick velvet curtain hung over the doorway to the front of the shop, and they could hear Dirty Gary arguing with someone on the phone about a shipment being delayed and receiving too few comics. Convinced he was talking about "The Magical Land of Yeld," Violet the Brat, played by Rachel, reached into the box and pulled out the top copy of MLY. It was a rare chromium cover and was thicker than the other comics in the box, with a note that it contained a limited edition full color map of Yeld.
The group then argued over what to do with the rest of the comics, whether they would steal them, destroy them or somehow ruin them. I'm not sure why our Friends suddenly became such hooligans, but as the GM I told them they could hear noises and voices coming toward them from inside the stacks. The Friends split, with most of us diving behind some boxes and accidentally into a pile of Dirty Gary's monster masks. Violet and Mac, the 10-year-old Bully and oldest of the group, went behind a pile of Little Lulu back issues and watched as three Goblins came out from between several bookcases. One of the Goblins carried a twisted branch that glowed blue at the tip. They were talking about the Yeld comic book and searching for the box.
Mac decided to cause a distraction and tried to fire his slingshot (I decided a Bully could have one of those as a level 0 weapon) into the darkness, but ended up hitting Chug, the large, slow-witted Ogre following the Goblins. The shot did not damage, but there was a moment when the Friends thought they had been found. The Goblins called for Chug, and the leader, CrackTooth (a crooked-jawed Goblin) told the Ogre to "store" the case. Chug unhinged his lower jaw and swallowed the box.
Violet and Mac, with the Goblins and Ogre between them and their Friends, decided to cause a distraction, and together overturned the table they hid behind, sending Little Lulu comics scattering everywhere. They yelled "Door!" and ran, pursued by two of the three Goblins.
Carey, who plays Davey, came up with a cool idea: He grabbed a goblin-like mask, put it on, stood up and did a Smarts test against Chug. He yelled that "the little green kid" (CrackTooth) stole his wand. Chug, with a Smarts of 1, rolled a 4. Davey added in a Special Die of Monster Knowledge (that Ogre's are stupid) and rolled 3 dice, getting a 14 total. Chug turned, grabbed CrackTooth by the head, and as Davey and the other Friends ran, he made a Strong challenge against the Goblin (each rolling one die and winning with a 4 to CT's 1) and stole the wand.
Violet was pursued by the Goblin FinHead (who had a fin on his head) while Mac was pursued by OneEye (who had only,,, well, you get the idea). Violet grabbed a limited edition replica lightsabre, complete with sound and light up action, and spun to confront FinHead. She failed her Brave challenge and FinHead attacked, but failed in his attack (Strong 1) versus her defense (Tough 3). We decided the two of them squared off, and Violet attempted another Brave challenge, this time winning the die roll, knocking out FinHead's Brave of 1, and sending the Goblin running in terror.
OneEye lept up on a bookcase and Mac turned and used his Special Die of Trip to make a Strong attack of 3, knocking the book case over and crushing OneEye (Tough 1). The Goblin dropped a piece of Loot, and I ruled it was a Serrated Goblin Blade (Weapon 0). Mac grabbed up the sword and ran.
The Friends found themselves in the wrong part of The Stacks, unable to find the door out. Davey noticed the harder he gripped the wand, the more light it shed, so he suggested all of the Friends take ahold of it, and the blue light blazed forth, illuminating an old iron bound wooden door. Hearing Chug and CrackTooth coming toward them (CrackTooth having seeing the comic book in Violet's back pocket as she ran) the Friends opened the unknown door and lept through.
They all fell in a heap on the dirty ground outside, with sunlight streaming down on them. A booted foot landed beside them, and an armored guard in medieval gear told them to "get up, get moving." Other people in similar dress milled about, and the Friends realized they had fallen through the door, which hovered and rotated several feet above a large dry fountain. An old woman warned the group they had better move along, because the Whirr-Clicks that guarded the door certainly would come to see what had come through. No sooner did the Friends ask what a "Whirr-Click" was, then two large steam-driven robots came clunking around a corner. Everyone in the town square darted indoors, and the old woman beckoned the friends to hide in a small inn.
That was pretty much the end of the adventure. We talked a little bit about the direction of the next session, and everyone said they enjoyed the game and were eager to see where it led from here. One a side note, we did come to one decision concerning the theme of the game. We decided all future sessions would be based on the names of songs by the Canadian band Rush. So the next session will be appropriately named "La Villa Strangiato," the Strange Village.
I plan to post updated character stats and monster stats as well. I need to go back and figure out how many Adventure Dice I spent (four monsters and one challenge), but I am sure it was well less than 20, so it was an Easy Challenge (meaning the players now have 1 Reward Die).
Thats about it for now. I will post more as it comes to me.
ME
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chasethestars
chasethestars
Comments
In revising the Friends Core dice so that they all have 2 Tough dice, does it feel like they are now weak in other areas? My idea with the limited number of Core dice was that if you want to excel in one thing, it would be at the cost of everything else. You can be Tough, but the cost is that you suffer somewhere else. And there is no dump stat. I'm curious to see how everyone being tough will play out for you guys. It should work fine in that you'll all be able to stand up to damage, but I'm curious to see where your weakness will be.
A Japanese manga called "The Magical Land of Yeld"? Cute.
Your first conflict is pretty interesting for a few reasons. It sounds like what you did was present a problem, have the players roll, and then revealed to them how it was overcome. That totally works. I've been going about it a different way. Two different ways, actually. Usually what I do is I'll present a problem and let the players tell me how they want to deal with it, then have them roll to see if they succeed. For example:
Derek and Kim want to sneak into the back room of the store. Derek says he's going to pick the lock on the door, while Kim decides she'll sneak through the window. They roll their dice against my challenge dice. I decide that sneaking through the window is pretty hard. It's high off the ground. I roll 3 dice against Kim. I decide that I don't really want to waste more dice on this conflict, so I declare that the door isn't even locked! In fact, it's open. Derek can walk right in.
So that's one way I've been doing it. It seems to me like there was another way I've been handling this as well, but now I can't remember what it was now. Anyway, I'm not saying that the way you did it was wrong, just that it was different. It seems to work fine.
Something to consider is that the player gets to describe the results of his or her success or failure. Here's the bit from the rules:
"Who describes what happens? Any time your Friend does anything, you
get to describe what happens. If you are describing the outcome of a roll your description must reflect the rolls success or failure. You can’t fail a roll to jump over a hole and then describe how your Friend jumps over it anyway. Instead, you get to describe just exactly how your Friend almost makes it! While the other players get to describe what they do, the Game Master gets to describe what everything else does! The Game Master will describe the actions of the people the Friends meet, the Monsters that attack them and the strange things they see in the land of Yeld."
So if Rainbow and Davey are trying to sneak into the store and they roll a success, they get to describe how they get in. They may say something like "Oh look, the door was open", or they may describe how they dodge security guards by hiding in the trash cans, then slip in the back when Dirty Gary comes out for a smoke. It's up to them. You can totally exert control over this by framing the conflict a little more specifically. Instead of saying "the challenge is sneaking into the back room", you could say something like "the door has been left open. Can you sneak in without anyone seeing you". Either way is totally fine.
The one problem I have with this conflict is that it's not actually a conflict. The door is actually unlocked. The kids can walk right in. If the door was unlocked the entire time, then there wasn't a challenge. Unless the challenge was figuring out to come around to the back door, or working up the courage to see if the door was unlocked. That's viable. Challenges should be more concrete.The door is locked. There's a security camera. There's a Gap employee eating lunch. Something that actually keeps the Friends from accomplishing their goals. The friends shouldn't have to roll dice just to find out that there never was a challenge in their way.
That's what I think, anyway. More...
Minor items like the Hello Kitty flashlight used to be part of the game. When you made your Friend you choose a few personal items as well. These were single use items that let you roll an extra die. They stopped working once the Door closed. Another idea was that real world items were really powerful, but only functioned in the real world. Yeld items worked great in Yeld, but not at all in the real world.I eventually got rid of the real world items because I didn't want a complicated item list that would be useless once the door closed. But I've always liked the idea of items from the real world. They may appear again in some way.
"Store the case". Awesome!
Davey tricking the Ogre was fantastic. I hope it's apparent that this kind of stuff is totally within the rules. I'm glad he was able to use "II Know About Monsters". I sometimes wonder why I left the "I know about..." Special dice in there, then something like this happens and I remember that they're not knowledge dice like in D&D, but all purpose utility dice. That probably needs to be explained better in the text.
In Violets fight against Fin Head, what were the Brave Challenges for? Were these to see who got to fight first, or for something else? Oh, after reading it again, it looks like she was trying to interrupt him so she could attack first. Right?
In the Mac and One Eye fight, it sounds like Mac used Trip to knock the book case over and hurt One Eye. Really, how this should have worked is that Mac would just make a normal attack (Strong dice), describing it as a push against the book case, causing it to topple on One Eye. There's no reason to involve Trip. Except that I imagine that Mac wanted the extra die from Trip. The problem there is that while Trip does add to Strong dice, it doesn't take away Tough dice. One Eye would have lost Strong dice instead of Tough dice. This may have been exactly what happened, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. Actually, is it clear at all how Trip and similar Special dice work?
Using Rush songs as titles is awesome. Good call. It sounds like you guys had a great game. You've got me all excited to play again. Thanks for the feedback!
Jake
The Brave challenges against FinHead... thats a tricky one to explain. Part of Davey's "I know about Monsters" was "Ogres are slow-witted but strong and brave, and Goblins are smart but easily frightened." Violet was trying to scare FinHead (that was what the player wanted to do, something akin to Han Solo chasing the storm troopers ... probably because she had a lightsabre). The Brave challenge failed (I think it was a 1 vs. 1, cant remember right now) but then FinHead's attack failed, so the two just kind of stopped in front of one another. The player said "I try again" so I allowed a second Brave challenge, her swinging the flashing sword above her head like she was going to hit him, he failed the challenge this time, so i had him run away.
Oh, and the real-world items - the main reason I decided to allow them (and even encouraged them) to have those is because of the Trade Special Dice. I think it says something about trading items for things in Yeld? So, my plan was to give them a few things they could barter with once in Yeld. Kim, who was playing Rainbow, mentioned at some point having antacids (like her Friend had stomach problems so her mom had her carry them). I immediately came up ideas on how those could be used in-game, like encountering a Dragon with a tummy ache or to get Chug to give up the box of comic books, so I said "write that down!" So now her character sheets has "antacids" as a piece of equipment.
I will write more as I get time and answer some of your other questions. Cross posted this to Story-Games.com.
ME