A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 6: "The Voice of God"

Common sense isn't that common...

When you are the GM, creating an adventure or running a pre-made one, it's hard to see why the players would do anything other than is expected of them.  You see all angles and things that seem obvious to you are not readily apparent to the players.  Case in point;

As the group was setting out from Dag's Inn and further along the Gold Road, it had not dawned on them that the sigil of House Trevayne might not be something to display openly, given the encounter they had the previous night.  Here is where you have to use the NPC's as "the Voice of God."  You aren't telling the players what to do, you are playing their common sense.  It's a way to keep the immersion in the game and not just blurt out possible ideas.  Here, the inn keep questioned whether they wanted to travel so openly as members of House Trevayne.  Of course, as somewhat arrogant bannermen of House Lannister, they didn't feel the need to hide their sigil.  They were too proud.  They did have Elan ride ahead of the main party displaying no colors, to try and keep an eye for potential threats.

Their journey turned out to be fairly uneventful.  As expected, they did get plenty of dirty looks and watchful eyes, and the inn they rested at, The Great Stag, gave them a suitably cold welcoming.  Prior to the main group arriving, Elan made the acquaintance of two apparent Dornish people; a man and a woman appearing to be siblings.  They introduced themselves as Ser Armattan and Amberley, members of House Vale in the Reach.  They chatted a bit and once the other party members arrived, they remained friendly, apparently not caring about the rumors of House Trevayne.

After a time, the group turned their attention to another person at the inn, a boisterous, drunken man, spreading lots of coin about who became peculiarly quiet and furtive once he saw the group.  It was here that they found a potential lead in their investigation.  This man, Hamish Flowers, revealed himself, reluctantly, to be the sole surviving member of the mercenaries hired by the Fox Knight, a disgraced knight turned bandit, to murder the House Buckwell smallfolk.  Everyone follow that?  He admitted to killing the other mercenaries in their sleep, and received a big payout from the Fox Knight.  He had no idea who hired the Fox Knight with this job originally, though.

Reason prevailed with Zoren and Elan and they didn't straight murder Hamish.  They knew he would useful in clearing their name, so they just gave him more to drink, a serving wench to seem him to his room and turned in for the night.

The following morning brought a harsh disappointment;  Elan found Hamish dead, throat slit and robbed.  This didn't sit well with Zoren.  He promptly went to the obvious suspect for Hamish's murder...the serving wench.  He burst into her room, forced her to wake, dress, and be interrogated about Hamish's murder.  He did exercise classic Trevayne restraint and just yelled and accused her.  Lucius and Elan inspected both Hamish's room and the serving girl's room, uncovering no murder weapon, no money, and the suggestion that Hamish's murderer entered and exited through the window.

Dissatisfied with the answers they received, the group set out on their final day's travel.  A few hours from King's Landing, Elan's scouting revealed a small group, armed and laying in wait.  Elan passed them by, circled around, and watched them.  As the main group approached, the men charged out, shouting "For House Buckwell!" and attacked.  After a very short combat, the group killed all but one of the ambushers, learning that they were hired by Lord Dominic Buckwell who gave them a letter bearing his seal.  The letter turned out to be a very poor forgery and the description of Lord Buckwell he gave them matched the description Hamish gave of the Fox Knight.  It seemed apparent that these men were just hapless dupes, hired by the Fox Knight to harass House Trevayne.  So of course, they killed the lone survivor.  Classic House Trevayne.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 5: Normalcy

Sometimes, things go accordingly

This past week was pretty standard affair for our group (aside from some really inappropriate jokes).  I have no glimpses into my GM'ing process with this post, just an update of where the party is in the story.

Following last week's unfriendliness at Masha's Inn, the group set off and reached the nearby city of Deep Den, where the Trevayne's share a distant relationship with Lord Lydden.  They dropped off the bandit to receive the King's Justice, spent the night as guests of Lord Lydden and met up with Lucius, the young assassin in training, and begrudgingly traded the bandit's horses for a cheaper (though not in their minds) price on a warhorse for Zoren.

After a few days travel, they reached another inn of note, Dag's, where they quickly received a cold welcome.  Between the reserved fear of the stableboy, serving girl, and matron, they assumed word had come down from Masha's and were preparing themselves.  Once a couple of sellswords approached the party and accused them of murder, they knew something was up.  Zoren and Elan taunted the two and tricked them into going outside while they locked the door to the inn and had Zoren block it off.  This restraint honestly surprised me.  After Elan's quickness to shot first, ask questions later, I figured these two sellswords were dead.

Talking with the owners of the inn, the group learned that the heir of their rival house, Aiden Buckwell, had been by a day or so before on his way to King's Landing.  During his stay, he told tale of the atrocities House Trevayne committed against his smallfolk; murder.  He brought proof in the form of a bloody shield bearing House Trevayne's sigil.

Learning of the accusations being levied against their house, Zoren surprised the sellswords by opening the door causing them to rush in.  He shield bashed one into unconsciousness and the other fell where Elan drew daggers on him.  They offered the two their lives if they left right then and did not come back.  They agreed.

Now the group has to watch itself on the last stretch towards King's Landing and hope to clear their house of crimes they did not commit.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 4: Adaptability

Players will always derail...always

One thing I have learned in the few years I've been a GM, is that players will always find someway to deviate from the expected.  It could be they ignore an important clue or an NPC that sets up the session that is key to the entire campaign that you have devised for months.  Sometimes it's unintentional.  Maybe the clue was just a little too subtle at the time and you have to work to reinforce the idea that "by the way, that medallion you found on the bandit...it's really important!"  Sometimes it's tied to how they roleplay.  Maybe the players skip over the NPC entirely because their characters "have no reason to interact with them."  This is not a bad thing in anyway and should never be discouraged.  Now you've learned that the band of adventurers really don't like nuns, hate religion and would never step foot inside a church.  Take that important information the NPC had and put it on someone who they would interact with; a tavern keep perhaps, or a guy looking to hire some mercenaries.  They key thing to take away from this is that you have to be flexible.  You have to adapt.  I think we mentioned it a couple times on the podcast, but roleplaying and, more importantly, GM'ing is almost like doing improv.

This past week, I started in on the premade adventure in the back of the A Song of Ice and Fire book.  I've ran very few premade adventures in the past because, I feel, that you have to be ready to react more in those situations when players deviate from the path laid out.  If it is a session or campaign I am running myself, I rarely have concrete paths laid out overall, so I can react a bit better to something of my own creation.  Plus, it might have something to do with the people I game with.

Early in the adventure, on the way to King's Landing, the group found some bodies, presumably killed by bandits.  This set them on alert some, as it should.  After all, one of them is heir to a noble house, and the others are body guards of a sort.  When they go to the inn for the night, they pretty quickly noticed "guy huddled alone, by the fire, sniffing and coughing like he's sick."  So when people turned in for the night, a watch was set and it was Elan, the bow wielding scout, who was awake and noticed the guy sneaking out.  He wasted no time in shooting an arrow right into the guy's leg, crippling him.

Here's where I had to alter a little.  I expected him to follow him silently to see where he was going, maybe confront him about being up so late...not shoot him in the leg, 5 yards from the inn.  I am used to this though, so I used it as the perfect opportunity to slow the game down and make the players have to deal with potential repercussions.  (The other thing I could have done was just scrap the entire bandit angle and make him truly just a random guy, but I didn't want to be that mean.  I may in the future though...)

The guy screamed out, waking the entire inn.

The inn keep was kind of an old lady, and not unkind.  She didn't have much care for lords and nobility, they have to pay like everyone else.  So when she sees one of her patron's bleeding with an arrow through the leg, of course she's upset.  What arose was probably one of the most belligerent common folk in the entire land of Westeros.  I probably played her a little too obstinately, but that made it more interesting.  She wanted them out, they wanted to stay the rest of the night.  They tried to pay her off, she wanted more than they offered.  She wasn't going to back down just because this guy was a lord.  So, while The Fort and Terrance stayed around to intimidate and threaten the innkeep (which was quite easy once they stopped playing nice), Elan went off with one of the household guards they brought along to find the bandit camp the wounded man was running off to.

The bandit encounter, as was printed in the book, was designed to be either an ambush set by the bandits or the players.  Should have been during the day, and at least everyone would be awake.  Here is another place I had to alter.  I don't want to say I "accommodated" the players, but I definitely alter encounters a little when I see the players using their skills appropriately or trying to play the game in a logical fashion.  Instead of the bandits being awake, waiting for their guy to tell them of travelers coming, they were asleep because of the delay caused by the arrow and the commotion at the inn.  It's obviously possible to travel there in a relatively short period of time, that guy was gonna do it.  Elan is a good tracker, and with his high skill, he was able to find them, all asleep.  I could have just said, "no, it's too dark, you can't find them" or "the sun is starting to rise, and the bandit camp is stirring" and kept the book encounter, but that is a cheat I feel.

What followed was a series of stealth rolls where he and the guard went from tent to tent, slitting the throats of the bandits.  Encounter over and Elan was vindicated for his quick, reckless action.

Game Bag Tutorial

Hello Gamers!  Susie here.  I like to be crafty and make things to "enhance" our games.  One of the easiest things to do (and usually impresses friends when you drag them out) is to make some drawstring bags for your game.  They can be used for dice bags or even little gifts for people.

Here are some examples:  Small world (orange), The Duke (Blue and Red), my dice bag (pink), a random bag I made for my sister (white and navy), and the bag I made for this tutorial (I used the same fabric as I did for one of the Duke bags)

My dice bag with the dice in it.  I don't have a lot of dice that aren't also Chris', but these are my special dice that I like to keep separate. 

The Small world bags are my favorites.  The outside is a happy orange with little cartoon flowers and inside are skulls and crossbones.  I think it capture the theme of Small World nicely. No drawstring because we don't store things in this bag, just use them to draw the races and power tiles.

This is the basic tutorial I use to make all my bags for games.  It's a very clear step-by-step explanation of how to make a lined drawstring bag.  I do make a few size adjustments as well as other figits to the instructions.  For example, my pattern size is 8 inches wide and 9.5 inches tall for the outside of the bag and 8 inches wide and 8.5 inches tall for the lining. You can really make the bag in any size as long at the lining is 1 inch shorted that the outside of the bag, but maintains the same width.  I also made a bag that was 7" x 7" for the outside and 6" x 7" for the inside to show you a size comparison.

First things first, you have to have a sewing machine to make these bags!

This is my sewing machine!  It's a Singer Esteem, which only kind of is for teenage girls.  It was about $75 on sale from walmart and has survived being moved 4 times (once overseas via truck, boat, and train) and fallen off the back of a moving truck.  The tension is a little off now (stupid moving truck) but it serves my purposes.

You also have to understand some verbiage regarding fabric.  Here is a handy diagram!  One of my first figits is that the red crown fabric has a facing, meaning it the crowns will need to point up on both sides of the bag so instead of cutting one long swatch of fabric, I need to cut two smaller pieces out

Anatomy of fabric!  Important to know when you cut out your pattern.  Selvage is spelled sevlage, not selvedge.  Forgive the typo!

Anyways, below is the steps to making a bag from beginning to end.  Again, the tutorial has a much more detailed explanation on how to do it.

Freshly ironed fabric! This is fabric I picked out for the game The Duke.   I also have matching blue fabric to make the second draw bag for the tiles.  Picking out fabric is my favorite part of the whole process.  

Applying my pattern to the fabric.  Here is another change I make to the tutorial.  Because I need the crowns to face up on both sides of the bag, instead of putting the bottom of the patten on the fold to create one long strip of fabric, I cut out two smaller rectangles and then sew together to make sure it all faces correctly.

The inside of the bag also needs to be two separate pieces of fabric, so don't cut on the fold, cut near the selvage.

All my fabric cut out!  I also used a much smaller pattern to make a second bag to give away as a gift (it turned out tiny!).

Here is the outer fabric where I sewed the bottom together.  Notice that the crowns face different directs at the very bottom!  If you fabric doesn't have a facing, you can skip this step by cutting out your pattern along the fold and having one large piece of fabric. 

Backside of the fabric. I really recommending pressing the seam.   Pressing the seam means ironing the seam on both sides to make it flat and gives you a more finished and less rumped bag.

After I've sewing the lining to the outside of the bag.  Always iron and press the seems!  It can be a pain in the butt (especially since my iron and ironing board are in a difference room from my sewing machine) but it's worth it for a nicer finished project.

Here is a handy map for how to sew the bag together.  To turn the corner, the easiest thing to do is stop sewing, make sure the needle is in the fabric, lift the sewing machine foot, and then turn the fabric 90 degrees on the needle.   To make thegap, just back stitch when you get to that needle, raise the foot and slide the fabric down and start sewing again from the next needle. If you don't leave this gap here, you will not be able to turn the bag rightside out!  And inch or two is best.

After the bag is sewn together, ready to be pulled right-side-out through that little hole.

Hooray!  Like magic, just pull it through and make sure to poke your corners with a knitting needle, chopstick, or whatever.  Iron again to smooth out the bag.  Close the little open gap on the lining by sewing a very small seam across the gap.

Tuck the lining down into the bag and voila, bag!  

Fin!  

 Note:  I skipped the drawstring because I am out of drawstrings.   The drawsting is the trickiest part.  I also alter the directions a little because I'm bad at lining it up.  Instead of leaving a small gap when you sew the bag together, I just sew it all up, make the drawstring seams as recommended in the directions, and then use a seam ripper to delicately rip out the side seams.  Then, just use a paperclip or safety pin to thread the drawstring through the gap you made with the seam ripper.  The way I do it means a lot of swearing and fussing at Chris, but it keeps me from having to line things up and I can alter how high or low I want the drawstring on each bag.  I will give a small tutorial when I make bags for the Capitals (I have ordered fabric, but it hasn't arrived yet)

Game Expansions: Killer or Filler, or Utter Garbage?

Many board games, if not most, have some sort of "expansion" that comes out eventually. If the game was popular enough to make money for the publisher, it's almost a guarantee you'll see an expansion of some sort anymore. In theory, this is great for people who love the game -- an expansion is more options, more cool bits, more cards and strategies... and more is always better.

Right?

Well, of course not, but it's easy to get sucked into the excitement of new stuff coming out for a game you love. The other day, I was reading a review for an expansion to Eldritch Horror, a game I don't even own (nor do I have any intention of owning it), and I got that little feeling of "Oh, this sounds great." Maybe it's just sort of a generalized positive feeling that someone out there who loves that game are getting something that will expand and improve their experience. Maybe it's just a generic rush of brain chemicals when I see something new. It was a decidedly weird experience.

Don't get me wrong, I have some game expansions that I really love. They are core to the game, for me.

But it's easy to fall into a trap of buying an expansion that you neither want nor need, and this can happen for a variety of reasons. Maybe you are new to a game, and in the excitement of discovering new strategies and exploring the depth of the game, you find out about a set of new spell cards or enemy encounter tokens, and you just can't stand to be without them. Perhaps you own a game that you used to play all the time, but as the weeks and months pass, you find you are playing it less and less... but a new expansion has come out, and it might be the very injection of newness and excitement the game needs to go back to the top of your list.

I've fallen into those traps before, and recently I've been thinking more and more about the expansions I regret buying. Not because they destroyed the game, or made it boring, too complicated, or otherwise unplayable. It's just that I sometimes have added an expansion, and the addition has done the opposite of what I wanted.

When I first got Pandemic, I fell in love with it: a cooperative game with an easily accessible theme and a real sense of danger... and without fail, every time I have introduced someone to the game, they have finished and immediately asked to try it again. It was fantastic. So when I saw that there was an expansion that had come out, I leapt at the opportunity. Inside the box were more player roles (more than doubling the original game), a handful of ways to make the game more difficult, and even a one-vs-many variant, where a "bioterrorist" took over the role of one of the viruses.

But I didn't want Pandemic to be more difficult or less predictable. In it's base form, the game can be nearly impossible, even on the easiest setting. I really didn't care for the "one-vs-many" option, either. The cooperative nature of the game was one of the best selling points. In the end, I only really ever used the extra roles, and even those were a mixed bag.

Dominion has ended up similarly, although I realized its expansion problems years ago. The original game was ground-breaking, taking the "meta-game" concept of constructing a deck of cards by choosing the best distribution of the best combinations, and making it the game itself. Like Pandemic, it is a game that people always want to try a second time. It's fast and it's unlike anything they've seen. It's also a game with more expansions than anyone could imagine when it first was published.

We played Dominion dozens of times in a single sitting when we first got it. As time passed, we played less, our attention drawn to other games, but we still really liked the experience of building up the deck from an assortment of cards. So we bought Intrigue, the first expansion, and it gave a bump to our enjoyment. New cards! New strategies! New combinations! But it began a gradual slide down as well. So we bought Seaside, the second expansion... but the bump was less. And as the number of expansions grew, we found more and more that we could pass on, and less and less time to play the game. It just wasn't as much fun. We never got to see the old classics like "Chapel" or "Village," and more and more we had to deal with cards that were more complex and more difficult to use effectively. How many different kinds of "villages" do we need?

As I look through my collection, I realize that there are many other games that have suffered a similar fate. Race for the Galaxy was slowed, overburdened with awkward rules... Agricola was turned from a dense but fun system of interlocking parts into an impenetrable engine with free-spinning flywheels... The tactical options of Alien Frontiers were buried under a deluge of factions...

I love all of these games, and I want to re-emphasize that none of them are made into "bad games" by their expansions. But I find that I play them less now, in part due to the expansions themselves. For me, expansions work best when they simply add more of the same, and they work poorly when they try to add new, bumpy sub-systems and strategies to the smooth play of the original. So, I've begun the process of separating out the parts I don't like from the parts I do.

Race for the Galaxy is great with the new worlds and developments, but the chunky mess of rules for attacking an opponent's worlds are out. Dominion is perfect with its core and one expansion - probably Prosperity, because where Intrigue and Seaside actually add new rules to how the game works, Prosperity is in most cases "regular Dominion, but BIGGER." We're giving away our copy of Pandemic: On The Brink, just sticking to the core game from now on, and I'm weirdly excited to see it go.

I'm careful with expansion purchases now. I need to know what's in them, and if it's not what I'm looking for, if it's not "the same, but more," then I definitely won't get it... and even if it is, maybe I shouldn't! Mage Knight (the board game, not the minis) is fun, but I don't really think I need more artifacts and enemies... I barely have touched the ones I do have. 7 Wonders is fantastic, but the expansions throw off the meticulous balance of the core game and add entirely new phases and paths to victory. Who needs it?

To close, I want to quickly touch on a few games that I don't have any regrets in buying the expansions:

Small World - in this game, the players take the roles of a flood of fantasy civilizations, all trying to colonize a crowded map. These civilizations are made up of power, such as "Rampaging," and a race such as "Elves." It is only improved by the expansions that add new powers and races (Be Not Afraid, Grand Dames, and Cursed!). The base game had only just enough power/race combinations to cover what was needed, but the expansions add variety, surprise, and fun without changing anything about how the game is played. I recommend staying away from expansions such as Leaders, which try to add an extra concern during the game...

Sentinels of the Multiverse - Superheroes vs. supervillains! Every villain requires a different strategy, and different combinations of heroes provide that. So why not add more heroes? Why not add more villains? Why not add environments that can take a chump of a bad guy and turn him into a virtually unstoppable menace? With all of the different heroes, villains, and environments, there is so much to try that it is hard to get bored.

Summoner Wars - A game designed around factions beating the tar out of one another. There isn't any worthwhile deckbuilding to do (although some people might disagree), but there is a lot of depth and variety to the factions, and there is no faction that isn't worth trying. Each faction brings something new while shining a new light onto the old factions - this is a game that could expand forever, and never lose anything because of it.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 3: First Session

So, no game this most recent week allows me to play catch up and keep this thing mostly on schedule.  Today I talk about, what I feel is one of the most important sessions, the first one.

Opening Day

Part of the fun or roleplaying games is creating a story and memorable encounters with your friends, the other players, and having fun.  The having fun part is pretty easy for some games like D&D or games that really only have one focus, like combat or cunning and intrigue.  Every one can be included at the same time and characters have very similar focuses.  There are few times when one or more people are not engaging in the game at a time.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, characters have a variety of choices to focus on.  Looking back at my previous post, you can see that we have basically 3 types of characters; 2 fighters, 1 social character, and 1 assassin.  If I focus on combat in a session, the 2 fighters are happy and quite useful.  The assassin and social character don't work well in straight up combat at all.  On the other hand, if I focus on the political intrigue side, potentially 3 characters are sitting on the side lines.  It's a careful balance one has to strike, but inevitably there will be some points when a player's character is not actively participating in the game, especially in SIFRP.

For the first session, I just recently decided to treat it sort of like the pilot to a new TV show; give each player a small scene where their character can shine and start introducing the mechanics of the game relevant to that character.  In a game like SIFRP, it makes sense, especially if you look at the books and actual T show.  It also would work for any game that has such varied choices for character creation and when having characters with different focuses.

First I started with Lucius, the bastard born assassin.  I set a training scene with him and his assassin trainer.  We traded rolls back and forth seeing who could get the upper hand with Stealth and Awareness rolls.  This no risk conflict allowed us to get used to the opposed test mechanics and roll some dice.

Second, I turned to Terrance, the heir to the house to start on the Intrigue rules.  In SIFRP, Intrigue is almost like combat.  For basic things, like getting past a guard, one roll is usually all that suffices.  Longer cons, or discussion call for multiple rolls, and it is very similar to combat.  I started with a local merchant who was looking for better prices on the metals he buys from the house.  Again, a simple, no to little risk conflict for the player.  That scene doubled as a gauge of power level for Terrance.

Third came the two fighters who got to fight off some bandits that harass the lands around House Trevayne.  This one was more of a learning point for me.  I knew the characters would be able to handle 3 bandits, one of whom was hiding, but I had no idea that they would just stomp them into the ground.  There's nothing wrong with the characters being powerful and it makes sense that trounce no name bandits.  It helps me know that if I want them to face a challenge, they will probably have to be similarly powerful enemies.

After introductions to the characters, I devised a small session to introduce some other noble Houses the group would be encountering; a wedding!  Nothing dire, like in the books, but a simple affair that really just served the purpose of letting the characters roleplay and get them involved in the world more.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty solid session and introduction to the game.  Next week, the group gets started on the adventure that is published in the back of the rulebook; Peril at King's Landing.