Agent 333's FantasyCraft Camaign Log

[MordOptiMax]

Silvia Lightheart, Repoting for duty, Sir!

[Agent 333]

Silvia Lightheart, Repoting for duty, Maam!

Who you calling Maam? That's it, you lose an action die.

[MordOptiMax]

What are you talking about? i said no such thing.
That's it, lose 2 action dice Maam!

[Agent 333]

Dude, not cool.

[Agent 333]

First Session! Woo!

After getting things working with the online program we're using (GameTable, works pretty well), we got into it. Here's the intro text I used, with a few corrections.

"You enter Taggoth, a the southern-most city on the continent of Anterra. It's a large, sprawling city, twice as large as it was when the wall was put up around it. The roads are paved with gleaming marble cobbles, and buildings of stone and wood line the wide thoroughfares. Carts make their way through crowds of people, their wheels resting in wide ruts along the roads. Even out to the far end of the city, the feel of the warm ocean breeze soothes and relaxes weary travelers. The weather is hot and humid, but thanks to the ocean air it is quite bearable, even in heavy armor.

The crowds of people lining the streets are quite diverse. Native Taggothians, which comprise 3 out of 5 people in the city, are bronze skinned humans with dark hair and dark eyes. The rest of the people in the city come from a wide variety of lands and are made up of a wide variety of species. Of the non-humans, Elves and Pech are the most common here, though goblins, dwarves, orcs, and saurians are not far behind. Ogres make up a small but significant minority, and you see a few walking the streets."
I attempted to have the adventure not start in a bar, but EVERYONE went to a bar first, so whatever. I had them coincidentally all go to the same bar. Narron  and Phathesarin were late for the session, so they weren't there to start. Naiwyn and Rao laid low, while Silvia's massive beauty drew attention without trying (read: +7 to Appearance modifier). Aramis almost immediately started telling stories to everyone in the bar.
Naiwyn and Rao both started pestering the bartender for information about various background subplots of their characters, so they struck up a conversation about what they were looking for. The bartender didn't have a lot of info for them, but he suggested the harbormaster might be more well informed.
Meanwhile, Aramis finished his storytelling, and began talking to Silvia, starting with accidentally hitting on her. It was quite funny, actually.
After a bit of conversation, they all went to their separate rooms for the night. A scene change later, and they're up in the morning.
Naiwyn gets up first, and when Rao awakens he joins him at the breakfast table. Aramis joins them shortly thereafter. Silvia ignores the group and sits at her own table for a bit, then decides she needs a map and goes off in search of a cartographer.
Naiwyn and Rao head off to the pier to see what they can do about finding the harbor master for some information, Aramis joins them in hopes that it'll lead to some ADVENTURE.
Both Phathas and Narron's players showed up around this point, so I conveniently had them arriving on ships just as the bulk of the party arrived at the pier. The harbormaster asked Phathas a few questions regarding his unborn origin, then got MOBBED by nearly every other character asking him questions at once. Quite coincidentally, the harbormaster instantly became the most important person in town.
After being grilled for leads on three different subplots (two of which were kinda merged together to form the main plot), the party found out that the Mage that Naiwyn was hunting was in turn being followed by the woman that Rao was hunting, and had set up shop somewhere in the city, though he wasn't sure exactly where.
At some point during this, Silvia came back from getting a map, realized no one was at the Inn, and went looking for them at the docks (Having overheard their plans to head there). She finds them right as they're about to leave.
Narron, having no real reason to join the rest of the party on their quest for the rogue Mage, heads instead to the Inn on the Harbormaster's recommendation. Phathasarin, having his own goal but no real leads to start, decides to join with the party in hopes for some help after he helps them (or something).

At about this point, the session is called for time.

Overall, everyone seemed to have fun. The interface promoted role-playing, and allowed people to stay in character a lot better than face to face does in our group. Three of the 6 players were here with me in a LAN, which allowed for most of the OOC stuff to stay off the net. I encouraged questions to be asked online, however, so everyone could see the answers.

As far as scheduling goes, from now on the group decided Monday Nights from 7-12 would be best, though every third Monday of the month we'd have to wait till 9 to start because of a small scheduling conflict.

[Agent 333]

Had another session last night. It was a short one, only 2.5-3 hours due to scheduling and other SNAFUs, but it was fun.


The party went to the market to look for hints as to where to find the mage they're tracking. Naiwyn detected magic, and found that one of the shopkeepers had been recently charmed. Rao noticed some of his country-folk nearby, and went over to see if they knew the woman he was tracking. Phathas started talking up a shopkeeper, while Silvia evangelized to the masses. Narron, having secured a room at the Inn, went to the market to shop. Aramis was just kinda standing around with Naiwyn.

At this point, a lot started happening, so this may be a bit out of order. Naiwyn attempts to cast Heroism I, but critically fails. Having his confidence shaken, he casts a few easier spells to get back in his groove. Silvia also starts casting, you'd have to ask her player why. Rao gets in an argument with the Khudrans (his country-folk), Phathas notices and steps over to ask if anything's wrong. The Khudrans, having never seen a clockwork unborn before, begin backpeddling in fear. The city guards begin advancing on the spellcasters. Aramis steps in to try to play it off as a show. Naiwyn pulls rank, trying to use his status as a mage hunter to get out of trouble. The guards admit they would probably lose a fight, and kindly ask the party to not cause too much trouble, and don't cast spells in public if possible, as it unnerves people.

The guards then leave. Naiwyn goes to the charmed shopkeeper, but before he can get an answer to his question, the Khudrans that Rao and Phathas were talking to start running full speed. Rao and Phathas give chase. Silvia flies over their heads and lands to cut them off. Aramis also starts giving chase, pulls out his pistol and shoots one of them (pretty bad wound, the guy made his damage save by 1). Naiwyn, more concerned with public safety than the answer to his question, runs up and surrounds the thugs with a Wall of Wind as both a cage and a shield, to prevent them from escaping and also protect them from the crazy lizard that shot them.

Silvia flies over the wind wall, and hovering above the wounded man, cures him with her magic. Rao and Phathas both try to threaten the thugs, but fail. At this point, a humorous exchange happens where I'd previously described the thugs as panicked and scared, but having resisted all resolve checks Rao's player says "So much for panicked and scared, eh?" and I say "Alright, more like confused and worried".

Aramis braves the wind, and smacks the guy he shot with his tail. The thug rolls phenomenally on his damage save (natural 19), and stays standing. Note that he would have failed had Silvia not cured him. Naiwyn, annoyed that his new companion is persistently trying to attack a contained threat, Threatens Aramis, giving him 3 stress damage. He easily makes his will save. Silvia uses a more potent cure on the thug, this time removing all traces of damage.

The thugs, seeing no way out of the wind wall, and not wanting to be slowly beaten to death by the saurian, surrender, hoping that will stop him. Rao succeeds at Intimidating one of the thugs into giving up the location of Kaliya's headquarters (Kaliya is the woman Rao is tracking, and the thugs work for her).

The thugs tell him, but add that Revana must be stopped, and Kaliya will prevail, and a generic praising of their dark god. This is the first time most of the characters have heard the name Revana, Rao recognizes it from his back-story, I tell Naiwyn it's the name of the mage he was tracking (that had to this point been unnamed, but in character he would know). The wind wall gets dropped, and they muscle the thugs into leading them to Kaliya's headquarters.

At about this point, I call for the end of the session. As I'm typing it, Narron finally approaches the party. Good timing on that one. We'll handle it at the beginning of the next session.


Well, it was short, not a lot got done, but we only had a couple hours to play, so all in all it wasn't bad. Wall of Wind is pretty damned butch though, so I might have to plan around that better in the future. Wall spells in general look to change the way combat happens, especially since the caster can define the area... I see a lot of very snaking walls in the future. Casters love mazes, right?
The chat interface got a little chaotic there for a minute, so we're implementing a system to ease that problem in the future. I'll make some red octagonal 'pogs' with each player's name on it so that if someone needs the action to stop for a moment while they do something they can just throw it onto the map while they type their action. I can just foresee a bunch entering the map at the same time, like yellow flags on a football field, but it'll be better than total chaos.


On another note, is anyone actually reading this? I'm sure it'll be interesting to read later, once the plot progresses a bit more, but right now it might not be all that intriguing. If anyone is reading, any suggestions on style or whatnot? Would you prefer I wrote out what happened novel style, rather than going through a play-by-play summary? It would take longer, but it might end up more interesting in the long run.

[OverNinja]

I prefer this style.

[MugMug]

I'm reading it for lessons learned (e.g. the red pog thing), so the current style is great.

Walter

[mach1.9pants]

I am reading it, and it is fine as it is...

[Agent 333]

A fun exciting time tonight.
We started by finishing off the scene in the market, with Narron FINALLY joining the party. As he's joining up, Silvia decides now's a good time to use Signs & Portents, so I let her know that they're being watched. (seemed like a decent enough hint, should probably have been a Notice vs Blend check instead, but I didn't want to give her the action die, so I winged it).
Silvia flies up to get a better view, and notices a hooded man staring at her. She wings over to him, and introduces herself. The man tells her he's a Storyteller, and her appearance is like something out of an old tale. He tells her that, in exchange for her story, he'll tell her a tale in return. Silva's player, not wanting to type it all and live a bit of wiggle-room, does the old "Silvia tells him the tale..." work around, the only part of it we here said in character is "And that's how the battle ended."
The story teller keeps his promise, and gives a tale in return, of mighty exposition!
I had the gist of it in my mind, but the actual wording was very on-the-spot. By the way, decent side effect of online gaming, easy to copy and paste exact words of the story!
"It was long, long ago, so the tale has faded through the ages, but pieces still remain..." he pulls a handful of sand from a deep pocket in his robes and starts streaming it through his fingers
"The battle had been lost, but the war was won. Mayelle's forces were victorious over those of the dreaded Baalhemal, but the toll was too great...."
After the final battle, Mayelle's forces had taken too much damage to be a proper fighting force. Many of the Champions were dead, others lay in a fuge state brought on by Baalhemal's evil magics...."
What happened next is unsure, but I have a theory:
Long ago, back in that day, the gods walked this world with regularity
Truely enough, many tales from many lands had the gods as important figures. But then something happened. Something, that I can only guess at
The gods stopped walking the world. Their followers began to lose power. Beings from outside stopped appeparing to help mortals in their daily lives
But lately, things have been changing. Those who can see the signs have noticed them already. Indeed, you yourself are the most obvious sign of what is to come.
(He switches to a different handfull of sand, this sparkling with all colors of the rainbow): Whatever happened to ban the gods from this world is being undone.
Soon, the barriers of existance will fail, and gods and demons both will walk the realms with impunity. Mortal men shall perish in the war that is surely to follow
(stopping his sand): Of course, I am but a humble storyteller, not a soothesayer. I don't know the future any better than yourself
Yes, if you've read Warbreaker, the Storyteller was modeled after Hoid. Yes, that's his name (as he mentioned to Silvia before he left). His last name, if anyone ever asks, is probably going to be something like "Exposition."

Silvia tries to pay him, he says her story is enough. Stubbornly, she puts the money on a table next to him. He tries to take it unnoticed, but fails his prestidigitation rather miserably, so everyone sees him. Silvia, just now having thought of it, summons forth an angel with her Call From Beyond, to ask how things are going in the Eternal Realm. The angel summoned tells her all is well, and Baalhemal is still safely trapped in the dark dimension they banished him to. On the spot, me and Silvia's player develop the formal greeting among worshipers of Mayelle: "Mayelle protect us." "Mayelle guide our hand." Instant action die for that player. A bit of conversation happens, then the summoned angel is given one of Silvia's feathers as a token sacrifice to Mayelle, and is then dismissed. Very well roleplayed.
Rao, who's backstory involves a lot of divine influence, asks Silvia where the summoned angel came from. At this point, the Storyteller Batmans out (dissapears while they're not looking). Rao and Silvia then have a short conversation about divinity, and its influence on the mortal realm. Phathas then asks Silvia a very cryptic question, and she doesn't know whatever the hell he's talking about.

They then start heading off to the Khudran district. They have a conversation about dying, and a debate about whether or not there is glory in death. Aramis is the main person arguing thay dying gloriously is a good thing. At this point, he is visited by the 'ghost' of one of his dead comrades (a subplot he asked me to work into the story, so I have ), tells him that being dead does indeed suck. He then starts having a debate with the ghost, who in life would have agreed with him, right in public while everyone else stares at him blankly. Great use of the private messaging available in an online game, as the ghost spoke privately but Aramis spoke publicly. Toward the end, he has a breakdown, falling to his knees and crying. One of the Khudran Thugs, the one who was shot, being something of an idiot, says something to the effect of "This is the guy who shot me? What a weenie". He then gets stabbed in the neck and dies.

They get to where they're going, and technical difficulties cause us a 15 minute delay. Razzin frazzin computer problems...

Once the difficulties are sorted out, they get ready to storm the building. Naiwyn casts 10SP worth of buffs on himself, and Silvia follows suit with a smaller suite of buffing spells.
They charge in, quickly overpowering the guard in the entryway, and then rushing down a hallway, killing another guard. The party splits off, one group going one way, the other going the other way. One group finds the stairs down (the party had intelligence that Kaliya (the woman Rao is hunting) is most likely downstairs. Naiwyn's detect magic spell detects strong magic coming from one of the rooms off to the side. Aramis and Phathas head downstairs, as the rest of the party discovers a statue that is familiar to Rao radiating powerful magic and a bluish fog. The statue starts talking to Rao, while Aramis and Phathas encounter a handful of demons and Kaliya, in the dark basement which also has blue fog everywhere. Kaliya, blade still dripping with blood from a sacrifice laying in a heap at her feet, demands to know who's interrupting her.
At about this point, someone points out that it's 12:07, and they have work in the morning. We wrap up the initiative, and then call it a night.
A good session, despite one player showing up half a scene late (He was 'talking to a merchant' who he wanted to interrogate last session but didn't get to), and a number of technical difficulties (my router was being fickle and not letting me host for some reason, and there were a number of crashes and whatnot), it went well. People seemed to have fun, and all the feedback I got was positive. A couple people seemed to spend half the time AFK or multitasking, which is not good, but overall the flow seemed fine this time. The STOP pogs definitely helped, even though they only got used a couple times.

[mach1.9pants]

I like the story so far, though it seems to be progressing rather slow...a function of online gaming? I have never tried (nor will I).

BTW WTF's teh TLA 'AFK '?

[Wolverine]

BTW WTF's teh TLA 'AFK '?

Just in case you're asking seriously: AFK = Away From Keyboard.

[Ferdinand Von Plat]

I like the story so far, though it seems to be progressing rather slow...a function of online gaming? I have never tried (nor will I).

Online gaming, from my experience, does seem very slow when compared to playing at an actual table. It takes longer for most people to type even a simple sentence than it does for them to say the same sentence in person, and that's not even equating for one person in the chat being a kind of slow typer.

[Agent 333]

Honestly, with this group of people, I'm surprised we got as much done as we did. I think it's just progressing slowly due to not actually having a full-length session yet. Our first session took a bit to get going due to first-sessiony stuff that seems to come up even when you make char's ahead of time, our second session was a planned short one due to scheduling, and our third was interrupted by technical difficulties. Add in the fact that I'm leaving out a ton of character developing dialog from my summaries, and a lot more is getting done than you'd think. Decompressed storytelling, perhaps? Once we get past technical difficulties and whatnot, I fully expect to get in two scenes a session on a regular basis, except our short sessions, which will only have one. That's not much slower than a regular at table pace, if I'm reading the book right...

[mach1.9pants]

BTW WTF's teh TLA 'AFK '?

Just in case you're asking seriously: AFK = Away From Keyboard.

Cheers!