“
barbarian got slimed during downtime”
We had a shorter session yesterday because I wasted an hour troubleshooting a problem with one of the players who couldn’t access the PDF of the current state of my homebrew system because it was made available on an internal site on my home network, and his Android phone (a OnePlus) hardcodes which DNS servers it uses regardless of what your network advertises. That tempted me to make this one “android wastes all our time”. I ended up
fixing it later at the router level, but I digress.
Yesterday’s session was focused mostly on downtime. We started off catching up on the project work for the construction of their manor. I finally got it converted/updated into the current system. The manor house portion is … lavish. It’s got 32 4-tick clocks, which seems like a lot, but it’s
huge. Their barracks are three 8-tick clocks and are nearly finished. They’ve been under construction for a few months, so this timeline feels intuitively okay. They could try to make things go quicker by hiring more teams to work on stuff at the same time, or they could rush the work (at the risk of degrading the durability construction clock, which would result in ruined materials if it emptied completely).
The party spent a couple of weeks last session in town taking care of business. Everyone spent one of their weekly activities on leveling. You can spend EXP on one skill, speciality, or proficiency as a camp activity, but you can only fully level as a weekly activity. (Technically with a base camp, you can level out in the field, but you have to take steps to effect that.) The rest of the time, the party pursued their own agendas.
First Week of Downtime
Dingo (the thief) spent the rest of his time during the first week trying to find a buyer for a weird, magical-ish chalice the found. If you fill it with blood and drink it, it restores HP. He doesn’t actually have Rapport, so he didn’t want to ask around. Instead he went to Severin, one of their friends, and tried to Persuade him to give him information. I’ve been trying to do a better job of foregrounding consequences, so I noted it was likely in this case going to be that Severin would want something from him.
I think the players assumed I meant money or goods, but I was thinking more likely favors. Dingo rolled a Mixed Success, so Severin told him about rumors he had heard regarding a “blood cult” in town. He thinks that sounds like a group that might be interested in buying the item, but there were some concerns from the authorities about it, so he wanted Dingo to report back after he met them since Severin works with the local government there (which is a military outpost for the most part).
Dingo wasn’t thrilled about that idea because he intuited the cult was likely lead by their vampire friend Natalia (this is correct intuition), so he resisted the consequence. He gave up an amulet they found (kind of crappy, but it’s still something of value the NPC would want since Severin is a sage and interested in that kind of thing) to boost the result of his Defense Check, ultimately giving him a critical success. That let him to avoid having to report back and avoid gaining any stress.
Tama (the cleric) has been training to cast spells while wielding a weapon and shield. She bought a shield in town (normal shopping doesn’t require an activity) then went looking for someone to help paint her religion’s sigil on the shield to allow her to use it as a holy symbol for casting. She got Mixed Success on her Rapport to find someone, so she ended up being fobbed off on Jon the Painter, a measly rank +1 apprentice, because the good crafters were busy. She tried Working Together with him, but their rolls were bad. No progress this first week (but at least the shield’s not ruined yet I guess). Tama could have gained stress to offset Jon’s bad roll, but she opted not to take it.
Deirdre (the barbarian) is interested in boosting her fame. She wants to throw a party for herself, and the first step is inviting important people to it. She spends her first week working with Ilsa, her bard retainer, to post notices and connect with people to try to get a good crowd for the performance next week. Ilsa has Warin-Grafs Folk Songs as one of her experiences, so she’ll be able to use Wisdom on her Entertainment roll in that performance. She’ll be singing songs about Deirdre’s deeds in the traditional style at Sugar’s place (the main tavern and inn in town). They get Mixed Success on their Rapport to recruit, so the consequence is less fame from the performance (not as much interest as they’d like), but they still get the +1 from setting it up. Deirdre could have resisted this outcome, but she chose not to do that.
Second Week of Downtime
When the players announced individual goals at the start of the session, Deirdre announced her intent to throw a party. Dingo countered by saying he wanted to prank Deirdre. This is when he set her up. For his activity during the second week, Dingo went looking for an alchemist who could help him out by providing a barrel full of ooze he could dump on Deirdre during the performance. They fought slimes and oozes in the dungeon, so he knew that was going to be something that would come up. His search lead him to find Wally, another vuple alchemist.
The Negotiation for the ooze went very well. Dingo really wanted this to be good ooze, so he traded two fame to offer Wally to come to the performance. Dingo rolled and thanks to his expertise was able to get a good enough result for Critical Success +1. That’s one degree beyond normal Critical Success. He got extremely good ooze (the consequence on the table was the ooze would have been contaminated and make Deirdre magically glow, which she would
not have liked). I suggested the additional +1 of success could negate the fame loss from the roll for the performance, which Dingo’s player accepted.
Tama and Deirdre pursued similar goals for their first activities. The party is interested in taking care of a massive stirge infestation near their manor. Tama wanted to do Research while Deirdre wanted to ask around (using Rapport) to find out more about the stirges. Was there a tactic they could use? They have 90 stirges to deal with, which is a lot. Both of them rolled Complete Success, so they got straightforward and complementary answers: stirges tend to nest in clumps together, and they are a bit sluggish when they return to their nests in early morning. An attack in the morning would enable hit and run tactics without drawing the attention of the all the stirges all at once.
What Tama and Deirdre did is how I’m handling information gathering. It lets them nail down parts of an upcoming adventure, so they can make plans and execute them. It also helps me with designing that upcoming content. I know now that stirges nest a certain way, so I can design the “dungeon” with that in mind. I’ll need to figure out how I want to run the sequence because constant attack and retreat to camp tactics might be a bit tedious at the table.
Tama also worked with Jon on her shield more. This time they made slightly better progress when Jon failed again while they were Working Together, but Deirdre opted take the stress to negate the roll. I actually think this is too harsh and may revert the penalty for failures on these group checks to −2 instead of reducing the degree of success, but I need to analyze it a bit more. If I do revert, Deirdre and Jon will be about half-way done. She could opt not to help out, but she hasn’t so far. For these group rolls while Working Together, she’s been using Crafting + Wisdom to draw on her expertise in religion to guide the design of the symbol on the shield.
Dingo spent his second activity this week setting up his prank. He met with Ilsa to get her on board and make sure what he needed was in the performance. This all went pretty well. He was able to do that, and he got someone there at the bar to tip the ooze on his signal. That would result in a pretty amusing resolution process because the skill for giving an order is Leadership, which Dingo does not have. Dingo’s player ended up using Dexterity as his approach, relying on his sense of timing to offset his not being very good at giving orders (resulting in a net −2 to the roll).
Finally, it was time for the performance. Most of the NPCs they’d met before showed up as did some of the members of the settlement’s administration. They’d met some of them before, but Commander Grimmelshausen showed up. Previously, they’d only met his Lt Commander Thurgrid when they wanted to meet with him to deliver a letter from a group of soldiers they’d help that vouched for their good work. I don’t know whether this will translate into work from the leadership, but it doesn’t hurt to know they know about you (in this way anyway). Natalia also talked her way into watching the performance.
Natalia’s time is almost up, and she needs to feed. The way undead work in my setting is there is a distinction between regular undead (which are effectively death elementals) and intelligence undead. Regular undead are the degenerate versions of intelligence undead. In order to maintain your intelligence, you need to take something from the living. For vampires, it’s blood. For ghouls, it’s fresh flesh. If you don’t, you turn into the unintelligent version. This is known as the Curse of Intelligence.
Currently, I have a clock on the table that is at 3/4 ticks for going off for Natalia. If it does, she’s going to feed in a way that causes problems for the PCs. Otherwise, it’ll probably bump out her next interval for a few more months. She wants to sire more vampires (being the last of her kind), but she wants to do it consensually. She’d been taken by the Blood King when his people invaded Mars (where she was a psychic researcher) to bring her back to replace the previous Princess of Blood who’d been killed. It was mostly bad luck on her part that got her chosen (others were also taken in the attack, but they didn’t make it). She doesn’t want to inflict that on someone else (as technically the new Blood Queen, though she eschews that title in favor of the name she uses currently, which is not her given name).
Anyway, the performance went pretty well. Ilsa sang songs about their adventures, and as they got to the oozes, it was time for Dingo to do his thing. His attempt to lead got a Mixed Success. This was handled as a regular Working Together roll to help or set up, so he contributed a +1 to Ilsa’s Entertainment roll (which didn’t stack with the +1 from yesterday). Dingo didn’t have an overt consequence, but he was going to share in any consequences that came from the main roll. The bucket fell, Ilsa rolled, and she got Complete Success. There was a bit of shock and surprise at first, but Deirdre rolled with it, and the crowd got into it eventually. Deirdre then invited Tama and Dingo up to the stage where she got slimed to thank them for their help, giving Dingo a big hug. Since Dingo is covered in fur, he’s now a terrible mess. Deirdre can at rinse off the ooze normally. She’s a mao (cat-like ancestry), but they’re more nekomimi than anthro. Dingo’s a vuple, which is the other way around (fox-like anthro a bit over half a meter tall).
