Session 1
http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php/topic,2023.0.htmlSession 2
http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=2024.0This session went far AWOL and was as much I think my lack of experience in this specific game style as it was the players having troubles groking the direction of the game. I also set them up to fail because I expected it to be a shorter campaign, and they just went a bit shorter than I expected them to. I also suspect I had been doing one thing wrong, for a while, but it made sense with how all the other actions played out, and it probabaly made things shorter.
So I introduced each of their personal stories (as described in the session 2 report). They grabbed on to them a little bit, one of them working to make her way into a fashion show, and the other figuring out how to Rob a bank with a bit of demonic device based magic so he could buy his missle silo.
I also fed them the bait about the zombie invasion, but they didn't end up focusing on it which somewhat surprised me considering this was a group that would have normally jumped on that.
That being said 2 of the characters (Ben and Anna) worked together to plan out this bank robbery by building a demonic device that would siphon money out of the bank rapidly, but because he needed a distraction he used Anna's ruthless willingness to manipulate men to distract the manager to get the device into the room.
During this time though the zombie invasion began, first with them boarding the Max Trains (a public transit system in our city) en masse, and of course this inspired Kevin, who has embraced the title of Murder Knight to dive into a train car and begin punching zombies which of course caused them to continue to escalate, the problem is in the fight he lost his last dot of Patient, and went berserk, causing a Massacare of not only monsters but people (I have a feeling you can see where this is going). At the same time Anna tried to keep the people in the bank safe by taking control of the situation and taking control of their minds and directing them properly causing them all to nearly worship her (it continues).
In the aftermath of this fight due to the nature of their sins 3 members of the group had all escalated to possession at the same time.
We did some amusing scenes with each demons player talking about how they ruined their hosts life, but considering their was only 1 other player, she realized what was going on and just bolted, because she knew they were all going to fall at the same time and stood no chance.
When the all turned they got to meet their Arch Demon master, who gloated about his plan and congraduated his minions on a much quicker corruption while fighting off the angel in the city that obviously came to finally deal with them.
The demons will have a hard time coming back though, as their Medallions are still protected by an angel, but their is still an Arch Demon the loose, he will figure things out.
Wrap and ThoughtsSo I obviously prepped them to fail because I wanted at least one of them to fall before the game ended, but with 3 of them crashing at once their really wasn't any reason to continue the game. That being said I mentioned I thought I made one significant mistake that probabaly made this work. Lets go into that.
In the sinning section of the game it mentions what it takes to gain dots in the various tactics. But it doesn't say what to do if that tactic is already at 5. But the game sort of already spells that out in another section. if you take damage and your out of dots in that tactic it removes dots from the strategy. That being said the reverse also makes sense. if the tactic is full it adds a dot to the strategy. I have a feeling that wasn't actually the intention mechanically but its how I interepted it and it likely accelerated the end of the game.
The secondary issue was that other than putting them together in the same place and giving them an obvious mutual enemy I didn't give them much motivation to work together which was probabaly a mistake on my part. I should have given them a closer connection or relationship, but with the direction of the game I wanted to see what would happen if they all wandered their own direction. The reality of that was that they made a disaster of things, which is fine, because that's what I was hoping for anything.
Amusing NotesKevin (Murder Knight) made some interesting choices. When he realized he was demon possessed and could fight better he became even more wiling to start a fight at a moments notice. But on the other end with any moment of downtime he started seeing a counselor, to try to conquer his demons, and he happened to get a counselor that could help exorcise his demon. It was an unexpected path.
Pele started out as a very direct and not subtle character, but her demon got under her skin more than he realized. Instead of just taking out the gang in direct ways she used her powers to infiltrate them and if things hadn't gone wrong her plan was to find each member who had been responsible for killing her mother and brutally executing them. She went from direct to subtle very quickly. Despite the fact that shes not the one that fell, her demon actually was getting under her skin, and I don't think the player of her demon even realized that.
That being said..our next game is Gamma World...the 4th Ed Version..with the cards based powers, because I wanted something crazy and nonsensical and it makes me laugh.
