2019.03.08 Trophy Dark: The Forest Queen

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:03.439 Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of just played. I am Jim 2 00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:08.919 Crocker and I just played trophy, which is a dark fantasy horror game that 3 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:14.599 was originally published in Gauntlets Gaming Zene Codex. It's by Jesse Ross and it 4 00:00:14.679 --> 00:00:19.280 is a variant of Cathulu dark where you play doomed treasure hunters who are going 5 00:00:19.320 --> 00:00:23.559 into a sinister forest that kind of has a life of its own and you're 6 00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:28.679 mostly playing to see what terrible fate that you end up encountering, as opposed 7 00:00:28.679 --> 00:00:31.760 to actually getting the treasure and get out of there, although it's possible. 8 00:00:31.800 --> 00:00:35.640 I'll talk about that a little later. But this particular incursion, which is 9 00:00:35.679 --> 00:00:39.439 what you call an adventure for trophy, was called the Forest Queen and we 10 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:43.119 ran this on the gauntlet. It was gauntlet hangouts, which we play over 11 00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:46.479 Youtube. There'll be a video of it that I'll linked to in my notes, 12 00:00:47.079 --> 00:00:51.719 and this particular run was authored and facilitated by David Morrison, who's a 13 00:00:51.759 --> 00:00:55.759 gauntlet tier from Britain who I have played with several times before and it was 14 00:00:55.799 --> 00:00:58.759 a real pleasure to get to play with him as a GM's the first game 15 00:00:58.840 --> 00:01:02.280 that he's Jim done the gauntlet. So it was a lot of fun players 16 00:01:02.280 --> 00:01:06.640 and characters. We had a asher as Tao damn, the woodcutter. One 17 00:01:06.680 --> 00:01:10.560 of the things that you're doing trophy is you're identified by your occupation, which 18 00:01:10.599 --> 00:01:14.079 is the job that you do kind of to make money right now. Kevin 19 00:01:14.159 --> 00:01:19.200 was Vera, the goatherd Julian was Elzio, the spouse to be, which 20 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:22.000 was a role that I thought was pretty cool. Let's comp a neat thing, 21 00:01:22.040 --> 00:01:26.640 and I was Sybil, the witch. Our session starting state was outside 22 00:01:26.680 --> 00:01:30.280 the forest, wondering what we're going to find on the inside. We're surching 23 00:01:30.319 --> 00:01:34.480 for the forest queen and each of us had a drive and in our quest 24 00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:38.079 for the forest queen we would be able to satisfy that drive. She would 25 00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:40.879 be able to give us whatever it was we were looking for. After we 26 00:01:40.879 --> 00:01:44.599 want her favor. So the plot of the game was that we dove into 27 00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:47.599 the forest to give that's kind of how a session trophy works. You Start 28 00:01:47.599 --> 00:01:52.040 and you go in and things get crazier and weirder and more sinister and dangerous 29 00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:57.000 as you go into the various rings of the forest trying to reach the center. 30 00:01:57.040 --> 00:02:00.799 So we dove in and encountered a young goat herd who had lost three 31 00:02:00.840 --> 00:02:05.400 of his goats that we then went questioned around a bit and found them, 32 00:02:05.439 --> 00:02:08.800 returned them to him. He gave out some rewards and revealed a hidden path 33 00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:14.000 to us. So we went down that hidden path. We traversed a river 34 00:02:14.159 --> 00:02:16.840 by felling a tree that turned out to be home to a nasty dryad that 35 00:02:16.840 --> 00:02:20.240 we could have had to run away from. And after a night in a 36 00:02:20.319 --> 00:02:23.919 cave where my character opened up her picnic basket and had a little teapot and 37 00:02:23.960 --> 00:02:28.000 we did a tea party for everybody because in addition to being which I was 38 00:02:28.039 --> 00:02:30.360 an animated Mannikin, so I had myself as a kind of a creepy life 39 00:02:30.360 --> 00:02:35.759 sized Marionette, kind of a Sally Tim Burton kind of a thing going on. 40 00:02:35.919 --> 00:02:38.400 I wanted to make sure that I was observing the trappings of civilization. 41 00:02:38.479 --> 00:02:42.879 I couldn't actually eat a drink myself, but I served tea for everybody and 42 00:02:42.919 --> 00:02:45.680 I had some stones for them and things like that, and I pantomime drinking 43 00:02:45.759 --> 00:02:47.960 the tea myself. So we had our creepy little tea party in our cave 44 00:02:49.039 --> 00:02:53.680 in the forest and then after that we found our way to a fake court 45 00:02:53.680 --> 00:02:58.120 party, basically like a revelry, kind of like an open air feast and 46 00:02:58.280 --> 00:03:01.240 dance, and if you have seen Jonathan strange and Mr Norl had had that 47 00:03:01.319 --> 00:03:05.039 kind of a thing to it, or like a midsummer nights dream sort of 48 00:03:05.039 --> 00:03:08.800 a feel. And so I crashed the party and impressed them enough with my 49 00:03:08.840 --> 00:03:15.039 ability to glamor myself with my witch magic that they ushered me through to see 50 00:03:15.080 --> 00:03:16.639 the Queen. But Oh, by the way, you need to get past 51 00:03:16.719 --> 00:03:22.080 her king first and he's going to hunt you with his pack of hounds and 52 00:03:22.400 --> 00:03:28.280 Fay creatures. And we evaded the hunt by playing to the king's Ego and 53 00:03:28.360 --> 00:03:34.280 eventually we ended up before the Queen who, in the climax of the adventure, 54 00:03:34.319 --> 00:03:38.280 had US basically fight each other to the death for her amusement. So 55 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:42.280 that was a like ended about how we expected it to. So at the 56 00:03:42.360 --> 00:03:45.840 end of the game, our final fictional state, my head was staved in 57 00:03:45.879 --> 00:03:51.560 by Vera's staff, vire was split in half by Teodin's axe and Elizio annoyed 58 00:03:51.599 --> 00:03:54.960 the queen, so she snapped her fingers and sent him back to face down 59 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:59.400 the hunt that we had escaped from. Before. So at the end of 60 00:03:59.400 --> 00:04:02.680 everything, Teodin's mother was cured. That's why he was there, was to 61 00:04:02.680 --> 00:04:08.479 try and fight a cure for his mother's illness, but te Dan himself remained 62 00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:14.719 in the Queen's court forever. Huh. So it was it was pretty cool 63 00:04:14.759 --> 00:04:16.439 and creepy in we had a lot of fun with it. So my favorite 64 00:04:16.439 --> 00:04:24.279 moment from another player was when Elisio chewed out the queen for being vulgar and 65 00:04:24.399 --> 00:04:30.120 uncouth and saying that he would rather be running from her husband's hounds then be 66 00:04:30.160 --> 00:04:34.000 dealing with her crap, then be dealing with her forcing us to debase ourselves 67 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:38.639 for her amusement. So that was pretty cool and and kind of unexpected, 68 00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:42.160 given the way that we were all pitted against each other and most of us 69 00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:44.720 just sort of fell into it. But at least it was like, Nope, 70 00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:46.639 I'm not having any of this and if this is what I got to 71 00:04:46.639 --> 00:04:48.639 do to win your favorite, I don't care about your favorite. It was 72 00:04:48.639 --> 00:04:53.560 a really cool moment. So my favorite chamming moment. On a couple of 73 00:04:53.600 --> 00:04:58.120 occasions David did a really neat thing where, when we were discussing things that 74 00:04:58.199 --> 00:05:01.959 might possibly happen if our roles F failed, he took them and tweaked them 75 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:06.800 to make interesting devil's bargains. Now, a devil's bargain is a thing that 76 00:05:06.879 --> 00:05:11.600 you can do in trophy where, if you want to get an extra die, 77 00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:15.399 you can accept a condition that makes things harder for you going forward. 78 00:05:15.519 --> 00:05:18.839 Just to take a completely random example, if I wanted to stick my axe 79 00:05:18.920 --> 00:05:24.480 into someone because the forest queen wanted me too, I could take the devil's 80 00:05:24.519 --> 00:05:29.040 bargain of I get one swing and then my axe breaks. Now the devil's 81 00:05:29.040 --> 00:05:33.120 bargain means that's a thing that happens whether your role actually succeeds or fails. 82 00:05:33.199 --> 00:05:36.959 So I'm going to swing extra hard and if it connects, oh it'll be 83 00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:42.319 a terrible blow, but the axe handle will break and if I miss it's 84 00:05:42.399 --> 00:05:45.959 extra hardnesal break off against the floor, something like that. So David did 85 00:05:45.959 --> 00:05:49.120 a really need jimming thing where he took some of the circumstances and made them 86 00:05:49.120 --> 00:05:53.079 into conditions, and I really like that. That was a very clever twist 87 00:05:53.120 --> 00:05:57.319 to some of the things that we put forward. Missed opportunity with this game, 88 00:05:57.360 --> 00:06:00.680 as with some of the other games that I've played recently. The main 89 00:06:00.680 --> 00:06:04.040 issue was that we ended up rushing it. Now this is David's first run 90 00:06:04.079 --> 00:06:08.399 of it online and I think it's the first time he's run it with for 91 00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:12.879 people, and the thing we are finding what trophy is that three is probably 92 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:16.639 the sweets about three players in the game master because for really expands things out. 93 00:06:16.639 --> 00:06:18.600 You're asking a lot of questions, you got a lot of stuff to 94 00:06:18.639 --> 00:06:23.680 keep track of and things kind of expand out. And again in this case 95 00:06:23.720 --> 00:06:27.279 we ended up kind of having to rush the back end and sort of force 96 00:06:27.399 --> 00:06:30.639 all that last bit into the like fifteen minutes that we had left. So 97 00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:34.959 we rushed past those character deaths and they didn't have the impact that I hope 98 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:40.279 they'd have and we really didn't have any kind of opportunity for us to get 99 00:06:40.319 --> 00:06:44.000 a scene describing how we died, what our final words were, what we 100 00:06:44.120 --> 00:06:47.480 said to the people that betrayed us or who we betrayed. There were no 101 00:06:47.560 --> 00:06:51.399 apologies or curses or anything like that it because we just kind of had to 102 00:06:51.439 --> 00:06:55.399 bang it out and get through to the end of the adventure. So I 103 00:06:55.399 --> 00:06:58.160 would love to try this again with three people so that we have time to 104 00:06:58.199 --> 00:07:03.079 really let it breathe and have a really impactful climax to it. So here's 105 00:07:03.120 --> 00:07:08.639 the thing that I noticed. The main thing I noticed was that I was 106 00:07:08.680 --> 00:07:13.360 doing trophy wrong when I ran it. So I've written an incursion for trophy 107 00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:17.079 called the flocculent Cathedral, and that's going to actually appear in a future issue 108 00:07:17.079 --> 00:07:19.959 of Codex, a few months from now. All let everybody know when that's 109 00:07:19.959 --> 00:07:24.160 going to be if you want to check it out. But I was running 110 00:07:24.199 --> 00:07:27.759 trophy wrong. Just to get into the weeds a little bit here, and 111 00:07:27.879 --> 00:07:30.720 if you're not interested in the rules, this is where you can you can 112 00:07:30.759 --> 00:07:34.439 tune out. But in trophy there is something called a ruined roll and that 113 00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:39.759 is just like a sanity rolling Cathulu dark. So when you do something that 114 00:07:39.839 --> 00:07:43.639 might allow the dark forces of the forest to get their hooks into you, 115 00:07:43.639 --> 00:07:46.560 you make a ruined roll and you have a ruined value that goes from one 116 00:07:46.600 --> 00:07:50.399 to six. Your ruined roll is a roll of a d six and if 117 00:07:50.439 --> 00:07:55.839 it's above your current ruin, it raises your ruined by one and once your 118 00:07:55.920 --> 00:08:00.120 ruin gets to six, you're lost to the forest. It claims you and 119 00:08:00.199 --> 00:08:03.120 you run off into the forest or you attack your friends or just something cool 120 00:08:03.199 --> 00:08:07.160 happens. That indicates your character is gone and kind of claimed by the forest, 121 00:08:07.240 --> 00:08:13.639 and that's the likeliest end to a trophy adventure if you're running it properly, 122 00:08:13.959 --> 00:08:16.439 and that kind of descent into madness and being claimed by the force. 123 00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:20.480 The force is not a place you're supposed to survive in a typical game of 124 00:08:20.519 --> 00:08:26.480 trophy. What I was doing was when you make a roll for something dangerous, 125 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:33.399 if you have a dark die added to your role. So a light 126 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:37.279 die means you're skilled at something, you get a single light die. If 127 00:08:37.279 --> 00:08:43.360 you're skilled at something, you get an additional white die if you accept one 128 00:08:43.399 --> 00:08:46.799 of those devil's bargains. But anytime you're risking your mind or body and any 129 00:08:46.840 --> 00:08:50.759 time you cast a ritual you add a dark die to the roll. And 130 00:08:50.759 --> 00:08:54.399 when you roll, if the highest die is a dark die, what the 131 00:08:54.480 --> 00:08:58.240 rules say is that it counts as a ruined roll. I was reading that 132 00:08:58.399 --> 00:09:03.720 as it meant it triggered a ruined roll and that you take that dark die 133 00:09:03.759 --> 00:09:09.039 and then you make a separate ruined roll and compare that to your ruin but 134 00:09:09.080 --> 00:09:13.960 what I didn't realize was that actually counts as the ruined roll, which means 135 00:09:13.039 --> 00:09:16.480 you make your regular role and if you roll a six on that, you've 136 00:09:16.559 --> 00:09:20.840 ruined is at three. It goes up to for boom, biggebanging like right 137 00:09:20.879 --> 00:09:26.919 away, and that changes the pacing of my own adventure in the way I 138 00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:30.120 was running it, and kind of the descent into madness for the people that 139 00:09:30.159 --> 00:09:33.879 were playing in a pretty big way. And this is a fascinating thing to 140 00:09:33.879 --> 00:09:37.960 me because I've run it like four times. I've had a whole bunch of 141 00:09:37.960 --> 00:09:43.440 people read the rules along with me and because I was reading it, they 142 00:09:43.440 --> 00:09:48.600 were interpreting it that way and nobody said anything about it being the wrong way 143 00:09:48.639 --> 00:09:52.720 to play. And so there's a couple of things that I took away from 144 00:09:52.759 --> 00:09:58.320 that. One is that the GM as a guide intensely powerful that if you 145 00:09:58.440 --> 00:10:03.879 say he here's the way that it works, people who I my hunch is 146 00:10:03.879 --> 00:10:07.519 that at least one or two of those people read that and went I don't 147 00:10:07.559 --> 00:10:09.960 think that's what that means. Oh, but if Jim says that, that's 148 00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:13.840 how it goes and that must be how it goes, either because they thought 149 00:10:13.879 --> 00:10:16.120 they were reading it incorrectly or this was just my house rule and it was 150 00:10:16.159 --> 00:10:18.559 the way I was going to run it, which is one of the things 151 00:10:18.600 --> 00:10:24.159 that points to just how robust a system it is and how well designed and 152 00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:26.960 tightly designed it is. It's a really great game and it does exactly what 153 00:10:26.960 --> 00:10:31.559 it wants to. But it was fascinating to me, just really, really 154 00:10:31.600 --> 00:10:35.840 interesting that my very first role in this game that I played, that happened 155 00:10:35.879 --> 00:10:39.279 and it triggered a ruin increase and a couple of the couple of people that 156 00:10:39.320 --> 00:10:41.480 have played before went, oh, yeah, that's how the game goes, 157 00:10:41.559 --> 00:10:46.360 and I was kind of gobsmacked by that that I had been playing it wrong 158 00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:50.320 all along. And so that is was a really interesting lesson for me that 159 00:10:50.480 --> 00:10:54.480 even a game that has like two pages of rules, if you read something 160 00:10:54.480 --> 00:10:58.039 wrong, it can change the way you play. It can change the way 161 00:10:58.039 --> 00:11:01.279 you approach it, and the social pressure to go along with the game master 162 00:11:01.480 --> 00:11:05.919 in a game that is facilitated or GM d means it's got to be somebody 163 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:09.279 very brave to actually break out of that and go oh, Hey, I 164 00:11:09.320 --> 00:11:13.720 think we're doing this wrong. So definitely a lesson for me. Trophy was 165 00:11:13.759 --> 00:11:18.519 really wonderful. You can find that in Codex dark to. I'll put a 166 00:11:18.559 --> 00:11:22.039 link to it in my notes and that you definitely should check it out as 167 00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:24.519 a really fantastic one shot. It's definitely one of the ones that's going to 168 00:11:24.519 --> 00:11:28.679 be in my tool kit for doing games on demand in any other kind of 169 00:11:28.720 --> 00:11:31.399 oneshot situation. So that's all for this episode. Thanks very much for listening, 170 00:11:31.399 --> 00:11:35.120 everybody. If you're enjoying the show, please rate and review it wherever 171 00:11:35.120 --> 00:11:37.759 you have found it. That helps other people find it and I really appreciate 172 00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:39.679 it. Check out the show notes for video of this session, if one's 173 00:11:39.720 --> 00:11:43.879 available, as well as where to find the game that we played and if 174 00:11:43.919 --> 00:11:46.600 I talked about any other media or anything like that, they'll be links to 175 00:11:46.639 --> 00:11:50.919 that. As always, you can follow me on twitter at Jim Likes Games, 176 00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:54.320 just like it sounds, and buy games from me and my website, 177 00:11:54.399 --> 00:11:58.120 Jim Likes Gamescom. That's the best way to support the show. Now, 178 00:11:58.120 --> 00:12:00.720 if you'll excuse me, I am going to go lay another game.