Cloudex

Fabula Ultima - The Romance of Ys - Session 4

Squire Blevin Conflict 1

We almost wrapped-up the first adventure yesterday, running out of time just before the denouement. This is fine, as it gives me more prep time for the next adventure. But before I get to work on that, let's write-up a session report!

Episode 1, "Seaside Panic! The Spirits Are In Gems?" Session 04

Cast

A Safe Place To Rest

The session picks-up in the aftermath of the fight with the Pressinian Serpent and its elemental companions. The group briefly considers returning to town or investigating the locked door more, but move further into the cave system in the end. They push ahead and reach a cavern with a marble dais built on the cave floor, which in turn supports a relief-carved stele depicting Melusine. Seren, Rhiannon, and Hemlocke investigate the stele and conclude this must be a home to the arcana Melusine. The party makes note in-case someone takes a level in Arcanist later.

The party collect some treasures stashed in the room, finding a new staff for Seren, a bracelet for Mio, a slab of beryl crystal suitable for crafting, and three Inventory Points each. Hemlocke sets-up a tent and everyone takes a moment to safely rest and recover.

Staff - Storm Crow's Crook

Accessory - Red Coral Bracelet

Everybody Hates Blevin

The group moves past the Melusine Shrine and reaches a worn brick wall with a spy hole cut out of it. The group peers through and sees a pair of Nova Sinfonians chatting with a young man in red armor while a shackled, ice-covered skull floats around. After a brief debate of whether they are only there to collect information about the Sinfonian plot for Sir Cai and Lady Branwen or should to do more, they decide they should take captives for interrogation. Mio busts down the deceptively fragile wall and the party engage in conflict!

The tempo of the fight is set by two factors - Aurelia gets knocked-out and surrenders in the second round and the villainous Blackguard Squire Blevin protects the Tiresian Crystal Chanter, buying her space to heal the enemy party. The group carefully wears down the soldier and skull supporting Blevin while he in-turn frustrates the with professional wrestler-esque bluster and powerful sword strikes. The fight turns after an opportunistic critical hit lets the group determine one of Blevin's vulnerabilities is poison, prompting Hemlocke to force toxic taffy and pies down Blevin's mouth for big damage. The fight ends when Seren gets the rare moment to attack and discovers Blevin's other vulnerability - bolt damage - and strikes him down with a powerful Thunderbolt spell.

Distraught that the party will not slay him in combat as honor demands, Blevin spends his last Ultima point to retreat, dashing down a darkened hall while leaving behind his enchanted sword.

Sword - Veilpiercer

A Familiar Mirror

The party tie-up the two remaining Sinfonians and investigate the room, which is filled with aged furniture and rugs. Hemlocke suspects the space was used as a sitting room long ago, but the only thing of value the party finds is a conspicuously placed hand mirror. Hemlocke notices it casts no reflection, only showing a blackness that occasionally shifts, as if in a bag that occasionally lets in some light. Uncertain how its magic works, he hands it to Seren, who immediately recognizes the mirror belongs to one of her handmaidens, the sisters Aurora and Vesper.

Inspection reveals the mirror is not magical itself, but instead is enchanted to link-up with another mirror and allow their respective wielders to view through the other mirror. The group discuss whether to terminate the link or not and the session ends when Seren decides the mirror is a chance to identify which handmaiden is maintaining the enchantment.

The group gains 6 experience points and reach level 3.

Referee Thoughts

I checked with folks in the Table Shapers Discord about villains and learned that I was thinking about them wrong. I thought of them as story-critical figures that should be used infrequently, but it appears most folks use them as mini-bosses, with Stepnix observing it is unusual to go more than a couple sessions without one appearing. With that in-mind, I spent most of my prep-time for the session revising Squire Blevin to be a minor villain and champion (3) instead of merely being an elite.

Redesigning Blevin forced me to think through the fight more and I realized it lacked any sort of synergies. I settled on mimicking the party and introducing a spellcaster for Blevin to protect. I designed the Tiresian Crystal Chanter after looking at how the Floralist's chloromancy skill works and turning that into a series of religious hymns that healed the group. This worked great for the enemies, but I overtuned Blevin's ability to protect the Chanter. As the conflict played out it became clear that the players had no direct way to get past Blevin's ability to intercept attacks. In the future I'll let at least one category of attacks get by the shielding unit and encourage players to use actions like Hinder or Objective to side-step the problem.

I also updated my conflict UI after feedback from the others in my group. They requested a Dragon Quest-style UI, with player characters arrayed at the bottom of the screen, instead of using the Final Fantasy style I initially developed, where characters are on the right. I'm ambivalent about the change, but it gave me the opportunity to follow a friend's advice and set the ratio of the UI to be 4:3, which is fitting for a game that pulls on console RPGs from the 80s, 90s, and early 00s.

Finally, I continue to feel the knock-on effects of starting the game in a bifurcated matter. I'm talking about how three of us built the setting and settled on the initial premise, then used that to attract the other three players. Realistically, this was the only way this could work - it's hard to pitch new games to my friends and having a setting in-hand helped with making that pitch. But because our "session 0" was spread across a whole game of Worldwizard, meet-ups that someone always missed, Discord chats, and a lot of individual conversations between me and the players, we're all subtly out of sync with each other regarding what we expect the game to be. I've tossed out three different ideas in my outline in the past month because of this.

Aurelia is a good example of what I mean. She is an Ex-Inventor Turned Spy, which to me suggests her player is interested in intrigue and espionage and the ways that can put you at odds with even your allies. I pitched her on introducing a handler who tasks her with mapping the entrances to various fairy realms so that her home kingdom can block off access to them in the event the enemy Nova Sinfonians try to raid them for fey to kill and revivify with their accursed cauldrons. This in-turn would put her in tension with Hemlocke, a fey seneschal from one of those fairy realms with a vested interested in not having their connection to the world blocked-off or severed.

Aurelia's player shot this down, explaining that she's played games where she was at cross-purposes to the party and did not enjoy them. This is reasonable and understandable, and we jettisoned the mapping angle but kept the handler around. All fine and honestly a good sign that we can communicate with each other. But I've had this conversation in some form or another with pretty much every player at this point and it is driving me batty. I don't know what folks want, I don't think everyone else knows what each other wants, but everyone agrees they want to play this game.

So I assigned folks homework. I asked them to tell me what they want out of their character's adventure and to let me know what sort of story tropes are off the table for them. I hope that having this in hand will let me create mysteries - an explicit pillar of Fabula Ultima - and put the player characters at the center of them - another explicit pillar - all while not having to scrap my notes and prep over-and-over.

Fabula is fun, but boy-oh-boy do I wish I was running a dungeon game sometimes.

#fabula ultima #the romance of ys #ttrpg