Cloudex

Fabula Ultima Update - Sessions 2 & 3

My group finished our third session of Fabula Ultima this weekend and the game continues to go well, but not entirely hitch-free. The plan for now is to blog about the game. I enjoy reading play reports1 and want to contribute to that delightful online culture! But I also want to keep them brief. I spent hours writing reports and recaps for my last campaign and do not need to repeat that.

The current plan is to post a story recaps before springboarding into discussing some referee thoughts. If I get ambitious I will also post the foes and treasure I created. With that preamble aside, let's catch-up on the still-as-yet unnamed Fabula Ultima campaign!

Episode 1, "Seaside Panic! The Spirits Are In Gems?" - Session 02

Cast

Investigating Caer Ys

Newly deputized by the seneschal of Caer Ys, the group resumes their investigation of the crystals found in the vicinity of the surprise Shackled Spirit attack that happened in the first session. A note in the victim's belongings leads them to an alchemist in the city's lower ward that he purchased the crystals from. The group visit the alchemist and Hemlocke tries to calm the nervous vendor but doesn't have much luck. He does learn that the alchemist bought the crystals from a sailor and that the gems have entropic magic associated with them, possibly creating a pocket space inside. Hemlocke requests the remaining crystals the alchemist has, and she gratefully hands them over.

Hanging back near a fountain to Melusine, Aurelia spots a suspicious figure check the alchemist's empty display box for crystals. She tails them to an alley, where she sees three sailors talking to two mercenaries hiding under unseasonably warm cloaks. She rejoins the group and the party swaps information before deciding to investigate the beach outside of the city of Caer Ys.

Beach Stroll and Bar Fight

Along the beach they find more discharged crystals as well as signs that a group investigated the site before heading toward a rocky sea cave further down the coast. Unable to explore the cave while high-tide is in, they return to town and get dinner at Mio's favorite dock-side bar, The Leeky Johnson. The food is good but Hemlocke is horrified at the quality of the wine, which Seren nervously gulps down.

Shortly into the evening the group is confronted by the group Aurelia tailed earlier. The lead sailor tries to convince Mio to return the gem, but doesn't get far. As discussions begin to fray, Mio decks her with a beer mug, kicking off a fight. The party readily defeat the group and discover the two mercenaries are enemy soldiers from the conquering empire of Nova Sinfonia!

Seren's Revelation

The group retreats to their employer's safehouse with two prisoners only to discover the Shackled Fey bodies they stored up there for containment reasons were gone. As their employers, Seneschal Cai and Lady Brawnwen, confront them, Seren breaks down and reveals that she can do the seemingly impossible and send Shackled Spirits back to the stream of souls and is also the Princess of Nova Sinfonia!

The session ends on this revelation and the party earning enough experience points to level-up.

Referee Thoughts

I still don't have a handle on how to pace Fabula Ultima. When I drafted the adventure I figured it would take two sessions at most. As I write this we're approaching our fourth session. Whoops!

The fight this go around was designed to be easy according to the guidelines in the rulebook - Three level 5 soldiers (the Dissolute Smugglers) and two level 10 soldiers (the Nova Sinfonian Shield Levys). And the book is right - my party of five level 5 characters won without breaking a sweat. I probably will only use easy opponents sparingly going forward.

Loot is annoying. The rules expect you to hand out treasure on a session-by-session basis. They also cap the value of any given award at 500 zenit or less, making it tricky to create or find items that don't all feel kind of the same. Those two rules mean I spend more time than I like creating parcels of treasure and finding places to stick them that make story sense. It ain't fun.

Episode 1, "Seaside Panic! The Spirits Are In Gems?" - Session 03

Cast

An Evening's Respite

The session opens with the group's first Resting Scene. Hemlocke experiments with her Gourmet ingredients, creating several meals, only one of which was fit to share with the others. Aurelia does some shopping, picking-up supplies for herself and Seren, before sitting down with Hemlocke to work on finding a way to safely discharge the spirits trapped in the crystals they recovered. Neither is particularly happy to have Nova Sinfonian royalty - Seren - in the party.

Upstairs in the hidden safehouse, Seren confides nothing has gone as plan since she fled home and expects to be taken prisoner by Caer Ys' Queen Gwenhwyfer after their investigation is finished. Mio does her best to cheer Seren up while the smuggler they captured last session glares daggers and Mio. Rhiannon shows-up with more seasonably appropriate clothes for the frazzled Seren.

Smuggler Hand-Off

The next morning the party try to find a boat to put their captured smuggler on in an effort to get her out of town. They look for leads at The Leeky Johnson and learn that since she was seen in the company of Sinfonian soldiers nobody is likely to take a risk by taking the smuggler on their crew. Instead, Joan Johnson, the tavern's proprietress, offers to take Matty the Smuggler on as a dishwasher while they look for a crew she can join.

Seaside Cave and Stuck Door

Smuggler off their hands, the group set-out for the cave they found last session, reaching it at low tide, when it is accessible. Inside they find a magic door etched evoking the Melusine story they learned about in the first session, as well as a really annoying sea bird. Ignoring the loud, grating squawks, they try reciting the Melusine poem to open the door as well as try looking away as they push on the door - a key element in the story - but have no luck.2

Out of options, Rhiannon and Mio decide to dive into a tide pool with a glinting light at the bottom. It leads to a small cave with amazing acoustics but no clues. The duo find an enchanted citrine and dive back, handing the gem to Aurelia who uses it to upgrade her magical palm pistol to shoot fire.

Stymied, they head down a side-cave that echoes with musical wave splashes and carries and acrid, nostril-searing smell.

The Pressinian Serpent

Inside the cave the party are confronted with a giant, twin-tailed, purple serpent and two singing wave elementals. Immediately hostile, the two groups fight it out. Over the course of nearly two hours of playtime the party manage to slay the Wave Singer elementals, avoid being devoured by the Pressinian Serpent, drop part of the ceiling on the snake, and eventually run it dry of resources before killing it. As a reward they find a crafting material - durable skin shed by the serpent - and an entrance to another part of the caves.

The session ends with Rhiannon's player spending a Fabula Point to ensure the group get a bonus XP for spending five points in a single session, declaring the Serpent will return as a ghost in the future to vex the group.

Referee Thoughts

Matty the Smuggler might turn into a side-quest. My players historically like adopting NPCs, so as soon as they took her prisoner I started figuring out where to slot her into the story. Honestly, they probably would be satisfied with her shipping out, but I think I can use her and The Leeky Johnson to emulate the feel of completing long-running side-quests in video games.

The fight took so much time. I attribute that to it being difficult (Level 15 opponents fighting a level 6 party), this being only our third conflict scene, and the table having five player characters. This led to a lot of strategy discussion, figuring out who to attack first, whether to try and rescue Mio from being swallowed or just attack the Serpent, and how to keep on-top of healing. Everyone had fun and only Hemlocke's companion, Thistle the hound, was KO'd so I count it as a success. I will use these sort of fights sparingly going forward, though.

Design-wise, the two things that worked out best were the Wave Singers having abilities that synergized with the Serpent and adding an environmental feature in the stalactites the party dropped on the Serpent. The Singers got free attacks if a character they buffed landed a basic attack that turn. The Serpent got three attacks a round by virtue of being a rank 3 Champion, so one Singer kept plinking at the party for five damage. It's not a lot, but the threat made it a real choice whether to focus on the Serpent, the Singers, the stalactites, or trying to pull Mio out of the maw of the Serpent after she got swallowed.

On the same note, the stalactites created a choice beyond "Attack the foes." Mechanically they were a six-step clock that would cause the Serpent to lose one-quarter of its maximum health points and disable the Serpent's tail attack, which could target two characters. The group were jubilant when they filled the clock and saw its results. I'll have to look for ways to incorporate these challenges in future conflicts.

Finally, we also tested the conflict UI I developed. We're playing using Drawpile, a free collaborative digital drawing tool instead of a virtual tabletop program. It meets our needs, but it was a struggle for everyone to see the health and status information during conflict scenes. I spent a few days with GIMP and Drawpile and created a template reminiscent of old NES and SNES RPGs that folks can write-on as we play.

A screenshot of Clouder's Conflict UI. It is a black image with a white border. On the right side of the screen are entries in white text where the party has filled in their character information. On the left side, taking-up two-thirds or more of the image, are pictures of The Pressinian Serpent and two Wave Singers. Each is accompanied by white text blocks that the players can use to fill in details for the creatures, including their health points, magic points, defense scores, status conditions, and elemental affinities. A large wheel with spokes aligned to break it into six pieces sits in the upper left corner and is labeled "Stalactite Clock."

It worked well, which is a relief. Everyone was able to track their health and status and appreciated having a place to fill-in threat information as they discovered it. The sole requested improvement was making it larger - trying to fit it to Drawpile's default dimensions meant player character stat blocks were cramped, which I will try and fix before we play again. If I have the time I also want to integrate Final Fantasy II & III style border images to evoke where a given fight takes place and standardize the dimensions I use for making foe art.

I'm hopeful that we will finish the first adventure next time we play. The tentative plan after that is to help Seren find a magic item to improve her plot-specific ability to "send" Shackled Spirits, Final Fantasy X-style.

Alright, none of that was as brief as I hoped! But fingers-crossed my summaries get more succinct going forward.

  1. Some favorites are Adventures in Nightwick at Mycellium Mischef and Jama's reports at On Winters Edge.↩

  2. The door opens if you recite the poem while looking away. They had the two elements they needed, but never put them together!↩

#fabula ultima #report #rpg #the romance of ys #ttrpg