Bad Vibes on the Bayou #2 (cross-post)-

LINK
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Urutsk: Bad vibes on the bayou #2

Following Bad vibes on the bayou, here are Stephen Laidlaw's GM notes:

By the session the players had figured out which system we were using - TSR's Amazing Engine (which isn't really). I'd not used it in years but it wasn't too much bother.

During the game I relied upon encounter and reaction tables, but beforehand I had established what had happened to the characters before the first session. The characters had been fed certain images and memories which the players can either work with or ignore. They may prove to be important depending on the party's actions.

The session proved to be full of player paranoia as character secrets were not being shared, though the bouts of nausea telegraphed the fact that all the party were regaining memories.

Over the two sessions the players have missed out on finding/utilising equipment but as the game doesn't hinge on these items for completion I've no reason to drop hints to help them.

Generating the adventure as we game, reacting to the PCs actions but being aware of the actions/agendas of NPCs has made the sessions very interesting for me as I feel I'm exploring the setting with them. Some stuff I do just make up - the look of the Humanoids for instance, which usually leads to further questions to get my mind around.

The material Kyrinn has provided had been invaluable, as they contain the tools for hex-crawling as well as 'the big picture'. A working knowledge of the setting is enough to aid the GM in interpreting the rolled outcomes of the tables so as the game seems Urutskan rather than just generic play.

I have no game outcome in mind, no objective for the characters - but their actions or inaction will have consequences. Events will unfold and the players are aware that I'm rolling for the reactions/actions of others as things are happening in the wider world.

Thanks to Dave, Sean, Sue and Tony for their mad confidence in me.

Another atmospheric song used was 'In Dark Trees' :



Now we're off to watch Germany vs Spain down the pub.

Urutsk: Bad vibes on the bayou #1 (cross-post)-

Here's the LINK to Sean Wills' blog account of the second Urutsk game he's participated in as a player.
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Urutsk: Bad vibes on the bayou #1

(following Memory and Mangrove)

Riverboat journey - party travel with the merchant Kariq and his three boathands - cargo of spirits, medicinal herbs, hides, cages of small beaked marsupials, and a triptych of painted metal panels depicted a comet streaking over the wetlands. Night falls - much chittering of creatures and gaseous light forms(fae?) follow at a distance - exhausted PCs cannot stay awake - in the long hours before dawn mud-encrusted bark-armoured humanoids (very primitive) attack from overhanging trees and coracles with spearsticks and blowpipes - party and crew fight them off but not without injury (all PCs bar Mouwles) and death (Kariq and 1 boathand). Boat reaches military stockade after fraught journey - boat impounded at gunpoint as officer disbelieves account of Kariq's death (or chooses to disbelieve it). PCs and crew put in lockup - separted in morning - PCs to travel under armed guard to Fort Stalwart via airship that arrives at midday. It seems the PCs are of interest to someone of importance. Future of 2 boathands looks grim, slavery perhaps. The session ended.

Much of the session was taken up with the battle. By now we'd sussed out that Stephen had us statted up using TSR's clunky 'Amazing Engine' ruleset. After receiving the pre-release version of the Vrun Player's Module from Timeshadows I wish we'd swapped over straight away as I would've loved to utilise the cool unarmed combat and ranged fire rules. The biggest in-game discussion was as to whether we took the boat to the stockade or not, player knowledge vs. playing in role.

And yes..more bits of paper passed to the players, but we all seem to be keeping things to ourselves !

(Riverboat trip was accompanied by Dr John's wonderful 'Gris-gris' album)



(more to come plus *ahem, Stephen* GM's notes)

Vrun Players' Module Update-

I am busy editing the Aberrations & Powers section, and then the Vrun locations need to be integrated with the Cultural data, so I am still hoping for a mid-to late-July release to .pdf, with print on demand following.

The Acaeum thread on UWoM-

This was nice to read, and I'll be by shortly to correct the point regarding the free Betas and the NTRPG Con pre-release version (which represents about 50% of the first commercial release).

James Tabor on Super Deep Caving-

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
James Tabor
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Main e-mail temporarily down...-

RESOLVED. :D



Hi,

If you need to reach me, please use the hotmail account until I am back up and running under my main addy.

Thanks.

A new Overseas URUTSK game session report-

Our man near Northumberland, Sean Wills, has this truly wonderful session report (as a Player, no less), reprinted here:
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We played using the UWOM setting. The GM, Stephen Laidlaw used the terrain/hex/encounter tables from the Beta Referee's manual. Each of the four players was given a mostly-blank sheet of paper with few words about the character on it - mine said:

Yande; Male; shirt, boots, breeches, embroided waistcoat, belt.

The game started with the PCs waking up groggy and retching, a foul taste in their mouths, to find themselves in a longhut on stilts in a swamp. Humans (?) - two male, two females, we seemed to know very little. We (the players) asked lots of questions about how we looked, how we felt, what we saw in the hut etc to piece together the situation. Yande seemed like a well-groomed gaunt young man -a fair-haired Vrun ? Teash seemed to be a shaven-headed Yir[inn] male, Mouwles was a tough-looking brunette, Niame was a lithe WI Vrun female. We all seemed to have lost any memory of who we were and how we had come to be in the hut. There was a shelf of odd bits of field gear/rations/water in the hut but no weapons or armour. It looked like there had been another inhabitant there recently.

During the session the characters left the stilt-hut to explore the surrounded environs - swamp wetlands. Mouwles found footprints on a stretch of solid land which led to a newly-ravaged body in a clearing. Teash seemed to recognise the carrion-insects feasting on the corpse. The man had been armed with a folding light crossbow and a machete. The killing blows had come from large clawed creatures, Teash reckoned they were probably feline. The weapons were shared out between Mouwles and Yande, Niame took the leather vest that looked huge on her.

Then the flashbacks and nausea started. Stephen handed out notes to each player at several points in the session. Yande remembers operatic arias and a masked swordswoman kicking him into a canal. After evading a monstrous horned reptile ridden by humanoids with slingshots and fighting off three spiny pack-cats (Yande seems very deadly and precise in combat, Niame's fast) the PCs reached a lakeside fortified outpost and distillery. They learn they are in the Vrun Berror region and decide to head to the capitol on a merchant's riverboat, their passage paid with the pack-cat pelts.

More flashbacks - an audience with an elderly woman producing feelings of dread, a technical sketch, a purple glow, screams dying to whispers.

The session had to end there.

Stephen obviously has us all statted up, I've not guessed the system yet, and we're only realising what our characters can do well/badly through doing stuff. We're definitely not 1st level !

A mix of sandbox with a backstory that reveals itself as a result of regular dice rolls. It's almost as if we're playing what happens after a (failed?) scenario. Cool idea, good session, looking forward to the next.