Friday, September 21, 2007

Fate: Dark and Stormy report #5

Another Friday, and another session of Fate. This week our goal was to finish this scene in which the PCs have been battling two noggit raiders.

When we left off last week, Leo had tripped and subdued the enemy we've been calling Noggit A. I spoke online with some other Fate GMs and they told me this block action (reactive tripping) really isn't allowed in the rules. Since I didn't want to look it up at the time, I had simply ruled that Leo could trip the retreating noggit. So, the noggit conceded, throwing down his weapon, as Leo jumped on his chest to hold him down. The noggit spoke to Leo in his native tongue, which sounded to Leo like just a bunch of growly nonsense. Leo didn't bother trying to communicate with the noggit. Instead, he tied his arms up so he couldn't pull anything fancy. Here you can see Leo sitting on the surrendered noggit (miniatures not to scale...):



Rwake was the first to make an attack. He had to pick up and load his blowgun, which I counted as a supplemental action, giving him a -1 to his attack roll. *THWIP*! He blasted a poisoned wooden dart across the room, connecting with Noggit B's hand. We spent the next few minutes as a group discussing how the poison ought to play out. A couple players went flipping through the SotC book looking for how poison works, and others talked about how it could realistically play out. In the end, we did what the book made it sound like we ought to do, but we still weren't sure. So, the potency of Rwake's poison beat the Endurance of the noggit. He took no stress, but did take a moderate consequence of "Poisoned". You may remember, he already had a minor consequence of "Slow movement". Discussing it later, Llama and I now have a better idea of how this should play out in the future. Below, Rwake shoots his blow dart across the room at Noggit B, who is engaged in combat with Elros. By the way, that miniature of Rwake was designed by Llama himself. Whenever we roleplay, he designs his own minis out of clay, which is very cool. After all, the more everyone invests in the game, the more fun it is for the group.




Elros took this window of time to pull a tricky sword stroke, rolling a nice +6 total, disarming Noggit B. The javelin the noggit was holding flew through the air, its tip landing in a hole in the grate in the middle of the room. After a couple seconds, the javelin had slipped all the way down the drainage shaft, out of sight. Having taken two consequences, Noggit B was now ready to join his raiding buddy in surrender. He threw his shortsword on the ground and dropped his arms, offering concession to Elros with empty hands. Elros borrowed a length of rope to tie the hands of this noggit as well. Below, Elros launches his disarming move against the now poisoned noggit. You also get a nice close-up view of some official Fudge dice (Fate is built on Fudge). Another tasty photograph taken by J (Leo's player).




Having both noggits now tied up, the PCs spent a few moments debating how they ought to deal with their prisoners. Rwake, uninterested in the negotiations, left through the northern door to scout out the next hall, from which the noggits had entered.

Leo and Elros took time to search the noggits for valuables. Over his armor, Noggit A wore a standard belt. On top of that belt, he wore another belt, loosely placed - clearly not intended to be practical. Leo decided this must be a valuable item and took it from the noggit.

Before this adventure, I created some little treasure cards. I drew some sketches of the items, scanned them, then added text in Photoshop. The belt that Leo acquired now was called the "Belt of Lifting". It allows the wearer to gain a +1 to rolls when lifting or carrying weight. I'll have to post an item card for you to see at some point. I'm really into little things like that. In our last game, the GM had a map for us that he had created, as well as drawings of places we went. He also had some other items he gave us that were images printed on paper. I'm a very visual person, so I like seeing pictures of things like items, just to see how cool they are. I always loved looking at the pro sketch art in the D&D manuals.

Leo went down the hall to follow Rwake (who had also gone and fetched the magical orb of light from the southern hallway). Elros was left with both noggits in the dripping room. Noggit A got to his feet and ran down the southern passage. Noggit B looked as if he wanted to do the same. Elros, acting on his good side (which fits the character's goals), sliced the ropes on the noggit's hands and bid him leave. AC explained to the rest of us that he figured he ought to leave the noggit on somewhat friendly terms just in case "the whole noggit army was waiting in the next room". A series of jokes and laughter ensued over the situation and we decided to end the session. Next week, the PCs have the choice to examine the next room at the end of the hall, and another narrow passage heading to the east.

One final photo J took - his bag of dice all spilled out. You can see a variety of dice, including a Magic: The Gathering countdown die, some Fate point counters on the left (Go pieces), and two sets of Fudge dice in the background. Thanks to AC for sharing his stash of Fudge dice with the group each week.

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