Saturday, April 6, 2013

First Session of Reclaiming Khazad-Dum

+Christian Blouin, +Alex Safatli  (Kalin Brother of Gimli) , +Arne Jamtgaard (Bain, uncle of the king) , and +Jason Woollard (Khazek a very young dwarf ranger), and I got to Play Drolf son of Hemmolt.
Congrats to everyone and the preparation was awesome and the results were awesome.

The social combat was satisfying, it really felt like a battle well in my experience it is practically a battle. The council of dwarves were successful in preventing the king in foolishly playing his entire hand before knowing what the dwarves are up against in the KD (Khazad-Dum).

Since I've been playing a lot of social combat games, I find that this is a more organized means and more "game-fun" model to run a social encounter. Comparing it to the others I've experienced, that don't use Narrative Control Mechanics to balance things out.

This approach, by christian, vs narrative control system are a good fit for Traditional RPG gamers for a way of resolving a social situation. In the NC systems, you have to "Yes and.../Yes but..." (all discussed a former post). This system is very tactical and has a beautiful visualization of how the positions are related. Its a "GURPS"sy more system than SIFRP, but it does take some setting up and KUDOS to the GM prepping!

Its such a nice system why not play a Political Animal? Now here is the thing about a Soldier is that they are pieces in the game, and they are trying to survive. They will go with the strongest at the expense that they can't push much of an agenda - I didn't have an agenda and that helped in the long run. Drolf is just trying to get things to work out, and will work with the party to achieve this.

As a Soldier, I just kill stuff and win battles. I execute the command, and my real field is on the battle field and leading troops.

2 comments:

bongotastic said...

I think that you played very interestingly. I liked how you turned the King's argument into a counter-attack using soldier's talk.

I will need to refine the flow and some of the mechanics to make it more fluid and exciting. But I'm happy with the first playtest and glad that I had you guys to work it out!

justin aquino said...

I'm glad to play and help. Hope to be able reinforce the core mechanics, what I just did made me realize a few potential problems in the future. Like "going with the herd" should give me more penalties to the "sway" action, since I have no credibility to begin with at the cost of displacing myself.