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So last Sunday we began our In a Wicked Age game. We drew an Oracle from The Nest of Vipers. And so it started...
- The ghost of a suicide, a person overcome by guilt and shame, who finds in death no release.
- A warehouse on the docks, full of stolen silk and fine stuff.
- A young widower, raging, whose beautiful wife was murdered by sorcery by a romantic rival.
- A court dandy, casually cruel, exiled from the presence of the prince for a petty slight.
From that point on we identified characters in the Oracle and went from there. We actually listed a number of characters and elaborated on how they were connected to each other and the Oracles. After the game we noted that that part of prep overlapped the later establishment of best interests and could maybe be left out. On the other hand we had easier time the rest of the prep when we had done that. So I guess both approaches would work.
We ended up combining the prince and the young widower. The beautiful wife was combined with the ghost and the romantic rival ended up being a playboy wizard. We had a bit more trouble with the docks oracle, but then we established the court dandy as the loser of royal silk and a thief gang which had stolen it from both the prince and the thieves' guild (who were in cahoots).
The players then chose their characters and allotted dice to their stats. After that it was time for Best Interests. We drew a kind of a relationship map of Best Interests as I thought that would show immediately if they were an imbalance between the characters. We finished with this:
So we had the thieves' gang led by Siegfried and assisted by Melinda, the prince and her dead wife Sylvia, who was also the lover of Edward and Hugo Sternberg who had made a deal with Jack No-Nose to buy some cheap silk to the prince, which the thieves' gang had then stolen. Quite a mess.And on top of all that, Edward wanted to raise Sylvia from the dead to live with her for ever and ever.
As we started playing, we also recorded details about the milieu to a piece of paper. At the half point of the session we had to decide a name for our harbour city and we came up with Eavesport, usually nick-named Thieves' port. Also, we started the game from a tavern near the docks called One-Eye's Cave. The tavern also doubled as a brothel and sported a savage giant bouncer (is there any other kind?).
We played a couple of scenes and a this point much of the Best Interests are still unresolved. We played a couple of conflicts and got to write two names on the Owe List, too. All in all a successful session.
A quick list of scenes and events:
- As Siegfried and Melinda are in One-Eye's Cave on a busy evening, Hugo Sternberg walks in in a poor disguise
- Edward is in his secret lab in the docks district (where he keeps Sylvia's coffin) as he starts to hear Sylvia talking to him
- Melinda offers her help to Hugo and escorts him to Siegfried. Hugo asks them for help in getting back the silk.
- Edward is visited by Jack No-Nose. Sylvia tries to aggravate Edward into revealing Jack something revealing. Edward promises Sylvia to make amends with Prince Archibald.
- Hugo and Siegfried make a deal that Seigfried will arrange a meeting for Hugo with people who have the silk now.
- Melinda tries and succeeds to make a secret meeting with Hugo to get him on her side. Siegfried notices that and follows.
- Edward promises to get rid of Siegfried for Jack and Jack promises to get Edward a secret audience with the Prince. Edward testifies having an affair with the prince's wife to Jack.
- Melindaand Hugo meet in an alley. Melinda convinces Hugo that she will help her so that Siegfried won't be able to swindle him. In return, Hugo promises to support and introduce Melinda in the court.
After the session we talked about spotlight time and participating on "someone else's" scene. We noted thatwe did not have a lot of scenes were the majority of player characters were preasent at once. I said that it wasn't necessarily a problem as people could always butt in with their suggestions and ideas about the scene even if their characters weren't in them. We talke about that a bit and decided to do more of that later. I think it takes a bit of skill to make the balance right, but we have plenty of time. And as we are having fun already, it's not so important to do it perfectly.
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