Mash-Up

 Two nights ago, we had another "Medieval Tavern Night" at The Press Basement Bar. 

It's been an erratic night. The first event was meant to be held in February but got pushed back to March, we had about 18 players, with 3 sessions at 6 per session, and another dozen or so Magic players (I think), who were participating in a card tournament. I ran an open exploration game focused on a ruined city that covered an island. It was once the capital of a corrupt and ancient kingdom. The each had goals on the island, it worked fairly well.  

The second event was in April but coincided with ANZAC day, and a lot of people figured it would be called off, or simply had other plans. We had two games running, and I think there were some Magic players again. I ran 8 that night, where a bunch of the players had been in my session on the first night. For this session I ran a heist. All the characters were half-animal races, so I pitched it as Oceans 11 meets Zootopia. It was basically a dungeon-crawl, or as close as I get to that style of game...lots of puzzles.

May's event was cancelled when I came down with COVID and one of the other GMs had been thinking of not heading in. 

June's event was the one two nights ago, and when I'd asked one of the other teacher's at my school if she was coming (she'd been to the first night) she wasn't even aware it was on. That didn't bode well... I found out later that only four presale tickets had sold...for 3 DMs. So we decided we'd randomly see who would run a game, and the other DMs would get a chance to play.

The die roll ended up with me running. The two other DMs had basically decided that they wanted to play my game anyway, which was nice. But what was the game??? Someone had commented in the April game that their Dungeon Master had been running massive combat sessions and those sessions had been boring. They dreaded going back to their regular sessions because it often degenerated into dice rolling and looking up things in books. So I took it as a challenge to run an interesting and story driven combat.

That led us to "The Ronin's Vengeance" a game told as a combat, with flashback scenes filling in the context and telling the backstory like an anime or perhaps like a Tarantino movie.

I had some good ideas, but ended up relying on instinct. Dungeons and Dragons mashed-up with A Penny for My Thoughts. The characters start in a fight, but don't know why as their memories are gone. 

I wanted certain triggering events to set up memories, so I wrote a dozen memory fragments and some leading questions for each of them. These started fairly mundane, "a glint of sunlight", "a scent of cherry blossoms", and worked up to more violent options such as "the sound of clashing blades", "the taste of blood". Each player was given at least one card with one of the memory fragments, we ended up with 7 players (including a complete newbie), so five players got two fragments, and two players got one. The theory was that every memory triggered would tie together random characters with a special moment from the past. 

I wasn't sure how I wanted the triggers to activate, but ended up just setting off a memory at the end of each full round of combat. Each player who failed a die roll or attack gained a coin. The player at the end of the round with the most coins would get the memory. The memories would trigger in order, and a random person at the table would join along for the ride.

To further the "Penny" experience, I described an event from the past, then got the active player to ask two players not related to the memory to fill in some details that they had heard. The active player chose one of the descriptions provided by those players, handed their pile of coins to the player, then made some kind of skill check roll based on the events in the memory. A success would grant them access to a magical item (they might realise how to activate the item in their possession, or might have to go and get it). A failure would regain them a coin. 

I didn't want to guide the choices of the players too much, but subtly twisted the final moments of each flashback to direct the narrative forward.

Normally in A Penny for My Thoughts, coins would be distributed one by one, with each flashback having a number of pivotal moments where questions are asked of other players in the group. A table of 7 players stopped that from being feasible, but the single query kept a level of dynamism in the story and player interest. 

If I was to run this again, I'd limit the players to 4 or 5, and maybe have a couple of questions on each memory, distributing half the load to each players whose input is selected. It just felt like the same players kept getting the flashbacks under the mechanics of play that were used. Still, it was something different, and the players involved seemed to enjoy it for those differences.

In conclusion, the game had 3 waves of antagonists, skeletal samurai, ninja, and a corrupted dragon. As we drew to a conclusion one of the players engaged in character self-sacrifice so that seemed a nice way to finish things off.

I'd love to run this again some time, with a few tweaks...maybe a non D&D system for the combat framing device. We'll see what happens.