Roses & Wyght - The AfterPost

(Read the final chapter here.)

If you are reading this, I have to assume that you have finished my Roses & Wyght campaign and have enjoyed it enough to make it this far. Once again, thanks for reading. I wanted to make one last big post in this thread to tie up some loose ends. First of all, there was a lot going on behind the scenes in the last chapter that I wanted to share with you. Next, early in the story, I promised that I would relay some of the background I generated regarding Shylock and his motivations for assassinating the King. Finally, since this was my first solo roleplaying experience, I wanted to make a few observations about the experience.

The Final Chapter

At some point while I was going through this story, I thought about how interesting it would be if the Captain of the King’s Guard was involved with the plot to assassinate the King. Because I was playing solo it would have been perfectly fine to make this decision on my own, but since this would normally be information the player wouldn’t know I really felt I should keep myself in the dark as to that fact as long as possible. Coming into the final scene, I knew certain events would be shaped by the Captain’s allegiances. Therefore, it was time for an oracle question.

To be as fair and unbiased as possible, I asked a straightforward question with a 50/50 likelihood.

Is Captain Fiststeel in on the plan?
(50/50 | 9[d10]) Yes

I had some ideas of what to do in the case of “ands” and “buts”, however those weren’t necessary. So, now that I knew she was the enemy I could set the scene to reflect that. The first way this affected events was in the positioning of the King’s Guard on the dais. It would be expected that the senior ranking Guard (i.e. the Captain) would be positioned closest to the King. Instead, I had the Captain place herself the furthest from the King and Shylock right next to him, putting the assassin in the best position to perform the deed. (I also randomly determined that one other Guard would really be a Huntsman and positioned him about midway between Shylock and the Captain).

The next thing the Captain did that would have been out of character for someone trying to protect the King was to send the guards from the stage away to investigate the disturbances. Of course, the disturbances were orchestrated by the Huntsmen to draw attention away from the stage, as well as give the Captain a reason to send several of the Guards away. If protecting the King was truly a top priority, it would be unlikely that the Captain would send them away, knowing there were already other King’s Guard patrolling the plaza and the crowd.

The final thing the Captain did to facilitate the assassination attempt was to react slowly once Bhart leaped on stage. I let her hesitate one turn longer than all the other Guards, giving Shylock a little more time to accomplish his task and escape. Of course, it would be suspicious if she did nothing at all, so she eventually had to engage in the melee, but a bit more on that later.

I knew there would be a chance that Captain Fiststeel’s actions might raise questions. I had the PC’s make perception checks at each of the above events. I started with a -2 modifier on the roll since they would initially suspect nothing, and increased that modifier by 2 each time they noticed something to simulate growing suspicion. I did not expect that any of the PC’s would come to the certain conclusion that the Captain was a trader, but I wanted them to have some clues in case I continue the storyline in a later campaign. No one suspected anything about the Guard’s positions on the stage. Bhart, Leira, and Harper all thought it was odd that the Captain would send the Guards into the crowd. All four noticed she was slow to act. Narratively, I presented these observations as part of the PC’s conversation as they left the Plaza.

Finally, I had a few ideas for Shylock should he be captured alive. In the epilogue I could have had Captain Fiststeel either let him rot in jail, slip him a key so he could escape, or poison his food to ensure that he kept silent about her involvement. As it turns out, in Turn 10 I made an oracle check to see if Tristan, who was the first to reach the stage, was going to try to warn the Captain about Shylock. The result was “No” he wouldn’t, but there was an event attached to the response: Passion/Competition.  My interpretation was that the Captain felt very strongly (passion) about keeping her involvement secret, thus maintaining her position in the King’s Guard. To do so, it was important that she eliminate anything that would reveal her secret (competition). At that point, I knew Shylock had to die, either in battle or in jail. The result of the battle took care of that, but I was still able to use the poisoning idea in the epilogue with the remaining Huntsman.

Shylock’s Motivation

The fact that Shylock and company were heading to Duskcall to assassinate the King was hatched in my own head. However, I was not sure of his motivation. Sometime around Chapter 4 I used various tools to generate a backstory in case I needed to include any of those details during the campaign. As it turns out, very little of that story was actually revealed, but I did promise to share it once the campaign was over. If I continue this story in the future there is a possibility that some of this will be pertinent. If you don’t want to be spoiled, just skip past the purple text.

First I rolled a d2 to determine why Shylock wanted to murder the King. 

Is Shylock’s reason 1) personal, or 2) is he hired for the job?
1d2=2 hired for the job

Next, I used UNE’s NPC generator to determine a description of who hired Shylock. The result was “Needy Merchant.”

Next, using BOLD I came up with an arched waylay, using the previously determined “Needy Merchant wants the King assassinated” as the Theme. I rolled up three nested waylays as follows:

Accidental (knowledge) enigma overcome on accident
Malevolent (Physical) Trap overcome by personal resources
Forbidden (Haven) Conclave overcome by avoidance

The last bit of information I needed was what kind of business the merchant ran. Using the Complex Description button on RPGSolo I generated “Mysteriously/Valuable.”

Using all that I came up with the following story:

The person who hired Shylock is Orcan Nightstrider [RG], a sex trafficker/enslaver. He bought young girls and boys and raised them to be slaves, primarily for sexual entertainment. One such young woman, Hulda [RG], was befriended by a member of the King’s Guard who was unaware of her profession. The guardsman was smitten with her and often tried to court her. Time after time she refused, but for no good reason. (In reality, she was a slave and couldn’t get in a personal relationship.) (accidental enigma-why is she not interested in courting?) While acting for the King on an unrelated matter, this guardsman discovered Hulda in the company of a criminal they were arresting, thus discovering her secret (overcome by accident), that she was Orcan’s slave. Realizing that Hulda was a victim of an illegal slave trade, the guardsman reported his finding to the court. As a result, King Angelo increased the efforts to eliminate slavery and sex trafficking in the Kingdom of Arigord. Part of this effort was to organize a sting operation to trap Orcan (malevolent trap) and put an end to his organization. Orcan, however, had people who were associated with the King’s men (personal resources [i.e. Captain Flinsteel, though I obviously didn’t know this at the time]) and was tipped off in advance about the operation. As a result, he was able to escape capture. Orcan realized that his business was in danger as long as the King stayed on the throne. Therefore, he arranged a meeting with a mercenary he was well acquainted with, Shylock (Forbidden conclave). Orcus hired Shylock to see that the King was assassinated. At the very least, the disorganization within the monarchy would give Orcus time to secure his business. At best, the new ruler would be sympathetic to Orcus’ trade. The plan was carefully kept secret, for if word got out the King would be on alert. As of the time of this story, things have been kept quiet and King Angel is unsuspecting of any danger.(avoidance of any information being leaked) 

Other Observations

As this was my first solo roleplay, I didn’t know what to expect. Running combat was pretty straightforward since that was handled by the rule system. But what about everything else?  How would exploration, conversation, and investigation work when I am supposed to be the ignorant player, but also the GM who drives the story? Furthermore, in this particular campaign, I was tossed right into the fire since the first several chapters were primarily conversation and investigation. Through the process, I learned to love tools like UNE, BOLD, RPGsolo, PlayEveryRole, and a multitude of random word, dungeon and item generators. Coming up with stories like Shylock and Tristan’s backgrounds were some of my favorite things to do.

I do have to say that I am impressed with what unexpectedly grew out of seemingly random information. Going in, all I knew was that I had three characters in a small village who were going to have an encounter with the villain and end up tracking him to the big city. That’s all. From there, the rest grew organically, starting with a random description of a pilfered dagger.  What I ended up with is:

• An Assassin’s guild who’s sign of inclusion is a particularly decorated dagger and whose rank is represented by the color of the gem in the pommel.
• The beginnings of a history of the capital city Duskcall.
• A marginalized race (elves) within a city that seems to welcome other non-human races (halflings, dwarves). (And yes, I do have an inkling of why they are marginalized and how that ties into the city’s history).
• Political intrigue within the city.
• An outside force (Orcan) who may have an impact on the PCs and Duskcall in the future.

The most daunting task of the game was clearly choreographing the Sacrament Celebration and final battle. I thought about it often during the chapters leading up to it, but wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to play out until I got there. I had to manage a large cast of characters, run a race, engage in combat and determine a lot of little actions and events along the way. It was thrilling to play and I found it as fun and exciting as many multi-player tabletop encounters in which I have participated.

Elsewhere, I have offered some impressions about the Adventurers! rule system that I used to play this campaign. I chose it because it was rules-light and I didn’t have to read through pages and pages of information to learn the game mechanics. While that did indeed help, one drawback was that, apart from character creation and combat, there were a lot of game mechanics and details that are left to the GM to develop themselves. To accommodate that, I ended up borrowing from other systems, creating several homebrew tables, and purchasing additional Adventurers! rules and scenarios. By the end of the game, I had a good feel for the system (not to mention having put in many hours massaging it for solo play) and I will be continuing to use it in the future, not only for my Roses & Wyght stories, but possibly other adventures as well.

For now, however, I will be setting Bhart, Leira, & Harper aside and move on to another campaign using another game system (Tunnels & Trolls). I’ve already started preparations for that, but my plans involve a significant amount of setup regarding character creation. Additionally, I have other projects and responsibilities that are taking up a lot of time. In other words, it might be a while before I begin posting that campaign. In the meantime, I do have another week of my Bachelor Roleplay that is ready to be typed up and posted and I encourage you to check out some of my other online projects, such as my blog and video game Youtube channel. 

Thanks for reading!