Deeper and Darker Plots


Not much involvement on my part this time around - which is okay, 'cause I was tired last night.

After a couple days spent at the estate waiting for an invitation to see our mysterious playwright, Rufina ends up following her "evil" cousin through a secret passage into the wine cellar. There she overhears a conversation between Verona and an as-yet unidentified bad guy who seems to be manipulating events to our heroes' disadvantage. Ironic, perhaps, because they are looking for "the Manipulator" - whoever that is. He confessed to turning Sebastian's brother on him and spoke of potentially using something at home to get Sylvia out of the way, if needed.

In getting away, however, Rufina attracted attention (proving once again the lesson learned from GURPS sessions: "It's all fun and games until someone fails a stealth roll"). Verona went after her. The mysterious baddy got away. Unable to get Rufina to meet her eyes for a Vodacce curse, Verona went for her stilleto. Rufina was faster - slicing her cousin's wrist nicely.

About this time, most of the others arrived, having been drawn by Rufina's cries. Faced with numbers, Verona fell back on the "my cousin is disturbed - she attacked me" approach, which has been met with a large degree of skepticism all around, I think. Sylvia certainly trusts Rufina over her cousin.

Things wound down with Rufina trying to convince Sebastian to take Verona along in an effort to lure out her superior in this dark conspiracy. He just seems offended at having others assume El Vagamundo is their taxi. And Rufina's Grandmother (a fate witch) has just invited everyone over for tea. How, exactly, this is going to get explained away without Rufina getting in trouble for attacking her cousin remains to be seen. In fact, it doesn't really sound good at all...

The group is a little more united by a common threat... but I don't think most of them realize or accept that. Rufina seems more set on uncovering the plot, but I suspect Sebastian is no more inclined to shuttle people around than before.

Elapsed Time: Two days.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adventures in Rokugan (ongoing)

 So, yeah, I'm terrible at keeping up with between-session conversations and all the piles of possible channels/servers in Discord - especially when work gives me some time to think, but not Discord access. I believe a question was posed about thoughts on the state and future of the Adventures in Rokugan game, though, so here goes... In general, I'm enjoying the time and look forward to it more than feel burdened by it. The start time is a little earlier than ideal, but I don't mind making it work on Saturdays. So, net positive overall. I'm a touch "meh" on the mechanics of AiR. I like the familiarity of D&D, but the Rokugan-specific stuff doesn't feel very rewarding. Granted, this may just be my pick of a shadow acolyte, but I feel like I'm getting more functional mileage out of the sharpshooter feat than all of the special class abilities and level-ups haven't been particularly exciting. I've been tempted to multi-class into something els
Read more

Harbinger of Chaos (Godbound)

 Last night seemed to be the climactic finale of the ongoing Godbound game. I have some thoughts. The previous session ended with a couple PCs and a shadowy person in the special chamber with access to divine realms and their vacated thrones (in the campaign, the gods were sorta kicked out of their positions, making things up for grabs). Once PC had already claimed a throne. All the others were waiting outside. At the moment the session ended, no one seemed aware that the shadowy figure was Beryn, big-bad threat of the campaign. This is where I feel weird about things, because that little detail came up OOC and it changed everything. If the PCs had been aware at the time, they probably would have started a fight outside the chamber when they saw him. That didn't happen. But suddenly because the players were aware, they wanted to be able to plan before the conflict (with downtime glossed over previous) so they could go into the next session guns-blazing and as prepared as possible.
Read more

RPG Desires?

 So I was asked last night what I actually want in an RPG game/campaign. I came up with a few points, but that's a question I find hard to answer on the spot. It's easy to point at things in an ongoing game that I don't like, and a little harder to point at things I do (darn negative-focused psychology), but making generalizations is more difficult still. It does, however, give me something to focus a little on and ramble about for a time... Story I like a narrative through line - not usually to the point of "railroading," but I want more connective tissue than just returning to a job board after each mission. Sometimes that develops as things go, with character goals shaping things. Setting an end goal at the outset ("defeat the demon lord!") can have ups and downs. However it comes about, I really like to feel there is some forward momentum toward something, though. Consistency This one gets sub-points!  As far as setting, I sort of stopped using the t
Read more