Status of the Game

[GhostWolfe]

New Day!

Day three is here, and marks the beginning of the Tourney Displays!

Today's activities:
● Tourney, Early Afternoon, Dressage (Event Grounds)
● Interaction, Early Night, A Single Scream (Grassfield Keep)

This is the last day of Session 1, which awards 20xp. You can invest this xp and have it take effect with the beginning of Day 4, see the thread here for details. In addition to xp gain, any Destiny points spent (not burnt) during Session 1 will be refreshed.

[GhostWolfe]

New... Delay?

To allow some extra time for rolling, RPing, and recovering from end-of-week stress, D4 will be delayed by 24 hours, to commence on December 17. Thanks to everyone for their feedback on this.

[GhostWolfe]

New Day!

It's Day 4, and things are well underway. Today brings us two 'new' things: the first single-skill event, and an experimental event in which your dice can explode, potentially allowing for some interesting break-out results.

Additionally, with the end of Session 1, xp awards are going out, and any Destiny spent (not burnt) in the first three game days will be refreshed/restored.

Today's Activities are:
● Tourney, Late Morning, Wrestling
● Event, Early Evening, A Music Performance

I hope everyone's enjoying themselves, and look forward to seeing some fallout from D3.

[GhostWolfe]

Intrigue and the Criminal Element

Don’t get me wrong. I love that many of you have jumped on the death of Leana as a plot hook, but I really feel I need to speak up.

This is Westeros.

Cutpurses, bandits, footpads, and other nefarious characters abound. They carry blades and they wear armour. Their gear is lighter than a knights’, usually concealable. But to think that a town as large a Grassy Vale wouldn’t have a thriving underbelly is sheer folly. Every town in Westeros suffers some degree of crime. Criminals tend to be good at what they do. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have lived as long as they have.

And in Westeros, disposing of one’s problems permanently is just one move in the game of thrones. I’m seeing a lot of theorising about Leana’s death that is based on very modern views. Try to keep in mind that people die every day in Westeros, this is not some hugely out-of-place occurance. As per the rumours on the start of Day 4, the public explanation that Leana fell has been accepted by the populace, who have moved on with their lives. After all, she was only a servant.

If there’s any way I can help you get into the mind space of the setting, please let me know. Otherwise, happy hunting.

In the game of thrones you win or you die. There is no middle ground.

[GhostWolfe]

Mechanic Removal

Effective with the start of Day 5, the following mechanics will be removed:
● Suspect Points
● Suspicion Points
● Unrest

You may remove your Suspect scores from your signatures.

[GhostWolfe]

New Day!

Day 5 is here, and with the start of the new day, Unrest and Suspect/Suspicion have been removed. For such a small group, all working towards calming Unrest, the actual numbers became somewhat academic, so I won't be requiring rolls for that any more. As for Suspect/Suspicion, the feedback was that it was giving people the wrong impression. I also haven't found sufficient opportunity to hand out points of either type, rendering what I was hoping to track ... untrackable.

Well, live and learn, onwards and upwards, and always whirling, whirling towards destruction!

Today's activities include:
● Early Morning, Interaction, Grassfield Keep.
● Late Morning, Tourney, Event Grounds.

Additionally, Liliane's dress is ready to be fitted today!

Please keep an eye out for upcoming announcements regarding the Grand Melee and the Joust.

[GhostWolfe]

A Plea From a GM too Stressed to Sleep

If you guys have any questions, worries, concerns, or uncertainties; be they about the setting, your character, other characters, what the hell the NPCs think they’re doing, anything; I want you to know you can always talk to me. Please feel free to reach out to me, at any moment that I’m not actually asleep, I can make time to talk to you.

Don’t ever think I’m too busy or too tired or that I won’t want to hear it. I’m here for you guys, not the other way around.

[GhostWolfe]

Important Announcements Regarding the Grand Melee and Joust

In roughly 50 hours from the time of this post (2 Days + me posting this a bit early) Day 6 will arrive, and with it, the Grand Melee. In hopes of running things as smoothly as possible:

T-minus 1 day (24hrs from this post): Registrations for the Melee open. Players have 24 hours ONLY to roll for Initiative and post in the appropriate registration thread. This means that registrations will close at day flip. Additional information on registering will be posted in the registration thread when it goes live tomorrow.

T-minus 2 days (48hrs from this post): Day flip occurs and the Grand Melee begins.

T-minus 3 (or 4) days: Once the bulk of the melee has been resolved, the Interaction for Day 6 will be posted. I will be doing my level best to provide NPCs and assistance for the players not participating in the Melee, and I apologise in advance for the first half of Day 6 being rather slow for you.


With regards to the joust: it was always my preference/intention to run the Festival for the full 10 days, I just ran out of ideas. I am, however, currently drafting a new Tourney Activity. This will now occur on Day 8, with the joust being pushed to Day 9. There are a couple of benefits to this:

● Melee participants gain an additional day to recover before the joust.
● More tourney games, yay!
● More time for me to look into the joust rules, because holy h*ck.

In game terms, we have always been at war with Eastasia, and the joust was always going to be on day 9.


Thanks to everyone for their patience and support, and letting me sleep really weird hours. You’ve all been wonderful, and I hope you enjoy the second half of the tourney even more than the first.

[GhostWolfe]

T-minus 3... 2... Delay

Another day, another extension. I’m pushing day flip out again. This means registrations for the Grand Melee will start tomorrow (rather than now), and day flip arrives overmorrow. The extra time to massage some joust-related numbers will also be appreciated, and hopefully I’ll have a resolution on that sooner rather than later.

Kylie hasn’t been well; please send her your love, best wishes, and pictures of porgs.

[GhostWolfe]

Components of a Joust

There were a lot of factors I considered when reviewing the rules for jousting. There is no tidy way to break it down in sections, as the parts need to move together in order to function, but I shall do my best to present a clear rationale, before laying out the modified rule set.

When mounted on a war-trained steed, you may add your Animal Handling rank as bonus dice on your Fighting tests.

When riding a steed, you gain the following benefit:
- Use the mount’s Movement in place of your own.
- Gain +1B on Fighting tests made to attack non-mounted opponents.
When riding a steed trained for war, you gain the following benefits:
- If your mount doesn’t move during your turn, increase your damage on a successful Fighting test by +2.

It’s impossible to tell if the Animal Handling addition was a widowed fragment that was supposed to be removed, if it wasn’t carried through to the later chapters, or what that’s about. However, given the lack of a buckets o’ dice mechanic, and my dissatisfaction with how roll and keep works on d6s (as opposed to d10s - a story for another time), I think this bonus can be discarded.

Since a jousting attack is by definition a charge (see page 164), both attackers take –1D on their Fighting tests.

Charge (Greater)
Throwing caution to the wind, you surge forward to destroy your enemies. Charging allows you to combine Movement with an attack. You can charge any opponent that’s up to twice your Movement away. At the end of your charge, you may make a standard attack. You take –1D on the attack, but you increase the weapon’s damage by +2 for the round.

On the surface, the assumption that a jousting pass would be defined as a charge seems reasonable enough, but I was prompted to look deeper into this by player comments. At the bottom end of the field, we have a PC keeping 3 dice on Fighting Tests, for a maximum of 18 (before the -1D penalty for charging). At the top end of the field, they are pitting themselves against TN22 - a number they can’t hit, even with use of manoeuvres.

Max Roll / Percentage of opponents with TNs exceeding max roll:

Code: Select all

            No Manoeuvre  Manoeuvre
.No Charge    18 / 40%     20 / 20%
-1D Charge    12 / 60%     14 / 60%

As one player asked: why even try, if you can’t hit?

Dropping the charge aspect of jousting is a fairly straightforward solution to this. This can be explained by breaking down each pass into three components:

● First Turn: both knights bring their mounts up to a gallop and ready their lances, covering approximately 24’ (7.3m).
● Second Turn: both knights pass each other, attempting to strike their opponent’s shield. This is not a reckless attack, as suggested by the Charge Action, but rather a calculated strike made with precision and skill. The horse continues its movement, a further 48’ (14.6m).
● Third Turn: both knights slow their horses, assuming they are still seated, reaching the end of the tilt, having traversed roughly 96’ (29.3m).
● Fourth Turn: assuming neither knight has been unhorsed, both turn their mounts, exchange lances, and ready themselves for the next pass.

This happens in roughly the same time it takes to pull a shot of espresso (24-30s for the uninitiated).

Tourney Lance Spear 1B Animal Handling+3 Bulk 1, Fragile, Mounted, Powerful, Reach, Slow

Fragile
Whenever you get two or more degrees of success with a Fragile weapon, it automatically breaks.

Test Result: Outcome
Failure: Lance shatters

Tourney jousting is about unhorsing your opponent, so lances are blunted and meant to shatter on impact with the opponent’s shield. [...] knight charges down the field to the right of the picket and tries to strike his opponent’s shield with his lance with sufficient force to throw the other knight from the saddle. Deliberately aiming for a target other than your opponent’s shield is considered poor form at best and out-right cheating at worst, though lances do sometimes slip off of shields to strike rider or horse—accidentally and deliberately. Jousting lances are simple wooden poles, blunted at the ends and expected to splinter or shatter on impact.

A tourney lance inflicts (Animal Handling +3) base damage and is a Powerful weapon, which adds +1 damage per rank of Strength specialty a wielder has. Since a tilt with lances involves a charge, the lance does an additional +2 base damage.

A combatant knocked from his saddle falls and suffers damage equal to the jousting attack’s base damage. Armor does not reduce this damage.

Cheating
A competitor can choose to shift his lance to strike a more lightly armored area of his opponent, or even to strike his opponent’s mount. This attack deals normal damage, as if in combat, potentially killing the rider or mount.

There’s a lot to unpack here.
● First, there is the mismatch of expectation between the Fragile weapon quality, and the actual outcome of jousting Tests (p.158 -v- p.168), not to mention that the tourney lance is one of only two weapons that have this quality.
● Second, there is (surprise, surprise) an inconsistency in terminology that obfuscates intended meaning (p.169 “normal damage, as if in combat").
● Third, while there is considerable discussion about just how dangerous tournament jousting is, it is mostly in the context of accidents and intentional contravention of the rules.

Overall, this suggests to me that tourney lances are not intended to be as deadly as a genuine war lance, the shattering effect and aiming for the shield meaning to ablate a large portion of the impact. However, assessing damage dealt is a little more complex than max roll -versus- TN.

When looking at the options, there were two main things I wanted to achieve: I wanted reward players for their XP investments, and I wanted to try ensure than the more ‘fragile’ PCs were not overrun by those with more ‘brutal’ builds. The following formula will still feel punishing to the fragile characters, but I feel reflects the dangers of jousting in lighter armour.

Damage = (Animal Handling or Fighting Ranks + Strength Ranks) * Degrees
The player may choose which Ability to apply to this calculation.

See: modified rules.