(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I ran my third D&D session of the campaign last night. In the last session, one of the players gave a faerie token of obligation to a different faerie. In this session, it emerged that she was able to use that token as her dowry to arrange her marriage to a Faerie King. In recognition of their role in causing the pairing, the players were invited to the wedding. In the background, this shift in faerie power balance was having economic repercussions back home, which the players sought to mitigate during the pre-wedding festivities.

If not for player intervention, the Faery King would probably be dead right now, instead he is now the most powerful fey being in the region, and happily married to boot. The whole session was at the wedding and it was a blast to roleplay.

I think I'm going to try to step away from faery stuff for a while now. There's a lot of other potential narratives in this setting, and I've laid bits and pieces of groundwork for some of them, so it's time to see about shifting them more into the foreground so that the players are juggling another storyline or two. Cold war with the wizards is one, and a gold rush story is another. The faery power struggles are great but the choices involved will be starker once they get stacked against the other economic choices.

I am very nervous about the impact of a choice I am making now. One player's actions were much more significant economically than the others, so in writing up my session report for the players I am planning to give him a lot more Guild Merits- enough for him to reach level 3 while the other players will still be at level 2. Those potential disparities are the whole point of this system, but it hasn't come up as an issue yet so I am really nervous to see how it actually plays out. The hazard of experimental unplaytested gaming systems is the risk that they will suck in practice.



Unrelatedly, I just offered to run a couple of games at Worldcon. I am very excited for that. Worldcon's in a month, holy shit.

Comments

[jack]

Oh gosh, yes, that is exciting! Really exciting to see big repurcussions playing out so soon.

Yeah, the leveling system is a question. I think be ready to see how it works in practice, which I'm really interested to see. But don't rush to change it until you see if does make problems or not

[bookherd]

There's a whole lot of complexity you're building up here, and I like it!

And surely, as long as every player has an equal chance at getting Guild Merits over time -- whether or not it's apparent how to do so -- it will all even out, with perhaps just a little plot-nudging on your part.

[seekingferret]

Yeah... thinking it through, I don't think even the player who got the level boost thinks he came out ahead. The things he did to gain the level put a massive target on his back and he knows it.

But I should be careful to offer the other players hooks that could give them chances to catch up.