So we had a playtest this weekend. Apologies if this AP is too detailed, or not detailed enough, or all over the place.
I GM’d two friends. One was a female human thief, and the other a male dwarven artificer (I ripped off loneamigo’s awesome artificer design and modified a few things).
We opened with the heros in the Big City, spending all their loot carousing. We didn’t roll Carousing, just narrated it. This was supposed to be a montage of what sorts of things they do when they party, as well as a way of introducing the characters, filling in bonds, and going through the character backgrounds. We decided they were level 3 so they’d have more things to play with.
Turns out they have been running cons on wealthy merchants and nobles throughout the countryside (this was one of the thief’s bonds which we fleshed out). The con involves them trying to get funding for the artificer’s far-out technology designs (the artificer thinks this stuff will actually work if he can just solve a few key problems, but the thief pretty much knows it’s pie-in-the-sky daydreaming). So they had spent their night of debauchery and decadence sweet-talking wealthy folks and running their con on them to drum up funding and support. Also, lots of bar-hopping, drugs, and skivy men and women.
The game proper begins with them waking up, hungover, sunlight creeping in through the window. They’re in a finely-furnished sitting room. There’s a body on the floor. It’s one of the wealthy guys they had been schmoozing with the night before (Lorenzo). He’s been soaking in his own blood for a while. His butler is knocking on the door to rouse him for his morning activities. What do you do?
The artificer threw a curtain over the body and the thief wrapped herself in one of the throw blankets, as if she were naked, and opened the door a crack. She convinced the butler that Lorenzo was ‘indisposed’ but that she would make sure to rouse him, get him sobered and cleaned up, and have him downstairs to start business within 30 minutes (Defy Danger with CHA).
Having bought some time, they quickly investigated the crime scene. I told them they hadn’t done it, and asked them how they knew. The thief decided that she had all her daggers and none of them were bloody, which I thought was fine (I really just wanted to establish that they had been framed). They rifled through the room, papers on the desk, etc, and the artificer used Logical to Discern Realities with INT. They discovered that it was a political hit aimed at serving the dual purposes of a) removing a political enemy and b) distracting the local police to hunt down our heros (a wag the dog kind of thing). I told them this was a good ruse, because after all this dead guy was the mark in one of their cons. (PS, the thief stole everything with weight 0 as she Aided -- I ruled she got an estimated 5 coin worth of papers, but we’ll see how much it’s worth when she brings them into play).
I decided at about this time they heard the butler returning, jingling keys, and they had to make a fast getaway. Since the body was already soaking the carpet with blood, the thief decided it would do no good taking it with them, so they torched the place. The artificer declared he had a pair of ECTOPLASMIC PROJECTOR GOGGLES which would spray down the room with flammable ectoplasm (it gets damaged in the process, clogged with ectoplasm, and the artificer will have to jury-rig it later). They busted out a window and tipped a candle, then repelled to the street below using a rope from their dungeon gear. They ended up getting tangled on the way down, landing hard on each other, and looking up at the window of another room in the house as the butler looked down at them making their escape. The butler started calling for guards at the top of his lungs, and we had a quick chase scene as our heros tried to lose the foot-police in the busy marketplace (obviously, several fruit stands were tipped over).
They managed to hole up in a smuggler’s seedy tavern (‘you’ll not find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy’), where they hid out for a bit while the thief put out feelers with a contact. After a few hours, their contact brought in a made wiseguy who gave them some info about the politics of this city and why Lorenzo might have been assassinated. Turns out the ‘king’ here was really powerless. The merchant collective really ran things, along with the Dominion Church naturally. This Lorenzo was making moves, gaining lots of friends, and consequently had a few enemies. The wiseguy could only tell them about the politics in general, but not about the specifics of who’s out to get whom and why (he’s not, you know, THAT politically savvy). But he set something up for them to meet with a mafia boss-type who would know.
I also used the wiseguy to Show Signs of Doom, telling them the city was crawling with police now, and ‘none of our people can even make a move because of how much heat you brought down here.’ In addition, Lorenzo’s family was hiring out mercenaries, and the majordomo of the house was going to be heading up their efforts. The wiseguy told them not to rough up any cops, because that would be Really Bad, but said it was probably ok to rough up mercenaries. However, he told them this majordomo was a seriously dangerous dude (ie, his wallet is the one that says Bad Muthafuka on it), and told them they’d best run if they see him coming.
So, with that under their belt, our heros had to slink their way through the city to meet this mafia boss (Santino). The thief lead the way, checking each corner and trying to avoid spots which would be good ambush spots if she were setting up an ambush (we decided this was Defy Danger with INT). The dwarven artificer just tried to look normal and not-suspicious although he’s carrying around an unlicensed particle accelerator on his back (Defy Danger with CHA). He didn’t do well, and the police spotted him and questioned him. The thief slipped a dagger into his hand and then told the police ‘thank you! He’s been holding me captive at knife point. Oh lawdy thank you for rescuing me!’ etc etc. Totally threw him under the bus (Defy Danger with CHA). The cops start hauling the artificer away. He decides he’s got a HYPNOTIC ARRAY WAND in his gadget harness, and rolls Defy Danger DEX to get it out. He does it all cool-like, telling the police ‘Just so you know, I’ve got this’ and holds it up. It works like a Men In Black pen. He flubs his INT roll to use it, and chooses the backfire option, so not only do the police forget what’s happened for the last 60 seconds but also the thief. This leads to a funny situation in which the thief has to roll +bond or else be convinced that the artificer is hauling her to the police to report that she’s stolen a bunch of stuff from him (one of her bonds is ‘I’ve stolen from xxx before and he doesn’t know it’). She rolls 10+, unfortunately, so she’s cool.
They get to Santino the mafia boss’ place. He lives in his mother’s basement, like The Pin from Brick (she’s very happy to see that a sweet girl (the thief) is coming over, because she’s worried about her son’s friends). From him, they find out who the likely candidate behind the assasination is. It’s a merchant named Barzini. Turns out Lorenzo was about to put forward a motion to revoke quite a bit of Barzini’s holdings in the merchant collective. Santino also tells them there’s been another hit while they’ve been laying low (another merchant, one of Lorenzo’s supporters who was going to approve the motion, and therefore another enemy of Barzini). He tells them they’ve been blamed for this hit also.
After agreeing to help Santino in the future should he need a favor from them, the heros decide they need to bust into Barzini’s place to find evidence to clear their name. Outside Barzini’s house, they see a few of the bounty hunters, and one of their underground contacts. Looks like the mercenaries have been roughing him up. Also looks like they’re staking out Barzini’s place, and the poor dude they’ve been roughing up is supposed to identify our heros. The party decides to split up. The thief is going to scale the walls of the house while the dwarven artificer creates a distraction.
The dwarf uses his final battery charge for his ectoplasm goggles (which he had jury-rigged earlier for a partial use), spraying a couple of mercs and then igniting them. They start running around, catching awnings and fruit stands and other things on fire. Of the remaining mercs, one tries to put out his buddies and the other two draw swords and get ready to fight. Cut to:
Meanwhile, the thief makes it in through a window on the third floor, gets into Barzini’s private office, and is going through papers when she discovers she’s not alone. The majordomo (the badass out to get them) is there. After a quick exchange, he draws a dagger and a parrying knife and gets into a low, wide stance which instantly makes clear to the thief that he’s a trained fighting man. Fade to black.
End of session.
This being my first time GMing DW, the biggest thing I learned was that Discern Realities is not like the Perception skill from D&D. It’s not ‘looking around’. If a player wants to look around for bloody footprints or whatever, I should just tell him ‘No. Looks like the killer didn’t get blood on his feet’ or whatever. Discern Realities is piecing together a bigger picture.
I also learned a few things about hard moves. There were one or two golden opportunities that, in retrospect, I could have made better moves with if I had more imagination.
The game was a lot of fun to run. The players both had a lot of fun, and none of us can wait to find out what happens. Loneamigo’s artificer works great. I do have a few playtest notes for feedback, but I’m going to post it in his thread.