The Forks of the Ohio River are Indeed Quite Bloody
While at GaspCon, I did actually succeed in running one of my three games. (As they say on Discworld, "One out of three ain't bad," right?). I wasn't terribly surprised to see that it was Bloody Forks of the Ohio.
I had rewritten Bloody Forks as a Larp back during the summer, but this time I stuck very close to the original documentation. The characters as outlined in the original PDF have little background detail provided, though, so I made my own set of character sheets that were an amalgam of the LARP sheets and the tabletop PCs. Mostly, this means that the PCs I ran with were as written in the PDF, but with the background paragraph and info on other characters taken from the Larp sheets. I'm pretty happy with how the sheets turned out. (Each sheet that you see folds in half into a booklet. You print it double sided, then fold.)
I had six players sign up for the game, so it was a full table. After a brief discussion of the politics of the time period (and why conflict was basically inevitable), I offered the players a host of options. They could: play the British, play the French, or play a mixed group. They could also play a historically plausible game or the "gonzo" version, in which Marie and French Margaret know strange Seneca magics and Benjamin Franklin has a super science lightning gun. The group preferred the gonzo version, which in retrospect is good: I had six players, but only five non-gonzo PCs of either faction.
Initially the group preferred to go with a mixed group of French and British, which is the lazy GM's preferred solution, as I could sideline all the NPCs and just have PC on PC conflict. But when the PCs started being handed out, the first three characters picked were all British. And astoundingly, Ben Franklin and George Washington were not picked at all. Who wouldn't want to play a guy who can kill with a stare and make love like an eagle falling out of the sky? When I pointed this out, Washington and Franklin and the remaining British guy (Trent maybe?) all got picked, so we wound up with an all British group.
Which is awesome, as the British are great underdogs in the situation: Fort Necessity is shit, and they're outnumbered and outgunned by the French. That's a compelling dramatic situation, and compels the PCs into action.
Initially, the PCs plotted together briefly in Fort Necessity, but determined that they needed allies, food and supplies (as shown on the Fort Necessity sheet). They decided to split into three groups:
* Washington was going to go with French Margaret north up the river, sneak past Fort Duquesne and try to parley with the Delaware Chief Custologa. Washington didn't mention to anyone, but he also hoped French Margaret could deliver a love letter to Marie on the way, figuring that Margaret had contacts inside the fort.
* Ben Franklin and Half-King Tanacharison were to visit Christopher Gist's trading post and get supplies or food, and any other support they could get, then meet Washington at Custologa's town.
* Jacob Van Braam and William Trent were to reinforce Fort Necessity and train up Washington's "loose and idle" soldiers.
These three pairings basically stayed for the rest of the game, until the big finale, anyway. So then we cut back and forth between these three storylines for the rest of the session.
Act One:
Van Braam early on sent out scouts to watch the area around Fort Necessity. One of these men returned fairly quickly with a native woman, Raspberry Girl Mehowimi. This was a deliberate reuse of a subplot from the LARP, intended to spur some inactive PCs like Trent and Braam into action. Raspberry Girl had married a British deserter, Ignatius Jones, so now Trent and Braam had to decide what to do with her. Van Braam thought she might be a spy, and Trent thought she might be a bargaining chip with the local Delaware tribe. Occasionally here I had to poke Trent for response and action, as much discussion happened in Shawnee (which Trent can't speak) and the player tended to be a bit passive. A plan was discussed involving letting Raspberry Girl go to see what would happen, but eventually the plan was modified such that Van Braam would take her back. Trent didn't trust Van Braam, though, so he sent a soldier, Torrence Swiney, to follow Van Braam and the native girl. Van Braam is a frontier badass, though, so easily noticed and snuck around behind the soldier bumbling through the forest, beat him up and sent him back to Trent. The soldier naturally then reported to Trent that Van Braam was deserting the British military. So Trent sent a few dozen soldiers to capture Van Braam.
Meanwhile, Washington and French Margaret stopped at Fort Duquesne. Margaret went inside the fort, claiming to be offering food and supplies for trade but really trying to meet with her half-brothers Jumonville or de Villiers. Washington chose to hide on the banks of the river with the rest of the men they had brought with them. French Margaret met with Captain de Villiers, who became slightly suspicious of what was happening (he knew of Margaret's loyalty to Washington). So he promised that Jumonville would arrange a trade with her, while actually sending Jumonville out to scout the area for anyone with Margaret. Washington saw Jumonville and his thirty men sneaking out of the fort, and thought that they were perhaps deserters, so he approached them directly. There was some attempt at communication, but Washington doesn't speak English, Jumonville doesn't speak English. so after a failed attempt at cross-cultural bribery, Jumonville decided to just capture Washington and his men. So a fight broke out, which resulted in Washington captured and his men killed despite Washington rolling a big pile of dice.
In the third group, Franklin and Half-King visited Christopher Gist. Gist wanted to help the British, but needed to stay neutral to stay in business. I tried to emphasize that Franklin was a famous scientist, author and statesman (or, as he was summarized "the 18th century Batman"), in order to give Franklin some spotlight time. A good couple of rolls for trading and charming and they were able to remove the "needs food" status from Fort Necessity (I gave them a choice of food or supplies but not both). A worse roll for acquiring reinforcements got them a couple dozen volunteers from the trading post, but not enough to help much. Then Franklin and canoed north to meet Washington, and found him strangely not present at Custologa's town. On the canoe trip, Half-King kept trying to suggest strange inventions to Franklin, of the sort seen in modern warfare, and Franklin kept waving him off as a crazy native type that didn't know what he was talking about.
Act Two:
Van Braam brought Raspberry Girl back to Shingas the terrible's village. Van Braam tried to persuade Shingas to join the British side of the conflict, but Braam's tales of the British's weakness and having the European powers fight each other convinced Shingas to attack the British instead. (Shingas's secret love of Marie-amable may have been a factor, too.) So the Delaware took Van Braam captive and began to prepare for war. Van Braam challenged Shingas to a duel, which I went with because that's always cool to do. Van Braam, it turns out, has a ton of traits on his sheet relevant for fighting a duel against a native tribe leader, and so rolled a huge pile of dice and pounded Shingas into the ground. He forced Shingas into surrendering (note Shingas has the Key of the Coward), then cut off Shingas's ear and ate it. At that point, the delaware were sufficiently terrified of Van Braam (and he had enough leftover successes from the duel) that they would do anything he said. What he said was, naturally, "go attack Fort Duquesne". As Van Braam was leaving the Delaware village with a native army under his command, Trent's soldiers sent to capture Van Braam caught up with him. Seeing the army, they very wisely claimed that they were there to "make sure Van Braam was okay", and were sent back to Fort Necessity to mobilize the British troops there. (This was the section that was toughest to get Trent involved, but his player seemed to have fun regardless.)
Up north of Fort Duquesne, Franklin and Half-King tried to sway the Delaware chief Custologa to their side. Custologa was somewhat impressed by the agricultural science Franklin could share with them, but still did not trust Half-King. Half-King made the choice to abandon his goal of bringing the Delaware back under Iroquois control and instead focused on his hatred of the French and support of the British. Buying off his Key gained him enough of a bonus to succeed in his diplomatic roll with Custologa, which worked because he was able to promise the Delaware complete freedom and autonomy and equality with the Seneca in exchange for attacking the French. So a third army came marching in the direction of Fort Duquesne. (Here I probably should have thrown more action or conflict in somehow. This pair's plot never was quite as exciting or over-the-top as the other two. Maybe Franklin's French rival Thomas-Francois Dalibard might have been already present in Custologa Town, wooing the natives to the french side. Or bringing the Key of the Revolutionary in somehow?)
In which fort George Washington was being held captive. In the confusion when he was brought into the fort, French Margaret was able to find Marie-Amable and deliver the love letter. Though Marie and Margaret didn't like each other, the letter convinced Marie to work to free Washington. French Margaret had a plan to disguise Washington as a French officer, use Marie and Margaret's magic to disguise his face and then walk him right out the gate. The plan mostly worked, though Washington had reservations about appearing as a Frenchman ("Couldn't you steal some women's clothes for me to dress in instead?"). And as the plan proceeded, Washington became increasingly aware of the use of witchcraft to achieve the plan, which also made him uncomfortable. After all, the Salem witch trials were only a few decades past. Nonetheless, Washington was successfully disguised by magic and costuming to appear as a French officer, and managed to sneak out the fort's front gate... right as three armies converged on the fort with orders to kill the French officers.
Act Three:
The threefold assault on the fort began with a pounding by Franklin's lightning gun, which successfully punched a hole in the wall and set the largely wooden fort on fire. Then Van Braam had a team of archers start picking off any soldiers visible on the walls, while Trent stormed the gate and Half-King led Delaware warriors through the flaming hole in the fort walls. Washington, upon seeing the attack happen, smartly retreated back inside, where French Margaret dispelled the illusion magic, and used another spell to make Washington look like an intimidating warrior hero, in a fine British officer's uniform. Washington then sought out the French commander and managed to intimidate him into surrendering, despite the lack of shared language. When George Washington breaks out of prison and has a rapier at your throat, you surrender regardless of whether or not you understand what he says.
And to keep things roughly historical, Half-King's player decided to murder the surrendering French officer under Washington's supervision. Thus did the British win the Battle of Fort Duquesne in this alternate history.
I was pretty happy with the conclusion: everyone got to participate in the big climactic battle and rolled very well (spending all their resources to do so), and it came right at the end of the assigned time slot.
In general, I'm not totally sure that I was using the system right, and to some extent I went easy on the players. But everyone seemed to have a lot of fun (the two players I was concerned about turned out to just be particularly quiet, as far as I can tell). I was very pleased with how it turned out. Even if it was the only game I successfully GMed over the weekend, it was sufficiently successful to make up for the other failures.
I had rewritten Bloody Forks as a Larp back during the summer, but this time I stuck very close to the original documentation. The characters as outlined in the original PDF have little background detail provided, though, so I made my own set of character sheets that were an amalgam of the LARP sheets and the tabletop PCs. Mostly, this means that the PCs I ran with were as written in the PDF, but with the background paragraph and info on other characters taken from the Larp sheets. I'm pretty happy with how the sheets turned out. (Each sheet that you see folds in half into a booklet. You print it double sided, then fold.)
I had six players sign up for the game, so it was a full table. After a brief discussion of the politics of the time period (and why conflict was basically inevitable), I offered the players a host of options. They could: play the British, play the French, or play a mixed group. They could also play a historically plausible game or the "gonzo" version, in which Marie and French Margaret know strange Seneca magics and Benjamin Franklin has a super science lightning gun. The group preferred the gonzo version, which in retrospect is good: I had six players, but only five non-gonzo PCs of either faction.
Initially the group preferred to go with a mixed group of French and British, which is the lazy GM's preferred solution, as I could sideline all the NPCs and just have PC on PC conflict. But when the PCs started being handed out, the first three characters picked were all British. And astoundingly, Ben Franklin and George Washington were not picked at all. Who wouldn't want to play a guy who can kill with a stare and make love like an eagle falling out of the sky? When I pointed this out, Washington and Franklin and the remaining British guy (Trent maybe?) all got picked, so we wound up with an all British group.
Which is awesome, as the British are great underdogs in the situation: Fort Necessity is shit, and they're outnumbered and outgunned by the French. That's a compelling dramatic situation, and compels the PCs into action.
Initially, the PCs plotted together briefly in Fort Necessity, but determined that they needed allies, food and supplies (as shown on the Fort Necessity sheet). They decided to split into three groups:
* Washington was going to go with French Margaret north up the river, sneak past Fort Duquesne and try to parley with the Delaware Chief Custologa. Washington didn't mention to anyone, but he also hoped French Margaret could deliver a love letter to Marie on the way, figuring that Margaret had contacts inside the fort.
* Ben Franklin and Half-King Tanacharison were to visit Christopher Gist's trading post and get supplies or food, and any other support they could get, then meet Washington at Custologa's town.
* Jacob Van Braam and William Trent were to reinforce Fort Necessity and train up Washington's "loose and idle" soldiers.
These three pairings basically stayed for the rest of the game, until the big finale, anyway. So then we cut back and forth between these three storylines for the rest of the session.
Act One:
Van Braam early on sent out scouts to watch the area around Fort Necessity. One of these men returned fairly quickly with a native woman, Raspberry Girl Mehowimi. This was a deliberate reuse of a subplot from the LARP, intended to spur some inactive PCs like Trent and Braam into action. Raspberry Girl had married a British deserter, Ignatius Jones, so now Trent and Braam had to decide what to do with her. Van Braam thought she might be a spy, and Trent thought she might be a bargaining chip with the local Delaware tribe. Occasionally here I had to poke Trent for response and action, as much discussion happened in Shawnee (which Trent can't speak) and the player tended to be a bit passive. A plan was discussed involving letting Raspberry Girl go to see what would happen, but eventually the plan was modified such that Van Braam would take her back. Trent didn't trust Van Braam, though, so he sent a soldier, Torrence Swiney, to follow Van Braam and the native girl. Van Braam is a frontier badass, though, so easily noticed and snuck around behind the soldier bumbling through the forest, beat him up and sent him back to Trent. The soldier naturally then reported to Trent that Van Braam was deserting the British military. So Trent sent a few dozen soldiers to capture Van Braam.
Meanwhile, Washington and French Margaret stopped at Fort Duquesne. Margaret went inside the fort, claiming to be offering food and supplies for trade but really trying to meet with her half-brothers Jumonville or de Villiers. Washington chose to hide on the banks of the river with the rest of the men they had brought with them. French Margaret met with Captain de Villiers, who became slightly suspicious of what was happening (he knew of Margaret's loyalty to Washington). So he promised that Jumonville would arrange a trade with her, while actually sending Jumonville out to scout the area for anyone with Margaret. Washington saw Jumonville and his thirty men sneaking out of the fort, and thought that they were perhaps deserters, so he approached them directly. There was some attempt at communication, but Washington doesn't speak English, Jumonville doesn't speak English. so after a failed attempt at cross-cultural bribery, Jumonville decided to just capture Washington and his men. So a fight broke out, which resulted in Washington captured and his men killed despite Washington rolling a big pile of dice.
In the third group, Franklin and Half-King visited Christopher Gist. Gist wanted to help the British, but needed to stay neutral to stay in business. I tried to emphasize that Franklin was a famous scientist, author and statesman (or, as he was summarized "the 18th century Batman"), in order to give Franklin some spotlight time. A good couple of rolls for trading and charming and they were able to remove the "needs food" status from Fort Necessity (I gave them a choice of food or supplies but not both). A worse roll for acquiring reinforcements got them a couple dozen volunteers from the trading post, but not enough to help much. Then Franklin and canoed north to meet Washington, and found him strangely not present at Custologa's town. On the canoe trip, Half-King kept trying to suggest strange inventions to Franklin, of the sort seen in modern warfare, and Franklin kept waving him off as a crazy native type that didn't know what he was talking about.
Act Two:
Van Braam brought Raspberry Girl back to Shingas the terrible's village. Van Braam tried to persuade Shingas to join the British side of the conflict, but Braam's tales of the British's weakness and having the European powers fight each other convinced Shingas to attack the British instead. (Shingas's secret love of Marie-amable may have been a factor, too.) So the Delaware took Van Braam captive and began to prepare for war. Van Braam challenged Shingas to a duel, which I went with because that's always cool to do. Van Braam, it turns out, has a ton of traits on his sheet relevant for fighting a duel against a native tribe leader, and so rolled a huge pile of dice and pounded Shingas into the ground. He forced Shingas into surrendering (note Shingas has the Key of the Coward), then cut off Shingas's ear and ate it. At that point, the delaware were sufficiently terrified of Van Braam (and he had enough leftover successes from the duel) that they would do anything he said. What he said was, naturally, "go attack Fort Duquesne". As Van Braam was leaving the Delaware village with a native army under his command, Trent's soldiers sent to capture Van Braam caught up with him. Seeing the army, they very wisely claimed that they were there to "make sure Van Braam was okay", and were sent back to Fort Necessity to mobilize the British troops there. (This was the section that was toughest to get Trent involved, but his player seemed to have fun regardless.)
Up north of Fort Duquesne, Franklin and Half-King tried to sway the Delaware chief Custologa to their side. Custologa was somewhat impressed by the agricultural science Franklin could share with them, but still did not trust Half-King. Half-King made the choice to abandon his goal of bringing the Delaware back under Iroquois control and instead focused on his hatred of the French and support of the British. Buying off his Key gained him enough of a bonus to succeed in his diplomatic roll with Custologa, which worked because he was able to promise the Delaware complete freedom and autonomy and equality with the Seneca in exchange for attacking the French. So a third army came marching in the direction of Fort Duquesne. (Here I probably should have thrown more action or conflict in somehow. This pair's plot never was quite as exciting or over-the-top as the other two. Maybe Franklin's French rival Thomas-Francois Dalibard might have been already present in Custologa Town, wooing the natives to the french side. Or bringing the Key of the Revolutionary in somehow?)
In which fort George Washington was being held captive. In the confusion when he was brought into the fort, French Margaret was able to find Marie-Amable and deliver the love letter. Though Marie and Margaret didn't like each other, the letter convinced Marie to work to free Washington. French Margaret had a plan to disguise Washington as a French officer, use Marie and Margaret's magic to disguise his face and then walk him right out the gate. The plan mostly worked, though Washington had reservations about appearing as a Frenchman ("Couldn't you steal some women's clothes for me to dress in instead?"). And as the plan proceeded, Washington became increasingly aware of the use of witchcraft to achieve the plan, which also made him uncomfortable. After all, the Salem witch trials were only a few decades past. Nonetheless, Washington was successfully disguised by magic and costuming to appear as a French officer, and managed to sneak out the fort's front gate... right as three armies converged on the fort with orders to kill the French officers.
Act Three:
The threefold assault on the fort began with a pounding by Franklin's lightning gun, which successfully punched a hole in the wall and set the largely wooden fort on fire. Then Van Braam had a team of archers start picking off any soldiers visible on the walls, while Trent stormed the gate and Half-King led Delaware warriors through the flaming hole in the fort walls. Washington, upon seeing the attack happen, smartly retreated back inside, where French Margaret dispelled the illusion magic, and used another spell to make Washington look like an intimidating warrior hero, in a fine British officer's uniform. Washington then sought out the French commander and managed to intimidate him into surrendering, despite the lack of shared language. When George Washington breaks out of prison and has a rapier at your throat, you surrender regardless of whether or not you understand what he says.
And to keep things roughly historical, Half-King's player decided to murder the surrendering French officer under Washington's supervision. Thus did the British win the Battle of Fort Duquesne in this alternate history.
I was pretty happy with the conclusion: everyone got to participate in the big climactic battle and rolled very well (spending all their resources to do so), and it came right at the end of the assigned time slot.
In general, I'm not totally sure that I was using the system right, and to some extent I went easy on the players. But everyone seemed to have a lot of fun (the two players I was concerned about turned out to just be particularly quiet, as far as I can tell). I was very pleased with how it turned out. Even if it was the only game I successfully GMed over the weekend, it was sufficiently successful to make up for the other failures.