Greg Stolze: Forums

I just want to share the results of an experiment I tried at Go Play NW 2008 this weekend. I ran a session I entitled "Zero to Reign in 240 minutes". The idea was to start with no setting, no situation, and no characters, and use the power of One-Roll along with a healthy dose of player brainstorming to go from nothing to a complete mission in 4 hours. We pulled it off in just over 3!

I was armed with my Reign core rules book, my binder with Supplements 1-8, and the ever indispensable Story Games Names Book. Oh yeah, and a big pile of 10 sided dice. I handed each player (4 in total) a copy of a character sheet, and my two quick reference sheets

I opened with a brief explanation of the one roll die mechanic, and some examples. I explained that most die pools would be calculated by adding two things together, typically a stat and a skill. Then I rolled a big bunch of dice (12 to be exact), and using Rob Donoghue's excellent One-Roll City Generator, I wrote the kernel of a city up on the whiteboard.

If you follow that link, you'll see we wound up with a military stronghold, in which the governing military was opposed by the church and a populist rabble united against them. I then asked the players what sort of cultural theme our city should have, and the quick consensus was "pseudo-Roman". Thus Urba Magna was born. We then sketched a rough map of the city and environs, to give us some hooks if we needed to describe what was going on where.

I gave a brief run down of the company traits, and then asked the players which faction they would like to step up and lead. Rooting for the underdog, they went for the Rabble, recasting it as an upstart merchants guild (the Urba Magna Greater Co-prosperity League), attempting to push the interests of the middle class over the iron hand of the military. They decided that what with the recent scarcity and hard times, the military governor's response had been to further jack up taxes to stave off declining revenues, and that this had pushed the merchants and clergy to the edge, and into each others arms.

I then asked each player to select a role within their organization. We had a spy master/gossip monger, a caravan master, the local food production kingpin (or queenpin as the case was) and former mercenary who was attempting to make his way in business.

I found an appropriate "class" entry for each player on one of the One-Roll character tables, and had the player set two of their 11 dice to that number, and roll the rest. I then read off the results of their roll which they copied down on their sheet, and with a little extra polishing, we had four characters ready to go. I mixed and matched between the tables in the core book, and the Uldish tables which provided good fodder for the mercantile focus that we had.

For example, the spy master had his two set dice as 6's on the Gossip/Spy table from the Uld tables, then picked up a big of sorcery and thievery off the tables in the main book. The food magnate turned out to be the bastard daughter of a nobleman who went around with two burly bodyguards and a pet wolf. Our caravan master conveniently not only rolled himself up a wagon, but had lead a disastrous expedition. And our mercenary turned out to be from the northern tribes that had recently been pacified, his skill with the sword only matched by his sensuous dancing, dancing which could be turned to the weaving of fiery magic.

For those players with spells, I asked the player for a general "type" of magic, and then pulled appropriate spells from the various schools available. A little negotiation over possesions (and an animal companion) and we were ready to go.

I then asked the players to propose a mission, and framed it in terms of a Company roll. They decided that they were going to try to dig up some dirt on the governor that would give them enough leverage to get him to back off on the new taxes. Fine. Changing attitudes, that's espionage, let's set up the roll. Whoops, looks like the players are rolling 2 dice to the military's 4.

I then asked: "So! What are you going to do to support your company, and get more dice?" A bit more brainstorming and it was determined that Governor Arrius was throwing a posh celebration at his mansion for a returning hero, General Aculio, fresh from his victories over the northern tribes. Each player wangled their way into the party, Livia the food magnate, by buying an invitation outright (haggling roll), Allus the caravan master secured the wine delivery contract (took some arm twisting by Livia on his behalf before the master of stores saw reason), Decimus aka Aelfred was the evenings entertainment, the word of his passionate primitive dances having seized the imagination of Urba Magnan society (Fascinate I believe), and Teleus the spy master simply wafted in incognito, using his crazy (10d!) Stealth pool.

Then we got down to some role playing at the party. Livia chatted up Ambrosius, the governor's social secretary, who turned out to be both cute, and smitten with her. Allus bribed the guards with wine, and Decimus "inflamed the loins" of the local noblewomen, for which he was well compensated. Meanwhile, Telius, after accidently stumbling upon an orgy, found his way to the scriptorum where he turned a keen eye to the General's accounts.

When the dust had settled, they had managed to dredge up the two following pieces of dirt. Fidelia, the wife of the High Priest of Jupiter had been making unescorted visits to the palace, and an accounts sheets indicated that at least some of the money for the party had been diverted from military maintenance funds. Armed with the paper, Telius visited the high priest to urge him to speak out directly against the governor's corruption, while Livia made a polite social engagement with Fidelia, that turned into a genteel arm-twisting session where Fidelia was encouraged to make use of her "access" to the governor's ear in exchange for keeping the affair a secret. Meanwhile Decimus invested his new-found wealth in the organizations coffers, enabling a few well placed "investments" in support of their pressure campaign. That gave them 5d to 4d, and they went to the company roll. With luck, they carried the day, and the new taxes were quickly and quietly revoked.

Astonishingly, we still had an hour left in our time slot, so I asked if the players wanted to try another action. They were not ill disposed, but given that it was the last slot of the night, the decision was made for sleep over more game. Still, I was pleased with the outcome of my experiment, and could easily have seen this be the start of campaign.

So there you have it. Reign as a no-prep con game. If I had had a little more time, I would have rolled up about 10 characters of various types and put them on index cards to use as fully fleshed out major NPCs (attached a name, jigger a few skills and go), and will probably try to do that if I try this again. But overall, a roaring success!

That's so cool I took a break in the middle of reading it to draw out the experience.

-G.

That was just awesome and also showed me a few things I could ad to my Game

Really interesting approach, I like that a lot, although it might not be for all players :-S
But certainly it's a great way to create all sort of things on short notice, which is pretty much what I naturally end up doing...
Thanks for that stimulating read

wow, this really inspired me to run a shotgun scenario for an upcoming convention this summer. Just great, man!