Yesterday's role playing game
Jun. 20th, 2023 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyornWe are playing Midgard, an old (first ed. 1981, current edition is fifth, we are using forth) German fantasy RPG. Close to our world, but with all the myth and fairy tales more or less true. Yesterday (and the session before) were bit disappointing to the characters (not so, I hope, for the players, but I doubt) because they were swindled by a bunch of professional con artists when attempting to buy a very valuable horse for a customer who wanted to remain anonymous.
I started this game in 2003, so by now all the characters are very experienced, and as we are playing on workday evenings which is not the time for high drama and angst, they are quite used to success and not so much to subtlety. Which is fine to a degree, I have had groups that were so afraid of all-seeing and malicious powers ruling the world that they could not solve the simplest adventure without some NPC I had to invent on the fly manipulating them every step of the way. Which is not a good solution as it enforces this mindset. I blame World of Darkness.
Anyway. During the midsummer festivities in a nice medium sized town by a large lake, the group was hired to buy a certain gaited horse, a young chestnut male. There was not only a large horse market in town, but also a big sporting event. The town was packed with buyers, sellers, onlookers, fanboys, professional athletes and fighters, scammers, sellers of merchandise and fake relics, bookmakers, poets, thieves and scoundrels.
The party consists of a rouge, a scout/ranger, a barbarian, a dwarven paladin, and a hobbit healer (plus a mage who just joined the party), and an NPC groom. They posed as a wealthy lady from up North (the rogue), her companion (the scout/ranger), her bodyguards (the barbarian and the paladin), her cook/personal physician (the healer), and dropped hints that the lady was willing to pay very well for a horse with special traits, which the horse they were sent to buy matched. They spend money like water and waited for offers.
They got one from an assertive, reasonable-sounding and no-nonsense woman, saw the horse, found that it was the one they were looking for, and made an offer. As they were warned by an uncommonly helpful watchman about a high tax for buying luxury horses in-town, they were not surprised that the deal should happen in some overgrown ruins outside of the town proper shortly before sunset. (As I said, the group is very confident in their ability to deal with everything lesser than a grown dragon.)
The undead burst out of the catacombs just as they had handed over the gold, and right at the moment the paladin was checking the horse for spells and illusions. The sellers raised a protective circle against the undead and hastily bagged their money. Some of the party's horses bolted, so did the chestnut. The party dispersed, some fighting the undead, some protecting the green-as-grass mage, some going after the chestnut. The sellers made themselves scarce and had more than 30 minutes on the party by the time the undead had fled or been destroyed, the party was reassembled, and the illusion on the chestnut had worn off and revealed a very sweet 20+ year old chestnut mare with white markings.
It took until the small hours of morning to find the catacomb through which the scammers had escaped, and only around sunrise the party discovered their abandoned camp.
This session, they searched the camp, but apart from horse tracks (and horse droppings) only half of a ripped letter was found which confirmed something the characters had already remembered: The name of one of the scammers who had been a competitor in the games. On the back was a handwritten note in a language mostly spoken by mercenaries. That camp had been cleaned by people well aware of what a good search and magic can do, but taking care of the horse tracks had been too much for them, so they had simply headed for the next well-travelled road.
Where they were seen by a young acolyte just finishing her night prayers at the shrine they cared for before opening the booth selling drinks and merchandise to pilgrims. The description allowed the group to pick up the track again, and after some hours on country tracks and paths they got the info that a group like that had headed for the stud farm nearby, and also that the horse breeder in question was of a mixed reputation.
The group got near the farm, a large one with more-than average armed guards, and decided to give it a wide berth and only check for tracks leaving in unexpected directions. The path they were following went to some high ground where they could see the inside of the compound, and a chestnut horse looking very much like the one they were looking for inside the walls. They also found tracks of one of the culprits having left the farm in direction of the south end of the lake.
Not knowing what to do with it and about it, they set up camp near the outlook point and considered their options.
Currently, they most of want to kill the culprits. Slowly. (It is a failure I have as a GM. My groups are always bloodthirsty. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.)
And their money back.
And save their reputation.
And get the horse.
And make their employer happy.
They are considering splitting the group to send two people after the guy (gal?) who rode off from the farm, and one person to go to town and find out if they have a legal leg to stand on. (Not so much, actually. They are not citizens, the deal took place outside of the town walls (near sunset in place of very ill repute, while there was an entirely above-board market taking place in town!), and the papers they hold might be forgeries. Also, their employer does not want too much publicity... AND if they want to kill the culprits messily, the law is not where they should go for help!)
As a GM, I do not know how this can be solved, but I do not have to. Any reasonably intelligent or entertaining idea will do.
Hoping for reasonably intelligent ideas or entertaining ideas Monday after next.
ETA: 2023-07-10: Fixed copypaste mix-up.
I started this game in 2003, so by now all the characters are very experienced, and as we are playing on workday evenings which is not the time for high drama and angst, they are quite used to success and not so much to subtlety. Which is fine to a degree, I have had groups that were so afraid of all-seeing and malicious powers ruling the world that they could not solve the simplest adventure without some NPC I had to invent on the fly manipulating them every step of the way. Which is not a good solution as it enforces this mindset. I blame World of Darkness.
Anyway. During the midsummer festivities in a nice medium sized town by a large lake, the group was hired to buy a certain gaited horse, a young chestnut male. There was not only a large horse market in town, but also a big sporting event. The town was packed with buyers, sellers, onlookers, fanboys, professional athletes and fighters, scammers, sellers of merchandise and fake relics, bookmakers, poets, thieves and scoundrels.
The party consists of a rouge, a scout/ranger, a barbarian, a dwarven paladin, and a hobbit healer (plus a mage who just joined the party), and an NPC groom. They posed as a wealthy lady from up North (the rogue), her companion (the scout/ranger), her bodyguards (the barbarian and the paladin), her cook/personal physician (the healer), and dropped hints that the lady was willing to pay very well for a horse with special traits, which the horse they were sent to buy matched. They spend money like water and waited for offers.
They got one from an assertive, reasonable-sounding and no-nonsense woman, saw the horse, found that it was the one they were looking for, and made an offer. As they were warned by an uncommonly helpful watchman about a high tax for buying luxury horses in-town, they were not surprised that the deal should happen in some overgrown ruins outside of the town proper shortly before sunset. (As I said, the group is very confident in their ability to deal with everything lesser than a grown dragon.)
The undead burst out of the catacombs just as they had handed over the gold, and right at the moment the paladin was checking the horse for spells and illusions. The sellers raised a protective circle against the undead and hastily bagged their money. Some of the party's horses bolted, so did the chestnut. The party dispersed, some fighting the undead, some protecting the green-as-grass mage, some going after the chestnut. The sellers made themselves scarce and had more than 30 minutes on the party by the time the undead had fled or been destroyed, the party was reassembled, and the illusion on the chestnut had worn off and revealed a very sweet 20+ year old chestnut mare with white markings.
It took until the small hours of morning to find the catacomb through which the scammers had escaped, and only around sunrise the party discovered their abandoned camp.
This session, they searched the camp, but apart from horse tracks (and horse droppings) only half of a ripped letter was found which confirmed something the characters had already remembered: The name of one of the scammers who had been a competitor in the games. On the back was a handwritten note in a language mostly spoken by mercenaries. That camp had been cleaned by people well aware of what a good search and magic can do, but taking care of the horse tracks had been too much for them, so they had simply headed for the next well-travelled road.
Where they were seen by a young acolyte just finishing her night prayers at the shrine they cared for before opening the booth selling drinks and merchandise to pilgrims. The description allowed the group to pick up the track again, and after some hours on country tracks and paths they got the info that a group like that had headed for the stud farm nearby, and also that the horse breeder in question was of a mixed reputation.
The group got near the farm, a large one with more-than average armed guards, and decided to give it a wide berth and only check for tracks leaving in unexpected directions. The path they were following went to some high ground where they could see the inside of the compound, and a chestnut horse looking very much like the one they were looking for inside the walls. They also found tracks of one of the culprits having left the farm in direction of the south end of the lake.
Not knowing what to do with it and about it, they set up camp near the outlook point and considered their options.
Currently, they most of want to kill the culprits. Slowly. (It is a failure I have as a GM. My groups are always bloodthirsty. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.)
And their money back.
And save their reputation.
And get the horse.
And make their employer happy.
They are considering splitting the group to send two people after the guy (gal?) who rode off from the farm, and one person to go to town and find out if they have a legal leg to stand on. (Not so much, actually. They are not citizens, the deal took place outside of the town walls (near sunset in place of very ill repute, while there was an entirely above-board market taking place in town!), and the papers they hold might be forgeries. Also, their employer does not want too much publicity... AND if they want to kill the culprits messily, the law is not where they should go for help!)
As a GM, I do not know how this can be solved, but I do not have to. Any reasonably intelligent or entertaining idea will do.
Hoping for reasonably intelligent ideas or entertaining ideas Monday after next.
ETA: 2023-07-10: Fixed copypaste mix-up.