To Be Resolved

First Test Session of Hellbenders!

The good news is that running RPGs for buddies is basically always fun. I've got a group of friends through work who get together every other week or so to play some tabletop. These friends have struggled with me through my first sessions of Old Gods of Appalachia, His Majesty the Worm, and Black Sword Hack and have been extraordinarily patient, so naturally I had to see what they would think of Hellbenders. This is a quick session 0-0.5 report, with some notes on what I know I need to touch up.

First, I've already had to revise the character sheet once. I forgot to include boxes for all of the combat stats (Hand Size, Replenish/Discard, Base Damage, and Armor). Then today I realized that I have a Recall Facts mechanic written into the rules and nowhere to track it on the character sheet. Probably need to square that circle before next time. Whoops!

Character Creation

I think this went smoothly. I dealt each player three cards, which they used as oracles to decide on their Past Life, Creditor, and Special Interest. I asked players to try to each take a separate Past Life (Suit) but this wasn't strictly necessary to do - I just only had a certain number of printouts.

This table enjoys random character generation, and I think dealing out a handful of cards that lets people have a little extra choice in how they flesh out their character. I specifically had them choose Past Life, Creditor, and Special Interest in order since Past Life and Creditor are the most mechanically impactful parts of the character. I think I should have had clearer instructions written down on the flow of filling out a character sheet, but all of the pieces are there in the text. Right now, the usability of the rules PDF is a little lacking - I think the watermark is overly distracting - but I care at this stage about people being clear that the current document is an unfinished revision. Maybe I need to reformat and have headers and footers (especially page numbers) rather than the splash watermark.

I only printed out one gear/equipment sheet, which was a mistake. I should have had at least one more combat procedure cheat sheet and one more equipment list. So, we basically just snapped a baseline of "what is your clothing/armor situation" and "what weapon would your character keep on them", then treated the rest of the backpack as basically a quantum inventory (slots are undetermined until you decide what is in them in play). Filling out inventories is a painful part of any non-pregen system that I have run or played, because asking players what they think they need before they know what an adventure in your game is like is sort of crazy, so I have never been too upset about quantum slots as a stopgap.

Test Combat

The idea of poker-hands-as-combat was the entire foundation of writing this game so I wasn't willing to run a first session without...something. I decided to run a quick round of combat for the party with two Bikers (stat block from the test adventure) vandalizing Linwood's truck as he returns from a day in the deer blind.

  1. Draw Phase. I dealt out hands to the players and drew an action card for the Bikers. Hearts, which in their stat block is the Rally maneuver, wherein they hype up their allies and restore Morale. For better or for worse, not a threatening action! They are still hooting and hollering after being caught vandalizing this very technical hunter's truck.
  2. Target Phase. Linwood draws his compound bow and declares an Attack action. Derek and Jean-Ralphio decide to work together to Browbeat the bikers, an action intended to intimidate or break the morale of the target. They combine their hands, Ante a poker chip each, and each discard a card. They think they can form a Straight Flush if they get lucky in the next phase.
  3. Replenish/Discard Phase. Linwood discards some trash cards from his hand and his player says "oh boy these bikers are dead". Derek and Jean-Ralphio are conservative with their throwaway cards and seem to be settling for a Straight.
  4. Miscellaneous Phase. We negotiated in the first round that drawing his bow cost a miscellaneous action, so Linwood tosses a card away. Additionally, as a Fixer, Linwood has the ability to spend Reserves (poker chips that represent health/resources) to modify the rank of a Diamonds card in his hand, and he has a Creditor ability to treat 7s as another rank. Derek and Jean-Ralphio don't have any miscellaneous actions to play, they're just ready to talk some smack.
  5. Action Phase. After his chicanery (laudatory) in the Miscellaneous Phase, Linwood has turned a Pair into a Four-Of-A-Kind, a high-ranking hand. His compound bow has a base damage of 2 and a Four-Of-A-Kind levies an 8x multiplier on the attack, so he hits the first Biker for a whopping 16 damage. Bikers have 8 Stamina, so this first Biker is sent to meet his maker. Derek and Jean-Ralphio's taunting maneuver involved an Ante of 2 and resulted in a Straight, which deals 'Ante+3' damage to the Biker's Morale. Bikers have a Morale of 5, so they, fittingly, break the second Biker's Morale by taunting him as his friend's heart is relocated outside of his body. He fishtails out of the scene and flees in terror.

So what worked? Poker hands are a very familiar scale for my friends, that part required almost no explanation. The phases functioned but it took some thoughtful explanation to spell out the procedure and then enumerate the types of "Full Action" that use the poker mechanic. I think I'm glad that the party felt empowered or incentivized to try both social and martial approaches to the encounter.

Also, WOW, I way overtuned the Replenish/Discard stat for a base character. I need to rework these numbers. It was one thing for a player making a single action, but my players realized that, if they did a combination action, one had a RD of 5 and the other had a RD of 3. Do I want them to be able to discard up to 8 cards together to form a hand? I don't think so. The spot fix that I will probably roll in to the rules this week is removing the contribution of RD that weapons have. In the U1 rules they affect Hand Size, Base Damage, and Replenishment. If RD is tied to any mundane gear, it should be just Armor, or maybe more weapons should be subtractive. I also let Jean Ralphio wear brass knuckles in both hands and essentially double count the stats, which was unwise.

Adventuring - The Pharoah of Phillippi

I introduced the players to Granny, their chess-playing old friend in a pink muumuu who was concerned about what was going on up in Davis, WV at that youth pastor retreat. She gave them two weeks to get up there to figure out what's going on.

Task 1: Pretenses. I was tickled that all three players took different approaches here. Linwood went straightforward - pay for a ticket and attend as a guest. Jean-Ralphio decides to found his own denomination of Christianity and attend as an up-and-coming pastor. Derek decides to invoke his Special Interest and see if there are any ventriloquists in his circle who might be performing at the conference. I'm tickled by this idea, and the main point of the special interest is to inject NPCs into the world, so I answer the phone as Fanny Boggs, a fellow puppeteer. I do, in fact know that the troupe playing at the conference is looking for another performer to help with their dramatic retelling of the book of Ruth, so Derek has an excuse to be there. Derek's player named his ventriloquist dummy "Peter Philanthropy" and that made me laugh until I cried.

Task 2: Arrival. Handled the travel into town as a straightforward Travel Hand. Derek was the shot caller, so he played a hand of Blackjack to determine how the travel went. In four cards, he earned a total score of 17, which is cautious but timely travel. The last showing card was a Clubs, so I advanced a faction clock (elevated Stakes). The key NPC Frank Chenevix would have still been downtown if the party had a different outcome, but alas he had already left the bar to set the adventure in motion. Instead, the party gets to town while some drunk Bikers are beginning to cause problems. Surely no relation to the test combat. The crew drinks at the bar while Jean-Ralphio decides that his new denomination only takes the Eucharist with rice wine - Sake - so he splits off to find someone in Tucker County, WV who might have some. Derek and Linwood check into the local motel, where it turns out a motorcycle gang is staying. They are mostly just being obnoxious guests tonight.

Task 3: Faux Pas. Before tucking in for the night, Linwood decides to stretch his legs...and stretch his Creditor's interests. Linwood bet his soul to the Mothman, so in order to replenish his combat abilities he has to destroy manmade objects that do not belong to him. He sees the dozen or so motorcycles in the parking lot, takes out his utility knife, and starts cutting brake lines of the nicest looking bikes in the lot. The session ends as he sees a light flick on in the tattoo parlor across the street.

Thoughts

Yall I am ecstatic about this game. I have some obvious spot fixes I need to look at but I really think the chassis here is good. I hope folks have had a chance to take a look at the playtest documents, but hopefully before the end of the week I'll have some revisions out! Let me know what you think so far!