[Official] Loch Varn

[Iris]

Very happy to read that it went in a so good way !

Now that you played Loch Varn, do the Players keeps the sames characters and want more ?

[tamsyn]

Yes they do! I'm going to go straight onto running the next two scenarios before I take a break. Need to add some sub plots to make it more personal. Those are the best games.

[Clovis]

Once more, thank you for sharing your gaming experience with us, tamsyn; it's really enlightening to read about how things went for other people, particularly when the audience is clearly different from the French one I'm used to as a GM.

It's true that some aspects of this scenario can be experienced as let-downs by the Players, but after all, this scenario is more about psychological horror and investigation (as is Shadows of Esteren in general, actually) than action and using brute force. Still, they seem to have been genuinely pumped up by the scenario, so that's good to know!

It's also true that the scenario does not cover each aspect of the adventure with exhaustive minuteness, but of it did, it would probably take twice as much pages! Hence the necessity of being concise.

All in all, it seems like everything went very well, and that you were able to lead the way through the scenario very well! I'm eager to hear about the final part of the adventure!

[tamsyn]

We had the final session of the Loch Varn scenario and here is my little recap.

We opened the start of Act 3 exactly where they had begun but this time aware of who they are. It played out the same with the death of Terent, this time with a lot more anguish from his brother who stopped to take his bracelet. Again they fought the warriors from Loch Varn but I lowered their low levels a bit so the players wouldn't be as wounded. No 'faster dream healing' this time! They made it to the deserted camp and amusingly there was a it argment about what to do next. They didn't want to go back into the ruins to face the monsters! Eventually they did to back in, realising it was their only way out.

Making their way through the ruins I had them experience the goo and dripping the same way as before it no monsters this time. They made it to the exit only to find the warrior dying (tell my wife I love her). He gave them directions to Deorn etc.

Upon approaching the sanctuary I drew out a map so they could see where everyone was, I could tell there would be a big fight. I had decided that if they sided with Deorn they would have two centipedes to fight, if the sided with Verzal, two swamp creatures. They listened to the arguments from both npcs then decided.... To take both as prisoners. Jearon plunged his hands into the earth, Deorn, grabbed his necklace - Cue a fight with four monsters. By the end of it two of the four characters were dying - luckily they had prayers, demorthian mysteries and magience to get them back on their wounded feet. They subdued Jearon and Deorn, resisted repossession by Verzal when Jearon went unconscious and investigated the lab. I asked them all to roll mental resistance when they saw the stone and one failed, so he became very protective over it, causing some good roleplaying to snap him out of it. In the lab they found an old diary of a magientist (I wanted to introduce the idea of an Arbaflux for one character) and they were quick enough to secure one charge of fossil flux. They tried finding the bodies of the inguard soldiers reckoning they had been dragged there but no luck. Then they torched the lab, mostly due to the cocoons.

Back at Varn they were listened to and offered first aid but were e entisols asked to leave as they went down the route of telling them the sanctuary was a lie. As much as they weren't happy with what Deorn had done the Council couldn't let them spread that message. As to what happened they put two and two together and got three but they seemed happy enough to get away from that place. Also they remembered that by returning to Melwan they were going to get paid (they were 'hired'by the Melwan council to go and help Varn).

After they noticed there was no island in the loch they didn't want to check out the grave site chalking it all down to a mad dream. They then returned to the Chapel of Nyline to rest and heal. I ended it there after the Adept had a confusing conversation with the Vector. He also had a vision to continue with the others - since he was not hired by the Council.

20 xp awarded in total, reset of survival points to 3 (as they spend them all in the big fight at the end).

Going to start running Poison this weekend straight on from their return from Varn. I think they will arrive, report to the Council who will then ask them to go to Dearg for the medicine. I will write up how that goes.

As always, questions welcome!

[Clovis]

Seems like you managed to deal with the scenario pretty well: no absurd or inappropriate elements have apparently been inserted in the plot, and overall, I've got the feeling that you did a good job immersing your Players into the atmosphere of Esteren. Whatever issues you previously met have been solved accordingly, so no real criticism to make regarding this point!

The only gripe I actually have is regarding the Survival Points: resetting them at the end of the scenario does not go with the whole "surviving is not easy" principle of Esteren. After all, getting to re-roll a die should remain something exceptional, or at least uncommon, and if the Players see that all the Survival Points they spend just come back at the end of the game, they may be more carefree about the whole thing. Whereas if they have to spend 5 xps to refuel these precious leg ups, it will encourage them to be more careful in what they do.

Also, with the scene at the sanctuary, I get the feeling that they have been rather headstrong with the whole thing ; maybe too much. After all, at this point, they're facing a friend possessed by a supernatural entity, and an old, respected Demorthèn; my point of view is that they shouldn't have been so confident as to go and take both of them as prisoners.

I'm also surprised that, considering they were starting Characters and seeing the might of the monsters they were dealing with, none of them died. Well, I don't mean that you should have killed them all, but I can't help but think they got out of the whole thing a tad easily considering how brashly they acted. Maybe giving physical trauma (similar to the "Aftermath" Disadvantage) after such a brutal fight would have been an adequate way to show them that they have been playing with fire?


Well, what I said may seem quite mean, but don't worry; it's just my habit of pointing out everything that I think is even remotely problematic! Truth be told, I really think you handled the whole thing pretty well, and you managed to always find ways to deal with whatever complications you met.

I hope you won't feel attacked. These were mostly points I am wondering about, and not formal disagreements.

And of course, thank you very much for sharing your experience with us!

[tamsyn]

Don't worry I won't be offended by what you say - every gm has to make the decisions for themselves and their group. I'm happy to hear different opinions.

I put the bit in about the survival points as I knew it would be controversial. I would only reset at the end of the scenario and not at the end of a session. We may be slightly spoilt by other systems were the points reset but also I didn't see any benefit to not doing it. Their enjoyment would be lessened and mine too by default. Personally I don't like killing off players unless they are really really stupid. I do think they have learnt a lesson from what happened. Also they have serious mental trauma to deal with in the next game.

[Dragoslav]

Yeah, it would definitely take a lot of getting used to having this resource that doesn't refresh unless you put a significant resource investment back into it (5 XP is half of a Skill, after all). Let's hope that your players are more careful next time, so they won't have to use all of their survival points in another outrageous battle.

Your post-session reports have been very interesting. Would you consider doing a post-mortem on running the adventure, recapping:

• What worked best?
  What didn't work?
  What you thought would work but didn't go over well?
  What you didn't think would work well that actually turned out to be a hit?
  The hardest parts of running the adventure?
  The easiest parts?
  What you would have done differently?

If it's not too much of an inconvenience! As you have the distinguished honor of the first report of a completed adventure on the English forums, your insight would be most useful to the rest of us planning on running this adventure and others in the future.

[tamsyn]

The survival points only replenish at he end of scenario so if they blow them in the first session they are gone!

Yes no problem will post a recap. Might have to wait a bit since I'm on holiday and I ave to prep Poison for Sunday. Will do it though.

[Gully]

Hi guys,

Thought I'd follow Tamsyn's lead and let you know how my first session with Loch Varn (and SoE in general) went. It was 4 hours long and we only got through the first act, but we generally laugh, joke and get on tangents from time to time.

I had five players, two electing to used pre-generated characters (Masha, Eoghan) that we had previously used to test the system (one test fight), another chose to use Sid, but tweaked him by making him older (27, +setback: illness, +discipline: signs 6), and another two made their own characters (occultist, rogue).

The liked the beginning and enjoyed switching characters. I had to push them a little to get them to kill Terent (who is Masha's older half-brother, in this case). First Masha, just wanted to dive out of the way, and then someone wanted to tackle him, but I reenforced the idea that they only had a split second, so they shot him in the end (though it wasn't Masha).

The fight with the warriors went OK, they quickly learned how deadly it could be, Eoghan was brought to Agony but used two survival points, and then had a tonic used on him. Another character was also very nearly killed. They ended up killing three warriors while I had the other two run off (heavily wounded). If I had them stay at least one character would have been killed, which would have made them sit out the rest of the session and they would have concluded that they aren't going to really die, early on. I wanted them to stay unsure.

The got to camp. As with Tamsyn, my characters wanted kept asking the people their names. I had them not being able to remember, but stress the party needed to go get help. They reacted well to the Demorthen's last words about the Chapel ... they were worried .

I was a little confused with Tamsyn's account because when the PCs get to the entrance the scenario says that the scene warps and the door is no longer there. I stressed to the more rational characters that this did not seem like an illusion, but the warping of reality as they turned to face the door. Some people failed the Mental Res (MR) rolls, and then went around kicking the doors that didn't disappear to prove they where indeed there.

They went into the office rooms, but I did very short descriptions of them, because I didn't want them to spend too much time on them and I preferred them not to think of looking for information (better to be surprised to find it in someones pocket later).

The entered the vat room, had a fight with the plant that also could have very easily killed someone. Unfortunately I forgot the MR roll until after the fight, so the fact that one was scarred, and would have stood stunned for a minute (and probably would have died) happened after seeing the scene post battle.

At this point, my players where definitely feeling the choas, uncertainty and insanity of the events, and I didn't want the to get frustrated from not being able to discover anything to help their cause. So I decided when they ran into the Centipede that I'd make sure to kill one of them and then have the whole group awake on the hillside as that persons screams.

So they entered the extractor room, only one went directly into the room and when he looked up he saw the writhing giant centipede above him. They started combat and the other player standing in the door way got a couple good shots on the creature. I wanted to makes things more horrific for the conclusion of the act, so I had 1,000s of smaller centipedes start pouring into the vat room from drains in the floor behind them. Some ran, some fought on, but then the PC in the extractor room died. I would have had it go on a little longer but my players where very afraid of killing someone else's character (they are generally fine with their own deaths) and I didn't want the one new guy to our group to feel awful (the character he was controlling died) while I carried on the scene more. Also they would have quickly realized no one was really dying as soon as the second person bit the dust.

I was confused about how the separate memories played out in the scenarios, but I tweaked them and let them know what each person remembered before they left.

The guy who took Terent's bracelet, also was the one who died, so he awoke screaming, but didn't remember the dream or any previous visit to the factory, but was wearing a strange bracelet from the dream described by others (I liked this confusion!).

Masha, was awoken by the scream, but she was the one who remembers the dream and tells everyone what happened, and describes the bracelet worn by the other.

They occultist (high reason), doesn't remember the dream, but does remember a previous factory visit, and had the papers in his pocket to "prove" it (I liked this too!). I didn't give him the "riddle" clue.

One character didn't remember the dream, or a previous factory visit, but did remember a trip to a chapel.

And finally, someone didn't remeber any of this but was very very certain someone was missing!

-------------------------------
Everybody enjoyed the session and we are planing the next one for tuesday.

After awakening from the "nightmare" of this Act, I was planning:
- Everyone's health to return to normal
- Everyone's survival points returned to normal
- Used Tonics are returned
- but Trauma gained to stay ... is this going to cause too many problems because all the characters will be insane by the end?

BTW Loved the music, was able to find all the songs (not already on Men and Obscurities) on iTunes.

Oh, because no "Potential" was listed for NPCs I didn't give them any attitudes, not being sure what was intended. I now assume that NPCs can take attitudes.

Let me know what you guys think ...

(Wow this ended up being much, much longer than intended ... sorry for the long read)

[tamsyn]

Hey Gully, good recap! Loved the hundreds of mini centipedes.

I don't say the door was warped, it was collapsed in so they had to explore further or they would have missed all the fun!

I also refunded the points but not until they woke up properly at the end of Act 2 so they don't know it's a dream. kept the trauma going right up until the end if the scenario.