Witch - The Road to Lindisfarne [AP]

[mr toad]

Read Daniel Klein's excellent AP report here:

Witch AP

Cheers

Toad

[w00hoo]

I'll add a second one here.

First slot of ConQuest I put up Witch, I had two sign ups pretty much straight away but no other takers by game start, fortunately three of us felt do-able so we gave it a try. One of the players had seen the game blurb on the website and decided it was a must play, they'd brought a friend from their club along with them.

Figuring we had to have Elouise and Br Armond I considered the other characters and added 'Sir' Thorne to the mix deciding that his questions would create the best conflict of the three. Elouise was taken up by the enthusiastic guy and his friend went for Br Armond. This left me with 'Sir' Thorne, who I'd already played, I considered swapping in another, but chose to go with my gut feeling on the best third character.

The game was a new style to both other players and Br Armonds player confessed a couple of scenes in that he didn't consider himself that great at narration, as he was getting the hang of it I made a point of being positive and said that he'd have had lots of practice by the end of the game.

In the beginning 'Sir' Thorne had been shown as very hot headed and Br Armond devoutly following his duty, Elouise started very docile and apparently broken in body and spirit, attempting to drown herself in a stream during Act 1 to keep the shame of being burnt as a witch from reflecting back on her family. As the game progressed she became both physically and mentally stronger. We had the three other characters out on the table and brought them in as the story warranted, we very quickly established Ham as an odorous pig of a man and Elouise's player had him trying to force himself on the witch in her cage during the night in the forest, only to have the others discover him and have him declare he had been bewitched by her. As the journey progressed Ham slowly moved towards being the villain of the piece as Br Armond became less and less certain of Elouise's guilt. I'd decided 'Sir' Thorne would be steadfast in following her burning to the end unless serious proof emerged and with that 'decided' pushed hard on keeping the story twisting and 'yes anding' the other players ideas.

As we weren't sure when sign ups were due for the second slot we broke after Act 1 and 3 rather than once at Act 2 which meant we flowed in to the confessions straight from Act 2. After the first break both players came back (which was reassuring) and were really enthusiastic about the game, getting some real meat out of the character play. They were keen to get a copy themselves as they felt it would be an excellent experience for the up and coming GM's in their club being a great environment to experiment with scene framing and narrative.

The confessions hit similar to the twist in Fiasco, we decided to do confession scenes for Ham and Sir Hayden as well as Br Armond and 'Sir' Thorne. 'Sir' Thorne turned out to be responsible for sponsoring Elouise's brother towards knighthood, an action that we already knew led to him being crippled in his first tourney. Sir Hayden used his great wealth to bribe Br Armond in to doing what had to be done to save Haydens own daughter, who had been accused of witchcraft, Br Armond took it upon himself to find a different girl who would burn, Ham was paid to find the girl and chose Elouise mainly because of his own base desires for her. We now had a pretty twisted group who had a girl they'd chosen to burn for possibly all the wrong reasons, but who was exhibiting a fair degree of 'the right reasons' during captivity.

The mountain pass included the loss of the cage, with Elouise just being saved from being dashed on the rocks and a tense crossing of a fierce stream. Ham showed himself up to be an even worse Guide than everyone had initially imagined and an almost divine incident as Elouise crossed the suddenly stilled stream it turned out to be the final tipping point in Br Armonds move from believing her guilt to her innocence.

As the journey came to an end Lindisfarne was described as a very stylised place of worship with monks devout almost to the point of cultishness prepared for the burning which would take place in a stark clearing with a well established fire pit set in the centre.

At the point of Absolution I changed things on the fly once more as I felt it important that Br Armond's player had everything focussed on him as to whether the witch would burn or not. We ran through the rest of the announcements in order, then I passed him his paragraph (as it happened with the characters I'd chosen all of the 'box text' had been read by me up to this point as there were no 'players' for the other characters, in retrospect I could have passed some of that over as we were all picking them up now and then but I don't think it caused any problems). He read through quietly, thought for 15 seconds or so, then announced that she wouldn't burn. He threw down the brand that Ham had lit for him and removed her gag. At which point Elouise, who'd been showing various signs of potential possession throughout the game, took on an awful visage and cursed them all to burn in her place.

We had freed a guilty witch.

We narrated epilogues for our own characters, plus Sir Hayden and Ham, with virulent versions of the plague claiming most and Sir Haydens daughter ending up the next witch to stalk the land.

Having three players didn't hamper the game at all, with adding in a slightly stronger NPC roles for the others the story managed to be filled rather than overly introspective, which was my worry if we'd have concentrated heavily on interactions just between Br Armond, 'Sir' Thorne and Elouise. The foreshadowing scenes could have gone better (so far it seems that one of the two foreshadowing scenes fails to really amount to anything, possibly because they are so close together? Could just be how it has gone) but the confessions worked excellently. The two players new to the game both wanted more and I passed on the contact details so they could find out when and how to get hold of a copy. They did wonder if the final draft would have suggestions on hacks for the game, etc.

With a couple of decent breaks the game ran 2 hours 30 which we were all happy with. As there were only three of us I'd flagged at the beginning that it would run shorter than the slot. Looking forward to its outing on Saturday night at Furnace now.

[Akco]

Hi! I was the player that took on the role of Elouise at Con-Quest. We did have loads of fun with the game and we are eagerly waiting to run it for the 'Imagineers' society of Derby university. Thanks again for running/writing the game!

[mr toad]

Hi! I was the player that took on the role of Elouise at Con-Quest. We did have loads of fun with the game and we are eagerly waiting to run it for the 'Imagineers' society of Derby university. Thanks again for running/writing the game!

Sweet!

Thanks mate, I also saw your post on RPG Geek. Let us know how you get on at Derby I here they are in need of some decent gamers in that neck of the woods.

::Whistles::

Toad