Ragamuffins, a Swords of the Serpentine One-Shot

Game Master Branding Opportunity

Hi folks,

I've been absent from the forums for a good while now to deal with family issues that took up all my available brain space. I did not end my last GMing experiences here in the forums well (I ghosted my groups), so I'll apologize for that for starters:

Sorry to all my players for ghosting our games. I was under a lot of stress at the time, but that doesn't excuse the poor way in which I dropped all of the games; nobody deserves that, mea culpa.

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I say all of this because it is my intention to run a brief game of Swords of the Serpentine, a fantasy sword and sorcery GUMSHOE game. To make it as simple as possible, I'll be running a pre-written adventure called "Ragamuffins" about a small crew of pre-teen street urchins who have to deal with a strange situation. Anyone who is interested will be playing one of the following pregens:

* Gemma, a 12-year-old who fancies herself a freelance slink (P.I.) or a City Watch member, even if the Watch regularly chase her away.
* Benito, a brainy introvert ((who struggles with demons of his own, quite literally, as he’s a sorcerer and his demon keeps speaking to him in a voice no one else can hear).
* Luccia, the tough girl who keeps them safe.
* Ratter, an easily distracted thief in training.
* Vittoria, a church ward who regularly runs away to hang out with Gemma and her friends.
* Arabor, a commoner boy who is secretly a disguised noble girl on the run named Arabella Tiverti. She is the heir to the noble House Tiverti, but her parents were killed several months ago by her uncle Tellio Tiverti so that he could seize power. She evaded her parents' fate and fled to Sag's End (the neighborhood the Ragamuffins live in) and changed her appearance and is masquerading as a boy.

Names and genders are flexible and can be changed by the player.

If you're interested, this will be a game with a lot of RP and investigation and even a bit of combat. Since all of the PCs are children, however, most of the time it will be much smarter (and more in the spirit of this adventure) to run away instead of trying to win a stand-up fight. I am hoping to begin as soon as all the pregens are claimed on a first-come basis, or if they are not all filled, once new players stop showing up. No previous knowledge or experience with Swords of the Serpentine or a GUMSHOE game is necessary to play, and all rules will be taught during play.

Firstly, welcome back to the boards! Family and sanity come first (It happened to me and I disappeared for almost 8 years). With that said this sounds like fun but I have absolutely no experience with this system. However, I’m willing to give it a shot and can post at least once a day and look forward to a RP heavy game. I’d like to give Gemma a try (unless some really really really has their hart set on this toon).

I'm also interested, specially in Benito.

Also no experience with Gumshoe, but read good things about it.

Here are some links for the folks who are interested in playing in the Swords of the Serpentine game:

Swords of the Serpentine Rules 101 "Cheat Sheet"

Online Character Keeper of the PCs

G-unit and Sir Longears, feel free to look at both docs and add your name to your chosen character's profile in the character keeper.

While we are waiting to see if others show up to play, feel free to ask my questions about the game/your characters/the setting that are not covered in the Cheat Sheet.

More info:

Link to Dave Thaumavore's review of the game

"Three things about Eversink": Quick info about the setting

Added my name to the profile. Thanks for the links/resources I’ll review them sometime today.

I would like to play Luccia, might gender swap her not 100% sure yet

Here is the Alias G-Unit will be using (hard to find young avatars). First thoughts after reviewing stuff:

Looks like a cool/fun system and I look forward to playing it. Some of things that really stand out and peaked my interest are:
1. The setting- Really like the vibe of Eversink and it appears to be a living world that your actions can influence.
2. Sorcery causes corruption! Yes!
3. Sway mechanic for combat uses looks interesting.
4. Armor & grit as damage reduction.

Questions
1. The cheat sheet suggest that you spend points before you roll. Are you changing that? (I read somewhere that one of the developers suggests doing it after the roll. Which would work better for pbp).
2. How do allegiances work (especially negative ones)?

Questions

1. The cheat sheet suggest that you spend points before you roll. Are you changing that? (I read somewhere that one of the developers suggests doing it after the roll. Which would work better for pbp).

The way I generally play it is that I give you a general idea of the difficulty you're trying to beat. The default is always 4, but if it's a lot harder, I will let you know. You then tell me how many General Ability points you want to spend. Then you roll. If the roll is one off a success, however, I'll generally let you spend an extra point (after the roll) to make it a success.

2. How do allegiances work (especially negative ones)?

Allegiances allow you to wield political power. They allow you to manipulate politics to get favors or help you in some other way. In game terms, you spend Allegiance points to gain a "spotlight moment" and grab narrative control that you might otherwise not have been able to pull off. You can spend an Allegiance point (or any Investigative Ability point) to get:

* Gain a +3 bonus on a related General ability test (including attacks).
* Gain +1 die of damage to a successful attack. Investigative points from only one ability can be added to any given attack.
* Gain Armor 4 (which reduces Health damage) or Grit 4 (which reduces Morale damage) for one round.
* Increase your Health or Morale Threshold by +3 for one attack.
* Give Supporting Characters a favorable impression of you.
* Stretch the definition of the ability you’re using, granting you a clue that would ordinarily be gained with a different ability than the one you have.
* Create one of the special effects noted under the ability's description
* Create a unique special effect that you and the GM agree is balanced with others on this table.

You can also do this with Enemies, it's just if you do, I get to do pull some shenanigans against you at a later time.

Never heard of this system before, but the concept sounds fun. I was interested in both Gemma and Ratter, but as we already have a Gemma I will gladly take Ratter if you're looking for a 4th.

Not a fan of the name, so I'll be changing it...likely to one of my currently defunct aliases since this is supposed to be a short campaign. Khatef would be the closest fit thematically but you'd have to overlook his eponym as he was from a Godbound game.

We have four people interested, great! We'll keep recruitment open until we get six, unless it slows down a lot.

In the meantime, let me give you a bit more info on the game. I'll keep this relatively short, but feel free to ask questions.

* The only die you roll in a GUMSHOE game (which Swords of the Serpentine is one of, but which also includes Trail of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents, Mutant City Blues, Esoterrorists, and others) is 1d6.

* There are two types of "skills". In GUMSHOE they are called Investigative Abilities and General Abilities. Investigative Abilities are for gathering clues when you investigate something. SotS is a game about solving mysteries and gathering clues. If you have the Investigative Ability, you simply state that you are using it in a particular area or way, and if there is clue to be found there with that ability, I give it to you; there's no need for a roll.

* While Investigative Abilities are for gathering clues, General Abilities are more equivalent to skills in Pathfinder: you use them when you are trying to accomplish something where there is a chance for failure and where telling the story of that success or failure is interesting to all of us. If that is the case, you roll 1d6 and then can spend points from your General Abilities to increase the die roll (generally before you roll). You're generally trying to hit a target number of 4.

* Spending points from your General Abilities pools (meaning your max General Ability scores) does not make you "less good" at that Ability, it's just a game mechanic to represent how much reserve you have to push yourself. You can recharge the General Ability pools by accomplishing things during an adventure.

* There are no ability scores, you are your skills. The two skills that come closest to ability scores in SotS are your Health and Morale skills. Both have a maximum (listed on your character sheet) and a minimum of -10. Health is equivalent to HP, but you don't die when you reach 0. Instead, you are considered healthy if you Health is 0 or higher. Once you go into negative health, you have to make Health checks (called Tests) to stay conscious and you get other penalties. You take Health damage when you are damaged by an effect (such as fire) or when someone attacks you with their Warfare General Ability (or Sorcery). You finally are "taken out of the fight" when your health reaches -10. Your attacker decides whether you die or not. Morale measures willpower and how strong-willed you are. Generally you take damage to your Morale when someone attacks you with the Sway General Ability. You are able to think and act normally as long as your Morale is 0 or above. Once you go into negative Morale, you have to make Morale Tests to stay active in the scene and get other penalties. Once your Morale reaches -10 you are still conscious but are considered "Broken" and are removed from the fight.

That's enough for now. As I've stated, we'll deal with rules as they come up in the game, but I wanted to give you a very basic primer. Feel free to ask questions about what I have written ... or anything else.

You mentioned spending General Ability points. For example if a PC has a 6 in athletics they potentially have 6 points to spent to increase athletics rolls that they make. Is my understanding correct?

Also, do these General Ability points regenerate/refresh?

Finally, do investigative abilities have a pool?

**Edit** Looks like Investigative abilities do have a pool. That give you a better result that the default success.

You mentioned spending General Ability points. For example if a PC has a 6 in athletics they potentially have 6 points to spent to increase athletics rolls that they make. Is my understanding correct?

Also, do these General Ability points regenerate/refresh?

Yes, in your example, you can spend up to six points to boost Athletics Tests (their name for checks). Each point spent improves a 1d6 roll by +1.

General Ability points refresh more often than Investigative Ability points. Basically, any time you complete a scene where people are likely to spend pool points, you receive Refresh Tokens. These tokens are a pool that anyone who was involved in the scene can use to "refresh" any General Ability points that were spent. It's a common pool for the entire group, not a per-person pool, so the group has to decide who gets the points. In a combat scene, each opponent has their own pool of Refresh Tokens that you get for defeating (or otherwise overcoming) them.

Investigative Ability points only refresh at the end of the adventure.

Check in to the online character keeper (linked above) and add your player name to the character you've chosen, if you haven't done so already. That will help secure your spot in the game. You can also look at your PC and ask any questions you might have about the game/rules/setting/etc.

So if you have more than 8points in a skill it looks like you get a special ability. Do you need to spend points to use those abilities?

So if you have more than 8 points in a skill it looks like you get a special ability. Do you need to spend points to use those abilities?

Nope. These are called "Talents" and can be used without a spend and each is different depending on the General Ability. Gemma's Talent for having 8 points in Preparedness is very cool and is called "Flashback". I'll just give you the full text from the book:

If your Preparedness rating is 8 or more you can narrate a flashback where your group prepared a secret plan in the past, even if no one had been aware of it until now.
Examples include:

* declare that a foe’s breakfast that morning was poisoned
* a portal normally kept locked and barred is left ajar
* a dagger smuggled in earlier is hidden beneath your chair
* a stolen satchel of treasure turns out to be previously switched for an identical one with different contents
* you’ve previously bribed one of the two armed mercenaries threatening you to be your ally.

You must have had opportunity and the means to set up the action, which can include the help of fellow Heroes even if you haven’t filled their players in on the Flashback plan until this very moment. (This, by the way, is an excellent reason to keep pre-adventure planning as loose as possible: you’ll have more “blank space” available for preparation.) You must still make a Preparedness test to succeed, and you must still convince the GM that your precaution is credible. If the action required a test (of Burglary, Stealth, etc.) you or your collaborators must make it successfully. Depending on the result, the GM might introduce a complication to make life interesting…

The difference between a Flashback and a standard Investigative or General point spend is twofold.

* Your plan can involve other Heroes and their abilities.
* You can present your plan to the GM as a fait accompli; you don’t need to go back and roleplay your fellow Heroes hiding blackmail material in an easy-to-find location. You just grab narrative control, state what occurs, roll your Preparedness test, and then each Hero involved spends whatever points are needed, and succeeds with their rolls, to make it happen.

A suspect is fleeing from you across the densely packed rooftops of one of Eversink’s poorer districts. It’s common to have planks of wood between buildings to act as impromptu bridges for the locals. Using Flashback, you announce that Prophecy warned you about this, so you previously had an ally partially saw through one of the wooden planks that hangs above a pig pen 10 meters below. This is a complete surprise to your fellow player Karla, but she’s enthusiastic about the plan.

You make a Preparedness test, Karla makes a Burglary test for her Hero (since it involves a hidden trap), and your suspect falls 10 meters into a pig pen if they don’t have the Athletics to catch themselves.

Wow, very cool. I just hope I’m clever enough to use it :)

Things seem to be slowing down. I'll keep recruitment open through the weekend and then get things started next week!

Sorry to say this, but I'll have to withdraw from this game. Work schedule changed a bit and I'd rather not overdo myself, even I'm very curious about the system.

Sorry to say this, but I'll have to withdraw from this game. Work schedule changed a bit and I'd rather not overdo myself, even I'm very curious about the system.

No worries, thanks for letting us know.

Since that takes us down to 3 players, I'd like to keep recruitment open for a bit longer.

Sir Longears wrote:

Sorry to say this, but I'll have to withdraw from this game. Work schedule changed a bit and I'd rather not overdo myself, even I'm very curious about the system.

No worries, thanks for letting us know.

Since that takes us down to 3 players, I'd like to keep recruitment open for a bit longer.

Works for me.

Speaking of the players, are the folks other than Sir Longears and G-unit still around and interested in playing?

I am still here

Speaking of the players, are the folks other than Sir Longears and G-unit still around and interested in playing?

Yep! I've just been lurking.

OK, thanks for checking in!

I've created the Gameplay Thread for the game. Existing players, feel free to "dot" in there.

I don't think anyone else is joining us, at least not right now, so I will start the gameplay over in the IC thread shortly.

If other folks want to join us later, there are still three pregens that are available and you can join us at any time.

FYI: We still have three open slots in this game.

Still looking for players if anyone is interested. Take a look at the pregens. So far, Gemma, "Ratter", and Luccia are taken.

Still looking for players if anyone is interested. Take a look at the pregens. So far, Gemma, "Ratter", and Luccia are taken.

Hello, I'm interested in joining your ongoing one-shot if you'll have me. I have no experience with any GUMSHOE systems, but Swords of the Serpentine looked really cool to me.

I've also never played a Play by Post game, but I can post consistently. I might need to be filled in on any PbP jargon.

I've read through the thread as well as the resources you've linked to and the adventure posts up to this point.

I'd be interested in playing Vittoria Coin-tossed.

Hello, I'm interested in joining your ongoing one-shot if you'll have me. I have no experience with any GUMSHOE systems, but Swords of the Serpentine looked really cool to me.

Great! We still have room and having a very slow, doldrums of summer kind of start so you haven't missed much.

I've also never played a Play by Post game, but I can post consistently. I might need to be filled in on any PbP jargon.

No worries, we can explain the rules as we encounter them.

I'd be interested in playing Vittoria Coin-tossed.

Excellent. Vittoria it is. You can just join us in the game thread as if you had been there the entire time.