| YourNewShoe |
So, I'm currently one of the players of a game of Hell's Rebels that started back in early May; we're currently in the early part of Book 5, and after some talks with my GM I've realized that there are some major differences between how we've been doing things and what the AP seems to expect.
So I thought - hey, let's make a thread about it, and maybe some folks'll be interested? As you can probably guess, this will be spoiling a bunch of stuff up to where we've reached, which is most of the AP by this point.
To start with, our party was odd from the get-go, as we've got:
- A LN Unchained Rogue Ravounel nationalist, played by me.
- A CN Kraken Caller Druid who hates Thrune but mostly just likes that she gets to stab people.
- A CG1 Alchemist, a Tiefling adopted by the Jarvis family and mostly interested in architectural reform. Had to leave in mid-September - explained it by his family ties forcing him to come along when his whole family left for Egorian.
- A...probably CG Brawler, who was involved because his family's boat full of wool had been seized by the Dottari ; had to leave after a few sessions, in book 1.
- A LN dwarven Brawler/Fighter who was made to replace the player who left in book 1. Not much of a personality beyond very blunt in-fight banter. Technically a GMPC, but played by me during sessions.
- A TN Medium (IIRC) who replaced the Alchemist. He throws starknives and is, despite having the highest Charisma of the PCs, mostly quiet and awkward.
1: On paper. But the player did say "it's ok, I'm Chaotic Good" when the question of executing prisoners came up, so I think in practice he was more CN.
The first thing I noticed was that my PC was the most directly linked to the idea of a rebellion - the others were happy to join in, but mostly seemed like allies of convenience. It didn't really cause problems, because everyone was happy to come along, though. I ended up the leader due to being the most proactive player, so I could keep us moving.
Secondly was how we did things. Seeing Cheliax as a sort of fascist Italy-esque place, I put a premium on secrecy that I later learned the AP didn't seem to expect at all. The documents we found early on were kept either hidden in a library at the Alabaster Academy (where Rexus would work on decoding them) or, for the one bit with a magical aura, hidden in my PC's house (based on the idea of 'if it's dangerous, it's probably better if I'm nearby than if it's just hidden somewhere in the city' and 'we don't want unknown magic in our base').
This continued when we started going on missions - when we hit the Saltworks, we ended up having a slight dilemma after we got one of the Dottari to surrender, because at that point we weren't disguising ourselves...and were accompanied by the singular noble Tiefling in Kintargo. So we killed the prisoner, made it look like he died in the fighting, and from then on went on every mission in cloaks and masks.
In order to be able to take credit for our less illegal actions, we formed an organization called the Silver Doves, which just so happened to be led by my PC (the others were involved, but largely left it to me, and we didn't want everyone to be tied to it, if we were discovered). It sort of fit into the niche emptied by the fall of the Cloven Hoof Society into inactivity after its leader vanished, being a reformist but very vocally non-violent, anti-crime organization. It let us take credit for things like the capture of Varl Wex without outing ourselves as rebels.
All of the illegal things we did, we marked with the symbol of the Silver Ravens, using the Ring of Brand Recognition Ring of Arcane Signets we got early on. It became part of the modus operandi we developed by the time we were going under the Fantasmagorium to take down the redactors stationed there: either disguise ourselves using the raven masks and cloaks, or as relevant Thrune agents, then either sneak or bluff our way in before killing everyone.
In book 2, the GM made some changes to the search for Octavio (mostly reworking it so the most likely outcome wouldn't be us fighting them - he added a fight with a Sarini our Alchemist knew, plus a couple assistants of his, who were harassing the seers) and we had a fun moment with Luculla when we were able to get a peek into the room before they were properly playing the 'damsel in distress' scene. Unfortunately, she beat the Bluff to realize that if she stayed put, my PC was planning on less saving and more Sneak Attacking before she got off the altar.
Moving into book 3, we were stepping up our efforts to start quietly preparing for a larger uprising. We set up a hidden forge in the Lucky Bones, began to organize a militia in the Devil's Nursery, and so on. There was a meeting with our allies, but it didn't accomplish much; the AP-planned alliance with the city's nobles ended up not happening, mostly because we wanted to delay it until allying with them wouldn't be unequal in their favor (i.e. we had enough supporters and had made enough progress with building up forces to be sure we could, if need be, turn on them once they'd served their purpose).
The alliance with Vyre went swimmingly, as did the aquatic stuff (it was after this that our druid realized she could just be a giant octopus on land as well, but at first this was a welcome opportunity for her to unleash her pile of natural attacks for once). Menador Keep caused us some trouble when we ended up caught in a room between several devils, after killing Lucian there (we, as usual, bluffed our way in - we had secret orders, straight from General Shibtek and for Lucian's ears only, to search for a self-destruct mechanism that the rebels might want to use to destroy the keep!), but managed to wriggle out of it with a lucky bluff.
I don't actually remember when we got the magical gifts from Barzillai, but he presented them to the leadership of the Silver Doves due to our use of that group to pin all our legal good deeds on. Being very suspicious (and not having enough knowledge, IC, to know whether or not you could just make a magic item that automatically scries on the wearer), I put forward the idea of immediately auctioning them off as prized gifts from the oh-so-generous Lord Mayor, using the proceeds to fund the charitable activities of the Silver Doves. We did, and later I learned that the original idea of the scene is for the PCs to show up as themselves, in their public-rebel personas.
Our GM reworked the Ruby Masquerade to not use Masque Points, though we did stick to the 'avoid suspicion to keep the initiative' paradigm. After we killed the bone devil in the basement, we jumped the gun a bit by floating up from the orchestra pit to deliver a speech about how Barzillai was planning to kill all the guests (expecting Barzillai, who we noticed looking strange, to be an illusion just like the orchestra had been). Then he proceeded to reveal that his plan was actually to kill all the guests, which surprised us, and we fought our way out of it.
At this point, having the Silver Doves was rather useful, as it meant that all of the goodwill people had for them could be connected to the support we'd built up for the Silver Ravens. This was also, in hindsight, a rather clever move from the personal perspective of my PC - while for OOC reasons I don't expect any kind of competition for leadership from the other party members (ok, for IC reasons, too, varying from personal relationships to 'they are very much not interested in leading'), this does also concentrate a lot of power into her hands, being the one with, effectively, two organizations under her control right as we're toppling the old regime.
This was when our Alchemist left, so the first thing we did when open rebellion erupted was to hit Castle Kintargo, freeing the new PC after we received word he had been part of a failed mission by one of our teams. It was a pretty quick thing to take control of Kintargo, given our preparations and our ability to rip through 1-2 missions per session (each session being a day, Barzillai barely got to do any reprisals) at this point. The nobility, having not been allied to earlier, basically stayed off to the side, and we let them be for the time being, focusing on finishing off Barzillai's loyalists and then clearing the Temple of Asmodeus.
As we took over parts of Kintargo, we used a mixture of pre-existing structures we'd built up in our underground phase (in Redroof and the Devil's Nursery, mostly) and the Ravens/Doves to keep the peace, though it was less necessary than I'd originally worried about. Turns out, Barzillai's supporters were pretty much all dead or fled by the time we only had the Temple left.
After finishing off the Temple (we killed or captured every named NPC in there, plus a few non-named ones), we made plans to call together a council to form a Provisional Government, calling up representatives of as many groups in Kintargo as we could think of, essentially. Due to real-life concerns (the GM has been sick for a while, and once he realized the 'guest list' was going to be 10+ people, he knew he'd need more time to prep it) the meeting was pushed to two weeks in the future, which rather conveniently led to us learning about the Kintargo Contract before making any official decisions about the constitution or organization of Kintargo/Ravounel.
We've just finished contacting and gaining the support of the members of the Board of Governors, planning to elect my PC as Lord-Mayor (which is apparently another major change - I have no idea why the AP expects you to resurrect the vampire you kill under the Opera House and put her back in charge, honestly; especially as the PCs will inherently undermine her authority by existing and being the rebel leaders the Ravens answer to) and use the unanimous support of the Board to rework the Kintargan Constitution.
Given the current situation, it seems like the largest departures of the game from the AP will be just ahead, as we're going to go wading into the politics of revolutionary Kintargo.
| roguerouge |
It's good to hear a player's perspective on this campaign. It sounds like it's working for you and you all are having fun. I will say that this AP, while not a sandbox, does have a lot of room for player agency, and the boards have been all about providing a space to brainstorm how to provide more of it (in my experience). I'm glad there was a surprise for the Ruby Masquerade, one of the high points in my DMing this campaign.
My table is currently forging the new nation, but I will say that making sure the entire table agrees about general directions of the politics would be good, not just in what the general tenor of the political ideology and structures, but also how much time spent on them is fun for everyone. At my table, periodically revisiting my table's Constitutional Convention has been one way to keep the topic alive without alienating players who find world-building to be fun as heck.