Catching Up with Jadepunk (part 3)

So, this is the last of these updates, enough to get us caught up to date so people can get an idea of how we put together a #Jadepunk campaign and got it rolling. If anyone has any interest I'll keep making my session updates available. I'm going to write them anyways for my own notes, so if it doesn't become annoying to my readers I may as well share them.

Session Three

Knowing they needed to hurry in case the Green Tiger came back with reinforcements, the group got right to work. Han and Saffron set about freeing the prisoner and bandaging the most grievous of his wounds while Keiko started searching the warehouse and fallen guards for clues.

The old man told them what had happened in the hours since he was kidnapped. Apparently he had been badly tortured, and in an effort to end his pain and get the Hu brothers to leave his daughter alone he had told them where the item (a book) that his daughter had stolen was located. The Red Dragon, the Hu brother the group had met during the fight at the tea shop had already left with several men to retrieve it, but his brother remained to continue gathering information from the old man.

Retrieving the stolen property hadn't been enough. They wanted his daughter dead.

Keiko, meanwhile, had found something else interesting. All of the fallen guards had evidence of old, congealed blood on their boots. Thinking that it was unlikely the entire squad had somehow walked through a murder scene, the group came to the decision that they must have been to a nearby slaughterhouse for some reason.

Having discovered what they could, Saffron picked up the Green Tiger's fallen knife and the group returned to their bolt hole to decide on their next course of action and give the old man a safe place to heal. There it was decided that the Red Dragon probably had too much of a lead on them to recover the book. That left them with only one choice: They had to leave the city, find the girl, and figure out what she knew that was so important that a large number of private police officers had been willing to die for it.

Thus the group split up one more time. Saffron returned to her shop to prepare some devices for their travels, Han returned to the Qin household to "borrow" a blue jade cloak that they kept there, and Keiko moved to investigate the slaughterhouse.

From the outside the slaughterhouse looked much like one would expect, a low structure in a bad part of town, clearly still in use. The smells were terrible, attracting all sorts of vermin and birds. Around back however was a different story. Keeping an eye on the place for a couple of hours, Keiko watched as one by one men would approach the building, pay a heavily tattooed guard, and then enter. Using her disguise to try and fit in Keiko approached the guard herself and learned that the people who came through here were selling some sort of jade concoction, but she was unable to produce enough money to buy-in herself, and was forced to exit before the guard became suspicious.

----

Finally ready to leave, the group got directions to the hiding hole from Mr. Nguyen and made their way to the train leaving town as quickly as possible. Most of the journey went well, but the end would be tricky.

Since the group didn't have the white jade kite that Daiyu had used to get off the train while it was still in motion, they would have to jump when the train slowed down to cross a bridge passing over the river. Timed just right they would be able to land safely in the deep, muddy water and continue along their way.

I was too lazy to bring out tokens and cards to represent the
characters and zones, so you get to see my terrible art work.

Of course, nothing is ever quite that easy. As the group jumped into the river Saffron slipped. She landed without injury, but slipped too deep for a moment and disturbed something very large that moved beneath the surface.

Never content to let a bad roll go, and unwilling to let a single mistake bring the game to a halt, I generally use them to introduce some sort of consequence. In this case I decided to introduce something new: a very angry, green jade tainted, hippopotamus.

The thing came out of the water in the midst of the group like a force of nature. Saffron and Han quickly made their way to the shoreline while Keiko stayed to engage the thing. The fight was hard, complicated by the fact that Saffron's pistol had gotten clogged with mud (thanks to a compel on its aspect) during her fall and the fact that Keiko refused to run from a fight (thanks to a compel on her personal aspect.

The poker chips represent fate points (white), created advantages
(blue), and boosts (red) that had been spent during the fight.

In the end the group was successful in killing the thing, but now they were cold, wet, stuck on the banks of a river in the middle of nowhere, and very short on Fate points. It was going to be a very long night.

Left with little choice, the group gathered on the shoreline and began the next part of their journey into the mountains surrounding Kausao city. They needed to find Daiyu and figure out what she knew, and hoped that whatever it was would make all of this worth while.


End Session Three.

Catching up on Jadepunk (part two)

Second Session

Picking up with the #Jadepunk game where we left off, the characters decided to regroup and quickly gather what information they could before the authorities began to show up. Unfortunately there wasn't much they recognized. The enemy had been unusually skilled and well armed, each bearing a tattoo of a red tiger and green dragon arranged in a yin-yang on their left hands. They knew it had to mean something, they weren't simple thugs, but there was no time to investigate it further.

Saffron and the still-injured Keiko decided to take Mr. Nguyen and get out of there, while Han stayed behind to smooth things over with the authorities and see whet more she could gather. This proved to be fortunate, because a member of the city watch and several city guards showed up soon thereafter.

Though they didn't seem particularly interested in Han's story about what happened, they did give away some valuable information. the "thugs" the group fought were members of a private police organization run by the Hu brothers, a pair of famous (and dangerous) mercenaries. These weren't the kind of men that should be messed with, and the watch was content to let them handle their own business.

Armed with that knowledge Han left the scene and rushed off to find where the others were laying low.

Meanwhile, being the member of the resistance tasked with smuggling people out of Kausao City, Mr. Nguyen had a number of hiding holes in which the group could take refuge. The one they settle for was an old cellar for a building that had burned down years ago. When the new building was built on top of it no one realized that the cellar was there, and thus it had no access. This made it a perfect place to store refugees, since everyone assumed the store room belongs to someone else.

Today the cellar was empty save for a group of ravens that watched with interest as the group took their turn to take refuge there. Nguyen and Keiko were hurt badly, but luckily Saffron knew a bit about healing, and took the time to bandage everyone's wounds while Nguyen told them what he knew.

Mr. Nguyen had called the group together because he had what he thought might be a massive blow to several of the city's most prominent houses. A young but accomplished thief named Daiyu had stumbled across several important members of the bureaucracy gathered in some sort of clandestine meeting. Once it was over she broke into the chamber they had gathered in and stole something valuable (though Nguyen did not know exactly what). She had thought she managed to get away clean, but ever since then the Hu brothers and their gang have hunted and hounded her.

Unsure what else to do, Daiyu went to her father seeking help, who in turn came to Nguyen hoping that the rebellion could smuggle the girl out of the city. Nguyen agreed, but on the condition that she leave whatever it was that she had stolen for the rebellion's use. Once they had reached an understanding Nguyen gave the girl directions to a place in the nearby mountains where she could be safe, and he brought her father to the group so that he could tell them where to find the stolen property.

Which catches us up to what happened in the tea shop.

This left the group with two basic options: Find the girl, who was presumably safe in Nguyen's hiding place, or rescue her father from a powerful group of well armed men.

Ever the heroes, our players decided to do the latter.

Bandaged as much as possible, Keiko hit the streets to check with her informants about where the Hu brothers might be keeping the old man, while Han did much the same in more diplomatic circles. Saffron, in the mean time, decided to hit her engineering shop and put together a few surprises for the enemy.

Our map, with a few marked locations around town.

In the end all of their intel lead to the same place: One of the Hu brothers was holed up with a large number of his men in an old, abandoned warehouse and sifting plant along the river.

Their quarry identified, the group moved in, Keiko using her extraordinary mask and scoundrel skills to disguise herself as a member of the gang, and Han helping Saffron to sneak up to the building around back along the river.

When the time came to act it happened all at once. Han separated himself from Saffron to check out a skylight on the roof, so the engineer took the opportunity to throw herself into the midst of the guards watching the building's rear entrance. Unseen by all but the ever-present black birds that circled the area, and armed with only a holdout pistol and a blade, she did an admirable job of creating a distraction. Half of the guards at the rear door were down before they knew what hit them. This allowed Han to slip in through the skylight unnoticed, and gave Keiko time to get inside the front door, throw off her disguise, and call out the men there.

The group was better prepared for the fight this time, and it went much better. It was long and hard, given the straight on nature of their attack plan (thanks to some creative invocations of their aspects), but it was clear from the beginning that the group had the upper hand. Even when the Green Tiger, the famous Hu swordsman entered the fray it was too little, too late to turn the tide of battle.

That's not to say it wasn't without difficulties however. In the middle of the fight Saffron discovered some sort of Jadetech refining operation and decided to destroy it while she had its engineers cowed into a corner. Unfortunately the whole thing was highly unstable however, and the resulting explosion killed all of the engineers, and nearly took out Saffron herself.

Meanwhile, this left Keiko largely alone to fight the bulk of the warehouse guard and the Hu brother wielding an extremely sharp green jade sword. Luckily Han was able to pick up a pistol he found on a dead guard that had been stationed on the catwalk at that point and join in the fight.

In the end it wasn't without cost, but the group won the day. The Green Tiger was forced to leave behind one of his trademark daggers and flee into the river, leaving the group in control of the warehouse and the old man they had come to rescue.

End of Session Two.

Catching up on Jadepunk (part one)

I know I've fallen behind a bit over the last few weeks, so I'm just going to jump right in and get to work covering our first three sessions. To keep the length manageable I'll split it over a few posts, but I expect them all to come out within the next few days.

First, let me say that I'm very please with the direction our game is going in. I'm a pretty big fan of giving players some shared authorship over where the campaign begins and where it is heading (see my posts on Campaign Mapping and the Jadeborn Campaign Map for details), and the technique hasn't let me down yet. Between our map and some outside inspiration from books and video games I have a very solid idea of what my version of Kausao City looks like, and what the opposition is likely to do. Now it's just up to the players to throw a wrench into their plans.

Speaking of which...

The Characters

Other than myself our group consists of three players: 

• Lisa, playing Han, an aristocrat serving one of the most powerful families in Kausao City (The Qin). Once a loyal servant until his love was captured by them and sold away. She now works from within the family, using her access to their information and Jadetech to tear down the system from the inside.
• Schroeder, playing Saffron, an Aerish jadetech engineer who uses her knowledge and a series of cleverly built devices to take on the enemy in a language they understand: power and explosions.
• Willy, playing Kei (or perhaps Keiko, depending who you believe actually lives under the jadetech mask), a former gang leader who was taken off the streets by an old monk and taught to use his skills to help the people instead of being part of the corruption that's oppressing them. Kei's primary weapon is a blue jade staff that can be manipulated to grow or shrink depending upon current needs that the character inherited when the monk was captured and sent to work in a penal mine.

First Session

Unfortunately we didn't get a ton done on our first night. Between finalizing characters and discussing the setting all we really had time to do was a quick intro. In this case we picked up right where my post on the Opening Scene left off. Our players chose to be members of a small but growing resistance movement dedicated to taking down the corrupt government of the city, and working to free people who are being held or worked unreasonably.

To this end they were tasked with meeting at a tea shop in an upscale portion of the city where My. Nguyen (their contact with the resistance) would be meeting them.

Now, I should throw in here that I like to start campaigns off with a fight. I find it gets the characters active and working together right away without the awkward small talk. It also serves as a crash course on the system for newer players, as well as making sure everyone knows what the team was capable of. Tonight was no different.

As soon as our characters were (mostly) ready to play we jumped right in. The group's contact was escorting an older man into the tea shop on the floor below the group when a lit lantern was thrown through a window, spreading burning oil across the middle of the shop. Immediately following it was a group of eight armed men, looking for trouble.

The group jumped right into action, with Keiko covering her face with her mask and extending her staff to slide down into the midst of the enemy. In the mean time Saffron wet a piece of cloth with water and used it to cover her face, hoping it would protect her from the smoke, as well as protecting her identity in the crowded shop. For his part, Han knew little of combat, and couldn't afford to be seen fighting in a shop his employers frequent. Taking the safe route, he pulled at table cloths and drapings to attempt to smoother the fire.

The fight itself was a lot tougher than anyone expected. The enemy outnumbered them badly (especially with a third of the group caught up fighting a fire that I also ran as a character), and it was all the group could do to hold their ground in the tight quarters. Keiko and Saffron managed to take out 5 of the enemy, but their ally Mr. Nguyen was badly injured and pinned to the ground by an enemy spear, while Keiko was (Thanks to a concession after losing two consequences) thrown out of a window, too badly hurt to return to the fight.

In the end Saffron managed to chase away the remaining three thugs, but not before they captured and carried off the man Mr. Nguyen had brought for them to meet. A scattering of ravens took flight as the young woman chased the enemy out into the street, hoping to follow them. Unfortunately, the enemy's rear was being protected by a newcomer to the fight, a tall man wearing a duster, with his hand resting casually on the grip of a red jade revolver, a red dragon tattoo etched in jade on his hand.

The fire finally out, Han ran to the door and dragged Saffron back inside. They were too hurt to continue this fight and face a new, unknown opponent.

End of Session One.

Jadeborn: Setting the Opening Scene

Mr. Nguyen was not the kind of man to waste time on petty things like tea shops. Never-the-less, this was where he had asked to meet them. They all knew each other of course, or at least knew of each other. The resistance was a small world, and few of its members were as capable as the three gathered around the table today.

The privacy of identities was, of necessity, almost sacred among the members of the resistance. Deeds and results were however things to be celebrated, and each of these had accomplished a great deal in their time. Looking around the table they didn't just see colleagues, they saw indentured servants freed, resources stolen for the greater good, evil men vanquished in the name of justice.

They saw works of freedom written in old scars and hard eyes.

Still, gathering in one place like this was awkward. They had heard that the shop was the kind of place where they could meet with absolute discretion, but it still felt wrong. Dangerous.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before their fears were proven accurate. Sitting in their quiet, well-concealed booth on the second floor they heard the commotion below. Shouts, weapons drawn, screams, and the sound of a window breaking as a lit oil lamp was thrown in among the crowd. They stood as one, bracing themselves for the attack to come, but it became quickly apparent that their gathering wasn't the target.

Carefully looking below they saw the flames starting to take hold and armed men forcing the crowds back as they crowded Mr. Nguyen and an elderly companion towards its warm embrace.

Jadeborn Prelude

Just to give you an idea where we're headed with the new game, here is the prelude story I sent to my players to get us in the mood for our first game, set up our starting point, and introduce a few important characters:

Daiyu ran toward the train holding the fragile bundle she had received from the jade engineer carefully. It was very light and delicate, and she feared that it would snap in her rush, but there was no time to lose. Behind her two men fought their way through the crowd yelling for everyone to get down, trying to bring their red jade pistols to bear.

She was running late, and the train was already in motion by the time she made it to the platform. By the time the first bullet sailed past her head, she knew she had little choice.

Without thinking she whipped out her nine section whip and shot its sharp, green jade tip out and into the wood of the train's car, leaping as the thing jerked her forward.The light, white jade latticework kite in her opposite hand fanned out, catching the wind and bringing her into an uncomfortable glide as the vehicle picked up speed and made its way to the outskirts of the city. She wouldn't be able to keep this up long, and she knew it, but with little choice she began winding the chain painfully around hand, bringing her closer to the train and safety.

Already she could hear the shouts of city guard inside the train, but she'd just need to stay on long enough to clear the edge of the city.

She needed help, or things in Kausao city were going to get a lot worse

----

Behind her, the Hu brothers cursed quietly, watching as the girl pulled herself atop the train before vanishing out of sight. If they couldn't take the girl they'd have to send some of their men after the old man's tea shop directly, and that was sure to make enough noise to attract unwanted attention.

Still, there was no help for it. The Qin family was paying them well, and they weren't the sort of men to fail on an assignment.

Providing some context, part I: Earthdawn

So, let's talk a little about what I'm currently doing with my games, so when I mention one later it might make a bit more sense.

First, I'm going to start with Earthdawn 3rd Edition. The game I've been running the longest right now is my Earthdawn campaign. It's been going for nearly two years now, though in fairness we've only played 16 times. This is a solo game I run for one of my players when we want to do something, but no one else is around. When I was in school this was pretty infrequent, maybe once every 4 to 6 weeks, but now that I'm done we're trying to maintain a steady every-other-week schedule.

Something that really sticks with me about this campaign is how resilient it is. 90% of the time, if I missed four or five weeks in a game, I'd be ready to move on to something else. With just one player and no real hurry though we've managed to really flesh out these characters and this world. We know them well enough to jump right back in, and would miss playing them if we were to outright quit.

The story itself is your standard Earthdawn fare. Our main character, Rask, is from a community newly emerged from spending more than 300 years trapped underground, hiding from the Horrors (a race of demon-like creatures that cross over into our world whenever the magic level grows too high). The community is short on supplies and finds itself at odds with another nearby community who sees their newly planted farm fields as a solution to their own food problems.

Meanwhile, ork raiders start harassing both communities driving them ever closer to war. In the end, when a battle does come it is only stopped by the intervention of a newly discovered enemy more dangerous than any of the others, forcing all of the communities in the area to band together. \\It's not a perfect truce however, and always on the verge of collapse as we enter winter and one of the towns begins to starve, so our player is off to find a magical sword, a symbol of leadership for the starving people, and a new place for them to call home.

The Jadeborn Campaign Map

So, I thought this might prove somewhat interesting to all the #Jadepunk  players out there. Earlier this week I posted the pitch I used to talk my players into my Jadepunk/Mistborn hybrid, and this Thursday we got together to discuss characters and play a little campaign mapping mini-game that I wrote that helps us get buy-in to our new games.

Linked is a PDF of the output from that mini-game.

To make it easier to read: the gray circles are my players. All other circles are people or organizations (fill colors don't mean anything, it just makes it easier for us to tell different types apart). Squares are places. Diamonds are campaign concepts we want to explore. Triangle are objects or things players own/want to work toward.

Size and position are important. The bigger something is, the more important the placing player wants it to be. The closer it is to something else, the more closely they are related.

The green and red circle round a shape indicate details and traits players have added to each campaign element. Green indicates a possible asset to be used/acquired in play, red is a complication or plot hook. The text guides you as to the placing player's intention, and serves to inspire the Aspects related to that element.

That's about it. There'a a whole mini-game to figure out who gets to place what, since I find that limitations give guidance and breed inspiration, but that's far too long and unrelated to go into here. I just wanted those who cared to have an idea how to read the map, as it defines the starting point of our campaign.

Jadeborn: A campaign pitch for Jadepunk

Below is the pitch for my #Jadepunk  game by way of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. I took the basis of Kausao City, made it a touch darker, and changed the governor o be a mythical figure so that he can serve as a single, identifiable bad guy. My players need a clearly defined win condition for our next game. He's it.

I'm tentatively calling it Jadeborn.

Mists, subtly colored in shifting hues by the nearby jade refineries, cling to everything; reaching out as though they are searching for some bit of life to hold onto. Nights are always dangerous in Kausao City, but nights like these make your skin crawl. The already dark and crowded streets lose all visibility, encouraging desperate men to make their move and lowering what few inhibitions the dangerous and powerful have about harming those they oppress.

Men like that think these nights belong to them. They're wrong.

These nights belong to you.

Kausao City can be beautiful. The billowing sails of huge ships float above the port like a snowy sea. Glistening airships sail overhead painted with the likenesses of dragons and the beautiful lettering of foreign lands. The spires of the rich and powerful lift to the skies like the praying hands of a hundred wisemen.

Beneath it all lay something darker. All around you men are treated like animals. They suffer in pitch black mines denied food until they meet their jade quotas. They are beaten in the fields because they are too weak to go on. They are killed in the streets because they crossed a rich man's path close enough that he was forced to smell them. They are, for all purposes, owned by nobles and corporations, unable to pay down debts to buy their freedom and move about because the cost of the meager housing and rotten food their masters supply is higher than the wage they earn, forcing their children to take on their burdens.

Streets and alleys crawl with gangs and predators. The wilds are full of beats mutated by pollution from factories and refineries. Buildings of the poor are left barely standing, coated in the ash and soot of a hundred thousand fires.

And somewhere out there among it all is a governor who styles himself a god. They claim that he is jadeborn, an immortal naturally infused with the power of jade. They say he is unstoppable, that his corrupt rule will last forever, that he is untouchable, unapproachable.

You're here to prove them wrong.

Maybe you can't get to him directly. Not yet. He is not without weaknesses however. His reign depends on a tight-fisted control over the nobles that oppress the common people, the corporations that dominate the production of jadetech, and a population too afraid to fight back.

In this lies his weakness. Corruption seeps from his rule like an infected wound. This is where you will hit him, striking at councilors near to him, taking down businesses that own men like slaves, and striking back at justice ministers who have been paid off or imprison men unjustly.

So pick up you razor sharp blade of green jade. Ready the red jade six guns. Prepare your black jade elixirs. However you choose, fight. Step out into this dark and dangerous night and teach evil men what it is to fear.