Hey Andrew, thanks for creating this AP post! I'm notoriously bad at putting these things together.

The Set-Up part was interesting. I wanted to do as suggested in the book, by basically reading off the major features of the land (Citadel, Ark, Wasteland), and first decide where to set it. Since it was really early, I provided a few ideas, and we generally agreed on "A Village Between the Ark and the Citadel". That's my favorite place to be, a place where there's a clash between two cultures.

The clash, of course, can be forced by putting something in the town that Both Sides Want. In this case, a rich vein of iron ore. I came up with this one.

Then, to get things started, it's cool to pull something out of left field. I decided to throw in Dragon Cultists, because hell, they're like Nazis but Eviler. And more powerful, but that's another story.

So to kick things off I started making a list of possible protagonists, antagonists and anchors. We figured the main folks were going to be the Village Headman, the Citadel Representative and the Ark Representative. From there, we started adding more and more until we had a list of about 9 or 10 (as above). Misbegotten wasn't on the list at the time (that was something I pulled out of my butt at the last minute to give the PCs a reason to explore the rumors of the Dragon Cult: It was actually a creation of the Dragon Cultist, in order to back up the lie of one of the evil PCs). The players really started to fall into place, choosing roles that interested them or that they thought had potential. Andrew lit up at the thought of the Hero, Joshua as the conniving Citadel House Negotiator, and Lindsey as the Daughter of the Headman. Mark fell into line by picking up the Citadel's Right-Hand Man and Dragon Cultist Infiltrator, deciding early on that he wanted to be a schemer with a possible redeemable story: Someone who got in over their head and wants out without more people dying, including himself. Seth had a hard time choosing, but authored his own dude. He said, "Hmmm. I was thinking I want to be a Blessed", to which I replied "Awesome! That's another thing that shakes up the balance of the relationships at the beginning of the game: A powerful Blessed traveller walks into town". Seth played a Psychic Vin Diesel.

In the end, we had villagers (2 players), Citadel (2 players), Outsider (1 player), and no Ark members (but I took on those roles, including the motherly Monitor Seventeen).

I have to confess, that a lot of the major moving and shaking events of the session, I literally just ad-libbed into creation, and then watched the players pick up those events and move with them. It worked well, though.

I too was frustrated with the rules a little: I thought I had a solid grasp of them, but had to go back a few times and skip around to find out what I was missing: Because of lack of play examples, I GOT the part about how your "evil" traits can swap out the enemies' score for a better chance to succeed, but I MISSED the part (until the second half of the game) about how your "good" traits can swap out your own ability to give the opponent a harder time to succeed. But after stumbing through a few minor conflicts, we had the game down. There are a few questions, though, which I'll have to ask later*.

My favorite moment too was probably Lindsey and Joshua's conversation above, same as Andrew. No one was turtling, everyone was giving it their all. Joshua, being much more skilled with adlibbing, improv, and having a much better grasp of his badass political character (his inspiration: House Speaker from Dune. Bad-Ass), could have just rolled over Lindsey's character. Lindsey also had a grasp of her character, and was coming up with great retorts to Joshua's character's threats and the like. In a normal game or a game where "the players talk in character and the GM decides who wins", then Joshua would have kept winning hands down. In this game, though, like most games with social rules, you roleplay, then roll the dice if everyone thinks that it's better to see what happens that way. In a 2-Success conflict, Lindsey ended up winning. She said a few scathing words to Joshua's conniver, and Joshua totally rolled with it, having his character treat hers in a new light with newfound respect. As Andrew said, that's one of the reasons I really like these kinds of games, when everyone is on board. This moment made the final "2 heroes vs mile-long mist dragon" fight scene pale in comparison.

I ended up rolling with a pictograph resolution instead of the clock resolution: Unicorn, Blessed, Ark, Misbegotten, Dragon, Devil's Hour. I was kind of thinking that if I run it at GenCon, I'm probably going to use QUEEN BISHOP ROOK KNIGHT PAWN DRAGON setup to get people into the game without hangup on the terms.

All in all, I was satisfied with the game. I want to run or play in a LoA game set in the Ark next time, perhaps 2-4 sessions.

-Andy

Oh, doubleup! Question Number Two, based on a comment of Seth's I saw in another thread:

Posted By: Great WolfMy gameLegends of Alyriais designed around double-edged moral Traits. So, a Trait can be Good or Evil, but it can be used against the character who has it. The neat thing about the math is that the best way to win a conflict in LoA is to turn a character's Evil Trait against him.

Huh, so does this mean that I can not only sub my own good traits for my roll, and my bad traits for my opponent's roll... But I can also sub THEIR good trait for their roll, and THEIR evil trait for my roll?

That's interesting, and very unexpected.

Hey, Andy.

First, having just finished writing Dirty Secrets, I'm already beginning to see the weaknesses in the Legends of Alyria manuscript. Extensive play examples would definitely be helpful, for example. And, just in general, I'm finding that I'm better at rules-writing than I was five years ago, when I wrote most of the Legends of Alyria manuscript.

That being said, here goes.

First, it sounds like Setup went really well. A "psychic Vin Diesel".... Sounds great!

One of my favorite memories from an Alyria session is also a weak character successfully confronting a strong one in verbal conflict. In our case, it was the first mate of a mist ship who was finally putting his foot down and refusing to be intimidated by a soldier of the Five Hundred. That kind of stuff is way cool.

Now to the rules inquiries...

Posted By: AndyI ended up rolling with a pictograph resolution instead of the clock resolution: Unicorn, Blessed, Ark, Misbegotten, Dragon, Devil's Hour. I was kind of thinking that if I run it at GenCon, I'm probably going to use QUEEN BISHOP ROOK KNIGHT PAWN DRAGON setup to get people into the game without hangup on the terms.

I'm going to seriously recommend that you use either the Clock faces or the original Moon iconography. The reason is that they are both inherently visual.

Take a look at these pictures:







The first is Sext, the second is Terce, and the last is Matins. But that's not the point. Look at the shading. Which one wins? Well, which one has more "light" in it? It's easy to see. Other forms of iconography lack this simplicity. That's why it is best to use an actual Clock Die (and not merely rolling on the chart). (Or a Moon Die, if that's where your fancy lies.)

That being said, it would be awesome if you ran this at GenCon. I will be demoing it at the Forge booth, in addition to Dirty Secrets, so feel free to send folks my way, too.

Posted By: Andy* Before I forget, here's one:

There's a "2 success" conflict.

Round one: Player one and Player two roll successes. No one gets a "10". But they both succeed. That's one success for each side: 1 to 1.

Round two: Player one and Player two roll successes again. No one gets a "10", but again they both succeed. Player one rolls a 9, player two rolls a 5. They both get successes. 2 to 2.

However, at this point they both have won, with two successes each?
Or did the person who rolled that "9" "Really win"?
Or did they "tie"?

BUZZ! Incorrect. Thank you for playing. ;-)

You're not racking up successes. Rather, you're winning (or not winning) a given exchange. Here's the rules in question:

Assuming that no one spends I/C to resolve the conflict, both sides now roll a Clock Die. The die roll is a success if it is greater than or equal to the target clock face. If one side succeeds but the other side does not, then the successful side wins the die roll. If both sides succeed, then the side with the higher temporary Attribute wins the die roll. Failure by both sides leads to an inconclusive result.

I'll cop to this being not totally clear. However, the point is this: only one player wins a given exchange.

So, in your example, Round One should have been won by whichever character had the higher adjusted Attribute. So, if my character's Attribute after Trait activation is Terce (aka Gibbous aka 8-9), and yours is Prime (aka Half-Moon aka 5-7), again, after Trait activation, then I would win. Since neither of us rolled Sext (aka Full Moon aka 10), the results after Round One stand at 1-0. Since I don't know what the different characters' adjusted Attributes are, I can't actually work out for you who should have won.

This means that for a Medium tension conflict (2 exchanges to win) is really a "best out of three" contest, and a High tension conflict (3 exchanges to win) is really a "best out of five" contest.

Posted By: Andy
Huh, so does this mean that I can not only sub my own good traits for my roll, and my bad traits for my opponent's roll... But I can also sub THEIR good trait for their roll, and THEIR evil trait for my roll?

Correct. Any Trait of two conflicting Characters is open for use by either player. The Traits actually used should be remembered when assigning Inspiration and Corruption post-conflict.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Posted By: AndySCENARIO ONE:
After traits and all are settled:
I need to roll Misbegotten or higher to claim that success.
You have to roll Ark or higher to claim that success.
We BOTH roll 8s on our d10s (aka "BLESSED" if we had specialty dice). What does that mean?

In other words (using your progression), your adjusted Attribute is Ark (aka Prime), and my adjusted Attribute is Misbegotten (aka Lauds). Both dice rolls were successful, so we go with whoever had the higher adjusted Attribute. That would be you. Therefore, you win one exchange.

Posted By: AndySCENARIO TWO:
After traits and all are settled:
I need to roll Misbegotten or higher to claim that success.
You have to roll Ark or higher to claim that success.
I roll BLESSED (8)
You roll ARK (6?)
Does that mean that I won this exchange?

So again, (using your progression), your adjusted Attribute is Ark (aka Prime), and my adjusted Attribute is Misbegotten (aka Lauds). Both dice rolls were successful, so we go with whoever had the higher adjusted Attribute (not dice roll). Again, that would be you. Therefore, you win one exchange.

Now, you can certainly use the actual dice rolls to flavor narration. So whoever is narrating could give you a bit more of a narrative edge in Scenario Two, but that's mostly color. For determining success, the actual die roll doesn't matter beyond passing/not passing the target Attribute.

Posted By: AndyFor the hours, that just doesn't work for me unfortuantely. I can see that one is whiter than the other, but I can't remember which is supposed to be which. Is the 3/4 full clock Sext? None? Terce? I can never remember. The only one I remember is that Matins is "Bad", and that was after multiple rereads*. That's why I go back to either figments from LoA (as above) if not something else (chessmen), because it's easier to attribute a figure like that to a good/evil level.

Question: what did you actually write down on the character sheet?

You shouldn't write down "Terce" or "Prime" or somesuch. Rather, you should just shade a portion of the circle on the character sheet. That way, when you roll, you have that visual cue tied to the visual cue on the character sheet. The actual names don't actually have to enter play at all.

Now, that all being said, if chess pieces works for your group, then more power to you.

And I'm a database administrator, and I have no idea what the OSI Model is, let alone the mnemonics. :-D

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf