Troika! x Barkeep on Borderlands sesh 7 GM Commentary
We play Barkeep on Borderlands with Troika! Characters are Witch (ancient undead parchment witch), Assassin (journeyman of guild of sharp corners) and Necromancer (just that). Check pregame and part one and two and three and four or even five, six
On the Whirling Way
The team decided in previous session they'd travel to Whirling Mummy dance hall, probably because one of the PCs is an undead mummy and another one is a necromancer.
The travel was full of events. First a group of drunk dwarves blocked the bridge. I described them as dwarven merchants but later I have read they were supposed to be salarymen. Welp, as merchants they at least had carts to block the bridge. There was crowd gathering on both sides but they were stopped by dwarves throwing empty beer bottles.
My players are smart so the first thing they asked was "can we wait for city guards to arrive?". Like fucking good citizens and not a group of serial murderers. I explained that during the Raves it might take a while so they started thinking. In the end they spiked some cigarettes from underground with sleeping powder and Assassin pretended to want to party with merchants. They gladly smoked and got really sleepy.
In the meantime Necromancer got an idea to gossip with one random crowd member so I was able to spill the beans about "very exotic and endangered bird in Birdcage pub" which pointed them to another ingredient for MacGuffin Antidote. Three out of four. The crowd then seeing dwarves getting sleepy materialised torches and pitchforks and charged at the blockade. Getting the chance PCs plundered the carts, got a bag of fake kobold cheese and two potions with labels 'Beauty'.
Bored and irritated by prolonged side quest I said that annoying love-seeking adventurer wanted a sip of a beauty potion. Necromancer let him drink which actually made him very pretty - but since it is dwarven potion with very strong alcohol base I said he got also very drunk. And vanished in the crowd. *And I was happier.
Then I rolled a setback that turned out quite boring - two food vendors arguing and intimidating each other with potential dance off. No one engaged with it.
Third setback (yes, three out of three rolls pointed to a setback) was a bunch of peacocks stealing shiny things from passers-by. They had nothing to pick from three dirty adventurers that survived explosion in a coal cave this morning. But on the other hand adventurers saw on them shiny things, so Necromancer and zombie basilisk jumped in between them, started a fight, Assassin had to intervene because they all are on their last stamina points (Witch immediately hid in the crowd and only shouted encouragement). In the end they grabbed some random jewellery and had to flee to a nearest balcony. I acted out how they basically interrupted Romeo and Juliet scene.
Meet the Mummy King
Finally the team arrived at the dance hall, learned the rules, spoke with a bartender about meeting a necromancer who'd want to buy some stuff. In the meantime things happened and they totally didn't react. One skeleton lost their skull which got kicked all over the dance floor, then a group of bards threw the main band off the stage.
At this point I took a liberty of introducing elements from random tables into the game without rolling. I doubt we'd play this adventure again so I might as well use all the shots I've been given.
The group met the necromancer, she bought their stuff from catacombs with a discount (PCs didn't even haggle) and they were weirdly prolonging sitting there doing nothing. In the end they decided to join the dance off, and started with Crowd Support -1 (because they didn't help the skeleton or the band). They challenged Silent Nuns, three lizardfolk priestesses who only did robot dances. PCs won.
Then the band decided to take back the stage from the bards and now PCs helped (although Witch recently regained Stamina to 4 and lost it back to 1 in a single enemy kick).
I decided to reveal to the group that as an adventurers people expect them to help, as it is some kind of cultural obligation. I felt like cheating by explaining it but players got really hooked on it. I think fantasy games often omit some interesting cultural and social clues that make life more interesting and present life as highly individualised and atomised. Like being in a mall.
Then the team started dance off with a three nobles (I guess their names make some kind of pun or a reference?). It was harder but the team has a cheat code - since Witch is undead and cannot be drunk she doesn't have to be wary of it and can spam harder moves a lot. But still in order to get more crowd support each of the group drank beauty potion and had to roll on getting drunk beforehand. And they won. And then they spoke with one of the potential dance off enemies about weaknesses of other teams. Their dance group called Cold Darkness is keeping it strong.
General Comments
So as I expected second bar we visit is way more interesting. The single wish from Madam Smiling is a huge prize to fight for, very nice hook. I don't actually know what happened when the guys went to trade with necromancer, there was some lag because they just sat there, started talking about maybe selling something else to the necromancer but haven't had anything else specific to sell her, they were asking some random questions and then went silent. I think they are driven by purpose and goal (which is probably why we never get a good game out of OSR sandboxes, because excavating treasures is not enough of a purpose. Or even some Trad fantasy stuff, they are not driven by adventure and being adventurers unless it serves their specific goal and are ready to abandon all adventure if it seems a better idea).
What is fun is that when they entered the dance off and started their combats they actually found it very entertaining. But again, the adventure itself doesn't lend itself specific rules of it so I had to come up with something, stuff about whether it takes whole Raves or just this one day, whether new teams can join and under what circumstances and why the other teams haven't yet eliminated each other. Similar as with theory of magic when they were in catacombs I improvised a lot and it was fun.
The case is I run ready adventures rarely because I don't find myself well in them. They usually describe things as they are or as they happen and I become afraid of improvising early in order not to override adventure on later stage (I did that multiple times, I always feel panic about it and it makes me uncomfortable). This one is kind of fresh air because it is just a set timeline of event + each pub being a little sandbox. I need not to feel constrained by random tables.
Spoiler: I plan to enforce Paladins of Chaos setback on my players (if nothing else funnier is rolled) as I think it would be very funny to see how Witch and Necromancer panic at the notion their necromancy is unlicensed and how they'd get out of it XD