Play Report 3

Campaign: Professional Criminal Walker
Session: 1
Session Time: 2 Hours
System: Dungeon World
Perilous Encountered: 2
NPCs Encountered: 3
Fronts Visited: 2

New Side Story Character

We were down one Immolator player over the weekend, so I talked Keaton’s player into creating a new character for a side story that took place nearby Keaton’s story, but a week before Keaton’s campaign began.  The player was a good sport about it, and I was glad to be running a game this weekend because it’s going to be about a month before I’ll have the chance again.

Our new player character is Walker, a human thief, whose backstory is heavily inspired by Lee Marvin’s character from Point Blank.  Walker was running a job in the Cathedropolis of the Ecclesterium, when he was double crossed by a man named Klimpt, who is actually Keaton’s deadbeat dad.  So after pulling a nickle in the clink, Walker gets out and wants revenge on the man that set him up for the fall.

DM Prep

In preparation for this side story, I felt under prepared, but that was mostly because this was the first time I was running a dungeon environment without a super detailed WotC style module map.  I wrote up a bunch of NPCs, and drew a cross section of the major dungeon location with notes in a spreadsheet.  I knew I was over planning for number of NPCs, but I also knew they whoever survived this side story would probably show up again.

When our session starts, Walker is in the port of Chumwater, digging up information on his target, Klimpt.  I didn’t know what kind of character he was going to make, but I knew Klimpt was going to be at the dungeon, so when he rolled up a thief, I figured it would be interesting to have him hunt down his other characters dad.  Walker learns that Klimpt has moved up in the world, and has been rubbing elbows with the court of the Countess of Bath, up north.  This peaked the player’s interest somewhat, because of the prominent mentions of the Countess of Bath as having a blood cult from the previous session with Keaton.  Furthermore, Walker learns that Klimpt has been helping the Countess round up hunters in the area and tossing them in the prison castle, Chateau Diva.

Walker, it turns out, it one cold bastard, and the player proceeds to roll 10+s for basically everything all night. Just keep that in mind while you read what happens in this session.

Walker figures he needs to sneak into Chateau Diva, so he finds a huntsman delivering a deer carcass to a butcher in Chumwater, follows the huntsman back to his cabin, walks back to town and drops a dime on the poor guy.  He mets with some men of the guard at a pub called, the Low End, and tells them that he’s found a hunter who has been poaching on royal land.  The guards are very interested in this, indeed, and get on there way over this huntsman’s cabin.  After a brutal arrest, the guards load their new prisoner into a wheelbarrow and set off on the two day journey to Chateau Diva, all the while being trailed by Walker.

They come to the dungeon gate, and after yelling for a guard for about 20 minutes.  Walker could see that this castle, whatever was happening here, was not very well staffed.  After the two guards leave the castle with an empty wheelbarrow, Walker sets a little trap for them.  Long story short, one get set on fire, and the other gets a poisoned dagger between the eyes.  Walker dresses himself in the poisoned guards uniform, loads both bodies into the wheelbarrow and hoofs it back to the mountaintop to the castle.

Walker, posing as the guard who was just there, buffs his way back into the castle, saying he and his partner were jumped by the brother of the hunter who they just turned in.  Castle guard says they don’t need dead men, but offers a cot in the barracks to Walker for the night, provided he disposes of the bodies he’s brought in.

The first body is fed to a pit of mistreated wolves, but not before Walker doses the body with sleeping potion.  They second body is laid into an extra deep grave that Walker digs in the chateau’s old chapel yard.  Walker find the guard back at the gatehouse, and asks him over to share a drink as he says a few words over his fallen comrade.  The castle guard provided its over with quick.  Upon remarking that the grave seems extra deep, the castle guard is struck in the head with a shovel.  Walker covers up the bodies and finishes off the wolves in their drug induced sleep.

Walker then climbs up the side of the tower to the roof, effectively bypassing the entire dungeon.  Thinking back on it now, this is probably why most dungeons are subterranean.  He spots his mark on the roof talking with a witch about the setup for a ritual that will take place in just two nights, when the moon turns red in Keaton’s campaign.  There were scaffolds setup with a dozen sacrificial tables with toffs that would empty into an ornate bathtub set up in the center.  Walker, however, doesn’t care about rituals or witches, he just has his cold revenge.  He ties a noose to a gargoyle, lures Klimpt over to the edge, lassos Klimpt with the gargoyle noose, zip zop zoop, Walker just has to make his escape now, mission accomplished.

The witch, witnessing the assassination of her colleague, curses Walker with a moon beam that follows him around, to keep him from skulking around in the shadows any longer.  After barely talking his way into getting the witch to turn her head for a moment, Walker stabs her in the back with a poison dagger, tosses her over the edge, and throws another poison dagger at her as she magically slows her fall to the ground.  The Witch goes inside to alert the guards, and while they are all climbing up the tower after him, Walker rappels back down the wall, lifts the gate a few inches, jams the gate pulley with his short sword, and runs off into the night, with the moon curse still lighting him up like a Steak n Shake sign.

Dinner was ready, and we got a late start, so that’s where we left it.

GM Wrap Up

Making Klimpt the Walker’s mark was an interesting but ultimately dissatisfying move for me storywise.  This player is more into winning and overcoming than he is into discovering story, so it’s probably no big loss for either Keaton or Klimpt.  As he made good his escape, it did seem to hit him that Walker was witness to something very dark that is connected with the more apocalyptic events in Keaton’s story, and perhaps the irony of so effectively achieving Walker’s goals making things more mysterious for Keaton will fester between this session and the next.  What was the Countess doing with all those wolves and hunters? Who was the witch?  Why was Klimpt working for her?  Whelp, Walker has other things to worry about, and Keaton may never find out what happened to his dad.

When I run dungeon again, I’m going to have a lot more details on the map.  I like trying to find ways to simplify resources to make them more handy to run, but skimping on the Chateau Diva made the session seem too empty.

A solo player game in the PbtA system works really well, unless the player rolls really high numbers over and over.  Walker went through the session like a hot knife through butter.  I should have been throwing more danger his way, but his plans seemed plausible enough, and he also had the rolls to back it up.  Next time, more enemies and more damage.  Lesson learned.

The Parley move in Dungeon World isn’t very descriptive of how it was often used in this game, so I may rewrite it, or look at other PbtA persuasion type moves.  Walker was bluffing his way through several situations, and I was left without a great move for it.  Parley is the main +CHA move to call for, but “When you have leverage on a GM Character and manipulate them,” doesn’t really describe it, and neither does “Defy Danger.”  Something to think about.  I would love a more specific move for bluffing that really phrases the stakes and danger of lying in a compelling way.

That’s it for this play report.  See you next time!