Feast of Blades - Feedback Thread

[Phoenix42]

SPOILER ALERT - PLAYERS SHOULD NOT READ THIS UNLESS THEY'VE ALREADY PLAYED FEAST OF BLADES

Just having finished the Feast of Blades adventure, I wanted to bitch a little - well, not really, but make a few comments about likes and dislikes, and maybe get a positive discussion started.

Pros
The adventure lets the players deal with, and destroy, an (ex) superior, and thereby have a real impact on the IN world - also allows them to really curry favour with their superiors, so that made everyone happy.

The general setting of the adventure is neat, especially the airport/crashsite, which made for a great emotional impact with the PCs for us.

On a more specific note to our campaign, I noted that the adventure is generic enough to transfer to just about any modern setting, including Mainz 1953 (or more specifically, Frankfurt in this case). Just replace christmas traffic with a US military convoy carrying wounded soldiers from Korea, and Bob's your uncle. Also found that the Villa is generic enough to have it just about anywhere, even in real settings in Frankfurt*

We all enjoyed the general idea of the superiors Alaemon and Gebbeleth, as well as Litheroy (the Mainzers really had a field day with Kadris).

Also, while I thought that the final confrontation does rely rather heavily on the Macguffin dagger, I liked the varied ways of playing the finale that are portrayed in the book. Like most (I assume from what I've heard?), I went with the "Gebbeleth appears and takes over Hamet", because that allows for the players to understand what went on. Also, my players then hatched the brazen, if ill-fated idea of trying to redeem Gebbeleth; which sadly didn't work, but you have to admire the huzpah.

Cons
What both the players and I thought was most disappointing about the adventure is its lack of twist or corners. Obviously, there is the blade, which is confusing enough for a while, but once the black tote-bag is found, it's very much plain sailing, and the pc's in our game caught Roberto by 11 am, and that's after I had stalled them for about 3 hours with attacks, random interventions and Yves knows what. I seriously wonder how any group is expected to daudle so long as to find Roberto in the church, or in hospital.

But the adventure being simple and straightforward isn't bad in itself - but considering that this is an adventure keyed to the word Secrets, one tends to expect more. The fact that the adventure features one single double-cross, which is made glaringly obvious by Hamet himself is rather sad, as is the fact that the demons in the adventure are really two-dimensional thugs. Not only Huzrael and the brat-pack (who, while they are great comic relief, are rather weird impudites, and even weirder Theft-servitors - didn't those guys usually go for a modicum of subtlety?), but also the apparently nonsensical bloody mayhem caused at the manor house. Okay, they're demons, I get it. But aren't they also demons who enjoy secretive activities? I dunno, having the demons just use the excuse created by the dagger to kill a few dozen people seems very two-dimensional. You'd expect them to use the alternative to maybe use more secrets, or if they're throwing a party, to bring in people with dark things in their history and kill them, bringing their souls to hell. Something, anything. At any rate, while the players and I really liked the suspense and sadness created by the crash scene, the manor house was rather a disappointment. I'm not saying that this wasn't due to my gming at that point, there is certainly room for improvement there (I'd really like to see how other gms ran the Manor) - but I can't help thinking that the general plot at the Tether is rather thin.

Also, the players complained in the aftermath that while the plot in itself was solid enough, they would have expected more plot twists and secrets from something involving Alaemon and Gebbeleth. And I must say I agree.

One final addendum which is probably mostly down to my own ignorance: What is the good of Hamet (or Dukes in general) having all the attunements of their superior, since literally all band attunements are restricted to Band resonance, which he doesn't have?

Anyway, sorry if the cons come off as being rather bitchy, but it was rather weird...

* Link is in German, google Translator may be appropriate - apologies for that.

[Archangel Beth]

Hmmm. I don't recall it being overly straight-forward when we ran it -- though mostly due to PC run-ins with most of the NPCs. (My character was geased for a while, which resulted in certain issues...)

So we had a lot of running around, though I think we managed to get everything done in one or two days of gaming.

Here's how our game went, which doesn't really answer the cons very much, but is about all I can think of with a cat sitting on my arm and making it very hard to type.

Spoiler:  

When we ran it, we got a Divine Intervention, and wound up getting to the scene of the Party with very good timing... (I forget what "time" we had it at... We'd caught up to the sorcerer reasonably quickly, but wound up having a tug of war with the LilimCop. We won, she tried to do Officer Down on her radio ("On her BUTT!" cried our Seraph), but our Kyrio of Lightning faked her voice and broadcast a description of the Theftvan instead of ours.

Our GM (well, ze spouse) had demons of all Words congregating there -- presumably invited for the fun and games and networking, which meant any of the Secrets lot would now know what kinds of fun and games and networking the guests liked, and which guests came, and who talked to who... I.e., lots of Secret-gathering, as well as brownie points for being able to host the event.

This also meant that the Kyriotate of Lightning had to be careful -- a Vapudite spotted that one of the walls had Essence, but fortunately passed it off as a weird Tether effect.

We, the PCs, mostly hid in the secret passages. (Of course there were secret passages!) Then we made the GM talk to himself with Hamet, the Litherite, and the Renegade Lilim. The Theftie showed up right next to my character (the secret Renegade who he thought was Just This Demon). All heck broke loose when the Kyriotate of Lightning decided to possess things. Like the ceiling; at that time, the Song of Acid did not require a "mouth" to use. (This, and the "you can't dodge your underwear" incident, is why that little detail got added...)

In the confusion, the dagger got tossed to the Ofanite of Lightning, who managed to zot it back to the local Lightning Tether before it started breaking down. Brownie points for everyone! Oh, and the Wind Servitor NPCs we'd called in showed up in their stolen helicopter and blew the place up while we ran away. (The Brat Pack tried to shoot back from an upstairs window. The Theftie left them there.)

I have no idea what good it is for Hamet to have them all. Bragging rights, probably. I think there's some errata on that? Like he got a bunch of Servitor Attunements instead?

[Phoenix42]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

Hmmm. I don't recall it being overly straight-forward when we ran it -- though mostly due to PC run-ins with most of the NPCs. (My character was geased for a while, which resulted in certain issues...)

So we had a lot of running around, though I think we managed to get everything done in one or two days of gaming.

Here's how our game went, which doesn't really answer the cons very much, but is about all I can think of with a cat sitting on my arm and making it very hard to type.

Thanks Beth - I understand the cat-problem, I have been known to suffer from it myself ;)
We had it done in two sessions, too. Please tell me you didn't get Geased by the Lilim of Secrets? I think that would make me cry. I tried to geas our Ofanite of Creation (neat Lilim of Secrets Attunement is neat ;) ), whereupon he resisted and shot her in the head - to be fair, she did pick a rather bad situation to try it (back to the bunker wall where the ritual was being held, all guns on her - what's a Lilim to do?), but somehow that npc didn't have any luck annoying the players at all...

Your session sounds neat - Kyriotates of Lightning do allow for a different angle on things, though (literally, most of the time - I remember one time where there was a Kyrio of Jean in one PC and a Shedite of Vapula in the laptop next to it and both started trying to hack each other, ending in an all-out battle where they tried to throttle each other with the power cords (how do you throttle a computer? Well, don't look at me it wasn't my idea... ^^)). And divine interventions help, of course - my guys were the other way round, I think there were three infernal interventions that evening (boy oh boy) - kept em occupied, but didn't really stop them much. Which is why I am concerned that the adventure as it stands is rather linear, because if a group whose dice-rolls throughout the adventure were absolutely awful manages to pull the "seek" part off in a few ingame-hours although is supposed to take twice as long... I dunno, maybe I'm taking this too seriously :(.

I have no idea what good it is for Hamet to have them all. Bragging rights, probably. I think there's some errata on that? Like he got a bunch of Servitor Attunements instead?

I looked it up, no adjustments for Hamet as far as I could find. In fact, only one Errata change to alle of FoB ...
And didn't he already have all the Servitor Attunements anyway? And don't get me wrong, the character is powerful enough as it is - but the whole "has all Band Attunements of Secrets" thing struck me as rather silly.

[Archangel Beth]

My Renegade Lilim, currently geas-Servitor to/with the local angels, totally got nailed by Ms. SecretGreenie! "Bring me the McGuffin!" But SecretGreenie forgot to add "and don't tell anyone" to the commands, and this resulted in a pack of angels tracking SecretGreenie down, dangling the fake McGuffin in front of her, and forcing her to remove the Geas under pain of being electrocuted. (Ofanite and Kyrio of Lightning, Elohite NPC of Creation IST Lightning, Seraph of Destiny, Renegade Free Lilim (the Elohite's Redemption Project Kit).)

Between that and "down on her BUTT!" (Kyrio in the shoe-laces), the Kyriotate of Lightning pretty much decided that she was its personal plaything. Or, rather, all her gear was. (And then there was the DI on her driving roll that resulted in four flat tires when she was chasing after something... She was just having an awful time of things. Though the Kyrio did spread the pain to the Theftie when we saw him in line to get off of... Martha's Vineyard, I think it was? Possess tires, open air-valves...)


It is a fairly linear plot, true. I think a lot of the complexity is supposed to come from interacting with the NPCs? And, of course, there's the consideration that it had to fit into a pretty tight page-count, shared with 2 minor Superiors. For the limitations it's working under, I think it's fairly good? If not necessarily Secrets-y.

I guess I didn't come up with any clever "fixes" for Hamet. *sigh*

[Phoenix42]

Looks like that Lilim is never a happy camper :)

It is a fairly linear plot, true. I think a lot of the complexity is supposed to come from interacting with the NPCs? And, of course, there's the consideration that it had to fit into a pretty tight page-count, shared with 2 minor Superiors. For the limitations it's working under, I think it's fairly good? If not necessarily Secrets-y.

Admitted - and I wasn't saying it was bad, just not very secretish, somehow... and since my players unanimously pointed that out, I thought I'd hand it on...

I guess I didn't come up with any clever "fixes" for Hamet. *sigh*

Great, now I feel bad for bringing it up... Demon of Private Shame indeed... :(

[Archangel Beth]

*giggle* *pats* Aie, the Word continues to have an effect!

It would be interesting to try to have a Secrets plot that didn't frustrate the fudge out of most players.

[naraht]

As I understand it (having not played it), in the best case scenario, the McGuffin gets handed off to a superior who exits stage up.

Has anyone dealt with an aftermath... For example, what would Litheroy do with it....

[Phoenix42]

Originally Posted by naraht

As I understand it (having not played it), in the best case scenario, the McGuffin gets handed off to a superior who exits stage up.

Has anyone dealt with an aftermath... For example, what would Litheroy do with it....

Well, the adventure gives a classic IN reaction list of what the Superiors want done with the dagger (though it would have been neat, like in Night Music, to have a list of what the players think their superiors want and one for what they really want :) - but I guess you can't do that all the time without risking total frustration on the part of the players ^^); so basically, there's your answer...

In our case, the two (three, counting one NPC) Gabrielites handed both daggers over to Gabriel, and then witnessed her hand it over to Dominic, who said that a broken dagger to him was a token of goodwill, but hardly proof of it.
The Elohite of Eli who was involved watched the proceedings from a safe distance, and found Eli tapping on his shoulder to ask him about something completely different... adding "yeah, that dagger's like important and stuff... let the others go to town, but did you see that kid at the crashsite? That's what I call talent!"

The Litheroy servitor was originally bargaining with the Fire-guys that they would summon their superiors together and have them beef it out, but sadly Kadris' vessel didn't make it out of the Tether - though the PCs did heroically save his celestial form when Gebbeleth tried to disassemble his forces. So Fire got it all. Effectively, Dominic takes the daggers to heaven, the dead one to be kept in potentiality, in the hope that it may be revived somehow (fade to dramatic ending of Indiana Jones I, only this time it's Dominic's archives). The lesser blade will probably be kept around for the odd Dominic mission... and I daresay the players will encounter it again in Fall of the Malakim. At least, that's my take on events.


*edit* :

It would be interesting to try to have a Secrets plot that didn't frustrate the fudge out of most players.

Mmmhhhh.... Fudge... (performs rite for Haagenti)

[Archangel Beth]

In ours, Jean got both daggers, and disposed of them with pyrotechnics. People got rewards, although as I recall, my Renegade kind of absented herself from any hint of going to the local Lightning Tether, and instead went into her kitty-cat vessel and hid inside a couch.

[Phoenix42]

Hmm, it just occurred to me - what about the Seneshal of the Secrets Tether? Does it have one? And if so, how come he doesn't come out and rain fire on the players when they are inside?