And for more details on the actual game!



So our "heroes", after visiting the Duke and chatting up the locals decided to leave for the northern swamps, where, allegedly, Ellara's kidnapper as brought her. He would be a crooked, monsterously deformed known as Crabhand, who had been considered up to that point as a simpleton and a village idiot-type character.



So Omar, Sanguinus and Xeno then take a Perilous Journey to navigate through the swamp, which would have gone extremely well if Xeno, taking the trailblazer's role, hadn't lead them directly to a clutch of Sahugins (and making them hopelessly lost). Omar spotted them early enough as to evade an ambush, but was also spotted by the creatures, who followed him to the rest of the party.



The battle was brutal and sahugins are nasty creatures. The highlight of the fight was Omar tripping Sanginus while he was fighting back three of the monsters as to make him fall on top of them. It killed one of them, but also pushed a few extra teeth into his chest. Also Omar accidently stabbing one inside the mouth (and learning from his mistakes. Sanguinus died and was promptly replaced by Gripe, a slightly schizophrenic Ranger with a dead pigeon as an animal companion.



With the help of Gripe, and with little mourning for their lost companion (evil PCs move on pretty quick) the party managed to find the old castle in the middle of the swamp. The castle was surrounded by a moat of quicksand-like mud, the only way to cross was a rickety rope bridge. Omar rushed foward and promptly fell in the quicksand. He was saved by Gripe, who lost a few arrows to the quicksand helping Omar.



The castle was significantly less creepy from the inside, but it felt off, cold. The entrance hall was this grand, marble room, in the middle of which was a large statue of a beautiful woman. 2 strange men in dark robes spotted the players from the second floor. They immediately entered a door near them, panicked. The party gave chase, lead by Omar, and burst into the room after very quickly picking the lock. In the room was 6 cultists and a vampire.



The fight was pretty brutal and ended up with Xeno hanging out, invisible, and essentially being forgotten. It ended with Omar nearly dying after failing to swing from a chandelier, and both of them being chased by the 5, still living cultists outside of the castle. Gripe ran past the rope bridge while Omar hid next to the door, waited for the cultists to be on the rope bridge over the quicksands and cut the rope bridge down, removing the 5 of them from the fight.



They had forgotten about the vampire, who managed ate some blood and was killed.



The party then decided to go back into the swamp and make camp, as to heal and regroup a bit. Eventhough they had some sleep, making camp in a monster infested, corrupted and haunted swamp rarely goes well. They woke up to a troll munching on Omar's backpack.



The fight with the troll was brief as the players started using Discern realities (and I was subsequently charmed with it). It was used by Xeno, who asked:



"What should I be on the lookout for?"



A: You doubt that there are no eyes on you right now. The troll is dangerous, sure, but you feel like the cult as eyes on you even if you can't see them, and they are more dangerous as a group than the troll is.



"What is useful or valuable to me right now?"



A: The troll itself.



Xeno's player smiled. A little earlier in the fight, Gripe had lit a torch, and attracted the troll's attention. Trolls are scared of fire, this was known (after a spout lore), but they also don't react to fear as most things do. What a troll doesn't like, it smashes. Xeno yelled at Gripe to use the torch to lead the troll to the castle, and have him start smashing around in there. And he did just that. It was a pretty magical moment.



The party then gave the troll some time to do its thing and went back to bed. They assaulted the castle again the next morning. The castles door was destroyed and so was the statue on the first floor. A few cultists were cleaning up as the players came in. During the night, the vampires and cultists managed to kill the troll, but they were freaked out enough to speed up the ritual and resurrect their queen during the day instead of waiting for night fall.



The clean-up crew ran to alert the vampires and the remaining cultists, and our "heroes" gave chase up the highest spire of the castle. To finally make it to the room where the ritual was being held. Just in time, at that.



In the middle of the room was a bath in which a beautiful, naked woman with snow-white hair slept. Crabhand, the head of the cult, was chanting in a strange language and one of the three vampire around the bathtub was holding the duke's daughter, preparing to cult her throat and empty her blood in the bath. She seemed severely drugged.. The fight was tense (You know, hostage) and we saw a parley erupt early on (Omar was threatening to kill the Ellara and spill her blood outside the bath) which ended up with everybody laying down their weapons got people talking, until the vampire holding Ellara hostage lost his patience and charged Omar. In the middle of the Chaos, our invisible Xeno managed to drag the sleeping woman out of the window, into the sunlight, and dusting her. The remaining vampires charged at him (even if they could not see him) and fell to their sunny deaths as Xeno hanged outside, by the edge of the window.



The cultists then quickly laid down their weapons, figuring Xeno would be a decent god to worship too!



--------------------------



Honestly, writing the actual play, I'm realizing something important: my god, the players did some awesome stuff. If not for one of the players resisting the change of pace from traditional RPGs, I would have seen it a lot better, but it feels to me like it's hard to not have awesome shit happen with this system. Discern Realities is essentially "Mister GM, what's awesome right now?", which I loved and yielded great results both times it was used. I really, really want to play this game again.



@Stras, I do have the beta (version 2.3) what I'm saying about XP is that the pace is sort of unequal without using the highlights of Apocalypse world, in some way (given that alignment XP varies wildly in difficulty to achieve), or maybe the alignement moves just need to be revised, I'm not sure, but the pacing felt off. And I agree about the counterproductive player. Not a fault of the system, more of me saying that it was hard for me to have a very solid opinion of the game given the player situation, essentially, I want to play this game again with a group of less antagonistic players before laying down my final judgement.



Honestly, for the tactical options thing, I don't care much. The player really meant figuring out ways to get bonuses to actions, such as his +2 to flanking from DnD, something I do not care for myself. I had a good time and don't really feel the need for it. I really liked the players finding clever solutions to problems (IE using the troll as a weapon, throwing the sleeping vampire queen out the window in the middle of the fight). Essentially, this was not a criticism of mine, but that of the disgruntled player. I thought it was awesome, I mean, I'm not concealing my enthusiasm much in this second post!