Ill Met in Torchbearer

I came to Lankhmar late in my sword and sorcery education. I was in my twenties and got roped into the book equivalent of Columbia House. It was a dangerous tightrope I walked then.

On one hand, I got exposed to lots and lots of books I wouldn't otherwise have read. On the other, I was flat broke working in a dying profession. Living dangerously with literature.

I think they went out of business before I was able to disentangle myself from their labyrinthian contracts. In that process though, I got my hands on a copy of Swords and Deviltry...

Great fucking title. Even better writing. And even though it was separated by decades, it will forever be connected in my mind with Oz, The Sopranos and The Wire.

I was deep in watching these shows around the same time, on VHS recordings my grandmother would give me each week. They shaped my view of Lieber's famous city and, I think Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser influences the way I looked at those shows.

I mean, isn't Pine Barrens a perfect Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story?

I bring all of this up to frame my head space as I recount to you our Torchbearer game from last night. Often, actual play reports are told from a neutral position. A sort of faux separation from the biases of the teller of the tale. I, instead, want you to picture a space reflective of those three key influences.

Dramatis Personae

Rather than a dynamic duo, we brought three actors to the stage. Down on their luck, scratching for every coin, scoundrels of the first order. They are not bad men, but they aren't good men either. They are thieves and con men and the perfect vessels to explore Balt... er Lankhmar.

• Golgo the Gossip (Mike) is a great burly warrior from Ilthmar who believes "It's not what you get your hands on, it's what you bring home. Simpler is safer."
• Murgon the Blackest (Thor) is a creepy, prideful sorcerer from a tower in the marshes outside the city who believes in, "A healthy respect for the value of one's own skin is the sign of a perspicacious mind."
• Ishlum the Hangnail (Keith) is a sneaky, annoying, wannabe ladies man from Ilthmar who believes, "Treasure is only as valuable as the love it will buy you."

In many ways this crew captures the tone of Torchbearer really well. They aren't great men or even bad men. They are ordinary men facing the ordinary challenge of poverty who are willing to take extraordinary measures to avoid it.

Session One

We begin our game as many games of this ilk begin, in a bar getting a job. We are less Stringer Bell and Christopher Moltisanti and more Matthew Bevilaqua and Sean Gismonte trying to become soldiers. We want in on the Slayers Guild or Thieves Guild and no one knows our name.

No one save Gloki the Ratcatcher, our handler. Our Christopher. The guy who is barely a guy, farming out the work he doesn't want to do himself. The guy who brings in another lesser made guy, Slot Threefingers from the Slayers Guild.

I smell a set up, but our pockets are empty. What you going to do?

The mark is Julm Papageorgiou of the Grain Merchants Guild. He was a party guy then stopped being a party guy. Stopped paying his bills too. He also has a tome that Slot wants.

Get in, get it, get out, let Julm know the bosses aren't happy, but make sure he can still earn. Do all that, and maybe we get enough smerduks for a meal and some company. Don't and we starve.

Of course this isn't easy. We can't walk in that neighborhood where Julm is holed up. Too dirty. We are the kids going to dinner at the fancy restaurant with Bunny.

So we need another way in. The roofs? The sewers?

No! A disguise!

Let me introduce you to Heidi. She is a freelancer that Ishlum knows and likes. She works in the Black Rose and her clientele, with the exception of Ishlum, tends to be young rich bravos.

But she is a professional and won't just help us roll three likely lads. So we have our first test of the night, a Haggler test. A successful test and now we have finery and she has all the gold they were carrying.

This test set us a direction for the rest of the session. Funny how, in a game where every die roll matters, that happens.

Oh, and the Grind turns over one turn. The clock is ticking...

Shit. Finery takes up three torso slots. No backpacks full of useful gear on this caper. No armor. We need to stash it, so we go see Bodie, Ishlum's fence buddy and dump our gear.

There is no infinite space to store your gear in Torchbearer. Everything fits in a number of slots on your body. Better get some sacks though, cause we have loot to get in this caper too.

So we look the part, but we still have no way in. The townhouse is covered in guards like fleas on a dog. So we do what comes naturally when Murgon the Blackest is your captain for this adventure...

We go to the local necropolis to roust ourselves a spirit to go haunt poor Julm...

We find the family crypt with ease. We even find an ancestor spirit to our liking named Yilt. Only now we need to choose how we go about this:

1. Do we bind the spirit and force her to do our bidding? Do we risk the outcome of that failure?
2. Do we buy her off with the zero money we have on hand? An easier proposition that requires a caper to fund this caper?

Like good desperate thieves, we decide to rob the nearby ancestral crypt of the Agyros, rivals of the Papageorgiou clan. Wealthy owners of silver mines. People who can afford a fancy mausoleum and the protections that go with it.

What could go wrong?

As it happens, a good deal. Poor Golgo triggers a magical trap and begins to wander off in the crypt. He is saved from certain doom by the aid of his fellows, but whoops... a shit ton of tomb guardians rise up to take us to the woodshed.

Time to run!

Also, time to talk about how Torchbearer's system instigates tension and drama. First, how did we get to a conflict? In order...

Golgo has an instinct, "Never enter a room without checking the ceiling and floor." This means he gets to make a test to find traps without moving the Grind over a tick, which is awesome. What isn't awesome is he is unskilled in this and ends up failing his roll.

The trap is triggered!

He rolls to resist the siren call of this magical trap with Murgon and Ishlum's aid, moving the Grind. He also fails, triggering a Twist... meaning he resists the trap, but now things just got worse. Six tomb guardians want us to stay for tea.

This gets us to our conflict. We decide that the better part of valor is to get the hell out of there with the loot, which is easily grabbed because of Ishlum's instinct, "Snatch anything that is laying about if no one is looking."

Ishlum has the best odds on the rolls because of his skill and ability combination for a Flee conflict (Scout+Health) and gets a solid disposition (9). The tomb guardians also score solid (8), but we have the Might advantage to make this a little easier (3 to 2).

It takes two rounds of narrating our actions to get away with a moderate compromise. We survive. We got the loot!

But we got conditions now. And shit, the fancy clothes we need to get into the neighborhood got tore to shit. So now we are on turn 3 of the Grind and haven't even gotten into Julm's house. We haven't bribed our ancestor spirit yet either.

Nothing is ever easy for a crook in this city. But Murgon got to make a villainous speech at the top of the stairs as we fled the tomb guardians successfully. Even the scum of the streets got their pride.

Man are we screwed, but it's all in the game, yo.

It's all in the game.