This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.
Emmett, Joshua, and Zalephona are now cattle ranchers, all seeking a quiet change in career for various reasons. They’re driving buggalo from Emerald City to the Porcelain Citadel. Having picked up Phonie in a grimy rest-stop on the Low Road and the High, the caravan proceeds to Potsherd Crater to deliver their mysterious cargo.
Now with a baby buggalo called Junior and a steppe hound called Rufus. Spoilers: Junior gets petted. 🤫
Story
The party finish chatting with the rainbowlander caravan that’s been overtaking them. They’re very interested in the buggalo, which are surely worth more up in the Porcelain Citadel? Mind you, taking the slow paths to Potsherd might be better, they’ve heard there’s a lot of unrest due to a Porcelain Prince being killed. All his polybodies dead! Shouldn’t that be impossible? All sorts of rumours are flying, but they’re not going to hang round when there’s a profit to be made.
The party continue onward, eating apples. They’re a bit sick of apples, Joshua especially. The weather heats up to the point where a breeze is desperate, but the purple haze burns off to more cloud. Joshua is still dealing with the birth of the buggalo and caring for the mother and calf. Zalephona has run out of her various chemical tools to trigger her dreamwalking, and tries scavenging mushrooms. Emmett takes a mushroom and sees a little house in the sky.
They amble along, arriving at Potsherd, at the back of a queue, behind the same caravan that left them on the road a few days ago. There’s been a wait to get in all day, due to cargo inspections. Girondo and Frank from the caravan have a number of theories, each one more outlandish than the last. Emmett helps by suggesting more conspiracies until Frank, a quarterling, gets far too overexcited and and Girondo drags him away.
They get to the front of the line, a hut with a single polybody under an awning, next to a levitating entry pole. He wants to know their names, reasons for entry, and their cargo list. He really wants to get out of this job, and looks exasperated as the party whimsically squabble about their answers to every single question. “Tourists with 11 head of buggalo” just seems weird enough to be non-threatening though.
However he insists on searching the wagon, and when he finds the crates provided by the Matriarch, Zelaphona charms him1 to prevent any further inspection. This appears to work fine, and they’re allowed into the city.
The buggalo are corralled in the Merchant Quarter, and they proceed in the wagon to find Hazel in the Metalworkers’ Quarter, where she works at Amalgamated Steeds and Vehicles. When she’s told they have a delivery for her, she drags them quickly into the back office. Impressive disguise, this explains why she didn’t get the box sooner. The players don’t ask what’s in the box, and she doesn’t explain. The rumours are false, she say. The town is in upheaval because a prince died, and because it’s rare, executing wills is legally fraught and the town forum has been debating and bribing for weeks. No foul play, just some eccentric that forgot to look after his polybodies. Zalephona is extremely interested in the empty country house that’s the subject of these debates. Hazel thanks them for their delivery, gives them €100, and promises them an autogolem if they give her a few weeks to source something “ornate”.
Time to chill in Potsherd!
Tools
Unchanged from last session. Maybe some bad accents.
Lessons learned
The sessions feel shorter now, and that less happens in each one. But short sessions are less tiring, and faster to write up!
It also feels like I’m doing the “right kind” of prep, as it feels like it’s taking less time to roll a bunch of dice on the ToAD and then muse about what that means. NPC generation for me is browsing the UVG book and thinking which races, genders, etc haven’t been seen enough.
Only one problem, all the NPCs the party met since leaving the Lime Nomads were supposed to be suspiciously interested in what people are up to. This was entirely unnoticed, so my attempts at subtle paranoia were wasted.
Mechnically, we finally had some successful Usage Die rolls, with the d6 of apples succeeding far more times than it had any right. I decided that instead of starving, running out of food triggers a mandatory delay of 2d4 days to gather food. This needs a bit of thinking through of whether that’s per week or not, but feels like it could work. A relevant test would also be nice, maybe that gets you a second week’s worth of food?
This session had the first use of Charm Person with the reasonable question of “How do you rule how it works? Can I say ‘you let us through the checkpoint’?”. Then we all thought about Star Wars and obviously that’s how the charming works - it’s designed for getting through checkpoints! Others may spot someone being charmed, but they can’t tell themselves. And they repeat whatever the order is, otherwise it’s not funny.
Also, I like Black Hack’s rules of “the first one works”. It’s nice for players that the spell they’re saving doesn’t require a roll.
We also had fun in “Amalgamated Steeds and Vehicles” discussing how the workshop has:
- A part disassembled autogolem over an inspection pit
- A calendar of rainbowpeople advertising tyres
- A back office with stacks of paper with grimy thumb prints and a calculator
Childish pleasures! 🚗🚗🚗
Or at least, this polybody is charmed… ↩︎