Over last winter we played a campaign of Guards of Traitor's Toll. I'd been really excited about this and was more than happy to give it a go, but actually found it a bit of a disappointment.
We talked it through afterwards and came to the conclusion that we found the games a bit slow. The rules were too fiddly and we often felt nothing much happened, despite a lot of dice rolling. Most of our PCs gained various advances during the campaign, but seldom found an opportunity to use them for any benefit. We loved the concept, but the mechanisms were not for us. It probably didn't help we were playing once every 4-5 weeks, if we could have played a couple of times each week we might had more success.
So I had the idea of keeping the concept, but adapting it to Sellswords and Spellslingers, a set of we were very familiar with and enjoyed playing.
Ian and I played our first test game, searching for contraband, and were really happy with the result, it still needs some tweaking, but we are going to play a campaign and make minor adjustments as we go. Here are a few piccis from the game.
Ian's squad of the Watch, the "Blue Jackets". 3D prints I quickly painted up for this.
And mine the "Red Cloaks". They are a touch on the big side. I saw them painted on Ebay and thought they would give me a second squad without any effort, but they turned out to be printed to 32mm "Heroic" size, rather than normal 28mm. But hey, perhaps this squad also play basketball!
Not the best start for the Blue Jackets. The first guards fails all 3 actions, a nearby civilian is revealed as an assassin, this guard had insulted a local gang boss, who put out a hit on him!
Whilst the first guard is fending off the assassin, the second guard also fails all his actions and a fire breaks out in a nearby house! What to do, help his mate or put the fire our? Fortunately the assassin got stabbed in the gut in the next turn.
Much quieter for my guys, just a horse and cart wandering onto the table. Then a brawl breaks out in the yard of a nearby tavern!
A classic example of law enforcement going wrong! Or, how the cards revealed the city watch as a bunch of bumbling nitwits! The woman and child with the yellow marker and in fact pick pockets who have just robber the lady behind them. Notice that there is a Blue Jacket to her left and another in front of her. Out of shot there is a Red Cloak to her right, se we have all avenues of escape covered!
My Red Cloak activates, fails once and the pick pockets runs to the right around the Butter Market, then I move closer. Now both Blue Jackets fail twice, drawing two cards that activate criminals, so the pair run into the gap between the two Blue Jackets.
The Red Cloak activates 3 times and catches the pair, but I roll rubbish combat dice and end up flat on my back (perhaps the urchin tripped me up?).
The pickpockets now run towards the table edge with the two Blue Jackets in lumbering pursuit, but the pair escape before the guards can reach them!
In all very cinematic!
With not much else going on nearby one of my Red Cloaks stops a passing cart.
"That will be 5sp tax on this vehicle!
Oh, you paid 5sp at the city gates, yes but that was wheel tax. This is hoof tax, 1sp per hoof!
Yes, I know the horse only has four hooves, but there is also a administration fee to pay on the transaction!"
Having broken up the brawl in the pub yard, the thatch of the stables catches fire!
Nothing to do with that guard waving a torch around, I'm sure!
Now all the guards are in the middle of the table, another house catches fire!
The Blue Jacket Captain found a suspicious box and promptly spent 3 turns searching it!
Having put the fire out in the burning stable, the Red Cloaks notice a similar suspicious box in the corner of the yard. They search it and discover the contraband! GAME OVER!
Apart from putting that fire out before it spreads any further!
A fun game, with a lot of laughs. Discussing it, we concluded that the end result was probably similar to the games we'd played of Guards of Traitor's Toll, except that the action had moved along at a faster pace and the whole thing had been far less frustrating for us.
We will be starting full campaign soon!
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