Entry: The Baubles of Hamlin

[Chanticrow]

Time: four sessions of two hours each
Ingredients: Glass, Committee, Ancient


Sharp, yellow light from the small bauble strung overhead reflected in the glasses of water and port on the table surrounded by four anxious, fidgeting scholars. They sat in silence, each glancing now and then at another, and looking away again to stir his own thoughts. They all started when the door suddenly and swiftly opened, and Thelus, the younger of the assembled scholars, quickly entered the room and closed the door. He approached the table, a nervous smile on his face, and laid flat a paper covered in neat lines of stampwriter type.

"Here it is, gentlemen, " said Thelus in an awed whisper, "our first trial. The first step on our way to becoming Masters." The other scholars crowded around the missive while Basimar, in his high but clear voice, read aloud:

"Candidates,

Your commendable progress finds you ready for the trials of the Masters. Completion of the trials is your final step to joining the highest ranks of the Glasscrafters Guild. This tradition reaches as far back as the origins of the Glassblowers and Alchemists Guilds, and you follow in the footsteps of the greatest scientists and crafters this world has known.

There is much more to a Master Glasscrafter than his skill at the torch and tube. To be a Master requires consideration, delegation, and understanding not only of one's craft but of the people surrounding the aspects of one's life. For this reason your apprentices will be tasked with the completion of these trials to demonstrate your abilities to train new pupils, understand the strengths and weaknesses of people and objects, and properly prepare for the rigors ahead. Your task is to each choose one apprentice from those you train, each choose one bauble from those provided, and prepare your apprentices with as much information as you can before the trial starts.

Gather in the Masters' study in the west tower wing to find the baubles available to you.

Work together toward your common goal, and you shall not fail. The first task is listed below.

Prime Annealment,

The Master Glasscrafters"

Liddell, the more hot tempered of the scholars, spoke first. "Where's the task," he queried, but the others merely stared at the paper with curiousity. "Where's the task? There's nothing there!" He swept the paper from the table and examined it, holding it up to the light, squinting and moving it this way and that. Indeed, there was no other text on the page.

"Stop it, fool," growled Balthazar, the eldest, though not by much, of the group. He took the paper from pale-faced Liddell, placed it back on the table, and fished from his pocket a half moon shaped, translucent blue bauble speckled with indigo and lavender chemical grains.

"The trial has already started, it seems," said Balthazar as he placed the thick piece of glass over the blank bottom of the page. Thelus and Basimar's heads nearly collided as everyone eagerly leaned over to peer in the glass.

Magnified by the curve of the glass, letters appeared where before there were none. As Balthazar slid the bauble across the page they all read aloud, "Bring an ounce of bell grease from the belltower in Caberra."

Sulfas, silent until now, gasped in horror. "Caberra? That's the castle where Baron van Tassle built the clockwork monstrosities that destroyed Dellshire and Mid-essex. I heard it's a ruin haunted by what's left of his army. There's no way I'm going there. No way."

Basimar grinned and stepped to the door. "That's okay," he beamed, "you don't have to. Just your apprentice." He laughed aloud, and the others scholars, except for Sulfas, relaxed and smiled too. "Let's go to the study and see what we're working with. Soon, the Masters' study will be our study too," he said as he left the room with a spring in his step.

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

My plan for the game is a set of "mission" based scenarios, or trials, that the players have to complete in order for the scholars to achieve the title of Master in the Glasscrafters Guild. The Glasscrafters Guild is the long term result of the combined efforts of the Glassblowers Guild and Alchemist Guilds, who found that mixing their arts allowed glass-hybrid "baubles" with alchemical/magical abilities. The game is set in a fantasy Hamlin and the surrounding countryside.

Each trial consists of a committee phase where the players take the role of the scholars to determine which apprentices and which items to send on the trial based on what information the GM provides about the nature of the trial, and then a trial phase where the players take the role of the apprentices actually carrying out the task using what their teachers provided.

The game will be mechanics light, and apprentice and item generation will be mostly random with minor customization so that the players spend more time deliberating the merits and flaws of what's at hand rather than number crunching. Once the perspective shifts to the apprentices the focus will be on ingenuity and roleplay rather than mechanics and dice rolling.

Each game is considered a self contained "campaign" since each play is considered a new group of scholars and apprentices.

My apprehension at this point is the sessions/hours thing. The plan is for there to be four trials in total per campaign. Each two hour session breaks into a half hour of committee deliberation and an hour and a half of trial time. Trials are meant to be rather direct and to the point, but I could see the game working well as a single longer quest style using an eight hour or twelve hour format. In my mind this doesn't really make good use of the Time theme though. Choices, choices.

[kenjib]

I'm really interested in hearing more about how you plan to have the players have a good variety of apprentices available with different assets that will suit each mission to various degrees. I wonder if there could also be some tension between cooperation and competition. On the one hand, the apprentices could have assets and liabilities which make them much more effective if they work together. On the other hand, there are three three ounces of bell grease in the bell tower, but there are four characters...

The idea of glassmastery is pretty cool and really interesting. It's almost like a variant on steampunk approach to creating speculative alternatives. Just as in steampunk, steam is used to create technology that is usually made using electricity, glass is used to create magic that is usually made using spells.

[Mathias Jack]

Fun setting. I agree with kenjib, this has a great mage-punk feel to it. Nice twist to fantasy. I'll be curious to see how you implement the randomizers, and I like kenjib's suggestion of cooperation/competition between the apprentices. Maybe there is even a limited number of Master Glasscrafter positions available, and the scholars must compete to see who seats, making alliances and rivalries...

[Chanticrow]