GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Shaun Hayworth, Kristin Hayworth, Eric Fattig, and Scott White
System: Burning Empires
Planet: Carom
Phase Objective
Human: Remove Darius (Vaylen FoN) from play.
Starting Disposition: 23
Ending Disposition: 23
Vaylen: Remove the Merchant League faction from play.
Starting Disposition: 31
Ending Disposition: 31
Maneuver Objective
The humans wanted to bog down the war efforts, using the budget cuts to justify reducing the Mundus Humanitis’ military efforts (Go to Ground). The Vaylen wanted to forget connections with the Imperials (Access). Humans won 3-2.
Conflict makes the Wheel go round
This game pivoted on three scenes.
- Artemus snuck himself and Kristoff into the Archcotare’s divination chamber at night.
- The two Psychologists had a psychic duel with Brenden to make him change his violent ways. The won, but left behind a witness, Gawain (a 14 year old servant).
- Draven drug Korak up on to the wheel to burn him, but was stopped, or at least slowed by the Archcotare. He had been woken from his sleep, and with his new belief, wanted Draven to end the violence rather than perpetuate it.
Those were some damn hard hitting scenes. Mostly because Draven finally got on board with the “lets kill all the Cyreans” war plan and the Brenden asked to give up his wrath. Draven persisted and burned Korak on the Wheel, but agreed to see Kristhoff for divination.
There was one more that was just made of awesome, but it was more a setup for the next maneuver than it was a change for this one. Heiser got the EVA-7 functional. At least enough for shot. I can’t wait to see where he aims it. (Note: the EVA creates gravitational fields that are intended to pull mineral rich asteroids out of orbit and crash them into “safe” places on the surface where they can be mined for their valuable cores.
Thoughts on the game
Things I want to follow up on:
- Fear of psychologists as Vaylen. Gawain saw the psychic duel and bore witness to the change it made. Give the planets hysterical fear of Vaylen I want to see this turn into fear that psychologists are Vaylen. We’ll see where I can go with this.
- More merchant guild action. I have a new FoN spot and I’m going to fill it with someone to give Heiser Malamus some concrete opposition.
- Where will that asteroid land. Heiser has the big gun. I want to see where he points it.
Burning Empires still evades me a little. I’m not sure how much interaction I should have in everyone’s scenes. I like to jump in and give them a life, but if the players only get three rolls, I feel wrong adding in additional complications.
The arguments have all be pretty insular amongst the FoNs so far. All of them wanting to lock up or stop the others. Next session I’ve got to break that out a little and present some problems that aren’t strictly tied to one of the FoNs, but that they will have an opinion on.
