Another kind of adventure: caretakers of sociopathic weirdos

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hi there!

I just discovered a supplement for a generic Spanish RPG system called Rapido y Facil (Fast & Easy) that is called "... and their humble servants". The supplement deals with this situation:

Imagine the legends of king Arthur and the round table. Now make the legends the work of bards. The REAL knights were basically sociopaths brought together by Arthur to keep in range the supernatural AND SPECIALLY all the mercenaries and other bad guys that were left roaming Britain after the wars where he imposed his own candidature for kingship. After the war the land was quite troubled by bands of bandits and robbers, and he selected the most efficient murderers around to act as a roaming police force to deal with such treats. Their only real virtue was that they were good at mass murder.

Now, you do NOT interpret one of those sociopaths. The sociopath is just a story-guide tool. You interpret one of the SERVANTS that trail behind one of those crazy dudes and try to 1) survive and 2) make him achieve his targets (read: not get himself killed) while enduring his constant abuse and lack of gratitude towards you. The characters you can represents are warriors, pages, bards, "dames in distress" AKA "not so pure women", druids, monks and other dudes of that aspect.

I liked the concept and automatically it did strike me that this could also work wonders for the Order of Hermes. It is basically another way of playing grogs using the magi as plot devices. How to deal with enraged villagers when your sociopathic flambeau casually murders some of their livestock as target practice (and preventing him from causing a massacre of innocents) and stuff like that have a lot of potential.

It is not Monty Python (explicitly stated in the original book). It can be deadly serious if you want to. Or hilarious, your choice :slight_smile:

I just thought the concept of using a magus as a NPC character and the grogs as the "heroes" of the adventure can be fun sometimes, specially since it can allow the paradigmatic "lab only" magus of the alpha SG to see the playing field more often :slight_smile:

Hope you enjoy the idea :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Xavi

2

Only we can do this stuff of thing, i maybe check the book and the game. Really is a good concept to play! One good way to show the game and to see the humblers between humblers. Maybe this'll work too on courts with youngsters with money and power, with matron, instructors, guardians, confessor and other similar characters; but less ruthless and more social dangers.

3

I like this idea, it does explain why the grogs who survive the longest in our games dont tend to be the ones without social skills.
"Yes yes, I know that the nasty orphanage attacked first, but the rest of the town looks a little unhappy at how you destroyed it. Maybe we should just leave quietly?"

K.

4

The RPG that has this exact theme in mind is "My Life With Master" - it's a rules-light storytelling game that focuses on the henchmen of an evil Master (or Mistress).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Life_with_Master

5

MLWM has a subtext of either escaping or replacing the Master, it's meant to be subversive, dark, and ironic. Great game, but not good for team play.

6

Disdn't know that one. Here the Master/Knight cannot be replaced, but must be PROTECTED instead. Being the one that allowed Lancelot to die is not a great idea. :mrgreen: So you must deal with the problems that serving under that knight (magus in the case of Ars) has, not stab hiim between the shoulders when he is not looking.

Xavi

7

This is AWESOME..... Now for someone to translate from spanish.... Anyone?

8

Sorry for the necroposting, but for those of you curious about the game here's the PDF. Though I'm afraid it's completely in spanish.