Your Festival of the Damned

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Finally, after years as an Ars fan and SG, I've got my dream group and finally... we're running through Festival of the Damned. A great bunch of players who really get it better than my previous group, and are dedicated roleplayers. This seriously a treat.

We're half way through Easter week, and I'll post more details later, but for now I just thought I'd ask - What are your fond memories of FotD? What tweaks did you do?

I'm also wondering how best to translate the Sin Demons in the finale, and the Corrupted Villagers into 5th edition. Any guidelines or thoughts?

A REALLY good adventure, this. More later when I return home!

V

2

It has been a very long long time. 10 years? I think so.
From what I remember, my friend Carmello was playing Antonio of Flambeau, and he resisted the temptations of all the villagers except one. Lust. I remember that it was lots of fun, a mix of gaming elements; mystery, social conflict, combat and demons :smiley:

3

I played the adventure, so my vision is from a player, not SG. We played it at night, and with candles and stuff. it was really cool and we were on the brink of jumping most of the time. In fact my cat scared the hell out of us jumping oon the table during the game :laughing:

I read the book after that and found that our SG introduced a change that I find cool: The village was bigger, so there were quite a few more dudes in the cast of characters, even if the main ones were as described IIRC.

The big change was that the demons were not demons, but villagers that thought that they were doing the correct thing (delusion). Killing them could have been an option, but it would have been singful to mass murder them, even if they were deluded to help the plans of hell. That posed some serious problems to our troupe: we could have treounced a bunch of demons rather easily since a pair of us were the kind of the Ninja dragon-hunting magi type, but that was useless when you had to interact with villagers that experienced the sins.

And being the prideful, lecherous and greedy bastards that we are, I think we failed 90% of the tests :laughing: Several times over.

Xavi

4

Very first and last adventure for my first Saga. The players all were accustomed to a "if the Dungeon Master puts it in front of us, we can kill it" mind frame (from a diff Game Master) - and that didn't work well at the very end.

My favorite was the mage who created a wand of DEO, with an activation of "shaking it at the target" - and then went around punctuating his warnings and menacing the townsfolk with it by shaking it at them - the player even had a chopstick that he even used to act it out. An unfortunately short-sighted choice when night fell...

5

One of my very best RPG memories... :smiley:

6

Well, the Festival of the Damned concluded last night.

A good session! Great in fact, with some great long-term consquences and issues to be resolved.

Keeping in mind that the ladies I game with tend to be fans of the "medieval soap opera" style of play, there was a lot of interaction, spice up with the nightly raids by the imps. I also threw in Fimus, the stone demonic destroyer, who came to destroy the chapel's walls on the one night the steadfast master of Terram decided to get drunk and complain about his lot in life.

The group's hardline quaesitor decided to go spy on the Midwive's hut, hoping to catch them and use "Peering into the Mortal Mind" to dredge up any information. He could hear chanting coming from within the hut, but no one was coming outside. As the sun moved to the horizon, he decided he had better get home.

He even sent his grog home, a lusty young ex-farmer's daughter.
I decided, given this Quaesitor's cathar bent, and adherence to the Code, to give him a crisis to deal with, and as the sun went down, and the moon came up, and his Parma faded, I decided the "Summoning the Dagger" ritual would have its effect occur.

This isn't something mandated in the book, but it is described, and it seemed opportune.

Rather than try to quickly re-erect his Parma, the Quaesitor, tried running out of the forest and back to Vezay in a panic. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew some sort of effect was trying to get into his fading Parma.

He could not make it, and woke in the forest the next day, along with another PC mage who tried to stop the ritual and failed. His fellow mage, however, had pretty good ideas about what had happened before his rescue attempt had ended with him passing out from horrific pain in his groin.

SO, now the quaesitor, after a night of passion he does not even remember, has a child on the way.

This provided a great deal of inter-character argument. Some of the mages wanting to destroy the witches. Other want to offer "Join of Die!". One other is more sympathetic when the truth of the witch's actions became more clear due to her Twilight inspired connection to a long dead Diedne maga beloved of the Boar King who lives nearby. This may create some interesting stress lines within the group.

The final battle was very memorable, and the covenant lost its first grog as a magnificent Creo Auram botch sent him - and almost their viking half-giant companion - hurtling into the fiery pit.

One villager - Mathieus the doctor, was saved from damnation due to a wizard talking him out of his envious plans. The rest are now the Corrupted, and will feature as antagonists for a long time to come.