Scarlet Sunrise Session 2: Ex Convicts

     Session 2 of Scarlet Sunset happened this past week, as our heroes made their way to the docks of Tok-namely, the great shipmaking artifact known as the Star Forge, a massive grey spike coming out of the ground, with other spikes branching off of it. During the voyage there, I learned that this game was less like Blades in the Dark than I thought; it has the whole "Short Rest Long Rest" thing rather than a concrete downtime, which I Personally Do Not Like. stingray started working on manufacturing her own grimoire, so we'll see how that goes. Also during this time, crew member Rhodo (a USK noble) approached stingray to say they knew that she was a combat doll. Haven't quite decided where that's gonna go, but we'll see.
    What I had established of Tok before the game was that it also had a rigid hierarchy, so I just took the old Indian caste system and slapped an Eyes Wide Shut coat of paint on it. Each individual must wear a full-body cloak and a mask with the symbol of their caste on it, and being in the wrong mask was punishable by death. They were as follows:

1. Mind: Wizards, Priests

2. Chest: Nobles, soldiers

3. Hand: Merchants, craftsmen

4. Arm: Unskilled laborers, servants

5. Foot: Untouchables

When an armcel says something so footpilled you just hit them with that Mind stare

    My initial plan was to just roll a die to determine folks' caste as a joke about the arbitrariness of the system, but people actually got kind of into it, so I had to throw some stuff at them. stingray ended up being assigned Foot due to being a former soldier (Tok doesn't recognize the idea of quitting your job). Amara wanted a full personality quiz, so I stole and modified Fallout 3's GOAT and then just rolled a die at the end anyway. Mercy's signature Rogue ability let her generate a contact in every new area, with a string attached, so she made Xyla Brightgrip, an Inferni whom she had dated and then abandoned a century ago, and who was now a cop.

    Wandering around the docks, the PCs encountered a few spots of interest (truth be told I've always struggled at making exploration be interesting so we won't be doing that again anytime soon). The things we found were:

• A squidfighting ring run by the legendary halfling corsair Little Fat Stinky Pete. Pete plundered and took hostages from both sides in the Great War, so he went to Tok because of its avowed neutrality. Mercy absolutely fell in love with him, and Amara hates his guts.
• The Chair of Uncomfortable Truths: Run by a satyr priest (of the Red Queen, but they didn't know that), all who sat in the chair learned something they really didn't want to know.
• stingray learned that she was loved, and people missed her when she wasn't around
• Amara learned that she was being followed, and then saw her old commanding officer surveiling her.
• Mercy learned that Mercy wasn't her birth name.
• Shaggy would have learned she was destined to cause great destruction or end the stars or something. Idk, something to do with being the chosen champion of the murder goddess.

    Finally, Shaggy ended up going to a rally run by The Brotherhood of Limbs, a collection of lower-caste people seeking greater rights, and running into the clank labor leader Unit 36. Unit 36 asked Shaggy how much she was being paid, to which Shaggy said nothing, and the crowd got mad. The rest of the crew got involved, and things almost turned into a scuffle until the cops started showing up. What followed was...sort of confusing, as some of the PCs wanted to fight off the cops (what I had intended to happen), while Mercy was trying to be captured to give everyone else room to escape. Coupled with this added messiness was that Mercy's ex was the arresting officer.

    Mercy seems to be making a play for an "I can fix her" but I honestly think I'm gonna run it as like...while she's still salty about the breakup, she is genuinely happy with her husband? Something something the limits of flirtation and all that. Anyway, they all escaped (except Mercy, who got arrested), and now the others and the Brotherhood of Limbs are gonna try and help bust Mercy out of jail.

Jason Statham is just sort of my general understudy now

Upon Reflection

    This session to me kinda highlighted my weaknesses as a GM, at least in my opinion. I'm really bad at making like...open spaces for exploration, and much better when there's an inherent goal and throughline. Also brought up are the limits of my own prep styles and Virtual Tabletops. I am, for lack of a better term, pretty much always ready to improv my ass off, but Daggerheart as a system doesn't fully support that. Prepping for Scarlet Sunset, I generally need to have maps and tokens ready and a few encounters prebuilt. Noellins on Bluesky mentioned just having a few of those ready (as opposed to my one), which I think I'm gonna follow, as well as getting some stock battlemaps and tokens ready-probably including a gravel pit and/or sewage treatment plant, the way John Pertwee intended.