Last Session of Hero's Banner

So, we played the final session of Hero's Banner tonight - at long last! Man. There was some hardcore awesome-itude that happened tonight.

Amusingly, all of our characters went with their Hero influences - which resulted in some pretty personally bleak endings. In terms of mechanics, this meant that:

Magdalena managed to secure the right of women to inherit and rule their own property. In order to do this, she had to give up the possibility of a future with her lover, Carmina. (In fact, Magdalena saw her lover beheaded by Octavian as a traitor. (She was innocent)) She also gave up on continuing her family's line, as she never married or had children. Ultimately, she became a ferocious warrior and one of Octavian's chief generals and died in battle.

Octavian claimed the throne for himself and created peace between the four kingdoms - although a peace brought about by force. In order to do this, he disbanded his House and murdered his family - including his beloved Roxana. Though completely insane and corrupt, history will remember his reign as a good one. He was ultimately murdered by the son Vasilica had by the Queen (before Octavian murdered her)

Casimir followed his heart and became a priest after succeeding in his campaign to convert the barbarous folks from over the mountain. Gavril, swayed by Casimir's sermon, converted as well as became a priest - entering a life of holy solitude. Casimir never saw him again. His lands were absorbed into the Principality of Carol - formerly known as Ryic.

Vasilica decided to pursue expansion at the cost of his people, and when his loyal servant Oana tried to persuade him to be content with the crown of Tucaescu, he killed her. He died a lonely bitter old man, and no one remembered him as a hero.

Here are the drawings from the final session:

Magdalena killed a soldier to save her lover, and she was ingrateful enough to repudiate her because of it. Stupid woman.

To his credit, Octavian did try to reconcile with Roxana before boarding her up with the rest of the family in his family's manor and burning it to the ground.

Awesome SAUCE. Conclusion: Hero's Banner rocks my world.

"That picture of Vasilica needs more axe in the face"

We just played our fourth session of Hero's Banner (I didn't do any sketches for session number three).

I won't go into all the gory details of the session (because frankly, that's boring). But I will note that our characters are currently in the following situations:

* Vasilica got to seduce the Queen whom he had been in love with. She is now pregnant with his child. Life is generally coming up roses.
* Octavian spent most of this session in prison. His sister sprung him, then turned him over to the Tuscaescu - as that was the only way to guarantee his freedom. The session ended with him being dumped at Vasilica's feet. They'll either be thick as thieves or try to kill each other.
* Magdalena and her gay lover Carmina, the Queen's sister, are currently on the lam. Carmina tried to persuade Magdalena to run away and live in the hills, but Magdalena remained determined to stop the brewing war.
* Casimir found a village in his family's lands destroyed by dark sorcery. He returned to his estates just in time to stop the Church from burning innocent peasants accused of being sorcerors.

Here are the sketches from this session:

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I'm rather amused that I wound up with a page of arguing gay couples. Magdalena and Carmina are on top, Casimir and his lover Gavril bottom.

We look to have two or three sessions left. Hero's Banner is pretty slow over Skype, so I don't know if we'll be playing a second generation. After six or seven sessions, I think it's more likely that we might switch back to In A Wicked Age for a while. Though I would like to leave the option open in the future for coming back to our iteration of the Hero's Banner world for a new generation.

Fun stuff.

Hero's Banner continues to be awesome

"Well, something had to happen. Maybe beating him was a bad choice."

That pretty much sums up how our second session of Hero's Banner went. It was filled with pure awesome.

Some highlights of the session:

* Magdalena (my character) beat her pig fiance with a silver candlestick for intruding on her while she was dressing. ("You may be my fiance, but you will NEVER be my darling".)
* Later on Magdalena pledged to throw her support behind Octavian's political schemes if he would send her pig fiance out to deal with the inevitable rebellion that arose. He took her request to get her fiance killed remarkably well. I had a lot of fun with that.
* Octavian, the psychotic would-be emperor in love with his sister, had a conversation with the ghost of a long dead emperor - Alin IV of Prodan - who told him he needed to fulfill his destiny.
* Casimir's went crazy and beat the shit out of his gay lover for using witchcraft to poison his mother.
* Vasilica's most loyal subject found out about the fact that he'd had his father, the King, murdered and threatened to expose him and Vasilica basically stared him down.

The dice told some interesting stories this session. For instance, when Nick made the passion check during his scene with Casimir, on his first roll he rolls two 2's - which meant that he had a breakdown. (Hence the beating of his lover.) But his passion only went up by one.

Even more amusingly, in the next scene his mother's chamberlain tried to have his gay lover imprisoned on suspicion of being a traitor. Nick rolled a passion check and rolled two tens - another breakdown! So Casimir BEAT THE CHAMBERLAIN TO DEATH.

Wow.

Not a huge advancement in Passion happened this session, which was a bit of a relief. We were all sitting at around 30 after the first session, but mostly people were succeeding on their rolls. I actually didn't gain any Passion this session, so maybe something to work at for next time.

I did some sketches of this session:

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We play again in two weeks. I'm very excited to see what happens. I love Hero's Banner so hard.

Hero's Banner: reliably awesome

Last week our Skype group had a pretty frustrating experience. We were trying to play a game that just didn't work all that well with our play style, and the game wound up sucking to a complete halt. We were feeling pretty discouraged and wanted to play a game that we knew from experience would bring the awesome. Our solution? Hero's Banner.

(Side note: For a while after we picked up the game in 2006, we were pretty obsessed with this game. We group went through a phase of playing Hero's Banner whenever we needed a one-shot game.)

And man, Hero's Banner did not disappoint. Briefly, the characters we have are:

Octavian: crazed would-be emperor, in love with his twin sister
Vasilica: almost looked like he was going to be a nice guy until he had his father, the king, murdered in the heat of battle
Casimir: Was almost a priest when his elder brothers were killed, is tempted to break his vows by his gay lover, is actually a nice guy
Magdalena: feminist member of the high nobility, lesbian, might be a decent human being as well

Kit went to town GMing, and last night's session was HOT. Aaron wound up having a conflict to *not* brutally murder the man his sister was betrothed to. He failed, mostly on purpose, and creeped everyone the hell out.

Vasilica, amusingly, had an emotional breakdown in his very first scene, slapped his father (the King), and charged off with an armed contingent to protect something his father had told him not too. This was made extra awesome in the next scene when he was surrounded by his father's men and ordered to stand down. He did, but in the battle that he didn't take part in, he had his father murdered and then "avenged" the murder.

Magdalena, had a perfectly horrible scene where her mother was pressuring her to have dinner with an odious younger son - owing to the fact that all of her brothers had been killed in the wars and she needed to marry well, but not too well, so she could have a son to pass their family name on to. There was a perfect moment where Magdalena was lippy and tried to bring up her brothers and her mother basically said they didn't matter.

Needless to say, the younger son she was to dine with was insipid and horrible and Magdalena refused to see him again. Later that evening he came to her rooms and made her look like "damaged goods" (I failed my roll and re-roll both) so that no one else would want to marry her. And the next morning her mother started talking about plans for the nuptuals, making the comment 'I didn't think he had it in him'. Horrible.

Casimir got off to a slow start in his first scene; his mother tried to persuade him to steal from the church to pay for some of their family's massive debts but Casimir resisted. His second scene went much better, though. His bodyguard and lover, Gavril, was revealed by Casimir's mentor - a priest - to be a heretic. Casimir's mentor said he had two weeks to either cast him aside or see his friend branded as a heretic. When Casimir confronted Gavril, he promised to reform (he was lying) and then distracted Casimir with sex. Rawk.

Anyway. I did some sketches of last night's session. Octavian came out every bit as psychotic and disagreeable on paper as I pictured him in my head.

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I'm very much looking forward to our next session, which sadly might be a few weeks from now. Still, pretty happy that Hero's Banner has come through once again.