Guilders: The Carriage

With the release of Guilders 1.6 Beta, we decided to start completely new guilds. We've been playtesting the game with the same guilds over a very long time. Since the game has seen so many tweaks (especially to injury) it was time to try out with some rookies. 

Heist
We rolled for a scenario and ended up with The Carriage heist. In this game the guilds must ambush a Carriage with loot. Loot will drop from the objective, but it will also cause Alarm. 

Since the last play of theis Heist, the rules have change. There's now rules for the carriage being able to run over characters in it's path. It's harder to block this way.

You can check out my new guild right here: The Rogue Circus. 

Complication

If that wasn't enough we rolled The Towncrier as a complication - an NPC that start every turn with automatically generating Alarm. 

This can be both a good and a bad thing. If the town crier moves away from the objective, he'll cause Alarm and draw the guards to him .. i he moves randomly towards the objective - that's bad. 

Setup

We made a city with a straight street through the middle, this is where the carriage will move through. We made sure the line the buildings with lots of ledges towards the main street, for some good action in the height. 

Here's a small film flying over the city, also filmed the miniatures after one round of movement. 

The start

The carriage with the high value loot enters the game in turn one, so the first turn is mostly the guidlers trying to move into advantage positions. Since these are all rookie guilds, they don't have many skills and such to help them yet. 

For both guilds we spread out thiefs and streets urchins. Moving toward doors and crowds for lockpicking and pickpocketing some Loot I, to pay the bills. 

I've also included a bunch of quarterstaffs, clubs and bolas in my gang - hoping for some easy violence. If someone is Knocked Out quickly they don't generate Alarm (draw in guards) and the character doesn't get Infamy (must pay the bailiff to not be wanted). 

Here's the Town Crier (an aigitator from King Games Dunkeldorf line), in the middle of the board.

The carriage entered the board and starts its trip through the main street.

A thief with lockpick moving towards a door that's locked TN/8. It's a 50:50 change for a rookie thief to unlock a normal door.

A street urchin entered a crowd. The character will just move along with the crowds random movement. For this game we raised civillian Savvy by 1, making it 50:50 for thiefs to steal from them. But street urchin have a bit lower chance of success as rookies. My kid got thrown from the crowd multible times, because he got caught. 

This civillian monk was walking around with some cheap Loot I. I decided to gang up on him with my scum and apothecary, both armed with Knockout weapons. They also support each other, so my bonus for wacking him is higher - and it dind't work. So the monk starts yelling and generating a bunch of Alarm. 

The crowds move randomly at the end of the turn and for this game all the civillians seemed to move towards the center of the board, this is good for out guilds as it will slow down the carriage. 

Here's an example of how characters can move with crowds. My street urchin entered a crowd in turn one and is now standing in the middle of the board in front of the carriage. The kids is not strong though, so he won't have much of a chance to knock high value loot of the carriage. 

Here you can see the townwatch having been brought to the center of the board as the town crier was making noise there last turn. The town crier then moved toward the carriage (randomly) - and generates alarm there. This is bad for our guilds, as the townwatch will now move directly towards our objective. 

The carriage is a stretch goal from the Dungeons and Lasers encounters kickstarter, it was a nice kit to paint. 

The drunken monk really shouldn't get away, so my scum and apothecary try once more to beat him down - and once again he dodges their attacks. Knockout doesn't generate Alarm if succesfull, but the monk starts yelling if he can. So already by turn 2 we have a bunch of Alarm - which goes to Overall Alertness at the end of turn. 

And at Overall Alertness 10+ the guards turn hostile towards the guilders. So you really want to avoid this until you have enough Loot secured.

The street urchin is failing his pickpocket attemt and is thrown out  from the crowd and also generates alarm. Guards will never beat a kid unless they are carrying stolen goods though. 

A thing we've been working on and tweaking a lot of the rules for hiding. There's some skills that let's a character do much more damage if hidden, better to steal and lockpick. Before this game the guards were tweaked, so it's a bit harder to spot someone hidden.

Here Bolin from my opponents team, hiding in a crowd (even harder to spot) hoping the crowd will randomly move here towards a target of opportunity. 

... The plan about knocking out that monk for some cheap loot has backfired spectacularly and I've only generated a bunch of Alarm, raising the Overall Alertness to turn the guards hostile. And being completely rookie guilds, they really don't have much of a chance against all those guards.

Loot will bring you money and items, but they also offer XP for the character who ends up securing them. So having thiefs and street urchin steal loot and then handing it off to others is a good way to spread out XP. Wanting my guild master to gain some, the urchin is handing him here treasure. 

Finally after a ton of rounds I managed to knock down the monk, now more on principle than to get the loot, I simply couldn't let him get away. Loot I is the worst loot and will often only pay for the upkeep of 1 or 2 cheap characters.

All the violence and noise is bringing the guards closer. And when Overall Alertness hits 10+ the guards turn hostile - and we still ahave absolutely nothing to show for it. 

The cutthroat Bolin was hiding inside a crowd, but with hostile guards they start looking for hidden characters - if there's no other obvious targets. The guard manages to spot bolin and then attack her. Crowds and civilians are always on the side of the guards and will help stomp any guilder near them. So down goes Bolin. 

The character being beaten by only a town watch (easiests guards) will not roll for injkury after the game, but only captured (risking jail time). 

The town watch with alarm have just beaten my courtesan. She tried dodging but got knocked to the ground hard.

Neither guild have really been close to getting any good loot of the actual target, but have generated so much trouble trying to knock out civilians. It really became clear how terrible these rookies were compared to our 10+ games experienced guilds. 

The annoying town crier have been moving close to the carriage, and because of it have drawn a ton of guards towards it, making it even riskier to go and try knocking loot from it. 

In the end my thiefs have managed to gain a bit of Loot I from pickpocketing and lockpicking and running towards the board edge with guards on their heels. 

The towncrier surronded by townwatchmen from all his screaming. 

In the end this was a very nice first game. Both guilds managed to just pay their upkeeps from Loot I, while we weren't succesful getting any from the carriage. We both agreed, we should have taken a stealthier approac and keeping our eyes on the target. 

Loot II and Loot III is so much better than Loot I. So next time we'll focus on that juicy target. Since we didn't get much loot, no characters managed to gain any levels after our first game. 

Rule changes

After this game we tweaked the rules for smashing (breaking doors, knocking loot of the carriage). The rules went from '1 Alarm on unsuccesful and 2 alarm on succesful attempts' to 'smashing cause 1 alarm', This also cleaned up two heists (For Whom The Bell Tolls and The Carriage), for cleaner heist descriptions and easier targets, as you can know use crowbar items in the heist. 

Play the game

Wanna check out Guilders? Go get the rules on my LinkTree also join and follow some SoMe, help my reach grow. The game is nearly finished and should be released in 2023. 

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