Brancalonia Session 1: 4/26

I'm currently prepping for the second session of my Brancalonia campaign. The first session was last Monday, and before that we had a session 0 to go over the 5e rules and roll characters.

my commentary will be in italics.

Roll call for session 1:

• Alfredo Schifoso, beleaguered husband of the ageless witch Elena Cumano, who causes him untold anguish from her home near Cucca, where she seeks the mythical Land of Cuccagna. Cannot refuse any vice offered. Searching for that perfect high.

Alfredo is a Warlock level 1, archfey patron. His Redeemed Cultist background gives him an edge at noticing other cultists, drug addicts, and compulsive liars.

• Clarketti Chianti, beautiful holy fool and bare-knuckle debt collecting legbreaker for the two-bit illusionist Lesaccio's wizard college. Trying to make money for Pa Chianti and his cursed horse farm near Naples. Hates scars.

Clarketti's player rolled terrible stats, so I let him reroll Strength for his troubles, and got an 18. His Int / Wis / Cha are like 5/7/7. He's a human fighter 1 with a Ruffian background - he can get away with minor illegal acts (like not paying your bar tab, fighting in the street, etc) more often than others.

• Diorio 'Dio' Giuseppe Papparellegrino, tactically-wide wiseguy monk, martial artist, and world traveler. Has mastered countless forms of martial arts but cannot treat a simple poison wound to save his life. Constantly drunk. The first-ever monk in Brancalonia to wear a ponytail.

Monk 1. Dio's player based him off Steven Seagal in the movie Out for Justice. He's a member of the Lords of the Vine, a group of wine terrorists. My custom wiseguy background gives him a patron (his Lords of the Vine higher-up) that he'll have to do favors for.

• Drago Bellini, chemically-addled insane painter, duelist, and confirmed bachelor. Under the patronage of the cat-loving wizard Atino Azcaria in Lungariva, who is the court wizard of the Felischi family.

Drago's player wanted to play a Caravaggio-esque insane painter. I made up a custom "artist" background, where he'll have to make a masterpiece for his patron every time he levels up. Rogue 1.


Rumors / news / random info about the world:

I gave this information to the players at the start of the game.

• You've heard of several merchant houses in Lungariva - the Felischi, who Drago's patron is involved with (their heraldry is a blue cat on a white field), and the Spinolla, who control wine imports into the city (Dio's group, the Lords of the Vine, have an eye on them)
• The ship captain Jacopo Fugazzi has just returned to Lungariva on his ship, the Silver Pearl, after a long voyage. It is said that he has found a new world.
• Fugazzi is my Christopher Columbus analogue. I've got big plans for him.
• The Church is splintered, and three men currently claim the title of Pope, denouncing the others as Antipopes. Of the three, the rumor goes that Urbano (in the Vatican) is reckless and hot-tempered, Clemenza (in Avenio, in Brecilién) is a former warrior-priest known as the "Butcher of Brancalonia" + is astoundingly corrupt, and Thomas (the guy in Ghisa who you're kidnapping) is pretty reasonable all told.

City names and family names are from the Brancalonia book, except for Brecilién which is my name for France. General sociopolitical situation is based around the weird time in Papal history when there were three rival (anti)popes, though I picked popes throughout history for maximum comedic / dramatic effect. I'm starting the game off with Skerples' Kidnap the Archpriest module, and I figured it'd be fun to knock off one pope as the very first story arc of the game.

The party was gathered in the city of Lungariva by the criminal impresario Giuseppe "Greasy" Palma, who put them in touch with a papal legate from the Vatican named Isaac Bacteriani. 

Isaac promised the PCs 1000 gold each if they could kidnap Thomas I, current antipope of Ghisa , and take him by ship to the Vatican. He gave them 10 gold each and booked them passage on a ship leaving the next day. 

Before leaving, 

• Dio talked with his Lords of the Vine contact Apollinario and his Lungarivan girlfriend (Dio's player rolled the first nat 20 of the game to convince her he's coming back to take real good care of lil' Frankie)
• Drago met up in secret with his lover Ferruccio Buccio, a monk of the poor Carnellian Order with amazing stats (I rolled once he was introduced: 8/12/15/18/13/13, 3d6 down the line baby).
• Meanwhile, Alfredo bought a huge unwieldy contraption to gift to his kids - an automaton that makes terrible copies of drawings for 1cp / use. I rolled on the list of 1d100 oddities from the Bastionland blog to come up with this.

The PCs arrived in Ghisa the next day and immediately interrupted a spousal argument at the Sober Monk inn. Innkeeper Gianni Grossa and his wife Alisa got hit like a fucking wrecking ball by our gentle adventuring band when Dio cold-cocked + tied up Gianni, and Clark threw a net over him. Alfredo had a weird tryst with Alisa, who wanted to go seek adventure with the party but who was scared to join them in investigating the mysterious hanging tower of Ghisa. 

The NPC descriptions and illustrations in Kidnap the Archpriest are great, and really helped me flesh out memorable characters with barely any prep time. The PCs almost immediately began doing PC things. I read in the Brancalonia setting book that the fake-Pisa city had a fake-Leaning Tower called the Hanging Tower, so I decided to mention it to the players as it'd be a pretty well-known landmark in town. I figured that they might want to investigate it, and decided to use a one-shot wizard's tower adventure for it.

I was briefly considering Prison of the Hated Pretender, but I decided to go with Tower of the Stargazer at the last minute, as it seemed like a more fun introduction to the old-school style of play I want to experiment with, and the treasure available (gunpowder, magic potions, poison wine, etc) seemed like it could be useful for the PCs when kidnapping the Pope.

Ultimately, the PCs left the two to sort their problems out and headed to the tower. As soon as they got up to the front door (hovering 10 feet above ground), Clark got rocked by a poison doorknob suffering our first death save of the game, only scraping by through dumb luck. He suffered a nasty snakebite scar for his troubles and is now at 1hp.

Clarketti getting scarred (from our Death + Dismemberment table house rule) at the very end of the game was an amazing way to cap off the session. The players all hustled to stabilize him and Dio finally did at the last minute. I think the house rule worked great to make things feel tense without making a PC death feel inevitable. Not to mention, it was a terrific callback to earlier in the session when Clarketti's player talked at length about how Clarketti hated scars. 

I didn't necessarily expect them to go to this tower, but honestly I'm OK with it!