FKR! Or: how I learned to stop worrying, and just make shit up.

Woowee! I had a kickass session, peasants, can you say the same? I ran a castle seige with an amount of rules that could fit on a napkin, and I ran it fucking amazingly, the 4 people I roped into it all said so as I held their families hostage. Truly, I am the apex of refereeing! All bow down and worship me as your almighty tittyRPG goddess!

But on a more serious note, any of y'all remember when you first refereed for a ttrpg? I do, I told the school dnd club leader: "Uh.... sensei.... I-I w-would like you to teach me GMing", general patheticness of my adolescent form regardless, seperated from womanhood and my understanding of GM = Referee (maybe I oughta blog about that later? hmmm....) the key bit to note is I was plopped beside the DM and told to run the combats. I did great actually, you see, I hated static combats already, so when 7 pirates broke into a bar, I had them react so fucking much to wounding, even getting knocked unconcious and shit. I recall this femboy getting shot off a bar with a crossbow after he hopped on, and then the glorious beatdown of the pirate boss. It was good shit, and I kept it up as I played 5e, then eventually dropped the game like the hot trash it was.

Ever since then I'd been chasing a mechanical dragon, trying to recreate the experience with mechanics, I have no idea if they worked because not allowing yourself to play 5e and having some paranoia (I'm not telling you what happened and it's not a mental thing) means you're kinda fucked playgroup-wise. Eventually I decided to give up, I was just gonna use the same system I used in 5e, just bullshit it with the even-handed sadism of Quentin Tarantino.

So that brings me to the session, which was improv'd an hour before playing, the setting not nailed down till a friend made a buccaneer and I needed to keep a feudal setting, so I put it in Japan. My only damn cue on how to run this was the fortress capture from the begining of Berserk's Golden Age, where Guts kills Bazuso. It turned into a gruelling battle where demoralized troops were rallied against a band of samurai, a battery of arquebussiers, and an MLG pro archer daimiyo sitting at the top of a castle. There were like, two player deaths, and because characters were statless, replacements were made just as quickly. It was like, really great, a good meatgrinder. 

After the session I was apparently told I ran several concurrent events very smoothly and kept up a good pace once I got into the flow of things. And now, I'm trying to sorta, think it through, how that hack-job rush worked out, because however good the content was, I genuinely bullshitted. The line of samurai was improvised, as were the arquebussiers (not the fact there were soldiers, just what they were using). I think one of the key things that worked in my favor was that my memories of over-goring 5e were strong in my head, the vibe I wanted was actually solid, so I was able to keep things consistent. Another thing that helped was that the rules were genuinely simple, literally just roll a d6 when I tell you, I give odds based on gut feelings, you really don't need more than 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3s with regards to probabilities, with the occasional 1/6 to get dicey. Hell, when it came to hitting people, players just rolled a d6 and the higher they rolled the more severe the blow. Everything I needed was in my head, and I barely ever referenced the doc for the game, so this.... centralizing effect likely allowed me to run everything with incredible smoothness because I was not beholden to no bitches writing a big book of bullshit some fucktillion miles away from me and my particular brand of nonsense. I didn't even need more than vague impressions of characters, there was nothing for me to stat out, which was very poggers.

Everything from there becomes a matter of technique, getting better at juggling characters and shit, at least that's my theory. Only sustained practice will tell.

Anywho, TL;DR: fuck rules, use vibes.

Also rough play summary:

- Characters: Yasmina the Pirate, Kaori the Ninja, Ding-Sun the burly escaped slave, are made

- the trio enters the castle, gets engaged by 6 soldiers, Yasmina shoots a man, Ding-Sun charges in and breaks his arm, gets shanked by the guy's comrades, he should have died, but I felt it may have been unfair. Kaori backstabs a bitch, shoots another with a crossbow, does ninjitsu to avoid attacks, Ding-Sun crawls back, Yasmina accosted while reloading. Kaori wounds a man, Yasmina is knocked off a pile of corpses and slashes the leg of her assailant before drawing her cutlass and cleaving off the top of his head. Kaori cuts off a guy's fingers, and her second assailant is gutted by a wounded Ding-Sun, who powered through his wounds.

- Ding-Sun is patched up, but in severe pain, characters want to loot the keep for alchohol to numb his pain

- Battle has moved to the castle, where samurai are holding out against the attackers and slowly losing, Kaori elects to climb up the castle and attack from behind, she enters on the second story, encountering gunners, who blow her away, first character death (player was black, this count as black dude dies first?), gunners proceed to unload on attackers, causing a rout as everyone scrambles for cover. 

- characters take cover, Kaori's player makes a tough fighter named Yaori, new player enters, makes a glaive fighter named Sadako. Sadako is gonna prove to be the strategic brains of this entire op. Gang decides to salvage guns and ammo to deal with samurai, Ding-Sun decides to sneak into the fortress, I rule he has no cover and he gets gunned down, I think I shoulda made the daimiyo get him, but whatever. Ding-Sun's player makes a new character, some fresh faced samurai wannabe called Saito Bunko.

- Sadako manages to convince the attacking gunners to volley on the samurai and then the castle gunners, providing enough cover for Bunko and the attack commander, Kaichou Kaijou, to lead a charge. The spear group engages the half-dozen remaining samurai, Yaori wounds one, as does Bunko, samurai get merc'd as the allied gunners advance up. Bunko, Kaichou Kaijou, and some kid advance into the keep, the kid runs into a mine and gets blown the fuck up. 

- Sadako makes makeshift explosives and passes them up to Bunko, who enters the keep with Kaichou Kaijou, after tossing in a dud, keep's gunners come down, shoot Kaijou, Bunko throws in the second grenade and runs, this bomb wasn't a dud and kills some of the gunners, along with a wounded Kaijou.

- Spear group enters fortress and engages the gunners in close range, massacreing them, Bunko is in the lead as the entire group climbs up to the 4th floor, 3 troopers get decapitated by the daimiyo, but Bunko manages to dodgeroll in and draws his own firearm to shoot the Daimiyo, he hits and arm, an the Daimiyo is overwehlmed and dismembered by the troops following Bunko, thus, the fortress was captured.

Anyways, hope this was entertaining.