So far the game has been going great, although we’ve transitioned to a different system. The World of Darkness adjacent system was fine but it really didn’t fit. My players and I both felt it. I’ll still be releasing a playtest document for that system soon, but we decided we needed something a bit more traditional for the setting. Thus we’ve transitioned to playtest DragonRune, which is my attempt at modernizing the concept of BRP (Basic Roleplaying) by taking tons of inspiration from Dragonbane and The One Ring. It already feels a lot more natural, and the group agreed after this session that it was a good change.
The Great Hunt
After the conclusion of the last adventure, the group headed back to their home village for some rest and recuperation. It was getting close to Sacred Time, but I knew that, with a Foundchild Initiate in the party, I needed to put some thought into the Great Hunt, so I devised a little minigame to give it some structure.
To this end I devised something akin to the chase rules in Night’s Black Agents, where I came up with four possible creatures Andivarth could hunt (an elk, a bear, a hippogriff, and a wyvern), and assigned them each a tracking difficulty (sort of arbitrarily, to be honest). Each day the hunters had to make a Survival test, and based on the degrees of success, they made progress towards their goal. To add a bit of a competition element to it, I also rolled for three other hunters, each taking one of the animals that Andivarth didn’t.
This actually worked fantastically. Andivarth, when presented with the different rumors of impressive animals in the area, chose to go with the bear. He is a slightly better hunter after the system switch, but he is still much more mentally oriented than physical, so watching the days tick by as he attempted to track down the bear’s lair was pretty tense. The Great Hunt lasts 21 days, and he was informed that he would have to return with his catch before the 21 days to qualify, so the fact that it took him eight days to find his quarry’s lair definitely felt exciting, but also reinforced to the player that he really needed to focus more on his hunting related skills.
After finding the lair, I informed him that he could go straight in to deal with this situation or he could spend additional days making preparations. Each successful day of preparations would give him a bonus during the final encounter (assuming they were relevant, they ended up not being, but I’m getting ahead of myself). He spent three days making snare traps, because he intended to try to bring home the bear alive for maximum points. He then spent a day laying them all out in strategic locations, but he failed his Stealth roll and ended up alerting the bear to his presence.
At this point, however, Andivarth showed his creativity, casting Talk with Animals to attempt to reason with the bear and try and get him to come back willingly. This was an awesome moment, and a perfect time to pull out the Negotiation mechanic in the system.
If you are familiar with Councils in The One Ring, then this is a more robust version of that concept, but for those that aren’t, the idea is that in a Negotiation, the target NPC has a Tolerance which describes how long they are willing to listen before ending the talks (in this case, violently) and a Resistance which measures how much the NPC is against the proposal. There are lots of little details, but essentially each round of the Negotiation reduces the Tolerance by one, while the degrees of success on the character’s rolls reduce the Resistance. First one to zero ends the Negotiation, for good or ill.
Andivarth sucks at social skills, and the bear was not particularly interested in talking as it had just been woken up by a human sneaking about their laid. Never a good sign. Andivarth offered to hunt for the bear (and failed); it wasn’t interested. He then offered to spread the word that the bear’s hunting grounds were off limits. This was a very weak success and thus a very limited response. The bear kept inching closer the whole time, preparing to attack once this foolish human was done droning on. When it was looking really dour, a desperate Andivarth said he would make a shrine for them and all his descendants would honor the bear.
This was an Exceptional Success (like a critical) and was almost enough to convince the bear, so it sat back on its haunches to think. Seeing he’d made headway and with his player knowing he only had one more turn to succeed, he then promised to make a song regarding the bear and its power and majesty, and that he would spread it around the clan so the bear would be remembered for generations to come. I liked this so much I have him a bonus, and it was enough to seal the deal, to the cheering at the table.
It was only two days journey to get back to the grove where the Great Hunt was to be judged, so he was able to return with almost a week to spare. There he found that both the hunters seeking the elk and the hippogriff had succeeded in their hunt, but they had slain their prey, and thus the bear was worth more points than the hippogriff. The hunter that sought the wyvern never returned. Thus, Andivarth won the Great Hunt!
The chance to try out the Negotiation system (even in this odd context) was great fun, and it worked perfectly. The only thing I would do differently in the future is have the hunters seeking clues and picking targets be part of the 21 days. Its such a long period that its nearly impossible to run out of time, even limiting the player to one roll per day. All of the tension that built up at the beginning deflated really quickly once the bear was actually found.
Regardless, the vain bear who wanted to be remembered by humans is probably going to enter the pantheon of gaming legends at my table.
Downtime
We hadn’t really spent a lot of time in the village yet, so I really wanted to bring home a feeling of community. Belonging to the clan is intended to be an important center-point of the heroes’ lives, and I really hadn’t spent enough time on that project, so I determined to turn that around.
Ever since running The One Ring, I’ve been enamored with the idea of Downtime (capital D). In The One Ring this is a loosely structured period between adventures in which the heroes can work on projects (researching a recurring enemy, building a homestead, etc). Coupled with these projects was this idea of playing out a scene for each hero, but it was mostly just a suggestion. I had this idea of taking queues from the Journey system in that game to create a mechanical framework for these scenes revolving around a small moment for the players to roleplay. These low stakes scenes were completely about vibes and roleplay, very little mechanical reward.
I knew I was on the right path when Akhelas posted similar musings on their blog earlier this year. While their thoughts tended toward something a bit more restrictive and mechanical, it shared a lot of conceptual framing, which made me feel I was onto something. So I wound down the session with a few of these.
Orani’s Training Day
The first was for Orani, and tied into the idea that their clan has dedicated 10 girls to Babeester Gor each generation since the God Time. Because she was 20, and her mom would have been close to 40 if she was alive, I decided that it was time for that next generational group to be brought to the Earth Temple there in the village. They ranged in age from 6-10, and Orani was put in charge of instructing them in their first lessons regarding combat (I envisioned it as a more serious kid’s karate class). Trouble is, she is absolutely horrible at any social skill beyond intimidation, so she failed a few times and the kids lost interest.
Frustrated, her player told me that she didn’t know what to do, as Orani is practically filled with Babeester Gor devotion, but she couldn’t express it. I told her to roll that passion, and she got an Exceptional Success, giving an impassioned speech about how she knew it was hard but that the cult is family and how they would be responsible for the safety and security of the Earth Temple and for the clan when they grew up. The kids listened in rapt attention, cheering at the end. Darias Earthblade, who had been watching was quite impressed, coming over to praise her afterward. “Not every act of devotion to the goddess involves an axe,” she said with a smile before following the young girls into the temple. It was a touching scene, especially since Orani’s player had decided that Darias was something of a mentor to her.
Mother and Son Hunting Trip
Andivarth was next, and I had he and his mother, Ivarne, head out to do some hunting, since that is an activity dear to both of them. Ivarne shared her worries over her son’s safety, remarking how like his father was at that age and how she couldn’t bear to lose him as well. This was interrupted by a furtive attempt to bring down a buck in a clearing followed by a quick chase to the nearby creekside where they finally brought the buck down.
They then took the deer home and prepared it, with Ivarne setting out the hide for tanning while Anivarth started cooking a stew. They then took pots of the stew around to Harala and Harmast, where they had a nice meal and talked over their plans for the coming year. There was some nice interplay between the party members (Garmast was off on a pilgrimage to a spirit site for one of his taboos, aka his player couldn’t make it).
Andivarth and his mother took a pot to Orani at the temple and had a small roleplay moment, before we moved on. I hadn’t intended to blend Andivarth and Harala’s vignettes like this, but it just worked out that way, and everyone had a great time.
End of the Year Bookkeeping
Finally, we wrapped up the year with some rolls on the End of Year tables. Clan Blackrock had an Exceptional harvest, and it was determined that Harmast’s younger sister Erryn (Garmast and Harala’s aunt) was getting married to a Lankor Mhy scholar in Jonstown (rolled randomly). Because of this we took a slight detour as the family attended. Harala made some exceptional pots as a wedding gift, which her aunt was exceptionally grateful for, gaining her some favor with the Lankor Mhy temple.
As they were leaving Jonstown a runner from Boldhome rushed in with news that Kallyr’s heroquest had a disastrous outcome. I chose that the coming year had a Cursed omen.
Conclusion
This was a great session, and the group had a lot of fun. It was a little lopsided, as Andivarth had a bit more screentime as the others, but he had not been as active as the others in previous sessions, so it seemed to work out well. Next session the group will be heading southwest to Apple Lane for the Rainbow Mounds adventure to round out the starter set. I also intend to introduce them to Leika Blackspear since the Battle of the Queens is coming up and I want them to know the major players. My group is not very into dungeon crawls, though, so I am going to have to be be creative to make this interesting.
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