There is a conversation I have with Luke Crane, probably once a month, that goes something like this...
I think it is because I wrestle with the form and always have wrestled with it. I know when I published my first RPG, I followed the well trod path of those that came before me. That was 21 years ago though, and it is disheartening to me to see that, after several years away from gaming, the game products still haven't changed much.
I am a firm believer that game products should be tools for play first. I also think we try to make things do too much at the same time in the search for efficiency. For instance, my own favorite game, Torchbearer, has a problem with the Dungeoneers Guide.
It tries to be both a character creation tool and a reference tool for play. At our table, we often find ourselves scrambling for the right page with the right rule content. That breaks up the flow of play sometimes, which is particularly tough with ADHD having teenagers.
My current gripe is with the much celebrated Curse of Stahd for Dungeons and Dragons 5E. It completely fails as a tool for running the game. It isn't surprising that Matthew Lillard's company has had success remaking these adventures.
The whole adventure is constructed like a shitty novel. It requires tons of page flipping to get to basic information about what is supposed to be going on. No encounter is clear and the adventure thru line makes no sense. Monsters are bolded, but all their stats are sitting in the Monster Manual.
It is a garbage product and I wouldn't be so infuriated if it wasn't for the fact that...
- My kids really want to go beat up Dracula like Moon Knight...
- And the designers had an opportunity to fix this problem that has permeated all previous versions of the Ravenloft adventure and failed to do so.
They just made another shitty campaign setting and forgot people have to play this fucking thing.
The good news is that my experience trying to use this tool at the table has influenced what I have and have not done for my own adventure publishing. Yggdrasil MGZ issue 04 reflects some of these lessons as it is an adventure. Issues 05 and 06, which I am actively writing now, will be taking some of these lessons even further.
Not to derail too much, but I am really excited to see if what I am trying to do with Sanctums of the Serpent Vaults works. I will unpack that in another post, but the headline is...
What happens if I mix X1 The Isle of Dread with Only Revolutions?
Any way, at the table, I have given up trying to translate the book into a workable adventure. Instead, I am treating it as a setting book, nothing more.
Strahd is the local ruler. The Village of Barovia a bustling crossroads town that they are currently basing themselves from. Everything else is me taking better constructed adventures and tweaking them to make sense.
With that in mind, we started with the Ghost Tower in our last session. This session, I adapted Thelon's Rift from the Cartographer's Compendium. We will continue down this path, weaving it into the overarching goal of, well this...
Session Two
Lot to do, lot to do. Bound by an undead necromancer to service, they made their way to town. In this case, the bustling crossroads of the Village of Barovia. We entered the Town Phase and they went to meet the man who sent them to the tower, a cadaverous factorum named Lazlo.
They note that the town shows signs of recent attack by raiders (burnt door here, slash marks there) and heard a rumor to not go in the church because something is up.
He is gracious and buys them dinner. Pays them a hefty sum for the sack of tomes they stole and makes all the right noises about telling his boss the unfortunate news about the necromancer. He also offers up the opportunity to make some more coin by dealing with these mysterious raiders who have camped out on an ancient bridge (Bridge of the Damned).
Alas, they first need to deal with the torcs around their throats and find Gereon, the necromancer's apprentice. Their business with Lazlo over with, and a healthy sum of loot between them (16D), they set about their business.
Sligo was cursed to become an undead if he didn't get some healing, so he headed to a shrine outside the church to make an offering. At the shrine, an offering is made to remove the curse. Success! No more undead munchies.
Meanwhile, the exhausted Guthdor got himself a room at the Inn and tried to rest. Success again! Now it was time to find their target, though it had been likely ten years since he had been at the town based on the journal they found in the Ghost Tower.
They do a bit of asking around (Circles test) and find a blacksmith who 10 years ago Gereon had dealings with. The dealings? Building a workshop in a cave not far from town.
Now they had a destination and just needed to get kitted out. They bought a few odds and ends, making Ob1 Resources tests to get that up, they spent a lot of money on oil and heavy leather gloves for Guthdor. Can't use a flaming sword without heavy leather gloves after all.
So newly broke, because adventuring is expensive, they got out of town with no debts and headed up a road the blacksmith pointed out. An uneventful afternoon in the woods and they find themselves face to face with a rune carved entrance to a cave. Eerily similar runes to what they found on the Ghost Tower's walls.
Inside the rough cave they found stone mouth shooting a powerful jet of water across the room and down a well. On the other side is a door and on a plaque near the face is a riddle...
The cost of making me, only the maker knows,
I'm valueless if bought, but sometimes traded.
A poor man may give me as easily as a king.
When I am broken, pain and deceit are assured.
What am I?
They are both very lucky that their sister was sitting next to the table on the computer playing Minecraft. She is my deep lover of Greek Mythology and riddles are her jam. After letting them struggle for a bit, she put her brain to it and shouted out the answer.
What followed might be the most Benny Hill thing these two have done in a game. They went down the well and came upon the spot where the water cuts them off from the landing with the big statue and stairs up towards some light. Then they backtracked the other way and found the stairs to the bridge that gave them bad vibes. Then they went up the well back to the door with the sunburst symbol on the far side of the room.
They decided to enter that room and came across the weird glowing moss and found the inscription. They scouted the stairs down in that room and successfully found the trap on the stairs (Scout test) and finally put together the map. It was amusing for me, but less so for them...
And their sister was merciless in mocking them.
Back down the well they went and tried to swim across the water to the landing, the stature, the bodies, and the stairs up into the light. Guthdor made it across with no problem, but Sligo got swept up in the current (Health test) only to be pulled out of the water and detained by the statue, which came to life.
At this point, I kept having to remind myself that against all odds, this adventure had required only 3 tests so far. Deciphering the riddle saved their bacon, because that trap is merciless.
But now came a serious conflict. They decided they were going to try and run past the statue and flee up the stairs where it wouldn't be able to reach them. It was a near run thing, but they were able to the chamber above, but only with the compromise of a shattered lantern, all their oil gone, and all their rations gone.
Then things get interesting. They find some loot that they can't carry, a body in a crystal case they assume is Gereon, and the orb. They touch the orb and start talking with the bombastic jerk whose spirit sits within it and never ask him his name. They pry open the crystal coffin (failed Health test), get frustrated in the effort (Angry condition), and acquire the amulet to get them out of the secret lab unharmed.
It was a lot of fun to play the conversation out. They even pretended that when one was touching the orb and talking they couldn't hear me talking as the soul in the orb.
So they assume that have completed their compact with the necromancer and plan on heading to her tower to give her "Gereon" in orb form. Little do they know that "Gereon" is actually Thelon, Gereon's apprentice.
Should be a lot of fun to see how they navigate that encounter!
Yggdrasil MGZ Issue 04
The fourth issue of Yggdrasil MGZ is one massive adventure for the Torchbearer RPG. Imagine if Die Hard was set in the tower headquarters of necromantic zealots standing on the grave of an ancient evil and you are John McClain!
