An obsessively detailed GM's-perspective account of the Wolves upon the Coast campaign's first two sessions is below. More answers for Idle Cartulary's list. The game was conducted online with two participants in Pennsylvania, two in the American Midwest, and one in Australia.
Spoilers for Wolves upon the Coast are below. Bill Nine-Toes, Dugson Whale-Rider, Pictidóttir the Silent, and Knut should stop reading now, unless you enjoy ruining the magic. 4000 words.
I start the players just off the northern coast of Ruislip. Wolves provides no explicit guidance here, but online voices recommend the island, and it's the first published key of the campaign. In addition, the territory is graspable by a GM, and the unit is small compared to Albann and Pyorra. The other areas beyond lean a little more into the weird, and the journey from mundane toward weird (and maybe the players never get there) seems the better path than the reverse. The PCs, having killed their master, have a few identifiable choices on the horizon: a coastal village, a town on a river, a large, beached object that has drawn birds, and a rocky spire their navigator had avoided. They may also decide to take the risk to explore further, if they don't like the apparent choices. The limited set of options was placed in front of the players to avoid analysis paralysis, but to at least allow a decision based on some information. One player remarks that he appreciated the map pins, a relatively new addition to the Roll20 interface. The GM-facing map has a whole lot more pins.
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| The pins can be opened for a little more information |
In-game, the map has east at the top. I justify this (to myself) by noting that in the setting, late first millennium pseudo-Europe, small scale maps (those that depict large areas) tended to be oriented with east to the top (the etymological origin of the word orient, the verb), the fact that common people of the time had no access to this kind of map notwithstanding. The real reason is that I wanted to use Hex Kit to make the player-facing world map, and most of its hexes are only available in the vertical format, while Gearing's original map has horizontal hexes, which cannot be reconciled as far as Hex Kit goes. The provided map's Worldographer graphics do not evoke "dark ages" so much as late-twentieth-century computer printouts, and the outsized icons obscure the hexes. (There is also no player-facing hex map in the package, unless you count the third party materials that present a map more along the lines of seventeenth-century cartography, and also include the bad rivers.) This vanity causes some confusion with a player when I describe places to the east and they are "up" on the map.
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| The full player view, minus the tables ringing the hex map |
Players roll weather and wind. Here is perhaps my first error, if we care about realism: the result is a light rain which probably precluded the possibility of the already-given sight lines. I have the players share their character's name and short description. No one goes over a couple sentences. After dispensing with the master's body, a short discussion settles on the large object on the shore as the party's first target.
I have pre-rolled encounters, both for the ocean (null) and land (null and Ogre). Wolves' GM rules specify two rolls per day during wilderness exploration and one standard 1-in-6 for daily naval encounters. I have added two d12s to my land rolls, to specify which hour of the half-day that the encounter crosses paths with the PCs. The Ogre is slated for 11 pm on day one. Pre-rolled land encounters that occur while the party is at sea will be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis, but that hasn't happened yet.
The beached whale is the site of the first party boasts, and all join in, promising to kill, ride the whale, ride the whale longer, or pierce its eye with an arrow. The latter requires a ruling on called shots; the player rolls low, anyway, but after the session I add to the house rules called shots as target-25 (with 20-24 still a normal hit). I am of the mind that the first boast can be very simple, so all of these earn initial HD (everyone chooses HD), but two ultimately fail. Without any prompting--unless it's the boat storage spreadsheet that fills most of the slots with food--the party decides to use the whale as a resource, flensing the thing after killing it. I rule that all empty "slots" (50) can be filled with harvested blubber, and roll an additional random encounter (null) for the process, considering how attractive the corpse might be to animals and men over the course of the butchery. One player asks if whale oil is regularly traded "in this world," and I say no, although The Isle's monastery has a repository of the stuff for heating and light. The players are very curious about the statuette they extract from the whale's gut. It has no set in-world meaning, yet. The logical next action for the party is to sell their recently-gained provisions at the town they know about.
For the process of entering the hex, I placed the party on a separate battlemap, and would do so for three additional scenes during the first session. The first battlemap was a spit of sand, a beach, with a large token representing the stranded whale, a few bird and fish tokens, plus a tornado animation that looked like blood swirling in the water, to indicate sealife gnashing on the dying creature. I used a boat token and four PC tokens, but the rowers/skirmishers and donkey in the boat were abstracted. While I agree with Elmcat that "Battlemaps Answer Too Much" in that they often have visual clutter that is irrelevant to the scene, or that they establish visual "truths" that are false for the setting, or even that battlemaps limit the players' imaginations about what might be done in the space. Additionally, most existing battlemaps are too tightly framed, and don't allow for realistic conflict movement like keeping at range. These costs must be weighed against the time that the restatings of theater-of-the-mind consume, the lengthier descriptions of complex scenes that players lose focus on, and the gloriousness of some of the illustrations that our mapmakers give us. In building the platform for the campaign, I uploaded more than five dozen battlemaps, many generic terrain types or human landscapes, but most pegged to particular hexes or locations. Part of why I do this is I enjoy the art of the maps, even if the format has limitations. I mostly selected one artist's (Afternoon Maps) depictions for Ruislip areas, and another's (Tehox) for Albann, to give the islands a partial visual consistency in "close-up." In truth, I did not need the beached whale map (or the meadhall or pallisaded town maps). Only the Ogre's home was necessary for semi-complex tactical positioning. During the second session, one battle was conducted entirely in theater-of-the-mind, and the other was so short it hadn't really needed a map.
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| The blood cloud was frothing! (The sharks are on the GM level, unseen by players.) |
The two PCs who failed their first boasts next brag of blubber trading success. Since it was still a first boast, I allowed the relatively unheroic to count. Because one player did not want to give up his last half-slot yet for a language Culemwardern's interlocutor understood, I ruled that his boast failed immediately. All but one of the players reacted to the quantum language rules--players may declare knowing a language the first time they encounter it--by hoarding their language slots, even though three quarters of the party had 2 or 2.5 available at the start. I interpret the language choices as setting the former thralls' backstories--where they were children, slaves, or some other lost profession in the particular region the languages is spoken. This might get a little awkward to realistically explain, especially with my linguistic hoarders.
With a partly positive reaction roll, the party is able to both conduct commerce and gather local information with the representative for the town, an NPC I invented in the position of "thyle," or wise-man to the named headman ("taoiseach" for more flavor). Into the thyle's opening parley, I put an abbreviated version of the words that Hrothgar greets the arriving Geats on the shore in Thomas Meyer's Beowulf translation. I wanted to set the tone for how NPCs might talk and set.an expectation for party arrivals at settlements. I like (fictionalized, simplified) unspoken rules about social class interaction far more than any of my players, but this was also supposed to be a bit of world building in that arena, revealing social status divisions of "cow-lords, ceorls, or thralls." Whether they were reluctant to start by lying, or just felt they didn't have enough background in the setting, the players hesitate in answering the question. Through their interpreter, the players do a good job interrogating the local landscape for adventure. I rolled fresh rumors--which ended up being very apt--for what the sage was willing to divulge. I allowed later that one of the characters actually knew the thyle's first language, but had concealed that fact, since we were all learning the ruleset.
I ruled that bringing food during a shortage caused by the griffin's depredation earned the party an invitation to the taoiseach's meadhall. The townsfolk called the monster the "Tesch-Tesch" (said harshly, so it sounds like slashing) and described it has half-bird, half-horse, all mad. One of the players wonders aloud if it could be a griffin. Crucially, six rowers were left behind to guard the party's boat. I shifted the PCs to the meadhall's "battle"map, where tokens were deployed to attempt to show the social structure. The players heard a shortened version of headman Cioran's speech from Reavers and because of the translation issues, I attempted to give it the feeling of my personal experience at a Tanzanian wedding. The only boast-less player claims he would "drink everyone under the table," a tongue-in-cheek choice for the PC with the 3 Constitution. None of the players rolled bonuses on their stats, but that's the only score outside the 8-14 range. A random roll "decides" who will be approached for the local internal subplot, and it just so happens to be the character whose player had chosen to spend a half-slot on the local language. The whale-rider boasts that he would kill the Tesch-Tesch for the town, in front of all the gathered warriors.
One player offers that his character would step outside for some fresh air, and dice determine that it is just after the 11 pm random encounter. The Ogre had found the rowers on the river's edge. I rolled on my quick resolution hireling combatant table and the result is unfortunate. Two are dead, and one taken, though they have damaged the monster. I probably should have made one of the dead the kidnapped one. The PC outside issues a second boast, that the killed will be avenged.
The players choose to defer the hunt for the Tesch-Tesch to extract revenge for their lost rowers, which I ruled made them no longer welcome inside the town's walls until the deed was done. The PCs set out in the morning, tracking the kidnapper. I forgot to have weather rolled until after the hexflower reveal when the party hiked down the path. It was lightly raining again. A host of smells were described to give the players clues toward the current and neighboring hexes. I normally operate Roll20 with dynamic lighting, which is set-and-forget, but for Wolves I have fog of war, since dungeons are unusual, and clumsily undid the fog as we went. My additions to the battlemap (the Ogre's lair) did not look great. The thrice-failed boaster declares that he will "strike the first blow," and we had the first tactical combat. The Ogre spoke a bit during the fight to hint at its origin. A shield is sundered to save that PC's life, and I forgot to both a) implement a 4HD creature's second attack, and b) add in the +2 for additional melee attackers during the second round, which was moot, since the attacker hit the Ogre, anyway. Although two arrows had struck the ogre first, I adjudicated that the "first blow" boast stood by its letter. All PCs were 2 HD at this point, except for the archer who had avenged the dead rowers, now at 3. The players begin min-maxing!
"We should carry extra shields on the donkey."
"Did we even bring the donkey?"
We agreed that the donkey would always accompany the party during any land expeditions, if left unsaid. The party loot the place finding their first treasure, a mix of many different types that were difficult to divide up. I remembered at this point that I had forgotten to create a treasure tracker: less important than for treasure-for-xp systems, but still crucial at an open table. The fact that Wolves is not sp-for-xp meant that the party decided to leave behind some subpar treasure, so it wouldn't bring down their social rank. There was also a map among the bones, which I intended to pre-make an in-game artifact for, but forgot, even though it was on a list of to dos. I described the map, and then made a crude representation of it between sessions.
The party journeys back to their boat, parked outside the town still, and I used that point to have the players roll rumors that they had heard about monsters in the world. This was to do a little more setting-building for the players. All the diced rumors were pretty nebulous, in line with the language of Monsters&, but not really actionable. The players shared them with each other, and then three of the players offered up their pre-game rumors. Here we closed out the session.
To start the next session, an NPC from the subplot visited the PCs in the evening. She offered to trade warding knowledge, and here was an in-game introduction to the mechanics of warding and its substances. Each player rolled one pre-existing knowledge of a ward. Here I used Riles' "Forbidden Truths" for the table. This immediately brought questions about foraging these plants, and one of Riles' charts was quite helpful here.
The weather roll brought fog, so the party felt unsafe attempting to sail to the suspected Tesch-Tesch roost. They choose to navigate along Ruislip's coast instead, encountering the neighboring village and then a desolate, odd landscape. The settlement got a poor reaction roll, and the clipped answers of the villagers (correctly) reinforced the idea in the players' minds that they were beholden to the Druids, as the contacts in the town had claimed. The party sails further and decides to disembark in the grassland of rock furrows, with six accompanying rowers on foot, the rest and Knut (player not attending) guarding the watercraft.
This was probably the trickiest portion of GMing the adventure, so far. The key states:
The sea wind bites with teeth here. It is desolate - few trees are to be seen, only the sharp undulation of the terrain and the rocks emerging like bones from wounds. Within such a crease, charms of bone may be found. These were taken from long-retreated conquerors, and mark the lair of a Druid.
and, from an adjacent hex
the druid speaks in broken twigs, whorls of blood and burst earth.
The players want to explore the landscape, and I wanted it to be simultaneously interesting, evocative, provide vague clues to the sub-region, but not be too revealing. Finding the first bones, which I described as having etchings (Ghom script), pushed the players to explore further. I described more human interventions in the terrain: tree carvings, blood smearings, holes in the dirt, feathers, and tiny, twisted twig charms. All of these have something in triplicate, to replicate the scarring the Druid inflicts. A player asks if there are hawthorn trees present, and on a 1-in-6, they are! (Sadly, the Ogham script for hawthorn is not a three-branched symbol.) Each player packs a slot full of the ward. They also scoop up the twig sculptures. These I rule as sensors for the Druid.
Past mid-day, the players reach the eastern coast of Ruislip, finding a seaside cliff with a difficult-looking path. Because of the fog, I didn't clear the adjacent hexes. Here, we remembered the donkey, and although we had made it a standing order that the beast of burden was accompanying, if not otherwise stated, the players argue that they would have left it at the boat, considering the expectations of the particular exploration. They suggest to me that I make two exploration tokens, one with the donkey and one without, so that we would remember in the future. Donkey-less, but with a grapnel and rope, the party of nine climbs down to the shore. Here, the invisible Druid attacked.
I bent the rules of invisibility, allowing an indirect hostile action without breaking the spell, partly because he wasn't much of a threat otherwise. The boulder dislodged from the cliff randomly picked one of the PCs, he fails his dodging save, and goes exactly to zero hp, unconscious in my house rules. In the half hour before he recovered, the party explores a bit, and because the tides were where they were in my daily chart, they find a single set of the Druid's footprints. I allowed one more attack with a cliff rock--figuring the Druid probably had to take time finding suitable ones to push down. This time the player dodges, and another makes a boast to kill the invisible thing throwing stones.
The party do not climb back up, but follow the intermittent footprints until they found a cave in the cliffs. They enter the Druid's lair, and one becomes deeply interested in the fossilized mound of dung. "He has to have a reason for shitting in his own home!" Perhaps I should've not made the Druid attack, as a centuries-old combatant probably played it safe, but I did. I might have given more HD (per the Archdruid elsewhere), but I did not. The first bowshot in response to the Druid's appearance is a critical, killing him, and ruining the other archer's boast. The Druid's magical necklace might have been ruled inert at this point--the point of earning spells is the difficulty one has to go through, like collecting three monarchs' eyes--but I treated it as a useable magic item. At the cost of time, the shit-digger finds his treasure. Another PC thoughtfully watches the tides, to make sure they could return along the shore to climb back up with the rope and grapnel. Unfortunately, the Druid had felt hate against the metal tool, and heaved it into the sea. This would matter for the next day.
I ruled that wearing the magic necklace would create dreams in the wearer that gave hints to its powers and idiosyncrasies. During the dawn watch, the encounter roll is priest with sixteen followers. I decided the priest would be a Druid (even though that's a separate entry on the table), and they would have discovered their dead fellow the prior evening. Perhaps it should have been a Christian missionary. The party pushes their boat into the sea (a die roll to see if they had time), and sail away, the fog lifted. The discovery of the killing and the sighting of the boat mean that the Druids--and Cloyne and Belcarra--now suspect the party of the murder, and have become enemies. Reaction rolls with these groups will now only produce false positives--a 9-12 means any Druid friends in the north will pretend to be welcoming to the party if they are linked to their boat, but then attempt to seize or kill them. The news will spread to the main Druid site in 2-12 days.
Freed up by the weather, the party elects to sail along the coast to reach the spire of the nest. I forgot to roll a sea encounter during this leg. Upon landing, they begin to examine the dangerous rocks and the scat upon them. The Tesch-Tesch returns after the first turn of searching. Each archer and two slingers hit the thing as it swoopes in, and then it strikes. 7 HD creatures have three attacks, and by house rule it had +7 to its attack roll, and its targets are in furs (so +14 to attack, meaning 75% likelihood of hitting). The first blow knocks out the first archer (he had 3 hp, the damage range was 3-8), and the second and third bring down the other archer, to -5 hp. Here was the first test of the death and dismemberment table, and it had one extremely bad result for a boasting game, and that was rolled. D20, result 9-5 = 4, brain damage, subtable d6, 6 "loss of speech." I described the damage as a ripped throat/crushed larynx, and realized the 2d6 weeks enforced downtime was very long (and rewrote the penalty as 2d6 days). Later in the session we agreed that the PC was able to expend one language slot on literacy, and might scratch or write out subsequent boasts. Communication would be cumbersome within the largely-illiterate party, though. This was all decided later, as a combat was still on. With two players down, it was very lucky that the boaster struck and killed the griffin, which effectively only had one HD left.
Hearing a softer screaming, the players recognize that a nest is above them. The Tesch-Tesch killer boasts of climbing the hellspire, but without the grapnel, the task was impossible, his falls nearly killing him. The party goes with the wind and sail back to Culemwardern, with the head of the Tesch-Tesch. The session was at about three hours at this point, and I was too tired to role-play the town's reception, just talking it through descriptively. I narrated the gradual reduction in support during the now-silent character's convalescence. I felt guilty for the degradation of the silenced player, even though it was a cool, genre-emulating trait.
I had to make a snap judgement--would the pre-rolled random encounters continue as planned during the downtime? Days 2-3 on land were already all null encounters, either being not in the proper location, being the now-dead Ogre, or being just an empty result. The evening encounter of the day of triumph was a merchant and crew, so that was easy enough for inside the palisade walls, and also provided a smidgen of foreshadowing and world-building. I decided to postpone the rest, in part because they would not be the party's encounter, but the wall-guards. That was probably a mistake, as one would have portended one of the island's central dangers, with far less immediate peril.
The players asked about shopping (they wanted another grapnel), and the questions indicated a presumption of vanilla D&D land settlements. I made a list of goods' availability appropriate to the levels of settlement (as in Errant, and I'm sure in other systems, but as simple as I could make it). The six levels are village availability (so everywhere), 50-50 village, town, 50-50 town, only city, and special locations only. I removed the bullseye lantern from the list.
The silenced PC starts designing hand-signals during recuperation. The double-killer, doubly-knocked-out PC strings together an artifact of their victories with gold thread, putting the Tesch-Tesch and Druid's feathers among cowrie shells. As part of their downtime, the players each received a Ruislip rumor, the scuttlebutt they would hear while hanging out, but also to give them motivations to sail beyond this base. They plot their return to the nest, the one outstanding boast, stealing the taoiseach's cup, and sailing up the River Suck.
Rules Infelicities: We discovered, in conversation, rather than through play, that a PC with a current boast cannot raise the stakes of another's boast, just as they figured out in "Dogs on the Isle." The languages as backstory, as stated earlier, might be tricky to reconcile, at least for those with many languages. If I were ever to run again, I would possible do d6+1 or d4+2 languages as starting points, even though that might complicate the issue further. I will need to rule about the process of learning languages as players exist in the world alongside foreign speakers. The weather plus wind tables produced an unlikely result: strong wind and heavy fog. None of this is major, of course.
I am keeping the world map cleared for the players, their reward for exploration. No fog of war will creep back over, even if all the original PCs are killed.
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| Detail of the PCs' world at the end of session 2 |
