Author: Ronan McNamee

I run thedicepool.com, a blog about ttrpgs and my experience with them.

The Apprentice, Chapter 11

Crabby

Maryk has seen better days. He has found himself living in the woods in a leaky old shack and subsisting on conjured fruit. For three years. He’s bored of it, and what’s more, he’s clearly not looking after himself. He needs a good meal, maybe one of those tasty crabs that live in the fens? And someone to look after him. That’d be nice too, wouldn’t it?

Chapter 11: Fen-crabs and Little Toes

Years passed. I grew up, not very much actually but nonetheless, I became a young man. By the time I was fifteen years old I possessed the face of a man far older, grey and white and blue in splotches as well. I spent most of my time in amongst the trees of Creakwood, the colour of which matched my own quite well. “I could blend in here like a twig-bug if I went around these woods in the nip,” I often said to myself, “never even need Invisible.” Sometimes I went out into the Crabfen, if for no other reason than to catch myself a couple of the eponymous crabs for dinner when I tired of fruit and berries. Sometimes I visited the old quarry not so very far from my old world to gather chalk for my homemade blackboard since I had no paper. I never saw anyone else. People did not go to the places I went. This satisfied me. That was the purpose of my new life. I could do no-one any harm out in these forgotten places, these abandoned houses and weathered graveyards. Well, no-one other than myself, of course.

For instance, came the day I lost my other little toe. The Crabfen had called me out again. My diet of water-fruit, grubs and occasional squirrel had begun to take its toll on my mood as it always did. “Oh! Water-fruit, so nourishing, oh, water-fruit, so dull, oh water-fruit, so boring, I want to smash my skull,” was a verse I penned all on my own and could often be heard to sing sitting under the glowing leaves of the water-fruit bush, in between tired chomps of unwelcome fruit. I had tried a number of other spells, which I thought might produce food of different varieties. They resulted in the creation of a number of poisonous toadstools (I spent two days over a pit behind my cabin after trying those,) the skeletal remains of a chicken unsuitable even to make stock, and a leather purse which has, admittedly, come in handy for the collection of berries and grubs. I came to the conclusion that the Fomori Emperor who wrote the book or, at least, had it written for him, had no need for spells to feed him; he had slaves for that. The water-fruit spell was, no doubt, no more than a novelty.

The weather was the type reserved for the days when your emotions are felt so strongly that they must surely be affecting it with their deep, bog-misery and their thunderous angers. Unsuitable for crab hunting in the fens, as the day may have been, I could not have put it off ‘till another one without, as the song suggested, smashing my skull. Rain fell, not in drops so much as in waves, drowning the fens. I could see not ten paces in front of me and the sheer weight of my conjured, sodden, cotton clothing weighed my emaciated body down so much that I considered simply doffing them. Of course the bitterness of the wind across the open bog might have done for me so I decided to keep them on. I performed the Umbrella spell to stave off a small fraction of the torrents. So, I squelched my way on through the Crabfen, determined to find a crustacean or two for my supper. “Crab, crab, crabbie, crabbie, crab crab,” I would call, counter to the effect that I wished it to achieve. “Where are you, my tasty little beauties,” I used to sing, thinking that it might entice them into my supper sack. It didn’t, not that day. I did encounter one but it avoided the sack.
It felt like days that I had been creeping and hunting and calling and singing for crabs. My boots, a hardy pair of conjured crocodile skin ones, went up to my knees and I was sure they were more than up to the task of crab hunting. On any other day, they would have been. But on this hellish, rain-soaked nightmare of a day the bog attempted to suck me down into it with each step. It did not get me, it almost did. It had me and it lost me.

A step in the wrong spot was all it took. I knew the fen quite well, I thought, but it transformed on that day. the whole thing was a trap and I was the prey. One step, as I said, was almost my undoing. The boot went thigh-deep into a patch of ground I had stood upon many times to seek out my own prey. I struggled and wiggled and pulled at my own leg and finally dislodged myself, leaving the boot there, in a grave of its own construction. My bare foot came out at speed and I fell back into the bog. Dirty, brown water crept into every opening and crevice both in myself and my clothing; my crab sack was gone; I spluttered and coughed up a lungful of bog in an attempt to right myself and that’s when I felt it; a slice, a thin, hard pressure and a crunch. I felt the warmth of the blood rolling down my foot and calf as they stuck up in the air like birch saplings. I spat and gurgled into a scream. “Bastard! Bastard, clawing, tearing, toe-clipper! Bastard!” I got my hand to my face to free eyes, mouth and nose completely of mud and bog water. I took a deep breath to shout some further obscenities at the little aquatic bastard that had shorn me of my last remaining little toe when I looked up. I used the breath for another scream instead.

Straight out of a fireside story had she come, and there she stood before me. I had no doubt about her identity. The Fae-Mother stood tall and spindly like a trellis supporting her clothes, most of which did, in fact, resemble plants. Stuck in the bog as I was I could not even guess at her true height but it was certainly taller than the tallest man I had ever met. The face she showed me was grey and swathed in shadows thrown by the leaf-like hood she used to keep the rain off. It seemed to do just that and better, I might add, than my Umbrella cantrip did. Her arms hung limply at her sides, hands twig-fingered and pendulous by her knees even when standing unbent. Her wrists, neck and ankles were adorned in layered circlets of black and bronze. The very surface of the fen is where she walked, disturbing neither bog pool nor grass blade. Feet spotless, she stepped and glided.

“You are in some distress, old man. Would you like some help? Perhaps I could assist you with your wound…” The voice which vibrated from her reminded me greatly of a lark’s song and a bear’s roar.

“I am no old man!” I said, foolishly indignant as the blood poured freely from the stump of my former little toe and wallowed in a bog more foul than the famed dung pits of Arampour, “I’m a fifteen year old young man!”

“Maybe it has been too long since I have seen a human, your kind have changed if all young men look as you do.” This time the sound on the air which formed these words was the blowing of a summer breeze and the the rumble and crack of a rockslide. I looked her in the eye as she spoke and I saw her in there. Eyes so old are not to be found anywhere else in the world. Her grey and shimmering green orbs looked back into my own eyes. “I can explain later about my looks; I would be more than happy to, Fae-Mother. Right now, I would like to graciously accept your offer of aid. I am in dire need.” Being polite was difficult. It had not been necessary for more than three years. I don’t care if I am spoken to politely when I am my only conversation partner.

She reached down with her long fingers and I grasped them. They were so long and slender that I almost feared to grip too tight but then, as I did, I could feel the fingers like thin iron rods pull me easily to my feet. Once upright, I found myself atop the grass like my saviour was. “Please follow me, old young man, and I will attend to your foot.” I limped along behind the Fae-Mother all the way to the edge of the Creakwood. Below a particularly wide-canopied weeping-willow bordering the bog and the wood we were totally protected from the elements. In fact, once the tree’s curtain of leaves had closed behind us I could hear neither wind nor rain and the light which filtered through from outside was that of a hazy summer’s day. The ground beneath us was firm and dry and I gratefully threw myself upon it before removing my shirt to expose my ribs and sagging-skinned belly. It was surprisingly warm also.

My saviour, the Fae-Mother, took my newly deformed foot in her iron grip and looked at it. She removed my other boot and compared the foot to the injured one. “It seems you are careless with your toes,” she said. In this place her voice reminded me of the whisper of tree leaves in a light wind and the echo one discovers in the boles of hollowed out trees.

“I have often been unlucky,” I said. She penetrated my soul with those timeless eyes of hers and spoke again, “Unlucky? I think you would say there is more than mere misfortune involved in the story of your short life’s troubles. You are a boy who resembles a man of advanced years as your race reckons such things; you have lost two toes; you are nothing short of emaciated and you live by yourself in the Creakwood where no people come any longer. It would take one person many more years to accrue that degree of bad luck.” Those eyes kept me pinned and I answered her because I had no choice.

“My name is Maryk Sharpetzi. I am accursed for the murder of my mother and twice accursed for the murder of my first mistress and thrice accursed for the murder of my own sister. My mistress, Old Aggie, cursed me to look the way I do but everything else that has happened in my life has been as a direct result of the curses I gained at birth when I killed my mother and three years ago when my sister died by my hand.” She continued to simply hold my foot in her hand. I started to worry that it was incredibly filthy (a young boy without a mother or governess to tell him when to do it can easily fail to wash himself regularly.) I wriggled it a little but she simply held on firmly. “Yes, that makes sense. Curses, of course I can see them rising off of your shoulders and head like fumes and smoke, two black, one red. It was not such a bad thing to kill Old Aggie, I think. She was a lying, devious, selfish, murderous human as so many of you are. It was not the act that cursed you in that case, it seems, but the woman herself. The other deaths and several other acts of lesser evil have become a part of your soul. They are terrible things to live with, curses such as those you labour under, and you have suffered greatly for them.”

Laying my foot back on the ground, she continued to speak while I looked in wonder at the wound. The flow of blood was totally stemmed, the stump seemed cauterised (I remember still the dreadful searing of the hot poker used to seal the stump of the toe on the other foot) and I felt no pain.) “But I think I know some things about curses that you do not. I would like you to find me again when you need to know more about this. Now, you need to go back to your shack and rest. You must be exhausted. Here, you may want one of these to help you recuperate.” She reached around behind her and drew out a sack, my sack. Inside, wriggling and snapping, was a brace of fen-crabs. She placed the sack on the ground before me and I grabbed it before my supper could escape.
“Thank y-” I looked up and the Fae-Mother was gone.

Perhaps I should explain a little about the Fae-Mother.

And you’ll get to read all about her in Chapter 12 in a few days, dear reader!

Inspiration

Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary of my big brother’s passing. We interred his ashes in the local graveyard yesterday. It has been a tough week for my family and me. It’s been a tough year.

He died after a short but vicious illness that we could not have predicted. He was only 53 years old. His death came far, far too soon. And even during the years he had, much of his time was spent contending with the draining, exhausting illness known as M.E. But he had made his life so rich and so full in the short time he had that he has been an incredible inspiration to me, particularly over the last twelve months, but through all the years of his life as well.

Lorcan McNamee

Lorcan McNamee was a teacher first and foremost. Most of his working life he spent teaching languages; English, Spanish, Portuguese. He was a polyglot, obviously. Even at the time he died, he was working on learning French and German. But he taught other things too. Most notably, salsa! He taught salsa dancing to all comers in a church hall in our home town.

We, his family, stood for two hours greeting those who had come to grieve with us at his funeral. Many, many of the hundreds who came were his students or his former students, including his dance students and a host of people from Ukraine and many other parts of the world. And so many people from Spanish speaking countries who had been welcomed to our town and helped by Lorcan and the Sligo Spanish Society, which he was instrumental in organising.

I will be honest with you, dear reader, the sheer numbers and the obvious and genuine emotion expressed by these people was something of a shock to me. I knew, of course that he was an excellent teacher, that was not the shock. But I had known so little of the key part he played in the lives of so many through his involvement in all of these different activities, organisations and communities. To me, of course, he was just my big brother. He always would be that to me and always will and I think that prevented me from seeing all the rest. Additionally, he was never one to toot his own horn, except when it was beneficial to a cause. For instance when he led the charge to gain fuller rights and benefits from the government and unions for language tutors. Indeed, a representative of his union spoke at his funeral, reading a glowing tribute from the union’s president. Lorcan had told everyone about the fact that he would be protesting at Government Buildings and that he was interviewed for the news. Such pride I felt then, especially as someone also working in an education sector ravaged by real-terms cuts for decades.

The Front cover of A Year in Lisbon, by Lorcan McNamee

Lorcan was an author. He published two novels and several poems in collections over the years. You can find his novels, A Year in Lisbon and Be Do Go Have here. He had a blog, on which he liked to post things about media he had enjoyed or wanted to to talk about. Never would he be lost for something interesting to say about the latest movies he had seen and the books he had been reading. This man had a first class honours degree in English and three more degrees that he had picked up over the years so you know the blog is worth a read. We’re currently working on getting that back up and running. When we do, I’ll post a link to it here.

You might be starting to see a pattern now.

I think some of the connections are genetic. Both he and I love to travel, are crazy about all sorts of food, enjoy really good science fiction (Iain M Banks was a particular shared pleasure,) we’re both really bald. I was told by his neighbour yesterday that, if I just lost some weight, I would look just like him. All this is true. But why I am writing this post today is the effect he has had on me over the last few years.

This blog would not exist without Lorcan. I started it because I was looking for a creative outlet, mainly for me but for anyone else who might have an interest in the same things as me. That’s very much how Lorcan approached his blog.

I have written several books. I don’t think I would have done that if not for him, his encouragement and his example. I should probably get around to publishing them too… Still you can check at least one of them out here on this blog, serialised with a chapter coming out every few days. Lorcan self-published his books because he very much wanted to see his own work in print. I think it took a lot of guts to do that, have them printed, arrange his own launch parties (I was very proud to introduce him at a couple of those even though no-one knew who I was) and everything else that goes into it. And of course, to write them in the first place. I feel very close to him when I think about these things.

Most recently, after the funeral and the avalanche of grief and love from all of these people who had been brought together by my brother in different ways, who had been made into little communities and who came to learning and creativity because of him, I thought, I could try a bit of that. So, in the smallest way possible, I did.

I started off by joining the discord server of my local game shop here in Bangor, Replay. There, I started looking for players who might want to try out a new RPG. Because I’m not a salsa dancer, I’m a GM at heart. From that, five mostly strangers came together to play a few sessions of Spire in the wonderfully welcoming Replay store where they have lots of gaming tables that you can use for free. That was Tables and Tales in a proto-community form. Not long after that, friends of the blog, Isaac and Tommy, suggested that we set up a local TTRPG community and I leaped at the chance, knowing that that is what I had been wanting all along. I wanted to try to emulate my brother in that all important way; by connecting people and helping in some small way to bring them together to do a thing they love. We are still a relatively small group but have been growing bit by bit and I genuinely love to see it.

A photo of the front cover of City of Thieves, A Fighting Fantasy Adventure book by Ian Livingstone.

You know, it just occurred to me that I might owe Lorcan more when it comes to my RPG interests. He might even have been instrumental in getting me into RPGs in the first place. Probably the first game I played that had any RPG elements was City of Thieves, by Ian Livingstone, a Fighting Fantasy Gamebook from 1983. Of course, I nicked off Lorcan’s bookshelf, didn’t I?

I have not done my brother justice in this short post at all. He was far more amazing than my meagre powers are able to convey, I didn’t even mention that he was the most incredible uncle to our two nieces, that he was an accomplished translator, that he earned a Master’s Degree in Spanish Studies posthumously, that he was an art lover and the origin of all my best musical tastes, that he was a podcaster, that he was the first in our family to get a tattoo, that he will be missed forever by all of those who knew him and that the world is better for having had him in it.

Thanks for reading about my brother today, dear reader. Normal service will resume in the next post.

The Apprentice, Chapter 10

Moving

I hate moving. It’s one of the most exhausting and stressful experiences in life. All that organising and physical labour and long days and nights of work to get all of the stuff you have but are not sure you need to a new place. Maryk’s moving in today’s chapter. He felt he had no choice after the events of the last chapter. But at least he doesn’t have much stuff to move, I suppose. Just the clothes he stands up in and that one big old book he procured from his master.

Chapter 10: Life in the Wilderness

Twelve years is not a very long time in the grand tapestry of the world and, though I had been of the opinion that my own depth and breadth of knowledge and learning was vast and fathomless, in my own twelve years I had somehow managed not to learn a single thing about woodsman-ship, orienteering or foraging. I also had little to no knowledge of the town’s surrounding countryside. Countryside is rather a generous word for the scrubland, ancient forests, swamps and bogs of which it consisted, in all honesty. I eventually spent rather a long period of my life amongst the stinking fens and mouldering woods of the Giarri Valley and grew to know them even better than my first home on the farm but I never learned to love them. They were harsh and I was soft. My muscles had weakened to such an extent that I could walk for no more than an hour at a time and if my levitation spell gave up the ghost I could not shove the libram even an inch from where it had been deposited. To put it mildly, I was in trouble out there.

I was in trouble before I had even left the town boundaries. I stopped at the crossroads on the other side of the bridge, staring at the signposts in the middle of the junction. Priest’s Point was twenty-four miles away to the south and Holdtbridge thirty-eight miles to the north-west. I had never been to these places so I thought that it would be safe enough to go to either one and be left to myself. I started towards Priest’s Point since it was the closer but soon realised the mistake in my decision. It was not a matter of living in a town where people would leave me alone. My curse would be no respecter of the choice of a hermit’s life-style. Proximity alone could be sufficient to kill those around me and destroy the lives of my unknowing neighbours. No, I could not be allowed to do that again. Murdering my sister and transforming her into a dreadful form of walking corpse were the actions of a person who no longer deserves the company of other people. I would live a hermit’s life, thought I, but out here, in the wilderness amongst the other animals, far away from the lives of others.

Leaving the main road of dust and stone walls, I took a track, which was made mainly of roots and puddles of dull, stagnant water, into the Creakwood. The wood was a thousand years old and I had heard so many horror stories about the place as a lad that I was in possession of a deep dread of its crumbling, creaking boughs and its moss bedecked trunks and its canopy from which seemed to peer a host of malevolent eyes. Still, I had made my decision, yet another decision of life-changing importance in the space of no more than a few hours. The woods were as good a place to start my new life as any, and better than most.

Dropped foliage conspired to hide the path from me before I had gone a mile down the track. The confidence I had had in my decision waned and I felt sweat trickle down my back. What had I been thinking, I thought as my pace slowed, I had no business out in the wilds, fending for myself. I could barely fend for myself in town. How could I have thought that this was going to work? I’ll barely last a day without starving to death or having my liver eaten out by a rabid badger or my eyes by a vicious pigeon or my soul by a wood wraith. The fact was, however, I saw not another living thing moving in those woods that day. The story goes that the woods perceived my puissance and quieted its denizens in respect. Looking back, however, the atmosphere was one, not of respect but of fear. Of course, at that time, my fear was all I was aware of, well, except for a vague sense of being watched.

I walked deeper, mind still a web of terror. Determination and a lack of options drove me on. The darkness was distilling itself down to a cruel, iron-dull fog. I no longer knew how long I had been walking and I could not tell the time of day or evening anymore. I stopped for a brief, terrified rest and wished I had thought to bring food or, at least, water along. I glared at the useless floating libram, accusingly. It had no response to my blame and could do nothing for my hunger and diminishing physical strength. Was that true? I took hold of it and drawing it nearer to me, I opened it. Only a faint glimmer appeared and only if one of the rare droplets of light in Creakwood’s gloom happened upon one of the book’s gilded characters. I stood to cast a Light cantrip and seconds later I was searching the book of Royal Magic for food conjuration. Now, obviously I had only been burned by this book so far and the idea of performing another spell from it at this point actually formed in my stomach a little brick of fear and loathing but I was desperate, lost and alone and I was out of ideas.
“Nourish” was the name of the spell I found. I could find none better suited to the task of feeding me than that. I chose a small patch of relatively flat forest floor and began the casting. Its movements were complex and the timing incredibly subtle but I was just about up to the task. I finished the performance and brought into being a tendril of green-tinged energy which escaped from my cupped hands, seeming to drip through them and into the ground at my feet. Rumbling emanated gently from the earth beneath me so I stepped back, just in time, as it happens, to watch a bush grow before me from a sapling to the height of a tall man in a matter of seconds. It was laden with an abundance of large, heavy, red and orange fruit the like of which I had never before seen. Green illumination glowed out of the plant’s leaves away from which the trees in its vicinity drew. The branches above creaked and groaned with such a racket that I was sure they would start to break and fall all around me. Instead, a gap formed in the canopy and honest sunlight streamed through rendering my meagre Light sphere redundant. I stepped into the rays of sunlight and picked a fruit from the new grown bush. I bit into it savagely. Lightly citrus flavoured water poured into my mouth from the centre of the fruit while I chewed the soft mauve flesh which tasted much like the water and had the texture of a perfectly ripe pear. Water Fruit seemed the ideal name for them so that is what I called them. Success! Finally success to celebrate. I sat on the forest floor in the sunlight by the water-fruit bush and smiled to myself, one hand grasping a second fruit and the other resting lightly on the libram. “Perhaps,” I said aloud, “I shall survive this after all.” Even then, before I was aware of her existence, the Fae-Mother heard my words, spoken naively, like the child I was still. Back then I knew nothing of her, despite all the power in the pages beneath my left hand. Why was she paying me any attention then? I wonder often myself. I like to think that, just as the Creakwood did, she felt the potential power in me but I can see now that she desired power, certainly, but it was not the power inside me, it was that inside the Emperor’s Libram. In hindsight, she seems very short-sighted but I would only say that now because I know she is no longer spying on my words or my thoughts.

I had created the water-fruit bush which would feed and water me, it had even provided precious sunlight through its effect on the dry and cracking trees that stood about it. When I finished eating I began planning. Realising that I should try to discover more about my surroundings I set off on a walk around the perimeter of the newly created water-fruit clearing. My floating Light sphere bobbing along at my right shoulder I found a few useful things. The first and most important was a woodland stream. The stretch of it in the immediate vicinity was choked and swollen with reeds, dead tree limbs and long-ago fallen leaves but I thought I might know a spell or two which would make short work of that particular obstruction. I also came across an eminently climbable horse chestnut of a venerable age and a profusion of sky-reaching branches. Finally, I found signs of life, or, if you can’t put it that way exactly, signs of a human presence nearby: a graveyard. It was an ancient place; you could tell there had once been engravings on the stunted, rounded stones but they were so weathered and covered in lichen and moss that whatever the ancient mourners had wanted remembered of their loved ones for generations was now unrememberable. Perhaps this wood had once been no more than a grove on the outskirts of the cemetery. Maybe the people all abandoned the area or were killed. It is possible they were all enslaved by Fomorin invaders leaving their rotting ancestors’ last resting sites to become annexed by the trees, which once shaded the dead’s living visitors. I continued on my patrol of the area and found the last item of interest, the wreck of a shack. Damp and mould had had their way with the roofless emerald and black log cabin. It was home to a multitude of birds, bugs and rodents.

I returned to the water-fruit bush, looked about the clearing around it and decided that this was the place for me. To the average twelve year old, obviously, there would be nothing about any of my discoveries that would lead them to think this would be the place in all the world where they would want to live. No bed, no toys, no mother, no father, no blankets, no bread, no tea. No matter, thought I and looked to the book, still where I had left it, floating by the bush.

My first priority, since I already had food and water, was to attend to the cabin. I started with a simple Clean and Tidy cantrip, one of the first I had learned to help me in my work in my master’s house. It achieved little but the removal of the mould from the wooden walls, the weeding of extraneous growths and the clipping of the grass around its outskirts. The fallen-in roof would have to be replaced, a door attached, floors and walls repaired and brickwork rebuilt. It would take me a lot of work to complete all of these tasks. Not muscle-work, not leg-work, but brain-work. I sat on the step of the house and began. As I studied, raindrops started to drop as thick, round pearls through the canopy above, falling on the precious pages of the libram. I cast a quick Umbrella and then continued. It would not be the last time I sat on the front step of my new home and studied the Emperor’s book until the small hours of the morning, no, not by a long, long way.

Dragon Age Rules

Basics

So, it looks pretty straightforward as a system, if I am honest. The basics, at least. I do believe that, from what I have read in the past, there is one major innovation in the AGE system and I will get to that later. For now, let’s just get a grip of the basis of the whole thing, ability tests.

Ability tests

You need to roll an ability test to do any sort of action in the game. In general, you can try to do anything, even if you don’t have the appropriate ability focus, which is kind of like a skill or proficiency in D&D and similar games. Sometimes, the fiction of the game or the situation might require you to have a particular ability focus to even attempt a roll, but this seems to be the exception and not the rule.

Anyway, the way it works out is you roll 3d6 when you want to try to do something. One of these dice needs to be identified as the Dragon Die, more on that later. Then you add the ability you are rolling and another 2 if you have the right focus.

3d6 + Ability + 2 for Focus

Obviously, the intention is to roll high. The GM sets a Target Number depending on difficulty and circumstances. The higher that number is, the harder the action is. If you roll the Target Number or higher, you succeed. Simple enough.

They identify the Opposed Test as a separate type in the rules but essentially they work the same way, except, instead of having a Target Number, both characters roll their opposing ability tests to see who rolls higher. Also, if your scores are tied, you use the number on the Dragon Die to decide who wins.

It also makes it clear that you will need to use tests, in some situations, as if they are saving throws. So, you would make a Dexterity test to avoid falling off an unexpected cliff. That sort of thing.

There is a short section here on degrees of success. But, honestly, it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense and I would be loath to include it. Essentially, it seems to be a narrative tool, only. It allows you to show off how well you succeeded in a test, or how you only just scraped by. You do this by referring to the result on the Dragon Die. The higher the Dragon Die roll, the more spectacular the action. But, from my point of view, it’s still a success and, if you want to see how well a character did in their success, can’t you just look at the number you beat the Target Number by? (Since I wrote this, I was chatting with a mutual on Instagram, @otherstuffrpg about this very subject. They were a big fan of this mechanic! They felt it was a unique aspect of the rules that added a lot to the game. It might be one of those things that comes alive in play.)

Time and Actions

So, time is explicitly divided into Narrative Time and Action Time. It’s pretty much always Narrative Time until the Action starts, is more or less how they put it in the book. There’s not a lot to explore regarding Narrative Time, to be honest.

Action Time happens when you get into any scene that requires the rolling of initiative. Once that happens you are dealing with rounds. Each round is 15 seconds. Within a round you can take one Major Action and one Minor Action or two minor actions. There is a list of major and minor actions that are possible within a round. Major ones include stuff like All-out Attack, Heal, Melee Attack and Ranged Attack. Meanwhile, Minor Action examples are Aim, Guard Up, Ready and Press the Attack. I’m not going to get into the description of each and every action. Suffice it to say there is quite a lot of detail here. I imagine a cheat-sheet would be all but essential at the table to help players remember what they can do in a round and how each action works.

Initiative is sorted by everyone making a Dexterity (Initiative) roll. Ties are broken by the result on the Dragon Die and only PCs and major NPCs get their own individual initiative rolls. Minor NPCs act together in a group. You only roll initiative at the top of an encounter, not every turn.

Combat

I realise I already started the combat stuff above but that is the way it’s presented in the book. Also, it does suggest that the initiative and Action Time rules can be used in any situation that could be an action scene in a movie. You could lump chases, hunts, and other similar activities in there too.

Anyway, here’s how you do violence in Dragon Age:

  • Make and attack roll. That’s a test using the ability associated with your weapon type, Strength or Dexterity.
  • Add any bonuses from focuses, magic etc
  • Compare the result to your enemy’s Defense rating
  • If your roll is equal to or higher than that Defense rating, you hit! Well done!
  • Then you inflict damage. Everyone’s favourite part
  • You roll the damage dice of your weapon and add the relevant ability to it. This is usually Strength, but, interestingly, you add your Perception score to a ranged attack roll, rather than your Dexterity.
  • If your attack is Penetrating skip this step, otherwise, subtract your opponents armour rating from the damage roll
  • The result is the damage you do to the enemy’s Health

@Otherstuffrpg suggested an interesting house rule for damage, which I thought was a pretty fun way to speed up combat a little and beef up the Dragon Die. Instead of rolling damage for every hit, you take the result of the Dragon die and add a +4 for each damage die your weapon normally has. So, if you roll a 3 on your Dragon Die on your attack roll and you are using a longsword, which normally does 2d6 damage, you get 11 damage, 3 + 4 + 4 (plus whatever other miscellaneous bonuses you might have.) Sounds good, right?

There are a bunch of other rules around how you deal with dying characters, pulling killing plows and coups-de-grace but I am not going to get into them here. Most of them are the sorts of things you are more likely to tackle using your own judgement at as a GM anyway.

Stunts

This is the part I was most interested in getting to. It is also the mechanic that I feel provides the most uniqueness to the system, was I hinted at earlier.

Here, I am only referring to Combat Stunts but the game has Exploration, Roleplaying and Magic Stunts too, which is interesting.

Essentially, in combat, if you roll doubles on any of your dice in your attack roll, you get Stunt Points. You get a number of Stunt Points equal to the number on your Dragon Die, so, you want to roll high on that too. If you want to do a stunt, you have to use those points immediately or they disappear. Now, different stunts cost different numbers of points. There is a table of stunts and their SP costs.

You can see from the table that it includes some pretty cool little tricks and actions. I particularly like the Set Up one, that allows you to help another PC on the battlefield and Seize the Initiative, which means you literally move to the top of the initiative table.

But, when I first heard about stunts I was imagining something a lot more freeform. I guess, even when restricted to the items on this table, you are relatively free to describe how you achieve the results. I think I would almost certainly play stunts much looser at the table, allowing players to come up with their own stunts on the fly and assigning the required stunt points to what they are trying to do.

Healing

You can recover a few Health points by taking a Breather, like a five minute break, you can recover more by sleeping for a solid 6 hours or you can gain some back instantly by using the Heal action or the wizard spell of the same name.

Magic

I am skipping the chapters on focuses, talents, specialisations and equipment, mainly because I touched on them in the character creation post, but also because I just want to get to the section on Magic.

Magic in Dragon Age the video games, while not necessarily very different o to other games in how it is presented on screen, is such an interesting and integral part of the lore and story of the setting. With most mages being controlled by the Chantry, or church, due to their volatility and the potential for them to become possessed by demons and turned into violent abominations, you have a fascinating dynamic in place already. If you then throw in the apostate mages on the run for the chantry and their enforcers, the Templars, the existence of the Magocracy in the Tevinter Imperium and the fully enslaved and tightly controlled magic users of the Qunari, things get pretty explosive. It is always at the centre of the stories in Dragon Age games and I am hoping they have retained a lot of that flavour here.

The chapter on Magic does take quite a few pages to cement your understanding of the subject in the setting, which is good, although, once again, potentially a bit too much for the beginner.

It then gets into the rules, starting by suggesting several basic mage builds that equate largely to those from the video games, Creation Mage, Entropy Mage, Spirit Mage etc. These are essentially just the selection of three spells that you should start off with if you have a preference for the type of magic you would like your mage to cast.

Mana

We then get into Mana Points. Once again, I got into this a little during character creation. A mage gets a 10 + Magic + 1d6 MP to start. You have to spend MP to cast spells. Each spell has a set cost but this cost can be increased if you are wearing armour, the heavier the armour, the higher the cost. Once you run out of MP, you are done casting spells until you recover some. Resting/meditation or sleeping will regain you some or all of your MP. Pretty straightforward there.

Casting Spells

You have to make a Magic ability test to cast any spell. Every spell will have a Target Number in the spell block and you have to hit that number or the spell fizzles, taking your mana with it. This seems pretty rough. You only have so many MP and even if your spell fails you lose them. This smacks of the spell casting rules in Dungeon Crawl Classics. There are even a number of tables in here describing specific Spell Stunts and Magical Mishaps that might happen depending on the results of your rolls. Magical Mishaps happen on a failed casting roll where the Dragon Die shows a 1. Here’s the table:

You can see there, that the mage risks becoming an abomination on a roll of 6!

Spellpower

This is another one of those rules that makes me wonder why they have bothered with it. Some spells will require a character to make a test against your Spellpower. Now your Spellpower is calculated like this:

10 + Magic + Focus (if applicable)

So, it is not a constant, like a D&D magic user’s Spell Save DC. What I don’t understand is, why not just use the roll you made to cast the spell and make your opponent roll against that? This whole Spellpower business seems like an unnecessary mechanic.

Spell Stunts

These work just like Combat Stunts. If you roll doubles on your spell casting test, you get the number of spell stunt points that shows on the Dragon Die. You have to use them straight away and you do so by spending them according to the cost of the spell stunt. See the table below:

I really like Fast Casting and Imposing Casting. No surprise really since they are the most powerful.

There are also Spell Stunt tables for each type of magic, like Creation, Primal, Spirit etc. And, if you want, you can include the optional Advanced Spell Stunts but only at higher levels.

I like the stunts a lot. It feels like something really special that I could imagine players hoping and praying for sometimes. I can imagine the burst of excitement at the table whenever doubles are rolled!

Spells

The spells themselves, I am not going to get into. I think it’s enough to state that the spells accurately reflect those presented in the video games. As a piece of flavour and lore, I really appreciate that. Spells like, Death Magic, Crushing Prison, Frost Weapons and others are very evocative of the Dragon Age games for me so I am glad they have chosen to stick so closely to them.

Also, the most iconic of the magic specialisations in Dragon Age, Blood Magic, is very much an option here, but to emphasise its otherness, the Blood Magic spells have all been listed separately. They’re pretty horrific, most of them, too.

Although there is no level requirement for the spells, as such, many of them have another spell as a requirement. I like this as it will force mage players to take a certain path through the spell lists if they want powerful, top tier ones. Just like in the video games, once again.

Conclusion

So, thems the rules for Dragon Age, pretty much. They are not as crunchy as I was expecting given the size of the tome but there are definitely a few mechanics that I would probably just not use. I would also definitely consider @Otherstuffrpg’s home-brew damage rules.
I am a fan of the stunt mechanic overall, but I would probably be quite happy to allow a lot of improvisation of stunts at the table too.

I didn’t expect this, but getting to grips with the rules has made me excited to play it!

How about you, dear reader, have you ever played this game? Would you be interested to give it a try now that you know a bit more about the rules?

The Apprentice, Chapter 9

The Match-maker

What a good brother and friend! Maryk just wants his friend and his sister to be happy together forever. A laudable and romantic ambition, I think we can all agree. He wants to use his skills and abilities to allow love to flourish and happiness to reign! Perhaps he can even do enough good to wipe out the curse his short life has laboured beneath since his very birth. I’m sure it will all work out perfectly.

Chapter 9: The Consequences of Magic Potions

Our water had monster’s blood in it, although this was never verified by a visual inspection of the site, it is the general consensus, or, at least, the belief. No-one drank from it or fished from it; certainly no-one swam in it. A few brave boatmen fared the black waters but most people got no closer to it than the crumbling wooden bridge over it. It did not smell bad or feel strange to the touch and it even looked quite beautiful sometimes when the sunlight or moonlight struck it just so but everyone knew it could kill you.
I knew that but, also, I knew I could make it not kill you. I could do it, at least, I could now…not then, though.

Inevitably, Cobbles knew a man who ran a boat. He brought trade goods from Pitch Springs to Priest’s Point on the coast. In exchange for a day’s work, this man was willing to look the other way when Cobbles filled his canteen with poison water. This was the final ingredient. His love was only days away from embracing him now.
We met by the fountain in Saint Frackas’ Square and he handed me the canteen. “I’d like that back when you’re finished with its contents. I’ve had it since I was wee,” he said to me, as if he were not performing the single most important act in his life. “Of course, of course. It’s yours after all,” I replied as if I was not about to seal my fate. “So, how long?” he asked. “Perhaps two days; you shouldn’t rush these things, you know,” but I should have said three days or four, not two. “Fine, fine!” he said, “I can’t wait, eh? Primmy will be mine just like I’ve wanted all these months.” I nodded and shook his hand. “Oh!” he said as an afterthought and yanked a single hair from his curly head, “You need this too, right?” “It wouldn’t work at all without it, Cobb,” said I, taking the hair. We said our goodbyes and I went to stash the pitch water in my laboratory.

Later, I sat at the dinner table and discussed the events of the day with Mrs Blanintzi and Primmy, who beamed her happy smile at us both and spoke of her friend, Olka. Olka was in love with the baker’s lad but had a boil the size of a grape on the back of her neck. So, obviously, she couldn’t show an interest in the boy in case he should fumble across it when they were courting. “Courting!” said our governess, “There was no courting in my day. You young people have no morals. I should stay away from that Olka girl; she sounds like a tart. Courting! In my day you married the man your parents arranged for you and that was that. Courting didn’t come into it.”

I sat and smiled and enjoyed the company of my family. I wondered what it would be like in the house when Primula left to marry Hindryk (that’s Cobbles’ real name incase you’ve forgotten. I know I often did.) It would be odd but I thought I’d like to have the old place mostly to myself. Mrs Blanintzi, after all, wasn’t so bad. She had strict rules but was less strict in their enforcement.

That night I prepared the equipment to distill the poison out of the black water and began the process. It would take 36 hours by my calculation. I was off. I should have experimented on a small volume of the liquid first to be certain of my calculations. I should have given some to one of the many rats that were so easily caught in the cellars and gutters of the town to see it’s effect. I should, perhaps, have thought twice about the entire damned undertaking. Refusing to craft the potion for Cobbles at this point would have been cruel to him, certainly. I might have lost a friend over it. But looking back at it, I can see how much I might have, not just retained, but also gained. A whole life of learning and maybe even teaching, of respect from my peers and maybe even of those far above my own station. Master Gedholdt had met His Majesty, the King. He displayed a medal on his mantle. I could have been ten times the sorcerer that my master was. Instead, I made a love potion for my friend.

Two nights later, I took the ruby liquid which had resulted from the distillation of the Pitch Springs Water and mixed it with the other ingredients in a small cauldron I had for just such purposes. It should have been the colour of beets when it was finished, instead it was the colour of stout. I paid the colour no mind, trusting instead in my own expertise. I had never made a potion that did not work as it should. This was an indisputable fact of which I was very proud. So I bottled the stout-coloured elixir and went downstairs with it. My sister had just arrived home for dinner and was at the door shaking herself dry like a dog. The weather had been miserable all day. Sheets of rain and hail had been sweeping over the town since early morning. I had not been out in it as I had been busy with the potion and Master Gedholdt had not needed my services. I helped her off with her coat and hung it to dry by the fire. Surprised, she smiled at me and said, “What’s all this about, turnip-head?” she said with suspicion. “Why, Primmy! I don’t know what you mean!” I answered, all innocence. “You want something…” she was right of course. “Well, there was something small. I made something, a concoction I’m thinking of bottling and taking to the market next month…” I started. “And? What has that got to do with me?” “You’re too clever, sister of mine. I thought, since it might bring in some extra silver it would allow you to, perhaps, cut  the number of hours you have to toil for that old bat if it works out. But I need someone to test it first. Just to taste a bottle of it to see if folks would want to drink it.” Smile slackening, Primula asked, “what does it do?” Little did she know…”Do? Why, nothing, not really. It’s more of a savoury fancy. A beverage for those who would rather not become inebriated.” “Oh. Why would someone want that?” She asked “My good sister. Our family has been lucky enough not to have endured a religious education or upbringing but many are those worshippers who are forbidden the taste of liquor. Followers of Saint Kannock, for example, though not completely abstinent, are not permitted alcohol at the weekends. That is when I intend to sell my beverage outside their temple.”
“Smart,” said she, and took the bottle. The lot was gone in a nonce. She smacked her lips said, “Not terrible, brother,” swayed in place, groaned, “something, something’s wrong,” stumbled two paces through a little side table and towards the fireplace. I caught her just in time, preventing her immolation by only a fraction of an inch. We fell in a heap on the parlour floor and I was laughing, what a jolly joke she was playing on me! When I took a breath I realised… Primmy was not laughing, she lay on top of me not even moving, not even breathing. She had fallen face down and I could see her pretty hair all in a mess, duller than normal. I struggled out from under her and saw her right arm trapped uncomfortably beneath her and her legs stuck out at odd angles. I had to be sure. Of course, I knew what this was, but I had to be sure. Turning her was not easy. As I said, I was wasting away and my muscles were weaker, then, than when I was a six year old boy. But turn her, I did. The deep blue veins in her face and neck stood out as if the blood had tried to force itself out through her skin. The eyes in her pretty face were like great black pearls, glistening with a liquid light but the worst was her mouth. Her teeth had all become like shards of coal and her tongue, also black, protruded rudely from between them. She was dead and I had done it. I did weep, if I remember clearly, I did, but I do not recall wailing or crying. Silently, I took up the empty bottle of Love Potion and pocketed it, then I went downstairs to the kitchen and informed Mrs Blanintzi that something had happened to Primula. I thought only of Cobbles then, oddly. What would he do now that his love was dead and gone? Would he be alright? I followed the old woman upstairs, thoughts occupied by the plight of Cobbles all the while. The governess stopped and stooped and wailed over my sister’s still-warm corpse and I thought that Hindryk’s life would be ruined now. Mts Blanintzi ran into the square and I followed as if attached to her by a string. I looked around and saw him there, Cobbles looked at me and I knew that it was even worse than I had thought. He knew. Cobbles knew I had killed her.

No-one else knew what killed poor Primula. The town doctor looked at her but the best he could come up with was, “she was poisoned.” He was not incorrect of course, but he could not be any more specific. A letter was sent for my father to return immediately but he was far away on the borders of our country defending a fortress against an infidel foe. He might not have been able to return for weeks and essentially, it would have been too late for him to do anything. Perhaps if he had been there I might not have continued down the pitch black path I had laid in tomb-stones before me. Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. What is the point in considering such might-have-beens when the past is immutable and the future, for me, at least, forever ruined? At the time, I had only one thought for the future. I had the thought that if I was going to be a sorcerer then I should be able to gain from it, and so should Primula. You have guessed by now, of course, what was on my mind. I did not have the knowledge. I could not perform the spell, if it even existed, because I did not know it. I knew where it could be found, though, and I knew how to get it. I just hoped that Master Gedholdt had not heard of Primula’s death because, if he had, he would certainly prevent me from even entering his house. I had to go that very night. I was just lying awake in my bed, considering the problem, as I saw it, of my sister’s death and how to fix it. So, once I had hit upon the answer it made sense to go immediately.

I skulked for an hour beneath the tree in front of my Master’s house before the lamp light went out in the front window. He was finally off to bed. I saw the lamp snuffed out from my vantage point and wondered why Gedholdt did not simply use a light spell all the time. I waited another thirty minutes and then crept, black-clothed, to the window. It was an old one with a latch, which would come loose with a jiggle or by the simple manipulation of a magic hand. I cast the spell, whispering the words and performing the actions as untheatrically as possible (this is a difficult thing to achieve when performing magic. It is always a performance and so, usually requires grand movements and projected voice.) Once it was open, I climbed awkwardly through and into the front room. The book I was looking for was not where I expected it to be. I could not have foreseen this as I had never been in the Master’s house so late before. The Master’s current work was the study and translation of the “The Emperor’s Libram, Royal Magic” and whenever I had previously been to his house it was placed, open to a particular page or closed against prying eyes on a stand on his desk. He often spent eight or ten hours a day at the libram, whispering and memorising and making notes. I did not know that he moved it at night. I went to the strongbox in the kitchen. I was certain that’s where he would secure it. Gedholdt kept all his valuables in the strongbox, thinking, incorrectly, as it turned out, that if a thief came to rob a magician, he would not expect the valuables to be there. It was an unassuming but large box with a sturdy, but not magical, lock. I had taken great care in creeping through the house and slowly shifting open the door but I knew the box creaked unnaturally when it was opened or closed. I had no choice, of course, but I steeled myself for the possible repercussions of my next action. Everything up until this point, my master might have forgiven. Breaking into his house was one thing but the Emperor’s Libram was not only his most prized possession, it was also the most dangerous by an extremely wide margin. I did not hesitate long before casting the “Open” spell. The sturdy lock was helpless against the magical spell; I heard the click and then I pushed up the lid. Wood groaned, iron scraped and I gasped. I cast another spell, “Levitate” this time, and took the glittering gold book from its ineffectual hiding place beneath a pile of tea cloths. As I did so, I heard a disturbance upstairs. The groans which had woken my master were echoed by the groans he made in the floorboards. He yawned and said something to himself. I could hear him coming downstairs. I pushed the floating book before me and ran for the front door, heedless, now, of the noises I made. The footsteps on the stairs quickened but by the time I heard him reach the bottom I was gone.

Home again, I had to find the spell. I floated the book up to my lab where it occupied most of the free space. I sat cross-legged on the attic floor and studied. Knowing that Gedholdt would figure out soon enough who had performed the daring robbery, I worked as fast as I could. The wonders writhing restlessly on every page made it difficult to skip anything and I could finally see why my master seemed so obsessed with it. But there was just one spell that I needed. Just one. I was confident, once again, in my ability to accurately translate such ancient writings. The spell I was searching for would be called “Revive.” It took two hours but I discovered it near the back of the book in ink of red and black. The sun would soon be up, I had to move fast or no-one would ever believe that she had simply recovered from her injuries.

I had devised the story that I would tell to explain her revival, if, for some reason, I was questioned. She had not died, no, she had but fallen into a semblance of death, a coma-paralysis caused by whatever poison she had consumed. When I went to visit her body in the temple, that night, it had worn off. She awoke, groggy and ill, right enough, but alive!
I hurried to the Grand Temple of Mictus, Saint of Souls, where the dead were laid before burial, armed now with the knowledge that would make things alright. If only I had managed to do this before word had been sent to my father, I remember thinking, I might have saved him some heartache. He would be happy, still, to find her alive when he arrived and she and he would enjoy a pleasant family visit, instead. Ha!

The door to the temple was unlocked, as always, but there did not seem to be anyone around other than the dead. It was a long, high-ceilinged, marble and granite, grey and white space. The tiles beneath my feet caused my footsteps to echo maddeningly as I walked the aisle, guided by dim torchlight. My sister was not the only occupier of the altar that evening. Two more corpses flanked her, all three draped in red cotton sheets as tradition demanded. I looked at her and thought, how dead she looked. She did not look like my sister anymore, she looked like a thing, an object, no desires or worries or likes or dislikes or emotions or…well…life. A second-guess stayed my lips as I approached the corpse and set my body in the opening pose of the spell. Maybe she’s the lucky one, I thought, maybe she is the one to have escaped this world of pain and disappointment and suffering and toil. Then I thought again of Cobbles and his misery and his knowledge of my murder and I proceeded. It was a long spell, and I performed it for close to an hour. As I reached its final syllable and flicked my wrist with the last movement I heard a cock crow and then I heard the temple door creak open.

“What are you doing? What are you doing here? What are you doing to her, you little wraith? Haven’t you done enough, already? Haven’t we done enough!?” It was Cobbles, come to pay his respects and beg her forgiveness as well, of course. I lowered my arms and turned to face my friend as he ran towards me up the aisle. I shifted a step backwards and almost tripped over a rug. “Its alright!” I cried, “She, she’s not dead after all, she’s not, look!” I could hear her move behind me on the cold stone altar and I knew then that it had worked and that I had performed a miracle, that I was blessed, even. I watched my friend slow a little and, just before he had reached me, stop, looking, gaping at the miracle behind me. “What did you do, you little monster?” he breathed. Finally, I looked and realised that it had been no miracle, it was yet another curse I had lumbered myself with. Primula, still wearing her red cotton sheet had slipped off the slab she had occupied and begun to shamble towards Cobbles, arms bent at the elbow, hands pointing in his general direction, eyes, still black as coal, rolled back in her head and mouth hanging open limply. There was that slug-like tongue sticking straight out and around it came the sound, a groan and a scream in one, high pitched and low at the same time, echoing out through a jagged cave of a blackened mouth. Her pallor had not changed from the time I entered the temple, she was grey and blue and black in splotches and her veins still protruded startlingly from the skin of her face and neck and now her hands and her feet too. Nor was she alone. Her two altar mates had risen now also, one a burly corpse of a man who seemed to have encountered some sort of agricultural accident as he was missing his left arm from the shoulder down. His colouring was more red and pink with blue spots but he, too, was black around the stump of his lost arm. The other one was a child no more than six years of age. A girl I think, though it was difficult to tell. The corpse presented nothing more than a burnt and ruined face, lipless, lidless and hairless, its unsheathed teeth chattered horribly as it worked its charred jaw.

I stumbled away from them, Cobbles and his opinions and his troubles vanished from my mind but my feet had lost all sense and I fell backwards onto the tiled floor, I hit it hard, jarring my shoulder and knocking my head to momentarily stun myself. Despite this, I saw what happened when they got to Cobbles. He had, perhaps, been paralysed by fear and disgust at my actions. Finally, my friend felt the embrace of my sister, not-so-pretty Primmy now. She kissed him and he screamed as she came away from his face with a sliver of it in her teeth. The others surrounded him then and I looked away as he screamed horribly for another ten seconds or ten minutes, I don’t know. When it was over, I was left, still on the floor with the blood of my friend, Hindryk, pooling about me. My walking corpses had gone, they had left me alone and gone out into the town. I took off my gore-soaked jacket and threw it over Cobbles’ grisly remains, then I ran out into the Pitch Springs dawn to follow the trail of blood. Unfortunately, they had split up. What could I do anyway? I was just a boy still and all of my skills were failing me. I had killed my sister with a magic potion and then revived her to a vile state of undeath along with two others. They were all, no doubt, decent people who did not deserve this treatment. Everything I did to try to fix things only exacerbated my problems or created brand new ones. It was time I stopped. It was time I left.

Decision made, I ran to our narrow house on Saint Frackas’ Square, retrieved the Libram and ran to the bridge over the accursed pitch water and left Pitch Springs behind for good, or so I thought.

Dragon Age Character Creation

Dragon AGE

I’ve recently been playing through Dragon Age Origins again. It’s been a long time since I have played that particular game although, I have played a lot of Inquisition and even Dragon Age II since then. Playing Origins has put me in a nostalgic frame of mind but also, I thought it might be a good incentive to try something new, TTRPG-wise. The Dragon Age RPG has been out for some time, about ten years I think. Green Ronin published it and it is based on the AGE (Adventure Game Engine,) which is maybe better known for being used by their Fantasy AGE game. I got both of those on a Bundle of Holding years ago but have never even gotten around to reading them. So, I asked in the Tables and Tales discord if anyone would be interested in trying the Dragon Age RPG and I was surprised and delighted to discover that I am not the only DA fan in the community!

If I needed an excuse, I could also say this is all in preparation for the new DA game, “Veilguard,” which is due out soon. But, honestly, it has more to do with replaying the old game than waiting for the new one.

Anyway, I have had some decent success in getting to know new systems by creating characters on here in recent posts, so I thought I would do that again today. Off to Thedas with us!

The steps

So, I am doing this using the Dragon Age RPG Core Rulebook published in 2015. I have it in PDF format. I would like to start by praising it for having a comprehensive set of internal links from the table of contents. For a book of over 400 pages, this is invaluable.

So, what are the steps to creating a Dragon Age character? Having a quick look at them, there are similarities with the video games but with some flourishes and differences presented by the AGE system.

A screenshot of the Dragon Age Character Creation Steps table from the Daraon Age RPG core book. The table includes the 8 steps you need to complete to create a PC for the game.
A screenshot of the Dragon Age Character Creation Steps table from the Daraon Age RPG core book. The table includes the 8 steps you need to complete to create a PC for the game.

As you can see from the screenshot, the first step is coming up with your character concept. I quite like this as a starting point, although, I do wonder if it might be rather a tall first hurdle for some players. I often find myself coming to know the concept of my characters in other games during the process of creating them. But, let’s give the game and its designers the benefit of the doubt and go with it.

1. Step 1: Character concept

This section in the book urges you to go and read through Chapter 7: Welcome to Thedas, if you’re not terribly familiar with the setting, and maybe haven’t played the video games. Now, chapter 7 is almost fifty pages long and covers everything from the major nations and races to the cultural significance of the Dwarven Paragons. You would want to be pretty invested in the game before you ever start to read that whole thing, as interesting and even pleasurable as it might be to do so (the writing is not bad but the illustrations are very good indeed.) As I have played through all the games multiple times, and even stopped to read all the books I picked up off bookshelves and desks as I played, I feel like I am already well enough equipped to get away with not reading it before embarking on the character concept step here.

  • An adventurous youth who has finally found a way to escape their home.

That’s it, that’s the concept. I will say, I don’t think a thorough knowledge of the game’s setting is required to make this sort of thing up. Most of the example concepts they provide in the book are vague enough that they could belong in any traditional fantasy setting, in fact.

Step 2: Determine abilities

You’ve got a whopping eight abilities in this system: Communication, Constitution, Cunning, Dexterity, Magic, Perception, Strength and Willpower. Other than Perception and Communication these match up pretty well with the stats in Origins. We are rolling 3d6 for each one of these and then we record the modifier from the table below, not the sum of the dice, much like your average Borg game.

A screenshot of the Determining Abilities table from the Dragon Age RPG core book. It is a 3d6 table, which indicates what your starting ability score will be depanding on your roll. It goes from -3 to 4.
A screenshot of the Determining Abilities table from the Dragon Age RPG core book. It is a 3d6 table, which indicates what your starting ability score will be depanding on your roll. It goes from -3 to 4.

Communication: Rolled an 8 so that’s a score of 0
Constitution: Rolled a 13 so that’s a score of 2
Cunning: Another 13 for this one, so, 2 again
Dexterity: That’s a 10, which equates to a 1 on the table
Magic: I rolled a 12, so that is 2 yet again
Perception: Not wonderful. That’s a 6, which is another 0
Strength: A below average 9. Still, it gives me a 1
Willpower: That’s a 7 on the dice. And that gives me my third 0

The book does give options to either roll the scores and assign them to abilities as you see fit, or to do use point buy system instead. But, I think I will continue the tradition of randomising the process that I started way back in the OSE character creation post.

Step 3: Backgrounds

So, in this game, your choice of background also determines your race and has some pretty major mechanical effects, as well as the obvious cementing of your character concept from earlier. Here are the effects they generally have:

A screenshot of the list of features a PC's Background gives them in the Dragon Age RPG. These include ability score increses, ability focuses, race, class choices and languages.
A screenshot of the list of features a PC’s Background gives them in the Dragon Age RPG. These include ability score increses, ability focuses, race, class choices and languages.

Now, the book says nothing about rolling for your background randomly. In fact, I believe it encourages you to choose based on your original character concept and the ability scores you rolled. But I’m not here to play by the book (actually, that’s not true, really. I just enjoy the thrill of the roll!)

So, there are a total of thirty, 30, backgrounds (!) in the core book. It just so happens that I have a 30-sided die thanks to my flirtation with Dungeon Crawl Classics. So here we go!

That’s a 28! This means my character’s background will be:

Tevinter Laetan

And that is pretty cool! So, it means that I will necessarily take the mage class as the Laetans in Tevinter society are magic users from the mundane classes who are identified at a young age and trained to serve the Imperium. It fits quite nicely with my character concept, too. I can imagine a young Tevinter mage, disillusioned with the unfair system under which their own class of people toils while the upper class mages reap all the benefits. Not to mention the binding of so many elven slaves in general society.

Here are the benefits gained from this background.

  • +1 to Cunning – this makes my Cunning score 3 now!
  • One ability focus, either Communication (Deception,) or Cunning (Arcane Lore) – I rolled again on a d2 for this and got Cunning (Arcane Lore)
  • Languages – Tevinter and the Trade Tongue
  • Take the Mage class
  • Roll twice on the Tevinter Laetan table:
The Tevinter Laetan Benefit table from the Dragon Age RPG core book. It is a 2d6 table. Depending on wht you roll you will get a particular benefit such as +1 Consititution, Focus: Communication (Deception) and +1 Magic.
The Tevinter Laetan Benefit table from the Dragon Age RPG core book. It is a 2d6 table. Depending on wht you roll you will get a particular benefit such as +1 Consititution, Focus: Communication (Deception) and +1 Magic.

First roll – 11 Focus: Cunning (Cultural Lore)
Second roll – 9 Focus: Communication (Persuasion)

Step 4: Classes

A screenshot of the page from the Dragon Age core book that describes the Mage class. It includes an illustration of a femme human in red robes with long blonde hair, a staff with a blue stone on top, three bluish potions at her hip and some magical enegy emanating from her outstretched fingertips.
A screenshot of the page from the Dragon Age core book that describes the Mage class. It includes an illustration of a femme human in red robes with long blonde hair, a staff with a blue stone on top, three bluish potions at her hip and some magical enegy emanating from her outstretched fingertips.

This game, much like the video games, only has three classes:

  • Mage
  • Rogue
  • Warrior

But within these classes you have a selection of specialisation options. I often wonder that there is no Priest class in this relatively traditional fantasy world. They gave the healing duties to mages and that is one specialisation option you can take as a mage. You can’t take Bard as a class but if you are a Rogue, you can choose to specialise as a Bard. And Barbarian isn’t an option in the Class list, but Warriors can go down that sort of route if they want.

Anyway, all that is academic as I am required to choose the mage class due the background I rolled.

The Class section starts off with an explanation of the broadness of the classes as I said above and then tells us a little about character advancement. You start at Level 1 and can get up to Level 20. There are options for XP and milestone leveling and it explains how you improve with a new level. Suffice it to say, ability score improvement is one of the main ways you gain in power, but you also get more Health, new ability focuses (which I don’t understand yet,) new class powers and “stunt points” (which I also don’t understand yet.) I just know you start with 6 Stunt Points. Everybody does.

It’s important to note that you don’t get a specialization until level 6.

As a mage, my character starts with three spells but can’t wear armour or use many types of weapons.

They have three Primary Abilities (as do all classes.) For a mage that’s Cunning, Magic and Willpower. The first two are not bad for me but that last one is a 0. Oh well.

All the others are Secondary Abilities.

Starting health is 20 + Con + 1d6. I rolled a 5 so that means it’s 27! Not too shabby.

My Weapon Groups are Brawling and Staves.

At Level 1, my Class Powers are

  • Arcane Lance, which means I can send a burst of magical energy from a staff
  • Magic Training allows me to cast spells. Here are the spells I’ve got:
    • Arcane Bolt
    • Arcane Shield
    • Daze
  • Mana Points. I start with 10 + Magic + 1d6. That’s a 4 on the d6 so a total of 16.
  • Starting Talent. I choose one talent from Chirurgy, Linguistics and Lore. Can’t get Chirurgy because it has a requirement that I don’t have. Gonna go for Lore, which seems the most generally useful.

Step 5: Equipment

You don’t get a lot to start with to be honest. I’ve got a backpack, some traveling clothes and a water skin as well as a staff and another weapon. I can only use staves or Brawling weapons. The Staves group includes clubs and morning-stars, I guess I’ll take a morning star then!
I also get 50 + 3d6 silver pieces to buy other gear. I rolled 10 on the 3d6. So that’s 60 silver.

I guess I’ll pick up a bedroll for 10 sp and a blanket for 6 sp. I’m not going to get into any more shopping right now.

Step 6: Defense and Speed

Your Defense score is, unsurprisingly, a measure of how hard it is to hit your character. It is 10 + Dex + Shield Bonus (if you have one.) So, that’s an 11 for me.

You can move up to a number of yards equal to your Speed when taking move actions. For a human, that’s 10 + Dex – Armour Penalty. I don’t have any armour so that’s not an issue. So essentially my Speed and Defense are the same, 11.

Step 7: Name

They have a long list of sample names in the book. Not just for Dwarves, Elves, Qunari and Humans but for the full variety of cultures and backgrounds (actually this mainly applies to the various human cultures) that they might come from. First, I need to decide what this character’s pronouns might be. I think I will go with he/him this time. As a Tevinter character, I can choose from some pretty cool names, including Dorian, Florian and Ether. But I have decided to go with Amatus. Amatus the Tevinter Laetan Mage.

Step 8: Goals and Ties

I like that they have included this step in character creation. Just go and take a look at my Motivation post to see why I think that, at least about Goals.
Anyway, I have to pick three Goals, a mix of long a shorter term ones.

  • Find the only friend I ever knew, an Elf named, Adanna, who was once a slave who belonged to his family in Tevinter, but escaped to Ferelden a year ago.
  • Try to make a name as an adventurer in Ferelden while staying out of the hands of the Templars.
  • To earn some coin and find some companions.

The other part of this is the Ties part. Now this specifically refers to other PCs. Since I don’t have any of those, I’ll have to skip that part.

I think I will have to do another post on the general AGE system and particularly how it relates to this game as there are still several elements that are a mystery to me but I feel like I have gone on long enough for one post.

The Apprentice, Chapter 8

Origin stories

Find the other chapters here.

I like an origin story with a little bit to it. A lot of place names are pretty dull. I come from a place called Sligo, Sligeach in Irish. It means “shelly place.” And, yep, it is. No mystery there. And maybe Pitch Springs got its name from the unnatural depth of the river at the location of the town or maybe the colour of the earth was so dark below the river that it made the waters seem black. But, actually, there’s a far more interesting tale behind it…

Chapter 8: The Story of the Naming of Pitch Springs

Pitch Springs had not always been named such. In fact there is a story attached to its renaming which has fascinated me since I first heard it. Many now say that the tale is nothing more than a bucket of bull’s manure but I am certain there are nuggets in it, even still, of truth or half-truth at least. I will relate here the Story of the Naming of Pitch Springs

Many years ago, in the village of Brightwash the mayor, a man of great girth and booming voice named Moltotzi, decided to build a series of mills along the riverside in and around the town. This would be of great benefit to the people of Brightwash and provide much-needed employment for several of the younger men who had been born too late to inherit any land and too stupid to study something worthwhile. The mills were really very popular. The town became famous for the fine bread flour it produced. Brightwash began to prosper and so did Mayor Moltotzi. He was hailed as a miracle-worker. The young men who found jobs at the mills soon found themselves prosperous enough to take wives and build houses of their own. Before long, nature took its course and lots of little would-be mill-workers came into the world. The village grew and Moltotzi said it was time they changed the name. Brightwash became Milltown and felt just a little bit darker.

Now, the folk of Milltown had always lived on the banks of the sparkling River Giarri so stories of the river’s odder inhabitants had been passed down for generations. Occasionally, a farmer making a delivery in the early gloom of morning or a sot wending his way home in the late black of night might report ed that they had seen one of them lurking or leaping in the middle of the deep river, sylkies; beasts that could take human form. While immersed in the river’s silvery mirror waters they appeared as nothing more than otters, remarkable only in their exceptional size but on the occasions when they left the river they were transformed into short, dark-haired men and women with deep black eyes. It was said that they survived on the bounty of the river itself: its fish and weeds and the plants of the river banks; so they did not interfere with the doings of the people of the town. Well, except in one very serious respect: supposedly they kidnapped young children. It was said that they did not procreate in the same way that people and animals did, you see, due to the fact that they were a magical species which were left over from the ancient times of the Fomorin Empire. So, to make more little sylkies they had no choice but to draw from the population of humans in their area.

The people of the town did not, at first, realise what was occurring. Their children simply disappeared from their beds. It was thought to be the evil work of some wicked man but there was never any evidence of that found at the homes of the disappeared. One father, one of the newly married mill workers named Davus was not willing to let his two year old son, Krish, go the same way as the dozen others taken from his neighbours. He determined to stand watch all night every night, if necessary, to find out who was responsible for these outrageous abductions, and to kill them. Darkened by night and partially hidden behind a curtain in their bedroom, he sat as Krish slumbered in his cot. His wife, Yolanna, slept in the bed next to the cot. He fought off sleep all night with a concoction prepared by the wise woman of the town (I often wonder if Aggie was this old.) The first night passed by without exceptional incident as did the second but on the third, Davus was sitting there behind his curtain, clutching the spade he intended as a weapon, when the silhouette of a darkened, naked woman slipped, soundlessly through the window, even as he watched. He did not act immediately, but paused to determine the intentions of the intruder. The little, hairy woman skulked to the edge of the cot, looked in, reached down. He burst from his place of hiding, thrusting the point of the spade like a spearhead at the neck of the kidnapper. A sylkie is not a defenceless creature, however, and is swift as an adder when attacked. This one sidestepped Davus’ effort and screaming like a cat, flipped out of the still open window. The whole house was awake now, Yolanna and Krish crying in startled horror. Davus vaulted through the window and made chase, raising a hue and cry as he went: “Awake, awake now!” He shouted, “Enemies here! Enemies! Up Milltown, Up! Up!” He whooped and hollered all the way to the river until half the town had come out of their houses and onto the streets. It was enough to cause the would-be kidnapper to be trapped. the sylkie, only strides from the safety of her river home found a wall of Milltowners blocking her path. The surrounding enemies made her crouch into a defensive position and watch as Davus came on, spade twirling in his hands as he did.

“Stop!” Cried the woman, in a gurgling bark. She held her hands out to Davus who smacked one of them with the flat of his spinning spade. She yelped and squealed in pain and stuck two of her bruised fingers in her mouth. “Where are our children?” asked Davus. “No children in the river! Just pups!” she garbled, fingers still mouth-bound. Davus’ spade spun and whirled about and then it stretched from his hands and struck her in the right knee. The sylkie woman went down and wailed terribly. “Where are our children, monster?” Shouted her tormentor now. “No children in river…just…pups,” she managed, whining and shaking all the while. Davus did not accept her answer. Had he not seen her attempt to take the child from his cot under his very nose? Had she not confessed by simply being? As if someone else had decided to voice his own thoughts, a shout came from the crowd, “You’re a sylkie, you can’t be trusted! That’s what you do! You take children and spirit ‘em away under the water. You have my Mikel! You have him down there!” The Sylkie fell to her knees as if struck again and growled, “No! We have pups. Not want your children. Not for the river, not for us, for the mayor!” Davus paused, his interest piqued. He had long been suspicious of the mayor and his ever-growing palace with its ever heightening walls in the centre of old town. He thought him a venal and greedy glutton but he could not imagine that he would have something to do with the disappearance of all those children, eleven in all now. “The mayor?” he asked, using the spade to support him as he knelt down beside the bruised and pathetic sylkie, “what about the mayor? Tell me n-”

“What’s all this, here!” The voice was unmistakable. The mayor had won elections based entirely on the strength, depth and timbre of his voice. Many claimed it had persuasive powers. Some said they had been hypnotised by the merest greeting from the man. Davus felt the reverberations of the mayor’s famous vocal cords in his own breastbone. He turned, and there the man was, dressed as if for the hunt, enormous red jacket over cream waistcoat, leather jodhpurs. He held a crossbow: Mayor Moltotzi. The mayor parted the crowd like so many chickens and came through to stand beside Davus. “Your Honour, I caught this sylkie trying to take my child, Krish. I chased her out and woke up the town.” “Yes, yes, good man…” “Davus, Mayor, it’s Davus.” “Yes, yes, I know that. Now, let’s just have a look. Well, she is a beastly looking whelp and no mistake. Still, how do you know she’s one of these river-dwellers? Hmm?” The mayor was questioning Davus but his reply came from the crowd of townspeople which had expanded till almost everyone was there, “She tried to take his lad! She’s a demon!” There was a rowdy chorus of agreement from the rest of the assemblage. “Indeed? A demon, well th-” “No!” interrupted the injured woman on the ground and attempted to crawl away. “It was you, you, you. Monster! Monster! You, monster mayor! You made us, you!”
A stone flew from the back of the crowd, hitting the sylkie woman square in the nose and knocking her back to the ground; another came from closer to the front and in no time the crowd was a mob and the stones flew freely. Davus ducked and covered his head with the blade of his spade and crawled away from what had just become a lynching. creeping away, wanting nothing to do with it, he hid and watched from the trees at the riverside until it was over and the town had gone home. Then he emerged and slumped to the spot where lay, not a woman, but the carcass of a large river otter, bleeding and battered almost beyond recognition. “What had she meant about the mayor?” he muttered to himself and then picked up the sylkie and brought her to the river.

A month passed; the abductions had stopped. The people of the town had forgotten all about the events of that night by the river. Well, everyone except Davus and his wife at least and Yolanna only because she had stayed where she was to look out for young Krish. He began to wonder if folk had been right about the mayor and the power in his voice. Everyone had turned so quickly. By the time they had started beating the poor woman they had sounded more like a pack of hyenas than the pleasant townsfolk he knew, no more words just howls and grunts and screams. And now…now the event may as well not have happened. He did not bring it up. He had been suspicious of the mayor since then and he was worried that there were agents amongst the Milltowners now. Making up his mind to go to the river and ask the sylkies what happened, and why, Davus made his excuses to his wife and went that very night.

It was just before midnight when he reached the riverside and he was reminded, uncomfortably of the night of the stoning. There was the stain still on the paving stones of the path to the jetty; there was the tree he had hidden behind; his shame hurried him along. He stood at the edge of the jetty and called, “Sylkie, sylkie, sylkie-o.” Over and over. He had brought an offering, of course, salted sardines. It had cost him a full day’s wages but he thought a sea fish would be a delicacy to river dwellers. The bells in the clock tower rang twice while he called and waited and introduced his bucket of fish to the river’s slow-flowing waters. His patience eventually bore fruit; a head bobbed out in the centre of the river. He had not seen it emerge and did not know how long it had been there by the time he finally spotted it but once he did, there was no mistaking it. Sleek, wet, shining dark, with moon-mirror eyes, the giant otter yawned, casually revealing the set of long glinting teeth in a jaw that he had heard could shatter the leg of a full grown man. He hesitated, but of course it was already too late. They would not let him turn around now. There were more heads bobbing out there, perhaps a dozen of them; one of them changed, becoming the head of a beardless youth. “Come in. Leave your clothing. Bring the fish.” He undressed clumsily and then, holding onto his bucket, jumped in. “Let the bucket go,” said the young sylkie man. Doing as he was told he watched the heads all submerge and then felt their wakes swirling about him below the surface. As they gathered and played with their food. He took a breath and dived. He could discern their dark bodies blur in dance about him; claws swiped at his face and missed by a whiskers’ breadth; a sideswipe almost surprised the air out of his lungs and then he was hoisted uncomfortably with little paw-hands in his oxters and dragged swifter than any man has ever swum in water. His eyes were forced closed by the pressure of the water on them and he kept his arms and legs as straight as he could so they didn’t catch on anything. They swam him for far too long.

Lungs burning and underarms aching he emerged finally from the water. His surrogate swimmers chucked him unceremoniously out of the water and onto the riverbank. Coughs wracked his chest and head for a few minutes and he spat up river weed and tiddlers. When he looked up there was a scrubbing brush-bearded man before him, dressed only in filthy torn britches and a sackcloth shirt.
“What?” Dared this sylkie wise man. “I was there…” “Where?” The man’s face betrayed a deep impatience. “When your woman died, I was there. I was one of them,” confession felt good, “I caught her.” The strike came too fast for Davus to see but he screamed when it came. Blood ran freely down his face from the four long slices made by the sylkie’s claws. Hand to face, he pushed on it to try and stop the bleeding. When he looked back at the man, it was as though he had never moved. “I deserve worse,” he said. “Did you come for worse? For punishment? We could do that but it would do our kind no good. It would make our lives much more difficult. No. Why did you come?” said the elder. “I came to ask you about Mayor Moltotzi. Your woman said the children were for him, not for you.” Davus’ voice was thick with his own blood, he spat some out and looked at the man again. He said nothing. “You don’t steal children to make them into sylkies, do you? You don’t kidnap them so you can have your own young. Am I wrong? You know what people think of you. I can see to it that they learn the truth. Just help me discover it!” The old sylkie hawked and spat a black gob into the mud. “The mayor is an evil thing. Not a man. Not him. Looks like it but so do I, eh? No, not a man. It’s name is Mulloch. It is here to feed. It eats usually sheeps and goats and rabbits and birds but once every month it wants a little one. ‘Give us human ones,’ it says, ‘and I’ll let you keep your pups.” Davus was aghast. “He knew, didn’t he, that we would all blame the sylkies for this? We are all so sure that sylkies take our wee ones for their own that we wouldn’t even think of another culprit. That’s what I believed but I needed proof as well…and then I found your woman in my house that night. The Mayor was able to use that discovery to deflect the blame onto you and your people.” The sylkie elder nodded curtly. “We will be leaving here. We have lived here in this river for many birthings but the mills hurt the water and they hurt our pups. Three have been sucked into them and killed already. They are too young to know the dangers and we want our children to roam free in their own homes. But I do not want to go until I know that Mulloch is no more.” The elder held out his long nailed hand to Davus and Davus held out his. They shook and and agreed. “That bastard will die. I will make certain of it.”

Davus was not a warrior; he was not an assassin; he had no magical powers, but he had a desire for true justice and the will to achieve it. His adversary was the most powerful man in the town and extremely popular with the citizens of Milltown. Also, he lived in a fortress. But, he had his weaknesses. He had a passion for the hunt and spent much of his time tracking and shooting game with his hounds. A retinue always accompanied him on these hunts since he could not be expected to fetch the kill or cook his own food while out. Also, he needed a squire, a stablehand and even a coachman if the hunt was to happen far from the town. Davus knew this about the Monstrous Mayor, as he began to think of him, because he had a friend who worked as a beater in this retinue, a friend he could replace. He would have to bide his time, though, and formulate his plan, not to mention waiting for his face to heal. Injuries like that never healed fully of course and he was scarred forever afterwards. His wife told him it added character and he earned the nickname, Scar.

Came the fateful day of the hunt. Davus replaced his friend in the role of beater and he joined the hunt at the gates of the mayoral palace in the centre of town. He never even entered; he didn’t have to. Out came Moltotzi astride a huge dray horse, the biggest in the region, it was said. Davus kept his head low and sat astride his own plain pony, trying to stay out of sight. They were to go, that day, to the nearby Hills of Heather where the mayor would hunt grouse with his specially made crossbow. It was not a long ride to this place, just an hour from the town but it was very different: colder, wilder and wetter. There was a mist blanketing the hills when they arrived, poor weather for hunting. The mayor managed to bag just one grouse all morning. Davus he knew it was a sign and he knew an opportunity like this one would not come again. They stopped for lunch near the top of a long-dropping waterfall, the very source of the Giarri on which Milltown stood. The company camped near enough to the water for the cook to fetch it but not close enough to allow its noise to overwhelm conversation. As the other servants busied themselves around the fire, Davus snuck off and planted something near the mayor, just close enough for him to see it from the corner of his eye, a feather. It was one of enormous length and had been part of a fan, once gifted to Yolanna by her mother. “What’s this?” said Moltotzi when he spotted the feather and, grabbing his crossbow, went to get a closer look. He picked it up and marvelled that it might have been dropped by a bird he had never before shot. He looked around for the beast only to discover, that’s right, another feather and another and another until the trail of them had wound him a zigzag as far as the waterfall. He stood there at the cliff, looking around dumbly for the bird he had come for, crossbow cocked and raised. But there was no bird, there was only Scar. “For the children,” whispered Davus as he crept up behind the bulk of the monster. He calculated for a just a moment and then ran at the broad red-coated back of the mayor. He managed to stop himself from going over too, only by clutching the hardy heather on the edge of the cliff. Davus watched him disappear into the mist and heard his unearthly scream all the way to the bottom. No-one else did. The little retinue returned to the town after hours of searching the hills, assuming the mayor had wandered off in the mist and fallen over the cliff side. They were partly right. When they returned to the town they entered the mayor’s palace to see if he had somehow made his way back there. They searched it high and low and found no sign of him. What they did find shocked the whole town, well almost the whole town, Davus and Yolanna were not surprised when a secret dungeon was uncovered. It was littered with the bones of children and the truth was revealed to Milltown. Of course it was not called Milltown for much longer. Once the party had returned from the hills the waters of the bright Giarri had turned unaccountably dun and then dark and then black and they have stayed that way to this very day. Black as pitch is what they were. It was not the residents’ idea to rename the town again. No-one knew exactly who started it, in fact, but that’s when Milltown became Pitch Springs.

Non-standard Holidays

Celebrations

I’ve begun to realise recently that I would much prefer to celebrate a fictional or “made-up” holiday than a real one. At least a real western one. I have had to interrogate the reasons for that, of course. But, let me tell you, dear reader, it did not take me very long to hit upon the answers.

Religion is, naturally, the top reason. It’s been a long time since the church and I parted ways. We had a fundamental philosophical conflict that was irreconcilable. Anyway, as a result, I don’t feel I’m a part of the religious side of any of our really major holidays. Christmas and Easter are the ones I am thinking of but in Ireland, at least, there are plenty of other saints’ names attached to days throughout the year. Of course, I know that these holidays, and even some of the saints have been recycled from pagan ones by the church. Same with a lot of the traditions. I’m sure dominant religions have been doing that throughout history as a clever way to stamp their authority on a people or place. You can see it happening in real time to our big holidays too, of course, as they are co-opted by consumerism. The original meanings have become mixed up and diluted and lost. What even is the meaning of Christmas? (there’s a saccharine Christmas movie in there somewhere.)

The second reason is related to the first in that rampant consumerism is the focus of these big holidays that we tend to celebrate in the West. So, as diluted as the pagan purposes of the holidays have become, even the Christian meanings of more recent centuries have been co-opted by Black-Fridayism. These times, when families and communities come together, are often the most stressful and worrisome occasions for those struggling financially in the first place. It just doesn’t feel worth it…

So why not celebrate occasions where the meaning is as clear and sparkling as Caribbean waters, and as fun and uncomplicated as a Hobbit’s birthday party? And let’s not forget, themes worthy of really kick-ass RPGs.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Those of you have been around a couple of weeks might remember that I made a character using Pirate Borg a while back. That was by way of familiarising myself with the game, the setting, the character classes and the general rules. And all of that was in the service of a Talk Like a Pirate Day one-shot on September 19th.

I was the GM for this game so I never ended up using Isabella “Butcher” Fernando, the buccaneer I created for that other post. However, we did have another buccaneer in the party, recently returned from hell, where the devil didn’t want her, was Eliza “Bad Omen” Rackham. She made an incredible entrance (her player was unavoidably detained so she appeared about an hour and a half into the action.) As though rising from Davy Jones’ Locker, she emerged from he water by the other characters’ little row-boat and hoisted herself into it by grabbing their oars, shocking her companions who all knew she was dead. Eliza was, surprisingly enough, the most normal member of this cursed crew. As well as “Bad Omen,” we had a couple of skeletons, one a swashbuckler and one a zealot, a vampiric rapscallion and, a mutant great old one from another reality who also happened to be a sorcerer with a taste for human flesh. So, I decided to skip any town-based interactions with NPCs and start them off in medias res, facing down a British naval vessel who wanted to kill or capture at least three members of the small crew. Raymond, our vampire took the role of captain, despite being disadvantaged by the glaring Caribbean sunlight, while Jolly Roger, the Great Old One Mutant and our skeletons, All Bones McKeown and Hector blasted off broadsides.

After they escaped that fight, we did a smash cut to them rowing ashore, greeting the resurrected Eliza and then to the carved door of a lost temple in the jungles of Black Coral Bay. That’s the island presented in the core Pirate Borg book as a place to start your adventures. I took three of the dungeons (Shrine of the Nameless Skull, Sanctum of Nameless Blood and the Lake of the Nameless One, which are all a part of the larger Temple of the Nameless One but are distinct nonetheless) described in the book and used those for the one-shot. It might seem counterintuitive to use three dungeons where one would have been more than enough for a one-shot, but, for the Pirates of the Caribbean type theme and for the satisfaction it would bring, I thought it was important. So, I did the first dungeon entirely in montage, finally describing how the PCs figured out the way through the temple door and let play begin there. For, the second dungeon I took out all but two main rooms, putting several major items and encounters into those rooms instead. The third dungeon, I left in its entirety and I’m glad I did because it had so many cool moments. These were topped off with a bunch of curses handed out by an ancient golden idol in the hold of a sunken Spanish galleon in an underground lake, the skeletons regaining their flesh, and All Bones McKeown being eaten by the giant Cthulhoid monster from the home-dimension of Jolly Roger. The survivors escaped through a maze of flooded underground tunnels and emerged into the creepy and atmospheric Black Coral Reef.

I loved it. It was a very good time and I think the players liked it too. One of them announced that they would happily play a full campaign of Pirate Borg, in fact. Their roleplaying was fantastic, because, as game designer and mutual on Instagram, sean_f_smith recently commented on one of my posts “everyone knows how to play a pirate.” I was worried about the strangeness of the PCs at the start, but the madcap elements introduced by their weirdo characters only heightened the atmosphere. Add in some pirate tunes and a few glasses of grog and we had a whale of a time. 10/10, might just go back to it before next Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Bilbo and Frodo’s Birthday

Did you know that it was Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday on September 22nd? The Bagginses of Bag End? Well, I didn’t. Not until the day before at least (although, I’m sure a younger me would have known it.) Anyway, I got in the Discord for Tables and Tales, our local TTRPG community and requested a Lord of the Rings flavoured game. It was incredibly short notice but our resident Tolkienite, Isaac of Lost Path Publishing did not shirk. He suggested a one-shot of a scenario that came in the core rules of The One Ring 2E from Free League. In no time at all we had swords, bows and axes being proferred in the comments and a full fellowship was formed.

In fact, we had five players and Isaac in total so it was a very fun table. We started off, on the night, with a spot of light character creation. Now, you need a bit of time for this in The One Ring. It’s not as time-consuming as D&D 5E character creation but it’s somewhat more involved, than say, Pirate Borg. Even then, with Pirate Borg, we had plenty of prep time and we had all met for a session 0 online a few days before so everyone had their characters ready to go. Since I had given Isaac only a single night to pull this together, (sorry Isaac) we had to include it in the session. By this point, we already knew this was going to take longer than one night to get through but we were all alright with that.

Actually, by the time we all had out characters ready we still had plenty of time to get into “the Star of the Mist.” The scenario began with our Player Heroes meeting Gandalf in the Prancing Pony! How my nerdy heart swooned! Isaac, producing an Oscar worthy performance as Ian McKellen as the old wizard, sent us off on a quest into southern Eriador where some folk had been going missing.

Our party consisted of two Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, one of which was played by me. I said I was going to go full Nesbitt (as in Jimmy who played Bofur in the Hobbit movies) But I think I was more Belfast than that in the end. My guy is Frár, the Champion. The other dwarf is Berfa, a Treasure Hunter. We have a second Treasure Hunter, Porro, one of our two Hobbits. The second Hobbit is, Rollo, a Messenger and finally, our Barding, Dagstan, is a Warden. We set off into the wilds to find the source of the trouble and we managed to get a fair way into the scenario despite our time constraints. I don’t want to give anything away but it has Dwarves ruins, monsters in the water and a mysterious “she” who has so far remained unnamed. That’s a trio of Tolkien ticks right there.

As I said to the rest of the players, this session was special to me. It felt like the realisation of the dream of Tables and Tales; the ability to get a game together at a day’s notice for people to enjoy and to celebrate an important occasion, Bilbo’s onehundredandeleventh birthday!

I’m so looking forward to continuing this adventure. It had been a long time since any of us had played the system so there was a fair amount of scrabbling through the book for rules by all concerned. I feel like next time, we’ll know what we’re doing a lot better and, from recent experience, I find Free League games to pretty intuitive once you grasp the basics.

Other festivities

These are just the latest games played with a particular non-standard festival in mind. On May the Fourth, we played a Never Tell Me the Odds one-shot set during the events of Star Wars Episode Four, A New Hope. The PCs had to infiltrate the Death Star to rescue a certain Princess before the storm troopers got them, or indeed, before anyone else could rescue her!

Obviously, we are coming into the season for horror and spooky games as Halloween approaches. This is one holiday I can get behind. There are so many games that could suit this season that I am excited to start coming up with a few ideas.

How about you, dear reader, are there any occasions, events or holidays that you like to mark with a festive game? Let me know in the comments!

The Apprentice, Chapter 7

Making friends

Our protagonist is not, perhaps, the most gregarious of characters. He is bookish and strange and somewhat obsessive. But we all need a friend sometimes, don’t we? In today’s chapter, Maryk attempts to cement a new friendship with a little light alchemy. Should go fine.

Chapter 7: The Happiest Time of My Life

The two years I was apprenticed to Master Gedholdt were the happiest of my life. I treasured, still, the memories of my self-teaching on the farm but they were soon eclipsed when the true nature of my studies in the house of the sage became clear to me. I had had no inkling the real potential of magic. But I learned; I absorbed it like a soft white bread absorbs the honey spread over it. I had mastered the twenty four basic runes used in the writing of magic spells and the two hundred and eighty eight compound runes derived from each of them within the first six months, purely through my own studies. These continued night and day unless I was occupied in cleaning up after my master, eating or socialising with friends (left to my own devices, I would have forgone human contact in favour of books but Master Gedholdt insisted, “Magic can make you powerful and knowledge can make you wise but if you have no-one with whom to share these gifts, what is the purpose? Learning for the sake of knowledge, alone, is worse than pointless; it is a waste of a fine mind.” I did not understand this point of view. I thought that knowledge would allow me to help people whether they were aware of it or not. All I needed was to trust my own judgement, and certainly I did that, more so than anybody else’s.) By the end of the first year I could read and even write basic spells. Master Gedholdt would not allow me to cast even the most elementary of cantrips, however (I was sure I was more than capable and only the esteem in which I held my Master stayed my hand.) Six months after that the written Fomorin language gave up the last of its secrets to me. Though Master Gedholdt forbade me from studying the great tome which had brought the two of us together, the title of which, “Dansh no Tikka, Ekktu Nakkori,” I was now capable of translating as “The Emperor’s Libram, Royal Magic.”

In the six months that followed, I finally realised my ambition to cast real magical spells. I watched my Master cast a simple illumination spell one day after I had finished the chores he had set for me. He did it, he said, because the oil lamps were too dim for reading in the evenings, but he looked at me pointedly when he did it. I watched the choreography of hands and feet and listened carefully to the exact tone and inflection of each syllable as he spun the spell a second time. “Now, Apprentice, perhaps if you could master this trifle, it would save me the bother of having to do it for myself in the future,” he said as if setting me yet another chore. With that, he turned away and walked into the kitchen, claiming to have left his spectacles there (even though I had clearly seen them resting on top of his head.) It disappointed me a little when I realised that he had left, not to save me embarrassment if it did not work but to save his own eyesight if it worked too well. I duplicated my Master’s spell exactly and produced in the air above my head a sphere, perhaps two inches in diameter, glowing with a soft, creamy light, the like of which could never be produced by a flame. When Master Gedholdt realised it was safe, he re-entered the room and said, “Good. Not a bad little light. Perhaps next time you can make one that doesn’t follow you around, eh?”

After the Light spell I perfected the casting of many relatively risk free, minor spells: Simple Levitation; Munch’s Floating Hand; Warm; Animate Minor Object; Read; Throw Voice; Clean; Minor Umbrella and too many others to list here without your gracious patience being tested to its limits. I was a Magician. The type of magic I learned could often have been reproduced by a talented illusionist or charlatan. Still, I felt a suffusion of wonder at my own achievements. My Master informed me that, as a rule, practitioners spent the first six years of study simply amassing the knowledge required to sufficiently control the power that was to be theirs. “It seems that you came to me almost prepared for it, however. You knew instinctively the balance between delicacy and power and will be required to channel the thaumaturgical currents responsible for the acts of which we are capable. It is a rare gift. That is why I have allowed you to progress to the more practical level of study that you are now mastering.” He kept a much closer eye on my activities, after that, though, and he expressly forbade me to perform any magic outside the confines of his house. “Folk would not understand if they witnessed it. We keep our more arcane abilities an open secret so that people can ignore it if they choose and make use of our services if they wish. Be discreet.” I obeyed this order almost always. Occasionally, when I sat, exiled from the Land of Nod in my tiny laboratory I would conjure a Light to replace the smelly, flickering oil lamp but I never demonstrated my new found abilities in the presence of anyone else.

Meanwhile, my friendships developed with some of the other local children. To be honest, when I first attempted to cultivate relationships with them, it seemed like a waste of time. And yet, I soon discovered that it was good to have friends and confidantes. I told them nothing of my real studies of course but I revealed just enough of the exotic truth to whet their appetites for more of my company. One lad, in particular, sought me out as often as he could. His name was Hindryk Scheimatzi. He was the shoemaker’s son so he lived next door, right above his father’s shop. He had obviously earned the nickname, “Cobbles,” by virtue of his father’s noble profession. He enjoyed being called by this alias. Apparently it denoted some degree of intimacy between acquaintances. Cobbles was not a person of any special intelligence nor was he a dullard; in fact he was very funny. He loved to entertain me with his japes and acrobatics. His particular favourite trick was to run directly at a wall and then backflip off of it. It was impressive but difficult and dangerous so he saved that one until he was sure he was in full view of a gaggle of school girls or sometimes even young mothers. He was not fussy, as long as they were of the opposite sex and paying him attention. I was still quite young when he started this, just eleven years of age, and I had yet to develop an interest in the female of the species. Cobbles, though, was several years older (in fact, he was the same age as my sister) he even sported a wispy moustache, of which I liked to make fun but was secretly jealous.

Cobbles worshipped me, he came looking for me before I went to Master Gedholdt’s house every morning and met me outside his front door. Why? You might well ask. I was a diminutive, bookish young lad, who was developing a pallor comparable only to that of his Master. Cobbles, in contrast, was five years older than me, tall, athletic and moustachioed. The answer, of course, is that he befriended me to get closer to my sister. Still, there was mutual advantage in our friendship. For me, Cobbles kept the rest of the town’s youths off my back when I was clearly a prime target for them. For him, I provided a very good reason to spend time around Pretty Primula and to garner a great deal of advice on the likes and dislikes of my sister.

A budding relationship between the two of them, I felt, was of use to me. If it worked out, it would be handy to have someone like Cobbles around me in the future. I had once been robust and even strong but my muscle was wasting away, I assumed because of my constant studies and lack of healthy exercise. I was wrong about the reason for it of course but nevertheless, I knew that I would be requiring the services of a strapping lad as my physical powers waned.

There was a problem, of course; my stubborn sister. Her refusals of Cobbles’ affections became embarrassing even to me and his clumsy, slipshod advances made me cringe. For example, one evening Primmy was returning from her day’s work where she had clearly been beaten again. Her cheeks were plum with blood and bruise and she was wearing her hair as a veil in an attempt to disguise it. She encountered us in Saint Frackas’ Square where Cobbles was doing handstands on the edge of the old fountain while I watched from our front doorway in an attempt to stave of the encroaching cold. At the very scent of Primula (she had the constant, if not exactly unpleasant odour of soap about her) he launched himself off his perch and performed a backflip to come to a landing directly in her path. Primula had not noticed his acrobatic feats but was startled to find Cobbles blocking her way. She looked up and spoiled the curtain effect of her locks. She was smiling her big, dumb smile as usual but she reached up to cover her cheeks with her hands. This is what Cobbles said:
“Oh no! You don’t need to cover you face, that colour in your cheeks makes you look pretty.”
The perpetual smile dropped to a momentary scowl before she pushed past him, saying, “Hindryk, You don’t know how to talk to a girl!” I could not have uttered the sentence any more succinctly myself. She was upset with him from that point on. His pathetic, crushed expression was spelling disaster for my plans to keep him around. I had to do something more direct to help this potential relationship to flourish for it could most certainly not be left in the hands of the erstwhile Prince Charming.

Now, Master Gedholdt had forbidden me from using magical spells anywhere outside his house and I did not want to jeopardise the days of contentment and learning which I so treasured by committing that most cardinal of sins. You have already guessed it, no doubt: I would have no choice but to write some lines for Cobbles to use to win the heart of my sister and perhaps some simple verses of love poetry for him to recite outside her window of an evening to woo her and show her how much he cared…Absurd! I was no poet, though I could write a pleasant enough passage of prose, I do not think it is the sort of thing one’s lover would appreciate read aloud to them to fill them with desire, no. I decided instead to return to the teachings of my old Mistress, one of her stocks in trade, The Love Potion. My current Master knew nothing of my former alchemies so could not forbid it. Even if he had known, I do not feel that he would have had the right to prevent me from practicing this particular art.

My plan presented several difficulties. Firstly, the ingredients for a real Love Potion were expensive and difficult to track down. The potion Burnt Aggie used to pawn off on her unfortunate customers was not merely inferior quality. In fact, it produced an effect which no-one particularly wants in a lover (or at least I assume so, I am not what one might term experienced in these matters,) uncontrollable flatulence. Saint Valentzi’s Day in Pitch Springs was rivalled only by market day in the intensity of the odour infusing the town (although things had changed considerably in the years since the murderous harridan had burnt to the ground with her hut.) I was certain that my new recipe would achieve the desired results without any appreciable side effects. I would have to recruit Cobbles into my plan to procure the ingredients. I was reluctant to do this as Master Gedholdt had told me never to make my abilities known to others if it was avoidable but I felt I could trust Cobbles and I wanted him to trust me completely too. Of course, when I told him my intentions, he leapt at the opportunity and offered to use his own money to pay for the herbs, booze and gold needed for it. This was the greatest risk I had taken since I first went to spy on that contemptible sow, Aggie, when I thought there was a very good chance she might like me for dinner and possibly dessert too. I considered it very carefully. I compared both of those situations and decided that the Old Aggie business had gone about as well as it could have despite having ended up with her resembling an overcooked lamb joint. Of course, I was only interested in how things had turned out for me, not for her, and for me the results of my association with her had been overwhelmingly positive. I weighed the risks and came to the decision that it would be riskier for me in the long run if I were not to bring Cobbles into my confidence.

One Friday evening when I had finished some magical cleaning chores for the day in Master Gedholdt’s house. As I was leaving I spotted Cobbles climbing a tree in the Lord Belintzi Memorial Gardens. I walked over to the tree and looked up at him as he hung upside-down from a sturdy branch and told him, “I am an alchemist and I am going to make you a Love Potion so you can woo Primula.” He tumbled from the bough and broke the middle finger of his left hand.

Here is a list of the ingredients required to craft Maryk’s Love Potion:

  • The roasted heart of a rabbit
  • A leaf of gold
  • Essence of lover’s tears
  • The egg of a storm gannett (yolk only required)
  • A ring of silver
  • A sprig of honeyleaf
  • Four gooseberries
  • A single hair from the would-be lover’s head
  • A quart of Pitch Springs water

You can, perhaps, see why I needed the help of one somewhat more able-bodied than myself to obtain some of these items. I had made one of these potions only once before and that was when I had access to the well-stocked and arcane larder of Abominable Aggie. I had never had to think about where one would have to go to find the egg of a storm gannett, what one would have to do to retrieve the lover’s tears from which I could derive an essence. The most unattainable of all, of course, was the leaf of gold. I did not have money, Cobbles did not have money and I knew no-one to borrow it from who would not ask uncomfortable questions as to its necessity. I was going to bring up all of these issues with Cobbles before handing him the list. We were sitting on the fountain steps in our square where I had told him I would give him the list. He was looking at me with an hint of wonder, a hint of fear and a hint of anxious expectation. “Just give me the list, Maryk, don’t you worry about what’s on it. Whatever it is, I’ll get it, just you see. For Primmy, I’ll get it.” So, I handed it to him, saying simply, “Get me the lovers’ tears and I’ll distill them.” He nodded then asked hesitantly, “Which one’s honeyleaf, again?” I smiled and watched him cringe (I had become gaunt as a scarecrow and my teeth were beginning to yellow noticeably. I was starting to think my growing list of physical abnormalities had more to do with Aggie and her curse than my propensity to study indoors.) “I’ll show you the right herb. By the way, if you have to do…anything…anything to get some of those ingredients…don’t tell me about it, eh?” And he didn’t.

He brought each item to me as he came into them. Surprisingly, he brought me the tears first. I asked him how he obtained them so quickly.
“Kitten,” he said with a shrug as if the explanation were somehow obvious and I was to wave my hand at him and say, “Oh, Kitten! Of course. Why did I even ask?” Instead, I peered at him for a brief moment before finally asking, “Kitten..?”
“You don’t know her? She’s one of the whores that work over in front of the garrison most nights, you might have seen her there.” In truth, Cobbles often forgot about our age difference. “She was in school with me till a few years ago. Kitten’s not her real name, you know. She’s really called Hochti. You can see why she doesn’t go by that, rea-“
“I don’t need a whore’s entire biography, Cobbles,” I interrupted.
“‘Course you don’t. Anyway, she said she had this regular fella who always cries after they do the thing.” I laughed as I knew Cobbles would expect that.
“Let me guess. Was it because he loved her so dearly and could not have her to himself?”
“How did you…you really are clever, Maryk, you really are.” I said nothing, simply basked in his lightly won admiration. “Anyway, I gave her a couple of coins to purloin some of these tears and there we go. Nothing untoward or even unlawful really. He paid her for her time and so did I in a way.”

I told him he’d done well and then dismissed him. It was very late and I had to get the tears to my attic laboratory before too many of them evaporated. I thought about the man Cobbles told me of. He was so in love with a whore that he tortured himself by going to visit her regularly. He probably spent all his earnings on his visits, for which she cared nothing at all. He wept like a rejected schoolgirl because he knew he could have her as often as he could afford but she would never want to have him. Why would someone subject themselves to such base indignities in the name of an indefinable emotion that has only served to cause strife and mental anguish, wars and bar brawls and murder and tears? Songs compare the feeling to magic. Well, I had never experienced love but the feeling of magic, that was unlike all others. The stomach plunging of fear, the volcano of hate, the sweet nothing of happiness, all dull and distant compared to the emotion of magic. That was molten gold running in your veins and clouds lifted from your eyes and a light of such intensity and vitality that you are sure it could never go out of your mind until it does and you are reduced again to the status of animal and base human.

I completed the extraction of the essence of emotion from the tears and went to bed to lie down for an hour before dawn.
The next day I spoke to Master Gedholdt of the love my friend, Hindryk bore for my sister and how she did not reciprocate.
“It may surprise you to learn, Maryk my lad, that I myself, have never been much of a ladies’ man (is that the term?)” I feigned shock, he saw through my inept play-acting. “It’s alright, really. I expect that the time is now past for me, though I do still think of, well, of, uhm, of taking a wife, shall we say. Yes, I still think of it often. As you have seen, however, I do not often have the opportunity to meet other folk. My studies and my work occupy my time most exclusively. I have my regrets, Maryk. You do not have to have the same sort. You are still a little young, I know but you should never neglect that side of life. My father once told me that the love of a good woman is what truly makes a man. Of course this was before he was tried and imprisoned for attempting to actually make a man from the parts of others. Hopelessly insane, of course, Old Papa.” He continued talking about his family and the various insanities, obsessions and mental misbalancings which defined them for some time. Continuing to consider his words of advice about women, I did my chores, half listening to his stories, all of which I had heard many times before. Do not think this disrespectful; on the contrary, I had nothing but the utmost respect for my Master and his opinions and advice but I felt the advice was more like a library: there to be picked and chosen from rather than read from A to Z.

That evening Cobbles and I met again. He brought most of the rest of the ingredients I needed for the potion: the roasted rabbit heart, the leaf of gold (borrowed from the gilded cover of a book in the Master’s Library in the school), the silver ring (I did not ask), the honeyleaf sprig (he was able to find some of the potent herb in the mouth of an old mine shaft near the quarry) and the four gooseberries which were actually quite difficult to find as they were out of season (I would make do with dried ones, I told him.) The last item he revealed was a thing of real beauty, the egg of a storm gannett. It’s shell glistened in the light of the oil lamps on the square. It had a lustre like mother of pearl and the colour of an oil spill on the surface of a deep pool of still water and wherever the light struck it, it seemed to leave a lightning strike.
“I’m going to crack this open and use only the yolk!” I said.
“Tomorrow, I’ll fetch you the quart of Pitch Springs water and you will make me my Love Potion. Maryk, I’ll never be able to repay you for this,” said Cobbles.
“Don’t you worry about the payment, Cobb, just leave that to me,” I answered.

Case Closed

The suspects

I finished up two investigative scenarios in the last week or so. The experiences could not have been more different. I was the GM for one and a player in the other. They were in very different genres and systems too. I am going to have a go at dissecting them and trying to compare them, nonetheless.

D&D 5E – An Unexpected Wedding Invitation

I wrote a little about this short campaign here. At the time I wrote that, I didn’t even know it was a murder mystery, to be honest. It is a published, third-party 5E scenario so I could have looked it up, but I avoided reading anything about it online. Our wonderful DM was also the consummate host and was always wonderfully welcoming. She was a great DM too. We met in person over the space of eight sessions, more-or-less every two weeks. Our DM, who has run this scenario more than once previously, informed us afterwards that we took far longer to get through the scenario than other groups. Personally, I think that’s probably because of a couple of very important factors. Firstly, we had a fairly large group, five players and the DM. But, I think the second factor is what really pushed it so far beyond the normal length for the scenario. We were all chewing the scenery at every available opportunity. This group of players does not shy away from the first person, expansive, full-chested role-playing and it honestly does my withered heart good to see it every time we get together. We all had reasons for going ham as well. There was the promise of romance and, failing that, friendship. The possibility for court intrigue and drama was there as well. But, certain sections of the table were there to get their kisses in (in the infamous words of Lou Wilson.) The mystery was almost secondary to those folks.

As for the mystery itself; I won’t go into details. No spoilers except to say that there is a murder and we were not aware of that aspect going in. I don’t know if the DM advice is to keep that from the players until it happens but that was the case for us. Anyway, that was quite exciting actually. To discover there was an actual crime to figure out gave us all a shot in the arm! Up until then we had been essentially casing the wedding for curses and harassing the guests with weird, cryptic questions about the nature of one family’s bad luck. So, when we had a specific thing to investigate, it filled us with the sort of motivation that, I feel, the scenario failed to provide up to that point.

As for the investigation itself, it’s all about the NPCs in this adventure. That seems appropriate for a mystery game and this particular scenario was replete with well drawn NPCs who had distinct personalities, motivations, idiosyncrasies and voices (provided quite expertly by our DM.) You have the bride and groom, of course but you also have a cast of characters drawn mainly from the families on both sides. There are several set-piece scenes that are designed to allow the PCs to get to know the cast and our DM graciously provided us with portraits for all the main NPCs, hanging them on her DM screen. This was very helpful as there were a lot of them and without that constant visual aid, it would have been much harder to keep track. Our interactions with the NPCs seemed to give us positive or negative standing with them, leading to later conversations being more or less difficult for us.

The setting was integral, of course. An opulent country manse belonging to one of the families involved, surrounded by a generous estate on which they enjoyed hunting and picnicking. The adventure provided a couple of maps; more for reference than anything else as there was not a fight to be had at this affair.

As I said, I am not going into spoilers here about the murder, the suspects or the ending but there are a few things I can say. It seems as though the adventure comes with several prepared possible endings. The actions of the players, their standing with the major NPCs and their final pronouncement of who they figure did the murder all seemed to have an effect on that. This served to give it a slightly video-gamey feel, which was neither good nor bad but certainly leant a lot to the idea that everything was laid out in the adventure quite prescriptively.

Speaking of which, the actions of the PCs throughout felt a little restricted. This was purely a result of playing D&D 5E characters in a genre they were never meant to exist in. Few of our powers or abilities were of much use in this milieu and that felt a little frustrating at times.

Equally, there were several timed events that could not be prevented or changed in any real way by the PCs. Once again, this had the effect of making us feel more like spectators than active participants.

Questioning the NPCs, the most important part of the scenario, by far, and the only one where you could make inroads in your romantic or duelling ambitions, was difficult to say the least. Pretty much all of them could have done it, to be honest. That, by itself, is ok, but failing certain rolls here and there made the process feel fruitless at times. Without some mechanic to allow you to fail forward, it was always going to feel like this.

In the end, we failed to catch the killer. We fingered the wrong guy for the crime. This was due, in large part, to us interacting less with the killer than we might have, failing s couple of clutch rolls in interacting with them and the fact that we were left with too many potential culprits at the end that we couldn’t whittle down further with the evidence we had. Our failure was revealed to us in a sort of cut-scene right at the end. After all the effort we had put in, this felt like losing even though we had all enjoyed playing together around the table. The overall consensus from the players was that 5E was not the system for this scenario. It is not built for this sort of investigation and it led to an unsatisfying feeling from the result of the game even if we had a good time playing together, as we always do.

Blade Runner, Electric Dreams

Two blade runners posing like neon noir heroes in front of a stylised Wallace Corp ziggurat beneath the title of the Blade Runner Role Playing Game.
A photo of the front of my copy of the Blade Runner Start Set box.

I wrote a little about this game here while we were still playing it. At the time of writing that, we were only two sessions in and I was greatly looking forward to the next one. There were two players, playing Detective Novak and Fenna. We did this online, using Zoom and Roll20. It took five sessions of two and a half to three hours each. Having checked out other groups’ experiences with the same case file, I can say that’s about average. I could absolutely see it taking both less or more time since it would be dependent on how quickly the blade runners discover the key clues and how quickly they act.

Electric Dreams is also a pre-written scenario but, I think, importantly, it was produced by Free League as the intro to the Blade Runner RPG. There was never going to be a mismatch of scenario and system like we saw in An Unexpected Wedding Invitation. In fact, it felt as though this scenario was close to perfectly designed to bring players into the world and the system at the same time.

If you are a Blade Runner fan but not familiar with the Year Zero engine or RPGs in general, its got elements from the movies for you to geek out over and allow you to feel part of the megacity of LA by referencing the media you know and love. Meanwhile, it holds your hand through the early interactions with the mechanics, kicking things off with a few basic Observation and Manipulation rolls, teaching you that the more successes you get on your dice rolls, the better the result. As time goes on, the references to the movies remain strong, keeping the whole thing feeling like a natural continuation of or bridge between those stories and establishing a consistent and immersive tone and atmosphere. But you get more and more in-depth interactions with the rules as it introduces you to chase mechanics, combat, use of more complicated investigative techniques and character advancement.

And if you are an old hand at Free League’s signature rules engine, you will be good to go from the start. I was somewhere in between when we started playing. I am a big fan of Blade Runner and I have run Tales from the Loop before so I knew how the system worked well enough. But it was a long time since I had played it and I definitely had to look some rules up in play. This was generally fine, and didn’t take too long. What we also found, was that, once we looked up those rules once, we grokked them and didn’t have to keep referring to the rulebook, which was a refreshing change of pace for a group of players who have mainly only played D&D 5E together before (at least in recent years.)

Now, down to the scenario itself. As with the Wedding mystery, this was largely based around really well drawn NPCs, all of whom were potentially important to the plot. But, from the start, it felt as though the PCs knew who their main suspect was. They were rarely dissuaded from that notion, despite (or perhaps because of) the powers-that-be forcefully reminding them about the way they would like to see the investigation go. Since the characters were playing blade runners, cops in the LAPD, there were a number of NPCs that were there purely to back them up or chivvy them along. You had Coco, the medical examiner (who you also meet in Blade Runner 2049) and Deputy Chief Holden (who got his chest punctured in an interaction with Leon the replicant in Blade Runner) as well as any number of ad-libbed beat cops and the AI LAPD Despatch. The Wallace Corp is represented by one of their replicant executives who was immense fun to play. You also had a few NPCs that were witnesses and were never going to be anything but witnesses. The investigation was not designed to send the detectives off on the wrong path. There was no more than one red herring and that was there more to reinforce a theme than as a real way of derailing things.

What we found was that most of the sessions involved them trying to track the one suspect and discover their motivations and whereabouts. This led them into a web of corporate intrigue and moral dilemmas. That’s what Blade Runner should be about, of course, and Free League nailed that. The PCs were able to use the abilities of their pregenerated characters to do that pretty well. In fact, I would say that they were implausibly successful most of the time. On a couple of occasions they rolled so well that I felt compelled to reward them with information that would not, otherwise, have come up until later in the investigation. Moments like these allowed them to make incredibly effective leaps. What I liked about this scenario is that it allowed for that. There is a timeline of events that will happen at particular points of the investigation, but only if the PCs do nothing to prevent them. So, that doesn’t stop you moving them two steps forward, instead of the usual one. I think it actually encourages that sort of thing, in fact, as the timed events are generally pretty bad for the investigators or the other major characters.

We got an ending that was equal parts satisfying and open-ended, with the PCs making the moral, rather than the legal choice after the corporation took the law into its own hands one too many times. We might return to Novak and Fenna someday, maybe in the next published case file, Fiery Angels. The first one ran so well that I would definitely be confident to play the next one.

Conclusion

It is almost unfair to compare these two games, but it has been impossible for me to do anything else. In blade runner, you had a scenario where any outcome the PCs reached was likely to be satisfying and a system that supported the sort of game you were playing, investigative, character driven and darkly themed. In the other, the scenario felt a little too restrictive and was hampered further by a system that was never designed to support the investigative nature or the regency feel. I had fun with both, but I know where I would turn first if someone asked to play a mystery game.