Play Report 2

Campaign: Sly Hunter Keaton

Session: 2

Session Time: 3.5 Hours

System: Dungeon World

Perilous Encountered: 3

NPCs Encountered: 1

Fronts Visited: 1

New Player Character

We added a second PC for the second session.  When I was blabbing about the first play report on social media, a friend commented that he wanted to play Dungeon World after having read the rules some time ago.  I cleared it with Keaton’s player first, and we added him in.  The one of the reasons I started with only one player in the first place was because it makes scheduling easier, but hey, adding just one more couldn’t make thing too much worse for a game played over google hangouts and a spreadsheet.

So, we added Spark the Immolator to the game.  We worked up a quick backstory and reason for why he was sent to search for Keaton a week after he left for salt for the village.  We landed on Spark being a young mage from a nomadic group of fire worshipers who have had contact with Keaton’s village when they visit the volcanic mountains nearby on a semi regular basis.  When Sparks tribe comes into town and sees that many folks are missing, it is mentioned that Keaton hasn’t been seen in a week on an errand the should have taken 4 days tops.  Spark discovers Keaton sheltering with Peg Leg the Priest and a mule under a skiff only a day’s travel from the village at the mouth of the river, with serious wounds and no salt.

DM Prep

In preparation for the second session, I came up with a bunch more monsters, added factions to the GM map, and restructured my encounter tables.  The encounter tables are loosely based on this post from the blog Pencils & Paper.

2	powerful mystic	1	Surprise!
3	recurrent npc	2	Two encounters right on top of you
4	terrain encounter	3	Escape is impossible
5	outsider faction encounter	4	Approaching from middle distance
6	local faction encounter	5	Approaching another encounter
7	nothing	6	Spotted at a great distance
8	nothing
9	local beast encounter
10	weather event
11	tough monster / recurrent monster
12	dragon / extraplanar abomination

The idea is that you roll 2d6 of different colors.  The sum determines the type of encounter on the left, and the red d6 determines the proximity.  

Play Report

Spark discovers Keaton camped at the river mouth.  Spark decides to help Keaton on his errand for getting salt for his village’s winter prep, let’s face it, poor Keaton needs some help.  Spark and the Peg Leg Priest of the Ecclesterium DO NOT GET ALONG.  Keaton’s player loses interest in my explaining the relationship between the Immolators and the Ecclesterium, but he’s a surly, impatient fellow and wants to keep the game moving.  Fair enough.

They set sail for the port of Whalebone, hugging the coast to keep their barings in the thick fog that rolled in overnight, obscuring the blood moon that has risen every night since Samhain (Halloween).  Spark is concerned about these heavenly omens, but Keaton’s only concern is getting these barrels of salt and getting back to his village before the heavy snows come.  

Camping after a foggy day of sailing, Keaton notices an approaching group of silk hooded men on horseback leading chained prisoners along the coast in the night.  Keaton leaps into action against these hooded men, waking up Spark with a deafening whip crack at on the hooded men.  Odd thing, when Keaton’s whip tears open an artery under the man’s neck, he scables to collect his lifeblood into a brass goblet, and the other man carefully takes the filled goblet away from his expiring companion and places the goblet on the ground without spilling a drop, prayerfully muttering, “For the Countess.”

Spark leaps up from his sleep and causes his torch to explode in a bright flash, blinding the remaining hooded man, allowing Keaton to follow up with another devastating attack and ending the combat.  Spark investigate the men discovering a few intriguing facts: These men work in the Castle of the Countess of Bath, to the South; They have clay jugs filled with blood; They are leading these prisoners back to the Castle.  Our heroes free the prisoners and wake up Peg Leg, letting him take these folks and the horses wherever he will.   Spark and Keaton bid good riddance to the priest of the Ecclesterium, and rest the night away to set sail again in the morning.

They sail the rest of the way relatively free of incident.  The encounter table is was pacing out the excitement as intended.  They make it to within six miles of the port town, when they see a 50 foot tall dorsal fin cutting out of the top of a dark swell of water.  Spark abandons ship immediately and swims for the shore.  Keaton stand his ground to defend his skiff and mule, the only apparent means of returning home with his cargo.  But he recognizes the identity of the beast, by its time-space devouring mouth filled with spinning rows of razor sharp teeth.  He faces the All-Shark.  So he grabs his wallet and jumps ship too.  The mule and skiff are sucked into the gaping maw of the All-Shark, but our heroes manage to make it to shore safely, although they dropped several important possessions and supplies.  Wet, tired, and depleted, our heroes are within an easy walk of Whalebone as the sun sets.

Spark is weary of the town, knowing it to normally have its street lit up at night with whale oil lamps, but not even a candle burns in the town, apparently deserted.  As they step on the cobblestone streets of the vacant whaling town, the smell of rotting fish and garbage nearly causes them to dry heave.  Spark wants to see if his old candle maker friend is safe, and if he’ll give them a place to stay the night.  As they make their way to candle maker’s shop, they hear the faint echoing of a church choir and see a bright glow from the local Ecclesterium Chapel in the middle of town, and give it a wide berth.  There is a sign hung on the shop that reads, GONE SINGING.

Keaton says he’s going to get some barrels of salt, steal a boat from the pier, and leave.  He makes it very clear that he does give even a single shit about what is happening in this town and he just wants to leave with what he came for.  Spark help Keaton break into the general store to steal some salt and supplies and loads up a fishing boat, but then says he has to at least check on the chapel to see if his friend needs help.  I make it clear to Spark’s player that this is a sandbox game, and he won’t be spoiling the fun if decides not to go, but he is very curious about the chapel.

Keaton sighs and says he’ll help. He loots some bees wax to stuff their ears to avoid possible audio ensorcellment, and Keaton devises three basic hand singles that mean, “This is my friend,” and “I don’t care,” and “It’s time to leave.”  After a solid five minutes of hysterical laughing, I collect my composer and the heroes make their way to the chapel.

The can’t hear anything because of the beeswax, but they feel the vibrations of a multitude of voices as the get closer to the chapel.  Inside, the villagers are adored in sackcloth and ashes.  Many of them have collapsed where they’ve been standing and defecating, singing lamentations for the passed week.  In place of the ceiling is an open sky in the center of the eye of a swirling storm, and around storm or swaying circles of chanting angels.  The angles have been decapitated from the eyes up, and their open-top skulls spew smoke and ash into the storm around them.  Keaton readies his lude hand signals.

Spark sees his friend at the altar of the church, deep in throws of this horrid worship.  Rather than go deeper into the church tries to bring one of the closest worshipers out of the church, but they began to thrash violently, so Spark and Keaton just booked it back to the boat.  They started looting some of the boats nearby for whatever they could find, but a procession of singers started to march out towards them.  As their boat pulled away from them in the red moonlit night, the singers just marched into the sea and drown.  Our heroes made camp at an island six miles away and slept as peacefully as one might expect after such an ordeal.

The next morning they seat sail in their new boat, their supplies for Keaton’s village in hand, and sailed until they saw a longboat with red silk sails heading their direction, cutting off their path back to the river across the straight back to our heroes destination.  Keaton attempted to make a quarantine flag to frighten off the ominous vessel, but to no avail.  They saw five hooded men of the same sort from earlier that week, this time with ten chained rowers.  After our heroes ducked a salvo of blow darts, the hooded men threw some grapple hooks over to Keaton’s ship. Keaton ran up the grapple line like a ninja and started attacking the armored captain.  Spark dispatched a few men with fireballs and lept over to the enemy vessel.

Keaton had several very good rolls in combat and made quick work of the captain, kicking him into the chained rowers, so they could wrestle with him while Keaton aided Spark in his fight with the other hooded men, who were armed with daggers and brass goblets.  The captain managed to throw a trident into Keaton’s back before he was strangled to death by the rowers.  And this is where we ended the session.  They have tow boats, ten prisoners, a couple barrels of salt, and maybe two more days of travel back to Keaton’s village.  To be continued.

GM Wrap Up

The new table was a HUGE success! If I was to change anything about the table, I might have the non-red d6 determine attitude or mood of the encounter.  Using a 2d6 table is wonderful because you can incorporate frequency by designing encounter types that correspond to the bell curve of dice results.

Terrain encounters and weather events are neat, I need to retool them to make sure the are adding tension or obstacles to the game.  How does rain affect campfires, and how does that affect resting, etc. I’ll fix this for the next session. Should be easy.

The encounters with the Hooded Men from the Castle of Bath were both results of the “outsider faction” from the encounter table.  Adding factions to the map was a wonderful element to add as well, as it’s a way to generate curiosity in the world in a dynamic fashion. Now our heroes are very interested in what these hooded folks are up to!

I forgot to do end-of-session bonds stuff, just not used to it yet, but it’ll be easy to do first thing next session.

Also, we discovered that I calculated the PC’s starting HP incorrectly, so once we fixed that it freed our Immolator up to be more aggressive in combat.  If I have a major fault as a GM, it's that I don’t make my PC’s take enough damage.  So now that I know they aren’t as squishy, I’ll try to be more brave about that.

I’m thinking about running the next session as a game of “The Quiet Year” or “Do Not Let Us Die in the Dark Night of this Cold Winter” when they return winter in Keaton’s home village.  After that, I’m thinking about opening up the game to a West Marches style of play.  Let the players figure out the schedule and how many players they want for each session.  Our main obstacle to this is, even a quick there and back again journey to buy salt will end up taking three sessions.  It’s not unsolvable and it could lead to some really interesting decisions for players who want to play multiple characters in the same world.

That’s it for this play report.  See you next time!