First Time Game

Last night a very good friend of mine decided to run a Dungeon World game, I believe this is the first time he has ever run a game with our group and he had only run a couple of games previously, a World of Darkness game with some college friends and I think some PDQ stuff at some point. We had spent a while talking about him running a game of some description and yesterday afternoon he was batting the idea around, I think in the end he just decided to bite the bullet so to speak.

What ensued was pretty fun, I ended up being Rurgosh The Cleric, a dwarf and member of the cult of Cyrnbul a god who's cult is bent on using the structures of civilisation to their own ends and who gain favor by discovering secrets. We also have Kenta The Fighter, a warrior of fierce personal honor who has taken it upon himself to watch over Rurgosh until his debt to him is repaid, Kenta is distinguished my the massive, sharp and bloody sword the hangs by his side. Finally there is Qotho The Druid, a member of the roving tribes of the vast desert, he is searching for something in the Ancient City and does not trust Rurgosh but for some reason which is unknown at this time is travelling with both he and Kenta.

Our party were sat about a campfire in a library towards the centre of the Ancient Ruined city, reclaimed by the sands of the desert some 250 years ago. Our brooding silence was broken by a sound in the darkness, Rurgosh, unnerved by the broken remains of civilisation surrounding them jumped to his feet and armed himself, stepping forward to the edge of the campfire's light, Kenta stood and peered into the darkness, listening for some other sign of movement while Qotho sat implacable and still by the fire. A cat jumped out of the darkness and wound his way about Rurgosh's legs. Being frightened and fearing an imminent attack Rurgosh punted the cat into the darkness, only to hear a much louder thud as something man sized hit a wall in the direction of his kick.

This quick exchange eventually devolved into a messy fight between some shape-changing denizens of the city who claimed to be of Qotho's people. This left 4 men dead, smashed and gutted by Rurgosh and Kenta and their leader running screaming into the dark, terrified and bloody. Our GM, my friend, a man who has done his fair share of good-natured trolling in games for all of the regular GMs sat and looked about at us, unsure, shell-shocked and apologising. We wrapped the game up there for the night and told him we'd like to play again, it was great fun, we had built some very atmospheric stuff into our world, out friend had chanced his arm at GM'ing a group who between them have upwards of 25 years of GM experience at this point, if some of our other members had been there this would have jumped to 40 years between us. He took on what I can only imagine was a fairly daunting task and managed it pretty well.

I barely saw the panic in his eyes.

Rivenhold Campaign: Rising Tide

Aziz and Selena lay in their bedding beside the fire, Loughlan was on watch; Thorn sat beside him and stared into the darkness of the cavern. Two days travel and a further day of clearing out this cavern system of Goblins had left them too tired to travel back to Mayhill immediately. This probably saved them. A complete lack of any golden Dwarven armour, said by a local merchant to be in the hands of the Goblins, had dampened their spirits. Suddenly Thorn growled, something was moving in the dark, something had entered the caves. Loughlan heard it then himself, the sound of guttural, broken Elven, he only barely recognised it.

He woke the others, who were to their feet and armed in seconds. They peered into the tunnel that lead to their camp site. Selena recognised some of the speech, it was Pale Elvish, a group of Elves, cavern dwellers, from far lands. Still it did not seem like the words were right somehow, but she couldn't be sure. Between the grunts and speech of the Elves they heard the sounds of men begging, two maybe, begging for their lives.

Aziz took the initiative and transformed himself in a small wave of constriction that rose from his feet until he was but a small serpent, a milk snake of the Sapphire Isles.  He slithered his way down the tunnel to the crossroads, there he found a grim sight, Pale Elves, naked and covered in some sort of ugly growths. They were feasting upon what was left of two guards, employees of the local Goldenroot merchants in Mayhill. Sharp, sharklike teeth crunched on bone and tore through soft flesh. Aziz made his way back, relating what he had seen to his companions.

Selena now took the lead, moving quietly and carefully through the shadows of the tunnels until she was in striking distance. Loughlan stood further down the tunnel training two arrows upon the crouched forms of the Pale Elves. Selena struck, diving forward and plunging her rapier into the base of an Elven skull. The Elf slumped forward to the floor, Selena had slipped back into the shadows unseen in her grace and swiftness. The Elves cast about for their attacker, spotting Loughlan as he loosed the pair of arrows into the back of another Elf.

The Elves charged forward, exposing the growths, the outcroppings of yellowed fungus the marked their forms. Aziz burst into a spring, shifting into the form of a great Gorilla as he grabbed one of the Elves by the head and smashed him it into the wall. Their eyes, their eyes were gone, replaced by a cluster of fungi and mould. The final three Elves were dispatched, Aziz's great strength smashing the twisted Elves as Selena darted in and out of their view, taking what she could and felling another Elf.

After searching the bodies of the fallen guards, relieving them of their coin and seeing the spread of fungal tendrils from their bodies, they made their way to the cavern mouth. Selena pulled herself free of the cavern first, looking out across the outcropping in which the caverns were set. Across the marsh ran groups of the twisted, fungus infected Elves, five or six to each and a count of twenty groups at a glance. They ate almost everything in their path, tree, root and man. Some animal or men were being dragged away, to some unknown fate.

A tide was rising.

Gone Adventurin'

Last night myself and three of my friends tried out Dungeon World. Normally Wednesday night is either Dresden Files (FATE) or Firefly (Cinematic Unisystem); on alternating weeks. This week our very,very busy DFRP GM wasn't available, he's all artsy and has a killer job, and our Firefly GM didn't have prep done, so a quick couple of texts and a late bus journey from work later we were sitting around my kitchen table looking at the character sheets, everyone deciding what they were going to play and me starting to take some notes of things people were saying, just idle chat; and draw the start of our simple map.

Three and half hours later and we were finishing up, what for me at least, has been one of the most satisfying high fantasy GM'ing experiences of my gaming life. The whole night was whirlwind of ideas coming from all corners, during character creation we established some fantastic stuff about the world, a list of some of these ideas is below:

• There is a kingdom ruled by the coastal city of Rivenhold
• Rivenhold has an army that employs assassins and spies in it's ranks
• Ironhill is a keep which provides protection to the village of Harren
• A river runs by both Harren and the town of Mayhill on the way to Rivenhold
• Mayhill has cornered the market on a root called Goldenroot, used in medicines and poisons alike
• Mayhill is situated on the edge of the marsh where this root grows in abundance
• There is a swarm of shark toothed, fungus infected, psychotic elves moving from the hills in the northeast to the southwest, following the river
• These elves eat anything living, humans, trees, roots, animals
• They sometimes drag prey away, to some unknown fate
• There is a Rite that can control the currents of the sea to some extent

These facts all came out of questions I asked the players, just their answers created all of these lovely details. This is the result of my friend's boundless creativity married with the Apocalypse Engine, which Dungeon World runs on. I've run both this and Apocalypse World and in both cases a vivid living world of moving ideals, people and environments just pops out, it's really very satisfying.

In our party we have Selena The Thief (possibly Catwoman inspired), Loughlan The Ranger and Aziz The Druid. They have already through play established some very cool facts about themselves and behaviours, Selena is adept at hit and run tactics, poison and fighting the enemy unseen; Loughlan is very protective of his do Thorn, he put himself in danger to save the dog rather than running, he's also something of a marksman with his bow and a little bit of a conman; Aziz is almost nature incarnate, he took the form of a Gorilla, an Albatross, a Turtle and a Milksnake, flitting from one form to the next as naturally as one breathes, he also has a deep hatred of the unnatural.

This all came so naturally, flowing from questions and moves, with mechanics rarely actually breaking the flow of play. Two of our group had already played Apocalypse World, so were pretty familiar, Aziz's player took to the game like a duck to water despite not having played the style before. I found that with no prep per se and little control over the direction of the game I was free to focus on the immediate and play to the themes presented naturally. In giving up control I got to enjoy it more.

What new myth will we create?

Shared Mythologies

I've been asked by a good friend and relation of mine to run a game for him and his group of friends. Turns out that back in the day, that's the mid '90s, they played a lot of games together. This friend, my cousin's husband, who was fairly instrumental in getting me interested in the idea of roleplaying games; I jumped at the chance to run a game for them.

This will be their first time playing as a group for a while, I've never ran a game for them before. It's a tiny bit intimidating. They were AD&D players, I don't think they got into D&D3.x which is the bulk of my D&D/D20 experience. I'm a huge fan of Apocalypse World Engine games and I've heard really great things about the AW-Hack Dungeon World, it's old school style which is good for this group but new school rules, in fact a mechanic set I'm very familiar with and really enjoy. So I'm hoping they'll be on-board with the whole idea for their game. Not least because I don't want to have to relearn THAC0 rules and percentile scores for STR-18 characters...

I'm quite looking forward to this game, I haven't GM'ed high or dark fantasy in a couple of years, I actually stepped out of the long running Dragon Age game that my friends play when my son was born. This gave me a chance to get out of fantasy for a good long while and I feel I'd like to go back to it now, with this new and interesting ruleset and mechanics.

If you've never played roleplaying games you probably wouldn't get the idea of something like this I guess. I really didn't get my own interest in the whole hobby myself until I happened to speak of my love of it to a gent I met at an education conference. He put me onto the idea of shared narrative in oral education and mythology, his own love of horror and especially zombie movies and our conversation evolved over the course of several glasses of port to the point that I finally understood what I loved about roleplaying games as a hobby for all those years; those things aside from the social aspects that keep me playing.

I suddenly discovered that roleplaying games to me were the same as the mythologies I loved as a child, things I would often add to when I retold them. These games are a chance to develop our own shared mythology, sometimes fleeting and ephemeral; dying at the table in a one-shot game. Sometimes more solid, played over the course of years, like my friends' Dragon Age game, a rich tapestry of characters and players.

I think these games are my myths and legends now. I think I see here the Dagda, Nuada the Silver Hand, the Fomorians, Lug, the Fir Bolg. All those beautiful and fierce and imaginative things I loved as a child, things I hope to share with my children as well. I think these are the natural extension of my imagination that was cultivated in these legends when I was only 5 or 6.

It's wonderful to share these legends.