The players were M, N, and U. Both and M and N had played before, albeit not in the sort of games I usually run, and U had never touched a roleplaying game.
There were a few days before the scheduled session and, as I was feeling particularly lively and excited, I banged out more prep than usual.
There were a few days before the scheduled session and, as I was feeling particularly lively and excited, I banged out more prep than usual.
In preparation I reread the module several times, feeling out which areas were satisfactory out of the book and which needed a little more. The first thing I did was draft up some hexcrawling procedures, as the ones in the book didn't have enough oomph. For one I made each hex a 1/2 day of travel (with the option to travel an addition hex at night at cost, which I think I borrowed from one of Gearing's blogposts) which didn't alter the map size too much but made travel feel like it had more player choice involved and nicely broke down the day which would (and did) aid in the "feel" of exploration. Next, I solidified the encounter procedures and procedures for getting lost (2 in 6 chance and 1 in 6 chance each half-day respectively) and worked out how rations would work, since it wouldn't be a good swampcrawl without such constraints.
All of the above are baseline procedures which would/will/did inform how play unfolds at the table. I wanted a gritty session about an expedition into a horrible swamp, so I chose to use procedures and mechanics (see: fatigue) that would have players be making choices that matched the tone.
From there I decided to flesh out the town of Clink a bit more, as it seemed the natural entry point of players into the swamp and the premise deserved a bit more thought. I decided that the cult shouldn't be uniformly the villains and so stole the SINS format from this I Cast Light post to make my own table in case players decided to throw their lot in with the cultists.
For each DEVOTION collected fill an inventory slot
All of the above are baseline procedures which would/will/did inform how play unfolds at the table. I wanted a gritty session about an expedition into a horrible swamp, so I chose to use procedures and mechanics (see: fatigue) that would have players be making choices that matched the tone.
From there I decided to flesh out the town of Clink a bit more, as it seemed the natural entry point of players into the swamp and the premise deserved a bit more thought. I decided that the cult shouldn't be uniformly the villains and so stole the SINS format from this I Cast Light post to make my own table in case players decided to throw their lot in with the cultists.
For each DEVOTION collected fill an inventory slot
- 1st Devotion : The sea kills and the sea loves: cannot be drowned by a hostile hand
- Sacrament : Drown a man by your own hand in saltwater, afterward all freshwater chokes your throat.
- 2nd Devotion : Dreams of the abyssal kingdom: speak to fish once/day
- Sacrament : Forego dry land, to set foot on solid earth is to die, gasping and choking like a fish out of water.
- 3rd Devotion : The sea embraces me, in its depth I will find him: reborn as a Deep One
- Sacrament : Throw yourself into the open sea and share in the dead dreams of your waterlogged god. If you survive you will wash ashore transformed; a herald for the new age.
Then, because I was inspired by the same post, I fleshed out the cults roster which was useful because it gave me a better idea of who players might run into in the swamp.
- Initiates (melee, special) yet to partake of the first sacrament, eagerly run down victims and attempt to drown them; mancatchers
- Musketeers (ranged, dmg) faces hid by salt-encrusted veils, bandoleers bouncing on their chest; muskets, fight with machetes in the press
- Priests (ranged, special) white robes, veils, necklaces of fish-bones; break a bone to break a target's limb, otherwise: machetes
I did the same for the People (autocthonic inhabitants of the Fever Swamp), and also made up a pejorative for the inhabitants of Clink to use when talking about them: wetlings. At this point I was picturing a situation where a fringe of criminals and outcasts were acting as the colonial vanguard to expansion of rice plantations which were slowly clear cutting and burning the swamp away (which vibes with Grandfather Rotte's deal). Which folded neatly over into the little "Buying Things in Clink" subsection I wrote up--I flavored the rations as ricecakes and salt pork. This included wages for guides as tracking coinage and day to day wages of hirelings (as well as having hirelings) felt significant to the expedition style play.
Some more scribbled prep, pre-rolling the route of the Corpse Pile etc., and I decided on (really I had been deciding during all of the above) what mechanics to use. Namely, hits + fatigue (á la Skorne or my own Perfidious ruleset), an eight slot "significant item" inventory
I chose this because Hits style violence carries a nice economic logic to it in play (fitting in with the rest of expeditionary beancounting) and can be fairly gritty. As well, fatigue rules nicely carry the load in terms of adding a grinding pressure to player expeditioning and I could plug other procedural elements (such as travelling at night) and fictional circumstances (such as starving) into the rule/s.
It was here that I made the unfortunate choice here to up the number of hits to six, figuring that there would be lots of enemies in the swamp and players would lose them fast. This was a poor choice and did not work very well in play, players didn't think about hits for the most part and the immediacy of fights came solely from in fiction, rather than being bolstered by a mechanical logic. Going to stick to three hits from now on if I'm not using variable damage, anything hire makes the mechanic into a distraction from the fiction.
Fatigue, however, fared much better. It was stellar even, and players reported that it had the exact grinding feel that I was hoping it would lend play. It nicely reinforced their decisions about when to fight, when to flee, when to rest, and the like.
For my basic resolution in face of a situation whose outcome is up in the air mechanic I chose a simply d6 roll versus a target of four, because four felt like a nice odd to beat and I didn't feel the need for anything more complex.
I also decided to run magic mostly in the fiction, but with a magic word type system for spells and combining them because I though that would be flexible but restrictive enough for expeditionary play.
The very last bit of prep I did was make a list of backgrounds and equipment to roll up, for which I plundered several other Early-Modern(ish) games for their background lists and equipment tables.
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THE CAST :
- M. as Dax the Enabler, a drunkard magician with a grimoire containing sleep, protection, and invisibility
- N. as Richard Dirkman (Dick to friends), armed with a pistol and oil flask
- U. as Rob, a fifty year old, pot bellied, musket and prybar armed graverobber
The session opened in media res, on the road that was more like a causeway to Clink. The players introduced their characters with a little description and agreed they all met at an inn a ways back where they had heard about the bounty on the head of Gert von Hammer. Bit by bit the rice plantations grew more sparse and the cypress trees thicker and shaggier with moss. The drone of mosquitoes filled the air. When the causeway become nothing more than a rickety boardwalk through the swamp they knew they'd arrived in the town of Clink.
The first thing they noticed was that all the houses were up on stilts, faded and ramshackle. A couple men, all branded as thieves, sitting high up on one of the houses' porch were sharing a drink and eyeballed the newcomers. Dax decided to march over and ask for a drink. The men looked dubious, but grinned and tossed the bottle down. Pure rotgut. Dax knocked it back and the men warmed up to them. While Dax and Dirkman haggled for a pirogue, U decided to have Rob poke around the circle of houses that made for a town "square" of sorts and look for moneymaking opportunities. To one side is a house with some kind of still, to the other a hut with a crudely letter sign reading: general store. Lastly, a house tightly sealed up, its windows shuttered, with a carven lintel-piece like that found on many of the more simple Imperial temples.
Rob decides to explore the last house first, climbing up the ladder and hammering on the door. The gods on the lintel-piece looked like they'd been defaced. A panicked voice responded from inside, crying out for mercy and promising that he would leave town immediately just don't kill him for the love of all the gods (this was Nickolas, the priest).
Rob unsuccessfully tries to cajole the priest into letting him inside, then starts to break the door down with his prybar at which point the priest panickedly delivered up some information about the town, but remained frustrating vague on why he was so frightened ("They'll kill me if I tell!").
His attempt at breaking and entry unsuccessful, Rob wandered over to the distillery where a young boy was feeding the fire below the still and above on the porch a man was smoking some sort of mushroom from a long pipe. Rob inquired after a job with the smoking man (Jason, the distiller) but was too disgusted by the low wages paid to the common labourer. The distiller was amused. Rob rejoined his companions who had, in the meanwhile, haggled one of the drinking men down to cheap(ish) price for a pirogue.
After inspecting their new means of transport, the players figured they wanted to get into the swamp and hunting for Gert von Hammer as soon as possible and for that they needed supplies. At the general store they met Daniel, a hulking but sad man with the tattoos of a penal legionnaire. They talked to him about prices and supplies amid the piled up dry goods. He was sad but not surprised to hear they were heading into the depths of the swamp. As for the bounty, von Hammer had passed through two weeks ago. The players asked him for advice on guides (Daniel had hinted most of the townsfolk were not to be trusted) and got recommended Young Jimmy, who worked for the distiller, and Old Man Mallows.
The players decided to talk to Old Man Mallows first, finding him in a mossy, almost sunken shack on the edge of town. A lean old man who bragged about how he'd been here since the first tree'd been felled and knew the swamp like the back of his hand. He didn't suite them, so they decided to talk to Young Jimmy, but were stymied by Jason the distiller after they let it slip that they'd been sent over by his hated enemy, Daniel, to "steal his employee."
Fixed on hiring Young Jimmy nonetheless, they conceived a plan to come back later and distract the distiller in talk so they could converse with the boy. In the meantime they returned to the general store, purchased supplies, and stocked their pirogue. It was getting onto evening now, and Dax ambled over and apologized for his friends comportment. He hoists up a bottle of wine and asks if he and the distiller could compare vintages. Jason is amused enough to accept and (after taking fatigue for getting painfully intoxicated and probably poisoned by menthol) Dax manages to drink him into a stupor. Dirkman and Rob scuttle over to talk to Young Jimmy, who boasts that he was born in the swamps and knows them like the back of his hand, and agrees to meet them at dawn-light in exchange for the going-rate for guides and share of loot. "Anything to get away from Mister Spittle up there.'
The party retires to the general store, where they pay to lodge on the floor. Daniel shuts the house up tight for the night and all fades gently away.
Sometime in the depths of the night, Dirkman awakens to a flicker of light through the crack in the shutters. He gets up, deciding not to wake anyone else yet, and creeps over to look out. On the rickety boardwalk below, a procession of white-robed figures marches past. They are carrying torches and wear salt-encrusted veils. He watches as one, unmasked and surrounded by a knot of others, walks past. She wore heavy necklaces of fish-bones and is scarred all over her face (this was Jasmine). Eventually the whole procession troops past and disappears into the swamp outside of town, from which comes the sound of drumming and flickering torchlight. Dirkman decides to go back to bed.
The next morning they rise bright and early. Young Jimmy meets them at their pirogue with a bag of supplies and a machete. Briefly, they debate whether to investigate the clearing outside of town where Dirkman had seen the white-robes march off too, but decide to get out of town fast instead.
They head southwest the whole morning and afternoon, paddling between cypresses and oaks shaggy with moss. That night Young Jimmy finds them a bit of high ground to encamp on and they pass the night beside their damp fire, listening the myriad croaks and cries that echo through the swamp.
The next day they continue southwest. Around midday, they come across a clearing of sorts (like an expanse of open water) with a massive dead tree at its center covered in shelf fungus, the gills swaying in the breeze. After Young Jimmy identify the mushrooms as edible they cut down as many as they can reach to use as rations.
A pirogue slips out of the treeline. Two men in loincloths pilot it, wetlings spits Jimmy. The pirogue turns, aiming right at them, and the two men began paddling with grim determination. With his wizard eyes, Dax sees a a sort of host of spirits blossoming out of the two men; puppeting them. Not wanting to fight, the magician works his magic. He takes a swig from his wineskin, washes it around, spits, and wiggles his fingers; casting sleep.
Immediately the two men fell down fast asleep, draped over the gunwales of their pirogue. The party paddles over and peers inside, where they spy several spears and club. A debate ensues over what to do with the prisoners and the pirogue. U wants to try and take the pirogue with them, but is hesitant to split the party between the two canoes. N wants to interrogate one of the two warriors. They end up tying one of the prisoners to the big dead tree and wake the other one up. He groans and opens his eyes. Upon seeing the faces of the party, he sours and spits, cursing them in broken Imperial. They ask him, with the help of Young Jimmy's rudimentary grasp of the indigenous tongue, what happened and why he attacked them. The man protests that the last thing he remembers was paddling a ways away from here then, seeing the pile of collected mushrooms and the big tree, laughs and tells them it serves them right for disturbing the spirits and its a pity he wasn't able to work their vengeance for them.
(I had rolled a two man People patrol as the encounter which the spirits formerly inhabiting the mushrooms would possess)
They ask him about Gert von Hemmer (a bearded man) and he confirms that the bounty had passed through, heading south or southwest. Then the players tied the warrior up and left him with his companion in their pirogue, after taking the spears. They decide to head south.
That night they couldn't find solid land and slept, uncomfortably huddled together in their pirogue after tying it to a tree root.
(each night they mark down one ration, the players had bought 10 rations each, further supplemented by the mushrooms they'd harvest--and now we're too afraid too eat)
The next morning they headed south again, planning on curving to the southwest later in the day (I had given them a piece of paper with a hex grid to do their mapping, in order to simplify navigation) but about midday they found themselves in a strange part of the swamp. The trees were dense and tall here and the water choked with hyacinths and green weeds, Moss grew heavy and shaggy and there was a rotting scent to the air. Huge bugs buzzed past. There is a weight in the air, the presence of something vast. Rob looked behind them while paddling and realized they were being followed by a lot of logs, nope, a total of eighteen crocodiles were calmly trailing behind them.
(random encounter roll = a shit ton of crocodiles)
Alarmed, but not immediately endangered, the party debated way to do. Briefly Dirkman proposed pouring oil on the water and setting it alight, but they settle on simply shaking the slowly pursuing crocodiles off (at cost of all marking down fatigue for fleeing). Which they successfully do, the lazy animals peeling off one by one till they were alone once more.
In their blind evasion, the players inadvertently blundered into an area of particularly dense foliage, marked by a strange mossy mound rising out the water and two cavernous holes, side by side, in it. Dax catches sight of something small and green splash into the water.
Curious, they row up to the rightmost cavern's lip and step ashore. A warm fetid wind blows out of the cavern, then is sucked back in, buffeting them. On the soggy ground are bits of gnawed fish bones and small clay pots. They venture deeper into the cavern only to find it disgustingly moist and narrowing the further back they go. The in-out wind stops, then blasts out at them, blowing out their torch. They stumble back to the entrance and step out into the sunlight.
A spear flies through the air and strikes Young Jimmy in the shoulder (they'd retreated in reverse marching order). Dirkman catches him in his arms as the boy falls, Dax flings himself down as another spear flies overhead, and Rob raises his musket to return fire. Small, green figures gleep and swim in the water before the hump, effectively blocking the players and their pirogue in.
One of the green things (a Scumboggle) pops out of the water to hurl a spear, and Rob's musket barks. The ball smashes its head and it falls dead. Blood blossoms in the water. Rob ducks down, and U loudly proclaims their intent to get the corpse with Rob's net.
Meanwhile, a plan has been concocted. Dirkman pops up and splashes his flask full of oil past the pirogue then lights it, sending a sheet of flame racing over the water. A shudder goes through the swamp, a vast convulsion, but the players put it out of mind for now (Grandfather Rotte reacting to damage to his swamp). Next, all three pop up and leap into the pirogue, dragging the wounded Jimmy with them. Lying flat in the hull of the pirogue, Dax begins to cast two spells. First, he applies invisibility to the pirogue itself. The hull turns transparent to them and suddenly they can see under the water at the swimming, child sized forms of the scumboggles. Then Dax casts protection, this time on himself, and he jumps up, hurling his grapple as he does. Lodged firmly in a tree, he uses the rope and grapnel to haul the pirogue off the nostril-cavern edge as spears skim harmlessly off his skin. They get enough momentum for him to duck down and grab a paddle and paddle them to safety. The pirogue and players flee (taking fatigue) away into the swamp.
Licking their wounds, they debate whether to head back to Clink before deciding they have enough supplies and turning southwest after patching up Young Jimmy's shoulder. The night is passed in sleepless watches nestled in a hollow between three towering trees. The next morning they find out Jimmy's caught a fever, his wound infected (poor Jimmy rolled badly). Rob feeds him an extra ration to help the boy heal.
They head southwest, paddling down wide avenues of scum choked water between shaggy trees. Late in the evening three giant wriggling grey leeches leap from the water at them. Rob shoots one with his primed musket. Another is beaten to death with a paddle. They players shudder. That night they encamp on a small rise and wonder where the hell Gert von Hammer is...
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Conclusions!
U had an amazing time, as did the others, but I have the inkling they (U) would enjoy a door-kicking, puzzle-solving dungeoncrawl more than an outdoors adventure based on how they played and what they expressed to me. Fatigue worked amazingly, players debated over whether they could afford to flee or do strenuous actions. Rations haven't gotten tight yet but are on the players minds.
The magic was used cleverly but I feel that it needed a better resource loop than spells per day, as the half-day structure is the equivalent of dungeon turns for a hexcrawl like this.
I really could have used some tables for swamp scenery and flavorings, as after a while my descriptions started to become the same ol'. Likewise, I think that I should have prepped a table of non-combat encounters, or omens, to spice up travel.
Also weather. Just a weather table would have done a lot.
Lastly, the players could have used more directions and rumours about where stuff was in the swamp. They had a guide, Young Jimmy, but I struggled to balance information and mystery with what he would know. Either I should not have offered guides or I should have better thought out what they would know.
All around a fun time! It's a good module, lots of meat to to work with.
