As some of you know, I am developing a new game, called Primal Quest, and a zine, called The Primal World of Thaia, which will support both that game and Old-School Essentials, presenting not only rules, but setting support and adventures of stone and sorcery fantasy in a mythical stone age.
And yesterday was the second session of our weekly playtest campaign. This time we had all four players (trying to get 1 or 2 more as someone always misses the session), and two of them needed to make characters, as they missed the first session. We played at our local Friendly Game Store, Game of Boards which is graciously supporting our group’s game!
So we began by explaining the game concept, that isn’t a NeOSR game (a game with modern rules but that’s suitable for old-school style of play), the setting is a mythic stone age with dinosaur, prehistoric creatures, monsters, aliens, time travel, sorcery and all that pulpy stuff I love. And then presented what they knew about the setting, their people, and the information they had about what was going on, as I explained in the game’s initial premise to the first 2 players.
One of them decided to make a character named Banuk, an exiled shaman from a tribe up north, from the Cold Wastes, that dabbles with relics from the Ancients. That’s how he cast spells by the way. Since he came from the north, I talked to the player if they wanted to tie their character background to the current events of the game, which would give the character some information regarding the threats they will face. They thought that was cool, and we decided he was exiled because he tried to fight the Death Siblings army, as the raiders who are attacking the northern village of Morik are called, and too many died because of that, so Banuk was exiled. And he has a Tag linked to it. Cool.
The other new player decided they wanted to try something different too, so they made a birdkin, bird person character, that has powers related to the sun (which gives them strength and healing powers, using bracelets and a medallion as their arcane focus). And they have an animal companion too (they used their Relationship Tag for that). But the greatest thing about this character is the language they speak.
You see, everyone at the table was naming their characters in a similar fashion. Either using simple sounding names like Banuk, Thark, or Buhr, this player names their character Ray Raymond and their eagle companion Eagly. So we decided on the spot that birds speak English. But not just any English. Have you ever seen these hilarious videos of animals slapping people, headbutting them, dubbed like someone arguing, like from these videos on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/thehilarious.ted/). This is silly, but it did give us some funny moments in the game.
Anyway, after the characters were ready, I asked for one of the other players, and we ended up both filling each other gaps in the events. The session would then begin with the group separated. Thark (the giant brute) and Buhr (the vigilant hunter) decided to go back following the river all the way down to the village. They realized they can’t deal with that just by themselves. They travel at night, even though they are tired (they need to rest at least a watch – 6 hours – per day to avoid being tired), and have an extra Negative Die to all tests because of that.
They travel until a bit after dawn, and was they were about to pass out of exhaustion, they see a small boa coming from the south. In it, of course, the other two PCs who went north after coming back to the village. And then we had the part of the game which took the longest to resolve. What would they do? Come back and talk to their wise leader? Scout ahead to find out more about this threat? I let them discuss and went to grab a drink.
When I came back they told me what they wanted to do. They were going to use the boat to go as close as they could to Morik, the village which had been attacked, and see what they could do. While the boat travels south for the first day (I told them it would be 2 days until they reach Morik), the two tired characters would rest up, and the other two would one steer the boat and the other send their eagle to scout ahead and see what they find in their path.
To determine how the eagle would fare, I asked for a Luck test, which is basically a test wirth no modifiers, just adjusted by Tags (in this case the Relationship Tag they used to have an eagle companion). They get a positive result, so the eagle comes back at the end of the day, and say they haven’t seen many invaders nearby, and that the area close by is empty. It saw the place where the smoke was coming from the other day, and says they saw a massacre there, with lots of people dead. So they are a bit safer 1 day away from the village, and they decide to look for shelter to spend the night and continue their journey by foot in the morning. However they want to find a new shelter, one that wasn’t used by the local population like the last time. This would be difficult, so I ask for a hard Mind test to look for it. Half of them decide to do that and the other half look for food and water. The first group had a good basic success and found them a new place that seemed to have appeared after a recent tremor in the region. The second group barely found enough food to go through the night (but water wasn’t a problem).
There were no Random Encounters during the night, the region has a high population of cave bears and even giant bats, but it seemed quieter that night, as if even the night was holding its breath. They wake up and move north by foot to reach the village.
Now a bit on how journeys work on Primal Quest. A day is divided into 4 six hours watches. During a watch they get to do one “journey action”, and these can be simply traveling, hunting, gathering, looking for shelter or anything like this. The last watch of the day is normally used for resting. So for two of them they traveled. At half of the day they reached the place where the smoking was coming from last week.
This paragraph contains graphic violence descriptions, skip it to avoid it. A huge pile of burned bodies was stacked up. The people in it were violently killed in combat, but it was nothing compared to what was around them. There were tied up corpses who had their skulls bashed into a pulp. Marks on the floor showed they were beaten to death with a large spiked club. Repeatedly, even after they were long dead. There were corpses half cut in half, from the top of their head till the middle of their torsos. The weapon used wasn’t that sharpened, and the executioner made a mess. Even worse were the corpses hanging in the rock wall behind all of this. They were ties like a pendulum going from a nearby hill to directly and forcefully hit the stone wall when pushed from the top. Their bodies splashed on the stone, making red blood splatters. Banuk, the shaman, who had already witnessed this happen to their people, muttered to himself this could not be happening again (cool RP move by the player BTW).
Back to more bearable descriptions, they spent another good amount of time debating what to do. Things are clearly serious now, these people are not playing around, and their people are dying. Ray, the birdkin, sent out their eagle again (and to scout the village), and I once more asked for a Luck test, but this time the dice had other plans. Not only did they roll a negative result, but they got a Setback (they rolled a 6 on a Negative Die) and I told them their eagle didn’t come back.
That apparently sealed their destiny, and they quickly decide to go to Morik and rescue the bird, if it is still alive (for just one setback I determined it was just captured but I didn’t tell them, as they had no way of knowing). So they set out for the village, but were going to look for an alternative path, a trail in the mountains or something tomhelo them approach the settlement unnoticed. I asked them for a difficult Mind test, but with almost everyone helping, they not only succeeded, but got 2 Boons (two 6 on the Positive Dice). That means they not only found a trail that arrived in the back of Morik, avoiding the walls where sentries were located, but it’s an almost forgotten trail, and very few people were aware of it.
From there they saw the invaders had taken all the weapons from the people of the village, and numbered around 7 at least. Banuk, the shaman, knew their numbers were actually much larger, so this is just a band they left behind before returning to their territory. Two of them were forcing a few of the population to load their Plateosaurus pulled wagon.
The plan they made was to wait until there were fewer of them outside (they saw that after a while the sentries were exchanged), so they waited until just they were outside, way into the night.
Their initial move was sending the birdkin Ray flying to check out the place where their resources were and look for oil. The player then made a Body roll to fly stealthily, and thanks to the darkness and their timing, they had a bunch of Positive Die to roll, and just a few Negative Dice because they are still vigilant.
What happened was that they were successful, with 3 Boons and 1 Setback. So here’s how we decided that happened. Ray flew there unnoticed (that’s the basic success), found the oil jars quickly (one boon), took them very quickly (another boon), and flew back with them without being seen (last boon). However, as he did that, he knocked another jar off the shelves and it broke as it hit the ground. So the sentries heard something in the building where the resources were stored.
Another paragraph with violent descriptions, skip if needed. What happened, of course, was they quickly blamed the local person responsible for taking care of this stuff, took them out of the building and started beating them. They screamed they didn’t do anything, that they weren’t even there, and that made the invaders even madder, as they said the locals should be there taking care of their stuff, and if they don’t care they would take all of it, instead of just half as they have generously agreed upon.
That didn’t make the characters act yet. They waited for the commotion to calm down. The invaders took basically everything that was useful from the locals and put it on the wagon. The one responsible for keeping the resources organized was unconscious and was dragged back inside. And the leader, a large burly bald man with an eye missing, went back to the place they were resting.
And it was time for the characters to act. The birdkin poured the oil over the building where the invaders were, and immediately afterwards the shaman used their totem to summon a flave on the roof, making the hut erupt in raging fire. It worked perfectly, and Banuk got two Boons, killing two of the invaders inside when the ceiling fell down. In an apparently coordinated attack, Thark, the brute, nearly split one of the sentries in half with a well rolled test that had some extra Positive Dice due to surprise and distractions. Buhr, the hunter, threw his spear, but didn’t do much damage. Aiming is hard at night.
After that combat was in a little stalemate for a couple of rounds, but then two of the invaders went away and came back with two locals, holding a stone knife in their necks, right as the group managed to immobilize the burly leader with an ice spell and set him on fire with oil and another spell by Banuk. And that’s how the session ended. I took notes of the NPCs current Vitality and conditions and that’s it. What will happen? Next week we will find out.
Oh, and I will come back later to talk about some of the feedback I got on the magic system and how I changed it a little to keep the same spirit but make it more integrated with the rest of the system.
P.S.: Old Skull Publishing now has a subreddit where I post game drafts, WIP documents, RPG theory posts, recently commissioned art, and all sorts of stuff related to my games. Como join us. It’s an active and welcoming community.
P.S.: Primal Quest is based on my minimalist game of endless adventure Sword Quest. Get it here, and get is Addendum here.