This last Thursday I went to Game of Boards (our FLGS) again, and was ready to continue our Primal Quest campaign and test the stuff I am making for The Tower That Fell adventure for the second issue of The Primal World of Thaia zine (I have the first 5 issues planned). The adventure will also be available in an early release format for Old Skull Publishing newsletter subscribers, and for those who choose to pay the asking price for Primal Quest – Essentials, the game rules that will be released as a PWYW product in a couple of weeks.
However, various Random Encounters and the heavy rain prevented half the group from showing up, so we decided to playtest The Cave Of Our People, a Dreamcrawl introductory adventure (and character creation funnel in the future) with the 3 folks that showed up just for fun. It wouldn’t directly affect what’s going in the game, and the new characters could become allies and future replacements when their main characters (or if) they die.
So I handed them each a blank Primal Quest character sheet made by @LicopeoArt and began explaining what we were doing and what the adventure is about (and will do the same with you, dear reader).
The Cave Of Our People is a short dungeon crawl adventure that serves as an introductory adventure for the game, and for the setting. The idea is that the characters are people who are being initiated in the grand tribe of The People of the Vale. They are not necessarily young, but can be of any age or species (including non-human characters), and are just new to the tribe (or just fully joining now). And they will go through this spiritual journey in their ancestral cave. They will drink a special preparation made by their leader, the elder and shamb Brikla, and have a psychedelic adventure, a Dreamcrawl as I am calling. They will sleep and have some vivid dreams. The magical weird trip is the adventure.
That’s what I told them and explained a little bit how the mechanics of it would work (but I didn’t tell them what would happen over time, as the effect of the trip begins to fade (see image below). But let me talk too about the design choices I made for this adventure.
The Cave of Our People is going to be the first official The Primal World of Thaia adventure. It will be fully released for Old-School Essentials and Primal Quest on the zine’s first issue and will probably be expanded a little bit, as I want to add the rules to use it as a character creation funnel (as I used in this playtest), but that may come later. PCs would fill parts of their character sheet every time they would enter a new area and so on (for OSE I might just follow the process on Zed & Two Noughts).
But anyway, the concept is that the trip shows the characters part of what got them there, and what challenges are in front of them in the future, while also presenting concepts of the game and the setting, like how Time is cyclical in the setting, what can happen, NPCs and other threats they might face, things they might do again (that happened in the past). But although all of this is present and I want it to have enough info about these to function as interesting encounters in the dungeon, I don’t want it to be too obvious and be like a lecture of how the campaign will unfold, what will happen and all that (that sounds too railroady, and not my style of play). These stuff are there in their path and they will discover them and make choices in the dungeon as they will do when these elements appear in the larger campaign (but when they happen in the future, they will have some ideas of what it is and how to deal with it because of this adventure – even if all they learn is that they need to RUN FROM IT).
There are many other ideas behind this adventure that will be important in long term campaign play (like the way its map is designed in a circular fashion to symbolize the cyclical nature of time), but that’s a subject for a future post.
So now that this is out of the way, let’s start the report and see what the heck happened in their first Dreamcrawl in The Cave of Out People.
I explain that Brikla, the elder shaman of the tribe and their leader guides them to the cave in the hill north of their village of Lakit. Brikla is a black woman around her 50s, with long braids, body paint, large earrings and a gnarled branch she uses as a staff. Her voice is deep but smooth, capable of calming even an enraged Apekin warrior, and her eyes see straight into a person’s soul.
She spends 30 minutes preparing the tea with leaves, herbs and magic mushrooms she collects on the cave floor. While this is happening I say the players can fill one thing in their character sheets. They think for a bit and take some decisions.
One of the players chooses to create their character’s Concept Tag, which defines what and who the character is overall. He asks if the character can be a decadent noble from a former weird civilization. I propose he makes the character an Ancient One from a Fallen Noble House, and he accepts the suggestion. I make sure to explain their civilization is long gone and he has only vague ideas about how things were and functioned. They are only a shadow of what they once were. The player is fine with it and we move on.
Another player decides to define their character’s Talent Tag, which defines something special they can do most people cannot. They want some kind of supernatural sense, as if they can see the weird supernatural things superimposed to reality. We discussed a few options and settled with Spiritual Sight.
The third player had a little trouble deciding what they would define first. We had a little talk of what they were imagining and we got to defining the character Concept Tag: Serpetkin. They showed me a picture they found on the internet, a long necked scaly burly humanoid with a serpent head. That’s a really simple Tag, and they can detail that further ahead if needed, I assure them.
After that, I say Brikla lights up the fire in the fire pit, serves each of them a bowl of the steaming tea, and sits waiting for them to drink. She tells them of the journey they will go through, and that the visions they will experience can very well be real, and will influence their destiny. Lots of secrets can be gathered in these rituals, but they aren’t as clear as reality.
Everyone says they are drinking the tea, so I say that after a few minutes they start to feel drowsy and slowly fall asleep. And then there’s this weird colorful darkness. And that lasts a little longer, until their eyes open and they see a prismatic show of lights bathing the cave. I say they have a temporary new Tag, Augmented Senses.
The pictures painted on the walls seemed to be moving now, and new ones appeared, as well as 2 openings that were not there before. One of them, to the west, had pictures of a great circle with a bloody gorilla with a crown in the center, many people traveling through a landscape, plants eating people, things that symbolize their tribe’s past and their perilous journey to where they are today. They could also hear the sound of drums in the distance. The other, to the east, had pictures of a large tree being consumed by a dark ooze, other people arriving at their village, and a small tree growing from a seed. This symbolized the party’s potential future and things that can happen in the world if the PCs interfere or not. From this sound, a disgusting ooze-like sound. Again, I wanted things that can impart information but are still cryptic.
I reminded them that before they delve deeper, they could get some gear picking up what was there. I asked them for a Luck Test and the result would determine how many items they could get. They didn’t roll very well (besides one of them), so they got only the essentials (weapons, armor), and the one who got the Spiritual Sight got two Arcane Foci (a inscribe rib bone linked to Portals, and a weird shiny stone linked to Mirrors).
So they now had to decide which way to go. After a quick chat about their options they decide to go west, towards the “past” of their people. As they approached the passage, they saw that it went about 10 feet ahead and made a curve south, from where the flickering light of a bright red fire could be seen. The drums were getting stronger. They keep going and arrive at a large natural cave with its walls tainted with dry blood and hand marks, some much larger than human hands. The sound of drums was strong, but no drummer could be seen. In the middle of the packed earth ground, a circle of skull sized red stones, and across from it a large stone throne where upon sat an oversized gorilla wearing a dented bronze helmet. And on the throne’s arm, rested a bowl with a dark crimson viscous substance. There was also a passage on the northwest wall leading north. As they entered the gorilla rose and demanded they kneel before him, as their rightful emperor.
The players didn’t like it one bit and wanted to act quickly. One of them, the decadent noble, decided right there his character had +3 on the Body attribute and would charge with his sword towards the gorilla king. As they were both looking at each other and in clearly aggressive instances, I asked them to roll for Initiative, which is basically the PCs testing the relevant Attribute to the actions they are taking and trying to beat the Opponent’s Level. In this case, the player who said they would charge rolled really well, but the others did not. So he was first, then the king, then the others. And as that was happening they were deciding which other part of their character sheets they would be filling.
The noble attacked with his two handed insect leg sword (like the arm of a Scyther pokemon) and scored a pretty decent result (he gained an extra Positive Die for the charge), but that only made a scratch on the king’s thick hide. And now was his time to act. The king made a backflip towards the throne, grabbed the bowl, drank a gulp from it, and put it back there, in one quick and precise movement. And then the transformation began.
I tell them the gorilla king is getting bigger. His muscles are growing, his veins getting larger and more visible, his head appears smaller, and he is now 15 ft tall and 10 ft large (I say it’s like the Hulk transformation). He roars, punches the ground and charges your way. I ask them to roll to avoid the attack with their Defense and as the creature is now super strong, the attack hits and is devastating. It doesn’t immediately knock the character out, but puts them on the brink. They should know now that combat isn’t the best option with this one.
It was time for the other two players to act. One of them quickly decides to join the fray but with a different approach. They also define an Attribute, but sets their spiritual sighted character Mind to +3, and say they are gonna try distracting the king by talking to them and calling his attention so the other character can possibly drink the liquid and deal with the king from the same position. That was a good idea, and they managed to distract the gorilla, but at what cost?
The other defines his snakekin character’s Talent Tag as “Poisonous Bite” and goes ahead to try biting their giant opponent but fails to land a hit. It was the strong noble’s turn now.
He was really beaten but still able to fight. But he goes for the bowl and get a sip of it, going through the same transformation. He gets +2 to their Body, the Tag “Supernatural Ape Might” and another Tag titled “I Can’t Concentrate“. Anyway, he was ready to fight and charged on. He rolled poorly though, and barely scratched the king again.
At the king’s turn, things took a turn for the worst. Since the spiritual sighted character distracted him last round, the gorilla would attack them this round. So I asked them to roll their Defense and it was a pretty bad roll (they got an extra Negative Die because of their supernatural strength). Their characters are knocked out. I describe how it happens like in those cartoons, as the big strong one punches someone, they fly towards a wall, hit it, stays in the air for a while, and then falls down. Things are getting out of hand.
In the next few rounds the characters managed to revive their friend, who was still in very bad shape and with a new scar; take the bronze helmet from the king and run with it, and because of that the two that remained were forced to kneel and swear fealty to the gorilla emperor, who demanded they bring him a tribute. I don’t think they intend to bring anything back, but that might bite them in the ass. This will affect the campaign somehow (maybe now it will be established that the People of the Vale didn’t pay tribute to the Simian Empire years and years ago and the current emperor will want revenge?). Anyway, they were out of there towards the passage to the north.
I say that things are really dark up ahead, even though the flames from the last room braziers shed some good light and they were still enjoying the Augmented Senses temporary Tag. So they go back to the first room, get some wood and torches and come back. After a few minutes of walking, they get to a bifurcation. One path leading northeast (from where the stench of death could be felt) and another path continuing north where they could faintly sense a sweet smell of fruit. Surprisingly, they chose to follow the smell of death.
That path didn’t go much further and they quickly found a collapsed tunnel. Heavy stones covered the northern side of the corridor and several bodies of people that were wearing similar clothes to them, and resembled people of their tribe. Again this was a new room, and the players decided something else of their character (I confess I don’t have a vivid memory of what it was, but they were always trying to define something unique for their characters that would set them apart from each other, and that could be useful for the situation at hand, which I think it’s a great way to make characters for a campaign that will feature these challenges at some point).
They asked me a few questions about the stones, how long it would take to uncover the bodies and all that. It would be hard work, but they could find something or get some information. It was their people too. But then the spirit sighted character (who ends up having the Concept of Witty Explorer) proposes they use their Arcane Focus of Portals to go through the stones, to pass through them and get to the other side. I explain that spells function a bit different in Primal Quest, and that a spell like that, to create a tunnel portal through the tone all the way to the other side would be a Ritual, requiring a full turn to cast (10 minutes), being difficult, but allowing the participation of others (sacrificing Vitality to add Positive Dice to the Test and so on). And that’s what they do. The other players help and spen Vitality. The spell is cast, and they create a weird portal in a dream.
The thing is, I haven’t planned for this to be possible. This was a dead end. The idea as that they could free the bodies, get some useful stuff, learn that they were people of their tribe that died on their own journey, and if they brought the bodies back to area #01, they could gain some benefits because they took care of their own. But hey! Players being creative and making up solutions for problems in ways you haven’t envisioned is one of my favorite things about RPGs, so I made it work. The corridor was roughly pointed to a central area of the adventure, so they could jump right there, but the passage would close after a short while.
So they arrived in a gigantic natural cave. The ceiling couldn’t even be seen, and as far as they could tell, the sky could be up there. Grass covered the ground, a slow running river cut the cave in half and ended in a waterfall to their right. Across the river a small improvised tent was barely up. Around a small fire in front of it 3 individuals could be seen. A wounded strong woman, a clumsy molekin trying to set the tent up, and a small human child trembling with fear while trying to catch a fish.
The idea of this encounter is showing something in the immediate future/almost present, that connects their people’s past and future. These are refugees that are fleeing a powerful threat and are in need of help. They will meet these people eventually. But their people themselves were them a few hundred years ago. What would they do with these? They are vulnerable. They are not from the PCs tribe. They are scared and won’t be so friendly at first.
But the party, paying attention to what was going on, approached with caution, with their weapons put away, saying they wanted to be friends, to help them, and ask for help. And that’s what they did. As it is an introductory adventure, I made each of these NPCs (who have names and personalities, as they will appear again in future stuff) with a problem that will most likely be tackled with actions that will probably ask for a Test from a different Attribute.
Laka, the wounded warrior, needs to have her wound binded. That required a Mind Test, and the spirited sighted explorer handled that (and I remember that right here he defined his character’s Motivation Tag as “Fellowship”). For that, the party gained a companion, as the warrior woman would accompany them now.
Umir, the furry molekin needed someone strong to hold down the tent while he tied it to the stakes. Our strong decadent noble handled that easily, as he was still being affected by the dark scarlet liquid he drank from the gorilla’s bowl. For that, the molekin revealed a secret passage to the north that would allow them to skip some challenging obstacles in the dungeon to reach some important locations that will be linked to important locations in the campaign.
Erd, the wide eyed scared kid was afraid for his life, and the life of his friends. A good talk and a nice Heart Test would calm him down and fill him with hope, but our friendly snakekin friend, who defined his motivation to be “Taking Care of Others” failed to do just so. But the party decided to try again, seeing how the kid gave up fishing and just crawled under a bear skin trembling and crying. I said they would be Pushing the Roll, and that meant trying again but risking a worse outcome if they failed. They all pinched in and at the fire told stories to the kid. They succeeded, and as a gift from the spirits, they would each be able to reroll one single Test until the end of the adventure (when the effects of the psychedelic tea would last – and I was timing this).
With that dealt with, they took the secret passage north, and arrived at the middle of a long east-t-west cavern with a bottomless pit and a platform path taking form one side to the other with gaps here and there and other platforms with interesting stuff, such as a person in the shadows, and a patch of healing herbs.
The two closest platforms they could jump to offered different options and risks for them. The one closest to them led west, towards what they could see a green yellow light, but was full of cracks and seemed to be prone to crumble if too much weight was put on it. The other was further afar, but looked safe to step on. It led east, towards darkness (to that direction was the healing herb patch too).
The players decide to risk a longer jump, and manage to do so, going slow, and helping each other. The effect of the gorilla elixir ran out and they then debated what to do and try to jump platforms to get to the healing herbs. Things almost go bad, but they catch each other and 1d6 uses of the herbs! But before they can celebrate, a tremor makes rocks fall (and everyone dies!), so I ask each one for a Luck Test, just to see if one was falling on them. Two of them went unscathed, but one rolled really bad and was crushed by one. The other players risk it all, and go back to rescue him. They successfully lift the heavy stone over their companion, pull him over, and start walking. And that’s when I ask for another Luck Test. They risked coming back to help their friend. The tension gets high. This could be it.
They roll the dice. The result is good. They are safe. Everyone breathes again.
They run east, and arrive at another corridor with a bifurcation, one going north (towards a darkness that seemed deeper than any other they’ve seen), the other going south (from where a faint gray glow could be seen, and a strong cold wind was flowing). They choose to follow the darkness, and after a while get to a narrow passage where a set of rough hewn stone steps lead below. Their torches seemed to be dying, and no matter how many more they lighted up, darkness seemed dedicated to sniffing the light out of them. Anyway, they climbed down for a long time, and the stairs never arrived anywhere, as if they were walking in circles. They realized that if they went back, they were soon back on the top of the stairs, but no matter how long they climbed down, they didn’t get much further (they played with this in many different ways).
The initial idea of this area was to leave it open for Referees to expand the dungeon as they wanted or needed, leave it blocked, or even use the player’s ideas to expand it. However, it also symbolizes in the way I ran it, the cyclical nature of time, the future possibilities that aren’t open yet and will be once more things happen, and the simple uncertainty that is life. And, now I think I will just make a contest for people to design the second level of this dungeon in the future (there will be a remastered and updated version of this in the future).
But even without realizing that, the party decides to continue through the south passage. I say the room is large, full of stalagmites and stalactites, there’s a real snow storm happening, and as they walk, the glow in the middle gets stronger. The players debate whether they will go through the middle of the room or just hug the walls as they pass by. One of the players decides to fill their character’s Problem Tag with “Reckless” and just go through the middle. At that time I realized the party was in there for more than 12 turns and said they got a new Tag, courtesy of the mushroom tea: It’s Cold In Here. So this made everything that followed a lot harder for the party.
So I asked them for a Mind Test not to get lost in the wind, darkness (as the wind wouldn’t let their torches alight), and heavy snow. The faint gray light of whatever was there helped, and they arrived at a colossal gray smooth crystal jammed on the ground. Dozens of small fragments of it were scattered around, as far as they could see, and it emanated a strong cold. The strong decadent noble bent down and tried to pick one from the ground, the moment a heavy fur boot stepped on his hand to stop him.
I say when they looked up they saw two people, a man and a woman of impressive height and scarred muscular bodies stared down at them. The man, bald and with terrible looking teeth carried a massive two-handed axe stained with blood. They wear close to nothing, just scathing pieces of fur covering their genitalia, and heavy wooly boots. The woman had long brainded scarlet red, and carried a gigantic femur of some prehistoric creature, it had a tally mark and was also completely covered in dried blood. Both of them had large pieces of the gray smooth crystal jammed into their bodies. Dark gray veins
The two spoke in unison for them to quit and join them. For them to become one with them. The PCs didn’t like that either (they are very unreasonable), and drew their weapons. Grave mistake. Combat ensued and one of the characters even drank some of the liquid they had taken from the gorilla emperor’s bowl. They became stronger but the two of them were really stronger. Things got so bad one of the characters ran away (the explorer with spirit vision suffered through some horrible stuff, so I understand). The two that stayed behind were bested and said they would join them. One of them got a crystal jammed in their throat, the other one in their forehead.
It was painful, they took damage, but it quickly healed and their Body Attribute increased by 1. They also got the Tag Augmented Strength. There are more things going on in here, but that’s the subject of a whole different post and I don’t want to give too many spoilers. Let’s just say these bonuses aren’t for free! 😈
Anyway, the two got out of there and joined their companion on a journey to the south which led them to a very large cave, with what they could see, their legendary Mother’s Tree. The tree was dying, its bark, previously a vivid reddish brown, was now a deathly looking gray, the leaves falling, and the fruits all but one rotten on the ground. A dark living ooze was consuming it from inside out, and it climbed from a giant ravine that divided the room in half, and made a crack in the tree’s trunk. They could not see well what was on the other side of the cave, but they could see the dark ooze was coming from that direction.
The party decided to investigate the dying Mother’s Tree first and as they approached they saw the ooze move and try to grab one of them when they got too close to the tree. And then one of them had the insightful idea of trying to experiment with the crystal and realized the ooze was repelled by it, as if it feared it (the idea was to give the hint that the crystal functions as a weapon against the ooze – it is actually a alien sentient weapon created to destroy the ooze and ended up turning against their creators, but that’s a story for another post). But as they were not actually attacking the ooze, the ooze tried to attack their body parts that were further from the crystal and things quickly got out if hands, but they managed to give a serious wound to the ooze creature, and escape through a passage that after a few minutes got them to the initial room, with the fire still burning with prismatic light making the drawings on the walls appear alive. And now, they seemed tk reflect the events thar happened in the adventure so far.
At that time, the session was coming to an end and our friendly local gaming store, Game of Boards, was closing. So the characters took a rest, we debated about the meaning of some of the rooms, but I didn’t reveal much. Well, I revealed much more here.
Next week we will have to see what we will play. It’s very likely we will just get back to the campaign as we stopped the last session, but who knows. I kinda want to see it through and get to the part where the whole group makes a cave drawing and shares on social media! That will be fun!
In the next post we will be back with some more details on playing Weird Stone & Sorcery adventures with Old-School Essentials, and more details on Primal Quest and The Primal World of Thaia, an upcoming zine for Old-School Essentials and Primal Quest!