We had plans to play a game this Sunday, but a friend was quite a bit late. Sooo just for the fun of it, we hopped to doing a playtest of a duo/small group mapmaking adventure game. I've got more than a few games in playable states buuut I've been struggling to jump to push playtesting. Just because I decided to try and push to do so.
In short, it's a mapmaking Forged in the Dark game inspired by the Souls series and about embracing death to make progress. I've given it the name Wither Knights as of now. The core isn't crazy unique, but I like the idea of creation at play while moving through the zones. Very inspired by Ironsworn co-op style of play, emergent and collaborative.
(More details about the game and playtest below.)
Play:
It starts from the Base, shown above (A ruined cathedral, with the move of 'Strange Guest', looks of 'Echoing & Shadowed, and goal of 'Offer rest and protection to travelers') and the character fueled by their chosen Ambition (in this case Oath, to bolster the flock) to push out into the world to pursue their ambition and build out the world.
We only played for around an hour, a little over making the character. Then jumped into the play process to test it out. The way the game goes is you build out the approaching zone by working back and forth to fill in details about the zone and its challenges. -You first roll (or make up/choose) Style & Theme, which is used to fill in wide details -Then each adds a feature, fact, or wide detail about the zone.
- Last, you chose the goal of the PC within this zone and gather a dice pool in order to see how well the start of the incursion goes and the number of obstacles presented. Clocks assigned, or simply one-step issues.
So for the first zone, we got:
- Style: Cliffs/precipice
- Theme: Loud/Strange
- PC Detail: This was once a bustling market and queue area for many folks entering the cathedral once long ago.
- GM Detail: Now the ghostly echoes of the past always holds around, out of your sight it's as though the market still runs. Bustling and moving right out of your vision.
- He then selected the Goal of Traverse, his reason for adventuring out not here, and just needed to pass through. He assembled a dice pool, and rolled 4, meaning 3 obstacles were present to get to the next zone.
The three obstacles, which were created as play progressed were getting around the spirits at the front, then once moving along the cliff sides he ran into flying creatures that swoop and poison, and up above on the topside, large tree-monsters prowled the area. Much of this was made up by asking questions back and forth etc. He took a lot of harm and eventually failed a Desperate roll against the trees. It killed him and sent him back to the original Base.
Review:
I'd say with that short bit alone it gave me a good chunk of notes and such. I noticed I needed to better write in some of the rules with their own place (them being like side notes in other sections kinda thing), and add some additional sections about potentially 'Fleeing' and obstacles left uncompleted (I think letting them remain to be issues on other passes would be neat. I also still need to figure out what going through a 'completed' area looks like overall. Like do you consume some resources? Is there a singular action roll? Variable? hmm. Last I think I decided you get more action dots during character creation.
Well, that's it at least for now, I'd like to try and come back and do some more. I'm pretty quick about throwing games together into playable states, but I've been terrible about pushing them to the table (some lack of playtesters/not wanting to interrupt my normal games are for sure issues). I think this one has existed mostly complete for like 6 months to a year? Well, maybe this will help get me rolling in that aspect, who knows.