Into the Barrowmaze - Session 9 (End)
A little less than two weeks ago, Elina (Lu') and Barnave (A.) went on their last adventure, this time accompanied by Risitas (Jon) and his buddy Charlie.
Six months had happened since the undead invasion of the Duchy of Aerik. Many a gold crown were lost along the way on various means of transportations, foods, the hazards of travel and general highway banditry. Our party of two still had a serious hoard of around fifteen hundred crowns to their names, and had reached a small mining town linked to the rail network that would lead them to Petal, and from then to the sea and Bastion itself.
There, they:
• Met Frank Regal, Extraordinaire Entrepreneur and arms dealer, whom they bought guns from,
• Found a locomotive - The Old Betty - to make the journey, but even with their serious capital, it was expensive, so they
• Asked Mr. Regal if perhaps he might want to buy the Locomotive and get two bodyguards for free!
Which he gladly accepted as he also needed a way to get to Petal - Bastion.
On the road, little happened - prairies, hills, a giant ball of corpses digging for more corpses to attach to its own rotting body, more prairies, the usual. They reached the fallen city of Petal around 7PM.
For Petal, I decided to use "Get Out of Brokenborough", the sample nodecrawl city adventure from the first Electric Bastionland package, which I had a great time with before, and started players at the entrance area which, conveniently, is an old train station. From there, a summary of events in the order that I recall:
• Elina saw hogs in a ruined train cart, took flight when they started to oink menacingly.
• The party went south through the Promenade, an overgrown path of colorful tiles, and promptly ignored most "points of interests" they came across.
• An uplifted crocodile waved at them with its tiny, T-Rex-like arms and stalked them for a while, with its cheerful crocodile smile, until the party jumped inside an abandoned building to hide from it, without success. From the safety of a kitchen, they tried to parley with the crocodile, which, while it walked on two legs and wore a tophat, was actually a regular, non-talking crocodile. After a good quarter of pantomime, the party realized that the crocodile was looking for someone to help him brush his teeth as his tiny arms were too inefficient for that task, and so they did and it left them alone, happy and with shiny white teeth.
• When the party reached a GIANT BIRD CAGE, they were rightly spooked of the GIANT BIRD-THING that whistled at them menacingly, but didn't really try to hide or find cover while traversing, which led to Barnave being almost killed by the bird which stole him away and let it agonize in his cage, a rescue mission that somehow both succeeded and failed at the same time, as Barnave was saved but Elina, who was in charge of the distraction, was caught and put in critical damage by the bird - and stolen away too, to the great dismay of Risitas who was now the only party member with decent STR left.
Another distraction, this one involving a lot of noise and actually sticking to cover allowed the party to recover Elina and continue onto their journey.
• Near the Dogsbridge, called this way because of the barking of wild dogs (like a murder of crows) that occupied most of its space, snarling and sniffing and teeth-y, they decided to wait for the day to come, and met an employee of Traxian & Shift Co. who might maybe have had the possibility of a teleporter in his pocket but they were too slow and kind to act on their suspicion and he left them to fend for themselves, like foolish non-teleporting rabbles. During the day, the dogs retreated from the light in their dog hole (that's where all dogs live, as everyone knows) and the party finally reached the safe harbor after ignoring another interesting locale or two.
• There, they parted with Frank Regal, and bought all of his bombs from him before going back to the bird cage, where they gleefuly atomized the giant pigeon in a clever trap involving no bait and overwhelming firepower. As the charred remains of the bird crashed on the pavement, hundreds of happy rubber men citizens of the ruins came rushing to greet and celebrate their saviors, swearing allegiance to them until death or boredom.
Instead of going to Bastion, the party decided that this would be a great place to live if they used their money, influence and newfound army to clear out the area of any danger and make Petal a better place for the citizens of Deep Country. A process which would mostly require money, manpower, and time, which meant something of importance: they had learned that adventuring wasn't as profitable as letting others do the work for them. That seemed like a fitting, although anti-climatic end to this journey of murder and profit, and I had another project slowly bubbling to the surface to follow-up with.
And that's all folks!
Post-Campaign Notes
The Not-So-Long Run
Nine games with an almost weekly session means two months +1. Compared to the last few years, that's a pretty good length, although the idealistic "one year long game" is insanely far from reach. Baby steps, that's all.
About the Rules
In the end, what we played with is a hybrid of Into the Odd equipment charts and Electric Bastionland rules. In the four first games which used OD&D and were focused on the Barrowmaze dungeon itself, we had two PC and fourteen NPC deaths. In the five games that used ItO, we had one PC death (a victim of another player, by the way) and literally everyone around the player characters died at one point. But they, despite being in danger often and in quite a lot of actual combat, managed to survive it all.
My point is: Into the Odd is not "meaner" than OD&D and, for my tastes, particularly mean. It is an excellent, tight, laser-focused game that focuses on player-skills and discourages combat in the sense that it's not 3.5 or your typical modern-style of game, and is one of the finest exemples I know of blending old-school sensibilities with modern design, be it in the rules themselves or how they are presented. I think it is the most well-written game I've played and only Ben Milton's GM's Guide in Maze Rats beats it in terms of how useful it is for any Referee to read, even if they play D&D or some other game. But it is not "the Dark Souls of D&D" - on the contrary, it is the most forgiving game I've found that still treats combat as war and not as sports. Here are things that should be said more often about Into the Odd than "it's got a very lethal combat system", which is something I heard a lot due to the way damage is handled:
• It's got an efficient and extremely transparent system : players always know their chances because they only roll when they take a risk and only under their own stats. Even in combat, having the STR buffer between HP and death allows them to make more informed decisions as to whether or not it is time to flee. This, to me, makes Into the Odd the ideal "introduction" to adventure fantasy gaming, because it loses some of the randomness of OD&D combat in favor of fairness, but one that doesn't feel like hand holding.
• It has the fastest character generation I know that still makes evocative characters that make you want to play them.
• It has the Luck Roll, and every game should have it, although it's on us Referees for not thinking of using it when not told so in a rule book. I for one have added this rule to my blue book of universal house rules, along with Shields Shall be Splintered and Carousing Rules.
What the Players Think
"I really liked the company system [explicitly stating the meta-character of a company of adventurers as the focus of the game instead of individual characters] because we can keep working toward an objective even if our character dies. I enjoyed keeping my character for a while and seeing her evolve. I like the "sandbox" aspect, we really get to choose what we're going to do next. I would have liked companions to be more elaborate since they lacked personnality, which led them to feel disposable." -Lu' (Elina)
"The fact that you can make a new character quickly is very nice. Because we don't really want to die, but we don't feel like we'll be excluded from the campaign.
The combat system is fun and dynamic. And the risk of being overwhelmed forces ingeniosity.
The setting is nice and allows freedom to explore because you have an idea of what's around you.
Although, I felt that we didn't push the "fantasy" aspect much. I never used magic books (which I kept forgetting), and any monster or weird thing was way too dangerous, you need to run away every time (which is more-or-less true, the witch was nice, but overall it was human-centered).
I'm really sad to stop with the characters becoming more important and making plans for the long run. Plus escaping the consequences of destroying the Duchy feels like a loss of agency : we dodged both the consequences and follow-ups to our actions.
Gear costs a lot but it's a good thing because it's the main way you get to feel your character progress. And heh...details of each shop in a town with a little picture is really cool. It gives an old-school JRPG tone that allows us to really get a feel of the place." -A. (Barnave)
Next Time: Zoopunk and its first session report!
Six months had happened since the undead invasion of the Duchy of Aerik. Many a gold crown were lost along the way on various means of transportations, foods, the hazards of travel and general highway banditry. Our party of two still had a serious hoard of around fifteen hundred crowns to their names, and had reached a small mining town linked to the rail network that would lead them to Petal, and from then to the sea and Bastion itself.
There, they:
• Met Frank Regal, Extraordinaire Entrepreneur and arms dealer, whom they bought guns from,
• Found a locomotive - The Old Betty - to make the journey, but even with their serious capital, it was expensive, so they
• Asked Mr. Regal if perhaps he might want to buy the Locomotive and get two bodyguards for free!
Which he gladly accepted as he also needed a way to get to Petal - Bastion.
On the road, little happened - prairies, hills, a giant ball of corpses digging for more corpses to attach to its own rotting body, more prairies, the usual. They reached the fallen city of Petal around 7PM.
For Petal, I decided to use "Get Out of Brokenborough", the sample nodecrawl city adventure from the first Electric Bastionland package, which I had a great time with before, and started players at the entrance area which, conveniently, is an old train station. From there, a summary of events in the order that I recall:
• Elina saw hogs in a ruined train cart, took flight when they started to oink menacingly.
• The party went south through the Promenade, an overgrown path of colorful tiles, and promptly ignored most "points of interests" they came across.
• An uplifted crocodile waved at them with its tiny, T-Rex-like arms and stalked them for a while, with its cheerful crocodile smile, until the party jumped inside an abandoned building to hide from it, without success. From the safety of a kitchen, they tried to parley with the crocodile, which, while it walked on two legs and wore a tophat, was actually a regular, non-talking crocodile. After a good quarter of pantomime, the party realized that the crocodile was looking for someone to help him brush his teeth as his tiny arms were too inefficient for that task, and so they did and it left them alone, happy and with shiny white teeth.
• When the party reached a GIANT BIRD CAGE, they were rightly spooked of the GIANT BIRD-THING that whistled at them menacingly, but didn't really try to hide or find cover while traversing, which led to Barnave being almost killed by the bird which stole him away and let it agonize in his cage, a rescue mission that somehow both succeeded and failed at the same time, as Barnave was saved but Elina, who was in charge of the distraction, was caught and put in critical damage by the bird - and stolen away too, to the great dismay of Risitas who was now the only party member with decent STR left.
Another distraction, this one involving a lot of noise and actually sticking to cover allowed the party to recover Elina and continue onto their journey.
• Near the Dogsbridge, called this way because of the barking of wild dogs (like a murder of crows) that occupied most of its space, snarling and sniffing and teeth-y, they decided to wait for the day to come, and met an employee of Traxian & Shift Co. who might maybe have had the possibility of a teleporter in his pocket but they were too slow and kind to act on their suspicion and he left them to fend for themselves, like foolish non-teleporting rabbles. During the day, the dogs retreated from the light in their dog hole (that's where all dogs live, as everyone knows) and the party finally reached the safe harbor after ignoring another interesting locale or two.
• There, they parted with Frank Regal, and bought all of his bombs from him before going back to the bird cage, where they gleefuly atomized the giant pigeon in a clever trap involving no bait and overwhelming firepower. As the charred remains of the bird crashed on the pavement, hundreds of happy rubber men citizens of the ruins came rushing to greet and celebrate their saviors, swearing allegiance to them until death or boredom.
Instead of going to Bastion, the party decided that this would be a great place to live if they used their money, influence and newfound army to clear out the area of any danger and make Petal a better place for the citizens of Deep Country. A process which would mostly require money, manpower, and time, which meant something of importance: they had learned that adventuring wasn't as profitable as letting others do the work for them. That seemed like a fitting, although anti-climatic end to this journey of murder and profit, and I had another project slowly bubbling to the surface to follow-up with.
And that's all folks!
Post-Campaign Notes
The Not-So-Long Run
Nine games with an almost weekly session means two months +1. Compared to the last few years, that's a pretty good length, although the idealistic "one year long game" is insanely far from reach. Baby steps, that's all.
About the Rules
In the end, what we played with is a hybrid of Into the Odd equipment charts and Electric Bastionland rules. In the four first games which used OD&D and were focused on the Barrowmaze dungeon itself, we had two PC and fourteen NPC deaths. In the five games that used ItO, we had one PC death (a victim of another player, by the way) and literally everyone around the player characters died at one point. But they, despite being in danger often and in quite a lot of actual combat, managed to survive it all.
My point is: Into the Odd is not "meaner" than OD&D and, for my tastes, particularly mean. It is an excellent, tight, laser-focused game that focuses on player-skills and discourages combat in the sense that it's not 3.5 or your typical modern-style of game, and is one of the finest exemples I know of blending old-school sensibilities with modern design, be it in the rules themselves or how they are presented. I think it is the most well-written game I've played and only Ben Milton's GM's Guide in Maze Rats beats it in terms of how useful it is for any Referee to read, even if they play D&D or some other game. But it is not "the Dark Souls of D&D" - on the contrary, it is the most forgiving game I've found that still treats combat as war and not as sports. Here are things that should be said more often about Into the Odd than "it's got a very lethal combat system", which is something I heard a lot due to the way damage is handled:
• It's got an efficient and extremely transparent system : players always know their chances because they only roll when they take a risk and only under their own stats. Even in combat, having the STR buffer between HP and death allows them to make more informed decisions as to whether or not it is time to flee. This, to me, makes Into the Odd the ideal "introduction" to adventure fantasy gaming, because it loses some of the randomness of OD&D combat in favor of fairness, but one that doesn't feel like hand holding.
• It has the fastest character generation I know that still makes evocative characters that make you want to play them.
• It has the Luck Roll, and every game should have it, although it's on us Referees for not thinking of using it when not told so in a rule book. I for one have added this rule to my blue book of universal house rules, along with Shields Shall be Splintered and Carousing Rules.
What the Players Think
"I really liked the company system [explicitly stating the meta-character of a company of adventurers as the focus of the game instead of individual characters] because we can keep working toward an objective even if our character dies. I enjoyed keeping my character for a while and seeing her evolve. I like the "sandbox" aspect, we really get to choose what we're going to do next. I would have liked companions to be more elaborate since they lacked personnality, which led them to feel disposable." -Lu' (Elina)
"The fact that you can make a new character quickly is very nice. Because we don't really want to die, but we don't feel like we'll be excluded from the campaign.
The combat system is fun and dynamic. And the risk of being overwhelmed forces ingeniosity.
The setting is nice and allows freedom to explore because you have an idea of what's around you.
Although, I felt that we didn't push the "fantasy" aspect much. I never used magic books (which I kept forgetting), and any monster or weird thing was way too dangerous, you need to run away every time (which is more-or-less true, the witch was nice, but overall it was human-centered).
I'm really sad to stop with the characters becoming more important and making plans for the long run. Plus escaping the consequences of destroying the Duchy feels like a loss of agency : we dodged both the consequences and follow-ups to our actions.
Gear costs a lot but it's a good thing because it's the main way you get to feel your character progress. And heh...details of each shop in a town with a little picture is really cool. It gives an old-school JRPG tone that allows us to really get a feel of the place." -A. (Barnave)
Next Time: Zoopunk and its first session report!
This post is valuable. I hope people considering what system to use read it and the rest of the series.
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