Last night I ran a session of Chris McDowall’s playtest of Primeval Bastionland. In the name of science I’ll share a summary of the session here. Since we might play more, I’m going to put GM-facing information that players may wish to avoid in spoiler boxes like this one:

GM Notes

See, like this!

Dramatis Personae

  • Morden the Talon Knight, played by Kyani
  • Reyka the Snare Knight, played by Ram
  • Marion the Saddle Knight, played by Brendan

Prep

I used the prep procedures described in Primeval Bastionland pretty much verbatim, with some further guidance gleaned from Chris’s recent post sharing his own prep. Fleshing out the Seat of Power and the Holdings, and their attendant Knights and Seers, turned out to be a handy way making the hex map start to gel into a real place for me, with its own local concerns and dynamics. The player map looks like this:

The GM map looks pretty much the same, except with the hexes numbered and some big red icons to indicate where Myths are.

We used Owlbear Rodeo as a VTT, where I shared the hex map, and used some post-its to keep track of PC names. I used a big gray post-it to display the Knights’ Oath, as a reminder of what PCs aim to do.

Screencap by Ram.

Arrival in Old Ferry

I started the PCs off near the northwest corner of the map. I started them off with the following information:

Arriving across a long-ruined wall (hex 02.00). A group of monks from the Stone Duchy to the North will see you here and no further. You are passing into the Shrouded Land, and may not return until you have found the city. They told you following:

  • The King in this land, The Club Knight, Kosh of Connicht, rules with the help of a brutal band called the Order of the Newt
  • The winter was hard and long and the crops are slow to come in.
  • Travel by river is swift, but the Gate Knight demands exorbitant tolls.

Further conversation with the monks brought forth:

  • The Reed Seer lives in a tower in the Bog of Hands, in the Western section of the map.
  • A strange curse or some pesky robber has been scourging the town of Old Ferry, just across the river to the south. Things and people keep going missing.

The Knights travelled to Old Ferry and learned that the town’s old women work the ferry boats for which the town gets its name. They spoke with a ferrywoman and the town’s Alderman, Rossen, and learned the following:

  • The Gate Knight, on behalf of the Club Knight, collects heavy taxes from the town. The townsfolk are low on supplies and turned away the taxman this year.
  • The Reed Seer lives in a tower in the bogs to the south. She doesn’t care for the Club Knight either, and wants a real king to follow.
  • The Alderman has lost his heirloom compass and would dearly like it back.
  • Marion asked if the town had a Seer, but the ferrywoman told him the folk don’t tell their secrets freely. Marion promised her venison to earn her trust.

Morden used their crow’s eyes to see if any of the local magpies had stolen the compass, but found no sign of it.

GM Notes

The compass was a fragmentary hook to a nearby Myth -- the Goblin. The reason the compass could not be found is it had been misplaced and taken. I mentioned that one of the Magpies mimicked a man saying "no sign of it!" as a reminder of the widespread phenomenon of missing items and to emphasize how widespread the problem was. Still, there was a lot of information coming out all once, and I think I may have been handling this two subtly for an online game using a new system.

At some point, I forget precisely when, they learned that the forest to the south, known as the Roilingwood, used to reach the limits of Old Ferry. But a century ago, the lord of the river keep called Pellsgate lost his daughter in it in a string of disappearances. He ordered the wood cut away and burned back. This information becomes relevant soon so I’ll list it here.

That evening, the knights’ rest was interrupted by the frantic arrival of a local hunter looking for his faithful bloodhound, Ewen. This dog is beloved by many in Old Ferry, and the whole town set to looking. The knights joined the search.

GM Notes

I probably should have called for a Task roll find traces of the dog -- or even just let them find its tracks. Instead I decided they wouldn't and simply made an Omen check. I think this was a mistake, and stricter adherence to the game's guidelines for Actions may have prevented it. But I had forgotten about those for the moment...

In the wee hours of the morning they spotted something – not the hound but the dirty white feet of a boy running through the woods. Marion chased him down until he scrambled up a tree. They asked him questions, and to each he responded with a story. I’ll summarize the broad strokes:

  • Where is the dog? A dog once got lost chasing a deer, and went through a hole into a kingdom where all the missing pets live.
  • How can they find the hole? Two twins, a naughty boy and a nice girl, once fought for the love of their mother. The boy tricked the girl into getting lost in a field of poppies and stole their mother away. The girl is still lost among the flowers.
  • I forget what they asked. A boy dropped his best skipping stone in the woods. When he went back to find him, an old man tricked him and dragged him into a hole.

Each of these ended with “and he/she/they lived happily ever after.”

GM Notes

It seemed appropriate to begin providing breadcrumbs to finding the Goblin without giving away its location outright. The second question was a hint at where to find the local Seer -- the Lost Seer, who wandered in a poppy field near the town. I figured this would be a good lead to tracking down the Goblin, but I think it got lost in the mix...

The Old Man in the Burnt Wood

While the knights slept off their long search, Morden’s crow consulted with the local birds to see if they saw where the dog went. The birds’ whisper network had the dog chase the deer all the way to a ruined watchtower three hecksleagues to the south.

GM Notes

The players were very focused on finding the dog. They seemed awash in all the ambiguous information they were getting, and I worried they were getting frustrated. So I just gave them its location.

The players set off for the tower. Along the way, they began to travel through young woods growing among the burnt out trunks of the old, but the roots were still giant and gnarled. Somewhere in this mess of roots, they heard an old man cry out for help and ran to his aid. They saw his legs trapped in the brambles which seemed to pull him in like quicksand. Marion rode in and hacked at the roots, revealing a trap door through which the man was slipping. He gave them an sprightly smile, and dropped down into the dark.

It was getting late so we ended the session there. I awarded 1 Glory to each of the knights for Seeking the Myths.

Usually, I include some reflections after these reports, but this one has taken long enough to write and I need to get to work. Perhaps I’ll write some up later on.