How I prep my games

Weird Writer suggested this as a topic/challenge for a post, and I think it’s a good idea, so here we go.

Preparing a Campaign

I’ve run three short (~a dozen sessions each) OSR campaigns so far, along with smaller games along the way. I am also in the process of preparing for a megadungeon-focused campaign right now, though it has taken quite a while longer than normal due to life.

Step 1 - What is this going to be about?

The first thing when preparing a campaign for me is to figure out what the hell do I, as a referee, actually want out of it. For example my BSSS campaign was focused on two elements: Seeing how the minor variations of OD&D compared to B/X change the pace of a game, and running a hexcrawl. In my second Greylands game run for my partners the goal was to see how much I can strip back the basic elements of play while still having an enjoyable weekly game. In my current prep I am building a megadungeon from scratch and I also am interested in seeing how sustainable that kind of campaign is over a longer period of time, plus I am testing out Tunnels & Trolls as a ruleset and seeing how sustainable that is as well.

Step 2 - Assembling initial materials

Once I have an idea of what I want, I start to assemble tools and materials that I might need to at least begin the campaign. That usually involves creating a map (and as such also a vague sketch of a setting to provide context), populating it with points of interest (usually pre-published dungeons), writing up any house rules that I will be using and then getting into the weeds of smaller details - a compact setting primer, a player-facing booklet to be used at the table for easy access to the house rules, a spreadsheet to track character and player rosters, in-game calendar, stats about the game etc.

This step can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to, well…months and in the current case over a year and a half.

Expanding on the above listed elements, here is what I find important about each of them.

Rough Notes - I tend to just use a single Google Docs file when I do this, but better methods might exist for others. I make a document about the campaign where I throw every single idea, house rule, setting information or anything else that I would need for it. The file is rarely organized, and I simply use it as an initial repository to make sure i don't forget something. The most useful thing from this notes file is a running list of things I still need to prepare, and things that I have prepared, as well as writing things before I can then copy them into the setting primer or players document.

Map - An OSR campaign needs a map. The locations you will be exploring need context, whether that is a map of the part of the world or a map of the singular dungeon you will be playing in. In all of my campaigns I have created the overall map myself, as I have a specific setting in mind, however I often use pre-existing maps for dungeons by using modules that I feel fit the overall vibe I want. In the case of my current prep, it means drawing and stocking the map of my megadungeon myself.

The BSSS campaign map.

 

 

This is the revised version of the Greylands map. Version 1.0 looked even rougher.

Modules and Points of Interest - I select at least one, usually between 2 and 3, dungeons that I will be using as the initial locations for the campaign. In my Grelyands campaign that was Dyson’s Delve, in my BSSS campaign that was a map from In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe that I then modified to fit the pseudo-Messoptamian setting of the campaign.

I rarely, if ever, use a module straight as it is without changing something to it. Usually it is simply re-flavoring enemies and encounters to fit the setting better, sometimes adding or changing the treasure available if I feel it is not appropriate for what I want.

Points of interest that I tend to create entirely myself are the “safe” zones - towns, villages, forts etc that I have put on the overall map.

House Rules - I have yet to run an OSR campaign without extensively tinkering with the ruleset I have chosen in some way. In some cases, like the Greylands it was fairly standard B/X(or OSE) with some simple house rules. In BSSS I effectively wrote an entire hack for OD&D to make it do what I wanted. In my current T&T wave I have also extensively redone and renamed elements in the ruleset to make it do what I want.

For me a campaign is always a good excuse to tinker with rules and mechanics. I enjoy seeing how changes in a magic system, or even the dice used for HD, can affect gameplay. While I do not consider any rules text, even the ones I write, to be beyond adjusting and ignoring if needed during play, I do like seeing how tweaks result in broader behaviors and changes during the game.


Setting Primer - Players always ask for some kind of setting primer, so I try and write a few words in very broad strokes about what they might actually need to situate themselves within the game. It can vary - the Greylands game had a very bare bones one, the BSSS game had a rather more detailed one both here on the blog and also sprinkled throughout the player booklet. My current megadungeon one, being focused entirely on the dungeon, has only a few broad paragraphs of setting, the rest being conveyed entirely through character backgrounds and items.

Player Booklets - Because I enjoy making these, in my in-person campaigns I always have a player handbook kind of deal. A collection of the house rules, character information and other things that players might want to look up during play, that is not part of the general rulebook that I am using as a chassis. My BSSS one became quite a bit more extensive as I changed enough things to necessitate it. These don’t have to be physical books of course, a simple google docs or pdf with the relevant information are also useful, and in fact I make a habit of collecting such for other people’s games as I find them endlessly fascinating to flip through.

Spreadsheet - I have found that any campaign I run benefits greatly from having a Google Sheets document for the campaign. That one contains, at a bare minimum, a character roster with relevant information (level, experience, player controlling the character, any notable powers or notes), a quick session recap calendar with both real life and in-game dates for the events, and then usually auxiliary tabs for stuff like hirelings, classes unlocked by the players (if I am doing that), stats for the campaign (I do love me some campaign stats!) and so on. 

The BSSS spreadsheet/roster

Other Materials - That varies from campaign to campaign. I like to usually have a list of names to use for NPCs and/or PCs; a character sheet (either a suitable preexisting one, or a custom one that I make myself); item lists (if not using a default one from a book); reference sheets to put in my DM screen (if needed)

Once I get all of this assembled I print out maps, modules and other reference sheets, booklets and other material, putting them in plastic sheet pockets and those in my referee binder. My binder always has extra character sheets, the world map I’ve made and whichever dungeon or module I am currently running. With all of that out of the way I then begin organizing the game itself (first two were open tables, third one was a closed family game) and begin.

Preparing a Session

Once the campaign gets going the prep I do from week to week changes significantly. I make a point to establish a solid groundwork (as you can see above) so that I have to do as little as I can between sessions, though even then I’ve found that it sometimes becomes too much by the later sessions.

Keeping the sheets up to date - Most important thing to do, and I usually do that after that week’s session, or at absolute latest the next day. Update everyone’s XP totals, changes in character, date, a quick session notes recap for my own sake (I do not keep any real notes during play, so I simply remember everything and write it down as it is fresh in my mind).

Setting reaction and dungeon restocking - The main and often hardest part of the week to week session prep - modeling how the world reacts to what happened in the previous session. Restocking or changing the dungeon(s) if needed, seeing how any factions or power players move in response to the actions of the player (if they know them) or advance their own schemes (if they’re unaware what the players are doing).

This has often resulted in me feeling incredibly overwhelmed as the fictional situation becomes more complex, with multiple factions and dungeons involved. I’ve yet to really get better at handling this, although discussions on discord have lead me to a potential solution which I will attempt in my next campaign - Making a list of any potential reactions or changes by factions, and then rolling a die to see which single one actually happens for the next session.

Preparing additional material - I always make sure I have a clear idea of what players plan on doing the following session (and I tend to hold them fairly firmly to any decisions made), and if that involves exploring new locations or following up on hooks that I have previously set, I then go through the various modules or adventure sites that I have prepared for the campaign or at least earmarked to use in it, and then either simply reread them and do any final adjustments, or if it is something completely new I go through the process similarly to how I do in campaign prep, and read through and edit the text with any changes or re-flavoring I need to make it fit.

Updating binder - I take out material that I will not need for a session and replace it with print outs of stuff I will. Binders get way too heavy and unwieldy fast, so I try and keep mine to the bare minimum if possible, especially considering I am usually also carrying my dice, player booklets, rulebook(s) and other materials when running.

In total I find that short of being swamped by too much reactivity from the world, my weekly session prep involves on average half a day of work, at most a day if I have to prepare something else. My hope with my next campaign is to streamline week to week prep even further, by restricting the play space to a single large dungeon. 

The Visions of Hazahall

    Back in the mists of time wizards decided to just take power for themselves and quickly formed an enormous and powerful kingdom run by magic. It predictably went absolutely mad and insane and turned to shit in no time, as magic and mutation and horrors consumed and engulfed its population.The few of those sorcerers who still lived and were willing to teach their magic to others would then begin a tradition of forcing any student to experience a very strong psycho-magical vision of the fall of Hazahall, the Glittering Kingdom, as a way of deterring their pupils from lusting after temporal power.

    This is an edited excerpt from a play-by-post game that I played with my partners a few years ago, that I am now posting here for posterity and because I was asked to. The scene involves Valeria - a young noble and later queen of her city-state that wants to learn how to practice magic and Jenx - a wizard and friend to Valeria, as well as mentor and counselor. The two are at the house of Violette, an old friend of Jenx’s, and Jenx is preparing the ritual of the Visions of Hazahall

    The broken up trance of the recitation was interrupted by Jenx suddenly inhaling sharply! He could see, and Valeria could sense it through him, that he was no longer in his friend's house. Instead he stood in the wide plaza of a city. The buildings were of pure white stone, towering above him, glittering like gems. The sky was pink or purple, and the people around him simply hummed with power. They walked around, ignoring him, talking among themselves.

During the trance Valeria had latched her aura into Jenx's with barbs of intention. She could feel his angular body pressed against her flesh. It was grounding and she used it as a conduit to dig deeper into his spirit. She did not want to hurt him but also wanted to be sure the ritual was done properly. When he inhaled she knew he was there. She could not see it but she understood it.

Jenx blinked and the scene changed. The city was still towering and glittering, but the people in it were now...different. Some looked like they were made of glass. Some had their skin become translucent and then shift into different colors. Some simply had an inscrutable look in their eyes. They still seemed joyous and happy as before, but there was a sense of unease. Like the joy was forced for the sake of appearances. There was a tension in the atmosphere, a dread. Like the pit in one's stomach as they are about to step off a cliff.

He took a deep breath. He knew what was about to come. He tensed up preparing for it.Valeria grew tenser with him. He blinked again.

The sky broke. It shattered like the shell of an egg, parts of it falling down, destroying the city, turning bodies into paste, shattering the glass creatures into shimmering mist. There was terror and panic that made his heart rate race like he was about to collapse. The sky broke still. Behind it there was nothing. A void and in it a black sun burned away flesh, thoughts, emotions, stone and wood. It burned away all.

Then there was nothing but a roiling mass of horror. Flesh, stone and glass mixed into one, pain worse than anything a mortal body was able to experience. And the burning of the black sun above. Jenx stood on, or hovered over, a low hill. Around him the roiling color and flesh reached out to him - with hands, claws, eyes, tendrils and other impossible appendages, reaching for help, begging for safety in a million voices. Every time they did not touch him though, pulling back away as if he was just out of reach.

Time became meaningless. There was simply an eternity of suffering in which Jenx was awash, like a man standing on the shore as the tides came in. It was years. Decades. Millennia. Time had become meaningless, just as self, pain, body, up, down, sky and sun had.

Valeria slumped against him. Every ounce of her will was in twined with his emotions. In her mind she clawed her way to him. His mind was locked in horror beyond reason but she clung to him, she loved him. It was like waves of pure terror and misery were trying to drag her down and away, but she clung to him, not just to support herself but also to brace Jenx against the onslaught. Tears flowed from her physical body and fell on his braided hair.

He had stopped breathing. He wasn't sure when exactly, but at some point he had stopped breathing because breathing had become a meaningless idea, just as his lungs were.

The sun had burned everything away - the million colors of the roiling flesh had simply turned to grey ash. Then the sun had burned itself out too. The screams stopped, but their echo continued. Nothing. Emptiness. But in that emptiness, the echo started to break apart. To take on a strange, stunted rhythm. The rhythm of his breath, the rhythm of the verse which Violette was reciting ever louder. And his breathing started again, again following the rhythm. He looked up one final time, into the empty void above where the sky had stood.


It was time to leave.

Adventure Design - Location, Scenario, Plot

When designing material for play at the table, it is helpful to think about what exactly you are trying to design as that will inform what sort of work you need to prepare before the game. Below I list three distinct (if often related) types of adventure structure.

Location Design

Whether it is a wilderness to explore a dungeon to delve, location-focused design is about setting up a fictional play space with enough things for players to interact with to provide entertainment and enjoyment during the game. This is your standard “sandbox” type of deal. A point-crawl, a hex crawl of some kind, and again, dungeons, all fall into this when they are being made with the primary concern being exploring the fictional space.

Secondary goals might exist such as looking for a specific item or NPC, attempting to do a specific task, or even just getting experience points. However an adventuring Location should work just as well without any objective beyond “this is a place to play in”.

Location-focused adventures can often benefit from having a scenario of some kind set up beforehand, as the two work quite well naturally. A plot of some kind could also be slotted in, of course, but in most cases that will simply overshadow the exploration of the location as a goal in and of itself.

How this differs from Scenarios is that the location does not need to have a specific situation or conflict currently happening as the players enter the picture. It is quite alright for a Location adventure to begin “static” and then react and shift as a result of the actions of the players.

How it differs from a Plot is that a location does not necessarily cares about specific narrative beats happening (either in order, or even at all). If the players do not interact with a specific element of the location, that does not result in bad or subpar gaming experience.

Obvious Example: Here is a dungeon composed of 20 odd keyed rooms. It has numerous enemies, hazards, treasure and obstacles. Some of the enemies form factions and have some kind of broad-strokes predetermined views of other enemies and/or factions, which gives an avenue for the players to engage in picking a side or playing all sides against each other.

Scenario Design

A different type of adventure is setting up a specific situation, outlining clearly the sides involved and their goals and parameters for “success” in the conflict, and going from there.

For me at least this type of design is primarily tied to wargaming (miniature, tabletop or otherwise). Wargaming is about conflict resolution of some kind, and so it benefits from having a scenario which outlines the parameter of the conflict.

An important part of scenario design is that it should depict the conflict already having started, and the players already begin the game by being part of one or multiple sides, and then striving to achieve their side’s goals as best as they can. Once the conflict of the scenario has been resolved, that adventure is now done and concluded - Further scenarios might be devised as logical reactions or responses to the way this first one played out, and stringing a bunch of those in a row is what a lot of wargaming campaigns end up looking like.

How this differs from a Location adventure is that while setting up the field for the conflict is part of establishing parameters, the location and its peculiarities only matter as far as they affect the conflict or scenario in question. It does not matter if over the mountains there exist some other kingdom that has other problems, because that does not directly affect the situation of the two orc tribes battling it out in this valley.

How this differs from Plot is that a scenario might have one outcome or another be more or less likely to occur as a result of the initial setup (in a “doomed last stand” kind of deal, the player or players doing the last stand are generally expected to lose eventually) however it usually does not care for specific outcomes happening or not happening. That contrasts it with a plot-focused adventure, which often needs specific narrative beats to occur so that the plot can progress without having to result to that most dreaded of term “railroading”, in which the referee simply forcibly drags the characters onto the next step of the plot, regardless of whether that makes any sense in the situation or not.

You can’t really railroad a Scenario, because if the conflict already has a 100% certain outcome, then that conflict is not really gameable, and therefore simply unsuited for being used to prepare a gaming session.

Obvious Example: The party and their allies must defeat an imposing Big Evil Enemy. They know the broad parameters of where that Big Evil Enemy is, and the focus of the game is resolving that conflict one way or another. Once the Big Evil Enemy is defeated, or defeats the players, or any other potential resolution to the conflict has occurred, the scenario is complete and finished.

Plot Design

Plot design is the cornerstone of Trad play, and more often than not the one done very poorly. An inevitable result of it being the most broadly done way of running and playing TTRPGs I suspect.

A key difference is that a “plot” is not a “story”. Any of these types of adventures can result in a story, as the story is simply the actual events of what happened (both within the fiction and at the table). One can not write a story adventure, because that is already complete and there is nothing in there to actually play out. So instead, what you do is write a plot.

Plot adventures are most often formulated as a series of narrative elements or beats, some (or all) of which need to be met so that the players may progress onto the next set of beats. You can't go and question the doctor until you find his card at the scene of the crime (or you hear from a witness that they saw him with the victim. Or you find his name in the victim’s day planner, etc.). The reason you can’t is that the doctor might not even have existed as an element in the game, until you found the narrative beat that lets you know he even exists.

The enjoyment of playing through a plot-focused adventure is trying to find the beats and where they lead, with an ideal one often having twists and turns to the plot that the players do not anticipate, but could have foreseen if paying close attention to what has come before hand, leaving them with a broadly conventional narrative or story after completing the adventure.

How Plot adventures differ from Scenarios is that they tend to not have as clear win or lose states as a scenario would. In a scenario each side participating has very clear goals, and there is rarely much care given to results outside of those already established before play even began. In a Plot-based adventure the outcome from moment to moment is a lot less clearly outlined, and in a well designed plot adventure there should be numerous results or actions which still lead you onto the next plot beat.

As for Locations, Plot tends to not care about the fictional space in which the narrative is set in, beyond the obvious effects it will have on the actual plot. Abandoning the plot that supposedly everyone has agreed to follow through on as part of the gaming session to simply explore some other part of the location is often seen as disruptive behavior in a Plot-focused adventure, whereas it is the entire point of gaming in a Location adventure.

Obvious Example: A mysterious crime has taken place, and the players take on the roles of investigators trying to uncover what has occurred, and separate truth from lies. Numerous plot points involving questioning suspects, gathering clues and uncovering layers of mysteries eventually lead to a logical conclusion of the plot in which the investigating players confront the perpetrator.

There are, of course, other ways of thinking about how to structure gaming material for play at the table, but to me these three are the major categories that tend to cover most experiences happening in tabletop RPGs.

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 5

 

Series Index
<< Part 4 

Part 5 - Practice your actual hobby

I have saved the most blatantly obvious of these posts for last. Yet it feels sometimes like the obviousness of this is not as clear as I or others might think, so it bears stating it out loud.

First off, let me direct you to Weird Writer’s excellent post on the roleplaying hobbies. She breaks things down in an excellent manner, and frankly much better than I ever could. Going by their list, this post will be specifically about participating in the “core hobby”.

To do so first one must define what their core hobby is. In the case of TTRPGs, as that is the primary focus of this series, it can be rather tricky, however for the purposes of this post I will say that playing at a table (in person or virtual one) with other people is the core hobby of playing tabletop RPGs.

That might sound like a hot take, or even “controversial”, but the fact that it does is the same reason it needs saying. Playing tabletop RPGs, with other people, is the core of the TTRPG hobby. Buying books, reading books, writing and preparing adventures, scenarios, locations, sub-systems, magic spell lists, writing session reports, doing solo play, engaging in the community, watching actual plays - all of those are perfectly nice and enjoyable activities, but they are not engaging with your core hobby.

However one can’t become a more engaged and better hobbyist at their chosen hobby by simply nibbling around the edges. I put off writing this post for over a year, because due to various life reasons I was not able to do much of any gaming until the very tail end of 2024, and it felt disingenuous to declare the importance of play as I was not engaging in any myself.

TTRPGs are in a lot of ways a craft and crafts require purposeful, focused practice to become better at. And surely we, as hobbyists, should desire to become better at the thing we love and enjoy doing right?
This was the last planned post in this series. I might add further ones if I feel a specific thing benefits from being highlighted as a best practice. Or even better, I encourage you to contribute to this list yourself! If you do, please share it with me.

Thank you for reading, and go do more hobbying!

Wolves Upon the Coast - Session Reports and Observations, part 2

 

 I've started playing in NBateman's Wolves Upon the Coast campaign being run from the Rainbow/Purple OSR Discord.  I wrote another post already which you can find here. This one is going to cover the events of Sessions 4 and 5 (I did not participate in Session 3) as well as my thoughts on those.

  

Current state of our map.

Session 4 + 5

As stated I did not participate in Session 3, but from what other players told me the party made its way to Jork, met with the local king as well as other characters and Albinus, the Christian scholar/monk in our party ended up going north to fight a giant named Thomas (who apparently keeps kidnapping and murdering musicians), using some poison they acquired along the way.

Session 4 begins with my character Thorgo and a few others going north to see what became of Albinus and the Giant. They arrive to a beach littered with corpses - Albinus, Thomas the Giant and also, rather inexplicably, some 30 odd bandits. Everyone except Albinus has their corpses ripped apart, their guts and innards picked at and missing. The party gathers up what treasure they could from the giant's bag, retrieve Albinus's naked corpse and sail back to Jork, along the way running into some crashed ships and potential drowned ghosts, which are promptly ignored.

In Jork the party spread the word of Albinus's deeds and his sacrifice for the people of Jork. The local bishop starts working the crowd and declares that Albinus is a martyr and a saint and the locals begin construction of a shrine in his honor. Meanwhile the king of Jork is happy the problem has been dealt with and gives Stignadr a force of 100 men and 5 ships to return to Rhus and help fight off the Merfolk.

While the army prepares to leave the party splits up, running personal errands. Thorgo goes to the hermit seeking knowledge of magic. The hermit is polite, but says he isn't taking in any apprentices, but directs Thorgo to a witch that he knows, warning him to not seek the path to power. (At that Thorgo politely keeps quiet as he's a guest in this man's hovel). Thorgo was accompanied by 2 NPC crewmates from The Freedom (the name of the karvi that the party began the campaign in). One of them says he's not interested in this magic nonsense and heads back to the group. The other one says he wants to go with Thorgo to learn magic. The two buy a small raft and head up the river, searching for the witch.

Session 5 skips ahead as the fleet has finished mustering and is ready to return to Rhus. Among the Brythonic soldiers are Robert the Stonemason (Also known as Bob the Brython) and Val, both local Christians and replacement PCs for myself and Havoc (Albinus's player). Robert has deeply mid stats, good HP and is incredibly learned, being able to speak fluently Norse and also able to read and write in Brythonic. He is a relatively new convert to Christianity and so is a bit...loose let's say with his interpretations of the holy scriptures, as are the others in the area. He became inspired by Albinus's martyrdom and sacrifice and is going to become a member of the saint cult dedicated to him, for sure.

On the way back to Rhus the fleet encounters an odd sight - an island that was not there a couple of weeks ago as the crew sailed to Jork. The island is covered in hills and an imposing mountain, as well as a port and village which are of strange and alien architecture and completely abandoned.

The fleet stops to loot some gold ornaments off an old boat and those who disembarked have a vision the next morning - the rising sun appears to them as a blazing red eye with a triangle in the center. Bob and Val declare that this is a sign from God and that he clearly looks upon them with favor in the upcoming war with the merfolk. This mostly keeps the crew of the ship content and not panicking.

The fleet proceeds through a narrow channel now formed between the new island and Rhus, and arrive in the fortress of Trecht, where Stigandr, having now returned with an army as promised takes Princess Sophia's hand in marriage.

The next morning there's a war council and the PCs, plus Sophia and Grimmr (the captain of the Jork fleet) decide to go explore this new island in hopes of finding allies against the merfolk, as it was observed that the merfolk avoid going to it since it showed up a few days prior.

The group makes their way to the island, finding the mangled remains of the previous doomed Rhus expedition sent to investigate it by the increasingly mad and demented king. Going into the forest towards the imposing mountain, the party run into the mutilated hanging corpses of beastmen and the drumming of strange drums in the distance. Sophia has enough of this shit and flees, Stigandr running after her to make sure she's safe. The rest of the party, composed of Ingvar and Olaf the vikings, Grimmr the Jork captain, Robert the Brython and Val proceed to the mountain - a strange obelisk of sheer rock, spiky points and no vegetation.

Robert boasts that he will climb to the top of this thing, with the boisterous Grimmr immediately challenging him to a race. Everyone except Val (who is of low constitution and would almost certainly die trying to do this nonsense) decide to have a race, climbing up the mountain in 5 grueling days. Eventually, Ingvar makes a surprise advance and manages to overtake everyone, getting to the top first. All who climb the mountain experience a strange feeling if awe and cosmic insignificance, and find themselves marked with a triangular mark on their shoulder - the sign of the mountain and a potent magical protection.

The climb down, now without any food left, claims Olaf who is lost to the mountain, but the rest descend and meet up with Val. On the day of their descent they also go out hunting, as they are all very hungry, and in the process run into the beastmen, having now captured Stigandr (who had previously stood behind to hold them back as he told Sophia to run away) and experimenting on him, completely mangling his left arm at this point.

The beasts seem in awe of the people who have the mountain's blessing and do not stop them as the party retrieve the barely awake and concious Stig and return to their makeshift camp, giving him food and water, and Robert giving the poor naked man his shirt to keep him warm.

The party try and fail to leave off the island and go back to Rhus, but their attempts at crossing the channel with a raft are thwarted by a flash storm that just does not let up, so eventually Robert declares another boast - he will swim the channel in the storm, reach Trecht and get help. Grimmr, now going stir crazy from doing nothing for 2 days straight, oneups him and proposes another race.

Robert can't do much but agree, and the two men strip naked and dive into the murky stormy waters. Grimmr is lost to the storm, blown out into the open seas, but Robert, exhausted and hurting gets washed up on the shores of Rhus. He pushes through the storm and the night, out of sheer determination and reaches the ruined walls of Trecht. Apparently the battle had been fought and lost there in the time the party were busy racing up a mountain. He runs into a friendly local, tells him about the others stranded on the island then politely collapses from exhaustion.

The next couple of days the party manage to get saved and get back together and hear that the merfolk attacked en masse, destroyed the fortress, but the Jork and Rhus forces managed to drive them off in the center of the island, at heavy losses, but still victorious. The victory was hollow though as the Jork soldiers realizing there's little food simply raided the treasury and abused the local population.

Stigandr, exhausted from his ordeal, renounces his pagan ways and asks to be Christened, which Robert performs himself. The party gather up what they can in The Freedom and make ready to set sail back to Jork. Sophia asking them to send help and food, but the party are doubtful that any help would be of use - Rhus is clearly a cursed and doomed place, and so they just want to get away.

Observations

Fuck this is way longer of a recap than I intended, but so much keeps happening in these sessions that it's hard to cover it all even when condensing things significantly.

I wanted to have Thorgo learn magic from the moment I created him, so this was a great way to get him moving on that direction. Nathan, our Referee, says he's fine with running individual side-sessions for people, so Thorgo will be doing his own adventures. I made Robert as a throw away character to just play in the session, but he now has 3 hit dice, personally had a hand in installing a Christian king on the throne of Rhus (for what that's worth) and has a magical blessing from the weird mountain.  So my stable now has 2 very solid looking characters, which is almost not what I wanted, as now I have to actually put some effort into both of them hah.

Boasting continues to always feel slightly odd - the fact that you declare a boast, then get the bonus, then keep it if you succeed sounds like it should be intuitive, but that's...just not how actual boasting in real life works. You boast to others after the fact about the great deeds you've accomplished. So it just doesn't quite fit, but we seem to be getting the hang of making it work.

The race up the mountain was lots of fun, completely decided on the spot, and also helped underline just how little most of us, who aren't Stigandr, actually cared about Rhus and its fate hah. The race was a series of Constitution attribute tests, which definitely helped underline a broader issue with D&D like games, which that attribute tests are very awkward of a mechanic, in a system that does not focus on raising your attributes.

Val has a CON of 4, which is why his player decided to not even try and run him in the race - he was going to die, 100% guaranteed.  This brought on a good discussion during the game, and is something I've thought about on and off for a while now too.

Broadly speaking, I think that if you are going to have attribute checks be a regular element in your game, then your attributes should be able to be raised above what you rolled initially. Tunnels & Trolls makes that effectively the entire engine of the game, and it works fine and solves the problem.

Another observation is that these sessions have been just absolutely packed with action and events. I suspect that is due to the general density of stuff in the Wolves hexcrawl, more than anything else, but of course that's for our referee to know. But even just the immediate area around Jork appears to be full of giant monsters to hunt, a dungeon and numerous other things. And that is but a tiny speck on the entire hex map that composes the Wolves Upon the Coast campaign setting.

I am definitely interested in seeing how running two different characters will go. I usually use side-characters as mostly just throw aways, and in B/X or other older D&D games that makes sense - when you need XP to level up, playing multiple characters simply means you are diluting your XP per session and thus all of your characters just end up overall weaker.

Well in Wolves there is no exp, and Robert now has more hit dice than Thorgo! So I think that helps people just make new PCs and simply run with them. That and of course our referee being willing to handle multiple PCs and keeping track of the timeline that entails.