Flute for my enemy - Ironsworn adventure part 1

Turtle was a village elder in a village of Summerhome. One day, his son Beaver left for adventure but never returned.

A year later a baby was left in front his grandfather’s house with a note that it is Beaver’s offspring. The baby was strange, with big eyes and skin of the color of dried leaves. Her mother must have been an elf. The baby girl was named Otter.

As kid grew, she also started behaving strangely….She often danced alone under the moon, and spent its days whispering to the crows sitting on top of a few willow tries that grew next to the spring.

Otter was also natural with bow and arrow – true to her elven ancestry.

Bonds:

1.       Otter’s grandfather Turtle

2.       Willow trees

3.       Summerhome village

Assets:

1.       Dancer

2.       Archer

3.       Augur

A leader falls

As Turtle grew older, more and more people thought that he should no longer be the village elder. This place should naturally be taken by his son, but as he was not there, other families started pretending to the position.

Otter made an iron vow that she will find her father and come back with him to the village, so that Beaver could take the elder position (background vow, extreme).

Gather information

Other tries to learn whereabouts of her father from family stories. It seems that Beaver wanted to enter the Mouth of the Dead cave – which supposedly contains entrance into the afterlife. Seems that he wanted to bring someone back from dead, but who, and why?

Vow

Otter swears the iron vow that she will seek clues about her father in the Mouth of the Dead.

Secure advantage

Otter searches her father’s remaining possessions to find something that might help in her quest. All she finds is a wood pallet with flute finger positions of some song written on it.

 

Turtle explains Otter that Beaver played a flute.  The only way for Otter to find Beaver is to find his flute first. But Beaver did not want to be found, so he made an iron vow that he will give his flute to his arch-enemy. No one in the village knows if he managed to fulfill that vow or who could this arch-enemy be.

Undertake a Journey

First part of travel to Mouth of the Dead was uneventful.

Resupply 

Otter stopped to resupply by hunting with her bow. She took a moment to aim at a deer, but then noticed that the animal is standing by some strange rock. Otter missed the dear but went to examine the rock ornate with strange runes. Rock was actually a vessel containing elven supplies. It seems that elves keep hidden supply outposts in the forests for their travelers.

Reach your destination

 

Otter stands in front of Mouth of the Dead cave, ready to enter.

End of part 1.

PART 2
As she entered the cave Otter found herself surrounded by swarm of rats.
(few combat moves later) She found squeaking of hundred of rats around her feet annoying so she endured some stress, but managed to push a big rock at the swarm and scatter them.

Moving on, she reached a very steep descent blocking her way. It is lucky she dad her rope with her (equipment test).

Few cave halls later, Otter has seen the daylight again - there is a second exit from the cave. Is she reaching halls of afterlife?

Near the cave mouth, Otter noticed another elven resupply cache. Being low on supplies, she decided to check it out. But when she opened the cache, the swarm of terrible bugs crawled out of it. She felt so disgusted that she will never try to open elven supply storage again. (miss om re-supply, something is lost, so I let that asset go. Easy come, easy gone).
Exiting the cage, Otter noticed wast forest spreading in the lands before her.Well, this is definitely not an afterlife.
Let see what can we find under the trees.

END OF PART 2. 

Traveling through the forest, Otter’s path was blocked by a huge wolf. She moved carefully towards it, not wanting to fight the beautiful animal.

Wolf was not there for fight or food. What does it need?

(Rebel against power. What power? Coordinate Language) Otter’s mind filled with images of animals forced against their will to work against the community of elves – sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly by small trickeries, misdirection, lies or petty thieving.

Otter swore an Iron Vow that she will free forest animals from this tyrannical service (dangerous).

Otter finally reached elven community and was accepted, but how will she recognize her mother?

Ask crows! Double – a twist! (Depart Balance)

Otter’s mother lived in this community as nature priest. But elven community never approved her relationship with human, so after having her, they left the community together.

Since that moment, elven community lost its stability point. They have no nature priest at the moment, and nature is playing tricks on them.

(Decided against vow here, as it would get too intervened, rather putting it as a milestone on find parents quest – Once Otter’s mother returns, stability will return too).

Otter tried to forge the bond with her mother’s community. But, there is an issue in the village. Some elven kids disappeared, lured by a strange music from a cave north of the community If Otter could bring the kids back…

Otter enters the cave, and deep inside it finds a bandit leader commanding both kids and forest animals with the music from a flute? Is this Otter’s father flute?

Otter enters the fray attacking bandit leader. He reacts by playing a song, hoping to enchant her. But Otter resists, humming in her head the song she learned from father’s writing. Then she ends the fight – Bandit leader is dead.

Was he the one to command the animals? (Fulfill the vow – Miss!)

Otter takes the flute from the body. It is not her father’s handmade instrument, just the common one you can buy on village fairs.

Anyway she uses the instrument to play her father’s tune to the elven children in a cave, freeing them from spell. Bond with village marked.

As she exited the cave, wolf appears again. It tells her that the Bandit leader was just one of several minions, serving one mysterious leader, figure shrouded in darkness…..  Free forest animals vow is now formidable….

 END OF PART 3. 

After dealing with Bandit Leader, Otter visited Haunted Barrow to kill Necromancer, and then entered Maddening Ziggurat to pay a visit to local Chaos Priest. But inside the Ziggurat she found out that her fame was there before her. Priest surrender at the first sight of her (doubles on strong hit - Avoid Wound. Successful Compel) 

This allowed Otter to fulfill her vow to forest animals. They are now free.

Chaos Priest told her about the strange person who gave him a flute and showed him how to play it. He knows very little about him, except that he is rich and important person in a town lying on the other side of the Northern Mountains.

Otter left the Ziggurat with 0 Spirit (it was truly Maddening) but pressing on. As she walked back towards the elven community, she saw Priest riding full speed North, to warn his boss about Otter's arrival. Stupid fool, he will probably regret he was born once his boss finishes with him.

Otter will do some Sojourn to recover and then move North herself.

But probably not in June. It was fun ride with Ironsworn, but I feel a little tired of solo RPG-ing. What I need now are some heavy euro boardgames to burn by brain in a different way for a while.

Colostle solo RPG - Sesion 1 and review

This is my first adventure in the world of a solo RPG Colostle, recently funded through kickstarter..
From house rules, I used only Oracle (see this link), and I disregarded class rules.

My character started as a 4 exploration / 2 combat adventurer called Otter, looking for knowledge about Rooks - strange stone semi-sentinel automatons that roam the Coloste.

Traveling through the land, Otter finds remains of the strange machinery. It seems to be broken. No part of it moves. Massive electric Rook seems to be guarding machinery. Using some strange form of communication, Rook informs Otter that it will teach him about Rooks if he helps repair the machine.

Solution to the machinery condition lies with a massive ice Rook, buried within a cave in a seaside cliff. Otter should be aware that there are traps…

In order to prepare for the mission, Otter decided to visit the remains of a medium ice Rook he knows about. But there are already 2 scavengers at the Rooks site, and they attack Otter. Combat is quick, and deadly, scavengers are not a match for Otter skill. (2x treasure)

Otter tries to enter Rook shell, but the trap activates, surrounding him in ice. From its trapped position, Otter can see one of Rooks windows, and through it, a small village. The village is not there if you look from outside of Rook. The window of a Rook is too small for human to pass through, but big enough for someone to give some object inside.

Otter tries to combat the ice trap surrounding him but fails, only earning two wounds.
Then, he starts to scream hoping that villagers will hear him and come to his help.
Oracle: will this plan succeed? Yes.
What happens:
One villager reaches through the window and gives Otter an ancient item - some kind of strange torch that once was part of electric Rook. It has only one charge (the item is mostly rubble - 4 spades).
Otter uses the item’s charge to melt the ice trap.
Can Otter establish further communication with the villager? Oracle says no.

Otter then travels towards the sea. On the way there, he meets a strange person wearing a castle symbol on a robe. Upon hearing about Otter’s mission, Castle Guard decides to help and gives him a mace made from rook finger - strange weapon indeed - combat + 1.

Otter arrives at the sea cave and finds a massive Rook buried inside it. He fights Rook’s ice trap and is victorious, even if gaining 2 wounds. This Rook’s portal window is big enough for Otter to pass through, so he moves to the other side.

Our hero finds himself to be in some other cave. This cave is used as a camp by a group of humans, but they are all sound asleep and nobody notices the new arrival.
Among the sleeping people Otter finds a cage with a very small Rookling inside.

Moving quietly not to wake up anybody, Otter takes the cage and returns through Ice Rook. Road back is uneventful and Otter quickly arrives back to where he started.

He took the Rookling out of its cage, and big Rook put it into the machine. Operated by a small robot, machine parts start moving, but no visible output comes out of that.

Satisfied, massive Rook thanks Otter. It further tells him that Castle Guards use items called Ticket Keys to direct exit location of Ice Rook’s window portals, and that they are using them as means of transportation through the Colostle.
Then, Rook gives Otter one such Ticket Key.

END OF SESSION 1.

Review:

THE GOOD
First thing that you see when you get this book is beautiful art.
Another great thing that simply shines in this game is world where it all happens. Game is located within the castle so big, that mountains, rivers, even oceans are located inside its rooms.
The rooms of the castle are roamed by semi intelligent automatons called Rooks. This material for solo RPG is just great.

THE AVERAGE
Mechanics of the game is based on a standard deck of cards. Each turn is divided into two phases - exploration and combat.
In exploration phase player draws cards, finds their meaning in the table, and creates story based on that. It has opportunity to create great story lines but player needs previous solo RPG experience, it is not very beginners friendly.
Number of possible results is rather limited, with 10 red and 10 black cards (suits always represent encounter with Rooks). Also, some card meanings are to concrete (like: you fall into trap, club you avoid it, spades you are captured) so occasionally it is difficult to fit it into current adventure concept.
Combat uses paper/rock/scissors push your luck mechanics that can create interesting outcomes.

THE BAD
Where the game falls are mechanics. They definitely need some important house rulings to actually work.
Classes of the game differ just by number of cards drawn in each phase, and this is something that changes during the game. Classes have no mechanical differences even if they were easy to implement - like one class could be better when fighting Rooks, others could have additional healing or similar.
Lots of things are just for the mood sake when they could have been used mechanically.
Additional minus is the fact that the game never addresses player actions. It never asks player: what do you want to do now? There is also no way to answer player's question - like oracle or random idea generator. Also, there is no way to resolve non aggressive actions other than combat.
For example: my character is locked in ice trap inside the Rook. Previous exploration scene told me that Rook stands in front of small village. I tried to fight the ice trap but I lost. I could fight again, but it would create the death spiral. I want to scream hoping that someone in village would hear me, but I have no option for that. I can just create exploration scene hoping to deduct from that if my idea succeeds or not, but this could turn difficult with the way exploration table is created.

This game had potential, but it was not playtested properly and therefore it was published way before it should have been. With some house ruling it could create interesting stories, but it may be more trouble than it is worth. Maybe it would be easier to use just the setting, and then play another game mechanically to explore its possibilities.

Setting: 9 out of 10 stars
Mechanics: 4 out of 10 stars.
Total mark: 6.5