Edgewise
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- Sep 27, 2017
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Hey, I decided to start this thread because I'm working on another adventure and I wanted a place to talk about it, bounce ideas off other people, get ideas from brilliant pubbers, etc. Feel free to comment on anything I mention here, and beyond.
The Adventure!
The adventure I'm working on is tentatively titled The Old Ways. It's basically a hexcrawl with purpose. The players are hired by a foreign trading bank to find a traversable route between a certain mountain pass and a very large lake, with a forest in between. There is an ancient overgrown road through the region, but the map the players get is wrong, and there are plenty of obstacles they need to deal with to blaze their trail (obviously).
Location, Location, Location
The vibe of the adventure setting is a combination of points-of-light and faerie forest. Think of something like Dolemwood or early Zzarchov Kowalski adventures (1k Dead Babies and Gnomes of Levnec). There are two settlements in the area: a prosperous fortified hamlet which is occupied by some very zealous knights (who aren't at all tolerant of sorcery) and a seedy logging camp that is reminiscent of Deadwood. The party has to travel back and forth to these settlements while mapping out a trail and possibly hiring work crews to clear obstacles. There's a fair amount of resource management, and I have drafted some very simple rules to handle this stuff.
Fun Elements
While there is no fixed plot, there are several different factions with their own goals, and some simple rules are provided to handle emergent events. There's a lot of tension between the New Faith, as represented by the knightly order in the hamlet, and the Old Ways i.e. the displaced pagan practices that still lurk around the edges. The Old Gods are greatly diminished, but they inhabit the forest as mythic demigods like Paul Bunyon-type figures. Meanwhile, a cult of devil worshipers has their own objective, as does a coven of witches that inhabits the swamp.
There are a few other interesting factions: a group of bandits who have turned their hideout into a fake haunted house and plan to rob the logging camp, a troll who has now declared himself the Troll King after finding a magical artifact, a tribe of inbred hillfolk who are secretly werewolves forced to serve the witches. There's a blood feud between prominent families in the hamlet, and one family will petition the party to build their route through the town while the other will violent oppose them. There are faeries in the forest who will sabotage work sites at night.
Monsters
I've also come up with a few important monsters. The most important are the woodwose. They are the fodder monsters here, but they're pretty tough for fodder. I came up with the woodwose after encountering them in a few recent OSR products. After running into them a few times, I looked them up; apparently, woodwose are like a European sasquatch i.e. big and hairy bestial men.
I decided to tweak them a bit and play up an aspect of the folklore which is that it's not clear whether woodwose are supposed to be savage humans or another species entirely. In this setting, the woodwose is a kind of contagious madness that transforms men into monsters. Hermits routinely change into woodwose after long periods of time in the wilderness, but the woodwose themselves are able to accelerate the process by capturing humans and surrounding them with chanting and drumming. This can transform men into woodwose within a couple days.
My concept of the woodwose is that they are huge and hairy ogre-like creatures, cunning but constantly babbling nonsense and emitting various shrieks and grunts. Those in close quarters must save to avoid being confused by this constant din. There are two bands of them in the area; one serves the Troll King and the other inhabits an ancient ruin in the forest. Both will grow over time, and raid settlements if not curtailed.
The other monsters I came up with for the setting are snails. I figured that spiders and forests have been done to death, it's time for lethal snails. So far, I have two deadly snail species: the Giant Cone Snail and Drop Snails. GCS's lurk in the rivers and lakes, and if you get too close, they fire a paralytic harpoon up to 15'. Then they drag you in the water to drown. Lumberjacks hate these, since they use the main river to transport the trunks. Drop Snails are just snails that climb trees and try to drop on the heads of unsuspecting passersby. Terrifying.
Other Stuff
There are also a couple of ruins, and some fun McGuffins: the pagans are looking for a ritual to summon an avatar of their war god to drive out the knights. The devil worshipers want to capture this avatar and sacrifice it to create their own far more terrible avatar. The witches want to release the Wild Hunt from its imprisonment in a barrow tomb. The werewolves seek an artifact that gives them power over the moon, so they can transform whenever they want and turn against the witches.
Feedback
Thoughts? Feelings? I don't have any questions yet but I'm totally open to hear peoples' ideas and opinions.
By the way, my goal is to keep this whole thing under 40 pages. That's with encounter tables, rumor tables, rules for trailblazing, sub-locations, etc. I don't think any of the locations on the map will be as extensive as a dungeon - anything that has its own map will have less than a dozen areas. But this is going to be a helluva challenge, don't you think?
The Adventure!
The adventure I'm working on is tentatively titled The Old Ways. It's basically a hexcrawl with purpose. The players are hired by a foreign trading bank to find a traversable route between a certain mountain pass and a very large lake, with a forest in between. There is an ancient overgrown road through the region, but the map the players get is wrong, and there are plenty of obstacles they need to deal with to blaze their trail (obviously).
Location, Location, Location
The vibe of the adventure setting is a combination of points-of-light and faerie forest. Think of something like Dolemwood or early Zzarchov Kowalski adventures (1k Dead Babies and Gnomes of Levnec). There are two settlements in the area: a prosperous fortified hamlet which is occupied by some very zealous knights (who aren't at all tolerant of sorcery) and a seedy logging camp that is reminiscent of Deadwood. The party has to travel back and forth to these settlements while mapping out a trail and possibly hiring work crews to clear obstacles. There's a fair amount of resource management, and I have drafted some very simple rules to handle this stuff.
Fun Elements
While there is no fixed plot, there are several different factions with their own goals, and some simple rules are provided to handle emergent events. There's a lot of tension between the New Faith, as represented by the knightly order in the hamlet, and the Old Ways i.e. the displaced pagan practices that still lurk around the edges. The Old Gods are greatly diminished, but they inhabit the forest as mythic demigods like Paul Bunyon-type figures. Meanwhile, a cult of devil worshipers has their own objective, as does a coven of witches that inhabits the swamp.
There are a few other interesting factions: a group of bandits who have turned their hideout into a fake haunted house and plan to rob the logging camp, a troll who has now declared himself the Troll King after finding a magical artifact, a tribe of inbred hillfolk who are secretly werewolves forced to serve the witches. There's a blood feud between prominent families in the hamlet, and one family will petition the party to build their route through the town while the other will violent oppose them. There are faeries in the forest who will sabotage work sites at night.
Monsters
I've also come up with a few important monsters. The most important are the woodwose. They are the fodder monsters here, but they're pretty tough for fodder. I came up with the woodwose after encountering them in a few recent OSR products. After running into them a few times, I looked them up; apparently, woodwose are like a European sasquatch i.e. big and hairy bestial men.
I decided to tweak them a bit and play up an aspect of the folklore which is that it's not clear whether woodwose are supposed to be savage humans or another species entirely. In this setting, the woodwose is a kind of contagious madness that transforms men into monsters. Hermits routinely change into woodwose after long periods of time in the wilderness, but the woodwose themselves are able to accelerate the process by capturing humans and surrounding them with chanting and drumming. This can transform men into woodwose within a couple days.
My concept of the woodwose is that they are huge and hairy ogre-like creatures, cunning but constantly babbling nonsense and emitting various shrieks and grunts. Those in close quarters must save to avoid being confused by this constant din. There are two bands of them in the area; one serves the Troll King and the other inhabits an ancient ruin in the forest. Both will grow over time, and raid settlements if not curtailed.
The other monsters I came up with for the setting are snails. I figured that spiders and forests have been done to death, it's time for lethal snails. So far, I have two deadly snail species: the Giant Cone Snail and Drop Snails. GCS's lurk in the rivers and lakes, and if you get too close, they fire a paralytic harpoon up to 15'. Then they drag you in the water to drown. Lumberjacks hate these, since they use the main river to transport the trunks. Drop Snails are just snails that climb trees and try to drop on the heads of unsuspecting passersby. Terrifying.
Other Stuff
There are also a couple of ruins, and some fun McGuffins: the pagans are looking for a ritual to summon an avatar of their war god to drive out the knights. The devil worshipers want to capture this avatar and sacrifice it to create their own far more terrible avatar. The witches want to release the Wild Hunt from its imprisonment in a barrow tomb. The werewolves seek an artifact that gives them power over the moon, so they can transform whenever they want and turn against the witches.
Feedback
Thoughts? Feelings? I don't have any questions yet but I'm totally open to hear peoples' ideas and opinions.
By the way, my goal is to keep this whole thing under 40 pages. That's with encounter tables, rumor tables, rules for trailblazing, sub-locations, etc. I don't think any of the locations on the map will be as extensive as a dungeon - anything that has its own map will have less than a dozen areas. But this is going to be a helluva challenge, don't you think?