[Circle of Hands] First Venture: Gerdawend

[Judd]

Alright, I rolled. Black Die: 5, White Die: 3, Red Die: 1. It is in Rolke (Role-Keh). Got it. I'm getting used to saying them. I look over the map, read over pages 19-20 and decide on a center-point near the mountains where there is a little standing stone. Gerdawend, the stone is said to have been left by the Pananthuri as a mark of who-the-fuck-knows-what. That dice give me a monster. I like the unicorn; it creeps me out.

Unicorn it is.

The Red Die says, "Harsh."

I have one component, so I have 3 names.

Ralf One-eye: B8, Q5, W4, C2, Outdoorsman

Gisela: B2, Q4, W5, C8, Farmer

Geert Wendwerner: B4, Q2, W8, C5, High Martial, Scholar

Alright, some wizards did battle here and the unicorn turned the tide. Maybe both wizards killed one another or one was driven off and said he'd come back for the unicorn. I'm not sure.

Either way, Geert came here with the wizard, leading the wizard's posse some years ago and when the wizard fucked off, he and his gang settled down and married local. He was probably relieved when he heard the locals were not taking part in the war anymore, all the more reason for him to settle down and not seek out the wizard he once served.

But that fucking unicorn, man.

For a while they'd use the unicorn as a kind of punitive measure, a nasty way to kill criminals and transgressors. They put Ralf up there, hobbled him and left him for the unicorn to deal with when it was discovered that he had helped the Rbaja wizard. He came back with one eye and a limp and a chip on his shoulder. He takes his sheep into pastures where no one else will dare, dangerously close to the standing stone.

Gisela was dying this winter when she called to the unicorn for aid. She was found, the only living person in the house, the rest of the family dead-by-unicorn. Now she's living with her younger son and her teeth look unnaturally white and they are scared out of their minds. Geert doesn't want word of it getting out. He burned Gisela's elder son's house, said it was sickness that did them in but spared Gisela. There's grumbling, though.

Locations: The standing stone on the hill AKA, the unicorn's killing ground

The burned down husk of Gisela's eldest son's house

Geert's tower, the Rbaja wizard's tower, where Geert has made his home.

Tripwire: Gisela is somehow threatened and calls upon the unicorn for aid.

Word gets out that Geert burned down Gisela's eldest's farm.

Thoughts appreciated. Thanks.

[Ron Edwards]

That is one focused little venture. Bumping up past 7 on the second die will do that.

I really like it. You can probably tell this stuff is right at the campfire with Trollbabe, Dust Devils, and Dogs in the Vineyard, given that each of these messes with the idea individually a little bit. A major common feature is that they back off hard from the "investigate then fight" as a track while conforming to its content.

Here are a couple of thoughts about the first stages of application.

1. With just the one component, the player knights have already heard about it. How much they've heard is a dial, but it doesn't spin much. They know a bit more than just "monster," I suggest it spins between hearing that it's a monstrous thing of some kind and hearing that it's an avatar (the latter identity is pretty unsubtle after all), and they obviously know which general region of Rolke they're going to. They shouldn't know anything about the names, the named NPCs and their interactions, or anything but the vaguest element of the back-story ("the fighting in the civil war was pretty bad here" - probably known to a knight from Rolke; if there aren't any, then not even that). It is a dial so you can tweak it to what you'd like, enough so that it makes sense to you that the knights want to go there, but no more than that.

Remember, you'll be saying what they know as the real opener for play - it's after you say that, that the players choose which knight to play. Also, since the characters are doing this on their own, don't phrase it as "the king sends you to go clear out that monster."

2. I recognize the need for back-story. The Iron Age setting just calls out for it, I mean, Saga of the Icelanders and all, especially since the harsh/grim/squick metric is a paint-color that wants to paint something. So good, you did it - the next issue is how much you'll make knowing that back-story a part of play. In this game, it's nothing but excellent to have the back-story impact the situation and NPCs' actions, but I find it useful to leave the "find out the back-story" entirely up to my feelings of the moment, and I also try to avoid coming up with new information about the back-story, i.e., not making it rich.

The plays into your prep in two ways.

i) The real guide in this matter is the various reactive responses of the named characters. If a player makes that Charm roll, then the named character thinks of him or her as kin, and will disclose freely, "this is what's going on, brother." In his or her own view of what should happen, i..e, biased as hell. If he or she doesn't, then that named NPC doesn't tell them important information because that named NPC isn't going to talk to "that whore" or "that outsider" about damn thing anyway. So it absolutely cannot be used as a pacer or even conflict-milestone during play - this is, I think, where Circle and Dogs diverge sharply despite being very similar in most ways. It's also where your phrase "Geert doesn't want word of it getting out" sticks out painfully - see, word did get out, the knights know something and they're here, and you're front-loading how he's going to feel about it, ahead of the roll.

ii) By my standards of play (so adjust to yours), you've tied too much into the back-story, making it all about this wizard. I suggest Ralf did something else, just an ordinary transgression of some kind, maybe beat up someone's brother or took advantage of some common pasture land. So the story is about what's happening now, not what happened then. I also suggest bagging the tower, or letting it be plain old ruins that no one cares about and which have no special properties.

Interesting - this reminds me of one of the playtesting preps, in which someone wanted an Rbaja zone and got all wrapped up with how it got there, to the extent that the prep bloated into a whole Elemental Evil's worth of wizards running around doing things. I even think I put some text in the book to help avoid this. In your case, anything you put in there about "how the unicorn got here" should be Color only, Color only, not consequential back-story.The fact that Ralf was mutilated by the unicorn is totally enough, absolutely enough.

Technicalities

1. Only one tripwire. If you use the one with "word gets out," I suggest it's too vague, and therefore subject to GM fiat whether it has or has not happened - I mean, arguably, the knights showing up in the first place could trip it. It also might lead to "I've got a secret" NPC role-playing. Wait ... looking them over, I think both have this problem. Tripwires are specific things: "Gisela is harmed," and there you go - nothing about how it happens, what bad it is, who thinks what about it ... and it shouldn't be about information or opinion at all.

2. Only one designated-dangerous location. I mean, someone can try to kill you anywhere, but this is the place in which Wits rolls and a healthy respect for the local geography really matter.

[Judd]

I get your comments and they make sense with what I read in the book.

I like Ralf having just done violence to the wrong person and I like getting rid of the tower - let the situation breathe a bit with momentum moving forward rather than back. Got it.

And I see where I over-day-dreamed a bit and need to dial it back and wait to see the information the rolls give me.

Good stuff. Thanks for taking the time to go over it with me.

[Judd]

2. Only one designated-dangerous location. I mean, someone can try to kill you anywhere, but this is the place in which Wits rolls and a healthy respect for the local geography really matter.

Yes, I figured the mist-shrouded hills with the standing stone is the dangerous location. The other areas are just places for me to think about describing like the huts in the book's example.

[Ron Edwards]

Roll20 often helps me with dangerous-location maps. I buy their stuff because it works really well for me. I know tastes in map styles differ, but here's a couple I would choose from.

Forest standing stones
Forest standing stone night (not the same location)

[Ron Edwards]

A couple more thoughts ...

"Harsh" is the lowest level of badness indicated by the red die; it corresponds roughly to ordinary life in the Crescent land. I submit that the family murder and the burning would be more appropriate for "Grim," the second level. What happened to Ralf seems harsh enough.

With that in mind, I see no secrets at work. The community uses the unicorn for summary justice, and that's what they do. They may not be proud of it, but unicorns are hard not to like (until ...), and it did help kill the wizard. The harshness that enters into things is that they kind of have to keep giving it victims and may not have realized how easy it is for "law and order" to become "throw people into the meat grinder."

Wow - no criminal. No atrocity. No cover-up. No villain. No secrets. No investigation. None of that stuff at all.

Try it that way, Judd. I'm not sure if you'd read the first part of chapter 4 when you first wrote this up, but that addresses some of the philosophy or strategy of venture design, from the point of view of GM usage. I think you'll be surprised.