[Dreamation] 1st Quest: World Tree Pack

[Judd]

I had come up with the idea for the World Tree Pack in an old RPG.net thread inspired by Luke's Great Wolf lifepaths in the Monster Burner and it never really left my head.

So, when Dreamation was looming and I had to come up with a setting that would sound pretty in a convention blurb, I went with sentient norse wolves who walked through worlds.  The pack structure also made it really simple to assign Keys (called Banners in 1st Quest) for each character.

I gave each character a Banner having to do with the pack and another having to do with something outside the pack.  This came from a discussion on the Burning Wheel boards where Luke and company had about external and internal motivations.

So, for example, the little boy being raised by wolves had Banner of Two Worlds and Banner of Curiousity.  It was up to this little boy's player, Mayuran, to decide what the boy was curious about and I was delighted when he chose girls.

All in all I was thrilled with the gamers who sat down to play.  Thor and Mayuran are TSoY-hack veterans who really helped me out as a Sorcerer GM when they prompted me to play my demons harder after a lukewarm Dictionary of Mu session a year or so ago. Steve and Rich are guys I've gamed with a whole lot in the Dexcon-Dreamation circuit and I look forward to gaming with them each year.  Greg had played in a session of SotC the night before with me GMing and I wasn't thrilled with the session's set up but I liked gaming with him.

Five fun gamers at a con, good stuff.  More importantly, I had 3 of five gamers who were not familiar with Shadow of Yesterday in any way, which was good.

Good things about the session:

- I really liked the way the XP flew around.  Thor and Mayuran bought new Secrets (called Rings in 1st Quest) and it went nicely.

- The possible characters were the Alpha, Beta, Omega, Elder, Human Child and Raven.  I had the math all done, so all they had to do was name 'em, and decide what their Banners meant exactly.  For example, if they had the Banner of Revenge, I didn't say who they wanted revenge against.

- We had named a human hunter, Far-away Fang but when no one took the alpha and we realized she died of a wasting disease, we never named her.  Thor pointed out after the game was done how powerful it is to name NPC's.  We should've named her.  Ah well.

It was a fun session

I will write more about this later along with the Banners and such.  Hopefully, I will also track down the link to the BW forum thread where they discussed internal and external motivations.

[ShaneJackson]

What was the scenario like?  Was it something that arose from the players ideas or did you have preconceived ideas of what was going to be happening?

[Thor Olavsrud]

It really grew up out of the setup that we did. After realizing that there was no pack Alpha, we determined that there was a madness-inducing disease (I envisioned it as rabies, but I don't remember whether we actually came out and said this) that was rampaging unchecked through the realms. We decided that our alpha had been infected and fled the pack rather than attack us.

We chose to attempt to follow her across worlds and seek the cause of the disease while Far-away Fang hunted us.

It was a great session. Judd's ultra-cool innovation for Banners is that there are conditions under which the holder of a Banner gives experience to other players for supporting or challenging the character in that area. For instance, my Raven had the Banner of the Trickster. Everytime one of the wolves learned a painful lesson from one of my tricks, I got to award them a few points of experience.

Neat stuff!

[Mayuran]

hey judd-

i'm late in responding.

this session started off oddly and turned great once the players understood the advancement stuff. people were earning XP like crazy, and realizing that their characters could CHANGE in the middle of a con game (pretty unheard of) really set us in a positive direction. basically, we went from "everyone is probably going to kill each other" to a dramatic story where we were working together, sacrificing ourselves for the good of the pack. so one thing to stress in a future con scenario would be the advancement rules - I LOVE that you can reward another player for participating in one of your keys.

also, i might have heard you wrong, but i didn't quite get the tone of "young heroes on their first adventures" from this particular scenario. we all started as relatively battle-hardened, bitter characters. if there is a pack of young wolves with a few elders, it would probably be a bit different. maybe this was your intent and we all heard you wrong.

i look forward to the playtest version.

[Judd]

this session started off oddly and turned great once the players understood the advancement stuff. people were earning XP like crazy, and realizing that their characters could CHANGE in the middle of a con game (pretty unheard of) really set us in a positive direction. basically, we went from "everyone is probably going to kill each other" to a dramatic story where we were working together, sacrificing ourselves for the good of the pack. so one thing to stress in a future con scenario would be the advancement rules - I LOVE that you can reward another player for participating in one of your keys.

Once the XP started to get spent and the players at the table realized they could play to their Banners to get XP and get cool shit, the game really took off.

I'll make sure people understand how that works in the future.

also, i might have heard you wrong, but i didn't quite get the tone of "young heroes on their first adventures" from this particular scenario. we all started as relatively battle-hardened, bitter characters. if there is a pack of young wolves with a few elders, it would probably be a bit different. maybe this was your intent and we all heard you wrong.

i look forward to the playtest version.

The game doesn't have to be a party entirely of young heroes on their first adventures.  Having a mix of children and their mentors is fine with me.  I saw the Omega and your characer, a boy rasied by wolves, as the kids and if they were battle-hardened, that's fine with me.  Kids go through all kinds of shit and young adult fantasy fiction is damned broad.