Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Freebooting on the Frontier [2]

My last entry recounted the first hour of a three-hour session, and this one covers only about the next half-hour of actual play time.

After everyone equips themselves to satisfaction, they assemble at Threshport's gate and set off into the Red Jungle, in the direction of the Pit of the Giant. The island is largely unexplored, with no other settlements besides Threshport, so there are no established roads pretty much any way you head will take you into the wilderness.

Time to put the Perilous Wilds rules into play. We had already established that the Pit was about a day's journey on foot, and they were clearly headed into untamed wilderness, so their actions trigger the Undertake a Perilous Journey move, which has been altered from the Dungeon World original to read:

Undertake a Perilous Journey
When you travel through dangerous lands, indicate the course you want to take on the map, and ask the GM how far you should be able to get before needing to Make Camp. If you’re exploring with no set destination, indicate which direction you go. Then, choose one member of the party to Scout Ahead, and one to Navigate, resolving those moves in that order.

I ask them who's going to Scout Ahead and Elorfindra the elf Cleric nominates herself. No one objects, so we go to the move:

Scout Ahead
When you take point and look for anything out of the ordinary, roll +WIS: on a 10+, choose 2 from the list below; on a 7-9, choose 1.

* You get the drop on whatever lies ahead
* You discern a beneficial aspect of the terrain—shortcut, shelter, or tactical advantage (describe it)
* You make a Discovery (ask the GM)
* You see sign of a nearby Danger —ask the GM what it is, and what it signifies

She rolls a 7, +0 for her WIS for a 7, and chooses 1 from the list: "You make a Discovery (ask the GM)." If they were traveling through a prepared region I might look through my notes for a pre-planned Discovery, but the point of this session is to make most stuff up as we play, so I go to the Discovery tables in The Perilous Wilds.

These tables are designed to generate prompts for the GM to build on, not to spell out things in detail. The Discovery tables fit onto one 8.5" x 11" page spread:


These days I ask my players to do all the rolling, and the Discovery and Danger tables use 12-sided dice, so when we sit down to play I make sure everyone has a d12 on hand. I've found the quickest way to generate numbers for these tables in play is to ask them each to roll a d12, then tell me the numbers one at a time until I get a result. This can feel weird at first, as there is a pause while the results are determined and interpreted, but it gets faster and smoother with practice.

The first three d12 rolls in this instance are 9, 3, and 6, which gives me Structure > Infrastructure > "road." Under "Infrastructure," it says I can roll to see whoever built the road it using 1d4+4 on the Creature table, and the result in that case gives me "human."

As an aside, I should note that all of this die-rolling goes relatively quickly; asking for rolls, referencing the tables, interpreting the result, and describing what they see takes about 20-30 seconds.


The job of the GM is to interpret the prompt in context, which in this case is a humid jungle on an unexplored island. So, I'm thinking, if there's a road on an unexplored island, it must be an ancient road built by some past human inhabitants. I tell Elorfindra that while everyone is taking a midday break in a clearing, she notices an unnatural shape in the undergrowth. She pulls away the ferns and grass to reveal a weathered stone pylon, about waist-high, and encased in fine green moss. She scrapes away some of the moss to find that the pylon is completely covered in runic symbols, worn down to the point of being barely perceptible.

Selina the Magic-User comes over to see what the elf has discovered. She examines the runes to see if any of them look familiar, which triggers the Recall move (Freebooters on the Frontier's rejiggered version of Spout Lore):

Recall
When you seek the answer to a question by drawing upon your accumulated knowledge, say why you might know the answer to that particular question. If the Judge buys it, roll +INT: on a 10+, the Judge will give you a complete and truthful answer; on a 7-9, the Judge will give you an answer, but you won’t know it’s true until you put it to the test. If the Judge doesn’t buy how you might know the answer, it turns out you don’t know much about the subject.

I ask her why she might know the answer, and she cites her years of studying both history and magical texts. I buy it. She rolls: 9, +2 for her INT modifier = 11. I tell her that most of the runes have been obliterated by the passage of time, but she can make out one that repeats—a stylized sheaf of grain that represents the deity Dalia.

In the course of making stuff up on the spot, I'm always looking for ways to connect things. At the beginning of this session, we established that Dalia is the Goddess of Life, and that there was an earlier and ill-fated colonial presence on the island. As they investigate the pylon and what it might signify, I'm pulling things together in my head: an ancient road, marked by the sign of the Goddess of Life. What does it mean?

Elorfindra starts looking for further archaeological evidence, describing how she stands at the pylon and scans the surrounding area, looking for more. So she triggers Perceive:

Perceive
When you pay close attention to a person, place or thing, roll +WIS: on a 10+, hold 3; on a 7-9, hold 1. Spend your hold 1-for-1 to ask the Judge questions about the object of your attention, either now or later. But ask carefully; if there’s no way you could reasonably know the answer, the Judge will just tell you you don’t notice anything unusual.

She gets a 7 and for her question asks me of there's anything else of obvious human construction in the vicinity. I decide there is and tell her that she finds another pylon, just like the first, about 50 yards away to the southwest. She and Selina scrape off some of the moss together and find the same markings, the only recognizable one being the mark of Dalia.

This puts me in an interesting spot. At first I had been thinking the pylon was a milestone on an ancient highway, but now I've said there's another one only 50 yards way. So something else is going on here, but what? I'll have some time to think about it, because before the halfling and elf can start searching the undergrowth in earnest, the others insist on setting out, in the interest of reaching the Pit before nightfall.

Since the initial Scout Ahead move resulted in a Discovery that led to a brief break in the journey, I say they need to Undertake a Perilous Journey again for the next leg. It's been noticed at this point that Selina has the best WIS modifier (+1), so she is urged to take point. Unfortunately, she rolls a 5, +1, for a 6. She marks XP, but I get to make a GM move (or Judge move, in FotF parlance). After a moment's hesitation, I decide to go ahead and throw a Danger at them. I could roll one up, but I'm going to go with one we've already established—the Three-Headed Horror.

Will they survive contact with the creature the locals fear above all others?

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