This summer our weekly roleplay became more of a monthly roleplay, at best. Most weeks, there weren’t enough people to get it going. That and our GM was getting a little tired of Dungeon World, we don’t think it was right for our group. After asking our questions on Google Plus, the designer told us that we were ruining the game. I don’t know about the other guys, but I see that as a sort of rebellious badge of honour.
Anyway, I finally got along to one – we’ve dropped the Dungeon World campaign and the GM has passed the mantle over to a more experienced GM. His chosen system is Runequest. We generated our characters and got introduced to the setting.
Basically, there are four islands – in the north are the Nord, a race of warrior Ogres. In the south are beasts, nature things that do not like people on their island. In the West are Elves, who experiment with magic. Arcane magic is forbidden in this world, so those Elves are seen as evil by everyone else. In the East are Dwarfs, who are experts at metallurgy. To the West and East of the four islands are two large continents with many separate human tribes and some non-magical (non-evil) Elves, Dwarfs, etc.
Our group are two Elves (non-magical) and a Dwarf. I have no combat skills, but the Dwarf has loads, so that should be alright.
The King of the Bretons (a human tribe) died, leaving his 12 year old son as ruler of the kingdom. We were on a boat transporting him to safety when the boat had trouble and sank. The three of us, and very little else, washed up on the shore of a cold island, covered in fir trees and snow. We succeeded in finding some driftwood and a turtle shell, started a small fire, and attracted a white wolf with our singing. We killed the wolf with flaming brands from the fire, completely failed at butchering it and creating warm clothes. As the one who killed it, I was able to keep the “shitty looking slightly scorched fur hat” which provides one armour point to the head and loses one appearance (taking it down to the practically fatal 4 – I am so fugly). We got some meat off the bones and created a stew (using the turtle shell as a pot).
The Dwarf managed to get us some flint, which we have fashioned into a couple of knives and a spearhead. There’s apparently some smoke elsewhere on the island, so next time we might be heading towards that. I think we’ve done pretty well, we’ve found shelter, made fire, eaten and have a goal.
In our second session, we debated whether to investigate the smoke we saw or follow the horse tracks (roughly a dozen horses) that our elf discovered when taking a jog around the beach. We elected to go for the horses, but before long we saw a person. This turned out to be a Nordish fisherman, singing a simple song, who told us we didn’t want to go to the capital. Instead we should head towards “Grunchen”, a free human town, where we might be received better.
We promptly got extremely lost, inland and near a river, when we were attacked by a sabre-toothed tiger. It was going to be a crocodile (ah, random encounter tables…) but we are surrounded by snow. Our Dwarf used his divine spell Mind Blast in the first round, which we discovered was an instant kill against anything without a magic characteristic. Butchering the body gave us a few cloaks, a nicer hat than the one I had, and two knives made from it’s front teeth. As we stood around wondering quite what to do, three Ogres approached us with logs and an axe. We chatted, cautiously and friendly enough, then were asked to come with them to the capital. Then asked again a bit stronger, because Grunchen is a town of the rebel king, full of traitors. We stood our ground while his mates threw logs at us for sport, and when one of them fumbled the throw and he killed them out of warrior pride we realised we had to run or fight.
I voted to run, but we’ve never run in a roleplay before.
Instead, I fast-talked him while we got closer, the Dwarf distracted him so we could hit him from behind in a surprise round. We dropped both of the ogres before they knew what hit them. We stole their bank book (???), their donkey and their cart and we’ve found what we think is Grunchen. We’ve snuck past the guard towers and made a safe camp for the night. Let’s see how we do next time…