This is Morgan Black, Baron of Staten, who lives on the 14th floor of the crumbling rockheap he swears to be his childhood home. He has a gun and a horse, and a coat of mail. The gun has no bullets of course, but it makes a good club, and Morgan likes the way it looks in the holster on his belt. There's a big old sturgeon in the Old Hudson that talks to Morgan, the sturgeon brings him secrets and tells him the weakness of his enemies in exchange for potato chips, which to the big fish are better than gold. There's a tree that will grant Morgan wishes, for a price.

Every where he looks, Morgan sees another conquest.

Post-apocalyptic meets pseudo-Arthurian fantasy with a huge dash of anachronism thrown in. A modern landscape that feels like it's ripped from a dream you had falling asleep while reading The Dark Tower and Neverwhere at the same time.

The landscape is filled with spirits called dreamers, who play out their petty stories, using the characters as pawns and bait, while larger forces twist and rewrite the world around you.

I see maybe a mechanic where players both play a character and a spirit with a lot of bartering and intrigue offering boons and granting small wishes to other characters in exchange for advancing their agenda.

I see turning familiar things on their heads and characters fighting to protect a single cul-de-sac in their hometown, or setting off to bizarre and exotic destinations in search of glory and understanding themselves.

Session 2: Part II

After challenging him to single combat, Orban bests Jenci, and pins him to the ground. Orban holds aloft a huge rock and asks Jenci if he would willingly trade places with his sister, and sacrifice himself to the Goddess instead. Jenci, grieving over the choice he has made, says he gladly would. Orban then begins smashing Jenci's head in with the rock.

We took a second here after Orban's character declares that, without resistance, he was going to kill Jenci. Jenci's player, perhaps a bit unsure if he was allowed to fight back after Orban got two points towards "winning the fight" over his character, said that he couldn't struggle.

I would like to point out that there is no animosity between the two players, so this was not an in-game resolution of an out-of-game problem.

Unwilling to create another character with limited time on the clock, we were unsure how to proceed. Sensing he may have stepped into a level of gaming the newest member of the table was unprepared to explore, Orban's player offered that perhaps Adel shouted to him and commanded him to stop. We agreed to go on from that point.

Jenci struggled back from a bloody vision of the future to find Orban still over him with the rock, and Adel shouting at Orban to stop. Jenci, now assured by the spirits that Orban would indeed kill him, agrees to go through with the ceremony. With the blessing of the Goddess, the ritual guidance of Adel, and lots of spilled blood, Jenci drowns his sister that evening. As her struggles cease beneath the icy waters, he feels her life force enter into him, forming a cold hard wall around his heart.

Necromancy (ii) was a really thrilling story option for me, so I had to try it on someone.

Jenci and Orban meet with Miklos and convince him that the Sarkozi need to fight. Jenci defers to Orban throughout most of this conversation, and sees his fathers faith in him shift to Orban instead. It is agreed that the people must flee, but that the warriors will remain and fight.

Jenci has no troubles convincing the warriors that their cause is worthy. Breja returns with a few Sobeska soldiers to add, telling Jenci that the Arnwald and Thancmor army has gathered to the north. Miklos flees with the women and children south along the river. The smoke of many campfires creeps through the woods and into the valley stronghold.

Uri, the Burnt is traveling along with the Thancmor army, exchanging protection for small trinkets and enchantments. He is looking for "the Bear Woman" whom he believes to be Adel, as he has received an omen that great fortune follows those in her presence. Knowing battle is imminent, strikes out under the cover of night to intercept the Sarkozi.

At this point, we've got forty minutes remaining and I want to test the battle mechanics. I ask the players if they want to fight in their stronghold, or somewhere else. They choose somewhere else. I then go around the table and have them each come up with a trait of the landscape.

The Sarkozi war party seeks to ambush the Thancmor at a nearby natural bridge, with forest at their back, easy lanes for archery, that unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) is in the territory of a very dangerous Troll. Jenci dispatches one of his younger brothers Harlan to try and rouse the troll, and then draw it back to the battlefield.

Uri arrives and parks his cart right in the middle of the natural bridge and lights a pipe. Crows begin to gather around the battlefield, sensing the carnage about to happen. Jenci advances the Sarkozi across the bridge and plans to pepper the Thancmor with arrows while drawing them back to the bridge.

We run into a few hiccups: If the group decides to undertake Harassing Your Enemy is the opposing army allowed a Come Under Attack move? We agree that they can, but can not find a definite answer.

The War Parties are as follows:
Army of Longinus: 55 Warriors (40 Thancmor + 15 Arnwald) +2 War; 4(7) Harm (+3 with numbers), 3(6) Armor (+3 with numbers); Archers
Jenci's Warband: 15 Warriors (12 Sarkozi + 3 Sobeska) +0 War; 4 Harm, 3 Armor; Archers

Uri calls out to Sorley and the Arnwald's new leader, Caius, from his spot on the bridge. He tries to use his right to council them against attacking the Sarkozi by telling them a terrible fate awaits them if they do. They do not heed him and the battle proper begins.

The Sarkozi strike, and it becomes inherently obvious that the Thancmor outnumber and outclass them. Secret flanks of Thancmor archers emerge and pincer the Sarkozi, and the air grows dark with the buzzing of arrows.

Orban met Caius on the battlefield and exhibited his incredible prowess. Caius, mounted attempted to slash at Orban, but Orban goaded Caius' horse to rear up and sneaking underneath, took his legendary antler-tipped spear and thrust it through the horses belly, through the saddle, and up into Caius from beneath. The horse collapsed partly on Orban, and Orban spent the rest of the battle pretending to be a corpse while wriggling his spear loose from the bloody horse kebab he created.

Breja allowed herself to get separated from the rest of the army by outflanking them and taking many Thancmor and Arnwald lives. Eventually taking refuge in a large pine tree.

Jenci draws Longinus' army back to the bridge at great cost of soldiers. Surveying the slaughter of their initial encounter, Jenci blows his horn to signal a retreat and the Sarkozi army is routed.

Throughout all of this, Uri decided to withdraw to the other side of the bridge and wait.

The group was a little shocked when I did the math for calculating losses. Outnumbering the other army has a very distinct advantage, and the Sarkozi army was butchered. There was a little bit of protest, and I explained that even I was surprised. We agreed that no one had scouted the Thancmor army, and I expressed that despite my efforts in highlighting their numerical superiority (number of campfires, the sounds of the approaching army, etc.) the Sarkozi went ahead with the engagement.

In hindsight I am okay with this, war as a choice of action in this world is risky and very dangerous, and has dire consequences if it is taken lightly.

As a bloodied Jenci pulled his fallen brothers across the bridge, Harlan appears dashing through the Thancmor ranks shouting "Run for your life!" Behind him, a half rock, half man, as tall as a castle keep, with a mouth full of hoary stalactites, came crashing through the earth. The Troll enraged by the smell of blood and the sound of the battle crashed into the Sarkozi flank, scattering men. The giant monstrosity knelt among the fallen like a drunkard and with one massive arm, began shoveling the living and the dead into his mouth. Surprised by the Troll and knowing they had won the day, Longinus' army fled.

Poor Orban was still among the fallen, and trying to avoid getting eaten by the troll when Jenci spotted him. With only two maimed soldiers remaining. Jenci undertook the great labor of drawing the Troll away from him by blowing his horn, and slowly retreating further into the mountains. Before long, only the carrion birds remained, to harvest those forgotten by their kinsmen.

A summer passed before Jenci was able to wear the Troll out and send it into another decade long slumber. He came down from the mountains to find the season slipping into an early fall, and the Sarkozi encamped without a stronghold many leagues to the south. When he arrived, Orban did not greet him, instead choosing to keep sharpening his spear. Uri's strangely painted cart was set up next to Adel's tent, and Breja was no where to be found.

With so many dead Jenci found himself next in line to lead his people. An unexpected outcome from this tragedy, however, it now made him much more of a rival to Orban.

Meanwhile in the east, Breja was trekking home to her people the Sobeska, who had recently joined around a strong and wise king and had proclaimed a new homeland for themselves to the south.

And that's where we left it.

An interesting session with only a few mechanical hang ups. Seasons I still have yet to get the hang of (i.e. what is their purpose?) and I am eager to explore some non-combat skill tests in upcoming games, before, perhaps introducing a more evenly matched adversary.

I think that's an awesome and exciting way to start the campaign, but you might want to get buy-in from the players to approve a "fast start" -- not telling them exactly how it's going to start, but offering the choice of "I've got an idea to get things moving pretty fast; do you want to go that route, or would you rather take a couple of sessions to build things up?"

Agreed. Our group has been playing together every Sunday for about ten years now (playing Shadowrun, Unknown Armies, Godlike, Dungeon World & The Sprawl) so consent and willingness to experiment is an easy gauge for the party, who tend to enjoy things moving at a filmic pace.

Setup:

Success! Setup took about two hours to complete. There was a little remarking about the sheer number of pages lying around the table. The instructions were rather straightforward, but there was a bit of jumping back and forth between multiple sheets (People, Household, War Companies, etc.) trying to generate them. The players have all played Dungeon World before (one of them has played Apocalypse World as well) and the similarities between the rules set helped smooth the transition.

For stronghold and peoples generation we were content to simply pass around the sheet and make small consensuses on the most exciting items.

Character sheets were smooth and easy to fill out.

One of our players had a copy of the first look and bemoaned the loss of the Outlaw Noble (Outlaw Prince?). The playbooks seemed to overlap a little with Court Wizard/Wicker Wise and War Captain/War Champion. Looking back I would have been pleased to have created our own playbooks from a pool of existing rights, maybe as a storytelling element with each right selected each turn and a character giving backstory on how they gained that right. That said, we probably wouldn't have actually got to any actual game play. (Microscope anyone?)

After the dust and unbound pages settled, this was our world:

Our Stronghold:
An unnamed village of nomad refugees in a river valley lined with slippery slate cliffs and moss. (- An outpost in an enemy land.)
Enemies:
- Fractious and rebellious free landowners. (We haven't established who these people are.)
- Hostile clans, never conquered. (There's a lot of volkswanderung going on and it's every clan for themselves.)
An unlawful crown, seized by a tyrant. (Not fully fleshed out yet: Someone got to the throne after a bloody civil war and the vassalage is weak and defenseless?)
Fortifications:
-Archers' overlooks.
-A bottleneck approach.
-Deep cellars, crypts and bolt holes. (Caves in the cliff walls.)
-A well or deep cistern.
Armory:
Surprisingly my players were eager to choose crude weapons to go with a more "dark ages" feel. We ended up with spears, hide coats, shields, and archery supplies.

What do we do with the Improvements or Want sections on the Stronghold sheet? For now we omitted them, as they seemed to be connected to game play.

Our People(s):
The Sarkozi - (Ri +2, Wr +0, We -1; 50-60 souls, 6 households, 12 warriors) A displaced tribe of tall, big-footed, steppe nomads, who worship a powerful water goddess. Hungarian language.
The Sobeska - (Ri +1, Wr +1, We +0; 80-90 souls, 20 houses, 30 warriors) A sister tribe to the Sarkozi, dispersed throughout these lands. Hungarian language.
The Thancmor - (Ri +0, Wr +2, We -1; 170 souls, 20 houses, 40 warriors) Hardy, hawk-faced men from the frozen forests of the north. Norse language.
The Arnwald - (Ri -1, Wr +2, We 0; 16 souls, 16 houses, 16 warriors) Clean shaven Germanic warriors, remnants of the last legion of the Empire of Eagles. Germanic language, Latin names.

Our Characters: (I'll post the character breakdowns if requested.)
Orban, the Last (War Champion) - Last of his family, a prideful Sarkozi warrior.
Breja (Outranger) - A Sobeska scout, always welcomed for her trinkets and stories from afar.
Sten (Troll-Killer) - An exiled Thancmor hunter, living with the Sarkozi for many years.
Adel (Wicker Wise) - A shrieking, old Sarkozi hag, buried under a ever shifting mound of soiled furs.

Adel is my character and without enough prep-time for our second MC, she takes a backseat to this adventure.

Play begins:

We settled in and announced our season turns. Orban had been working the fields for, Miklos, his lord. Breja travelled back to the village over the winter, seeing famine in the surrounding lands. Sten was enjoying a bountiful supply of rabbit from his winter hunting. And Adel was buried in her hut reciting the names of the Old Gods.

All of the characters chose rather peaceful seasonal moves. I found it difficult to press them for anything at this point. Perhaps each move could be at the expense of something else? Someone must hunt, someone must work the land, someone must pray, someone must rule, and more, each season or else the stronghold suffers. A choice between finding food or keeping your Gods satisfied (or anything else on the AW:DA Hierarchy of Needs) might be interesting here, and provide an opening conflict to build off of.

I opened the scene on Orban, bloody-handed, with a corpse at his feet of a visiting Thancmorian dignitary, and asked his player if Orban was innocent. Orban's player decided that he was guilty, and described the bloodied knife in his right hand and the gash in the dignitaries neck. I asked Breja's player why the dignitary had to die, who had an ominous Valar Morghulis-y reply. Sten's player added the detail of the emissary being his brother.

Gameplay took off rather marvelously from there. Orban's character quickly developed the story that Sten's brother was here to take Sten back to his clan and had insulted the Sarkozi, and so deserved to die. Breja called the tribes leader, Miklos back from his hunt. Sten seemed complicit at first with the act but then upon seeing his brother's body, demanded single combat with Orban.

Rolling blind for combat works great to increase the suspense of fighting. The first round of combat, both players rolled the same and bid 4 on winning. The tie resulted in this lovely break, where both players sized each other up to see if they still wanted to fight. The players of course, did not back down.

Breja broke up the fight after Orban plunged his knife into Sten's shoulder.

Adel showed up and demanded the dead body be immediately given to the Goddess of the River, to prevent the murdered ghost from returning. Sten refused to do so until he had dismembered the corpse and cut of it's tattoos.

I noted "Angry Thancmor ghost" as a future front/Troll idea.

Orban was waiting for his chief inside the main hall, brandishing his spear, which is a taboo amongst the Sarkozi, who leave their weapons outside. The old, maimed, but incredibly virile leader Miklos (who has fathered the majority of the remaining Sarkozi warriors) returned and the village gathered for an assembly. Breja went to find others of her tribe in the area and tell them to clear out, and got back in time for the assembly.

Sten and Orban chat at the falls as they wash the blood from their clothes, and Sten tells Orban that the Thancmor worship Aina, the Taker, a goddess of destruction, her symbol of two snakes twined around a man, and that is the reason why they became unsatisfied with their life in the north and have come south to pillage.

At the assembly Orban said that the emissary, Sten's brother Solveig, insulted the honor of the people and tried to reclaim their warrior ally, Sten. Orban insisted that the emissary had run off and should be brought before Miklos and the Sarkozi to be punished for his insult.

At this point, Orban's player has taken full charge of his character's story. The other players, including myself, don't actually know what happened in the cave where the emissary was murdered. Despite this being a major plot point, this nebulousness has been a very fun point of tension to bring up. What is Orban's motive? What did Breja see Orban do? Did Sten want the murder to happen?

At the beginning of the assembly I had them ask what they all wanted out of this scene. Orban's want boiled down into a Win Someone Over, and the rest of the characters focused on trying to determine the truth by Sizing Someone Up, in this case Orban. We played out the discussion at the hall with characters being able to interject with questions they received with their roll. It went smoothly.

Orban manages to get the Chief's 3rd son, Big Jenci, assigned to him as an aide.As the meeting progressed it became apparent that Miklos is dependent on Orban's strength and popularity amongst the men to keep control. It also became apparent that Orban is duty-bound not to flaunt this. Sten is looked upon as an outsider, but the Sarkozi cannot afford to lose anymore able-bodied hunters. Breja is skeptical about Orban's story and position within the tribe.

They set out the next morning on a "quest" to find the man that they murdered. Sten refuses to bring Adel along as "the witch is too loud." Adel however covers Sten's hand in a poison, to allow him to poison a meal by touching it.

For Adel's action I proposed transferring the benefits of a successful wise in poison-craft roll to Sten's player for a one-use duration. This probably won't happen again, as I can see the abuse of that becoming very popular.

Breja ends up leading the party to the Thancmor camp the long way. Along the way, Sten tracks down the last village that Solveig visited before coming to the Sarkozi camp and Orban fills Big Jenci's head with ideas about his fathers cowardice.

Classic "the thief botches a sneak roll" moment with our Outranger rolling snake-eyes while trying to find her way by road or trail, thankfully the mechanic works to advance the story and allowed them to arrive at the destination.

The text of the Troll-Killer's strike a quarry's trail is also funny to read when the quarry is dead, as option 1 becomes kind of irrelevant.

Our party finds their way to the Thancmor camp, downriver on the edge of a large swath of farmland with a distant castle (the unlawful tyrant!). They discover a language barrier problem and Sten steps in as translator. They speak with Sorley, Jarl of the Thancmor and demand that he find and bring them Sten's brother Solveig (who was, let me state again, murdered by the characters) who they claim "ran away after Orban challenged him." Sten claims that he's arrived to "claim his brother's share, in his absence" but Sorley shouts him down declaring that he is no longer Thancmor.

Orban's player pointed out that he was using his right to be known by reputation and had rolled an 8, allowing him to demand things of Sorley without retribution. Sten's character did not have that right, but attempted it anyway. Was this an acceptable response? It felt like it worked in game.
 
Sorley sends for Solveig, but Solveig can not be found (given that his dismembered remains were probably halfway to the North Sea by then). Sorley dismisses them saying if Solveig does turn up he'll send him back to the Sarkozi "for justice." Satisfied, the party leaves. Sten however wants to get rid of his poisoned hand, and so convinces them to wait for nightfall for him to sneak back in and dip it in the Thancmor well.

No sneak roll or it's equivalent was apparent in the rules. We determined that Sten would Take Stock of the scenario and find out when it was best to slip in. He botched the roll. Was the sneak mechanic left out on purpose? If so it could really change the dynamic of the game if you simply can't hide from your problems.

Sten sneaks back in to the Thancmor camp without telling anyone else in the party. He dips his hand in the well and before he can sneak back out his way is blocked by a guard out for a piss. The guard stands for longer than expected and begins singing an old Thancmor song about the raven who stole the thunder.

"Raven was so happy when he stole the thunder from the sky.
But when he brought it back to his nest, the thunder was so loud.
It chased his wife away. It broke his little eggs.
It shook poor Raven's nest apart."

The guard looks over his shoulder at Sten, and Sten feels a cold point of steel in his back.

"Don't move," says the guard behind Sten.

And we left it there. Next session I'll hope to tackle the battle mechanics. (I have a feeling the Thancmor are going to accuse the Sarkozi of poisoning their well, so war is certainly nigh.)

No real hiccups this session, but I expect as the players grow more confident and take over more of the story the cracks will appear. Most of the issues were simply in keeping the scene focused and advancing the antagonizing fronts. There is a lot of extraneous paper, especially with all the basic moves and people moves and war party moves.

We only used the People sheet and the War Party with "Notables" at the bottom as it makes it easier to keep track.

Everyone seemed very eager to get some additional Rights.

Were we supposed to engage in question asking before choosing experience? How much does the character have a say in how/where they advance? Also, when do we make the choice to open it up to the Ungiven future?

Excited to try a better-late-than-never one-shot playtest with my gaming group this weekend.

Looking over the seasonal moves, I am concerned that my players may not have enough at stake to provide a really crisp opening moment that propels the rest of the session.

I am going to run the characters through them of course as they do provide excellent context for the interpersonal dynamics and history of the stronghold. However, as it stands I am interested in opening the game by making a strong move against the players and letting their reactions dictate the course of the game from there.

Basically the move boils down to this:

"The air is thick and hot, bittersweet with the taste of copper. Your hands now soaked with blood, flip over the corpse to reveal _____(Name)______, heir to the throne of the _____(Rival People)____. His face fixed in a pathetically horrified half-scream. The Gods are cruel, and war is almost certainly upon you. One question remains: Did you do it?"

Either in innocence or guilt I've got a few idea/question trees mapped out, and can certainly count on the players to generate additional conflict.

Thoughts? Am I pursuing my own sense of magic, mystery and danger too much here? Can I rely on the seasonal moves surprise me if I employ some zesty consequences?