And here I am! I should note that the LiveJournal page he linked to is friends locked for various and sundry reasons, so here is the AP in all its disturbing glory. Oh, and can I be a member of the Guild now? Please? With the BLOOD OF THRONDARS ENEMIES on top?
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The Adventures of Throndar and the Mountain of Fire!
This game was my second attempt at Dungeon World, and was run at the KapCon convention in Wellington (New Zealand) in January 2012. Gm'd by Anarchangel, this was one of the most enjoyable single-session games I've had in over 20 years of roleplaying. It subsequently won best single session at the convention, with two of the players winning prizes for their 'efforts' in 'weakening' a demon - described in far more graphic detail below than is wholesomely necessary. This, and my earlier game of Dungeon World, has inspired me to look into it a bit more and see how I might use it myself in the future. Thus, this Actual Play report.
The session was three hours, run in a session based 'on demand' by players. As a result, we ended up with six players, rather than the preferential four. This would have been annoying, except all the players respected each others actions/turns, didn't speak over one another, and essentially, created a positive, facilitating environment for everyone's creativity. Worthy of note is that of all the people present, I'd only played with Anarchangel for any real length of time in the past, and only briefly with one of the other PC's. The others I knew from the occasional one off, or through non-gaming related associations, but all in all, not a group that was used to playing together. We designed our characters as part of the game process, and Anarchangel took written ideas from each of us to shape and design the adventure (rather than use any pre-existing written one). Thus, in Anarchangels words - "The resulting adventure was traversing a fetid swamp to reach the lair of a fire demon in a Dragon graveyard atop a volcano. Badass, bring it!".
The characters were:
- Walton - human fighter. A chef extraordinaire who adventures to find the next culinary masterpiece cut from the remains of his victims.
- Fo Thun the Petulant - elven wizard. Wielder of magics most average. I think he cast one spell in the entire session (daze), and his most inspired piece of spellcraft was either when he accidentally set his staff on fire or used our last remaining water on a fire demon.
- Zorica the Cleric of Zorica - human cleric. A worshipper of herself, she's on the hunt for converts.
- Sir Ptolemy Chumley-Smythe Worthingtonsonness - human paladin. The most polite, friendly and british paladin of the lot. Odd that he worshipped a god of bloody revenge.
- Melliandre the traveller - elven bard. With a bewitching voice and penchant for writing, he follows Throndar to write about his mighty epics.
- Throndar the Barbarian - human barbarian. Played by myself, Throndar only spoke in the third person about himself. With specialties in butchering things then parlaying with them (alive or dead), he certainly screamed a lot. I pitied the other players as I kind of ranted a bit. A misread of the ruleset on beserking meant when I always rolled under 7 on the recovery, Throndar decided a nap would be most appropriate. Thus, a penchant for narcolepsy.
The Adventure:
After speaking to his village elders, Throndar had heard of a mighty fire demon who sat atop a fire-mountain - defying all who would vanquish him. Throndar saw this as a mighty challenge for him, gathered some likely meat shie... party members, and set off. Upon reaching the swamp, Walton studied the area and noted to himself both that a manticore lived in the swamp and that the remains of a manticore would season his latest masterpiece quite nicely. He directed the party through a route that was less than swift... walking the party straight into a lizardman ambush!
Luckily, the lizardmen weren't immediately hostile, leaving room for Throndar to step forward and begin to parlay. Hissing wildly while waving his arms around, he intimidated the lizardmen, but not quite well enough. Recognising this required some form of object lesson, Throndar put an axe through the head of the leader causing the rest to flee or surrender. The effort of such a taxing blow was obvious to all, as Throndar failed his beserker recovery roll and decided to have a wee nap. Luckily, Sir Ptolemy talked the surrended lizardmen into carrying a litter for Throndar - converting them to his god along the way. What a lucky encounter! Or as Throndar ordered Melliandre "This Chapter Two - How Throndar makes scaly things scared of Throndar".
Walton continued to lead the way, following a crude map that Zorica found on the leaders corpse. He noted that the map showed a long, foot march up the mountain, a side trip to the lizardman village, or a short trip to a 'pit of death and batshit' (i.e the Manticore lair). Fo Thun had a think about it, and remembered some old story about giant bats in this area. These would be the perfect riding beast to avoid the long and hazardous march up the mountain. So the party set off.
Sadly for their epic ideas, darkness began to fall and they quickly made camp... in the remains of a lizardman's camp. Nothing suspicious there, right? Dinner was an appetising arrangement of Walton's - being a mix of ration packs, swamp rat, ground lizardman scales, and lizardman meat. Mmm.
Being the mighty hero that he is, Throndar summoned his hawk spirit to see into the darkness, and luckily during his watch, he noticed lizardmen sneaking up on the camp. Kicking Melliandre awake "you get others up, scalies coming to kill us", took the opportunity to wander off to "drain the lizard". Throndar like double-entendres. As the party awoke, the lizardmen swooped in to attack - a handful descending into the camp itself, the larger group staying in the woods as a, now freshened up, Throndar beserked into their midst. While Throndar's slaughter was mighty, it 'paled' in comparison with the events in the clearing.
First, Walton threw his shield at a big lizardman, missing and sadly watched it sink slowly into the ooze. Fo Thun gave up trying to cast spells, and swept his staff at a charging lizardman, missing but setting his staff on fire as he stumbled into the firepit. Sir Ptolemy, deciding to get his armour on before fighting, ordered his converted lizardmen to dress him rapidly - but needing to raid Throndar's rations to bribe the hungry lizardmen into complying. And Zorica was too busy healing Melliandre and Sir Ptolemy to get much else done! To be honest, it was all a bit chaotic and I lost track of the flailing about.
Meanwhile, in the woods, Throndar had hacked down half a dozen lizardmen before one latched onto his arm biting deeply, as another huge lizardman loomed over him. Not one to give in so easily, he used the weight of the attached lizardman as momentum, messily hacking the big lizardman in half. With no room to swing his great axe, he simply stared the last remaining lizardman in the eye, and bit its throat out. Messily.
Back in the clearing, one limping, burnt, hacked and badly wounded chief lizardman was staggering off to safety, with the party deciding to ignore it. Not Throndar. Still in the throes of a beserker rage, straight through the clearing and off into the woods. Cue sounds of hissing and screaming. A happy Throndar staggers back to camp, fails his beserker recovery roll, and decides to have a nap. Again.
The next morning, the party discovered one of the lizardmen had a magic net of binding - perfect for capturing that bat (or Manticore). Arriving soon at Batshit Pit, they quickly lowered themselves into the depths. As they looked around the darkness, their meagre light not piercing the darkest shadows, Throndar decided once more to ask his spirit guide for help. With the eyes of a hawk, he spotted the manticore in the darkness, and as it leapt, he bounded to meet it in mid-air, net extended.
And rolled snake eyes.
As both the net and Throndar went flying, the party leapt into action. Melliandre was first, recovering the net and throwing it... well past the Manticore. The rest of the party subsequently gave up trying to capture it, and wildly slashed at the beast. As Throndar bellowed a challenge, it spun and jumped towards him. Not to be outdone, Throndar did the same - leading to the best cover art of all time for Chapter Five "How Throndar cut a manticore in half in mid air". Unfortunately for him, he didn't roll terribly well, and the dead mass of the Manticore fell on him, impaling him on the longsword of a previous corpse. Which, of course, turned out to be a magical sword of human slaying. 'Cause what else could hurt Throndar? Thankfully for Throndar, he didn't need to deal with the pain for too long, as he once more failed his recovery roll and decided to have a nap. While he was asleep, the party charmed the bats with a combination of Melliandre's soothing words, and mushrooms gathered from deceased lizardmen. I guess even bats like hallucinogenics.
Throndar awoke from his restful nap strapped to the back of a flying giant bat, on the way to the summit of the fire-mountain. Wounds healed. Bats tamed. Paladin holding big sword with dried Throndar blood on it. All in a good days work... and with 15 minutes to go in the game round, the heat was on (pun intended) to whether they could slay the fire demon in the dragon graveyard of fire-mountain!
As the bats set them down gently, Fo Thun quickly surmised that to find and bring the demon out quickly, the party could 'fake' a ritualistic sacrifice. Zorica posed that the usual sacrifice was a virgin. Sir Ptolemy swallowed his pride, and before anyone could say "ritualistic sacrifice of a party member", Sir Ptolemy was tied to a dragon skull. As Fo Thun chanted mystical words of power, the mountain shuddered and a giant fire demon erupted from the mountain. "WHO SUMMONS ME?" it roared.
Against the fiery and epic backdrop, Throndar screamed out "Throndar, hero of hawk clan challenges you, foul demon!", and begin sprinting along the bony spine of a dead dragon. Game on.
As the demon and Throndar charged to meet one another, the rest of the party began to assess its options. Melliandre announced that the demon garnered some of its power from the sacrifice, successful or not. By somehow breaking the energies now in place, the demon might suffer some ill effects. Zorica quickly assessed sir Ptolemy's options and offered to either cut him free to join in the fight, or become an 'ineigible' virgin sacrifice - provided he convert to her religion... one exceedingly high parlay roll later, and Sir Ptolemy chose to... "mark experience". The demon roared in pain as its magical energies were disrupted by the "sacrifice" of the sacrifice.
As the rutting began behind him, Throndar launched into the air, neatly lopping off one of the demon's four arms, but was badly wounded in the process. Walton flailed at the demon's legs, but proved his skillset truly lay in preparing delicious food, as he rebounded off the demon into a sharp dragon skeleton. Fo Thun once more failed to produce magic sufficient to harm the demon.
Throndar twisted in mid air, hacking deep into the demon's neck, but as he did so, the demon's arms grabbed him, pulling him close to its fiery body. Good thing Throndar is invincible (sinking to 1 hp). Melliandre began singing spoilers from Chapter 7 "How Throndar killed the fiery demon of fire mountain", inspiring Throndar's heart (and ego). As the rutting continued in the distance, Fo Thun waved his "magical hands" and badly damaged the demon through creating clouds of billowing steam which luckily disabled one of the demon's arms (by random coincidence, the party would later struggle to find any of their water skins). Walton managed to chip away at the demon, but once more slammed into a dragons bony protrusion.
Finally, on the point of death, his party hidden amongst the billowing clouds of steam, audible only through the sounds of cavorting clerics carrying on a converting ceremony (like that alliteration?), Throndar had only one, tried and true, option left. He bit the demon's throat out. With his bare teeth. 'Cause he's that awesome. Rolling away, a hack and slash of 12, and a near max damage (17 on 1d12+1d6) - and the demon was no more. Cover art of Chapter 7 - Throndar emerging from the billowing steam, muscles gleaming with sweat, spitting out the burning remnants of a demon's throat. Who then promptly fell asleep.
And Game. Two minutes over for the session.
This write up is obviously from the perspective of myself as Throndar, and thus is dominated by his decisions and actions. I've glossed over the dozens of awesome and witty things the other players did, simply because I can't remember all of them. So my deepest apologies to any of the other players who may one day read this and ponder why XYZ humorous moment isn't included. To indicate how bad my memory is - the players of Sir Ptolemy and Zorica won prizes for their efforts, showing just how awesome they were.
This game was punctuated by people really hitting their xp goals in tune with non-traditional actions. The system worked wonderfully for this, as Defy Danger, Parlay, Discern Reality, and Spout Lore were frankly used far more than any other skill. Although Throndar's Hack and Slash came awfully close. A great use of a light system for creating action options, that allowed the PC's to, in essence, shape the GM's world. A big part of this was the less strict GM'ing style of Anarchangel which encourages positive, story developing concepts, rather than be bound by any preconceived notion. This was a game I wish we had recorded as a demonstration of how liberating this sort of system, with this sort of player group, can be.