Category: The Gauntlet: Our Community

Last week I shared some initial thoughts on The Gardens of Ynn and Whitehack (links to both products will be at the bottom). Yesterday we finished up the two-shot and I have some more I thought I’d share.

First of all, damn what a cool point-crawl. There was always some super cool, mysterious shit going on. Bizarre and strange. It always felt like we were on the cusp of discovering just what the heck was going on. Unfortunately, we didn’t get that deep into the “levels”. I think Horst Wurst said we maybe got 9 deep out of 30 something, so it probably would have taken a while longer.

This session also still felt very through the looking glass and haphazard as heck, most likely because of the random tables. We had some discussion about what it might look like if you decided to take the things you liked the most, or even decide on a theme going in and then choosing options to construct the rooms in that way; then having the players navigate and experience the “point” of the Gardens in that manner.

For me, I approach my characters in a meta way. I like to know the themes and tone and then decide what I’d like to explore, crafting a character that explores those things. My feedback at the end was pretty much this. I would have liked to have figured out what was going on before we ended and that I like it when there’s a “point”, reoccurring themes, a theme, etc.

I’m not familiar with OSR products much, or the movement, in general. However, Horst told me that the “point” somewhat with OSR is crafting your character as a reaction. You go in cold, shit happens to you, and that the “point” is that the random shit that happens is the story. You roll random, “regular” people who get entangled in wild scenarios. Sometimes figuring out who your character is based on the random things you roll, even strange gear you have as a character in some systems. It won’t seemingly make any sense, and so you make a storyline emerge from these details. You’d have never thought to craft such a person because it’s so messy and haphazard that it’d have been near impossible to think that kind of shit up. As you all do this and experience these things together, you remember it and talk about it with your friends. If the module landed for you or if things made sense and the point was made, or these details are less important because you’ll be remembering the crazy events that occurred and how other people reacted. To me, what Horst sounded like he was saying is that the point is the shit that happens along the way, not the overall plot (if there is one at all). It seems like that makes sense with the whole random table business and perhaps never making it to the “end of the story”. I would have never considered running an adventure I know we wouldn’t finish, but scanning the OSR stuff up, it seems to be fairly common?

I really like that take. And looking back on those two sessions, I found myself struggling because I clearly didn’t grasp this point at all, while Jason Cordova, by contrast, as well as Paul Staxx Spraget and Agatha, just roll with it; bringing a lot of characterization, while I was tied up mentally trying to figure out what was going on with this place. A few questions were posed to Jason’s character, Vincenzo, through dreams which had a broad theme, which Jason then had to incorporate into his description of the dream. It worked so well!! It was my favorite part of the story, in fact. I expect if you played it through to the end, this would be happening more and more, revealing some of the mysteries hidden beneath the “levels” of the Garden.

In retrospect, Horst was absolutely correct. I would have enjoyed the sessions a lot more had I been more focused on who my character was and how this place was affecting them. I was driven primarily by my desire to figure out what the heck was going on with this place and missed the opportunities to flesh out my character.

I had a fantastic time despite that, though. And took a lot of joy in other’s strong roleplaying and dynamics. I can see the appeal of OSR products for this method of thinking; it does feel different than when I have played D&D and Pathfinder, and not in the way largely spoken about in my small little Twitter world and other social media. Usually, I have seen it condensed to “people who want to play old D&D”, and sure, the various hacks seem to do that. But if this is the larger cultural mythos around the style of play that OSR is going for, this reduction largely misses the beauty of emergent play. Something I have talked about frequently and absolutely adore in my games. In short: I hope to play more OSR stuff. I am sure there is a large breadth of products that aren’t all focused on emergent aspects of play… but there’s gotta be more products into this and I’d like to explore that stuff. If nothing else to see if I would enjoy it or not.

System Wise:

Horst pitied us and decided we hit a milestone of saving one of the missing boys, leveling us up! I have to say, rolling the two hit dice to get 9 HP rather than 2 was more empowering that I thought it would be; it felt great! Poor Jason rolled two dice and got 3 HP… but continued to Thief it up and tap those fucking statues good. We also increased our Saving Throw and Attack Value and continued on.

After Christian Mehrstam let me know about the design intent and the point of being squishy in the last post (https://plus.google.com/+FraserSimons/posts/cyfUb7yHp2K), I intended to get some cool shit into the fiction and if I got killed–whatever. And so, as a monk from the Whispering Tear Monastery with my hand carved staff, I destroyed the marble base of a statue, leaning on my “hard but not impossible” attunement to my staff. It felt awesome and led to some cool shit beyond, exposing a weird crypt with skeletons.

We got to see the bidding mechanics, which I think I like? One-upping each other might lead to a gonzo tone, though, and I generally prefer that scenes in crypts and shit be spooky and more “serious”, rather than kinda funny when people all try and grab the loot. Applying the mechanic to other situations would be really fun and neat, though. A cool way to include multiple people in a scene when others might be bored with a scene consuming a bunch of time with one player.

Looking at the system in a broad sense, I love it. I got to advocate for my character again in a different scene to get the double positive role; love that dynamic with the Referee. Narrowing on character creation specifically: I love love love love it. Because I missed the point, and kinda the spirit, of what we were up to with this point-crawl–it would have been a worse experience had we used a different system. Why?

Character creation made me come up with the coolest bits about my character, and because I was focused on unraveling the mysteries of the Gardens rather than character work, these bits were the things I could reliably fall back on. I’m from a monastery, I know martial arts, I’m attuned to my staff, and I’m a wanderer. Had I gotten the same affliction as Jason’s character, with the dream stuff, I would have been able to grab onto those bits to expound on them, I’m sure. Very cool.

So as with the first session, I felt really supported and felt like my contributions to the fictions mattered. Love the scaffolding and I think it definitely implements the design goal of empowering the players and their characters in the world, shaping it in ways that make the player excited. I want to play more and get more slots, changeup and grow my Groups. Hit on the stuff I have already to try and leverage more double positive rolls.

Totally down to play more Whitehack and OSR stuff; see if I can’t adjust my brain to this different mentality. Thanks so much to Horst for running and to the players; all of whom were fantastic! Hope to play some more of this kind of stuff as it has proven that I don’t dislike fantasy, I dislike D&D and Pathfinder. Neat.

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Buy it here: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/237544/The-Gardens-Of-Ynn?term=gardens+of+ynn&test_epoch=0

And Whitehack here (super cheap, IMO): http://www.lulu.com/shop/christian-mehrstam/whitehack-second-edition-booklet/paperback/product-22295753.html

Lulu has a coupon right now as well: BOOKSHIP18 (expires end of day TODAY), which gives you 10% off print+free mail or 50% ground shipping.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of playing in a game of The Whitehack run by Horst Wurst, The Gardens of Ynn! I was pumped for it as of sign-up and dang, it exceeded my expectations. Let me talk a little bit about why, both regarding impressions of the module but also the system, as it is my first time actually playing with it.

This module is super cool. We are adventurers going to get rich and looking for some kids in this surreal garden; not exactly a revolution in my brain there. However, as soon as you enter the garden, shit gets real. The procedural generation of the spaces is super cool; the results evocative. We are only one session in and I definitely want to discover more.

There is time fuckery, literal machinations beneath the ground, and we always have the option of staying in a given space to spend time with it or like just take off. We were also told that we should be thinking about out items for fictional positioning and if we just wanted to go hack things up… we’d be having a bad time. If you stay in an area time passes as well. We didn’t really get the connotations of what that means, though.. and still don’t? I like that! Are we going to emerge from the gardens into like an altogether different time period or something? Are we going to age rapidly when exiting? Cool!

We only got to navigate a couple of these spaces but all had cool sensations around them. Smells; sights; taste; sounds, etc.Evocative and interesting. I hope that continues. We met a talking cat. Saw some skeletons as human-sized peacock things were mesmerizing a poor boy, presumably ready to devour him.

Can’t wait to see what more happens~~

System-wise:

Some people may know that I have barely any working knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons. I played a couple adventures I recall very little of when in junior high school, then reentered the hobby 5-6 years ago by way of DnD Encounters, Pathfinder Society, etc.; hated it, eventually found online gaming, then finally found this community and could not be happier.

So 2 years or so ago (is) when I purchased The White Hack, I was very excited by the design work and could imagine how it might go. So much so I took inspiration from how class creation worked to put it in this month’s Codex issue! I finally got the opportunity to play it thanks to Horst, and my word, I just loved the whole experience.

The Deft, The Wise, and The Strong are the character classes. Elegant, subjective, and open to interpretation. Evocative names, good examples. What you choose as your ‘thing’ in the game allows you to do difficult tasks with complete success if you’re deft. The Wise have miracles that are negotiated and cost HP. So. Much. Cool. Stuff!

The notions of Groups to craft previous life experience (lifepaths) and the other associated fiction you should have for your character is a bit of a mental hurdle at first, but ultimately very helpful in having you place some cognitive load as to what is important about this person and therefore granting them better fictional positioning. These things being coupled with mechanics was like a breath of fucking fresh air for me. I felt like notions I had about what my character ought to be good at actually mattered. My internal subjective ideas were externally supported by the system as I came up with them on the fly.

I ended up deciding to play a wandering Deft monk. In the gardens we came across a suspicious, foaming at the mouth mind, talking cat; I asked the referee, Horst, if I might have experience with these things having wandered about for ages and encountered strangers often. Specifically, I wanted to know if they were trying to ambush us or otherwise lie, etc. Because I might have been set upon before in my travels, I gained that fictional positioning and rolled with Advantage.

These things about my character I decide are important are each tied to a stat, which I’m less crazy about. Why not just have it so when it makes sense I get Advantage, right? Why does it have to be only when I’m being intelligent or wise I get this benefit? Most of the time characters will be rolling specific stats for what they’re good at anyhow, I’m sure. I’m super high in DEX and my fictional positioning beside DEX is that I was trained in martial arts at the monastery, for instance. Super cool.

Another thing I loved was critical roll target numbers being the exact stat value, that’s a really small but fun thing. The design work really makes it feel like it’s all about the characters; empowering them with just enough fictional positioning that they get excited about contributing without dictating too much.

One thing I didn’t like much was that you can also be squishy AF. I myself and one another started with just 2 HP, which made me feel way too precious about my character. Sure, they could die and I could roll up another… but I just thought up all these cool ass things for my monk! I want to gain levels and gain even more Groups! In that sense, it feels a bit at odds with the system goals. But I was also told there are some fail-safes in the text that make it a little harder to die; I’ll have to revisit the text.

The end result was a Venetian Deft Thief, Vincenzo di Pasqua (Jason Cordova ); a wandering Deft Monk (myself), A Wise Clockwork Tinkerer (Paul Staxx Spraget ); a Strong Bodyguard (Shane Liebling ); all walked into the msyterious Garden of Ynn!

How fucking cool is that, right?!

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/237544/The-Gardens-Of-Ynn?term=gardens+of+&test_epoch=0