There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.
Andor, Nemik’s Manifesto
Aedler and Drifter faced down the Dragon in what was a nameless valley. The beast shrugged Aedler off its back, nearly killing the rebel in the fall. Then Drifter entered into the sideways reality of the Dragon Dreams and taunted the scaled tyrant. Willpower save = success.
“Wait there,” the Dragon said.
“I ain’t going anywhere,” Drifter said.
The Dragon was gearing up to breath fire into the small grove of trees where Aedler and Drifter and the fallen Gryphon-rider were. Drifter took a belt that he had his fallen comrade, Draven, and made a makeshift atlatl to hurl Wyvern’s Tail, his named spear. Aedler looked over Manticore’s Staff and figured out its triggering mechanism, with which he could fire the manticore’s spike from at its tip. the gryphon-rider (had we named him?) got his crossbow ready.
Chest, eyes and mouth glowing with the coming dragonfire, the Dragon descended on the grove in the valley and breathed. Aedler and Drifter loosed. Dice were rolled.
The last hope of this rebellion was quashed, killed in dragonfire. The Dragon’s scales kept the worst of the damage from drawing blood but the rebels perished as the beast landed and rampaged, making sure that nothing could grow in that valley. The gryphon-riders who were going to arrive too late would inter would they could find of the bodies.
In the decades to come, this valley would become famous, known as Black Glass Valley. This is where future rebellions would be born. This is where people would gather to bring about the downfall of the Dragon’s fell rule, inspired by Draven, Aedler and Drifter.
Maybe they will succeed. We can’t know that but we know that they will damn well try.
This campaign is dedicated to the memory of Jim Bryant, a good friend and great gamer who told a dragon to go fuck itself and told a 13 year old kid who stuttered that he should try his hand at running role-playing games, an endeavor that changed his life forever.
Drift and Aedler meet up in Crone’s Pass, make a plan, and then chaos…
This past Sunday, an old and dear friend of mine, Jim, died. I had started this game because he was hungry to play again. I don’t want to use this feeble actual play blog post to write an obituary about what he meant to me. He deserves better than that. But I do want to talk about how continuing to play despite our loss, has been a lovely way to remember him. If he could see our game today, he’d have smiled and pumped his fist at the decisions Aaron and Jay made, having been inspired by his fearless play.
We fast forwarded a bit, deciding that playing Draven as an NPC was ghoulish and so he died suddenly in the night of his wounds. Aedler and Drift met at the rendezvous point in Crone’s Pass, with a battalion of fully kitted out gryphon riders. The plan was to find a pass where they could taunt the Young Storm into action but the ground would cause his elite dragonguard knights to be slowed down. Killing the Young Storm would cause The Dragon to come out without an army, without back-up.
Then I rolled some dice to see how their gryphon-riding scouts did and it was clear to me, through the behind-the-screen dice that the first scout had encountered The Dragon and died. Captain Modesto, leader of the Gryphon-riders, flew Aedler and Drift out to the valley where the scout had died, showing them where the rider and its mount had gone down.
“We think The Dragon is hidden in this valley somewhere, waiting for us to attempt to retrieve our fallen comrade.”
In honor of Jim’s fearless play as Draven, Aaron and Jay decided that this was where they would face down their enemy. They sent Captain Modesto back to Crone’s Pass to rally the rest of the gryphon-riders. The session ended with both players nearly out of Hit Protection due to an avalanche The Dragon caused the flush them out. In the cloud of stone dust and snow, Aedler climbed to a high position where he could jump onto The Dragon as it flew past. Drift found the fallen rider, who was alive but with a pair of broken legs.
And that is where we will start next session. An angry dragon in the skies above, a battalion of gryphon-riders en-route and two rebels in the valley with named weapons gripped with white knuckles.
Jim would’ve liked that. I’ll miss him.
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Draven and Drift head north towards Crone’s Pass, evading the Young Storm and the dragon’s personal stormtroopers as best they can.
Making Young Storm a blue-ish dragon who spits lightning became an important detail as two characters made their way north to the rendezvous point at Crone’s Pass. As the dragon hunted them, I described a vicious storm that they knew from past experience was often a precursor to the Dragon’s son entering the fray. I’m using dice quickly and efficiently at the table. Rolling to see how the Young Storm is doing at hunting them down.
At one point I described the abandoned barn they took shelter in as having evidence of wayward war refugees and possibly AWOL soldiers making camp there. I thought to myself that perhaps they had left some kind of a weapons cache and rolled a d6, 6 being favorite to the players, 1 being unfavorable. Rolled a 6 and rolled again on the d6 gear chart from the chargen – a dragonknight and their retinue’s armor and clothing. Would 1 have been some kind of buried undead, arcane trap or an angry spirit? I’m not sure.
There were plenty of fights against smart foes but the characters ran when it was smart to run, hid when it was smart to hide and attacked when an enemy was separated from their battallion. And still, they could’ve easily died. The dice are falling their way. When a new human opponent arrives, I rolled them up quickly without missing a beat and write it down on a nearby dry-erase board. If the stats aren’t good, I take that as a sign of a NPC having damage and exhaustion at the end of a lengthy war. Stats don’t define a character.
To travel during the night more efficiently, Drift used something he had rolled up on a chargen table called a War Owl Tattoo. I put things on those tables and did not explain them at all. I’m liking that decision more and more. Aaron had his own ideas about what a War Owl was – a regular owl but smart and loyal like a pet that came out of a tattoo of an owl rampant on his chest in a flurry of feathers.
When Drift passed out after running from dragonknights through the knight after being involved in several fights and having no time to rest, Draven looked for cook-fires of some kind. I rolled a d6 again. Rolled a 2. Yeah, there’s a village but it is dragonsworn. Luckily, they had dragonknight and squire armor from the above buried weapons cache but they were in the hornet’s nest, a town loyal to the Dragon.
I liked making the people in Pazavor village (Old Valyrian for loyal) human. Elder Quptenka had a chest with a duke’s ransom in silver as compensation for having lost her husband, 2 daughters and 2 sons in the war, having fought for the dragon. Draven only stole half of the silver, “I’m not a monster.” The smith’s apprentice asked them if they had fought in a prominent battle to the south that Drift had played a key role in because the prentice’s brother had died in that battle. I like illustrating the dread cost of war all over the landscape.
I’m thinking about what kind of tables I might want or need to generate things more effeciently. Maybe a d66 table with tidibts about people, little surprising details. I’ll think on that. The game is going well and moving quickly; I’m enjoying the heck out of it.
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Adler, insisting that he’s just a tailor, is on the edge of the bridge, watching the Young Storm glide in the distance on thermals. Drifter is on the cobblestones of the bridge nearby, in Dragon Dreams. Draven, with a successful Dex check, has dropped from the netting meant to keep the gryphons penned in into a tree and to the floor of the gorge, where dragonsworn archers have their eyes looking up, trying to suss out who is brazen enough to attack the young dragon.
Jay couldn’t make it, so we played for about an hour and then pumped the brakes a bit.
I was more than ready for Draven to die but that wasn’t what the fickle Dice Gods had in store for him today.
Draven had explosives divvied up into small packets and he threw those into the unaware archers, who were looking up to the bridge, expecting a larger battalion of soldiers brave enough to face down Young Storm, the blue dragon. I had Draven roll a d12 and the archers, caught flat-footed and unaware as they were only rolled a d4. The d12 did 10 points of damage, decimating the 20 archers and the squire who led them. They weren’t all dead, just not ready to organize as a group of soldiers until someone came and took control.
That said, Draven failed his Strength test and so he took Critical Damage, falling unconscious. I might’ve missed a roll on a critical damage table, something to watch out for next time. Long-story-short, Draven was captured, thrown into the brig with the Gyphon riders they were here to save.
Meanwhile, Drifter was in the Dragon dreams when the explosives went off. Young Storm followed his father’s instructions, getting the eff out of there. Drifter had one-on-one time with The Dragon in the Dragon Dreams. Looking back, I wish I had taken some time to describe that a bit better – something to watch out for next time in the Dragon Dreams, a missed opportunity to describe the villain of the story. Drifter sold himself as a Dragonsworn spy, built on the reputation he had as the Betrayer of Green Devil Gorge.
Some fun back and forth between Draven and the Gryphon Riders. “Wait, aren’t you a rider? Which unit were you with?”
“7th Courier.”
“Fucking couriers…”
Playing the turncoat to the hilt, Drifter got into the brig with the Dragon-knight he had seen in the Dragon Dreams. Draven and Drifter jumped the knight, using the chaos from the grenade and the decimated unit still trying to put itself back together outside. We rolled some dice and they stabbed the knight and got the riders to their flying steeds, letting them know to meet them at Crone’s Pass.
Drifter had an ability from chargen, Summon the Saint of Goats. We pictured a non-Satanic Black Phillip vibe and they got help climbing out of the Green Devil Gorge.
I like the way the dice all roll at once and we look at the damage and figure out what it all means. It feels like the Fair and Clear phase dice rolling from early Forge games. The damage and people’s hit points all make for a visceral result in ways that are always interesting.
I’m also digging the way the d66 tables from chargen have added spice to this stew.
Next week we’ll head northwest towards Crone’s Pass, avoiding the dragon’s forces who will be on high alert after this flagrant act of rebel terrorism.
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The Dragon and its children, personifications of greed and power, rule this area by tooth, claw and fire along with their dragon knights (knights in cool dragon-adorned armor) and loyal bureaucrats and dragonsworn nobles. The player characters were a part of a resistance, a rebel force that fought the Dragon and its armies on 4 brutal fronts and lost. Now they are all that’s left…
Paraphrasing what it says in the PDF below, I asked the players to roll up their Strength, Dex, Will, HP and Coin, marking down anytime they get a 1 or 2. Those 1’s and 2’s allowed for extra rolls on the d66 tables below. The tables coincide with different fronts of the war against the dragon and its forces. They can choose whichever front interests them for each roll. The characters had terrible stats, so there were lots of rolls on the tables.
Moving forward, I’ll have an equipment package with each front, asking the player to choose which one, of the fronts they rolled on, that they get. I also have an odd idea of someone who has ZERO 1’s and 2’s in their character creation having a reputation as some kind of prophesied Chosen One, with no mechanical back-up but some in-setting awe and maybe a little fear.
I had evocative stuff on the tables and did not define any of it. At the time I thought I didn’t define it because I was getting this playable fast but after a session of play, I like that the players define it.
Jay‘s character, Adler, had General’s Red Right Hand as a reputation. Jay defined that as having a rep for being a killer but the truth of it is that he killed someone assaulting him entirely by accident, a kind of reverse John Wick-pencil-situation.
Aaron’s character, Drift, had a reputation of being the Betrayer of Green Devil Gorge and Aaron defined that as meaning he had leaked intel to the dragon’s knights to draw them into a battle where the rebellion had an advantage but in doing so fed another group of rebels into the dragon’s maw, hoping for a good trade but in the end, both groups of rebels were destroyed.
Jim defined a contact as a talking green devil-bat, somehow related to the Green Devil and defined his Manticore Spear as having spikes that cause extra wounds when they meet flesh.
The map is set and the situation is firm but the players get to define things on their character sheets. Everyone assuming that Adler is some kind of bad-ass assassin while he insists that he is just a tailor is so much fun. The world has gained lots of details and richness from discussions about what different reputations, weapons and magic abilities mean. I’m there to offer ideas if needed because I definitely have ideas but also like it when the setting goes into areas I had not anticipated from character definitions.
We played our first session today. I wasn’t sure until we started if I was going to start the mission Blades in the Dark-style and start at the fort where the captured gryphon-riders and their gryphons were being held with a roll to see the starting situation. As it was, I’m glad I didn’t. Going through check-points through the Green Devil Gorge, meeting soldiers and dragonknights and their squires helped get a feel for the world and the characters. The players weren’t planning things to death.
When I wasn’t exactly sure how someone would react, I’d make a reaction roll and if a player did something that I just wasn’t exactly sure how an enemy would react, I’d ask for a Willpower check. When Draven pushed his ass-kissing to a dragonknight at the first gate, the Greengate, a little too far, everyone winced noticeably and I asked for a roll. It was a failure, so the knight sent word ahead to the next gate and that gate really took their faux merchant cart apart and asked lots of questions.
Drifter’s reputation as the Betrayer of Green Devil Gorge got him into the good graces of the Twingate’s knight, getting them out of trouble. They stayed at Twingate for a few days, letting Adler do some needed mending and gathering intel. I asked for a Willpower roll to see how the intel gathering went and it was a successful roll. I gave a broad overview of the soldiers and then dropped the big into bomb on them – The Young Storm, one of the Dragon’s own spawn, would be coming through the Green Devil Gorge to check on things.
I rolled once a day of travel time to see if the dragon arrived and when they got to Sixbridge, the bridge above the fort where the soldiers and their gryphons are being held, I rolled double 6’s. The Young Storm flew by and Jim said, “Fuck you.” I asked him if Draven said that. He said that he did say that. Maybe it was because Jim’s mic was a little louder than the others. Maybe it was because Smaug had amazing hearing. The Young Storm wheeled around in the sky to attack the person who dared drop an eff-bomb at him.
Aaron and Jay watched, awestruck, as the dragon and Draven tilted, the Young Storm breathing lighting on the fearless rebel. I could’ve easily killed him in those rolls but I didn’t, just took him down to 0 HP.
Aaron described Drifter’s eyes going white as his eyes rolled up and he went into Dragon Dreams. Wtf are Dragon Dreams? I decided they were how the dragons communicate and their most trusted knights had the ability. The Young Storm’s knight had entered the dream to talk to The Dragon and report that his son had been attacked.
The Dragon ordered his son to retreat to Tensgate and let his knights deal with whoever it was who had the audacity to attack a dragon. The son thinks it is an agent of the Manticore, based on the spear Draven had from chargen.
Adler, insisting that he’s just a tailor, is on the edge of the bridge, watching the Young Storm glide in the distance on thermals. Drifter is on the cobblestones of the bridge nearby, in Dragon Dreams. Draven, with a successful Dex check, has dropped from the netting meant to keep the gryphons penned in into a tree and to the floor of the gorge, where dragonsworn archers have their eyes looking up, trying to suss out who is brazen enough to attack the young dragon.
And that is where we’ll start next week. I have no idea what is going to happen. Can’t wait.
The Dragon and its children, personifications of greed and power, rule this area by tooth, claw and fire along with their dragon knights (knights in cool dragon-adorned armor) and loyal bureaucrats and dragonsworn nobles. The player characters were a part of a resistance, a rebel force that fought the Dragon and its armies on 4 brutal fronts and lost. Now they are all that’s left…
I made 4 different d66 tables, one for each front of the war. The Northern Front is where the dragon’s lair, a front where mountain pass battles with dragon knights and very possible engagement from The Dragon itself. The Southern Front isn’t a proper front, but where a city-state is, where lots of intelligence battles and back-alley knife fights occurred – the only battle mentioned on the Southern Front’s d66 tables is The Knight of a Thousand Knives. The Eastern Front is where the Green Devil Gorge is located, lots of hit and run battles in the hills and gorges, trying to make a dent in the Dragon’s overland merchant caravans. The Western Front is the Riverlands, covered in fortresses and castles, lots of prolonged sieges, starvation and fallen walls.
The characters got one free roll on any of the fronts of their choice and then got another roll for every 1 or 2 they rolled when rolling up their 3 stats, HP and Gold. We ended up with interesting characters who had an array of gear, named weapons, magical abilities, reputations (some well earned, some not so much), intelligence and contacts. I had a vague idea about getting more rolls through trying to level up and possibly taking scars but nixed it as too complicated; we had more than enough rolls on the evocative d66 tables.
One of the players had a child as a kind of contact/NPC/ally and I realized that, in a brutal war story, that could be a really poor choice. We X-carded it and had them roll again. Moving forward, I’ll take those options off the chart and come up with something better.
We had to cut the first session off early so we made characters, described said characters and the players decided that the first mission would be rescuing a unit of gryphon riders and their steeds who are held captive in a fort in the Green Devil Gorge. I wanted that first mission to come to them, not that I think any of these folks are going to have any trouble being proactive.
I’ve got ideas on statting out the dragons and some houserules on characters gaining more hit-points but more on system stuff later as it migrates from my ink in my notebook to a Google Doc. Looking forward to seeing this shake out at the table.
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Githyanki Diaspora 
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