Mar '22 Murmurs: Vow of the Knight-Aspirants
Plus, Back Again from the Broken Land on the cusp of delivery
Greetings! Just like I said back in January, this Substack took a little break while we adjusted to our new baby, Thalia. We’re easing back into things with a short March newsletter. But as a reward, here’s Thalia rocking a Back Again from the Broken Land onesie:
Which brings me to the other important Cloven Pine news: Our game Back Again from the Broken Land is setting off on the next step of its journey. We have opened up pre-orders for non-backers to buy the PDF or a physical copy. If you’re interested in this game about small adventurers sharing stories on the long walk home from a calamitous war, pre-order your copy today!
Ran: Vow of the Knight-Aspirants
After musing over it in the last installment, I have now run three playtest sessions of Vow of the Knight-Aspirants. This is a game about Arthurian squires on the cusp of knighthood venturing into a dark fairy tale wood to prove themselves worthy. Video of the first of these playtest sessions is available here.
Highlights: The modular playbooks made character creation really exciting! Players loved mixing and matching Temperament playbooks and Aspiration playbooks to create unique combinations—e.g. the Fox and the Oak, the Rabbit and the Hourglass, the Falcon and the Chalice.
I also enjoyed how much players leaned into the tropes of knighthood. Their characters really committed to trying to live up to their Lessons and help out the people they encountered. That didn’t mean the characters all lived this out the same way!
In two playtests, the character with the Oak Aspiration playbook used their special Heart ability at a crucial moment, which reads “Sing a song of protection that stills violence for as long as it sounds.” I loved how the players interpreted the song in wildly different ways. One player sang his character’s song out loud, performing a lovely verse of “How Can I Keep from Singing?” Another player said she thought of her song of protection as more of a dissonant screech that stilled violence primarily by freaking people out.
Musings: Lessons are a major mechanic in the game. All player characters start out with two Lessons, and can learn more from NPCs. But a major question that players asked in these first playtests was whether PCs could impart lessons to one another.
I gave it some thought, and I decided that PCs should definitely be able to impart lessons to one another! But it can’t be something they could simply spam—I want to keep the same basic mechanics from NPC Lessons, where accepting the Lesson lets you mark a Notch (basically an XP) and resisting the Lesson gives a chance to impart your own Lesson in turn (if you roll well enough…). So I’ll be testing out the following mechanic in my next playtests: “When you attempt to impart a lesson to another PC, spend 2 Heart and share the lesson. They can accept or resist the lesson, as usual.”
Final Thoughts: I have loved getting to play this game with folks in one-shot form. I’m excited to run it as a short series this April and find out how the characters fare over multiple sessions.
Elsewhere
—I got to run Back Again from the Broken Land on the official stream for GaryCon, a convention celebrating the legacy of Gary Gygax. The session was a lot of fun, with the fellowship traversing the Slag-Scarred Bastion and the Coral Shallows, encountering a suspicious dwarf lord, a terrifying Hunter, and a mysterious beggar woman who might be a fallen immortal... Check out the video here.
—A player in a different session of Back Again wrote about the experience in her newsletter. Many thanks to Shane for this fascinating reflection!
I also loved that the choice of prompts seemed to make my decisions more free, and certainly more surprising, than the unconstrained choices some other games offer. I think for me, especially for a one-shot, if I’m making up details they’re going to stick pretty close to what I already know about my character. But drawing from Back Again’s incredible pick lists, I could learn new and unexpected things about poor Dittany Theogast. By the end of the game he felt three-dimensional and complex in a way few of my characters have.
—On April 9th at 8pm EST, I’ll be on PlusOneExp to showcase my game The Great Soul Train Robbery. Follow PlusOneExp on Twitch and Youtube—Tony does great work to promote the indie games scene!
Till next time, may you lift your voice in song, accept the right lessons, and share your story with friends.
Gamefully yours,
Alexi