2023 Day 7: Fellowship (2nd ed)
I have been hunting for a decent narrative high fantasy game. Ironsworn is great, but is closer to low fantasy (middle fantasy?). Blue Rose is really good but is nestled directly in its own world (and a few niggles that annoy me - surprise!). Fellowship on the other hand definitely covers a range of high fantasy and is expandable to many sorts of species and tropes.
Fellowship is Powered by the Apocalypse, so has the usual series of playbooks, basic moves and playbook moves. Roll 2d6 and your trait (or something) and get a full success, partial success or failure. Add in Fellowship moves (granted by the friends you meet along the way), Destinies (advanced playbooks), Overlord rules (for the ST/Big Bad) and a long series of special moves.
Cover of Fellowship 2nd ed
The splats/playbooks available include races (Elves, Dwarves, Orcs) as well as tropes (the Heir, the Squire). The core book is very much Lord of the Rings-based - the Gandalf class is the “Harbinger” which has slightly more unusual features and is more powerful. The really cool thing about these is that whatever splat you take you get to be the authority on some area of the world. The elf is the authority on elves, the heir is the authority on whatever they are an heir to etc.
Like most PbtA games, Fellowship sets out the kinds of stories it wants you to tell. You are a mixed party (no duplicate playbooks) on a quest against a specific type of enemy. There is only one move for actually dispatching enemies, and you can only do that if you have advantage over them. Yet that move (Finish Them) can dispatch verbally as well as physically or finish off an infection with Wisdom. This is a game of violence, but not of slaughter. Leave that to the villains.
The ST plays the overlord, or at least represents them. The overlord has a plan to get them what they want (either to rule everything, or an equivalent goal). The PCs’ purpose is to stop that plan. And it’s with the Overlord I feel that the game starts being a bit forced, because the ST is given restrictions on what they can do, or even how they do it. They are quite broad restrictions but I know I would be struggling to remember what I can and can’t do. I would guess they are meant to be taken as guides to help the ST know what to do, but if that’s true I would like that to that be more explicit.
There’s other rules too. Like any ally you make has exactly three Fellowship moves they can use. And this is where it becomes less of a narrative game and more of a simulationist game: it tries to simulate a certain type of story, with rules for all the different types of things that you want to do. I was also warned that 2nd ed XP can create unhelpful party discrepancies.
Does this ruin the game? No. I think you could skip or broad-brush the Overlord rules without the players seeing a problem, and modify the Fellowship moves and/or rules to give them a more relaxed feel. And the supplements give you more choices of adventure, heroes and big bads.
Definitely a game I want to try. Still not an all-encompassing narrative high fantasy game, but it fills a good gap.
I want to take The Heir as my example character, because I think it demonstrates the game well, but also want to show how you can go off the beaten track quite easily. To help, I spotted there is a Destiny class she could take later called The Lord of Beasts which requires you to have bonds with at least three animals.
Mareceline, Child of Feanor, is heir to the realm of Delphyna. The royal family are all shapechangers, but as a tweenager Marceline is not grown into that ability. For now she resembles a slightly small female humanoid. (What she looks like may depend on other races being played, but I’m imagining angular features, slightly faerie-like, with her hair growing down her back into a point. She may have downy fur.)
I imagine she is going on this quest without the blessing of her parents, so she is wearing borrowed clothes from a servant, although not many look like her outside the extended royal family.
Actually, a bit later it asks you define what you are an heir of. So I’ll pick the option “The Forgotten Lands”: until recently everybody thought Mareceline’s people were a myth. So some of her people can shapechange, but nobody outside the realm can do this or even looks like them.
- Wisdom: 2 (automatic, and a good stat for making allies)
- Courage: 2 (no matter her physical strength, she will always be there when it matters)
- Sense: 1
- Grace: -1 (she is very clumsy and unsubtle under pressure)
- Blood: 0 (she has ferocity but not yet strength)
Agenda choice: A Softer Touch (no rules benefit, but indicates your approach), because she just wants the world to be happy with each other.
- … although I can also imagine her taking Judge, Jury and Executioner depending on what might have happened before the game.
Core Moves
- Royal Treatment: rulers have to welcome you if you introduce yourself.
- Yes, My Liege: you can command those of lower rank, with some sensible conditions
- Heir to the Forgotten Lands: Mareceline’s anatomy gives her an extra feature and acts as an additional mark against harm (quite a substantive gift).
Royal Gear:
- Food and poultices
- A “warhorse” - actually a large panther-like cat called BonBon - who she has a bond with.
- A naginta called “First blood” which has been used to train royal heirs for four score generations.
- The irreplaceable royal compass - actually a sun symbol used to brand royal heirs when they come of age.
- Fellowship with Delphyna.
- (Choice): Two servants you have a bond with. One is BonBon’s brother CawClaw who acts as a feline bodyguard. The other is … I think almost everyone else was killed before the rest of the fellowship saved them, and I think we need some drama and comedy. So her little brother who sneaked after her.
- (Choice): The mounts of her other servants survived the fight and she offered them to the rest of the party. They are all large cats, although not as large or loyal as Bonbon and CawClaw.
- (Choice)... and a piece of gear from one of the other playbooks being used that is not taken by the PC with the playbook. A very strange restriction…
Custom Moves
- Most playbooks have one custom move that allows you to take a custom move from a different playbook. In this case, using Foreign Exchange allows Mareceline to take the Harbinger’s Wildspeaker: you speak the language of beasts and monsters. I would suggest that this was a blessing on the royal family from whatever powers the harbinger. It also allows to take an additional agenda, in this case “Fulfill the Prophecy”: she can invent details of a prophecy. Fun!
- And I think for the second, she’ll take Quiet! Don’t Move which allows you and the group to hide perfectly as long as they don’t move or speak.
- Another one for later is How Dare You: if she is insulted she can take it and get information about her opposition.
Bonds
Mareceline gets a bond with each other PC, which immediately shapes the world.
Bonds are written as sentences that define your relationship. I… didn’t do that above, because I’m lazy.
You can mark bonds to use them to your advantage or when they take damage. If all bonds are marked, you lose a bond (and at no bonds, the companion).
You may notice that I have given her two bonds with animals. They may die, but she’ll get more. There are ways for her to start with three animal companions but I feel that would take cheating a little too far: she has at least one animal friend to make along the way. And I love that I found the power that lets her speak to her animal friends.
First page of The Heir playbook for Mareceline
Third page of The Heir playbook for Mareceline