Game Log: Werewolf: Dark Ages
I'm a bit weird in my gaming style in that I find combat to be the most boring aspect of the game. That's why I don't play combat-monkeys, I wouldn't want to play a character whose focus is the only part of the game I don't particularly enjoy. Combat can be done well, if properly described and made exciting. But even the best combat scenarios fail in contrast to some good old-fashioned detective work or infiltration.
This is entirely the opposite in LARP, where I'm really in it just for the combat and my character is a full-on combat monkey with no secondary skills. But there's just something boring about rolling a handful of dice, and then sitting and waiting another five minutes for your turn.
However, I know that's just my opinion. It is just what I like, not necessarily what is better. Therefore, when running games, I am sure to include the occasional physical encounter. I do my best to make sure that the combat route is entirely optional and my games can often be played through from beginning to end without a single initiative roll. Whether or not this is achieved is usually up to the players.
And so it happened that I ran a dark ages one-shot with a group of players who did just that. They avoided every single possible encounter up until the very end. It was probably my favourite game session ever, and I was sorely disappointed when we ran out of time and had to leave before the ending. I ended up having to rush the ending and tell them what happened. Despite this, I really enjoyed running it.
The game was set in Scandinavia in 982, which is a very important year for werewolves and vampires alike. It is the year Baba Yaga was defeated and forced into torpor for a full millenium. The 3 players got to choose from 6 characters I created, and we ended up with a good spread even though they decided to choose randomly. We ended up with a Forseti berserker, a Rotagar wild boy from the mountains, and a Godi thrall who had her first change when she was selected to accompany her master into the afterlife.
The game had potential epicness involved, so I made the characters advanced enough to handle it. I warned the players not to power-trip, but their characters were rank 2 and pretty advanced in skills.
The game began when the elder of the village, a Jarl who also happened to be a Forseti, shared an ancient prophesy with the player characters.
The prophesy went like this:
“The Serpent awakens in the frozen lands,
Grasps the bastards of the night,
Sheds their blood and strengthens his own,
And those who have seen,
They remember,
They roam the wilds,
Where Njord fails to find sleep.”
The players have not heard of Baba Yaga or the Zmei, and neither have their characters. They discuss things in character for a while, and I help them out as they make academics, enigmas, and occult rolls. They figure out that those who have seen are in the sea, and that would mean they're either sea-monsters or weresharks. They decide to go with were-sharks, since sea-monsters are rarely chatty.
Their next step is to get themselves a drakkar (longboat) and a chieftain to sail it, and possibly a crew to go with them. They manage that pretty well, and convince a viking chieftain with a reputation for being fearless to sail them north into the area where sharks have been known to swallow longboats whole.
They sail off north and the Rotagar says he'll take a pig with him. They make a list of things they'll be taking along, including weapons, provisions, armour, and the pig. When they reach the right place, they decide they wanted to step sideways in order to summon the weresharks without startling the crew. This makes sense, but if they do step sideways, they'll end up in the water. I had played a game before where the GM had us find weresharks as well. At the time, someone had the bright idea of awakening the spirit of the boat so we would have the boat in the umbra too. I don't remember who that player was, but it was a pretty neat idea and so I stole it from him and passed it on to my players. I suggested to the Godi that it was something her character would think of. So she awakened the boat and they all stepped sideways.
Once there, she summons a shark spirit and offers it a gift of gnosis. Then she convinces it to find the weresharks.
Communicating with the weresharks was especially difficult since none of them had chosen the Skald. Eventually, they managed to make out that there was a ship bearing death that headed north towards the frozen shores. This is 982, Svalbard has not been settled yet, and the player characters do not know of any shores to the north. Neither does the chieftain, and he's not happy to try sailing there, especially not with the large ship-eating sharks around. But they convince him to sail further north.
I find it worth mentioning that I cued up a random encounter once they awakened the boat. Instead of fighting the spirit attacking the boat, however, the Godi commanded it to leave them alone. It worked, and they sailed away unmolested.
Once they reached the shores they decided to go on and search for the ship. They asked if any of the crew members wanted to go along, and one young man volunteered. Time to feed the players some plot. This young man is a Rus, and he knows a lot about the war between the lupines and vampires back home. In fact, he knows suspiciously too much for a mere mortal. The Forseti starts asking him questions and hopes to catch him in a lie, but the man has a difficulty 10 for detecting lies, so he keeps trying. The one time he does get a 10, Akim is actually telling the truth. This is a shame, I would've liked to know what they would've done if they'd have found out he was lying. But for their sake, it's a good thing they didn't.
While the Rotagar finds the ship and sneaks on board (avoiding fighting the 5 einherjar on board by stealthing past them), Akim tells the other two about the old Hag called the Baba Yaga, and the legend of how she came to serve the Wyrm. He mentions dragons, and the Forseti immediately links dragons to serpent. This man knows way too much.
Then the Godi decides to contact her ancestor, a Silver Fang, and ask him what he knows about dragons. Now they get the rest of the story. The Baba Yaga called on the Zmei in her pain to help her fight the Nosferatu. And the Zmei, the ancient dragons that slept, answered her call. The Silver Fangs managed to bind these dragons. But if they were to awaken, and join the Baba Yaga in her fight against the Garou now, then all would be lost. And luckily, he knows the rite to bind them.
Meanwhile, the Rotagar has found a map to a site on the island, and they have made contact with the local Garou, a group of wolf-borns who have guarded the island for years. He has also found some coffins on the boat, and an oil lamp. So he set the whole thing on fire and escaped back to shore.
At the site in question, a collection of vampires and mages are awakening the sleeping dragon.
Now we started running out of time, and they took too long planning the ambush at the site. They can't avoid a battle at this point, but I decide we have no time to play it out. Instead I explain what happens. The Garou, along with Akim (who as it turns out is a remarkable fighter as well), and their new allies (the wolf pack) ambush the ritualists and interrupt the rite. The battle is tough, and many casualties are suffered. Where the dice would usually decide whether or not the ritualists manage to awaken the dragon before they are killed, I had to make this decision on the spot myself, and I decided to make it as epic as possible. So the dragon awakens, and slaughters the vampires and feeds off the mages' avatars. Then, as he turns on the Garou, Akim himself turns into a dragon and holds him off while the Godi, possessed by her ancestor, performs the rite to bind it once more.
I explain to the players that Akim is Shazear, the seventh dragon, who is tired of the shackles of Baba Yaga, and wants to be free to explore this world. He is a creature of the Wyrm, but the players let him go. Well, they don't have a choice at this point. If they try to stop him, he's perfectly capable of killing them all. And of all the Zmei, he is the most likely to return to the Wyld.
Weeks later, the Baba Yaga is defeated by the armies in the lands of the Rus, and she falls into torpor for 1,000 years.
I decide I might run this game at a con. It just needs a little trimming since it's too long for one session.
This is entirely the opposite in LARP, where I'm really in it just for the combat and my character is a full-on combat monkey with no secondary skills. But there's just something boring about rolling a handful of dice, and then sitting and waiting another five minutes for your turn.
However, I know that's just my opinion. It is just what I like, not necessarily what is better. Therefore, when running games, I am sure to include the occasional physical encounter. I do my best to make sure that the combat route is entirely optional and my games can often be played through from beginning to end without a single initiative roll. Whether or not this is achieved is usually up to the players.
And so it happened that I ran a dark ages one-shot with a group of players who did just that. They avoided every single possible encounter up until the very end. It was probably my favourite game session ever, and I was sorely disappointed when we ran out of time and had to leave before the ending. I ended up having to rush the ending and tell them what happened. Despite this, I really enjoyed running it.
The game was set in Scandinavia in 982, which is a very important year for werewolves and vampires alike. It is the year Baba Yaga was defeated and forced into torpor for a full millenium. The 3 players got to choose from 6 characters I created, and we ended up with a good spread even though they decided to choose randomly. We ended up with a Forseti berserker, a Rotagar wild boy from the mountains, and a Godi thrall who had her first change when she was selected to accompany her master into the afterlife.
The game had potential epicness involved, so I made the characters advanced enough to handle it. I warned the players not to power-trip, but their characters were rank 2 and pretty advanced in skills.
The game began when the elder of the village, a Jarl who also happened to be a Forseti, shared an ancient prophesy with the player characters.
The prophesy went like this:
“The Serpent awakens in the frozen lands,
Grasps the bastards of the night,
Sheds their blood and strengthens his own,
And those who have seen,
They remember,
They roam the wilds,
Where Njord fails to find sleep.”
The players have not heard of Baba Yaga or the Zmei, and neither have their characters. They discuss things in character for a while, and I help them out as they make academics, enigmas, and occult rolls. They figure out that those who have seen are in the sea, and that would mean they're either sea-monsters or weresharks. They decide to go with were-sharks, since sea-monsters are rarely chatty.
Their next step is to get themselves a drakkar (longboat) and a chieftain to sail it, and possibly a crew to go with them. They manage that pretty well, and convince a viking chieftain with a reputation for being fearless to sail them north into the area where sharks have been known to swallow longboats whole.
They sail off north and the Rotagar says he'll take a pig with him. They make a list of things they'll be taking along, including weapons, provisions, armour, and the pig. When they reach the right place, they decide they wanted to step sideways in order to summon the weresharks without startling the crew. This makes sense, but if they do step sideways, they'll end up in the water. I had played a game before where the GM had us find weresharks as well. At the time, someone had the bright idea of awakening the spirit of the boat so we would have the boat in the umbra too. I don't remember who that player was, but it was a pretty neat idea and so I stole it from him and passed it on to my players. I suggested to the Godi that it was something her character would think of. So she awakened the boat and they all stepped sideways.
Once there, she summons a shark spirit and offers it a gift of gnosis. Then she convinces it to find the weresharks.
Communicating with the weresharks was especially difficult since none of them had chosen the Skald. Eventually, they managed to make out that there was a ship bearing death that headed north towards the frozen shores. This is 982, Svalbard has not been settled yet, and the player characters do not know of any shores to the north. Neither does the chieftain, and he's not happy to try sailing there, especially not with the large ship-eating sharks around. But they convince him to sail further north.
I find it worth mentioning that I cued up a random encounter once they awakened the boat. Instead of fighting the spirit attacking the boat, however, the Godi commanded it to leave them alone. It worked, and they sailed away unmolested.
Once they reached the shores they decided to go on and search for the ship. They asked if any of the crew members wanted to go along, and one young man volunteered. Time to feed the players some plot. This young man is a Rus, and he knows a lot about the war between the lupines and vampires back home. In fact, he knows suspiciously too much for a mere mortal. The Forseti starts asking him questions and hopes to catch him in a lie, but the man has a difficulty 10 for detecting lies, so he keeps trying. The one time he does get a 10, Akim is actually telling the truth. This is a shame, I would've liked to know what they would've done if they'd have found out he was lying. But for their sake, it's a good thing they didn't.
While the Rotagar finds the ship and sneaks on board (avoiding fighting the 5 einherjar on board by stealthing past them), Akim tells the other two about the old Hag called the Baba Yaga, and the legend of how she came to serve the Wyrm. He mentions dragons, and the Forseti immediately links dragons to serpent. This man knows way too much.
Then the Godi decides to contact her ancestor, a Silver Fang, and ask him what he knows about dragons. Now they get the rest of the story. The Baba Yaga called on the Zmei in her pain to help her fight the Nosferatu. And the Zmei, the ancient dragons that slept, answered her call. The Silver Fangs managed to bind these dragons. But if they were to awaken, and join the Baba Yaga in her fight against the Garou now, then all would be lost. And luckily, he knows the rite to bind them.
Meanwhile, the Rotagar has found a map to a site on the island, and they have made contact with the local Garou, a group of wolf-borns who have guarded the island for years. He has also found some coffins on the boat, and an oil lamp. So he set the whole thing on fire and escaped back to shore.
At the site in question, a collection of vampires and mages are awakening the sleeping dragon.
Now we started running out of time, and they took too long planning the ambush at the site. They can't avoid a battle at this point, but I decide we have no time to play it out. Instead I explain what happens. The Garou, along with Akim (who as it turns out is a remarkable fighter as well), and their new allies (the wolf pack) ambush the ritualists and interrupt the rite. The battle is tough, and many casualties are suffered. Where the dice would usually decide whether or not the ritualists manage to awaken the dragon before they are killed, I had to make this decision on the spot myself, and I decided to make it as epic as possible. So the dragon awakens, and slaughters the vampires and feeds off the mages' avatars. Then, as he turns on the Garou, Akim himself turns into a dragon and holds him off while the Godi, possessed by her ancestor, performs the rite to bind it once more.
I explain to the players that Akim is Shazear, the seventh dragon, who is tired of the shackles of Baba Yaga, and wants to be free to explore this world. He is a creature of the Wyrm, but the players let him go. Well, they don't have a choice at this point. If they try to stop him, he's perfectly capable of killing them all. And of all the Zmei, he is the most likely to return to the Wyld.
Weeks later, the Baba Yaga is defeated by the armies in the lands of the Rus, and she falls into torpor for 1,000 years.
I decide I might run this game at a con. It just needs a little trimming since it's too long for one session.