Mythic Bastionland - initial impressions, and making a Realm

[pemerton]

I think I might just fiddle with the progression system.

What have you got in mind.?

The progression system reminds me of Prince Valiant - where the players' knights gain Fame for resolving situations, winning jousts/tournaments, taking part in battles, etc. The main differences in Mythic Bastionland are (i) that you can lose Glory when you lose a joust, and (ii) that gaining progression doesn't, in itself, advance your PC - that's dependent on the passage of time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, using OD&D as an example here is setting the bar about as low as it can get. Even a lot of pretty lightweight modern RPGs would consider it woefully incomplete in comparison. You had to really want to be doing an enormous amount on pure judgment calls to consider it complete.

I think you are misunderstanding me, that I am not being clear. I am not holding up D&D '74 as a ' bar' at all. It's an example of a design which fails to even attempt to be complete, or even explain itself at all really.

Later versions of classic D&D (TSR D&D) sometimes expound some of their principles of play, but oddly all of them largely assume a vast amount of unspoken 'stuff' related to various aspects of the function of the game. I would rather say that their various authors are the ones who set a low bar!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think, no offense, that you're missing the point. The extent to which a given RPG is 'complete' is neither, IMO, obvious nor easy to assess.

I think it is, perhaps, difficult if you have not really analyzed the makeup of RPGs and the structure of play in a clear way. I find there is great resistance to doing so in certain circles. Classic signs of this which I often see are statements about how system and related things are unimportant. Or people who attempt to conclude that all sorts of play are doing the same thing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think you are misunderstanding me, that I am not being clear. I am not holding up D&D '74 as a ' bar' at all. It's an example of a design which fails to even attempt to be complete, or even explain itself at all really.

Which is why its a pretty low bar.

I'm beginning to wonder what part of my statement was so unclear to people.

 

[pemerton]

the rules talk about "sites" and the "treasure" they might contain:

A Knight’s journey largely focuses on travelling great distances to seek the guidance of Seers and uncover Myths.​

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However, on occasion there may be the need to zoom in on a single Hex, or a specific site within a Hex, in more detail.​

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Sites can be created as areas that warrant more detailed exploration, whether ancient tombs, hostile castles, twisting caverns, or misty woods spanning the entire Hex.​

But the rules have nothing more to say about when and why there would be the "need" to provide this sort of site-level treatment of a place of interest.

I have thoughts on how to approach sites, based on the exploration rules in Mythic Bastionland, and also drawing on TB2e.

I've thought a bit more about this.

The "Oddpocrypha" - that is, the examples of play with commentary - includes this, as part of the entry on Exploration:

Tal: While we’re travelling can I search for any other travellers we could speak to? I can see through my raven’s eyes remember.

Ref: Yeah that’ll help for sure. No real risk here so we’ll just make it a Luck Roll. With your raven you’ll certainly find somebody, but this is more about how far away they are.

Tal rolls a d6, scoring 5.

Ref: Sure, there’s somebody travelling not far from here, let me see who we’ve got.

Ref decides to roll a random prompt for a person, scoring 1 and 11. They’ll also use the State prompt from the same page. The result is “lost Knight” and “nurturing”.

Ref: Through your raven’s eyes you see an armoured figure riding on horseback, a smaller figure on a pony trailing behind them. Looks like a Knight and their Squire. You’ve got enough warning to skirt around them, or are you going to move closer?

. . .

Ref leans on a Luck Roll here for a situation that didn’t have any risk, but was still uncertain in outcome. Perfect use of that type of roll.

To get a prompt for what the raven finds, Ref rolls a Knight and uses the prompts on that page. They could also have simply flicked to a random page if they wanted inspiration quickly, but the dice are generally preferable to get a wider spread of results.

When Ref describes what they see their description ends with a choice that the players must make.​

So, suppose that the players choose to have their PCs speak to this lost knight. The referee might end up rolling on the Task table, to find out what this lost knight is supposed to be doing. Suppose that the roll gives Retrieve Dwelling - so the knight is supposed to be retrieving something from a dwelling. The GM could roll on the Goods table, and get - say - Traditional Pottery. And then a final roll, for another person, might give (say) Aristocratic Farrier. So, the knight is supposed to be retrieving, from the dwelling of a legendary farrier, the urn in which the farrier places all the nails removed from the hooves of shod horses.

I think this is one way that it might turn out that a site is required.