Solo Gaming Using Mythras Part 3: The Blood Money of Yahina

Here it is, the actual solo adventure where I teach myself how to play Mythras and how to do a solo game. It'll be complete with story, mechanics in italics, and my thoughts on how I did, what I liked, and what I'd change. If you want to know the set up, here are the first two parts here and here that detail the setup.

The Cast

Mucario: The main solo character, a Sulano fisherman with some fighting and casting skill
Ana: One of the pregen characters, she's a tan Okulek warrior trained in the spear and shield
Kara: Another pregen, she is the sister of Ana and a priestess of Amuzencab, goddess of medicine and community
Kju: The last pregen, he is a nomadic brave from the plains of the northern continent looking to make his fortune
Captain Abraham Spalding: The captain of the ship Kayaben, looking to break the Curse of 65 Coins

Act 1: Revelations and Superstitions

Day 13 of Alexan of Her Holiness's Course

We begin aboard the Kayaben, a large carrack cutting through the clear blue sea, sailing towards the island of Yahina. The island has a cursed past, where the village on it was raised to the ground years ago during the Great Island War. Most of the natives and colonists believe that the spirits of those murdered years ago haunt the land, hunting and devouring any that land on the shores. Most boats avoid the island at all costs, wishing not to anger the ghosts or be reminded of the terrible war.

I rolled a Locale on this and got a critical. Mucario has heard of the stories behind Yahina and is rightfully nervous, yet excited, about going to the island.

While Mucario and his compatriots were told of the destination by Captain Spalding, the rest of the crew were kept in the dark about it. Spalding finally reveals the destination of the Kayaben about three days out, and the crew are none too pleased. Whispers of cannibalism and angry spirits fill the decks until three sailors decide they have had enough and try to stage a mutiny.

The bodyguards are near Abraham when three sailors approach him with clubs. "We are turning this boat around, whether you like it or not cap'n," one of the wind beaten shiphands says.

Mucario tries his best to reason with the mutineers, but the older and exhausted sailors brush past the naive boy and attack the captain.

Mucario tried to roll Influence to dissuade the mutineers from fighting, but with only an 18%, he fails it spectacularly and is ignored for not knowing what he's talking about.

The first two sailors try to beat down on the captain, but only one is able to land a solid hit on Spalding's right arm. Mucario, frustrated with being ignored, loses his temper and strikes at one of the soldiers. His spear lands true and slices the shiphands's ear clean off. The pain is unyielding and the blood gushes from the wound as the sailor cries out.

"Back away from Abraham, or it'll be your other ear next!" Mucario shouts, hoping the sailor finally takes him seriously. The man balls up, clutching his severed ear, and yields to the adolescent.

Mucario got a lucky critical against a failed parry. Mucario went for Scar Foe and Compel Surrender, and did enough damage against the head to bring it to a Serious Wound. The sailor can't attack for 3 rounds and further more, he failed his Willpower Roll and now capitulates against the teen warrior.

Kju joins in the fight, firing an arrow at another sailor, but his bolt flies passed the man's shoulder and into the mast. 

"Dammit!", the proud brave mutters under his breath. He can't let the younger fisherman outshine him.

The remaining two sailors become furious at the maiming of their friend, and realizing the youth meant business. turn their attention to Mucario, They try to get past the range of the spear and within reach of Mucario, but are unable to keep up with Mucario.

"You'll have to do better than that if you want to hit me!" Mucario taunts the men

The two sailors flat out fail their Close Range action and Mucario doesn't spend an Action Point to press the advantage.

Ana moves up to one of the sailors and prepares to strike. Mucario finds a great energy from the adrenaline rush and presses his luck, attacking the next sailor. His spear lands on the chest of the second sailor, but the blow was softened enough that it only bruised the hardened sailor.

"You don't know what you are doing, kid!" The sailor shouts at the fisherboy. "This island will kill us all if we land there! No amount of money is worth that!"

Mucario landed another spear blow, but this time the sailor was able to succeed in blocking it. He parries it for half damage, then his armor brings the damage down from 4 to 1.

With the melee slowing becoming a bloodbath, Captain Spalding tries to talk some sense into his crew.

"You may or may not lose your lives on the island lads, but you will surely lose it here if you keep fighting. Lay your arms down and you will be spared a mutineer's death!"

Seeing no other course of action, the sailors drop their clubs and capitulate, not wanting to be keelhauled.

"Old man, you know nothing of the old ways," one of the sailors shouts as he is being shackled by Ana and Mucario. "Your greed will be the death of us all, mark my words!"

"I know of the cruelty and terror of your old ways... more than you'll ever know," Abraham's mind wanders for a brief moment before he shouts at the rest of the crew. "Take these traitors down below and keep them there until we leave Yahina. Anyone else that has a problem with this can join them in the brig!"

After dealing with the three traitors, Captain Spalding turns to Mucario.

"I'm grateful I didn't make a poor decision in hiring you," the captain chuckles a bit. "You're not half bad with the spear, though I hope to see it done to the ghosts on Yahina next time..."

"I hope we don't end up running into any of the dark spirits there," Mucario says with a nervous laugh. "Why are we going to Yahina? There hasn't been anything there in decades."

Captain Spalding's demeanor becomes more serious, "It is not the shield's place to ask why, but to protect. I am grateful for your service, but you need to remember your place in this world, boy." Abraham storms off, leaving behind a bewildered Mucario.

End of Act 1

My thoughts

This was my first combat in Mythras, despite running M Space. A bit more complicated since I am using melee weapons with Size and Reach, rather than ranged weapons that don't really need to worry about such things. It took me a bit to get through this first combat, though I'm happy to say that it gets faster as the adventure continues. At least until I get to magic.

Writing these are turning out to be another hard task all together. Between my inability to focus and people interrupting me at every chance, it definitely took me longer to get this written up than I had hoped. Ended up having to break it up into different acts, so I'll be sure to post more of this in the coming weekend.

Solo Gaming Using Mythras Part 1: The Adventure and Setting

So for awhile now, I've been doing practice games with solo gaming to help grok it better. It's been an unusual experience, especially with my inability to sit down for more than an hour to do anything. But, I feel like I've finally got the hang of pulling double duty as PC/GM while also using a good oracle. I've been using Tiny Solitary Soldier's simple oracle, with the caveat that for good/bad chances of a question, I change the probability of Yes or No. So if there is a good chance of something happening, then rolling a 1d6 will yield a Yes on 1-4, while the reverse is true for a bad chance of something happening. Adds a bit more nuance and variety to rolls I feel.

The System

After playing all kinds of game systems out there from FATE and Dungeon World to Savage Worlds and D&D/Pathfinder, I've come to settle down on Mythras. While it is certainly a more complex ruleset than much of the OSR games I've been reading in the last year or so, I've found the rules to be fairly intuitive and easy to understand, as well as fairly deep. And truthfully, I've always leaned to skill-based classless systems the likes of HERO and GURPS. I'd probably still be playing HERO if they hadn't locked me out of the pdfs I bought years ago.

So I will be using Mythras in my campaign setting of Anacaona, one that has seen at least three rules shifts since I started it years ago with Pathfinder, then Savage Worlds, then ACKS, and now Mythras. 

The Setting

I'm not sure I've ever gone over my home setting, but here it is in a nutshell. The setting takes place in a high fantasy world much like the Americas. Folklore and traditions from the different tribes and civilizations of the New World (both Pre and Post Columbian) as well as stories I grew up with as a child are used as inspiration with my own ideas and twists. There are two continents, Thivola to the south and Kivira to the north. In between is a giant chain of islands like Indonesia called Anacaona. This place has a lot of themes from Caribbean natives, as well as inspiration from things like Pirates of the Caribbean, Treasure Island, Age of Sail Caribbean tales, and even some modern day Caribbean folklore and trends.

The islands host a variety of peoples. There are the native civilizations of several island-states that are in a constant cold war among themselves and the new groups of colonists, who themselves fight among each other. The setting begins five years after a terrible series of endemic wars between the natives and colonists that ended with a terrible plague wiping out a great deal of everyone on both sides. Now people have to live in a tense peace, all the while magical zones of arcane energies are popping up.

It is a highly magical place, but not in the sense of something like Warcraft where everyone seems to have world shattering magic. Rather, magic is a part of the world. There are spirits everywhere and demons that roam the islands looking for souls to harvest. Entering a cave can lead you into the underworld, another plane of existence, or even to a completely different time. Besides the magic, you also have to deal with the people. Distrusting natives, paranoid colonists, slave trade, piracy, disease, famine, and the remnants of the great war, and you have a setting rife with conflict.

The Adventure

With all that, I will be running a modified version of Sariniya's Curse, available at the website of The Design Mechanism for free. Only setting stuff is changed, but the main adventure conceit remains.

"Venture-Captain Abraham Spalding is an aging merchant that has spent the last forty years of his life creating a prosperous trade company in the Anacaona Sea. He is a rich man whose name is known throughout the wharves of the islands, and he is able to ply coin from the normally insular native Sulano and Okulek peoples. However, his family houses a dark secret. His father was a Devian soldier and a terrible man, looking to make his fortune in the tropical paradise of Anacaona. Searching for the famed Cities of the Gods, he instead found a smaller village of Sulano with a chest of 65 precious gold coins. Seeing opportunity, the man razed the village, killed the village spirit leader, and took all of the coins and women for himself. In the shaman's dying breath, however, he cursed the man and his kin to die a terrible and gruesome death at the age of 65, one year for each coin stolen. Abraham himself took no heed of this curse, until his father was dismembered by sharks. And then his uncle died painfully from chikungunya. And his mother was found partially eaten alive from a band of ghouls. With his 65th birthday approaching in mere months, Abraham has spent years collecting all 65 coins and has hired the PCs to protect him while he goes to the island of his father's sin to make things right. But what awaits the PCs there may be more than they bargained for..."

That's the basic gist of it. I will be playing with three of the pregenerated characters as well as one that I have made myself. I'll post that for tomorrow. Until then!