SESSION 2 - Playlog - Corrhéo

Yes, again, we'll get into the details but:

Should I assume that you're going to read S1 Playlog and just drop you right into the mix and medley, or should I give some sort of backdrop?

Backdrop: Corrhéo is a country and a 52-hex project put together by myself and Clane that I am playtesting via a West Marches campaign over Discord with interested parties that include friends, family, and maybe you. 

The setting. Clane put it yesterday:

I didnt think we could pull off pod-capsule launching catapults, berrylmen balloonists and steampunk electric lords in the same world as Lovecraftian obsidian knights, wasteland prophets and casual undead liches & necromancers but it works

Here's a running Table of Contents, and then I'll drop in on Prep and Play of Session 2.

1. Working Player's Survey of Corrhéo
2. Session 1 - Corrhéo - West Marches - "To Bero's Boon"
   

Zeunt!

Wanting that exclamation to be a little more section-breaky than it is. 

Zeunt!

Alright. Session 2, scheduled 3-4 weeks after the first. 

All of my intentions were to have players leave HQ at the beginning of a session and return by the end of a session so that they could then post details about what they saw and experienced in the wild for other players to base their own decisions off where to go next. 

All plans laid to rest. All plans collapse, at best.

This team—

Maddeson, Clothchilde and Envoy of Genemene; 

Zugg Brunswick-Dax, adopted of the Brunswick farm collect; 

Taamog Peets, a rather young goblin;

Godfrey, a human fighter with long black greasy hair; &

Zahir, a tall, scrawny, half-orc priest

—never made it back to HQ.

And alas—

Maddeson, Clothchilde and Envoy of Genemene;  

—could not make scheduling work for them.

So I consulted with Maddeson a week or so post-session when it was clear that the group likely needed to start from where they were in the swamp rather than return to HQ.

Maddeson had been ... dainty regarding swamplife? Very opposed to Huguklah's various muck wisdoms (cover yourself in slime, mostly) to combat the rich ecosystem of insects. Maddeson had been ... a bit high on their horse. 

I wasn't keen to punish Maddeson's player for living life so figured since they'd admitted one of their major character motivations as take advantage of my time in Corrheo to find new herbs, and knowledge in herbalism, I would put forward: 'berry blight'— a blotchy fever that rocks the body with a wracking fever—buboes in the neck, armpit and groin. -3 to CON until reversed. 

Fix is gilfern salve.

The idea was to weave some landmark knowledge I'd recently provided Zugg Brunswick-Dax, adopted of the Brunswick farm collect, for his backstory.

C-03-03 Misnan Keep

 

or The Grey Misnan if preferred: a Corrhéonic outpost of mudworks and stove-edge fencing. Patrols are active, with two Reams actively patrolling, two resting, and two attending to keeply duties—repair, hunt, fortify.

The waist-high wall of yeglite is like a long cemetary. Interwoven, not solid, but built, planted, at intervals, to slow the thunderous approach of braeburn steeds which riders from the hills and mountains north of Corrhéo ride.

The land has been quiet though in recent years, so the Stand have become lax in routine. Suggestions that there is a massing to the north flood the mouths of those prone to believe the world a dangerous place. Others, the more bucolic-minded, are willing to believe in frontier peace—some have begun to even plant gardens, to retire or marry—the proliferation of gilfern in tandem with the shrubland stone wall has brought croppers and dryers and dyers and peddlers.

The grass here is tall and the hills golden.

So ZBD knows where gilfern is (a good ways away by map's reckoning), Maddeson of Genemene is sick with fever & buboes (thank you forever, Connie Willis, for buboes), and when M of G wakes up, the two can connect the pieces and have a new destination in mind. 

The plan anyway. 

Collapsing at best.

Let's Talk About Session Prep

I started same as last session: drawing a set of seven rinky-dink hexes on my paper. Checked the surroundings. 

And the surroundings provide further net for keeping PCs within a hex range anyway.

Much reduced from Session 1, I really only had to prep my knowledge of C-17 or C-14 as Session 1 gave me C-10 and C-11 (HQ). 

And in reading them, I'd clearly forgotten how nasty and strange Silt Coast hex landmarks were. The Tooth Taker... God. Silt fleas and bristle flies. I suspect players will want to stay in the green lands over time, but we'll see. The right fruit draws the tenderest eyes. 

Players are in Bero's Boon, with access to the Muddyhen Pickets, a six-node adventure site. C-15-01, neck-deep in night-time.

They'd admitted intentions to both stake-out the snipper of snares and also gather information from the NPCs they had access to: Huguklah and the Mado Family. 

Maddeson of Buboes was supposed to be on stake-out with Godfrey the Greasy-Haired. 

I knew Veel was in the swamp cutting snares. I had a d6 chart of his motivations, unrolled. I was excited for players to use torches. You'll remember Taamog Peets, Rather Young Goblin had spotted harpy's nests to the south. I had a harpy in mind. Black seduction of some kind? 

I made my list of Essentials:

• The Mado's
• Huguklah
• Coypu & otters
• Dusksong Passage
• Veel Mulgav
• Clinchin Fold middlemen
• Berry blight

The Mado Family

So we've got a collection of potential 'fellow trappers' in the swamp here at Bero's Boon. 

The Mado Family was an improv based on 'family who've lost their cattle', an encounter drawn last session from an anecnote in Clane's Wilted Hollow landmark:

C-10-03 - Wilted Hollow 

The Wilted Hollow is situated on the western edge of the vast silt-salt desert, where the winds from the desert have transformed an ancient forest into a petrified landscape. The terrain is characterized by blue-grey, barkless trees standing motionless in cracked, salt-encrusted clay. Delicate layers of silt are constantly blown in from the sea, coating everything with gritty dust. 

Deeper: Once a thriving forest, the Wilted Hollow has long since turned to stone. The trees, preserved by time and salt, form a petrified woodland. Over the centuries, the roots of these trees have created natural cavities and chambers beneath the surface, some large enough to be used as tombs. Great Lords of the Clinchin Fold know the naturally dry, stable conditions and have used these chambers for torpor tombs, where ideal conditions should indefinitely preserve their bodies and wealth. 

The first and most infamous burial site is the Tomb of the Lordless, a crypt hidden deep beneath the petrified roots of one of the giant trees. While the tomb has remained untouched for centuries, over the years, rumors of treasure and lost riches have drawn the attention of adventurers, robbers, and the curious to the Hollow.  

The Wilted Hollow’s dry, cracked terrain makes travel difficult. The silt and salt from the desert cause frequent dust storms, which can obscure vision and treacherous navigation. Additionally, the root chambers, while stable, are often hidden beneath layers of silt and clay, making them hard to locate. Some chambers have become unstable over the years and may collapse if disturbed. The Hollow is also subject to persistent exposure to extreme temperatures, with scorching heat during the day and cold at night. Adventurers should be prepared for the harsh conditions before venturing into the area. 

Recently, the Wilted Hollow has become a concern for the nearby villages. Strange animal tracks have been discovered near the Hollow’s edge, suggesting recent activity despite its reputation as a desolate place. Villagers have reported hearing sounds from the wind and the unsettling noise of shifting stones at night. Though the Hollow is largely avoided, these signs suggest that someone—or something—is digging among the petrified trees. Colossal moles have begun expanding their tunnels to the Hollows, opportunistic feeders feasting on helpless dreamers within the tombs. 

Additionally, several livestock have gone missing from nearby farms, leading some to believe that more is concealed than just old graves. Anxious lords will pay well for answers.

I made the Mados Dar sheep farmers. We have a random beast encounter called 'very aggressive sheep'. I'm assuming the two are the same.

Sheep farmers who lost their flock are now in the swamp trapping otter to make ends meet. A family of four (no names yet). 

They had to be farming somewhere though, right, in the Wilted Hollow landmark? 'Nearby farms'. 

We haven't written any villages. We haven't written any farms... 

So I wrote 'multiple villages?' and underlined it. Then I named them.

Carmaad.

Then Lynn.

Then Tunke.

Okay three villages.

I made another Bite-Sized Dungeon. (Marcia B, when will I pay off this debt?). It worked for the Pickets... Maybe I could just imagine the villages as sites, rather than things that needed whole-ass maps. 

Clane writes that the petrified forest is encroaching on the grasslands. The trees are stoney? Life must be tough there...

I place the villages in a row. After that, all is random. My entrance pops up down at the Hollow of Roots which is unexpected. I typically picture walking into adventure village-first. The Tomb of the Lordless is trapped. There's a treasure in the Abandoned Village, Overtaken by Sand and Stone), and both of my encounters roll in the villages themselves. 

Okay, I'm thinking: Carmaad is where I already had the Mado's farm pegged... who would they encounter...

I stop. I don't need to think who they would encounter. I'll just roll for it. That's why we made all these damn tables!

Roll. Ant army, eating.

Oof. So this is how the Mado's lost their sheep.

Roll for Tunke's encounter. Raki stickbug making territorial display. We don't have beast statblocks or descriptions written. Half the time our stuff is just 'sounds cool I'll write it someday'. 

It's someday.

I don't roll a number. I picture a forest of Raki stickbugs, petrified brown and huge. I go read about stickbugs for awhile: they curl up like scorpions to look strong and dangerous; they flash red hidden wing flaps vibrantly; worst case, they're spiny and grapple with those long legs. Fake ents. 

They'd hate to hear that. Sorry Raki stickbug. 

They've come out of the petrified trees and are shaking territorially. Maybe a hard breeze through bamboo. But with click noises. What, are they running their breath through their tiny mouths? Cicada, maybe? Like cicada plus the percussive clack of a stick on wood?

Who are they demonstrating to? NPCs of course. And NPCs with a reason to stay and take the territory right? Petrified wood, beautiful stuff. How about a stonecutter: Eyork Cool and his partner Kel. The treasure for the node becomes friendship with whoever the PCs help. Probably a petrified wood necklace either way...

The town of Lynn is empty so I choose it as my 'special interactable place that doesn't hurt but is actually scenery'. In this case it's the locked house with the raving lunatic inside repeating I AM LORD LOSS to exhaustion. 

Maybe I AM LORDLESS is the verbal password to enter the Tomb of the Lordless in node 5. Too tough?Might be too complicated. But I also don't have and won't have the prep done for the Tomb of the Lordless by game-time, so I'd rather they not go in quite yet. 

Woof! We are deep in prep, friends. Take a break. We haven't even hit harpies yet.

2

Huguklah 

didn't need much love. He'd been fairly fleshed out in the improv of Session 1, but I did add him a secret. I haven't transmogrified my How To Seed a Secret tables into something nice looking but I did type them up.

I'll deep dive on the table in an upcoming post but suffice to say it was 3 columns when I upgraded Huguklah's character background with a little spice, and now rather than a happy-go-lucky Happy Man in the Swamp With a Problem, he's also guilty about his passion for magic with such a luddite, common-sense family.

Coypu & otters:

 

These were what could be trapped and hunted. I just realized I hadn't made them prominent in the first session and had wanted, if the characters were inclined, for them to be able to make enough off of snaring and hunting to pay rent (I think they owe 150g, at 3g a pelt?).

I opted to just say there would be, with any reasonable attack or grab, 1d6 catchable in any of the passing rooms, and that they'd be very prevalent in the dark.

Then 

Dusksong Passage

Reminder, a highlight from Session 1 when Peets, Young Goblin, climbed a tree, got an encounter roll, 2 dusksong harpies. I opted to nest them far away because I think they'd kill him and his friends. 

He came in obsessed with the nests as I thought he might.

Dusksong Passage was a way of 

1) finishing Clane and I's commitment to 3 landmarks per hex

2) trying out a 'Bite-Sized Dungeon Attached to Another Bite-Sized Dungeon' and

3) making sense of the harpy-nest-encounter-that-was-not-an-encounter

As such, I followed the usual perscription on Bite-Sizers:

Got the same layout as I did for the Session 1 in Bero's Boon. Began to immediately worry: is this where dice-rolling for layouts goes wrong? 

No. Entrance got rolled right in the middle, in 4. Occupied hex also got rolled at 4 (unkeyed unfortunately I realize now) and in 3, up in the upper right. 

Well: plan had been a secret entrance found in Bero's Boon when our heroes discover Veel Mulgav's hideout, his 'hunter's blind'. But now that the space was occupied as well...

I took a page out of Johnn Four's Five-Room Dungeon which Clane has been considering in the dev room: the first room is a guardian of some kind.

Hadn't thought of that honestly; I tend to prefer deep lures. But I put the harpy in at 4 again. Sure. You've made it to the entrance to the Passage. She's the most powerful creature there. She'd be there to greet you. This is her lair (for now). 

Then of course there's two nests, spotted by Our Goblin Peets. I put them in 6. I'm prone as result of the nests to begin thinking of taller trees, and also prone to begin wanting any non-occupied rooms to still provide more world. Given Peet's tree-climbing attitude (and his desire to keep avoiding waterlogged boots), the view from 5 would likely give our Company some more landmark knowledge elsewhere. Not a treasure per se, but a broader scope. So a peek there if they take it, into the rather nasty C-17.

The treasure's in the nest. Or the nest is treasure: like crows collecting silvery things, I want a big old pot of coin and gleam up there high up. The real treasure is the egg, of course. Every Poke-catcher's heart is easily poked with an egg no matter how wrecked the beast that drops it. And we'll complicate emtions with a decomposing second harpy in the nest too, which probably got killed by the first. (But who knows: might actually d6 a 'why is there a second dead harpy in the nest or nearby tree' table later. Permutations are Queen!). 

North west in 1 & 2, I rolled trap, I'm setting the Geas there, a long buried colossus of a ship whose prow still points out, filled to the neck with decomposing matter. Time to start sewing in the science-fantasy.

It still has a special binding presence, so that oaths made thereon are reinforced. I'm not sure who'd be making oaths this deep in the Dusksong, but what's important is that the capacity is there and it's palpable so players might be silly and decide to make an oath. Then I'll be in a corner again and have to explain something wonderous that I don't even quite understand.

Right, a trap. I'll gas trap 4, in case anyone gets to tinkering with the strange 'tiki' torch like cannisters-on-a-pole which stick out from the swamp at hard angles. Not quite sure why they'd be stuffed with gas... but... I don't think it deserves a d6 tabbble. Okay fine. d6 table of why is there gas in the pressure cannisters that stick out of the Geas's main deck? later.

And stirges, in 3, because it's occupied, because I rolled them. Territorial display also! Buzzzzzz. And with a treasure? Well again, Arnold K says no coins and gives me an easy d6 table to avoid them as treasure:

...remember that treasure doesn't need to be treasure.  It can be:

• Shiny shit, such as boring ol' coins, or the jewelled brassiere of the zombie queen.
• Knowledge, such as where to find more treasure, or information you can use to blackmail the king.  Or even a sage, who can answer a single question honestly.
• Friendship, such as an amorous purple worm that follows you around and protects you when it's hungry and a little bored.  Occasionally, it leaves egg sacs laying around for you to fertilize (and it will get angry if you don't sit on them for at least an hour).
• Trade Goods, like a wagon full of tea (worth 10,000gp).  When I give out large parcels of trade goods as treasure, I give half of the XP now, and the other half of the XP when it's sold off.  (I just really like the idea of a mercantile campaign.)
• Territorial, like a tower the players can claim as their own, or an apartment in the nice party of the city (and the chances of being stabbed in your sleep are dramatically reduced).
• Useful adventuring shit, like a magic sword, scroll of blot out the sun, or a parachute.

I roll. 4. Trade goods. A nest made of fragrant patch moss & useful salt vine by the pound. Nice.

I think a landmark writing session is in order so that I have a more postable, palpating thing than this little six-node: what's the Geas, what's the power, etc. That artifact is what feels most potent about the space. 

Harpies, while fun, are simply an encounter roll away from being elsewhere, back in two blog posts with that.

Veel Mulgav

Shorthand notes: I gave Veel a secret too. Sure, he's out there cutting snares. I still haven't rolled on his d6 motivations. It'll come when they find him so I'm in the tightest corner I can talk my way out of. But I do want a bigger secret:

Ah, rolls prove that he has a guilt about career and family and it shows up in deep sadness / melancholy. Or song, in this case. I wager Veel left a career in Drek's Landing, a curse his mother sent him away with. She said something like your father wore his bones to the knees so you could have this and if you walk away from it, a ghost in your thoughts it'll be. 

She was no pirate. She was the wife of a printer or something, but Veel felt it like she was some sphinx of the sea. Now he's in the swamp, and cursed on nights when the harpy sings, to feel the echo of her song of loneliness in his own. He's easily located as a result, if that should happen. (On the encounter chart, for instance).

Last Thing, Bonus Thing

I went to roll that second encounter for the Dusksong Corridor, the stirges. 

I realized then and there that I'd sort of fucked up. 

We based so much of our encounter charting off of Hurst's Hot Springs Island. You'll remember that now. The thing that HSI did very well, among other things, was nest tables. The encounter chart is a 3d6 chart with 4 entries: (1) Probability of Encounter Type (2) Encounter Itself (3) Encounter Quantity and (4) Encounter Motivation. 

Well scramble back a post or two and find out that in my haste to flesh out encounters, I only included the final three. 

This meant that every encounter was a Beast encounter. 

Damnit. 

Well: we have 3 encounter types, as Hurst and Co. did. His were... Intelligent, Beast, and Elemental I believe. Ours matched, but our Elementals are a group called the Popolos (or the Populace?—dunno, made the word up; they are essentially 'the people before these people' and call themselves the Popolos).

Regardless: I needed to double back but a lot of our landmarks have different qualities to them—some of little access to the underearth; some are cities; some are ruins; some are great big fields of grass. Each is going to have a slightly different variation of possibility of encountering different groups. 

Now, I'd already gone through and separated out our factions into 'types of terrain they'd be in'—the Clinchin Fold gravitate towards dusty, hot, lonely places; the berrylmen love their muck and bog. 

And as I look at it now, I did include Popolos in here (see 'Alien'), but I'll adjust that, because this was the big work of Session 2: I made this d6 based chart that is applicable to individual landmarks, sorted by a gut 'type'. 

Decide on what 'variety' of landmark it is (maybe Bero's Boon is 'an outpost', roll a d6, you should get a 'type of encounter'; head to the encounter chart appropriate; roll as usual. 

Key would look like 'B is for Beast', 'F is for Faction', 'P is for Popolos', or in a final version, will likely be Intelligent, Beast, and Alien; though in our case 'Intelligent' is simply for 'groups with knowable motivations'. Not to get too finicky with definitions but there's plenty of intelligence among the beasts and plenty of motivations among the alien. 

Regardless, table made. Excitement had.

Enough prep, let's play please

Play. I was late. I got my East Coast mixed with my Mountain time. I got a note, 'Present' from Zahir. I was walking out to pull rocks out of the pond in the corner of the field.

5 minutes, I say, meaning ten.

Rush back, plug in. Sup guys.

Everyone's expectant. Quiet. Cool: I return us through last time's happenings to oh boy: stakeout is a bit sunk: Maddeson of Genemene has berry blight.

We all know this. I figure they know this as a way to pass the character through an absence of player. But nay. 

Two of us should stay and protect Maddeson. (Maddeson coughs from the tent). Two should continue the stakeout.

This from Zugg of the Farm Collect.

He and Zahir the Half Orc Priest will stay. Godfrey the Greasy Haired and Peets, YG, off you go.

Torch, no torch, torch, no torch. Peets and Godfrey opt for torch for now (tis but 8 milord) and wend their way into the swamp. 

I bypass a node to keep them walking. I noticed it in Session 1, that the empty space of Node 1 (sedge corridor) really only provided pause when written as 'decision point'. In this case though, even though I knew it was empty, I still talked them through it and it gave me time to narrate some sensory stuff. Get the swamp deeper into night that way. Improv, but reminds me to trust that all is there for a reason, or at least serves a purpose.

They stake out. Right beside the black pond. (Still a treasure in there). Peets the Goblin of course up a tree. Greasy Godfrey at its base. Gutter the torch.

Must teach a class. Back in a bit.

3

Back in camp, though he can't respond, Maddeson is being nurtured. Zugg Who Wishes to Be Paladin Though There Are None in Shadowdark has requested an audience with the sufferer of Berry Blight. He does a pretty comprehensive ritual description involving a pair of copper-coated mountain lion fangs and specific pressures—like a reiki ritual or somesuch—and I'm entirely won over. He's trying to ritualize lay on hands which he's snuck onto his character sheet somehow and I'm all for it, but I'm also a little bit of a rules kid, so I can't totally give it to him. 

Berry blight saps CON. Enough to penalize leveling up with it. To date, I had not imagined berry blight getting worse, but all the characters are imagining it will, so I'm along for the ride. After all, the Genemenian isn't responding (as I think he's traveling the East Coast or something).

So Zugg the Non Paladin gets CHILLED. -3 CON but Maddeson stabilizes. (Still has buboes, sorry Madd). 

Anytime a character goes to great length to cast a spell they're unsure of, or a 'blood gift' as Zugg prefers to think of it, I'm never going to 'duds' them. No one needs that embarassment.

Zahir falls in with Huguklah and starts chatting the Rot which is pervasive in Corrheo, and gets her own herbal info on how to fix the kid in the tent. 

Meanwhile in the swamp, the Stakeout Team is proper staked out. 

The harpy (encounter roll) flies overhead singing sweet song, melody pure and sweet. She heads south. Described as 'an elongated crow, as much serpent as bird'. 

Before the night's over, Huguklah reveals she's a harpy but in this moment and for another hour, the Stakeout Team is pretty obsessed. 

Back at camp, Zugg is integrating with the Mado's. We get the story about the ants that ate their sheep. Zahir is drawn into it. Huguklah starts drinking some black beverage no one else wants any part of and most of the work is cleaning boots and trying to make friends with people who aren't too happy about their plot of land.

In the swamp, otters are getting caught up in snares, exhaustion rolls are met with applause, and old Veel Mulgav skates by like a swamp king. 

We do not pursue, says Godfrey, like a soldier.

Characters do not pursue, though Peets the Rather Young Goblin reveals very shaky, young tendencies to start talking just as antagonist enters the scene of the stakeout. Thank goodness for some decent rolls. 

Mulgav's on alert though, I recognize. This ain't his usual swamp foray.

Meanwhile in camp, it's all about berry blight. We're trying to save Maddeson, we're trying to learn about how to salve Maddeson, we're concerned about the boys in the swamp. Everyone's going to bed. Is everyone going to bed? Yes, everyone but you are going to bed. Do you want to go to bed?

I feel a certain unease, says Zugg.

I'm checking on Maddeson again, says Zahir.

Veel Mulgav returns. 

The exhaustion rolls are tougher this time—we're four hours in the black and wet—and Godfrey's Greasy Eyes give out. He knows it too. 

Peets senses him going down and does what Rather Young Goblins do: drops down the tree and starts asking him what they should do now that the antagonist is 60ft away and they're on stake-out. 

Welp, I'm rolling d20's behind the computer screen every sentence that comes out Peet's mouth and by the third, a 20 hits. Yes, you've been noticed because yes, you dropped ten feet into muckwater in the middle of the night and started trying to make a plan with a guy who fell asleep on watch. And yes, there's a dog, too, this time, and it's barking.

Up wakes Godfrey, up goes a torch, twang goes a crossbow from Mulgav right into and through Peet's Young Shoulder but Godfrey's got a shield up and Peets is firing back from over it— — he's aiming at the man the man the man, but realizes he'd rather pop the dog (and I can hear the player take a breath at his own decision because it's a small white dog and its feet aren't going to down under the water; it's a levitating white dog, a kite hunter, I say.)

Misses. (Woof, because, dead dog otherwise, no hp). 

And away goes the swamp king into the night. Everybody breathing hard. 

Meanwhile in camp, the 'something's up' duck whistle Peets blows gets heard. Zahir the Half Orc is primed (and out of conversation points) and runs into the swamp.

Zugg is in full character. He will defend Maddeson the Unconscious. Stays.

All return, carrying two otter that Peets the Young Goblin keeps a cool head on and silences in their snares. 

A debrief occurs. 

What happened out there?

Godfrey reports
- a flying woman w/ beautiful song
- a man who moved like a crab in the swamp
- a levitating dog

Wow. They all say, and choose to sleep for a few hours.

The Mado's serve coffee before they head into the swamp for a day's trapping. Pretty unaware. Probably no one told them what was happening last night at the stake-out. I'm scrambling to figure out how interested Huguklah is in what the team has come up with; how pushy. Real time in my night is dribbling out the glass and I wonder if the PCs will pursue. I wonder: will I have time to let them.

I opt to let players decide. No HP recovered for Peets Bolt-in-Shoulder. Some CON loss again for Maddeson the Berryful. That point lost is returned to Our Zugg. Everyone's thinking maybe we should gtf out of the swamp for his sake. 

I see no reason to interfere. It would suit me. Time is running out. 

Zugg convinces the group to split and go out again. 

Peets and I will go investigate the homestead mentioned in Session 1. Peets will pretend to be a child and I will be his keeper. You two have fine rapport with Haguklah, perhaps you can drum up some information.

There was no homestead. I described a node as homelike, as it was a mangrove cluster rich in coypu and otter dens. It was a peaceful space.

Fine. I will draw in a building there so that he's not totally wrong. Bero's old hut, sagging and decrepit and now more like a shed infested with cats, but the cats are big fat coypu moms.

Faux-Paladin Zugg and Peets YG get there and have a Miyazaki / forest spirit moment among the mangrove weave. Peets finds the a quick treasure in wall-mounted black box because... no treasure so far: roll d100 on our Trinkets and Baubles and gets!

a saltglass lens.

He immediately set it to his eye, of course, to look over and see Zugg find the hidden doghouse, vacant now, but wherein sleeps the kite hunter.

Meanwhile in camp, Huguklah hear's about the dog simultaneously. Knows what it means. 

Veel Mulgav, he says, knowingly. 

And then I rolled on the d6 Veel Mulgav motivation chart from S1.

'Huguklah and Veel share a father, and it isn't pretty'.

I end the session as quick as I can.

Zugg sends me this by text shortly:

Post Game Thoughts

• I think that the ultimate fun of being a DM is pinning yourself in a corner and needing to explain your way out of it. I think that's what I find to be the way I play along with everyone else. Waiting somehow despite my desire to control, to commit, until the very last moment.
• It felt at first like I overprepped for sure. Two six-node Bite Sizers that I didn't even touch? But, this was four hours work? And their existence made conversation much more manageable—the discussion with the Mado's seemed to catch hooks as they explained they hadn't been back to their farm in weeks. And the harpy overhead did the same, elsewhere in the swamp.
  
• I did fall back on Justin Alexander's (or whoever he got it from's) 'faction clocks', which I'm treating a bit differently? I've got a 4-piece pie for harpy egg hatches so that regardless if the PCs are there, it hatches. And then I've got another 4-piece for Mado family return to their farm. I figure they'll try at some point, PCs or not. This helps me think of the landscape around the Company as changing, but only changing in ways that the PCs would care about or have knowledge of. The harpy egg I noted would also be one occurrence of several that would lead to harpy domination of Bero's Boon. Perhaps Huguklah ain't there the next time we come to try to trap coypu and otter for some coin. Wouldn't that be a trick.
• I was absolutely floored by how invested everyone was into protecting or trying to solve the problem of their downed friend, especially since their downed friend's 'reason to be downed' was a known quantity. It sold my on everyone's investment in the world and in the notion of quick companionship. I was moved.
• I am once again moved by ritual and the way people dig at magic in a world where they know it's possible. Several circumstances happened wherein characters acted with an intention that could not be summarized in any other way but 'something wonderous happens', and as I sat puzzling over some of the conversation at The Cauldron about 'providing wonder' for characters, it came to pass that they provided the wonder themselves. 
• Handing out skills is more fun than I care to express. Peets was being.. badgered? a bit, by Zugg. He has a tendency to be the most timid, but it's clear that he has stubborn opinions. He is the only character who sees slitting an otter's throat and turning it in for gold as a reasonable way to make rent. In fact, the other characters made him return the otters he had brought back with him since the snares weren't his. The next day, he immediately set about making his own snares. Zugg started badgering him again—'We have extra snares that were given to us, Peets. You don't need to make them'—further effort at control. I threw Peets what bones I had: roll Dexterity (I think I set DC 15 or 16)—and he made a snare immediately; in fact, learned basic snare setting in that moment, through imitation. Absolutely could. not. shake. the glow out of him after that. Just keep letting me learn things he said, as the session drew closer to end. I loved it. I loved that Zahir the Half Orc priest's prayers about balance resulted in temporary hit point blessings. Not a thing, but too unique a gesture not to honor with a blessing. I realize I just want to tack badges and stats on to everyone like a Scout Leader. 

Guess I'll need to play again.

(5 days til then, at Time of Posting).

d100 Social Contracts

d100 Social Contracts and their Antagonists - No Background (for B&W printing)

d100 Social Contracts and their Antagonists - Printable

 d100 Social Contracts and their Antagonists - Spread (for Screens)

Most of what I need to say about the origins of this post are said on the pdf but, tldr; elmcat wrote a post about making bustling cities with neighborhoods that have character and I made a table to help codify that aspect of their post.

I got caught up thinking about the various communities I've been a part of, the way they've agreed to be communities intrinsically or expressly; the ways that's been good and the ways that's been bad, and how homogeny tends to exist for awhile until people get bored or people get greedy or some other permutation of prolonged stasis, and then the agreement falls apart, drift, disintegration, exodus, etc.

Which, if Idea is to make a civilization or a settlement that's like a character, I like Idea, and I like the idea of clearly identifying aspects that make a body a body, which to me means boiling down beliefs and cultures into little snippets, exaggerating them, and when a DM, sticking to it. 

This town believes that Labor is Lord.

Well that's a town, then, and that'll affect how they feel about adventurers walking in, or how they cast blame, or who is touted as the local hero and walks out to confront the Raki stickbug making a territorial display in the central plaza.

Anyway: mixed aim here. I want to get some TTRPG spread design practice as the Corrhéo campaign goes on so that when it comes time to design the book, I'm not sitting in front of inDesign wondering how to make my table borders thicker. 

I also want to design tools and see if other people can use 'em.

Hopefully these links work for you.

Extra reading: Ann Leckie's Ancillary series are exceptional community studies. EO Wilson's On Human Nature was fresh on my mind too.

SESSION 1 - Playlog - Corrhéo

 

Don't zoom in yet. I'll zoom in eventually. 

Here's my tables. I took five of my hours and two Micron pens and a ruler and this fancy journal my cousin gave me and re-drew all of my prep-work for the first session in Corrhéo. 

For your sake, I'm going to assume you've never heard of it. I know you may have. Look around you briefly and recognize that you are not the only one here. Or at least there are other footprints in the dust. 

Corrhéo, for the unitiated, and to initiate the country to this blog is neatly summarized as follows:

a swamped land whose wellsprings once cared for by the alien Popolos have become plugged;— aristocracy has fallen off and toy with undeath as an alternative to cultural dominance; the heraldric knights grapple with their own being supplanted through insane devotion to cleanliness and order, but are pressed by a past steeped in brutal civil war. Periodic slaving forays are made into the country by colonies of ant peoples from the desert; a growing immigrant population of the thick-skinned frog-like berrylmen relish in the newer hard-leaf foliage and muck, worshipping seaweed elementals and farming slime; and a faction of druid-led justiciars who seem more like the barb-hook madmen of Mad Max than any staff-wielding tree-lovers from modern fantasy lore are out to hang whoever is causing all the Rot.

 Okay, it's not a neat summary when I read it aloud. 

Trying again:

a peat-bog province whose natural wellsprings have become clogged with rot; whose nobles have turned to mummification; whose knights grapple with the results of their civil war; whose peasants are thick-skinned slime farmers with froggy features; whose justice system is run by a mis-directed druid far from balanced; who are regularly visited by great elemental powers of an older age; and whose sea, once a fountain of economic resource, was replaced with a roiling ocean of silt and salt that moves like water and is populated by things which can survive in such harsh atmosphere.

Neater. Better?

Doesn't matter: we move on. 

Corrhéo is no tome. It is a sprawling series of web-documents and hyperlinks. But in my mind, and as I'll spell up for you here, it will be. First it will be a series of ZINES if Clane has his way, which he will. Then it will be a tome. 

System neutral. Or rather: taking each ginger step forward in the footsteps of Hot Springs Island. 

Big footsteps. 

Let's zoom in.

I decided to play Corrhéo to edit it, rather than simply edit it without playing. I wanted the vibrancy of player action in each of the hex landmarks Clane and I developed. I wanted the webs tested. I wanted to roll on tables I'd produced. I am inspired by the notion that as a game designer, not only do we provide a game for a player to play, we provide a game for a DM to play. That game is:

What will I roll on this table? And what will I do with what I roll?

And I want to play that game.

I think any number of DM's have admitted to the satisfaction they get from reading through the 'sample plays' in any number of handbooks throughout the years. As a young reader, it is undoubtedly what coupled me to the occupation for life. Reading about an anonymous DM rolling their own dice and then fabricating story from those rolls was liquid honey. Reading Hot Springs Island, I felt that same thing again. It was in the encounter charts. It was in the satisfaction of probability. A chart that can be populated so that certain things happen more often than others makes the DM in me read to the edges of that chart, looking for what the IMPLAUSIBLE actions are. Thinking, my god, what would I do if 3d6 black dragons were rolled, with the motivation performing a ritual?—because I trust the dice, so I'd have to play them as they lay, level one characters or not.

I hear you. Get to it, Hugh.

Let's Talk Session Prep

So Corrhéo the country is fifty-two hexes. I decided I wanted to do explore it with something I've been itching to try— a West Marches campaign. 

This scared me.

I also wanted to offer players the opportunity to start in any hex.

This scared me too. 

I didn't write but 1/3 of these hex entries, if that. 

I know the world. I've read it, edited it, thought through things with Clane. I've lived in it. But I didn't write all of it. I certainly didn't (see: don't) know how every hex interacts. 

But I sent out a semi-cryptic email to every person I trusted with my writing and anyone I'd think to roleplay with, about thirty five anonymous bcc's in total.

Fifteen are now in a Discord together.  

Of those, six created a player sheet. And five of them signed up for one of the time slots I set out three weeks in advance. Three of these people knew each other, two were strangers to all. I asked everyone to change their names to their character's name. The three who knew each other didn't know they were playing together. This was a happy result of simple rules. 

They picked hex C-11 'for its proximity to a diversity of biomes and probably to Drek's Landing'. 

Players assuming here that the building depicted in C-12 is a city. Drek's Landing is one of two major cities in Corrhéo. 

C-12 is not where Drek's Landing is, but this was a happy result of poor map symbolism. Drek's Landing is in fact across the Silt-Salt Sea in C-24. It is described as 'the Venice of Corrhéo'. 

Then I had to figure out what they were doing in Corrhéo as a mercenary company. 

I'm going to give you this to read. It should describe everything you need about the world and its final page will detail how I ended up delivering a West Marches introduction. If you don't want to read it, the players are in a mercenary group whose rent is due.

Now you're caught up. 

Here I am, the day before the scheduled first day of play at a climbing gym whose windows I cleaned for a free punch pass. I have my notebook, I have 76 Patrons because of Luke Gearing, I have a PDF of Hot Springs Island,  I have Kemp's Dungeon Checklist, I have Marcia B's Bite-Sized Dungeons , and I have the wildly inefficient back-end of a World Anvil campaign setting to search through.

Characters are playing two fighters, two rogues and a priest. 

You want know them?

In their own words:

Maddeson, Clothchilde and Envoy of Genemene; 

Zugg Brunswick-Dax, adopted of the Brunswick farm collect; 
Taamog Peets, a rather young goblin;
Godfrey, a human fighter with long black greasy hair; &
Zahir, a tall, scrawny, half-orc priest

 

 Let's talk for a second about prep.

So far, all I have for player motivations and direction are as follows (when asked: what do you want to do, know, or are interested in?): 

• —what is Genenene & where;
• —inklings bout What's Due;
• —inklings bout Yaddish;
• —discreet info bout 'Hood;
• —big cats;  
• —why Godfrey look so bloody.

- zugg

And:

—take advantage of my time in Corrheo to find new herbs, and knowledge in herbalism

—learn the trade routes in and out of the country, and to find how they might be exploited

—making contact with The Corrheonic Stand

—also the Clinchin Fold, learning to ward off their death-ways and generally keep them at arm's length

            - maddeson 

Then I have a location. C-11. 

So I start outlinining each of the hexes around them:

Zooming in again

C-15

C-10

You get the picture. Clane and I have written ... 400 words on each place, but I'm grabbing the barest details as fast as I can. Remember I'm at a climbing gym and it's a day before. The Bellwright's Quarry: right, there's a bellwright and there are saboteurs. If they go there, I'll grab the rest. The Cistern at the town of Lodger: right. It has a Festival. Grab that. Table it.

I'm finding myself just hauling ass through these entries we have and making massive edits to what I need to read. 

I realize one fundamental fact: there's no way I can do this for every hex in one day. So I need to make some sort of net that can catch them if they decide to try to play out in deeper water. After all, I'm planning to use Hurst mechanics for exploration: one watch, one poker chip, explore or travel, boom. 

(By the way, Jacob: I stole my poker chips, which felt very in-line with Hot Springs' attitude. It was from a flea market. Two red, two black, two white. )

I lay my adjacent hexes out as I have here:

I decide my net will be a roleplay net. I will create an NPC encounter list and each NPC will in some way engage with one of the existing landmarks, in a dire effort to draw PCs somewhere that I've actually studied, rather than somewhere I haven't.

First major mistake: there is no reason for this list to be a probability list, for multiple reasons.

1. I didn't organize it so that the rarity of any particular event was important
2. The NPCs match particular locations: the lovers Bells and Charliene wouldn't be at the Eisenharz Factory for any reason, for instance

But I am glad I've made the list. Suddenly I have tools, toys. I have bodies, and interesting ones. Lord Wygmy's mineralists might tie PC's to Wygmy's Siltstone Jet Vein in C-06. The blood salesman might induce them to go to to the Urlgraff Theatre in C-05. 

That's it. 

Well. Hold tight. I have those things and I filled out the remainder of the encounter charts that Clane and I drummed up. 

Again, credit where credit's due: the framework is entirely Hot Springs Island. The beasts & factions are ours. Some of the motivations we mixed around. We worked in some from Justin Alexander's book on Gamemastering so that we weren't just tracing HSI word-for-word.

And I have no monster stat blocks. 

And Now Let's Talk About Session Play

Everyone got there before me. To Discord. 

I set up my microphone and laid out Treacherous Traps, 76 Patrons, two sets of dice, my printed map, and a scrappy piece of paper with a rough draft of the above tables. 

Then I said hi, and everyone said hi, and I said I'd just like to say a few words about what this is, which is both a game session and a playtesting session, so please bear with me if I need to step into a separate channel to prepare something on the fly. I apologized in advance, let everyone speak if they needed to, and let them play from the prompt I already shared with you: you're in the warehouse, it's morning. Sup? 

Zugg the Paladin-Wannabe immediately prompted everyone that they ought to visit A RESPECTABLE'S HOUSE, VILLA CHI (C-11) to have a word with the landlord.

This was one of the night's happy synchronicities. The presupposition of the playstyle is that the party uses a common space for mapping and storytelling, and happened to pick a hex with a landlord in it. Villa Chi was a landmark I wrote. 

Two above-ground coffins sit in fenced gardens, iron grid fences. Each coffin is 12' wide and gloss-finished. sand around each. The house behind the coffins is two long rectangles, with aspects of furniture visible all the way back. No walls, only columns, and one courtyard with a lone ash implanted in dirt. 

 

Private spaces are the curtain of surrounding bush that magically parts and closes at arrival. 

 

Deeper: "This sense of timeliness is not universal, just relative to me." This is inscribed on the two over-long coffins. Access to the sleeping space is free and open through a swinging door, but if A. Respectful is abed, they are trapped and locked.

 

This is the tomb and home of A. Respectful. He lives in two halves, lower and upper. As wide as a street with great bowed legs, but skinny. There is nothing pretty about A. Respectful, but oddly enough, it has never bothered him.

 

A. Respectful responds quickly, nourishes relationships, makes others feel valued. He is awake in the morning, remains dressed in the sharp, white lordly attire of his life, and involves himself with various crews who are constantly maintaining or visiting the grounds of his villa.

 

2d4 crews

• 2 two sculptors who hate each other, Prienaut & Bill Daggins
• 3 d4 scourge wraiths, serving as cleaners
• 4 Earth cultivators shaping the privacy garden
• 5 Morgan Binstone and her lawyers
• 6 Pack of elders from Drek's Landing, discussing mercantilism
• 7 a pair of First Popolos visiting First Popolos Bausian, topics art or entertainment
• 8 Carga has come to call and pay respects

 

A small personal depression is dug in the central courtyard and left as dirt, wherein A. Respectful goes at the end of his days to drink the blood of deer. He becomes introspective and careless for an hour, then takes long steps back to his coffin, divides into top and bottom, and slides inside to rest.

 

Except for this time, A. Respectful holds a dry court in his open-air home, serving as business developing consultant, political maven, and storyteller. He has been alive since the departure of the Silt-Salt Sea. The First Popolos Buasian lives here as his consort but has grown very old and thus even more elusive.

 

She will ignore all things, or if she pays attention, will rationalize without reason why things said to her are more important than others. She holds veto power on any of A. Respectful's rulings for clients. A. Respectful does not show her enough respect.

 

He can be heard wandering the halls apologizing to her, "If I'm going to care for people and be more careful, then I also need to be more respectful" or some variation thereof.

 

2d4 renditions of A. Respectful's apology 

• 2 (just lays down on the ground in front of her)
• 3 I do care! You're my most respected .. what?
• 4 If I'm watching you, you feel full, but I need to show I'm watching you?
• 5 To be full of care is to show respect, yes, yes, yes yes yes.
• 6 You are taken care of, but that is not the same as being cared for.
• 7 How long have we been together?
• 8 (wraps himself around her and lifts her and squeezes)

You'll probably notice that, once again: we've entirely ripped Hot Springs Island for landmark formatting: short blurb with a 'deeper' section (HSI uses the dark as their DM curtain) for DM's (one of which you now are; sorry if you're a player and stumbled across my blog. I'm trying to avoid that but who knows).

Regardless: I got lucky. The Company agreed with Zugg. Let's go have a chat and figure. 

They tended to believe, right off the bat, that their employer, 'HOOD', had either bailed on them and left them in the lurch, or had been maligned in some way. 

A. RESPECTABLE was at home. It was daytime. He happens to be an open-faced practicing member of the Clinchin Fold. I wrote him that way and I like having a few 'good aristocrats' among the usual shitpack. 

Plus he's a big ugly coffin sleeper who splits himself in half to sleep who wants to treat his wife well and can't. And she's a Popolos, which is basically our 'elder race'. There's not many of them and they're being forced further underground by the usual shortsightedness of the 'newer peoples'. I won't go too deep here but it goes deep.

Players approached. DM's note: I had no map of this place. In my mind it's just a big Greek private-public space. Columns, places to lounge and do political things. I rolled on my own table. He was holding conversation with "6 — Pack of elders from Drek's Landing, discussing mercantilism".

Peets the Goblin gave a listen. Got some of the mercantilism, the voices. Zahir the Orc Priest immediately knocked where there was no door. 

Conversation stopped. 

RESPECTABLE stepped over, the 'magistrates' moved away, still conferring. (Great, now I have magistrates. I didn't have magistrates in Corrhéo! I thought.) 

Shorthand:

AR: What can I do for you?

Party: We apparently owe you money?

AR: Sure, leave it in the sleeve.

DM: (What sleeve, idiot? A rent sleeve?)

Party: Well our boss disappeared.

AR: K?

Party: Do you know anything about that?

AR: Why would I? Should I?

Party: (get suspicious)

Party: Well we don't have any money.

AR; Really.

Party: Yeah whaddaya say to that?

AR: Um

Party: Do you know where we could get some money?

Party: (seem more suspicious, start trying to case the grounds)

DM: (Damnit I didn't draw a map of the place. All I know is he sucks deer blood at night to stay alive forever and has a wife who he can't figure out how to be nice to)

AR: Let me think for a sec.

AR: Hold that thought. I'll talk to my wife.

Party confers.

DM happily listens.

I was rabidly scanning my notes for a way for PCs to make money. I ran my finger across two things I could think of. I'd been wanting to try to flash-build a Bite-Sized Dungeon and I figured if I had a small break, I could pull it off at either option:

Party reaches a consensus of some kind on how they feel about AR.

AR returns.

AR: Okay.

Party: Okay

AR: My suggestions are as follows. One is my wife's, not mine. 

AR: Are any of you geologists? —

Party real mum. Peets the Goblin holds up his knives because they're made of obsidian like that's an answer.

AR: Okay, well then I'll suggest the other. 

AR: My wife thinks that you might make quick money at Bero's Boon, the trapper's camp to the south-west. 

AR: The other option is that Lord Wygmy—

AR looks over his shoulder at the 'magistrates' who now include Lord Wygmy

AR: Lord Wygmy is having trouble getting access to a vein of jet he owns on some property. But it seems you probably... ? ... don't have the credentials?

Party get wicked grins. Blood seems to drip from their blades already. 

AR: (in an effort to coax some of the suspicion) I can give you a couple extra weeks? But only that, and please understand that you'll still owe rent two weeks after that, just like in the real world. I know it sucks, but this is a good place to practice.

Party: DEAL!

Everybody was pumped. They could go into the swamp and hunt something and get money.

This one Clane wrote:

Mudraig Swamp is a vast, muddy wetland filled with thick roots and stagnant water. The swamp is dense with undergrowth and towering, moss-covered trees, making it hard to see far ahead. The air is humid, with the constant drone of insects and hidden creatures. Narrow paths of firmer ground lead through the swamp, barely visible beneath the foliage, and are lined with traps set by local trappers.

 

Deeper: Haguklah (ha-GOO-klah), a seasoned Berrylman trapper, runs the Muddyhen Pickets where trappers lease trails through the area to trap mud otters and swamp coypo for pelts and meat.

 

His camp, Bero's Boon, set on the northwesternmost bank of the swamp boasts the longest and most profitable picket lines in the region. It's common for adventurers to find work as exterminators here, keeping the trap pickets safe from predators and pests. A bustling camp, an assortment of a dozen score frontiersmen of all trades and occupations call Bero's Boon home at any time.

 

The Muddyhen Pickets has become a contested area, with rival trappers and poachers moving into Haguklah's territory. These rivals have been sabotaging traps, leaving strange symbols carved into trees and stones near the picket line—possibly warnings or signs of disputes. Haguklah believes a rival trapper, or perhaps a group of poachers, is behind the sabotage and would pay handsomely for evidence identifying the culprits.

 

In addition, rumors are beginning to circulate that the swamp is cursed. While navigating the Muddyhen Pickets can be treacherous, old-timers have begun to report seeing strange firepits throughout the darker parts of the bog. Those who wander too far from the picket lines after dark sometimes vanish, leaving only remnants of their gear scattered among the roots and stagnant waters.

 

Valrik Mulgav, a notorious poacher, has been sabotaging Haguklah’s traps and setting his own along the picket lines. Valrik is cunning and uses the swamp’s natural cover to hide traps, laying snares and spike pits. If adventurers get too close to identifying him as the poacher, Valrik attempts to lure adventurers into his traps and ambush them from the shadows. He prefers hit-and-run tactics, making use of the swamp’s thick foliage and hidden dangers to outmaneuver opponents.

This is where I made my stupidest DM moment of 'keep control'. 

The party wanted to head back to camp, re-gear (they were fully geared) and then head out. A moment of unnecessary simulation.

I said of course. They went back. I said: but will you want to head south-west without a map? Without a map you will be heading into the wilderness without direction. 

There was no need for this. The PCs had a direction. They knew where they wanted to go. They'd found out roughly where it was, and in all likelihood, RESPECTABLE would've given them some idea how to get there. I just didn't roleplay it. I didnt want the PCs to wander. I wanted them to go where they wanted to go. I had nothing prepped for wandering and I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the idea of just throwing a random encounter at them in an ambiguous space. I'm not eager for violence. I want them to explore the world. Sure, I want to use all the damn tables I've made, but, Hugh, bro—just take them to the adventure. You haven't even even written it yet... why add in...

Whatever: you get the idea.

I called a break. Went, peed. Popped into a private audio channel for whatever reason, and pulled up the shorthand I had for Bite-Sized Dungeon. 

Look: I've never done this kind of dungeon design, but it was so handy. All I had were connection points. 

PCs rolled in. I had Clane's ideas about a trapper (Haguklah) who was getting his snares tampered with by a saboteur. I renamed the saboteur from Valrik Mulgav to Veel Mulgav because Valrik is too fantasy for me. I need a little slither in my names. The proximity to veal appealed to me. I liked Mulgav. Plus the fact that both Haguklah and Veel Mulgav have 3 syllables gives me a nice mirror between 'villain' and 'protagonist'. 

Anyway: H wants to catch swamp coypu and otter and VM keeps cutting his snares and stealing his catches. Who knows why. Doesn't matter. Though I did write up this little VM motivation chart:

And yeah, it's mostly basic bitch reasoning, but it's nice to have a table for it. I haven't rolled on it yet because PCs haven't met Veel yet.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

PCs roll into Bero's Boon! 

Party: You Bero?

H: Ha!

H: No. Haguklah.

Haguklah laughs at all their bug bites. Convinces them to roll around in the mud. Classic Apocalypto reference. Maddeson the Clothchilde won't do it. 

Party: Love to help you, H.

H: Sure! Night around here is scary. Catch coypu! Catch otter, give you gold. (He's got a sort of jamaican/dutch accent and for whatever reason I describe him as having incredibly thick teeth)

Party: Oh?

H: Yes.

Party confers—they talk about splitting up, some of them running night shift, some running day shift. 

H: Yes.

Party: we'll go into the Pickets and have a look around, okay?

H: Yes. I will cook steaks.

H goes in and cooks coypu steak.

Party confers. Lots of planning about how to approach a swamp. They're far more.. intimidated? than I expect. 

Party enters mess tent with H.

Peets the Goblin heads up a tree to scout.

H is cooking somehow. It's a magic pan heater! 

H: You've got a plan.

Party: We've got a plan.

H: Okay, go for it.

Party: Do you like our plan?

H: I have some ideas? But I'd rather just see how you do with your plan.

Party: Cool magic pan heater. 

H: Yes. It's mine.

Party: We'd like it. 

H: Yes. It's mine. 

Party: Very good.

Peets meanwhile scouts. Not very well. One of two checks I've had them make so far. Only because he's really trying to pick something animal, so I want him to pick something animal, so that climbing the tree wasn't just to get this rather useless map:

(Admittedly Haguklah does keep pointing at the rodent line and saying coypu anytime someone says 'Coypu?' to him because no one has Google in the swamp so it's nice to know where it is) 

But! I get to pull out my BEAST ENCOUNTER CHARTS at last, because Peets the Goblin is looking for animal trails. He gets an 8 on an intelligence check. High enough for me to point out two big nests up, maybe a half mile south through the swamp, well passed the Muddyhen Pickets. 

Why?

Because I rolled a '16: dusksong harpy' on the Wetlands Beast Encounter Roll. Cool! I'm actually playing my own game.

But I don't have a harpy factored into the Pickets themselves. I already made my Bite-Size.

Anyway. I log it. And tell Peets about man-sized nests.

And in they go. 

Now: Clane wrote in the landmark description that Bero's Boon is a camp where more than one trapper works. So I figure: there's gotta be a little team of trappers working with H. I invent 'the Mado family' and look over at my NPC's WHO KEEP THE PC'S IN THE AREA chart, grab up these "12 - farmers who have lost their cattle to creatures in the WITHERED HOLLOW (C-10)". Nice: poor farmers, now much poorer, just trying to get by, doing what they're not good at (catching coypu).

Plus, hoping maybe PCs get to chatting, find out that there's more issues in the world than just coypu and otter and whatever is setting off Haguklah's snares. 

They dash off together into the Picket. Totally imaginatively lost. I might as well be describing a corn-maze. They make it three nodes in, land at the 'black pond' as they call it (unguarded treasure in there, boys!), fall into conversation with the Mado's who are out setting snares, and when they pull up from dialogue, they've got duck whistles from Haguklah, some extra snares from the farmers, and have zero idea where they are. 

I did write in the campaign brief that they ought to have someone map where they're going. And I'm describing with pure cardinal directions (and a few descriptors). But still: everyone's getting a little freaked out. Ready to blow their whistles. They left Godfrey the Greasy-Haired back at camp to make it. (He's supposed to blow a whistle when it's time to come home). 

Then they split up again. Zugg the Wannabe-Paladin and Maddeson the Mudless head north into a mangrove clearing and Peets the Goblin and Zahir the Priest head south to the dark mirror mangrove clearing which is totally spike pit trapped.

Zugg the Wannabe-Paladin and Maddeson the Mudless get 'homey, lurking vibes' from the mangrove clearing. It's where they can snare mad coypu pelt if they'd like, but they just turn around: this is only a scouting mission they say.

Meanwhile, Peets the Goblin and Zahir Orc Priest leap cypress rootball to cypress rootball, take one look at the 'deep swamp', freak out at the fact that another path leads west (admittedly to Mulgav's Blind and through traps), and despite the chicken that gets emoji'd into the Discord chat by Godfrey the Greasy-Haired, turn around and head back. I had 2d6 laid out to check if anybody ended up tripping a spike pit and things would've been rolling.

Just a scouting mission, they said.

Godfrey the Greasy-Haired blows his whistle three times. All reconvene at camp. Discuss what they found. Not much, it turns out. Everyone's a little shoulder slumped. They prepare to make it a long camp instead of just going right into action.

I can feel the spell fading.

Then Godfrey's like: hey guys, I'd like to volunteer for a stake-out to figure out what's cutting Haguklah's snares.

And for awhile everyone's arguing with him, saying its stupid. Saying how it doesn't seem safe. How easy it would be to get lost.

But then Zugg the Wannabe-Paladin catches the bug. 

And suddenly there's Stake-out Crew and Get-Information-in-Camp Crew. And as I close it down for the night, Godfrey the Greasy-Haired is getting taken back into the Pickets by Maddeson the Mudless, and no one can hear the quiet song of the harpy quite yet.

Now Things I've Thought Since Playing

• It's crazy how easy it is to forget names. I forgot the name of the swamp. I renamed it Muareg, and that stuck. I think it was Mudraig or something? in the original descriptor.
• I forgot Haguklah's name almost. But then I wrote it HUGE on my paper so I wouldn't forget. Hilariously everyone else called him different names. Huklah. Yuguklah. I think from a designer perspective, making a wordcloud where you get REALLY BIG WORDS that you use often that aren't perfectly normal might be a good idea. But I just made a small QUICKWORD table for myself as a temporary solution.
  
  
  
  
• Scrambling to come up with treasures to fill a Bite-Sized dungeon with was not that fun. I went to Shadowdark's 1-3 treasure chart and just grabbed 'boot with 60sp' and 'rotted cloak with 12gp' but was never happy with them. I was glad they ended up in the black pond and that characters never even thought about fishing them out, but I made a little d6 treasure chart that included some of Kemp's treasure ideas. He suggest treasures can also be knowledge, friendship, trade goods, territory and useful adventuring gear. And if it's shiny,  don't make it coins. So I added: an extra hot string that fell into the swamp (useful adventuring gear), 3lbs of sealed rooibos tea (trade goods), knowledge of gilfern boon (somehow PCs learn of gilfern's healing qualities, knowledge),  and then I kept the boot and the cloak. I stole the two undersized pearls off of Mulgav as a sixth item. 
• I did find that not having a 'wandering encounter chart' made empty rooms seem... like pure suspense moments? .. but suspenseful even for me? I was really trying to avoid any 'we just keep going' but Node 2, I got one and I noted it. I added a 2d4 chart to remedy
  
  

  
  
  

  I'm particularly fond of the harpy moments, which are not encounters per se, in that it's not 'you're in the room with a harpy' but instead, here's something that will draw you in a direction. This is new to me, maybe not to you. I also wanted the NPC's to have a good chance to keep operating around the PCs, so following them or coming in from other rooms. They were fairly stationary in-game. 
• Ultimately I was very happy with the play, for how much I had to prepare for a first session, and I don't think I'll need as much next time since I made so many longer range summaries to work with. I do like the approach I took to getting nearby hexes 'reined in' with potential NPC ties. 
• I also adore what happened with Peets the Goblin's scouting mission. Seeing those harpy nests makes it so that suddenly, instead of a bite-sized dungeon that ends Bero's Boon, I've opened up a second six-node layout after this one called Dusksong Corridor, which involves the harpy nests. It also makes me recognize how modular and flexible the methodology is to adding on the fly.

Now, Final Thoughts on Game Design

Taking my DM hat off, I thank you for stopping by. 

One of the things I really had flowering in my mind after working on this, and one of the things that I really want to encourage in this editing phase, is how I can make these landmarks work for longer than just a single session of play, or in different hands than mine. I want to create interesting tables that multiply or fractalize the simpler structures. 

As such I've added two additional tables that I think will become a foundational quality to the hexes that my players visit. 

The first is a light thickener:     

NPC Trappers are also:

This assumes that 'NPC trappers' are a constant, but that they can be variable in what they are. You'll see 'The Mado Family' who I made up and used in my own game (which involve a nearby hex) at the center of the probability. But then there are links to the crew of the Grimalkin (the skiff is a burial mound in C-12) and blood merchants who've gone a bit too far and are hiding from the law and catching otters in the short term (the blood auction is an active happening in C-05). 

I think making this group variable adds dynamo to camp activities, and potentially snarls the plot-line that's generated when PCs land at Bero's Boon too.

The second is even broader however, almost changing the base of the soup:

Permutations

Permutations can go as far as flipping the plot on its head. The Pickets remains extant. It's a six-node space with a simple geography. But what's happening in the Pickets can be a variable.

Let's assume the trapper and the poacher who is cutting his snares is the fundamental storyline, mas o menos.

But let's permute, if you'll permit:

You'll see, again, at the center of the probability, the two surprise harpy nests added, the 'game mode' my players played in. But then, we quickly shift out from there: a proliferation of exotic herbs makes the collector happy; the malic flies from Pilkin Creek (C-5) are infesting, oh no!; all the far-fetched (and low probability) way out to Haguklah is actually Veel's doppleganger! 

(We have a lot of doppleganger usage throughout Corrhéo, as I hope you'll come to find out). 

Obviously these table items would require additional resources, monster stat blocks, determinations as to where things go, probably some level scaling to match players, so they are DM-dependent items, but I tried as much as possible to make them tie closer to the other aspects of Corrhéo in the interest of wending the landscape deeper into itself, giving PCs a chance to encounter fun things from other hexes.

It's a sandbox, and in a sandbox, sand gets everywhere. 

Session 2 is, so far, planned for March 26th. 

Back to the climbing gym then.

And now is also a good (and the only) time to drop How & Why Hot Springs Island Works, a short study I did for myself back when Corrhéo was a baby.

Adios,

- Hugh