Antrin Playtest Report 1
This is the first playtest report for the RPG I’m currently working on, influenced by Scots folklore, Ursula LeGuin and Luke Gearing’s Wolves Upon the Coast. It’s still got a ways to go, but I recently invited a few friends to battle-test what’s there.
NOTES:
- Change ‘Stalker’ to ‘Outlander’ per L’s suggestion. ‘Stalker’ seems fine in text but doesn’t land right at the table.
- Think about how players might want to play against their class / ancestry archetypes.
- Shortbows and longbows are distinct. Mechanically? Ehhh not sure yet.
- Barter isn’t the most intuitive thing in the world. Let players have coins if they find it easier to track. As there’s already a ‘currency’ there, not too big a hassle.
The party, Mhairi (sídhe healer), Pim (urisk mystic) and Teaguy (dvergr outlander), start having met as crew on a Sprawlboat, a huge dvergic longboat that functions as a self-sufficient travelling settlement. Mhairi is trying to pay down her tab with the barkeep, and offers him some dried mushrooms which he accepts as a partial trade, but says he’ll call her tab settled in exchange for completing an errand. He’s heard rumours of unsanctioned tinkering in the lowest deck of the ship, a door or a hatch being constructed where it shouldn’t, and wants the party to check it out and report back.
Teaguy quizzes a fellow dwarf from the lower deck about this, who confirms that this rumour is true, but they don’t know the function of the door or why it was built - on that, the party gather their things and prepare to head down to the bottom deck. They make their way down past the cargo and rowers to the bottom deck, which is damp, dark and uninhabited. Pim has a conversation with a glowing mushroom, who convinces Pim to eat it, gaining some mild hallucination and heightened senses as a result. With this, he senses a tinge of honey in the air the others are not able to pick up on.
Moving forward, they eventually find a door that has been crudely constructed into the hull of the ship out of wood and iron scraps. After discussing whether they should report anything first, Mhairi decides instead to just open the door, which leads out into a sweeping, grassy plain at sunset. Pim steps through the door and explores around its periphery, discovering it appears as a featureless one-sided portal suspended in the air on the other side, and deduces this is likely a doorway to the Otherworld.
Mhairi steps through the doorway, and discovers a river of flowing honey close by. She approaches and begins to collect the honey in a large jar. Pim comes over and drinks a little of it. Teaguy elects to stay back inside the ship, and readies a lasso in case either of the other two need to be pulled back to safety. He also spots a number of figures emerging from the honey further upstream, but is too far away to make out their features.
Teaguy alerts the other two of the figures, 5 mellwraiths, which are rapidly advancing on them, brandishing rusted old blades. Having failed a dexterity check at throwing the lasso, he runs in and looses an arrow at the mellwraith the closest to the other two, stopping it momentarily as the arrow lands squarely in its chest, rancid old honey gushing out of the wound.
The three make it to safety and block the door behind them, but not before they are set upon by three human figures in crude bronze masks, speaking a language none of the group understand but clearly furious at their intrusion. Choosing to flee, the assailants give chase, but do not go beyond the bounds of the bottom deck. They do however notice on their way back up through the decks of the ship that the crude carpentry visible on the door seems to be spreading to other parts of the ship.