I prepared some introductory play material for The Mountain Witch for some recent public activities. When our Spelens Hus EABA game ran into on-and-off scheduling, some of the guys indicated they’d like to play it, so we prepared and played for a session. Now that EABA is concluded, we’re continuing with everyone.

• Tanaka (Nils): older, scruffy, entirely not-a-samurai any more, bearded, wearing a wide straw hat, armed only with the two swords; sign: Horse
• Oshiro (Filip): clearly a ronin for some time, with long hair, armed with a longbow in addition to the two swords; sign: Dog
• Saito (Neo): quite young, clearly having just become ronin and not accustomed to living rough, armed with naginata and the two swords; sign: Tiger
• Maeda (Arvid): young, stubble indicating the first re-growth from his samurai hairstyle, maintains as much of a samurai appearance as he can, stays as clean as possible, armed with a daisho; sign: Dragon
• Otake (Theo): middle-aged, armed with naginata and the two swords; sign: Monkey

I decided long ago to dial down the Abilities feature, and lately, I’ve found play to be greatly improved simply by eliminating it and having the characters be fully competent at anything samurai-ish, including a specialty weapon apiece if they want, and without any distinct “powers.” So the Dark Fate and zodiac sign are the only formal individualized features, in addition to the verbal content of why they’re a ronin and why they want the money from this job.

Of these, the only shared information is the zodiac sign, which sets the starting Trust (in the picture, green = 3, red = 0, no arrow connection indicates neutrality at 2). For those of you unfamiliar with the game, these are effectively the characters’ first impressions of one another.

I’ve also found that the game definitely needs a brief verbal portrait from each player, during play, as part of these first impressions.

Session 1

Our first session, with Arvid, Nils, Neo, and Filip, wasn’t recorded. I decided not to recycle any creatures or general situations from playing the game previously, treating this group play-time seriously as entirely its own experience.

I like to establish a bit of actual Mount Fuji geography in playing this game, so this time, I’ve been reviewing it more carefully. I’ve always been impressed with its shape, so perfectly conical like a kid’s too-simple drawing of a volcano, and I like to use the lake at its base as a starting point, but now, I also decided to use the historical pathways and routes of ascent as my guide to assigning content to the game’s formal Chapters.

I hadn’t played gaki (hungry ghosts) before, so I went for a real nightmare in the last moments of a chilly ruined town near the lake. They arrived as a Buddhist priest did his best to dispel the gaki, ultimately caught up in a gory fight. In fact, it was downright repulsive, considering the bloated, gaseous, sewage-saliva opponents, some obviously having been gaki for a while and others just now risen from being partly devoured. Maeda began in the most danerous circumstances, alone against the horde who killed the priest, but he nailed it with a 6 vs. a 1 … which tied in well with his starting enmity with Oshiro, suspicious that this untrustworthy fellow seemed not to have been in much danger.

This is a good opportunity to review the organization of combat in the game, which is extremely coherent and useful to apply across many systems, including back-extending aspects of it to The Pool.

• Determine who is fighting with whom
  • You end up with one or more groups of foes engaged with one or more player-characters each
  • Every combatant has its own die to roll
• Inside a given group, the dice are all rolled and the highest is taken as the value
  • Exception: if someone inside a group spends a point of Trust, their die result is added to the result for the person in the group who granted that Trust (characters only; monsters, et cetera, don’t do this)
• The result for each group is derived from the difference between the two rolled values
  • Weak, Able, and Strong characters differ in terms of how much damage they take from a given dice outcome, but they are all the same regarding how much they deliver from it (player-characters are Able)

At the end, I reminded them about the Dark Fates and clarified how they worked. Nils said that Tanaka sat by himself and made an entry in what appears to be a journal, and Neo described a group of very well-appointed, very high-status riders approaching the ruined village, proceeding from the lake just as the ronin had done (i.e., not from the mountain).

Session 2

For this session, knowing that we had an ongoing game at hand, I put some thought into what “Chapter 1” really meant as a playable unit. The text treats the concept essentially geographically, which I like, so I retained my usual concept that it’s the lakeside, foothills, initial walking paths, and the transition from small villages to “now we’re going up the mountain,” without getting very far. However, I made it a point for the whole game that I’m not going to repeat anything I’ve GMed before, and to rely on new monsters or general situations.

I really liked this preparation and play in terms of thinking about a “chapter” defined as the foothills. The prepared components all brought in different aspects. The village from the first session is now clarified and expanded by the general cold, the cats who’ve fled the village, and the riders approaching, or rather following, from afar. The cats were especially nasty, by which I mean, especially fun to play, since I knew that they wanted to enthrall the characters, as in, cats have servants, not masters or owners.

The mysterious squad of horsemen had been introduced by Neo as Dark Fate content, and I played it simply by having them approach, not as landing them with a sudden fight. They ultimately decided to avoid it and (mostly) act together, especially when Filip drew a schematic map of how he suggested the group should deploy, and it made sense to everyone.

I have some dice things to review for myself, in general and especially concerning this encounter.

• Can you have separate defenses against the same attacker, i.e., not include your die in your own group’s “stack” for highest value, or to put it differently, defend in such a way that you can’t be said to be working with the others at all? This is what Tanaka wanted to do in this encounter
  • It doesn’t seem to fit, at first glance. Going strictly by the rules text, I should have split the attackers to provide a full separate roll vs. Tanaka, which also would also mean, assuming the same result for argument’s sake, that he was did not escape upon being clipped by the gunshot, and that this roll did not conclude his end of the confrontation.
  • Or maybe I don’t have to split them, and give a foe (or group thereof) “separate attack rolls” in such a case, especially if it’s a general effect like the cold or a really dispersable group … but this is probably a bad idea, seems like borking some of the rules’ coherence and making foes way too strong.
• Can players chain Trust for an effective multi-die roll for the final recipient? A spends Trust pool from B to add to B’s roll, B spends Trust pool from C to add to C’s roll … it seems valid and arguably rather nice, thematically, but I need to go back to the book to see whether it’s explicitly acknowledged or prohibited.

In anticipation of the upcoming workshop, let’s take a look at authorities. For anything pertaining to the Dark Fate, the player says what it is and why, and the GM says what it does. Therefore in terms of authorities, I’m playing a lot of situation but must ask questions about a lot of backstory, or even be corrected when necessary. This is ordinary and common if you reverse player and GM, so the act itself is not hard, but I know it takes a session or two to everyone to realize it’s in play and that they have the responsibility to bring in the content before I can use it, and to be prepared with real backstory when it’s relevant (which is often).

I’m struggling to remember to GM the damn horses. I really should have disallowed them at the start, and barring that, I should have had Tanaka’s got shot or ran off in that last fight. I’m kind of stuck with them now, and it seems a Dark Fate has brought in a new horse too.

Now for Chapter 2, still basically geographic (where it’s set), but more dynamic, less up-the-mountain meet-the-thing, more “who is doing what.” Also, privately, each player assigned new Trust values, which establishes the new pools for this chapter.

• Tanaka receives from 3 Oshiro, 4 from Saito, 2 from Maeda, 2 from Otake
• Oshiro receives 2 from Tanaka, 3 from Saito, 1 from Maeda, 2 from Otake
• Saito receives 4 from Tanaka, 4 from Oshiro, 2 from Maeda, 0 from Otake
• Maeda receives 2 from Tanaka, 0 from Oshiro, 3 from Saito, 4 from Otake
• Otake receives 2 from Tanaka, 3 from Oshiro, 1 from Saito, 4 from Maeda

I’ve been playing with these guys for a long time, some of them almost weekly for three years. I’ve noticed that now, they reboot their sense of “what we’re here for” with every game and own it masterfully. The EABA game became somewhat idealistic, or at least bitterly hopeful in a blasted landscape, and people played into it or in contrast with it, as everyone noted, enjoyed, and commented upon as we went along. This one is only two sessions in, but already, the sense of brooding horror + extreme personal danger is already thick at the table. Their collective Trust is increased … but only a bit, variably so, and asymmetrically. Everyone is clearly aware that the danger is both external from the creatures on the mountain and internal among themselves.

Session 3

See the comment below for my thoughts about this one.