Episode 14 - River Rage

Welcome to the fourteenth episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. When we left our intrepid band, they were at the river port of Gnyozdovo, on their way to Kiev. At the port, the group find themselves part of a small flotilla preparing to face a Slav uprising farther down the river.

The intro and extro music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo.

Gnyozdovo was a very important Norse/Rus trading centre on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). This was the sourthern end of the Grand Portage. You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

You can send any feedback to game@swordsedge.ca

Episode 13 - Visions and Interpretations

Welcome to the thirteenth episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. When we left our intrepid band, they were travelling south to Toropets, on their way to Kiev. Visions and stories of legends continue to haunt those hunting the Bulgar gold. Have they found more friends or more enemies? What has happened to Audun and who are those protecting him?

The intro and extro music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo.

Toropets was a very important Norse/Rus trading centre on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). This was the northern end of the Grand Portage. You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

You can send any feedback to game@swordsedge.ca

Episode 12 - On the River Again

Welcome to the twelfth episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. When we left our intrepid band, they were travelling south to Toropets, on their way to Kiev.

The intro and extro music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo.

Toropets was a very important Norse/Rus trading centre on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). This was the northern end of the Grand Portage. You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

You can send any feedback to game@swordsedge.ca

Episode 11 - And Then There Were Three

Welcome to the eleventh episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. When we left our intrepid band, they awoke in a burning inn, under attack once again by Loki and Angrbotha. A new ally appeared and aided them, but to what end? Now these three try to learn what might be left to them. Will the search for the Bulgar Gold continue?

The intro and extro music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo.

Novgorod was a very important Norse/Rus trading centre on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

You can send any feedback to game@swordsedge.ca

Episode 10 - The Roof Is On Fire!

Welcome to the tenth episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. When we left our intrepid band, they had an encounter with Loki disguised as Sven Helmcarver, another being of power disguised as Loki, and Loki's "companion" disguised as, . . . well, as Loki's companion. Sven remains missing. The group remains confused.

This episode marks the inclusion of a new player with a new character: Grimalf "Wolfeye."

The intro and extro music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo.

Novgorod was a very important Norse/Rus trading centre on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

You can send any feedback to game@swordsedge.ca

Episode 09 - Not Just a Pretty Face

Welcome to the ninth episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. When we left our intrepid band, they sought for the lost captain, Sven Helmcarver, the group has used dogs to try to track the lost viking. The dogs, however, have been spooked by a spectral dragon. The warband must now decide how best to find their lost comrade and what might be occuring in Novgorod.

The intro and extro music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo. The music playing during the game is from the albums Himlens Polska by Eric Ask-Upmark and Dram by Dråm available at Magnatune.com.

Thanks to Critical Failure - The GURPS Podcast for their comment.

Novgorod was a very important Norse/Rus trading centre on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

You can send any feedback to game@swordsedge.ca

Episode 08 - Curiouser and Curiouser

Welcome to the eighth episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. When we left our intrepid band, they had been joined by a Basque pilot named Sancho sent by the Etruscan. Bad timing on his part as Sven Helmcarver had disappared and his crew blamed the warband. To add to the warband's troubles, Audun had fallen into a mysterious trance.

The intro and extro music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo. The music playing during the game is from the albums Himlens Polska by Eric Ask-Upmark and Dram by Dråm available at Magnatune.com.

Novgorod was a very important Norse/Rus trading centre on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

Wikipedia also includes information on the Slavic peoples, including the East Slavs, such as Koliga, the Basque and the Etruscans.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Episode 07 - the Basque Pilot

Welcome to the seventh episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. The warband arrived in Novgorod and encountered Koliga Talitsev, sent by the Etruscan to find Blatik. At the inn, they meet Koliga's pilot, Sancho.

The intro and extro music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo. The music playing during the game is from the albums Himlens Polska by Eric Ask-Upmark and Dram by Dråm available at Magnatune.com.

Novgorod was a very important Norse/Rus trading centre on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

Wikipedia also includes information on the Slavic peoples, including the East Slavs, such as Koliga, the Basque and the Etruscans. I'll admit it, Wikipedia is becoming my go-to tool for reference. Heck, it's only an RPG game, not a history dissertation.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Episode 06 - The Arrival

Welcome to the sixth episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. The warband finally arrives in Novgorod, only to learn that someone is waiting for them.

This will be the last episode until the group gets together to play again. In the meantime, you could always enjoy the Accidental Survivors podcast, and the shorter (and safe for work/family) Collateral. If you are interested in Actual Play, there are a couple of interesting podcasts you might want to check out:

Return to Northmoor
The Game Master Show
And the list from RPGPodcasts.com

The music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo.

The Volkhov River runs from Aldeigjuborg to Novgorod on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Campaign Journal - the Second Session

The long awaited session two summary. This is also posted at Sword's Edge Publishing.

If you've listened to the "Story So Far," you don't really need to read this.

So, our heroes had set off after Sven, in the hopes of reaching Balagard first.

Historical note: I made Balagard an island in the south-west of Finland. There is mention of Balagard in some of the legends, and it was mentioned in A Brief History Of the Vikings: The Last Pagans or the First Modern Europeans? by Jonathan Clements, but I couldn't find any real information on it. A link to Louhi, the Finn death goddess, was also mentioned in Clements, but in relation to another location. I just put the two together, picked an island by zooming in on an archipelago in Google Maps, and BOOM, that's Balagard.

So, the group arrives only to find that they have beaten Sven to Balagard, but two of his ships are already at the island. Landing, the group finds Harald the Black, Thorgil's brother-in-law. Luckily, Harald knows Toste, the NPC captain of the group's ship, and so is willing to accept the group and introduce them to Helga, his wife and Thorgil's sister. The group has to announce Thorgil's death, but it turns out Helga had a prophetic dream, and no one is much surprised. Further, Harald and Helga's son, also a Harald, turns out to be Thorgil's son, fostered to his sister for undisclosed reasons.

The group and Harald the Black begin to make plans to attack Sven's men and remove them before Sven arrives. In the midst of this discussion, Harald the Black's daughter Visna takes interest in Nemit, who has not joined in the conversation as he doesn't speak Norse. Visna speaks to Nemit in his own language, and reveals she has been gifted with all languages by the witch Ullin.

No one in Balagard believes in the witch, but after Visna's display, the group decide it might be wise to find her and consult her. Young Harald joins them. The group encounters two "trolls," Dis and Pater (who refer to themselves as Didius and Pertinia). These guardians are easily mollified by Visna's cookies. The witch reveals herself and tells the group that they are threatened by "the Visitor." The group learns that Young Harald will find aid in Aldeigjuborg, on the route to Miklagard. The encounter ends suddenly when the witch announces that the Visitor has arrived.

The group returns to find Toste's ship burning. One of their members, Blatik, has died in the fire. Sven Helmcarver's ship has arrived. Sven's men are busy fighting the fire and rescuing those whom they can. Faced with Young Harald, whom Sven guesses is Thorgil's son, Sven denies murdering Thorgil. He tells a story of a disagreement over an unpaid debt that ended in drawn swords. Sven says that while he had wounded Thorgil, he hadn't killed him. Holm's Truth-Reading reveals this to be true, leading to no end of confusion.

Using Object Reading with the remains of Toste's ship, Nemit sees a dark-haired, thin-featured man with a long moustache set it alight without waking anyone. The man turns and recognizes Nemit, speaking to him. This throws Nemit out of the vision.

The group agree to accept Young Harald as their captain and join with Sven Helmcarver to travel to Aldeigjuborg in an attempt to uncover more information about the Bulgar Gold.

And that's where we left it at the end of the second session.

Episode 05 - Riverbank Evenings

Welcome to the fifth episode of Vikings True20 Actual Play. On the way to Novgorod, the warband have an uncomfortable evening on the banks of the Volkhov River.

Interested in Collateral? It's another great Accidental Survivors podcast, shorter than the regular episodes and free of foul language.

The music is from Warrior ( The SoLariS Remix ) by SoLaRiS available at ccMixter. You can find out more about SolaRiS at Jamendo.

The Volkhov River runs from Aldeigjuborg to Novgorod on the Viking trade route to Miklagard (Constantinople). You can read a very brief explanation of the route at Wikipedia.

You can download the audio file here.

This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Conclusions from Session One

Originally posted at Sword's Edge Publishing on January 14th, 2009

The first session didn’t totally sell me on True20. I realized this was partly my problem. I was still stuck in a d20 mindset. I missed the Minons rule, which would have made the combat with Hygelac’s warband fit my preconception. Also, while the iconic weapon concept I mentioned in my last post dealt with the combat competency gap, this could also have been dealt with--mostly--with the rules as written.

Here’s the thing: I started the characters at 3rd level to give them some experience. I chose 3rd level based on my d20 experience--the character is more capable, but is not yet nigh-invulnerable due to high hit points. Without hit points, I could have started the characters at 10th level.

Because the Toughness save doesn’t have level dependent bonuses, a 10th level character is as vulnerable as a 3rd level character, unless the 10th level character has burned feats on increasing his Toughness. I should have started the characters at 6th or even 8th level. That would have made them as competent as I had hoped, but would not make them tanks--the outcome of starting at such as level in d20.

A couple of problems remained, based on the conflict of my conception and the True20 rules.

Players would still choose weapons based on the mechanical benefits, or if they chose based on style, would face mechanical penalties. Giving iconic weapons a +4 damage allowed players to choose style over mechanics without penalty.

While a wounded character did have a penalty to most actions, it was not progressive. It was only applied once, no matter how many times the character was wounded. I changed that to a - 1 penalty per wound. It creates the kind of deteriorating condition for which I usually look.

Having addressed those problems with house rules, True20 is now chugging along very well. Truth be told, though, I have never met a system I haven’t house-ruled, so only applying two house-rules (so far) is impressive in itself.

One thing I couldn’t figure out and I need to research is the use of ranged weapons in melee. I know how d20 deals with it, but I couldn’t find anything in True20. Given that I totally missed the Minions rules, this may simply be my oversight. I’ll check back in later if I learn something more. As it was, the ranged weapon in question was an iconic weapon, so no worry.

Vikings True20 - The First Session

Originally posted at Sword's Edge Publishing on January 13th, 2009.

So, the first session.

I had forced the players to provide character concepts without the mechanics. This was kind of a history meets character niche posting. This was what we used to build the characters in True20. It worked surprisingly well--at least for me. The biggest problem during character creation was that I only had one book and there were five players. I really liked building from concept to mechanics, and the structure of True20 allowed for a pretty open process. With only three classes and builds based on feats and powers, the class decision was pretty much made for us.

I also devised some character backgrounds and updated others to match the historical setting. That was fun.

My only issue with True20 was how it approached multi-classing. Maybe it’s the d20 Modern guy in me, but I like multi-classing as a means to create unique characters and complete character concepts. The only real penalty in True20 to multi-classing was to saving throws. While the impact is minimal, especially at higher levels, as I was hoping to create real heroes, I waived that penalty, and allowed character to multi-class freely--however, the character only had one core ability, based on the character’s first class.

The character creation actually took a bit of time because we only had one document. One of the players already had True20, but we were using the revised version, which had a few minor changes. Another player had the quick-play rules, which are apparently significantly different. Given that, the Revised True20 book was in great demand.

The characters were:
Holm: an older Viking who lost a hand to access the Odinpower, much as Odin lost his eye
Audun: an Orkneyman who is part Celt and has access to that culture’s magic through his mother’s blood
Blatik: a Frank who was fated to kill a god or forever suffer servitude
Theodore: a Byzantine scholar, out to learn about the world
Nimet: a Magyar wanderer

Finally, characters all ready, we embarked on the adventure. The players had been asked to provide a reason why their characters would gather at Ravenwood, a small hold on the shores of the Baltic, near modern Rostock. The hall at Ravenwood is the fastness of Hygelac, who calls himself the Goth (purposefully anachronistic, and referring to the Germanic tribe rather than the modern emo-culture).

At the hall, a seeress, called the Angel of Death in the village, indicates that the group have a shared destiny, and marks each of them with a rune, granting each access to a “mythic power.” Most of the group picked their power from a list, though some accepted random assignments. We had two characters who already had limited access to magical powers.

As he had dreamed of Holm coming and taking his sword, Hygelac precipitated a battle, which drew in all the PCs due to their shared destiny.

And this is where I fell down as a GM. I’m familiar with the d20 system, but not totally with the True20 system. Toughness saves were new to me. Further, I hadn’t noted the Minions rules. Minions would have worked perfectly for what I had envisioned, but instead, the group struggled through a very difficult battle.

This led me to do two things. First, I reread the rules, and noted the Minions rules. Second, because I wanted every character to be somewhat useful in combat, I created “iconic weapons,” a weapon type that is tied to a character.

Each character would chose a specific type of weapon (longsword, scimitar, longbow, whatever) and when using that type of weapon would gain three benefits. 1) A +4 bonus that could be applied to attack or defence, based on the player’s decision at the outset of combat. 2) A +4 damage rating. 3) Can be used in ranged or melee without penalty.

The reason for 1) was to allow the character to excel beyond their mechanics in combat. Even a character built to be a scholar would have a fair chance in combat. Those who are built for combat are truly frightening.

The reason for 2) was that I wanted characters to choose weapons based on concept and style rather than mechanics. If you want to play a dagger-man, you can, and it can be as effective as a sword! True20’s more abstract combat system makes this workable even with two-weapon fighting, as it only adds a +2 to the damage.

The reason for 3) was simply based on the cinematic and action-adventure bent of the campaign. In many books and movies, characters are using bows like clubs and throwing swords as a last resort. This allowed for that level of cinematic action.

And all of the bonuses for the iconic weapon were based on a concept of cinematic action rather than realistic. The more abstract combat system of True20 helped this along tremendously. I also made a ruling that there was no need to track ammunition. I adapted the Savage Worlds system for Allies which gives a variety of categories to track ammunition usage rather than tracking each and every arrow. This means that we can go with the fiction of a 6 second combat round that includes multiple attacks or attempts, all defined by a single roll. I’ve discussed my thoughts on that elsewhere.

Defeating Hygelac and his warband, the spirit of the Angel of Death reveals the existence of the Bulgar Gold and divulges that Thorgil of Visiby in Gotland knows its secret. Off the PCs go to Visiby, only to learn that Thorgil was just murdered. At first, the PCs are suspects, but they are able to gain the trust of one of Thorgil’s friends, and through him, Thorgil’s wife. Thorgil’s wife could not help them with information on the Bulgar Gold, but directed them to Thorgil’s sister in Balagard.

Through his mythic power of Object Reading, Nemit saw a vision of a red-haired man in a red cloak murder Thorgil with his own sword during a friendly conversation. The murderer was identified as Sven Helmcarver, a sea-king (leader of a large warband and fleet, but without any land) of some renown. Sven and his ship, the Wolf’s Breath, had set sail the morning before the group arrived--the morning after Thorgil’s death.

The group set off after Sven, believing he too sought Thorgil’s sister in Balagard.

All in all, I thought it went pretty well. I was wrong, though, as we lost one player. The player who ran Blatik did not feel the game was suitable for an inexperienced player. I asked, through email, for more information on what the problem might be. I wrote that if the player enjoyed the campaign, then we could fix whatever deficiencies he may have encountered. I never heard back, so I figure he either didn’t enjoy the company or the campaign.

Down to four players, which, for me, is the sweet spot. I would have liked to have heard more from Blatik’s player, and since a lot of the plot was altered to suit his character’s background, I was sorry to lose his character. In the end, though, the players that remained expressed enthusiasm for the campaign.