Last night’s game started to see the adventure take shape in greater detail. Unfortunately, this noob streamer didn’t realize that the voices of the players didn’t make it through to Twitch, so the video is fairly one-sided and I’ve decided to keep it unpublished. Streaming is hard, y’all.
As a reminder, if the setting Krevborna sounds interesting to you, then check it out on DriveThruRPG.
Narrative
The party met a noble-looking woman named Morrigan Rue who owns the clock tower at the center of Piskaro, who introduced them to another adventurer looking for work. When asked for directions to the League of Rat-Catchers, she offered them payment to tell her what Duro Lovac (the leader of that group) asked them to do. Interestingly, the new adventurer – a Paladin in the Church of Saintly Blood who considers herself an adherent of St Moredith – expressed disdain for this offer. Even when Rue gave them leave to tell Lovac that they’d be reporting back to her, the paladin felt it was not an appropriate course of action. I can’t wait to see what happens when that meeting with the other adventurers happens…
She then directed them to a warehouse in the dock district where the League could be found. After they made their way through the fishmongers and sketchy sailors, they found the appropriate building. Inside waited a man wearing a hood made from a wolf head, who offered them 120 coins to bring them the whole corpse of the leader of the wererats.
After spending a night recovering, we had some quick vignettes for each of them showing how they spent their evenings. I loved how this gave each character a moment in the spotlight and we could get a sense of who they really are. The worldbuilding that came out of it sparked all of our imaginations – why does the thieves’ guild have a safe house underneath a graveyard? Who else might be staying in the hostel under the main cathedral? Does anyone else know the legends of Leopold the Brave? (Funny how a random name generator came up with the name of an unrelated YouTuber…)
When they finally reached the sewers, I moved out of the “theater of the mind” mode we’d used thus far to an actual dungeon map from Dyson Logos. The Thief, who’d had a run-in with Death after fighting with wererats, tried to look at some sewer gases seeping around a door, and it made his eyes flare red like the wererats themselves. That seems to drive some potential future conflict with the Fighter, who mostly is a monster hunter.
I also got the chance to reveal a bit about St Moredith when the Paladin prayed for guidance and saw a crown of thorns floating down a stream (which of course she later recognized as this sewer) before a monster leaped out of the water and devoured it. There are some other salient aspects to this saint that I look forward to incorporating in future adventures.
When they broke through a portcullis and found gnawed human bones, all of them went very alert. Sadly, all they found was a fairly pitiful wererat huddling among a cot and some scraps, wielding nothing but his own voice to tell them he’d done nothing monstrous and simply wanted to live. They chose to spare his life… so far. The monster slayer appears to be a bit conflicted about the fact that, apparently, some monsters are people too. And, eventually, I suspect he’ll learn that some people are monsters.
Lessons Learned
First, I really need to fix my streaming setup. I likely had my audio devices set up incorrectly in Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). Also, streaming dungeons with dynamic lighting and line-of-sight will probably work better if I have a “camera character”. There are some easier ways to check how things look from a character’s perspective, like Ctrl-L, but in those cases I’ll otherwise still reveal too much to the stream and ruin the suspense.
GM moves are still an area where I feel weak. On a 6-, we get to use a “hard move” (one with immediate consequences), but so far “soft moves” have made up the majority of my repertoire. Fail a Parley and get spit on by an urchin could possibly qualify as as Show signs of an approaching threat Also, Dungeon World has additional GM moves to use in dungeons. Some of these are difficult to use in my playstyle: changing the environment doesn’t work well if your map is already drawn, although you can still introduce hazards of various sorts. The other moves there, like Make them backtrack and Present riches at a price still work just as well.
Next time, better polish on the stream and harder moves on the characters!
Technoskald's Forge 