Seven Hills gaming convention is on this weekend and I’m bringing A Storm Eternal to run for a single shot session of world saving as much as building.
Got those pre-convention MCing nerves…
Attached is my City Sheet – for which I have borrowed from other hacks (thank you!) and cobbled together something for the game. The convention has a theme of ‘Urban Legends’, so I decided that they could each build their city at the table as one of the the first things we do. Should be fun!
The blurb for the game is below:
A Storm Eternal
(To the sound of ponderous drums and symbals…)
It was an age before history. A story before our chronicles. A primal world of lost civilisations, of forgotten gods, of the sword and wild magic. It was…
The Time of Prophecy.
The augurs from each of the ancient cities had spoken. The ageless rivalry between the cities, the bloodshed and strife, must cease. For the chill wind of the old enemy, cast in legend, but now made real in the dreams of the wise, shivers from the savage north.
Each of the cities provide their greatest champion. Together they must form a company of heroes, to stem the tide, and fight to save the world.
Five cities. Five heroes. One quest against overwhelming Evil.
A Storm Eternal
GM: Graham Spearing
System: A Storm Eternal (Powered by the Apocalypse)
Players: 5
Setting, cities and character histories will be formed in advance at The Crucible of Heroes (or at the table). How many of the Five will return? Will they succeed? How will the cities change if they do?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3z0Iw52e0CcSEwxX2gxVDJZMVU/view?usp=sharing
I love that city builder. I worry that it’s way too much for a con game. It’s pretty much four unbroken pages of options. There’s, like, 102 to pick from. If it was for one city and you pass it around from player to player, that might work, but individually it feels like so much.
Don’t get me wrong, like I said this looks really cool and I really want to use it myself! Just ask yourself how much of what’s chosen here is actually going to be directly reflected in play at the table. Few players remember other players’ extensive character histories, but they all remember when Maktab the Sorcerer took a swig of his mother’s homebrew and used a fingerspark spell to make a impromptu flamethrower.
Great feedback Toby, cheers. I got a bit carried away, especially for something that just provides some background scenery and setting before they head off to save the world. 🙂
I’ll have a ponder. Will let you know how I play it. 😉
Looks like someone really like Barbarian Hordes beyond the walls…! 🙂
So, the game went well, though I feel that I still hold back the PbtA possibilities by constraining the options.
I used the city builder as is, but constrained the time to a quickfire 10 minutes. The players gamely added great options to their cities and we established relationships, which once or twice came through and affected play. It is probably the case that it was a slightly too big an investment for the effect, but the players had fun with it.
The adventure was a series of set pieces with some custom moves and a lot of inventiveness in each of those scenes. Each scene had its own set of images to invoke the flavour and draw out detail in the scene. The game was described as “very metal”, which captures the slightly overblown nature of it.
A good time was had by all.
Good to hear, well done! Setting a hard time limit on the city creation sounds like it was a good move, and for a one-shot perfectly acceptable. Same for limiting the options, when you only have 240 minutes, every one you spend discussing the setting is one less to play in the setting.
Graham Spearing do you mind if I borrow this? Thinking of trying to run up a one-shot with Fallen Empires (http://apocalypse-world.com/AW2ndEdFallenEmpiresPreview.pdf).
Toby Sennett Sure thing, let us know how it goes. 🙂
It went well! I didn’t put a time limit on the time for city creation and that did cost us. We got a great game out of it though. Thanks for making this tool available.