Author: Jason Godesky

I played the goði in one of the one-shots Jason Morningstar ran at Origins, Arnar Firebeard. I imagined him as the Stringer Bell of the Icelandic Commonwealth: a man capable of terrible violence, trying to make it all just business. My family kept wanting to leap to treachery, deceit, and betrayal, but I cautioned them to keep those as back-up plans when all else failed. Well, when I walked into my daughter’s home to find my adopted son over the dead body of the son I was about to marry to a rival goði’s daughter, that’s about when all else failed. I came up with a plan to save my bacon with lies and treachery, which immediately blew up in my face.

It was a great game. Getting the PDF when I got home, I saw some of the changes between the version Jason had to run, and the final version. In particular, I keep thinking about how differently things might have gone for Arnar if considering an uneasy situation had been a move available to him. I almost certainly would have used that when I walked in on that scene, rather than going straight to the treachery that cost me everything. I probably would have asked “What is the most I can make out of this situation?” and “What is a honourable way out?”

It was a great game; I’m just reflecting on how these small changes could have had a really big impact on how it unfolded.

I’m running into some trouble just sharing Jason Morningstar‘s post about how to run a one-shot, so I’m going to try good ol’ copy-and-pasting. Everything below is from Jason Morningstar, not me.

I ran Sagas of the Icelanders (which probably needs its own community here) three times at Origins, and each time it went well.

My advice for convention one-shots:

* Start with a pre-defined relationship map. Be flexible, but keep it all in and around a single family with a Goði on top.

* Leave out the Man, Woman and Monster. Consider leaving out the Child and Thrall. These are all excellent playbooks but favor long-term or more passive play.

* Spend a minute – literally one minute – explaining the time and place, let them review their moves, and answer questions the moves prompt about Iceland in 900AD. Provide as much context and cultural advice as people want in play, but enthusiastically roll with stuff that comes up in play that is “incorrect”.

* Be easy about letting people switch moves as the fiction develops – if they picked one that won’t see use, just change it.

* The relationships and bonds they choose are what the session is about. Build a front centered on a big event that introduces new people. Make these new people a problem. I used a wedding in each of the three sessions I ran and that was perfect.

Here’s the relationship map and handout I used, which worked well. The players chose a playbook and placed themselves on the r-map (some roles, like Goði, don’t get a choice where to fit in). A wedding is implied, as is some malfeasance.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3441990/one-shot_handout_v3.pdf

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3441990/one-shot_handout_v3.pdf