The Isle of Sorrows - 19/02/26
Part 2
So I'm one session deep and I have thoughts.
The starting party:
Rebekah, a midwife exiled after being framed for the crime of poisoning a baby. She's constantly trying to look small, scared for her life, but confident in matters of survival.
Grigori, a soldier exiled for failing to follow orders. He was told to show mercy but butchered his enemies instead. He's fatalistic and cynical.
Maeve Penrose, a witch exiled for being a witch. She's unrepentant and bold.
Reginald Wilhelm, a court physician exiled for failing to save the duke's son. Being a doctor in this world has to suck. He is a coward but rolled the best stats by far (6 HP / 14 STR / 16 DEX / 16 WIL) At the start of every combat he panics.
The session began with my players on a ship to the titular Isle of Sorrows. I had them explain their backstories, how they got there. I think giving them the power of the narrator worked really well. It's definitely something I'm going to do again, especially for downtime. They went due north seeing a massive seabird and other exiles before hitting the forest. They camped a night but by morn Maeve found hands and fingers grafted to the trees and they decided to GTFO.
Heading west they spy a tower and village in the distance and start by heading to the village. This is the Stone Farm, where stones are farmed for their meat. The party found whisps leading to the basement of one of the houses but with a chain holding the cellar shut they left it alone.
My descriptions of Stone Farm have been very simple: abandoned but everything that could be taken was. The thatch is rotted, probably at least a year since the people left. The water that was used to irrigate the fields is sour. I wanted to paint a picture of a place that once was, but only recently was brought to ruin. A place that could be again.
After hunkering down through a storm they headed to the tower. Combat went fast with the tower's guardian, an animated suit of battered armour. It was defeated by throwing a chair at its head. This is where my concerns really start to appear. Combat can be extremely linear where both sides just bash each other over the head until someone dies. It's a function of damage vs HP + STR. Who dies first. Now I'm not saying that combat can't be interesting in this system. I just think that combat itself isn't interesting, it requires other things to juice it. Environment is the most obvious to me but others are few and far between.
After their encounter with the guardian they headed up the tower to it's apex and met the Mage. Every good tower has a mage. This one doesn't know his name, nor much else, he's a ghost both of his former self and also literally. He does however know astrology and how to stay in his lane. This entire encounter was hilarious and threatening. He constantly shut them down when they asked about matters non-astrological. He offered that if they can get the stone farmers to bring him 3 stones to eat he'd cough up a spellbook. Reginald did the bulk of the negotiation here and it was nice to have him open up a bit. The party has yet to talk about their pasts, in a way they don't matter.
I think Cairn may have been a poor choice for this game because it assumes a very narrow set of characters. Everyone knows how to hunt, make camp, and can travel long days. This is, weirdly enough, why I chose it in the first place. It removes a lot of the bookkeeping I'd normally have to do and removes the possibility of what I call “Lock Out” where a single skill check stops the story in its tracks. I think about what would've happened if I used a more complex OSR-y game or something like Forbidden Lands. I don't have another group to try it on (yet) so I guess I'll never know.
For now I'm happy with how session 1 turned out and excited to see where things go.
