#334
Feb 23, 2025
Books
No books this week!
Roleplaying Games
I’ve got some new acquisitions on the way: the new Realms of the Three Rings supplement for The One Ring; Beyond Corny Gron, a fantasy sandbox based on Polish folklore; and I backed the recent Kult kickstarter.
I still plan to run Delta Green as the next campaign (which may start some time this year in parallel with Arden Vul), and then maybe Ars Magica after that, but I’m also increasingly coming around to the idea of a Jewish and Slavic inspired fantasy setting for a future campaign.
The Halls of Arden Vul
Another action-packed session this week, but the thing I’m most happy with is something I’d planned working out exactly the way I wanted it to.
For some time now the players have been aware of an area of the dungeon which venerates Arden, the legendary hero. Arden isn’t a god, but evidently she had some sort of cult following back in the day. The players have managed to piece together that there was some sort of rebellion down here, with cultists turning on each other as the city fell in the civil war.
There’s also one undead hanging around—a corpse whispering about “duty”, and about the need to “protect the relics”—the players wanted rid of it, as it’s a liability.
They’ve discussed various plans over the weeks, but one in particular that caught my eye is using illusion magic to conjure up an image of Arden, to tell the ghost that he did well, that it’s time for him to rest. It’s a brilliant idea that I would normally have let work, except for one thing: Arden isn’t a god as far as everyone knows, but she has, in fact, ascended to demigodhood due to the devotion given to her since her death, and so the players would be conjuring the image of a demigod in her own temple in order to deceive her last remaining loyal follower.
So when the player cast the spell I described how they felt a sense of intense disapproval slam down upon them, as the illusion was instantly dispelled.
Cue “wait, Arden isn’t a god, is she?”
Exactly what I wanted to happen.
Miscellaneous
This week I played Chants of Sennaar, a short (took me 9 hours) Tower of Babel-themed puzzle game. Each floor of the tower has its own language you need to figure out to solve the puzzles and make it to the next floor, with a larger overarching story (mostly told through environmental storytelling) about how the current situation came to be. Along the way you can use your knowledge of multiple languages to reunite the scattered peoples of the tower. Each floor of the tower has its own visual theme, and the soundtrack is really nice.
It’s a very fun game, though one that has probably zero replayability value.
