Once upon a time ...

Last Saturday we started our 5e game in the faerie tale world of the Tulgeywood (renamed from the Alfenwood because Jabberwocky). I had three players show up and we spent most of the evening making characters. I want to do session recaps on the blog like I did for our Ravenloft game, it’s good for me as a DM to remember what happened and it’s fun to go back and read about the campaign afterwards.  This will hopefully be the first of many posts following the party as they fight the sinister forces of the Goblin Wood.

The purpose of the game is to play with the 5e rules and explore a bit of High Fantasy, a realm to which I seldom venture. In this world, good and evil are very real things. Goodness embodied by the Faerie Queen, and Evil by the Jabberwock. The characters are expected to serve the Faerie Queen. I am trying to hew as closely to 5e as written, but I had to limit races, classes and make up my own backgrounds to to fit the setting. Determining how well 5e holds up to homebrewing/houseruling is part of the purpose as well.

In the recaps I will make comments on the action and game (probably using my curmudgeonly old school voice) which will be denoted by italics.

Session One

Character Creation

I made a players guide for the Tulgeywood that includes races, classes, backgrounds and some information on the setting.
A Gimble in the Wabe Player's Guide Google Doc

The party so far consists of:

Tekka the Warlock (Tim)

Tekka is the Half-Elf daughter of Isonash a Southron Hunter and Sennara the Elf Maiden. She has a twin brother named Pasco. As a young child, Tekka was raised by her mother in an Elfin gwel. The Elfs recognized her potential for magic and encouraged her to make a pact with the Archfey, the spirit of the Tulgeywood. After she made the pact and completed her Elfin education, she returned to the Maze Marsh and spent her youth hunting and learning the ways of the Utari in the company of her human father. Tekka has not yet undergone the Utari rite of passage to become a woman and his still considered a child.

Pasco the Bard (Drew)

Pasco is the twin brother of Tekka, son of Isonash the Man and Sennara the Elf. He spent his childhood with the Elfs and displayed an aptitude for learning and music. They taught him to sing the ancient Moon Songs and the history of the Tulgeywood. Once grown, he returned to the Maze Marsh with his sister, and lived amongst the Utari storytellers. From them he learned to play instruments and perform the stories that tell the history of the Southrons. Pasco has not yet undergone the rite of passage to become a man and is still considered a child.

Bata The Druid (Zac)

When the Utari Hunter Isonash returned to the Marsh from living with his Elf Maiden, he never took a Southron Bride. He did have a relationship with a Dryad and the fruit of this union was Bata. Bata the Man-Fey was taken by his mother to the Faerie Queen and given to her care as an infant; he has never known the Dryad that bore him. At the Queen's court, Bata was raised as a Druid in the care of Shimrood, a Treant and head of the Druid Order. Once he physically matured Bata was sent south the Maze Marsh in order to learn from his father and siblings the ways of the Utari and to undergo the rites to become an adult.

Yes they are all related, how’s that for a bond…

At some point these characters will have to choose to undertake the Utari right of passage. For a woman this means stealing a Grey Bear cub and raising it to adulthood then slaughtering it for its meat and hide. For a man this means removing the heart from a crocodile and offering it to the Reed Witch.

Character creation steps in 5e are all wrong. We tried to follow the book with the first two characters, and it resulted in players redoing skill selection because of choosing background last. Also, choosing race and class before rolling ability scores is so unnatural that the player that made the third character (Zac) actually asked if he could roll abilities first to draw inspiration. Future characters will be made in the following order: 1. Roll ability scores 2. Choose Race 3. Choose Background 4. Choose Class

We also dispensed with the bonds, flaws, etc. I used custom backgrounds to suit my campaign (there is a lot of implied setting in the default backgrounds) and couldn’t be bothered to make all the tables. Maybe I’m missing something by skipping this part of character creation but I suspect not.  My players have been doing this for 20+ years and don’t need charts to make a realistic or memorable character.

Session Recap

The game began at the Kings Day festival, held at the end of the warm season (Grillib) and the beginning of the cold season (Brillig). The folk of the Tulgeywood gather in moots to trade crops and crafts, honor the dead and remember the fallen King of Beast by wrestling matches. The party of two twins and their half brother travel north from the marsh to the wood in order to join a moot and celebrate King’s Day.

I figured the best way to try out a new version D&D is to jump immediately into grappling rules.

The wrestling challengers were a wolf, elk, and bear. Tekka decided she would wrestle the wolf. They circled each other and Tekka successfully grappled the beast. She was surprised when the wolf spent it’s next action to bite her. Perhaps this fairy tale is not so sweet…

Her brother Pasco, remembered that he could inspire her and began to play his shawm. Tekka used the inspiration to pin the wolf.

I made a ruling here to determine if something was pinned. Once an attacker has a target grappled they can pin it (make it prone) with another grapple action (Contested ability check). Turns out this ruling was right on the money, since per the actual rules an attacker with someone grappled could use an action to “Shove” in the same way, which when successful makes the target either prone or five feet away.

Tekka’s was next challenged by the bear, and she accepted. After a long match of back and forth with neither able to pin the other and Pasco using up all his inspiration they called it a draw. The bear gave Tekka an old claw as a mark of respect.

The party then partook of the Queen’s Cake baked specially for the King’s Day celebrations. Each of them found a golden acorn in their cake, a sign that they had been chose to serve the Faerie Queen. Accepting tradition, they said farewell to home and began their journey to the Glade, where the Queen rules from the Mushroom Tower.

I called it a night, Bata’s player was sad that he didn't get to hit anything with his shillelagh, but it was late and I’m an old man.

We are all (I think) looking forward to the next session. I’ve decided to call the game.

A Gimble in the Wabe.

Fairy Tales for Fifth Edition

A bit of lore for my upcoming 5th Edition game. Apologies to Zak S for the Queen of Hearts bit.

Once upon a time the first woman wandered the world alone. One night she slept under the boughs of the Tumtum tree and dreamed a dream of light and living things followed by a nightmare of darkness and death. When she awoke she had split in half, one side the Faerie Queen resplendent in silver and green and the other the Queen of Hearts, terrible in a vampires red beauty. The Queen of Hearts shied from the morning light and fled to the darkened east, while the Faerie Queen caused the Tulgey Wood to grow around her, stretching from the mountains to the western sea. The Faerie Queen wondered her woods alone until she came upon the Wabe and there she danced a dance to praise the moon and sun. When her dance was done she was no longer alone, for from the Mountains the Beast King had seen her dance and became enraptured of her beauty. They kissed beneath the stars, and from them sprang the fey of the Tulgey Wood; Pixies and Brownies, Satyrs and Sprites,  Nyads, Dryads and countless other creatures. The animals of forest and mountain and the fey of the Tulgey wood lived happily ever after under the reign of the Faerie Queen and the Beast King.

Except that ever after wasn’t forever.

The first betrayal was the Jub Jub bird who flew above all else and came to believe that it was superior to the groundlings. The Jub Jub bird longed to make a nest above the clouds and chose the moon as a home. It broke the crystal sphere around the moon and caused the Elfs to fall from the sky to the forest floor. The Queen accepted the Elfs into her realm and gave them leave to live in the trees.

The next betrayal was the Bandersnatch, who grew so frumious that the Queen allowed the Elfs to live in its trees that it began to eat all the other creatures. First it ate the squirrel and hare as was its right, then it ate the boar and hart and the Queen accepted its hunger. Then it ate the fox and wolf and the King admonished it, then it ate the lion and bear and the Queen commanded it to eat only the nuts and berries of the wood. The Bandersnatch by now had grown monstrous large, and full of vengeful hunger. It broke the Queen's commandment and ate the elf and faerie. The Moon Wizards opened a door at the edge of the wood, and the Beast King wrestled the Bandersnatch down and threw it out of the Queen's Realm.

The Bandersnatch sulked in exile and roamed the world outside the wood nursing vengeance in its heart. In exchange for their mountain home, it revealed to a Prince of Men the path opened by the Moon Wizards to the Tulgey Wood. This Prince, fleeing the darkness to the East led his people to the wood and the Faerie Queen accepted them. However, men are doomed to darkness and although they were fleeing from strife they could not escape it. The Prince declared himself the King of Clubs, and fought against the foes that pursued them to the wood. They raised stone castles and towers across the Tulgey Wood and waged war against the evil Queen of Hearts. They lost, and the Vampire Queen of Hearts took the King of Clubs head back to her castle. The Club Kingdom fell and its people dwindled to shadows in the ruins. Those that did not become ghost and wraiths took shelter in the Northern Fells and Southern Swamps swearing fealty to the Faerie Queen.

All the while the Bandersnatch lay in the darkness of the mountain, hatred and hunger for revenge against the Beast King and his Queen burning in its belly. The Queen of Hearts learned of the Bandersnatch from her Club thralls and ventured to its cave. She convinced the Bandersnatch that its hunger would be sated only by devouring the Jub Jub. This was the last betrayal. Driven mad by frumiousness and the honeyed words of the Heart Queen it climbed the tallest peak of the mountains and leapt to the Jub Jub’s nest on the moon. In its hunger and fury the Bandersnatch raped and devoured the bird. And then fell to torpor its cavernous hunger temporarily sated by the the pregnant Jub Jub in its belly. The Queen of Hearts stole upon the Bandersnatch while it slept, cut the Jub Jub from its belly and then removed the egg from the mangled bird. She sent her Slithy Toves to carry the egg to the Tulgey Wood and set Mome Raths to guard it. They built a secret nest at the Wabe and from the egg sprang the Jabberwock.

The Jabberwock was born of lies and betrayal, hatred and hunger. It grew into a great green serpent, pale and hideous in might and malice. The Queen of Hearts nursed it with blood from her breast and tried to bring it under her will but the Jabberwock proved too mighty to tame. The Vampire Queen abandoned it to the Wabe, but not before she sang it a song of deceit enchanting the creature to consume and defile the Tulgey wood. The Faerie Queen heard this song from across the woods, and for the first time in her life she grew afraid. Comforting his wife and Queen, The Beast King vowed to slay the Jabberwock and set off with a mighty host to face the creature at the Wabe.

Long did the Beast King and Jabberwock struggle, wrestling at the Wabe while the host of the Faerie Queen faced the Slithy Toves and Mome Raths. Great are the tales of valor of the Battle at the Wabe; how the Chief of the North Men hew the heads of a hundred Mome Raths, The Witch woman of the Marsh succored the Beast King's wounds when he was first cast down by the Jabberwock, how the Moon Wizards held the Wabe against the Slithy Toves. The valor of the free people of the Tulgey Wood was not enough however, The Jabberwock overcame the King of Beast casting him down thrice and on the third time the King died. The Queens host fled the field and would have been overcome but for the valor of Nicnevin the Elf Maid who held the rear and made a stand in the ruins of the Knaves Tower at the river crossing.

The assault of the Jabberwock ended at the river. All the wood east of the Sweetail fell under darkness. The trees became black and twisted the animals corrupt. The Jabberwock defiled The Wabe and the body of the Beast King. From the defilement sprang forth the goblins and they multiplied in sick fecundity amongst the brambles and shadow until the Tulgey Wood was split, the Faerie Queen's Realm of Light to the West and the Jabberwock and the Goblin Wood to the East.

The folk of the Tulgey Wood held onto hope however, bound together in their struggle they pledged fealty to the Faerie Queen. From the Animal Princes to the Moon Wizards and tribes of men, all still ight together to preserve what remains of the Queen’s Dream against the evil of the Jabberwock.

The End.