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.