Professor Dungeonmaster convinced me to check out Mythic Bastionland, a new tabletop RPG from Chris McDowall. I always appreciate Prof. DM's commentary, and he called it a masterpiece. I splurged on the hardcover edition without doing much more research, and I have no regrets.
The book is beautiful in its form. The entire rules for the game are presented in about twenty pages, followed by a generous collection of random tables. The majority of the book is devoted to 144 pages that describe the 72 knights, the seers who knighted them, and the myths that manifest in the world. The knights seek the myths, and the myths are described with just enough detail that the referee can turn them into compelling vignettes. The book concludes with about thirty two-column pages in which the left side narrates the table experience of three players and the right side provides commentary on it. This is a brilliant way to give examples of play and provide recommendations while keeping brief the initial rules explanation. Generous illustrations by Alec Sorenson push the dark medieval fantasy theme right into your imagination upon opening the book.
My two older boys agreed to try Mythic Bastionland with me yesterday afternoon, and we finished a one-shot session in about three hours. It is clearly a game that benefits from campaign play, but I found several resources that helped me to pull together a one-shot in about two hours of prep, not including reading the rules. There is an extensive list of resources on Reddit, but these are the ones I found most useful for quickly pulling an experimental session together:
- Chris McDowall's post about Mythic One-Shots. I followed his "Speed-Shot" approach, opting for a 6x6 Realm with the recommended myth. I rolled four random Knights and filled out their character sheets with everything except the attribute values, which I left for the players to roll. I came across many praises for McDowall's blog posts and YouTube videos; I am curious to look at some of his other content, but I have not done so yet.
- The official character sheets. The official sheet is dry but effective. There are a lot of fan-made ones, some of which are quite beautiful. I could not get this one to print, otherwise I might have used it, although I fear it would look poor on my black-and-white printer. I love the aesthetic of this other one, but it lacks some of the rules references that I wanted for new players (including me).
- Realm Maker online tool for generating Realms based on the game's heuristics. The interface is a bit awkward and I would have liked more printing and export options, but for what it is, it's a handy free tool. I configured it for a 6x6 Realm with one Myth, one Seer, and one Holding, and it came up with something reasonable enough for me to use. I printed up one for the players, then had to take a screenshot of the referee version. I printed this latter one at a smaller scale so that I could write in my notes around it, which worked well.
- Squire and Holdings tables from the Mythic Canvas. Knowing I would have two players, I took the book's advice to give each a squire, and the tables helped give each a bit of character. Similarly, I rolled a random Holding, which gave me a name and an economic focus for it. This ended up being slightly incongruous with the terrain, but it was adequate for a one-shot.
All this allowed me to pull together a one-shot, which I played with my two older sons yesterday afternoon. For me, there were a lot of firsts.
I had not previously run nor played a hexcrawl, but I really enjoyed it. The Myth's early omens provided simple vignettes that gave a sense of the game's setting. The party went straight for the castle to learn more about the local situation, and they got just enough info to set them in the right direction of the Seer. They did receive a crucial tip from the Seer that ended up being used just in time to save one of them from death, although this was all driven by dice, not my plotting. The one-shot only had one Myth so that the party could have a chance of overcoming it in one session, which they did; this made me curious to see how a larger Realm and multiple Myths would impact the feel of the game. Our game-time played out over the course of about a week, but I understand that a campaign would take place over years or decades. It's an attractive storytelling form that I have never explored.
When I run TTRPGs, which is not very often, I usually try to improvise some environmental conditions that establish a tone, such as the weather or a smell. I had not previously tried to rely on tables for such things, but given the prominent place they have in
Mythic Bastionland, I decided to try it. I used random results from the weather table for the first few days' travel, but I quickly found that tedious. It was fun to try it, and I am sure that a better use of the tables is for when one is creatively stuck or desiring an improvisational challenge. Incidentally, I also have a copy of
Knave on
Professor Dungeonmaster's recommendation, and it is even more chock full of tables---but I have not been able to run that one yet.
I had also not previously run a game without roll-to-hit. Mythic Bastionland has combatants roll damage, and these dice can be manipulated through various player abilities. We all found it to be a lovely minigame of risk management and mitigation. It works well with another novelty of the game, where a player who suffers damage equal to half their remaining health is mortally wounded. Of course, the more damage one takes, the less damage is required to deal such a wound. Our session culminated in an epic battle where Sir John was mortally wounded, and as the enemy creature took wing, Sir Asgerald grabbed Sir John's javelin and hurled it at the fleeing monster. The player rolled exactly what he needed to deal a mortal blow to the enemy, and because of the Seer's advice, they were able to heal Sir John of a deadly poison. It was a beautiful ending to the afternoon, all driven by dice and improvised storytelling.
I found some of the nomenclature used in Mythic Bastionland to be hard to remember. The system of armaments is appropriately simple, yet terms like "hefty" and "slow" are used in a technical sense that doesn't match their colloquial use. Realms have Holdings, which seems right, but one of them is the Seat of Power, which sounds arbitrary to my ear compared to, say, "Capital." Each holding has people in the roles of Steward, Marshal, Sheriff, and Envoy, which are used in a historical sense but don't stick well into my memory. This meant there were some awkward pauses while I made sure I was introducing players to the right terms. I am sure that if I played this particular game more often, or even got into McDowall's content, it would be more natural for me.
Mythic Bastionland is an impressive game, and the physical book is a beautiful addition to my collection. The tabletop experience would benefit from loading screens that highlight Sorenson's evocative illustrations. It's another game that I wish I could run again soon, but that's probably not in the cards. This is one of the reasons I write these reviews: when TTRPGs are few and far between, it's nice to have a place to collect these stories or to return for inspiration.
