I’m about to start a campaign of Freebooters of the Frontier that eschews the idea of treasure in favour of restoring useful structures in a landscape full of ruins and devoid of civilisation using “memory shards” that essentially cause the world to remember a time when the structures were still whole and bring that forth into reality.
For that purpose, I decided that all living things and particular places in the world (chests) contained fonts of memory that these memory shards could be mystically drawn from. I created a move for this purpose:
When you reach into the soul of the world and pull forth its memories, roll+CHA. On a 10+ their memories coalesce as beads in your hand, consult the Judge. On a 7-9, the same then choose 1:
– Alien memories invade and distort your identity, the Judge will tell you what you remember. Roll the same dice the Judge instructed you and burn that much Charisma.
– Halve the reward the Judge tells you.
– The soul of the world steals your memories, say what it stole. Roll the same dice the Judge instructed you and burn that much Wisdom.
The idea being that “consult the Judge” means the Judge tells you to roll as per Perilous Wilds’ treasure finder but replaces the word “coins” with “memory shards”.
If you want memory shards to be used, adding a risk to using them is a bad idea. Make a simpler move, maybe don’t even roll for it.
Peter J This is something I definitely thought about in the making of the move, which is why I put the player in control and give them the choice of the consequences, which drive a theme of this hostile landscape changing them rather than causing any real harm (considering making the ability damage a fixed 1d4 as well). I’d say the main risk is the possibility of a GM move. Which makes me think that perhaps I should include a defined 6- clause.
In any case, it’s not a question of wanting the memory shards to be used, they will be a necessity. Like I said, there is no civilisation so there is no buying rations etc. They’ll need to make the land remember it can grow food.
Permanent ability damage still really hurts though. I think that would be too steep of a price for me to consider, especially if I didn’t have a high CHA. How about “roll+shards spent” instead?
Peter J Oh, it’s not permanent ability damage! It’s just ability damage per the rules in FotF. Exactly like damage to your HP. It heals eventually. You gave me food for thought on +shardspent though…
This looks pretty interesting. How many ‘shards’ will it take to make a house or store? or a town? Are the shards specific or generic? Will the players know what they are trying to draw forth?
Bob Bersch I’m not certain how many for certain things yet. As for specific vs. generic? I think that’s interesting but I’ll think about whether that would be too complicated. Obviously, narratively, acquiring them will be different. If you draw from a certain creature, you will gain specifically its memories.
And yes, they will know what they’re drawing forth, otherwise that will just be mean. I’m thinking, in a homebase, it will be explicit. If they want to restore certain things on the landscape, there will be fairly big clues but it won’t be explicit just so the unknown, alien terrain doesn’t start feeling familiar.
So it will be a trackless waste from the start and the players will be drawing in the setting? (trying to get a handle of the concept 😉 How did they get to here? Or are you using the FotF map with the kingdom off the main map?
Bob Bersch I’m drawing maps, leaving blanks 😉 As for how they got there, essentially, the basic concept I have is: individually, they found themselves in a situation where they felt there was no escape (literally or abstractly as they please) when a strange vortex spontaneously appeared and they heard the voice of an old man in their mind, calling for help and offering a way out. When they step into the vortex, bam, bizarre magical post-apoc.
That’s the concept.
As an aside: I’m considering doing something unorthodox and doing a full Perilous/Freebooters world creation with the players before they are thrust into this completely different world, to help engender the feeling that they have had their old world and life stolen from them.
I like the idea of this campaign 🙂 What about having a list of simple question on for each of the players about their homelands. Then use the answers when they try to create something in the wastelands.. so the resulting world is a mix of all of their homes.. or an echo of it.