Solo RPG Campaign - 1. Mara's Vineyard

Disclaimer: This first session contains a lot of Mythic GME rolls, and very little in the way of BFRPG rolls (mostly just a few wandering monster checks and reaction rolls). That's fine, because I'm using it to flesh out the setting. There will be more actual game rolls in the next post.

Day 1

I started off my party in the classic common room of an anonymous inn/tavern in an unknown town, with no idea what they would be doing. I needed to overhear some rumors. For this, I turned to the Mythic GME, which responded with the following prompts: who? foolish, what? broken, where? resourceful, and why? transport. This could be interpreted several ways, but to my mind, this meant a foolish merchant had been transporting resources, and a wagon had broken. Perhaps sabotage? Or a raid on a trade shipment? Where there bandits in the area? I rolled a direction the shipment was heading: NW. I found a list of trade goods in BFRPG's Equipment Emporium and rolled to discover that it was a shipment of wine. I've forgotten if I rolled the town's name first (Marafeld) or the patron's name first (Mara) and then filled in the other one from that. Either way, I've learned that Mara is the local bigshot of the small thorpe I am in, who owns a vineyard, and was shipping some wine somewhere when it was raided. I arbitrarily decided he would pay the party 100 gp to retrieve the wine.

I take the party out to the site of the incident in the neighboring 6 mile hex, and my scout, Edelweiss, makes a tracking roll. I also roll on the wandering monster table for inhabited lands to see what kind of creature it was that stole the wine. I was expecting bandits, or maybe some corrupt guards, but what I got was a band of ten centaurs. Of course it was centaurs that stole the wine!

Day 2

A random roll said they had gone north, and when I asked the Mythic oracle if I would catch them on the second day, an event I deemed unlikely, the oracle nevertheless replied in the affirmative. I didn't really think about how much faster centaurs would be moving than my party on foot. I suppose they must have stayed up all night partying and gotten a late start. Edelweiss is scouting ahead when she spies the centaurs from a distance, and is unseen. Ten centaurs at 4HD each is far too much for a party of 5 level ones, so I decide to make a reaction roll first to see how friendly the local centaurs generally have been towards humans. I get an 11, meaning the two are usually on very friendly terms. I deem this sufficient to give Chadonius a +1 on another reaction roll when he attempts to approach them and parlay. The result is favorable. They allow the party to travel with them, and are generally polite and gregarious, but are unwilling to negotiate about the wine. The Mythic GME suggests this is due to "loyalty", which I take to mean they are following the orders of their chief who is not present. But the party can travel north with them to meet their chief.

There are no wandering monsters encountered that day or that night. At night, Timbo (my halfling thief) decides he wants to have a look at what kind of treasure the centaurs are carrying. However, he fails a move silently roll, and is spotted by the night watch. He just barely succeeds on another reaction roll. I interpret this as his trying to joke it off, but the guard doesn't buy it and wakes his superior, who questions him, gives him a stern talking-to, and lets him off with a warning that he would be watched.

Day 3

On the third day, they rendezvous with the chief, and a second band of centaurs (this time, eight of them). I used UNE (Universal NPC Emulator) to roll up that the chief is a "cunning performer" (perhaps an orator?) and his goal is to "create an alliance". I ask the Mythic GME why they stole the wine, and it hilariously answers "hinder emotions". Yes... That is generally why people drink. Or so I've heard. This line of questioning isn't going anywhere, but suddenly I come to a realization about the chief's purpose to create an alliance... A few more questions to the GME, and I learn that the centaurs are actually trying to forge an alliance, not with Marafeld, but with another nearby human settlement. It's named Sapperton. It's located in the foothills of the mountains to the north, and they grow tea. Sapperton, I learn from a reaction roll of 3, has a very negative opinion of Marafeld for some reason. 

Later in the day, the party and the combined band of 18 centaurs come across a pack of 11 wolves. Both parties are surprised, but the wolves think better of the encounter, and slink off. The night passes without incident.

Day 4

On the fourth day, they arrive at Sapperton. They have a favorable reaction. I roll on UNE to determine what kind of NPC we are dealing with, and I get the prompt "lovingly rotten" which doesn't immediately mean much to me. Then I ask why there is such bad blood between them and Marafeld, and I get the prompt "lure people". Putting these together solves the riddle nicely: a nice girl from Sapperton eloped with some bloke from Marafeld, and now the lovesick leader of Sapperton is jealous and resentful. A further question to the Mythic GME determines that, in fact, it was Sapperton who hired the centaurs to perform the raid on Marafeld. In light of this conversation, Sapperton is unwilling to make any further negotiations. I allow my cleric (Grimace, the dwarf) a Wisdom check to see if he can console the man, but this fails. I'm not sure what to do next, so I roll for a random event from Mythic GME and get the prompt "take enemies." Apparently the leader of  Sapperton isn't sure what to do either, and decides to throw us into a jail cell overnight, until he can think further on the matter. Overnight, Timbo attempts, and fails, to pick the lock to the cell.

By this point, I've organically created a number of factions (Marafeld, Sapperton, and the centaurs) and know something about the relationships between them. My fighter Chadonius is in a position where he could try to negotiate peace between them, but so far that hasn't been going too well. Furthermore, we haven't really seen a dungeon yet either, or any way to earn XP. I make a GM-fiat decision to introduce a dungeon at the earliest convenience. But that's for next time.

Side note: Filling In The Blanks has a set of tables for rolling up settlement size (listed as a market class), which I tried to use. Upon closer inspection of these tables, about a third of settlements will end up in what they call "market class 1" which is defined as "up to 30 individuals (6 families)". Both Marafeld and Sapperton ended up in this category, but this size extremely small because it is meant to represent the kinds of numerous minor strongholds, estates, or clusters of buildings that might occur in every 6 mile hex. I am not sure I need to place such small settlements on the map, but if I did, there should be many more of them. Indeed, they are small enough that even ACKS typically would recommend ignoring them -- it's smallest settlement class is a hamlet of 74 or less families, which is an order of magnitude larger, corresponding to the top end of FitB's market class 3. It's a shame that, with all the population statistics that ACKS has built-in, it doesn't have any direct recommendation for randomly determining a settlement population distribution (it wants them to be deliberately placed). I may do a separate post on this topic at some point. But at any rate, I'll note here that when I make the ACKS conversion, I will need to bump up these populations to something more meaningful.