GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Rae Nedjadi, Josh Hittie, Casey H.
System: Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth
After some pretty heavy revisions of the single-session adventure format we wanted to give it another run. Last time I ran Frozen Truth I focused a lot of the nemesis, so this time I wanted to try letting them loom in the distance while the tomb itself challenged the Explorers.
I was also cognizant of trying to get the entire adventure (from start of session character creation and safety tools all the way to epilogue) done in four hours or less, and we managed to wrap in a cool 3:45. I included a single puzzle and several interstitial scenes. I heard later that Lowell Francis ran the same adventure in 3 hours with 2 puzzles. I DO NOT KNOW how he does that!?!?
Crash, Johan, and Rusty
We created our Explorers (previously Seekers) and immediately there was some amazing tension:
- Lottie (an NPC) had destroyed an artifact in the past.
- The Edendale family (our Nemesis) hired Crash to do research into weather control devices.
- While working for the Edendales, Crash imprinted on Johan (his devoted)
- The Edendales asked Rusty to translate and old text and then used the results to discredit him as an occultist rather than an academic.
- Jonah was an orphan in the Society of Raiders and for many years, that’ all he knew. He pulled Crash into the life.
- Crash left Amanda behind because they were sure Amanda would make it out on her own…she did not.
- Collectively they had broken (or were accused of breaking) several laws an the local authorities were after them.
- Everyone was tangled up about their feelings for each other!
The Entrance
We opened at the entry of the Tomb, but getting in required taking a frozen bath. Lottie and Atsila (locals and contacts that are part of the adventure) joined them above a near frozen lake just as the Edendale families submersible disappeared beneath the surface. This was the way in, but the tomb was responding to their presence. The lake seemed to be getting colder (waiting any longer and it would freeze over completely), birds suddenly filled the sky, the fog thickened, and they could hear the sounds of police dogs and the dull glow of flashlights searching for them. It was now or never!
Of the motifs for the adventure (Fog, Ice, and Nature), ice was the one that really stuck with me, so there were icy tendrils subduing them beneath surface, frozen hearts, and all manner of visible condensation from their exhalations in the cold (which of course also played nicely with fog). Metaphorically I was going for hidden paths, fragile strength, and biting pain.
With heat generating drones, brave exploration, and compassion for each other, they all made it through the freezing water and into the underground entrance of The Tomb of Spearfinger.
Truths and Facets
One of the major rules changes we made were how truths were obtained once inside the tomb, and how they could be linked to facets. As a bit of an inversion from the normal action phase, instead of needed to spend an investigation phase understanding the truths, in the Tomb phase, they can be used as powerful connections to the legend and the people to aid the Explorers.
Mechanically that meant that during various stages of the Final Tomb, the Explorers could overcome (or understand) and obstacle by linking a Truth to a Facet if they had one available. The goal was for the truths to all be linked by the time the Heart of the Tomb was discovered so the players would only need to come up with one Final Truth instead of linking all of them at the end.
What Rocked
This game was an absolute delight. Casey has a lot more experience in cold weather environments than I do, but he was still please by my depiction of the creeping ice. All three of the Explorers (and one more who showed up at the very end!) were incredibly bound to each other, and by the end, to Spearfinger as well.
Our story became one about accepting sorrow and understanding that the pain doesn’t go away, but neither does it have to be all consuming. And…it can be shared with others who can help carry the burden. I was really happy about the tender moment…right until Crash took the Frozen Heart and IMPLANTED it into the ghost of Amanda giving her new undead life. OMG RAE!!!
What I’d like to work on still
- Order of operations. My preferred method to put breaks in the reading is to do Message (group reading) -> Journey so far (individual players each making decisions) -> Creating PCs -> Legend -> First Action Phase. That worked last time we played this adventure, but this time I realized that in the second question the PCs get Connections (lore, aid, etc) which you can’t really track if people haven’t pick characters yet. However, if we switched the order (putting Create PCs in front of Journey So Far) we’d miss out on all the juicy details from the journey which could affect character creation. Next time I’d try it in this order:
- Message
- Select PCs and pick core moves (but then stop)
- Journey So far
- Complete PCs (Bonds and other details)
- Legend
- First Action Phase
- We’re still working on the Discover the Truth move that prompts for the Final Truth. Want those final questions to all have a punch!
- The Truth currency was very tight. It worked perfectly for our game but I think more testing is needed to make sure that if folks don’t elect to get more truths as the result of moves, there is still a way forward.
- Some moves have a lot to do during their resolution. In the cases where that included both gaining a truth and linking it to a facet, it felt like there was too much happening all at once. I think we want to keep some distance between gaining and linking truths, even if it’s just gain a truth at the end of one move, and link it at the start of another.
- The start of the action phase for The Witch’s Frozen Truth has a lot of details that create ambience but aren’t actionable. Since there is already a lot of reading from the Message and the Legend, as well as details that need to be established for the Path and the Entrance, I think the description for the first action phase should be pared down to just the situation they are in “You arrive at the entrance but XYZ obstacles stand in your way.”
- Currently each Puzzle calls for two moves (Traverse and Decipher) to resolve. I think we need to call those out within the adventure so each Puzzle looks like:
- Puzzle Description
- Traverse the Tomb Move
- Learning about the Puzzle (as a result of Traverse the Tomb)
- Decipher the Tomb Move
- Solving the Puzzle
