GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Rae Nedjadi, Josh Hittie, Tom Lommel, Sophie Lagacé
System: Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth
Tali Inlow wrote a one-shot adventure for Tomb Raider that we wanted to playtest. The goal: To have a fun session where we select characters, enter, and finish a tomb in 4 hours. We did it in 4:20 with a break at each hour, so technically we made it under the wire!
Tomb Raider Background
Evil Hat has been working on the Tomb Raider RPG officially since July 2023, but it was 2020 when we first started talking to Crystal Dynamics about it, so it’s been a long haul!
Rae Nedjadi is the lead designer on the game and as such it has a lot of similarities to Apocalypse Keys. They Keeper has a similar role to offer up opportunities (in this case dangerous and thrilling ones) and build on what the players contribute. The final Truths are not fixed, but built upon brick by brick as the Truth Seekers (PCs) discover mysteries and link them to facets of the adventure. All of this happening while being shot at, caught in landslides, surviving lightning storms, and addressing unresolved feelings about their fellow Seekers!
Miro VTT
Before the game, Rae built a Miro board (bless you Rae!) to run the game with. These are so great when prototyping new games. We played nearly the whole adventure off this board! Sorry it’s not really readable, but this give you a sense of the play space we were working in.
One Short Format
Following the First Session format from the game, this was how I broke down the four hours of play.
I felt rushed, but honestly that’s what I expected. Tomb Raider is a BIG game with a lot of moving pieces. The game is rich and builds beautifully off the players contributions, but it isn’t fast!
Hour 1
- CATS – Content, Aim, Tone, and Subject Matter. We quickly went over the CATS for the game. Rae is the lead designer and Josh has been working on the game for over a year, but this was the first time for Sophie and Tom. Plus I wanted to include the full process to see if we could do it in time.
- Concept: A team of TRUTH SEEKERS explore the ancient mysteries of the world. The Truth Seekers free knowledge from a Nemesis—people who steal, control, or subvert those mysteries and truths.
- Aim: The Truth Seekers are capable, tenacious, determined, and highly skilled individuals. By working together, they can take on challenges that seem overwhelming. Building bonds with each other and as a group is essential to their success, to keep them from a shadowy path where one’s worst tendencies can take over.
- Tone: The tone of the game is one of action-adventure and incredibly high stakes. If the Seekers don’t reach the Heart of the tomb before their Nemesis does, they risk the mythic artifact’s secrets being corrupted forever. The unfolding events should feel tense and dangerous, with opportunities for calm and respite built on social connections.
- Subject Matter: Both the game and Adventures include themes of animal violence, supernatural threats, colonial violence, generational trauma, systemic/cultural oppression, and similar subjects. Because one of the important intentions of the game is to explore post-colonial and anti-imperial themes, this means the game will directly address the existence, nature, and consequences of imperialism, colonialism, and other systemic issues that affect cultures, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves.
- Safety Tools – We introduced the Red/Yellow/Green tool (where folks can indicate topics they don’t want int the game, want to check in with before including, or specifically want to see) as well as check in about how folks feel about romantic relationships. I think the most important part of the safety tools is the safety talk at the start of game. I ask everyone to commit to treating each other with love and respect for the next four hours and when the agree, I thank them and say that if there’ any content in the game that is making it unfun for them to let us know in any way that feels comfortable and we’ll take it out.
- Message – Each Tomb Raider adventure includes a message at the start that highlights the critical facets of the mystery. Normally you read it at the start of the adventure, but since this was a one shot I wanted to read it before character selection/creation so everyone had a good idea of what the adventure is about. In this adventure, the Seekers receive a message from Lottie Crow, a water protector and Land Back activist from Cedar Hollow. “Enemies we share have descended like the wolves they are. Rumor now is that they’re after The Witch’s Heart…“
- Character Creation (selection) – We have ready made iconic characters for our one-shot adventures. These are the characters you see on the cover of the game:
- Jonah (he/him), the Companion (played by Tom)
- Kraken (he/she), the Hunter (played by Josh)
- Rusty (he/him), the Scholar (played by Rae)
- Crash (she/her), the Creator (played by Sophie)
- Normally character creation would involve selecting a name, aesthetic, core move, and playbook move, but those were preselected for the iconic characters. Everyone picked playbooks read them over, and then introduced themselves to the rest of the group. Note: In a full game we would also pick a Team Playbook (Conspiracy Breakers, Raiders of a New Age, etc) but in a one shot, we’ve got enough going on that we forgo this. This is the same technique I use when running one-shots in Blades in the Dark. The crew and come afterward!
- Bonds – Once the characters are introduced, each of them ask bond questions to the other seekers and add bonds to their character sheets. Here’s a few of them that I remember:
- Jonah asked Kraken – In order to save many we had to leave someone important behind. Why wouldn’t you let me go back to rescue them? They had to leave behind Opal, Lottie’s mother, to ensure the safety of the rest of Cedar Hollow. Kraken held Jonah fast and said they couldn’t take the risk of slowing down!
- Rusty asked Jonah – I asked you to teach me about love, why am I a difficult student? See every 80s movie about a guy who asks his best friend about love advice and eventually realizes it was his best friend all along! Jonah kept trying to say he loved Rusty but instead just gave general advice like “Speak from your heart.”.
- Kraken asked Crash – You were there when I was at my most dangerous and frenzied. What did you do to bring me back from the brink? Crash projected a magnetic field that helped sooth the nerves. Magnets. They are magical!
- Crash asked Rusty – You were there when I created my most dangerous Invention. How did it hurt you and why don’t you hold it against me? Rusty doesn’t mind that Crash hurt him because the magnetic polarity helped Rusty with a breakthrough. It helped capture the resonance of prayer. Rusty now hears voices (other people’s prayers?) but doesn’t want Crash to know!
Hour 2
We took turns reading the Legend of the Spearfinger’s Heartbreak. A story told to one of the Seekers by their grandfather about a witch they called Giga who cut out her own heart and turned it to stone rather than leave he home and die on the Trail of Tears.
Journey so Far: In a standard game of TR, the adventure starts with the Seekers looking for truth and finding the Final Tomb. In a one-shot, they start with one Truth already and begin just outside the Tomb’s entrance and ask a few questions about how they got this far on the journey:
Who is your ruthless Nemesis seeking The Witch’s Heart?
The Edenvale Family, global elite ecofascists who murder and the exploit through mythic artifacts.
How did you make it through the mountains and reach the Tomb of Spearfinger?
We searched extensively with our friend Lottie Crowe through cave systems in the mountains, discovering long-forgotten hideouts used by tribal members to avoid forced removal in the 1830s.
What price did we pay to learn a part of the Truth?
Our Nemesis disrupted a sacred festival of Cedar Hollow, dishonoring the land and stealing precious medicines from the community.
We talked for a long time about what this would be and eventually decided they cut off healing waters that went to Cedar Hollow for a cosmetic spa treatment for the uber-rich. In the now drained river bed the Seekers found their first Truth: an abalone shell smudge bowl with an inexplicable, ashen hole in its center, shaped eerily and precisely like an anatomical heart
First Action Phase
The scene opened with the Seekers stepping precariously from stone to stone over a still and black lake surrounded by fog. As they got close to the lake edge the could barely make out the figure of Lottie standing beside the tomb entrance, a archway formed by a gnarled oak.
Suddenly, as if the Tomb noticed their presence, the sounds of drum beats and high-pitched ululation echoed through they valley, a flock of ravens flew overhead, and the already dense fog thickened to be impenetrable. Just before their vision was cut off, they saw their Nemesis, the Edenvale family rappel down to enter the Tomb. They had to reach the tomb and keep Lottie safe, all while deprived of their senses!
Kraken called out to Scout, the most athletic of the Edenvale siblings to challenge her. And that is when I got to ask the most delicious establishing prompt: You and Scout once fought as an undefeated tag team in an underground fight club. Why did you break Scout’s heart and leave them to face your greatest enemy alone?
It turns out Kraken knew he was the best. He didn’t need Scout or the underground fight club to tell him. Otherwise unblemished, Scout now has an scar on their face from the fight she faced alone.
They taunted each other back and forth, and Kraken’s goading was enough for Scout to shout back and draw the tombs attention to the Edenvales for a moment, clearing the fog so Crash has an opportunity to get the rest of the team to shore. The only downside was that doing so meant Kraken and to abandon her team to face Scout head on! [Mechanically this was an Intuition Question about how to address the tombs defenses followed by a Take Control action with a 4-5 result]
Crash didn’t miss a beat. She fired a grapple arrow at the tree and pulled her companions along with her to the shore. Most notably, Cordelia Edenvale had expected Crash to use some magnetic device (magnets are her thing) and she planted an electromagnet that would repel Crash’s arrow (and other tech), but Crash swapped the polarity of her arrow and it was drawn to the tree instead! [Mechanically that was another intuition question “what is everyone else missing” followed by a Forge the Path action with 6 result].
Crash not only found a way to the shore, she also discovered a secret passage through the roots of the tree that bypassed some of the tombs first outer defenses.
Hour 3
It was cold—deathly cold—inside the Tomb of Spearfinger.
In the tree roots, Jonah noticed that while the were not being attacked, they were being surrounded by rattlesnakes, seeming to defy gravity as they slithered on the walls and ceiling of the small tunnel. He tried to reflect on what he learned in Cedar Hollow and from Lottie and burned sage in the smudge bowl to show respect for the spirits. The ash that trickled out of the bottom revealed a path forward as well as an strange arrowhead surrounded by snakes. He made a quick lunge and snatched the arrowhead up before the could strike but unbeknownst to him, a rattler had wrapped itself around his leg and bit in fiercely. His shin gaiters protected him from the worst of the bite, but Jonah’s pride was hurt and he took on a stony disposition after this. [Mechanically he was Traversing the Tomb and elected to gain one truth but pay the price].
Ahead they saw a ladder of roots that they could descend down into the tomb… where they could hear Karen and Scout facing off.
There was a bunch of posturing, threats, and promises to show who is best. Kraken by all means was in tip top fighting condition, but Scout had genetic engineering, performance enhancing drugs, and a three year grudge on their side. She pulled out an collapsible staff and pole vaulted across the room to drop kick Kraken in the chest and send her flying. When the stars cleared Kraken saw Scout with the pole raised high, ready to cave in Kraken’s chest.
When death seemed inescapable, this place of death and rebirth came to Kraken’s aid. The spirit of his mentor Diwalla appeared and grabbed hold of the staff and held fast against Scout’s fury. Just at that moment the mulchy floor gave way and Kraken went tumbling down, wounded, fatigued, and now merciless! [Mechanically rather than give Kraken her just fictional positioning where he could have tried to Take Control or Face and Enemy, I just spent a Trouble to use Scouts move “Overpower an enemy with almost inhuman strength”. I also combined it with “Use sports equipment to dominate a competition”. At Scouts mercy, I told Josh that Kraken would need to Defy Death. It’s a mean move, but TR is meant to be deadly. Josh used Kraken’s playbook move “The Hunt in Duet” to have the spirit of his mentor appear, granting him +1d from the move and allowing him to answer yes to the move questions “Are you facing this danger alongside someone else?”. Despite having four dice, Josh got a 4-5 result suffered some serious consequences. Kraken took 1 condition when overpowered by Scout, and then two more in order to “reach for the truth—take a bad hit but gain on Truth”.
Just before the floor collapsed Kraken noticed a corn bead necklace that was stained with blood around Scout’s neck. She grabbed for it and was overwhelmed by images of past violence that Spearfinger experienced! That’s when Scout sent a blow to Kraken’s solar plexus and sent the Hunter flying! [That was the truth…and the cost]
Hour 4
With the aid of Crash’s tech, the Seekers were able to catch up to their Nemesis. Cordelia Edenvale using the electromagnetic device had inadvertently given Crash the means to track them! [Crash used Listen to the Tomb to spend a map token and catch up].
The two teams met up in an underground field surrounded by dead corn stalks. On the bleachers at the side of the field were several skeletons holding rotted wooden stickball sticks. As the living arrived, the spirits of the dead animated, incorporeally stepping out of the physical remains to take the field. The Oak Root stickball team was not going to let the Seekers or the Edenvale family pass without facing them in a game of stickball!
Meanwhile Cordelia, who never plays fair, grabbed hold of Lottie and held a knife to her throat. She reasoned that the tomb would let an Native person into it’s heart and it was probably better if she was alive…but not necessary!
[Mechanically there were two threats here. The team had to Decipher the Tomb and solve the puzzle of the stickball game and protect Lottie from Cordelia. They had to divide their efforts to face all of the challenges, namely:
- Tools at Hand – The opponents on the field are outfitted with sticks of strong hickory with elastic nets of sinew. The only sticks available for the PCs to use are old and worn-out, the leather netting cracking and falling apart.
- Little Brother – An enormous spirit opponent rushes forward, face contorted into an otherworldly snarl. The powerful challenger demands to be faced directly.
- Obfuscating Fog – The fog churns, cloaking shadowy figures moving around the edges of the field. A barrage of fist-sized leather balls rains down on the field of play from out of the fog, and the shadowy figures’ ululations rise and fall with the speed of their attack.
- Bullies Three – Opal, thought lost was here and in possession of the game ball but is cornered by three restless spirits. The spirits are responding to Opals’ powerful emotions, their behavior both magnificently furious and devastating.
Here’s how the Seekers responded:
- With permission from Rusty Crash affixed Rusty’s talisman (a fragment of a mythic artifact) to an arrow and shot it through the Bullies Three. The mythic powers sufficient to sting the spirts and set Opal free! [Mechanically, spent 1 Gear to to add 1D to the move]
- Jonah’s pack always at the ready was converted into expert stickball nets so they could face the Oak Roots [Also spent 1 Gear to to add 1D to the move]
- Kraken guided by the Tomb, and the story she heard from Lottie, squared off to face Little Brother [Spent 1 Lore to add 1D to the move]
- The voices of life, death, and rebirth (one voice decrees a victor, another the strangers prove their mettle, another says they may die and be reborn) – prophecies of Three Witches. Then Little Brother called out Kraken to fight him… and Scout stood by Kraken’s side! [We added up their dice (3d6) and rolled to Decipher the Tomb. They got a 4-5 so they had one more challenge to face to solve the puzzle (Little Brother). They also gained a truth whispered by the Tomb]
- Rusty alone faced Cordelia, which allowed me to ask another establishing prompt “You ran into teenage-Cordelia a few summers back on a deep sea fishing excursion in pursuit of an artifact. What do you remember about her that chills your bone marrow even now?” Without missing a beat, Rusty recalled how Cordelia expected the expedition to fail and for all of them to have to resort to cannibalism. She had picked Rusty as an unwilling partner and made plans to murder and devour the others. Luckily, it didn’t come to that, but he remembered her casual ruthlessness…which also meant she remembered his sentimentality (or at least his basic regard for human life). Rusty pulled a revolver he barely knew how to use and held it at her, this time his hand was still “Let her go Cordelia. I’ve changed since you last saw me, I’m not as soft as I was before.” She called his bluff and he had to fire, a shot right into her shoulder. She slumped back and Lottie broke free. [Rusty used threat to Take Control and got a 4-5 result. I told Rae the price to maintain control was firing the gun…so he did it. He also elected to give up a valuable secret for the Truth]. A fog with a mind of it’s own pass through Rusty to show him the violence that had been done here and then to Cordelia to show her the same as well as the memory it had lifted from Rusty!
The made their way to the Heart of the Tomb, a seven sided hut and on each side the drawings depicted stories one of the seven Cherokee clans. In the center was a glowing light that held Spearfinger’s Heart within. They worked together to connect all the Truths they had found so far to the facets of the mystery and determine the Final Truth:
- The abalone shell smudge bowl was the link to the Three Sisters.
- The arrowhead pointed to the tomb of Spearfinger so it’s not forever lost.
- The corn bead necklace stained with blood was a tool used by the Three Sisters to change Giga’s past into instructive (but dangerous) visions.
- The fog that carried memories of violence was an emanation from the Witches’ Heart. It was the Tears of Spearfinger.
- The voices of life, death, and rebirth were a prophecy that even though Spearfinger lost her visions of the future, the Three Sisters gained the gift of prophecy.
Their Final Truth was that the witches and the cycles of Life, Death, and Rebirth, would continue to carry on Giga’s visions, but someone had to risk their own life to claim it. Jonah did not hesitate, he reached forth to grab the Frozen Truth. [They got a 6 result on Discover the Truth so they only had one more complication to face.. in this case it was Death itself].
Jonah took hold of the the Heart and proved himself and his companions worth. Despite experiencing the horrible suffering that Giga (Spearfinger) did, he held his ground and Lottie and Opal helped the Seekers escape while the tomb itself collapsed around them [Mechanically the last challenge was to Defy Death. Jonah got 6 so he did so and pushed forward. Choosing to gain aid from an ally (Opal and Lottie) and to ensure the safety of the others.]
Wow, that was a lot, but it was an action packed adventure. So glad the Seekers prevailed and returned the Spearfingers Heart to the people of Cedar Hollow.
What worked really well
- Bond questions. The characters grew together so well. There were so many complicated relationships, I would have loved to see how they carried forward in we played more.
- Establishing prompts. Just perfect. They helped frame every interaction. I really came to know who Scout and Cordelia were but hearing the response to the prompts!
- The intuition questions were so great for both the players and me! They helped me give suggestions about how the Seekers could go about overcome seemingly impossible challenges.
- Spending Trouble is great. It’s a wonderful way for the Keeper to pull out some new death defying challenge without feeling like they are just being cruel and unfair to the players. Josh seemed pretty happen even though we nearly sent Kraken into Shadow Self!
- Sophie’s determination to catch up with the Edevale’s was great. I had this gut instinct to fight it and make it so they didn’t find them till the end, but everything in the game told me to let her hard work pay off and I’m so glad I did! It was great to see them face off at the Stickball game.
- The path and entrance descriptions were so much fun. Walking over the fog drenched lake. Love it.
Areas I felt challenged
- Time in general. I kept trying to find ways to move things along but many of the moves generated multiple costs or complications or questions to activate (i.e. asking an establishing question before the move goes off) or based on the outcome (i.e. a 4-5 result plus getting a Truth). I don’t think this is a problem to be solved by changing the mechanics (they worked beautifully). I think with practice I could shorten the early sections to leave more breathing room at the end.
- The Witches Three were a facet and so they had to be connected to the truths. I wish I had used one of their moves to bring them into the story a bit more. It still worked, but they were only present as a voice or memory.
- I felt a few of my scene transitions were rough and part of that was because I was using the Traverse the Tomb move the wrong way. It shouldn’t have been how they made it to the puzzles, it should have been used when the arrived in the puzzle areas to learn about them.
- I also missed asking the revelation prompts when the players described solving the Stickball puzzle.
- I really wanted a “what do you do now?” question at the end, but Huzzah, Rae has written one now so next time I run this I’ll have it 🙂
