Mythic Bastionland: The Barowia Campaign

This is an account of my ongoing Mythic Bastionland campaign for anyone interested in running the game but also a reference document for new players joining the campaign and as such won't contain any major spoilers. I will talk about the setup of the campaign (realm creation, houses and the relationship between holdings) without going into much detail. After that I will make use of the notes one of my players took during the season 1 online sessions (thanks Will!). 

Agenda    

• Make the Realm feel real but use dark colours
• Present opportunities to disrupt the power balance
• Even the mundane should be mysterious
• Make the Seers powerful, strange, creepy, obtuse, disgusting
• Lean into the dreamy vibe of fairy tales

The setup

I picked “Wanderer” and “Saga” for start and scope of the campaign with the explicit goal to have the Knights qualify for the final Myth: The Myth of the City. I don't think the last Myth is that interesting in itself, after all the search for the Holy Grail is much more interesting than finding it.

I used the 12x12 recommended grid and followed the realm creation rules concerning the wilderness types (forest, hills, bogs etc.), holdings and landmarks but added or subtracted wilderness types here and there for aesthetic reasons. Then I rolled and added the Myths. I rolled on the d12 spark tables for the landmarks and holdings to give me at least one base level idea e.g. for Karpat Fortress I got “Ornate Bridge” and for Kranach Castle “Pristine Moat”. One monument got “Looming Arch”and another “Bone Reliquary”. I didn't flesh out the ideas quite yet in order to save time, but I changed the Fortress to be near a mountain and the Castle to be at a lake.

The Realm after the three sessions

For the naming convention of houses and dwellings I chose Austro-Hungarian with some German and vaguely Slavic thrown into the mix. 

Machinations

As I wanted to see the domain level play as well I took some time with preparing the sandbox for diplomacy and machinations. In order to create a fragile power balance I decided that there had been a relative recent change of rulership, where changing alliances and betrayals had played a role in toppling the old king. I picked six houses (Barow, Szalai, Karpat and Kranach for the holdings, Masur for the old exiled royal family and Urban an ambitious family without holding) so that every time I had to determine the affiliation of a noble I could just roll a d6. I also picked three neighbouring realms: Waldoch, Svenrik, Altenburg and I wanted both old and new king to have an outside-of-the-Realm territory belonging to their respective families as well. 

Why bother coming up with so many neighbours? Although it wouldn't be relevant until much later in the campaign - when they will have become the rulers of the Realm (assuming we manage to play that long) and will have to deploy diplomacy or wage war - I wanted the bigger picture to be already present, and I'm hoping that the larger world will slowly seep in through the unfamiliar names they come across. Furthermore there are some Myths where neighbouring realms play an important role.

Sir Vladislav of Barow the Banner Knight

I then used the “relationship” and “conflict” spark tables (as suggested by this excellent post on Chris's blog) to establish connections between rulers and rolled on the crisis table to determine whether the holding was troubled (in which case I rolled on the “woe” table) or not. For one relationship I got “estranged peers” maybe they were allied during the war or they were once travelling knights searching for Myths? But what made their relationship “estranged”? 

For the woes I also got some intriguing results: “religious negotiations” which I tied to the bone reliquary and “bloodfeud forgotten” which hints at some dark secret the PCs can uncover in order to influence the power balance of the Realm.

Getting Started

After the sandbox was finished I rolled d4 for the hex on which the players would enter the Realm, in the middle of one of the 4 sides of the grid. Choosing the starting point randomly communicated to the players that this is their sandbox, that they can freely decide what they want to do and that there is no preferred direction, perspective or course of action. The roll determined that they came from the North, which decided the nearest Myths and Holdings. They could have travelled down the river towards the Seat of Power but decided to visit the closest Holding instead: Szalai Keep.