RiftWalker Campaign - Overview and Thoughts (28-29): Holiday and In-Person Sessions

This week we will be discussing the last two sessions of RiftWalker. Not only are they super fun one-off experiences so far with our group, but they are a turning point for the play test.

RiftWalker Holiday Special - A Yuletide Rift Paradox

A powerful wizard Kris Kringle accidentally opened interdimensional rifts to the wrong spots (to help them in their travelling to deliver gifts), creating a Yuletide Rift Paradox. The group was summoned to investigate and navigate through these rifts to prevent the chaos from escalating. Summoned to The North, they meet Kris, who turns them into appropriately themed characters to help them on their journey.

·  Ralph turns into a juiced reindeer

·  Zadymka turns into a magical snow man

·  Esbara turns into a magical pine tree dryad

·  Khazgan turns into a northern Christmas elf

Rift 1: Frosty's Enchanted Frostbite Gauntlet

Here the group fights a bunch of snowmen statues in a massive snowball fight to overcome the challenge. Pine-bara uses her tinsel to throw a massive snowball; Elfghan shoots nerfguns from the needles within Pine-bara; Ralphdeer headbutts the snowmen; and Snowdymka drops a giant snowball from above. There they see happy versions of themselves in an enchanted mirror.

Rift 2: Twisted Tinsel Forest

Here the group fines some light wisps that try to trick them. They see that Sylvana, the Spirit of the Corrupted Grove, is hostile and negotiate to work with her to stop the corrupted spirits of Gloom World Grove in the future to support her.

Rift 3: Toy Workshop Dimension

Here the group helps finds a massive war happening between two groups of nutcrackers. In the chaos, they see a ragdoll being cornered by a Bear and a Jack-in-the box. They defeat these toys and the doll takes them through the battlefield to find two generals who are arguing with each other. The group negotiates and helps them find out what they would rather be doing, which is fine dining and painting instead.

With the chaos completed, the group travels back to Kris, who gives them all their individual Yuletide wish. Each has a special moment and the tale draws to a close.

RiftWalker In-Person Game – Zadymka’s Last Stand

We got the pleasure of playing in-person. This has never happened for our group.

After resolving our last downtime sessions for the characters, Esbara was tasked by the Doomsayer Priests to cleanse an old, corrupted temple. The group found out along the journey that this was a holy place for the priests. It was built to house some mystical artefacts, a Rift gate with no designated end and some obelisks of power. The group found out through some journals and scrawlings of mad mutants, that it had been taken over during the Great War and was now being used to send the Rift entrance to the Bad Realms. The group found a secret room with some clues to the mystery, some old holy artefacts of the Priests, some beautiful paintings and markings. Finding the Rift glitching out, they didn’t know how to close or destroy it, without bringing forth evil from the other side. They were tempted with many offering of corruption during this adventure, as the temple had been active with dark magics. After finding some scorched and mutated corpses of old priests, the group headed down into the obelisk room.

In this narrow room overlooking burial sites of the priests, there were many mutants that were in the middle of a dark ritual. Some summoned devil bone creatures were blocking the way to a massive growling beast on a narrow pathway. At the end of the chamber was a dark corrupted priest who was completing a ritual to become immortal. It’s goal was to bring forth his dark master from the Bad Realms. The group sprung into action. Ralph did some massive damage to the obelisks and the beast, spinning and attacking with full force. Esbara acted as support and healer in the fight, after turning into a bird to escape a huge fire that triggered her bad memories. Khazgan went invisible and shot the many creatures. Zadymka first intimidated the minions and headed into the boss chamber to unleash the ice. The group found out the leader was immune to damage while the obelisks were up. They had used an artefact found to make their weapons holy, in order to attack the creature. Hammer, axe, crossbow and bird claws all helped in the intense battle.

After Esbara and Zadymka had been taken over mentally, the ritual had only one round left for completion. At this point the two of them were very hurt. Zadymka used his mastery of the dark corrupted magics to use the bone staff. He could destroy the being and the last obelisk. In this act he was further mutated. He grew a large chest eye and a mouth that took up his whole torso. After the dust settled, the companions were greatly saddened by Zadymka’s sacrifice. They all knew he could not come back to Rift Plane Alpha in this further twisted state. They said their goodbyes in a disappointed way. They heard that the rift was rumbling upstairs an the group did not know how to close it. Zadymka’s corruption allowed him to see through it and know he could close it by entering the Rift and destroying it from the other side. Using his new powers, he sent a final farewell to the group and headed through. This collapsed the temple and he promised to try and destroy the evil in the Bad Realms.

Thoughts

• It was so fun to have characters become other fun shapes and forms during the Christmas adventure. This was all said by the players to be the best part.

• I experimented with a little bit of generative AI to get some descriptions of locations and parts of the Christmas adventure. I am still vehemently against the use of AI in terms of replacing human input to creative tasks. Though, it is a tool that can be used for personal prep and help in ideation. AI art has never really worked for me as it is usually pretty bad in outputs!

• Gaming in-person is far superior – I got to use all of my cool gaming paraphernalia. We can talk at the table much easier. Separate conversations can happen at the table. I really miss it! Happy to still keep playing though online as our group lives in different parts of the country.

• We experienced our first ‘lost’ character! It was a truly memorable moment where I took the player aside to tell him what was happening and if his decision to walk through the portal was ok. He then came out and gave a final message to the group. It will be fun to try out the new updated character design rules for his next character!

• We did a formal transition to version 0.2 of the play test. We have incorporated many revisions over the length of the year and this was great to draw a line in the sand for new concepts. More to come on that!