Riftwalker Campaign - Overview and Thoughts (Sessions 1-4)
How It Began
Over 2022, I wrote and designed a full tabletop roleplaying game. This was bigger than my Roll For games (to get an idea the draft document was 96 pages). I never was able to get a group together to start play testing the game. I knew this went against my rules of immediate play test - see my thoughts on that here. But I have been finally able to get a group together. I have actually found myself less “attached” to my original design then expected, which is great! This was the group I have been play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition with online. When they asked to start a campaign of that game, I was tired of the intricacies and extreme rules depth of the system, and floated the idea of getting the group together to play my new game Riftwalker.
These blog posts will outline the session recaps and the play test journey as a sort of log. I hope this is interesting to you all and find some learnings in the journey of writing and playing a game of this magnitude.
Overview
The Setting
Riftwalker is thematically a game about diverse characters who have come from many different worlds. They will explore many different worlds and time periods to tell stories and overcome challenges. There they will combat unique creatures and socialize with interesting NPCs. The original intention of the system was to allow a universal “hub” world that the player characters (known as “Riftwalkers”), could access many different “worlds”, “times” and places; every session. This wild allow variety for me as a games master and the same from the players end. I wanted a narrative structure that could allow me to to use all from my different adventure sources and other games systems I have collected over the years.
The System
The system is something I have built upon many different sources of inspiration (often the wellspring of all creative work). It is a d6 dice pool system where players roll the number of d6s in a a thematic attribute “pool” needed for a check to succeed. If a single 6 comes up, then they succeed. More 6s means more successes. From this core system, I have allowed players universal picking of abilities from lists to create custom archetypes. This includes rules where the core rule is easier for them, unique rule ‘breaks’ for characters and powers. Powers are rolled for a player that means instant success. The intention overall was something quick and simple, that would allow players to feel powerful, while minimising unnecessary bookkeeping. I intended for players and game masters (known as the Riftmaster) to talk with one another about the appropriateness of a certain pool and intention of an ability, to come to a quick resolution. Everything is taken in turn order and we move between combat, narrative scenes, trackers that are used to show large scale time passing and between session downtime. Damage can cause critical injuries and comes form the same pools that checks are made from. There are meta currencies and dark influences that players can draw from. I won’t go into too much detail here on all of the rules minutia, as that is the purpose of the play test.
The Campaign
The Riftwalkers
Our campaign focuses around a group of heroes that all were pulled into the Rift Plane (the world between worlds of sorts). They were from the ‘Old World’ (original Warhammer Fantasy universe). After investigating an issue in the town - they found a creature attacking not of this world, and before they could react, they were pulled into a rift… The characters all have a ‘Bond’ someone they know that can allow them the use of a re-roll dice. The campaign outline outside of the first few sessions, has been indicated to the Riftwalkers that many ‘totems’ will need to be found across the worlds to save the Rift Plane from an encroaching darkness.
Note all images are credited in drawing. Used for Fair use for our character ideation only.
Ralph - The Carpenter
Role: The Warrior - Extra dice when Melee attacking and can heal themselves after taking damage.
Powers: Can jump, grow large and smash things.
Abilities: Can move heavy stuff, and knows all the skills of a carpenter. Fights with a large hammer
Bond: Khazgan
Esbara - The Elvish Forest Dweller
Role: The Support - Extra dice when assisting others and can heal others when they take damage.
Powers: Can Bolster, defend and soothe
Abilities: Woodland empathy, spiritual leader and natural understanding. Fights with a shortbow.
Bond: Zadymka
Khazgan - The Dwarven Rogue (and Small the Frog)
Role: The Skilled - Extra dice to ‘Speed skill checks’ and can gain additional dice when ‘focussing’
Powers: Can avoid death, cause a lot of pain and quickly attack
Abilities: Can sneak, pick locks and be acrobatic. Fights with a Spear filled hunting bow.
Bond: Ralph
Zadymka - The Ice Warrior-Mage
Role: The Controller - Extra successes on powers and can refresh all power dice once per day.
Powers: Can emit an ice aura, control the weather and reshape the environment with ice
Abilities: Can do minor ice magic. Fights with a magical flail
Bond: Esbara
The Sessions
So far we have had 4 sessions of my new table top roleplaying game Riftwalkers. Play testing the rules and seeing where the story takes us. We had a Session were we set out expectations of the game, built characters and talked about boundaries of the players. I wish we had set out more information of my thoughts around doing more world hopping.
Session 1 - Welcome to the Rift Plane
They group found themselves in a nightmare with a strange hooded figure. Telling them their worst nightmare. They awoke to find themselves in an abandoned town where an old man with pink shorts and a turtle vest took them in and gave them a lay of the land (so to speak). They were told they would never go home and to make a good life here. There are ways to travel to other worlds officially and unofficially. The were offered work to steal something for him in a world, but decided not to take it. Being suspicious of the old man and the 2 pairs barely knowing each other, they instead they set off to the major city Rift Plane Alpha. On the way the visited a solar pine forest and fought some mutated creatures (looking like Golem from Lord of The Rings). Some choice ranged attacks of the hunters in the group, the creatures were quickly slain. They were let in and brought to their government issued 80s style apartment. The city is mega and full of many creatures from across all of the worlds. They ended the session hearing the roar of an enormous creature.
Session 2 - Hunting the Sad Beast
Rushing downstairs, the little robot concierge that took them in asked them to help the Rift Guards who ask for volunteers to join the hint to slay the beast coming for the city. The head of the Hunter’s Guild Johannes took them out and told them that great creatures exist from the big rift incursions many years ago. They came across the poor giant sad beast (looking like a Star Wars Bantha or the Pokemon Pilloswine). Khazgan was absent for the session and so went off with the Hunter’s Guild leader to lay traps if needed. Being very large and it could burn the ground with acid the group took the safer approach to lure the beast back to its home in the Great Canyon. Ralph enlarged himself, throwing sticks to lure the creature in the right direction. Esbara distracted the creature and took some heavy blows from it. Zadymka threw up ice walls to get it on track. Eventually they got closer to the canyon and found a dark mutated sorcerer was controlling it. It spoke mentally to Esbara teaching her and the group of the ‘Corruption’ of the Rift Plane. Leaving a bad taste in the mouths of the adventurers, they headed home to rest.
Downtime:
Zadymka - Learnt of a twisted Bone staff that was collected during the fight with the sorcerer - that can be harnessed with corruption
Ralph - Did some work for the local carpenter
Esbara - Met with the Doomsayers to learn of the Corruption, Fate and the former evil ruler of the Nega World and can learn more from the Alpha Council
Khazgan - Began training his Speed pool.
Session 3 - Who Killed The Doomsayer Priest?
Esbara and the group were called down to the Talisman Tavern to help the Doomsayer Priests with a murder of one of their own. After much interrogation of many of the local patrons, they formed a shaky alliance with an individual from the mysterious Venture Syndicate. After finding some evidence of a hidden blade, corruption in the establishment and some hidden motives, they traced the murderer to a mutated squirrel person missing an arm. In the battle the Venture Syndicate worker was slain. A stronger bond was formed with the Doomsayer Cult and the party acquired some mysterious healing white powder. The session wrapped with the party finding some scrambled writings of this priest who found out that 10 mysterious totems are hidden and linked to the many worlds connected to the Rift Plane. Evidence seems to suggest they might learn more from the Old man they met with the turtle vest. Khazgan and Zadymka got to know each other a bit more, and Esbara was shaken after nearly seeing the death of child. Ralph was absent for the session and so went off to meet the current lead carpenter of the city.
Downtime:
Zadymka - Did some Carousing, ending up in prison and making off with a magical set of pocket watches
Ralph - Did some community service for the local kids building
Esbara - Began training her Speed pool.
Khazgan - Continued training his Speed pool.
Session 4 - A Day on the Town
Before the team decided it was time to hit the town and see the local sights, they finished up their down time sessions. In finishing up their training, Esbara and Khazgan avoided a knife throwing contest and fight with a drunken town fool. Meeting up with the others they visited the local Carpenter who told them about a legend of a great shark n the Ocean world, and how to get to it through the blended world settlement. Heading to a Magic Imbuer, the crew gave some of their gear a power up. They then went to a dodgy Hacker and cyber punk shop to get some illicit weapons. He mentioned the crew could find out the entrance to the desolate dreadnaught ship in the Future world through a terminal in the city behind Infinity Tower. The crew got some cool reading done at the local obscure book market. They got to know each other in the Korker’s Kanteen over some mediocre food. They all got an identity card and gained some maps from the Central Bureaucracy Building. They then had a drink at the local Merchant bar to hear some rumours about other legend entrances in the Planar Elevator near Infinity Tower, an entrance to the Gloom world through a mirror in the city morgue to hunt an undead unicorn, and the the old ruler of the blended Ocean world is now the Grandmaster of Alpha Council.
Downtime:
Zadymka - Research their bone staff.
Ralph - Community Service.
Esbara - Training their Speed pool.
Khazgan - Training their Speed pool.
Takeaways
The Campaign
The party does not seem very interested in world hopping at the moment. They seem more interested in getting to know each other and Rift Plane Alpha. This is totally fine, but just different from my initial expectations. I have found it fun to use spiral campaign building to build out information as the players discover it. I am challenged as always to find the best place to store and connect all of my information. It has moved a little slower than my initial thoughts, but honestly, I see this a good thing in retrospect. I am enjoying the characters and seeing the different type of players. We have rules minutia people, bug backstory people and narrative people. We even have one who wants to be pointed at a goal and just given more direction in general.
The System
The system is much more robust than I initially thought. The core mechanic is sound.
The maths of the original game looks something like the below:
NUMBER DICE vs CHANCE OF SUCCESS
1 - 17%
2 - 31%
3 - 42%
4 - 52%
5 - 60%
6 - 67%
7 - 72%
8 - 77%
9 - 81%
10 - 84%
This means that finding every little benefit you can is needed to heighten the chance of success. It also helps with the concept of niche protection between characters. Things I like in my RPGs. I regionally envisioned people using more abilities like Focus, Assist and finding ways to make tasks Easier to gain benefits to rolls. This has happened only rarely so far. I might need to eventually consider removing all these things and just increasing the base number of dice people have in their separate pools.
I have considered changing the success number to include a 5 (with a consequence potentially), but knew this would throw all the math right off. It is something that might be changed in the future, but would have major impacts on the rest of the mechanics.
Our player who plays Esbara is a Support Character which means they get a bonus to Assisting other characters on checks. She has not used it a lot. For me playing support characters are my love and helping others succeed at checks is what I find most fun. I kind of think that players in this group prefer to do their own thing on their turn and individually succeed. This might be something that needs tweaking, but will leave for now. (I have my eye on it).
I have mostly had conversations around tweaking wording to find the correct intention of specific powers/abilities and when they should be activated. An example might be Esbara’s power: Healer - When someone takes damage, you may use 1 action to heal them up to 2 will power or endurance dice - this reads as if it happens in reaction to the damage being taken when I originally wrote it with intention that it can be used on Esbara’s next turn. Little things like that.
Trackers have been simplified. They were originally designed to have the total number of original separate successes add an extra dice to the final check. See original rule below:
A tracker will be used in appropriate circumstances throughout the game. They represent the characters needing to have multiple successes to be successful at an abstract task. Time is usually a factor in determining these successes.
A tracker will work by the RM stating how many successes a group will need to complete a task. This will indicate the size of the tracker (examples above for 3 and 5). The RWs will take turns to make checks that will work towards the goal they are wishing to attain. They will move up the tracker if they are successful, and down if they are unsuccessful at their respective checks. RWs may not attempt the same in-game action as another. Each RW must take the same number of turns, unless the end of the tracker is hit. After moving up and down the track, one RW will make a final check on behalf of the group to see if they have enough successes to complete the task. Their spot on the track will reflect the modifier to the dice roll that the final RW makes. The RM uses the total number of steps to adjudicate what the outcome of the successes are. For example, if the party fails their check, more time may have passed if there are more steps. And so, the consequences are worse. The RWs may make their check at any time. The more time you spend the better your chance at making that hard roll that will require multiple successes. Even if you succeed, your number of steps will indicate the passage of time (as appropriate) but extra successes, may reduce this.
This has instead been changed to make it, that each original success, reduces the number of successes needed in the final check. This is much more attainable. See above on the original success measurement rate.
The major change I made is how enemies work. I have made all enemies work with player facing rules, like other challenges in the game. Meaning that players now roll to defend against incoming attacks and abilities, rather than monsters rolling to hit them. This became apparent when the Sad Beast had 25 dice to roll to attack the players. This was done to show the significance of the beast in its size. What it meant in practice for me was a lot of unnecessary rolling, as with 20 dice in endurance, the beast would just statistically hit with needing a 6. Changing this would mean less stress on me and more engagement from players. I wanted to make sure that 2 things would still be intact while keeping things player facing. 1) that monsters difficulty could measurably affect players 2) that the damage they took would still affect their ability to make attacks, just like players.
I am now trying that a monster will have a threshold of stats that means your pool may reduce a dice for every x number the monster has in that sort of check, up to a certain amount is no effect but potentially every 4 it has in its stat is a reduction to that sort of attack. Final note is that I think that if an attack has an additional condition, like a mind blast that does damage and tries to hold you in place: each success you roll will counter 1 of this things: ie 1 success for the hold and 1 to avoid damage.
- might for melee
- Speed for ranged and area of effect
- mind if magic
- social for battle of wits / intimidation etc
For example:
Ralph gets attacked by a bear with 8 might dice would need to have a -2 to might to parry the attack. If Ralph rolls no successes, then the bear hits for standard damage. This I knowing that as the bear takes damage, the reduction to pools are not as much as their score reduces.
So far I am enjoying myself and will keep you updated!
