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Torchbearer

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 5:04 pm
by Xanthea
As some people might know, I've been trying to put a game of this together for a while now over roll20. It keeps falling through mostly because the various people aren't around ALFA that much and keep showing up at different times. For my own sake of convenience I'm making this post as something I can link back to at a later date.
This is a grim land. Summers are short. Winters are long. The towns are overcrowded. Food is expensive. Guilds control trade. Nobility control the taxes. Priests pray for our damned souls.

Out there, beyond those walls, are beasts, bogies, monsters. They inhabit the forests, live under the fields, dwell in the ruins of our burned-out fortresses. They kidnap the lone wanderer, harry our caravans, and when they are bold, they attack our towns.

This land is wild, untamable, and in it we struggle to survive. We who thought we could conquer it, subjugate it—we are guests here, our days numbered.

Our forebears succeeded in wedging a toehold—a small point of light in a vast, weird darkness. Their hubris led them to believe they had won, that victory was inevitable. But they were wrong. The forests fought back. The mountains rebelled. The seas heaved in protest. Things issued forth from crevices and caves; the foam and fire spat forth a writhing, crawling answer to our fathers’ “conquest.” We fought them. We banished them. We flung spell and prayer at them. But they came like a creeping tide, forcing us steadily back.

So now most of us crowd into our walled towns and make do with what’s been given to us. Some hardy folk brave the long nights and, far behind our defenses, work the soil at dawn. A few of us—those with nothing left—take up torch and sword and stride forth into the dark wilds.

For underneath the roots are the ruins of those who came before us. Layers of foolhardy civilizations crumbling atop one another like corpses. Each thought they could conquer this land. Each failed.

But in failure, they left us hope. They left us gold, artifacts, secrets, knowledge. Those brave or foolish enough to bring back these treasures are richly rewarded. Those successful enough can even can rise above their station.

Thus, we can become heroes.
…if we survive.
Adventurer is a dirty word. You’re a scoundrel, a villain, a wastrel, a vagabond, a criminal, a sword-for-hire, a cutthroat.

Respectable people belong to guilds, the church or are born into nobility. Or barring all that, they’re salt of the earth and till the land for the rest of us.

Your problem is that you’re none of that. You’re a third child or worse. You can’t get into a guild—too many apprentices already. You’re sure as hell not nobility—even if you were, your older brothers and sisters have soaked up the inheritance. The temples will take you, but they have so many acolytes, they hand you kit and a holy sign and send you right out the door again: Get out there and preach the word and find something nice for the Immortals.

And if you ever entertained romantic notions of homesteading, think again. You’d end up little more than a slave to a wealthy noble.

So there’s naught for you but to make your own way. There’s a certain freedom to it, but it’s a hard life. Cash flows out of your hands as easily as the blood from your wounds.

But at least it’s your life.

And if you’re lucky, smart and stubborn, you might come out on top. There’s a lot of lost loot out there for the finding. And salvage law is mercifully generous. You find it, it’s yours to spend, sell or keep.
Torchbearer is a riff on the early model of fantasy roleplaying games. In it, you take on the role of a fortune-seeking adventurer. To earn that fortune, you must explore forlorn ruins, brave terrible monsters and retrieve forgotten treasures.

However, this game is not about being a hero. It is not about fighting for what you believe. This game is about exploration and survival.

You may become a hero. You might have to fight for your ideals. But to do either of those things, you must prove yourself in the wilds.

Because there are no jobs, no inheritance, no other opportunities for deadbeat adventurers like you. This life is your only hope to survive this world.
Generally the way Torchbearer breaks down is that playing is divided up into individual adventures that last about 3-7 sessions. The party goes forth to find a dungeon, spends those sessions dealing with that dungeon, and then returns to town victorious. A few months pass while the party does whatever it does in its downtime, and then they set out again to find a new dungeon. Because of that structure it's fairly easy to switch GMs between adventures (particularly if a PC dies). I'd expect people to stick around for at least the length of one adventure, but if people want to bow out after one is done then the structure of the game makes that very easy to accommodate.

General expectation is playing on Sunday evenings US time. I mostly make this post as a reference point that I can point people back to, but if other people are curious I'm certainly willing to answer any questions here.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:07 pm
by Heero
Sounds super neat. I wish I were more reliable...

Or am I actually pretty darn reliable? Reliably consistent in my inconsistency. Ponder that.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 1:05 am
by Xanthea
A question for the philosophers.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 2:55 am
by HEEGZ
What is the approximate play time schedule?

Also, for roll20 do you use voice chat or text chat primarily?

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 3:17 am
by Xanthea
The last time we played something over roll20 we did Sunday evenings around 5-9ish PST. I'd like to keep to that but some other day/time is theoretically possible if everyone involved was okay with it.

We use voice chat. Webcams not required.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:43 am
by kid
More importantly, can I buy a winged bikini?

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 3:46 pm
by Xanthea
No, but you could possibly loot one off the goblin sunbathers in the "Beaches of Chaos" module.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 9:55 pm
by kmj2587
Yeah, I'm definitely still interested in this if we can get enough people for a group. Only hangup I have is that the old time slot doesn't work for me anymore, as I've made other plans for Sunday evening.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 11:58 pm
by Xanthea
Sure we can absolutely find another time to play instead.

And I'll also note that the three people we need to run this have all been around in the past couple days now. If those three people could make an effort to be around on IRC for the next week or two when possible we might actually finally be able to put this together.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 3:35 pm
by Xanthea
Okay. New time. Brokenbone and kmj are both on board for Wednesday evenings so I'm going to TRY to start this on the 11th at 5pm PST, assuming I can get at least one more person to show up.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 2:33 pm
by Brokenbone
Maybe the materials will simply be posted on our Roll20 group, or if not, at least links to Dropbox or fansites or whatever for enough info to do character creation... unless creation is a sort of collaborative task like in DW.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 3:33 pm
by Xanthea
Yeah we'll do it together when we start. I'll run people through it then.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 3:21 am
by Xanthea
Okay. Pushing this back an hour to 6pm PST Wednesday. We have enough players to run this but I can add up to two more on the off chance anyone else is interested.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 3:49 am
by HEEGZ
I'm somewhat interested. Tomorrow I have a thing though, it's a once a year sort of deal.

Re: Torchbearer

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 4:08 am
by Xanthea
Well like I said this thing runs in arcs and it's pretty easy to stick someone in at the start of a new arc. If we keep playing then you can probably get in on it a few weeks later if you miss this one.