This session actually went really well. We’ve had a couple snoozers walking through the wilderness that didn’t really click.
I think this can be attributed largely to a valuable deposit of information. (Go read the ICI doctrine if you haven’t already). Thanks to the beastman Keoth, The Friends got some good lore, enough to go forward with care.
The Friends and Keoth exit the hills early the next day and make their way into the wider plains. They are now North of Orthos, behind enemy lines. Keoth tells the friends that the beast king of Caskoon and his allied enclaves line the border north of Llamontca Wode with wooden towers. Between the mountains and hills, just north of the center of the forest, the beast king himself camps with his giants and lions.
The Friends decide to avoid them utterly, staying on the border of the forest to the north (such that they might duck in if spotted)
This is a smart move, but they missed out on some cool treasure. I had a neat little system of determining which enclaves were at each camp and what they thought of each other. Could have sewn some dissent in their ranks, but this outcome is also cool.
Walking along the fields is uneventful but tense. They keep their eyes pealed to the south to see if any raiding parties of beastmen come their way. 2 days west of the swamp they find a lake. There’s a brief encounter with some beastmen they haven’t seen or heard about - the aquatic Kaye beastmen. Seeing humans, these beasts flee into the water. The Friends do not persue.
A short way east from there, there’s trouble. They spot a wooden watchtower. Talari’s owl familiar, Corum, flies over and confirms there are beastmen, but the beastmen have noticed The Friends, now without forest cover. They start to flee, but fail the roll, and get intercepted.
The beastmen have giant wasps as allies who arrive first. There is a couple rounds of stinging and Balthazars Hemeshan retainer Enzo succumbs to their stings (poor level ones!). The Friends dispatch the wasps and manage to flee on horse back before the beastmen proper can find them.
There is a short lament for Enzo, but such is the way of the adventurer. They continue on, pledging to return his body to civilisation. (This makes two bodies the friends are carrying - Baronson Rolf and Enzo Alran-mahdi).
Entering the hills but a small distance west of Fort Duvno, the friends turn south. They cross a path leading west and come close to the northern border of Llamontca. The forest seems normal, almost inviting, despite the fact The Friends know it’s cursed. As they watch the woods, the spot something coming through.
A unit of 6 men from Fort Duvno stumble out of the woods. Some of them are wounded. The Friends intercept them and make camp with them while hearing their story. The men entered the woods and got seperate from their unit when they were attacked by a strange squat goat-legged creature calling itself the Korred Kilron. After two days of wandering they managed to escape, where they met The Friends.
Icoriol realises an inconsistency in their story - what they saw as two days was a week in real time. This scares one of the men - they thought the woods were cursed. This also confirms Icoriols suspicion that the woods are under some fae influence. All the better they avoided the woods.
A short trek north the woods converge. The Friends can no longer travel further east without entering the wood. Accoridng to their map they are very close to Fort Duvno, so they risk it. Unbeknownst to The Friends or the players, they’re north of the invisible cut-off for the cursed part of the wood. They emerge luckily unenchanted on the other side in the shadow of Mount Nemnoy. Only a short journey south The Friends at last arrive back at Fort Duvno.
It’s hard to explain the breakthrough I had for sandbox design prior to this session. I realise in retrospect I’m always too concerned with crafting game experiences. I think that’s a little important, but it was so much easier and more satisfying. The best way I’ve found to describe it is my prior process was like:
World idea -> game experience that represents the idea of the world in a fun game way.
Whereas the new method is more like:
World idea -> Description of the world -> Allow game mechanics to create the game experience.
If only my mechanics were better suited to the kind of game I want to run :P Fifth Edition is starting to become hard to handle in these later levels.