Last Friday, just gone, we completed our playtest campaign of Wyrd Sword…
The aim of Wyrd Sword, as a Basic Roleplaying based ruleset, was to make a Fantasy version of BRP fun and easy to play, that still stuck to it being BRP. After x sessions and just over a year of online play, where the players whould chase me up about the next session, i think we’ve managed that.
Our exploring the Borderlands of the Realm game, saw the characters Joan Diameter (a magician) and Ulric Strongheart ( a barbarian warrior) roam the unsettled lands just north of the town of Timberley. Both are premade characters designed to test the game’s power systems, Magic (Joan) and Martial Arts (Ulric). But Adrian (Joan) and Tony (Ulric) made them thier own and played with great enthusiasm!
During the exploration of five toyboxes (freeform adventures), the characters did the following.
Defeated Cat Mummies who had taken over a border watch tower, banished a Warp Demon who had escaped its prison in a Crystal Henge, took Magic Mushrooms at a Cat Cafe for Witches, fought an overzealous priest of Father Death and his zombie helpers, negotiated successfully with a group of revolting loggers, defeated a trio of Warp Priests who stood atop an ancient ziggurat firing off corrupting beams of energy from their Warp staves, fought and killed the crusading Brother Knight (and Ulric took his plate armour), fought bandits disguised as merchants, put a disturbed ancient king back in his barrow, fought a rabble of Goblins who attacked them at camp, defeated the giant eyeball monster created by a local wizard, regrettably slew a young lad who corrupted by the Warp spat Weapon Snakes at them, fought a Warped One who would be Count on the top of an ancient hill aided by Three Wyrd Sisters.
The campaign ended after twenty-two online sessions with the discovery of the Tower of the Starshine, which was the original quest of our duo of plucky heroes, Joan (the Magician) and Ulric (The Barbarian). They avoided fields of zombie serfs with skill and guile, and through clever use of the characters’ powers (Joan’s magic spells and Ulric’s Wolves Ways martial arts), they brought down the horned, double-axe-wielding Warped One! Dan Barker has captured this climactic battle on the cover of the main rulebook, as Joan (on the left) and Ulric (on the right) fight the Warped One Lord Worton (in the middle).
We brought the game to a halt, with the characters in possession of a big chest full of silver coins and ancient scrolls. Enough treasure and knowledge to set themselves up as rulers of the area around the Tower of the Starshine. But that’s for Season 2 and will need me to write some rules for Ritual magic and Domain control, as well as Battles, all the sort of things I’d include in an Advanced Wyrd Sword book
So for now the sun sets on Ulric and Joan, and I’ll get on with finishing off the main rulebook for a release before Christmas.