New lodge
Mechanics conversion & Lodge creation
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ICYMI
This week
We get into the mechanics and build or rather rebuild our lodge. We will touch quite a bit on the conversions I am making to turn this skirmish game into a streamlined solo theater of the mind game. It might be a bit much for some of you , if you rather skip this installment you are welcome to. Those of you that stuck around I hope seeing how I do things as a GM might inspire you or help in some way. Finally for those of you that have created characters I have a treat for you!
Setup
This is probably going to be far longer than some other installments. Again if you aren’t interested in me putting on the GM hat and nerding out then you are welcome to wait until we get into the actual narrative and story proper.
Let's get into it.
Frostgrave is traditionally a miniatures skirmish game. These typically take quite a bit of setup prior to play with all the physical maps and terrain. While I can appreciate that kind of play I am far more interested in the stories that derive from these games.
The gameloop is akin to the game Monster of the Week (MoTW), which pulls inspiration from Buffy and other episodic storytelling. In Frostgrave Instead of a monster each week it's a dungeon/ruin/location the objective normally the find of treasure instead of neutralizing the monster. The formula is slightly different but the frame work is the same. The Scenario break down for Frostgrave.
Scenario
Initiative- who goes first
Wizard Phase- The Wizard and up to 3 soldiers can be activated.
Apprentice Phase- The Apprentice and up to 3 soldiers can be activated.
Soldier Phase- Any remaining soldiers are Activated
Creature Phase- all uncontrolled creatures are activated
Our big changes start here with how we will play the Scenario to feed into this episodic/procedural format further.Mythic Magazine 31 gives us a rules light way to create our characters with descriptors expounding upon narrative combat rules from issue 26. Issue 33 gives us further rules for the clash system and utilizing it for mass Combat. Our Lodge won't have as many members as a Frostgrave warband so our Scenario phases look like so.
Scenario A
Primary- The Dry and up to 2 other Lodge members can be activated.
Secondary- The Rinnel, Scild, and one Lodge member can be activated.
Creature- all uncontrolled creatures are activated.
OR
Scenario B
Lodge- The Lodge is activated
Foes- enemies are Activated
This is will be at my discretion depending on how far into the action we want to zoom. Keeping the focus on the narrative and the outcomes of battle rather than the blow by blow of traditional skirmish games. I rather love the flexibility of the clash system it offers us the choice to play whole scenarios in a single roll if we really wanted to.
You may notice the wording, Primary, Secondary and Supporting. This is a bit of hierarchy pulled from Mythic Magazine #37 article on troupe Play.
This was more so a way for me to split the Lodge in a way that fit the turn order of Frostgrave. Our Primary character, the Dry, the leader of our Lodge. Our secondary characters are the Rinnel and the Scild. Our Lodge is small and will consist of a total of three other members these are our Supporting characters. This hierarchy leads us into our creation and building phase.
Home locations
We will start with the construction of our Landsail and Silo, our home locations. Mythic Procedural Drama setup from issue #26 of Mythic Magazine, has us creating recurring locations that our narrative will occur. Using the added texture of home locations I hope to showcase the importance of the Silo not just to Ysdelfers and the Dry that run them, but also to the larger community and world. I would like to think of the Silo and Landsail as parts of the same whole. So first things first, No good vessel or Lodge goes without a name.
Jeiore or the Fatesong Lodge.
Not sure why this name feels appropriate, but I like it, I'm going to consider Fatesong the name of the Landsail while Jeiore will be used when talking more specifically about the Silo. A name given we ought to describe this place. I already have a few ideas about the Fatesong, but we will also roll a few Descriptors to see if it adds anything unique.
Descriptors
Patchwork Sails,salvaged, and recycled wood
Dishonored and Ridiculed
Now let's see what we roll up.
3 artistic 10 charming
95 unusual 25 enormous
Jeiore the Fatesong Lodge has a bit of history to it, but it has been on the decline for some time, it has barely been able to keep itself afloat in these harsh times. A once charming and unusual sight to behold now held together with scraps and recycled goods. A patchwork of mismatched material, a shadow of its former glory now merely a large empty canteen. A joke of the sands.
I rather like the rags to riches tales of unknown parties and guilds. This narrative will have our new Dry trying to rebuild the Lodge reputation slowly. Home locations require that we add some things to our characters list and our threads list, these don't have to be separate from our adventure list but their context is always the home location. Our characters for the home location will be as follows.
Characters
Dry
Scild
Rinnel
Supporting
Rival
Customer
The primary, secondary characters, and rivals are listed separately while customers and Supporting characters are all grouped together. If we happen to roll either of these then we will roll up the specifics of that option. Now on to generating some threads. Threads should be persistent or important goals to our Home location. There are a few I have in mind but we will also roll on the Action and Descriptor meaning tables.
Threads
Regain Glory- I think this might be the main thread throughout our campaign.
Repairs, Renovation and Maintenance- things break, go wrong and often need upgrades.
Relic Studies- the artifacts of the old world have better uses than being sold.
Ys Ruins- there is a specific ruin the Lodge has laid stake To, this is where our ys is gathered from..
Most of these are recurring now let's roll a random thread
Action
60 Lure 44 Illusion
12 carelessly 2 amusing
I am going to say this is in regards to an artifact.
Object
16 creepy 27 energy
The cloak of mirrors an artifact that produces mirages and illusions.
Our home location is complete! All of these will be added to our Adventure threads and characters list under Home. This saves us a bit of space on our list. I will be weighting the list for now until we gather more things through play.
Settings
The procedural drama setup that issue #26 lays out has us creating a number of recurring locations we have created a few already when we created our Home location.
Jeiore
Fatesong
Ys Ruins
I want to roll a up a few locations but I also really enjoyed some of the places we have created in the past. So here are some hold over locations from past issues.
Market(s)
Jenwah Pits (fighting pits)
Fortune's Mirage (dice hall)
Our last two locations
Colorless useful enthusiastically pale
A place to meet an Underground or criminal contact? VL 2+9+2=13
Jenwah -11 Fortune's Mirage +11? Fortune's Mirage-The Count Room
The Count Room
I'm sure my reasoning for why this place is attached to one of these locations is rather obvious but who doesn't need a few friends in low places.
Active purposeful generously festive
I actually reached out to a few friends about this one. Shout out to
for his input. I'm going to lean into the fact that the world is hard to Travel in, without a guide you can very well die. So our last location is Missive Square, a place where couriers, messengers, and those looking to send packages, letters, and farewells gather.
Missive Square
Home
Jeiore
Fatesong
Ys Ruins
Market(s)
Jenwah Pits
Missive Square
Fortune's Mirage
The Count Room
Alright our reoccurring setting locales are marked down. Now we can get into the members of our Lodge.
Lodge
As our Lodge is a Faction unto itself, albeit a small one. I'll roll up a few Faction descriptors from Mass Combat rules and assign some descriptor mods. We will also take one from our home location.
Dishonored and Ridiculed: Disgraced -1/+1
100 weapon 92 tool: Battlesmith +2
22 defensive 22 defensive: Fortified +3
83 take 98 waste: Scavenger +1
Each of these descriptors apply to all members of our Lodge. We can think of them as teamwork feats, party combos, or Squad tactics. I tried to boil each Descriptor down to one or two word tags for simplicity sake.
We can finally get into characters. I wanted to go over the original stat line for Frostgrave and touch on the changes for our game purposes.
Move: is not something we will need to worry about in this theater of the mind
Fight & Shoot: will be combined into our Abillities and Skills ⚔️ &🗡
Armour: will be converted to a modifier for our Tough (T) 🛡= +1
Will: represents our magic strain (S) ⏳️=-1RS
Health: we will take a page from ICRPG and use ❤️ to represent Wounds as well as any ailments. Each ❤️=5hp
Our Dry starts with the following
❤️❤️❤️|⏳️| 🛡
15hp|-1|+1
The Dry
Dry is a title and I am going to lean into the idea of each Dry having an epithet, these monikers are passed down and with them certain power, a call back to Yrkoon. Our Dry's Epithet is Rector of the Sands. Now let's roll up Name, Background, personality, appearance and description for our character. This is mainly cosmetic detail for roleplay, but can tell us much.
Name: 5 An 13 Brah = Anbrah the Rector of the Sands
Bg: 78 recruited 22 community
Persona: 16 Brave 54 interesting
Appearance & Description: 17 cool 66 intrusive 25 caring 45 intense
My mind goes to an orphanage or street urchin in terms of Anbrahs background. She was found and recruited from the slums of Baaskqir. Mainly for her bravery, and intensity. Cool headed and a bit nosey, but always out of care. Her former Master Rector found her an interesting anomaly, noticing her bent for magic.
Before we continue let's revisit Frostgrave. The Wizards of Felstad have types and there spells are broken up by these types. Here in the Aamsk magic is as vast and varied as the peoples of the world. The expression of their Magic is as personal to them as a fingerprint. That said let's push on.
We'll roll twice on the powers table and twice on the spell effects table to get a base line for what Anbrah Rector is able to do.
⚔️: 96 wall 35 electricity 84 soul 78 protect
🗡: 8 block 3 assist 38 emotion 42 take
How does this work exactly? Well these are our innate abilities, and skills. In our world those touched can do things naturally without disrupting the Arcane web. These aren't grandoise or world breaking feats of magic as it is dangerous to attempt such without an Oathevone. Mechanically speaking this is our word Bank. We will be able to freely combine two words from this list to create our spells, and skills. However, things start to become more difficult as we add more words attempting to create/ combine effects.
Something I love about this set of words is it paints a picture of Storm from x-men in my mind, albeit probably a bit rougher around the edges. I think I'm going to be leaning on the Soul Electricity combination abit in combat lol 😆
Finally we will round this out with a few equipment choices. We have four item slots, with a free slot for a keepsake or trinket.
Hand weapon: Dueling Spear
Shield +🛡
Scroll of Purify [50 hinder 43 illness]
I figure I'll leave one slot open and let our keepsake pop up during play. For now this is what we have for our Dry, Anbrah Rector.
A quick overview of our stat line
Anbrah the Rector of the Sands
❤️❤️❤️|⏳️|🛡🛡|🗡assist,block,emotion,take|⚔️electricity,protect,soul,wall
15hp|-1|+2|assist,block emotion,take|electricity,protect,soul,wall
The Sĉīld
The Sĉīld is simple just like the Apprentice Frost grave and is pretty much the Dry with a few shifts as they are not as knowledgeable. Here is a review of the Sĉīld stat line.
❤️❤️|⏳️|🛡|🗡block,take|⚔️ Illusion,dimensions
10hp|-1|+1|block,take|illusion,dimensions
We kept two words from our Drys word Bank and rolled up two more words. We lose a heart and that honestly is all there is to our Sĉīld's stat line. Now onto the cosmetic stuff for them their Name, Background, personality, appearance and description!
Name: 78 T 63 Oh 94 wah= O'Thwo
Bg: 72 place 23 competition
Persona: 13 bad 24 Competitive
Appearance & Description: 60 muscular 41 heavy, 53 intensely 69 odd
This makes me think O'Thwo is a bit of a sore loser and a rather insufferable winner. Which tends to bode well for someone of his size and stature. A frequent competitor of the Jenwah Pits, O'Thwo is not one to be trifled with.
Equipment wise we are going to lean into the heavy and muscular archetype here. Giving our Sĉīld a two handed weapon.
Two Hand Weapon: War Oar
Amulet of Sheilding +🛡
Is the amulet personal? 9+7=16 Yes
Awesome so we have two open slots on our Sĉīld as the Amulet is actually a keep sake and the Two hander takes up two slots.
And that completes our O'Thwo.
O'Thwo the Sĉīld
❤️❤️|⏳️|🛡🛡|🗡block,take|⚔️ Illusion,dimensions
10hp|-1|+1|block,take|illusion,dimensions
Much easier creating a Sĉīld but now we shall move on to our Rinnel! The runner, courier, messenger, the cultural liaison and ambassador between the nomadic tribes of the sands and those ysdelvers that would do trade.
The Rinnel
We are modeling our Rinnel after the Captain from the Sellsword supplement. Which means we get to change our stat line around we can add a ❤️, or 🛡 to the base stat line. We will take an extra ❤️ in this case.
❤️❤️❤️|⏳️|🛡|
15hp|-1|+1|
The Rinnel like the Captain has access to abilities and feats based on their training. The Rinnel occupies a particular niche however that is similar in function to the Warden of Ghost Archipelago. The tribes and nomads of the Aamsk rarely deal with outsiders, the Rinnel allows Lodges far more freedom in their work. That said we will roll on the Skills and Powers tables, these will be our Rinnels Wisdoms, analogous to a Captains tricks of the trade. These will work similar to the Dry's word bank with less flexibility.
🗡62 military 7 assist 99 weather 78 Rogue
⚔️78 Ranged 9 Break
Unlike the Dry and Sĉīld The Rinnel cannot freely combine words from 🗡 to ⚔️
Our Rinnels Wisdoms taken care of let's look at Name, Background, personality, appearance and description to round out this character.
Name: 14 Col 7 Ar 5 An 30 Fah = Naar Kolfa
Bg: 1 Abandoned 59 Imprisonment
Persona: 73 principled 21 cold
Appearance & Description: 80 scholarly 44 Insignia 84 Ruined 66 Mechanically
I am going to pose a Fate question here to gather a bit of detail before moving forward with the interpretation of these very fitting rolls.
Is Our Rinnel Half-Golem? Likely [6+4+(1)]=11 Yes
Naar Kolfa is one of a scarce few to have been ‘blessed’ by the old world through whatever means. The Half-Golem are men and women scarred by war, Travel, life, through some unknown means regrow these lots parts of themselves. Limbs replaced with some old world tech or other. Some tribes seek to induce this in their Rinnels others shun it vehemently. Naar unfortunately did not belong to such a tribe. Their choice Imprisonment or Exile as a Rinnel.
Equipment is the last thing to choose for our Rinnel. A Half-Golem Exile with a scholarly bent
Ranged weapon: Zefyr Rifle
Keepsake:Insignia Scholarly context 65 Nature 93 Transform
Tribe Name:98 Yah 73 Ren
Carved in the butt of their rifle, and branded above their eye are the Coiling Crystal's of the Yarhen tribe. I'm really liking these characters ☺️
This will wrap up our final character for our Lodge creation.
Naar Kolfa Rinnel Exile
❤️❤️❤️|⏳️|🛡|🗡military,assist,weather,rogue|⚔️Ranged,Break
15hp|-1|+1|military,assist,weather,rogue|Ranged,Break
I won't jump into much beyond the names for our Supporting characters for now. As I will be playing through the gathering of our Lodge as it were, so our last three members we will discover in play. But let's get some names.
41 Iss 72 Rah
9B 37 Hee
80 Tal 68 ow
Some of these look like they could be fun characters already!
Our Lodge created we can move on to the last part of our setup before we get to the fun Reader things!
Recurring Themes
Before we dive into themes let's review the procedural drama setup
Central Dilemma
Settings ✅️
Crew✅️
Themes
Our central Dilemma was briefly touched on in our home location setup, Regain Glory. But I want to make it a bit broader. Rolling on the Action table we get the following
31 Depart 28 Expectation
This Makes me think our Central Dilemma is not simply to Regain Glory, but to Refut Presumptions and Squash Fears. Meaning our Lodge are the underdogs here, the least likely heroes and are constantly on a back foot due to these preconceived notions.
Central Dilemma: Refut and Squash✅️
On to Themes!
Themes are the types of things we can expect our Lodge to deal with and encounter in and out of Scenarios. I have some ideas about themes already but as I like to do let's roll.
16 Carry 93 Value-escort/courier/harvest
33 Destroy 86 Suffering-extermination/curse
37 group 88 Tactic-rivals/tribes/factions
57 Lethal 8 Attainment-Extraction/Heist
These are some pretty solid rolls and we may have more that pop up as we play but I like these for now as they are broad enough for a few interpretations thus recurring Themes!
These were the final major strokes for Setup. We can basically jump into play but Let's look at our Procedural Drama Sheet and Adventure list. I also promised you, my readers a treat.
If you liked reading this, feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏 Thank you.
Reader Lodge
Frostgrave is originally a competitive game where you pit your warband against a friends to attain the treasures and secrets of Felstad. Here in the Aamsk is is much the same, there are bitter long standing rivalries, time tested alliances and everything in between. Even the gravest of enemies might need each other to survive.
That's where you guys come in. I have been trying to formulate the right way of doing something like this for a while now and I think the easiest way is to roll up some Lodge modifiers and a bit of backstory to see if Your Lodge and my own are rivals, allies, or just know of each other. Those that have created characters already will also be added to the character list. This will give us a chance of working together or against each other during our Adventures.
6 Arrive 91 Truce
29 Energy 12 Bold
89 Travel Skilled
3 Allies 59 Quiet
Well I'm sure the dice like me this time around. Not going to roll a Fate Check for this as Arrive Truce and allies Quiet both make me think this Lodge is on the more Diplomatic side. While not openly an ally, they seek cooperation over competition which bodes well for Jeiore. A Roll on the Name table.
63 Oh 17Dah 8 As = O'Dasah Lodge
O'Dasah Lodge is for you the reader! Our Current Members are.
Aschor VahGah created by
Tallee Anje created by
Do you dare to brave the sands of Aamsk? Then make your character, HERE! Drop the results in the comments below.
Fellowship
If you enjoy this format of game I highly recommend checking out the amazing The Peoplz & Dragons YT. The director recently started a new Play by Video Campaign where you can watch your character come to life.
Don't forget to check out my fellow compatriots on the Stack!
writer of is currently getting ready for his Proper Villians game do yourself a favor and read all the Pilots!If you enjoy the world of Stonetop,
the writer of has begun his own story and I must say it is such a captivating tale!If you are in need of some levity in your fantasy
the writer of will have you rolling!