Mythic Bastionland 11 session campaign retrospective
There are very minor Myth spoilers in this write-up.
I had a total of 6 players, but most sessions involved the same 3-4 knights with others coming and going as schedule permitted. There were no player Knight deaths, though several near deaths and a rather dark ending for two of them, leaving them stranded in another strange realm in a near cataclysmic state.
One knight was turned to dust after being stabbed by a desert hag, and was only able to reform after the other knights killed the hag. Another one one-shot by an NPC knight in an honorable duel where the NPC was very angry but not trying to kill him. One squire played by a Knight fell to his death. The two stranded Knights are so far away from the rest of the group that any follow-up campaign would have to follow one group or the other with returning players making new knights to join them.
This was my first hex-crawl sandbox kind of campaign and significantly outside my comfort zone in terms of how I usually prepare. I forced myself to do a great deal of improvisation and for the most part it was fun and worked well.
We began with 6 myths, 3 were completely resolved, 1 reached the final omen but wasn’t really dealt with because the players were busy dealing with the other more catastrophic omen resolving as the Seat of Power was swallowed into the earth leaving a gaping hole behind (two of the players were inside the city and survived this event). Despite the wild odds, one myth was never engaged with. It was never the nearest myth hex, and it was never rolled as a random myth to encounter an omen while traversing the hexmap.
Many of the Myths I randomly selected for the map had some similar or overlapping themes which made it hard for the players to figure out what was going on exactly, but not in a bad way.
I absolutely loved all of the weirdo Seers, playing them was my personal highlight. Seeking their council was often useful but sometimes very confusing for the players because of how cryptic some of them can be. I’m not sure if I obfuscated too much information in my effort to play the Seers as written, as some of them are less than forthright with information which is a bit contradictory to that idea of “the players need good information to make decisions”.
One Myth involved Knights searching for a child, and the myth said they had a Seer with them. I rolled randomly see see which Seer it was, and landed on The Born Seer who is also a child. This was extremely fun for me to figure out in the moment and helped me add quite a bit into an already cool Myth.
The combat overall was enjoyable, but I had difficulty anticipating how hard/easy various situations would be. Some things I expected to be insanely lethal were dispatched with ease, and other things I thought were trivial seemed to be quite dangerous. During a dueling tournament, almost every pair mutually downed each other since those rolls resolve simultaneously, which was hilarious.
All of the Knights, players and NPCs, were insanely evocative and fun to interact with. I love their weird magic items and powers. I yearn to play the game myself and can’t wait to see what Knight I’d get my hands on.
I think in the future if the random Myths I rolled mostly had apocalyptic final omens I might re-roll some of them to give more variety to the stakes, and I also could have emphasized time passing a bit more season to season to space some of this action out. Everything was so damned urgent that it felt like we couldn’t jump ahead because it just made sense for the players to continue directly. We did get one big time skip and I really enjoyed resolving their choices for Pilgrimage/Favor/Service.
Highly enjoyed game. Play it.