So I finally ran Whitehack last night.

So I finally ran Whitehack last night.

Originally shared by Eric Nieudan

Actual play of last night's session of The Keep on the Redemption Lands
(Some rules-y considerations for #Whitehack at the end, feel free to skip the fluff.)

The night started with a Q&A session to generate some basics for the setting. We ended up with a world of islands drifting in the astral plane, which is where the dead go. These floating islands are all linked by a river going through a series of portals. The realm the characters come from is a gerontocracy of Judges, an unforgiving society with few liberties. Freethinkers are cast out or sent away to forced labour. The main cities are called Tribunal and Justice, that should give you an idea.

The Keep, called Penance, is a former penal colony (there's a French pun in there) on the island of Redemption. Most of the garrison there is still indentured but the Keep is open to colonists and explorers - because Redemption has recently been expanding into the astral plane. There are rumours about the fabled continent of the Alchemists, a race of divine beings who may be the world's creators.

With such a high fantasy, multiversal setiup, I let the players go crazy with their character concepts. Anything that could conceivably have been in a setting published by TSR in the 90s was fair game. So we have two Deft monks: one a hengeyokai sohei on a mysterious pilgrimage, the other a proselyte shaolin type who wants to build a golden temple-statue on Redemption. There is also another Deft, a ranger exiled as a result of his involvement with a group of astral smugglers. Our Strong character is a mantis knight from a disbanded order, with plate armour bolted onto his exoskeleton and a slightly alien disposition. Finally, there is a Wise royal explorer, versed in the art of astral necromancy, who happens to be a doppelgänger. Plenty of stuff to work with if these heroes survive the Caves!

Knowing we wouldn't have much time for the game proper, I made a short exploration encounter for the new heroes to cut their teeth. A straight fight, such as the classic kobold ambush on the road, was out of the question with 1st-levels. This mini dungeon is randomly built using Ed Allen's excellent DunGen website, with a touch of Expert random encounters. I can't say much about it since the players only got to the mysteriously abandoned iron foundry. There isn't much to say about the rules in action, since we only rolled a couple times when the PCs started looking for clues.

Debriefing today though, there is an overall sentiment of disconnect between the character creation and the world building processes. The players felt weird investing so much creativity in a characters' vocations, species and affiliations while knowing they might not survive the first session. This mix of old school and shared narrative is what fascinates me with Whitehack, but I understand where the players come from. I probably went too far with the whole 'let's build a setting before we play' thing. Next time, I'll pitch a general idea for the environment, let the players create their characters and ask questions from there.

Two of the players told me the Groups felt confusing. In an old school game, your character sheet has nothing to rely upon and you have to make up what you want to do without looking at a list of skills and abilities. Having these traits on their sheets has been a source of confusion, because they kept looking at their races and vocations wondering how they could use them to solve the situation at hand. I should have explained better.

In any case, we're all happy to keep playing and see where this all leads. I'm certainly looking forward to thinking up the Keep of Penance and the Caves of Astral Chaos.