Tales from The Wood (Actual Play)

by **Simon W** » Mon Sep 06, 2004 11:37 am

I never know how to start these, so I'll start with the players and then the premise.

Mark (Gamekeeper & co designer).
Annette (fairly new to gaming; A chinchilla called Princess Chi Chi)
Alyson (Long time gamer; A shrew called Snip)
Me (long time gamer/gm/designer etc; A frog called Bug Eyes)

The premise (unknown to us, of course) was that some gypsies had set up camp on the edge of the wood and one of them had found and captured Oakfellow the Gnome and had put him in a cage in one of the caravans.

The GK started by asking what we were doing and was particularly interested in the Princess Chi Chi (as we had to design a chinchilla from scratch to accomadate Annettes desire to have one!).

The long and the short of it turned out to be that Chi Chi's cage had fallen from a removal van near The Wood (her owners were moving house) and the door sprang open allowing her to leave.

She immediately bumped into Bug Eyes as I decided I was looking for my brother Big Eyes who had left the Marsh ages ago looking for adventure (as he put it).

Aside: Annette did some great role-playing here, first of all acting scared of this strange creature and the weird sounds and smells from The Wood but then afterwards demanding food and "hugs" (picturing her owners hugging her and stroking her fur. I immediately decided Bug Eyes would mis-interpate this as "bugs" and found a few chice beetles and flies and presented them before her, which made her vomit.

Anway, Snip joined up with us at this point and after we tried to find out what manner of creature she was, we decided that Oakfellow would know and went off to find him, in his hollow tree.

Finding that he was n't there, we discovered a trail of man-prints on the ground nearby the tree and a still smoking cigarette (we didn't know what it was, but Chi Chi with her Man-Lore knew it well).

Anyway, we followed the trail to the edge of the Gypsy camp, meeting some belligerent rats along the way, but who were scared off by the aggressive Snip.

At the camp, we scouted around. I used a Luck point to decide that the door to one of the caravans was open and Bug Eyes went inside, finding Oakfellow inside a cage. He nipped back out and told the others who came in.

Luckily, Chi Chi with her Man Lore knew how the cage worked and we got him out, just as the dog outside started barking. We legged it back out of the caravan, with a bunch of gypsies and a dog on our tails.

Snip stayed behind and leapt at the dog, biting his nose and sending him whining away, whilst the rest of us dashed for the woods.Unfortunately the rats had reappeared.

Bug Eyes leapt over the top of them and caried on. Chi Chi climbed a tree and Oakfellow beat them off with his walking stick.

The game was great fun, and lots of good role-playing took place, particularly from Annette through Princess Chi Chi. I know I co-wrote the game, but I would recommend anyone to try it, particularly if your gropu features any females as they seem to appreciate this style of game.

Fire away with any questions you have about this session or Tales from The Wood in general, as I don't feel I can do it justice in a write up like this.

by **Rob Lang** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 2:24 am

by **Simon W** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 7:31 am

by **Rob Lang** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 7:38 am

by **Juicetyger** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 8:19 am

by **Simon W** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 8:57 am

by **Simon W** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 9:03 am

by **Rob Lang** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 9:11 am

by **Simon W** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 9:31 am

by **Rob Lang** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:22 am

Well, I asked my players to check out the link and make honest opinions. I doubt they would take the game seriously at all. To be fair, though, they have trouble taking Icar seriously and that's hard science fiction.

Please feel free to check out their comments, although some of them may be a little frank:

Tales from The Wood (Actual Play)

Tales from The Wood (Actual Play)

Who is online