players: Alex, Evelyn, Joe, Lance, Ben

"My character is a humble barmaid."

"Cool. But just a heads-up about the rules, you are allowed to change Roles later on so you may make it harder for yourself to describe how your character could take Power."

"Oh, right. Well how about while I'm walking in the woods I'm consumed by the awakened trees and become the avatar of the ancient earth-power of the realm?"

"… Oh. Yeah. That works."

And that's how we lost half our kingdom to the walking woods. True story.

Cerendiel! Our beautiful kingdom ain't what it used to be. Surrounded by more powerful predatory nations, facing a looming famine and strange happenings in the old forest, our once-magnificent realm is facing hard times.



As always, I'm impressed by how even though there is no mechanical pressure to reintegrate them, the Threats we brainstorm at the very beginning fundamentally frame everything that happens in the game. Students of human nature and game theory, take note.



We couldn't resist the urge to draw a map of our kingdom, which rapidly turned into a "how much of the realm the awakened forest has consumed so far" chart. Very useful.

The Drakemont vs Hawkmoor feud for the throne that emerged during character creation turned out to be another big issue in our kingdom. Joe's Regent character was running a deep game and endlessly trying to provoke the princess (Alex) into taking Power away from him, because that was his whole job: get her ready to take over the kingdom. I think he perfectly epitomized the "power wants the kingdom to survive" idea. He was juggling all these different forces, trying to keep the realm from coming apart at the seams.

My fear that Evelyn's barmaid character would limit her options was, ahem, needless, as Evelyn demonstrated nicely by consuming half the kingdom. The one plot I wish we'd spent more time on was the bond between the barmaid and her unknown father, Lance's corrupt harbor master. There was definitely some rich material there. Did he flee in horror when his daughter became an arboreal demigod? Oh yes he did.

It was also pretty fascinating that we had two entirely different viewpoints about the awakened trees, among the players and the characters. Were they a menace consuming the land or a benign force bringing the kingdom back to its natural (ahem) roots? I actually loved that the kingdom and the table was totally divided about it.