I’d love to hear some stories about advancement in Torchbearer. Maybe some of you playtesters could regale us with your tales of adventure and woe. Any emergent play hinted to by the Luke and Thor in their interviews after 4 or more sessions? 10? How do characters seem to develop beyond their initial stats, etc. both as personalities and as numbers.
Hell yeah! Actual Plays!!
Stay cool 8)
Just started a new adventure today—Yancy (halfling butler), Gudren (lady warrior) and Harguld (greedy dwarf) were shipwrecked. Entered the dungeon 10 turns in before we had a successful camp (would’ve done it earlier but as soon as I broke out the tablecloth and rations we discovered our “camp” was in a spawn point and we had to skedaddle). Fought some sailors, also from our wrecked ship after they robbed us. Killed 'em! I watched. Fled some giant rats that were disturbed in the fracas. Tried to tame an infernal, hairy, fanged beast and failed. Failed to capture it in the tablecloth but in a stroke of good fortune it decided to run off instead of savage us (though it did that later when we bumped into it in a hallway and that made us quite angry. Quite angry indeed.). Oh, and we managed to cleverly “find” a crossbow trap—injuries all around. Yancy prepared dinner and calmed everyone down. We ate and drank and nursed our wounds and tried to get some sleep. In a closet. sigh Fuck this place.
I played in a very early playtest and I know a lot has changed since then, but I remember thinking I was going to play a badass warrior. In the session I fell down a rock incline and got injured, swallowed some stagnant water while swimming and got sick, and we got into a fight with a troll and barely managed to drive him off. It made dungeon exploration a really rough experience which I think if you are in the right mindset for adds a level of grittiness and, ahem, “realism” to dungeon crawling.
I really like what was said in one of the teasers or maybe on the Kickstarter page about how the game is about taking desperate people, making them endure really rough circumstances, and turning them into heroes. I’m eager to play again.