Tension Tables and Faction Development in Mythic Bastionland
Using an Unexpected Collection of Tools to Prep a Hexwar Soloplay
Mythic Bastionland is known for its fantastical myths, but it also has intriguing sections on Dominions, Authority, and Warbands. Here at Gnomestones we’re exploring these sections while applying Hexwars and other OSR tools to our historical Gnomestones soloplay thriller.
We have our setting, map, and character sheet ready to go from previous sessions. To finish the prep, we need to address the other factions and decide how their motivations will impact the flow of the game. As we go we’ll show how our rolls and Gnomestones canon work together to inform the world-building results. In the name of Ulf, let’s get building!
FACTION 1: The MULNARNS
Our hero Sir Tollix Twinewinder grew up in the bucolic fields of Mulnar. Eighty-six years ago, the lands of Mulnar were liberated from centuries of evil Kyroan overlords by a monotheistic ethno-state known as the people of Ulf. Since then, Mulnar has been part of the Ulfan Empire, a vassal realm in the Southern Provinces. It’s a marked improvement from Kyroan tyranny, but recently the zealotry and hubris of the Ulfans is feeling increasingly overbearing, and the Mulnarns are seriously contemplating independence as a new way forward.
You’ll recall that this particular Gnomestones arc is inspired by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. In this game, it will be the Mulnarns embodying l’esprit de corps. Therefore, we need a game design tool to effectively simulate the growing discontent and eventual revolt of the Mulnarn.
The Events Table
The TTRPG blogging community has been hard at work framing the flow and pacing of adventures. I recommend checking out a blogger/artist called MurkDice who has been researching different ‘timeline of events’ flowcharts and game tension matrices as creative tools that move the game forward.
We want to do something similar, but in a way that incorporates Mythic Bastionland rules and accounts for mechanisms we’re currently missing. Specifically, we want to make Omens and Myths part of the table, and we want to account for the fact that Mythic Bastionland has no other tool for determining random encounters, and has no traditional Monster Manual. We get in the lab and things escalate quickly from there.
Here is a rough version of our Mythic Bastionland Events Tables (full version at the bottom). We’ve given the table twelve rows and twelve columns dans l’esprit de jeu. Each time Sir Tollix enters a new hex, there is a 1 in 6 chance of triggering the events table. The table uses colors to indicate the different categories of event that can occur. A green space is good fortune. A red space generates a landmark. A blue space generates an MB omen, advancing towards a myth. There's more, but for now let’s turn back to our second faction.
FACTION 2: THE ULFANS
Once upon a time the Ulfans followed their god out of the wilderness and into the promised land. They’ve been the heroes of their own story ever since, working feverishly to proselytize the known world to their ‘Lord of All Creation’ with acts of civil engineering and pop-up blacksmithing clinics. Their symbols are the Hammer, Anvil, Grindstone, and Coin. They worship through building. In their language, ‘Ulf’ can be roughly translated to ‘the’.
We’re nearing the end of the Ulfan Golden Age, and like most aging empires, the Ulfans are facing internal fracturing and significant corruption in the border regions. Though the Ulfans are often the protagonists in the world of Gnomestones, in this case they’re lukewarm villains.
Myths and Knights
Time to infuse these factions with the flavor of Mythic Bastionland Myths and Knights. I was originally going to roll four of each to account for the complexity presented by our other game mechanics, but they’re just too fun, so I went for the full six. Some of the rolls have been carried forward from our previous sessions.
Enter the Ulfan generals: The Talon Knight, The Gazer Knight, and The Mask Knight. For the purposes of this arc, the authority structure of the Ulfland and surrounding regions will be influenced by Mythic Bastionland with a council of knights, a smattering of seers, and the potential for crises. We already have our Weaver Knight, and The Magpie and Amber Knights will be making their appearances down the road.
The Myths add great flavor, especially the The Order, which will clearly work as part of the Ulfan Faction. I’m not sure if the other baddies go with this arc, so we’ll keep an eye on The Lich, Shadow, Hydra, and Plague. Evil things in our future I suppose. The myths will occur less frequently than the normal MB game because they only trigger on some of the Events Table boxes. I’m not sure if our heroes will have time for a hydra with this next threat coming around the corner.
FACTION 3: GNOMEPOLEON
There are whispers that the gnomes of the south have a fiery new leader. Long have the gnomes hid in the shadows, from the dark elves, then the Kyroans, and now the Ulfans are in charge and things are no better. The tunnels are as cold as every and gnomes go hungry by the day. But now is the time for the Gnomes of Le Jardin to seek their own destiny, forged in the blood of their enemies, with a glorious leader at the vanguard! Gnomepoleon is here! All will bow or taste his blade!!
The Events Decks
Adjoining our Events Table are three ‘Events Decks’. Each one corresponds to an Events Table outcome, purple for The Rise of the Gnomes, yellow for Civil Unrest and other Ulfan related events, and green for Mulnarn good luck. My original idea was to make three event timelines that evoke the feeling of classic war games and MB Omens, but once they were made, I realized randomizing the events would lead to more emergent plot (plus then I don’t have to order them). The Events Decks function similarly to random tables.
I’ve added an extra mechanic to the purple and yellow categories that impacts how the main Events Table works. As purple and yellow events are crossed off, more of the Event Matrix will become available, altering the odds and opening up the potential for new events. This progression is explained further at the bottom.
Time to demonstrate a classic worldbuilding virtue: restraint. There are so many great tools in the OSR community. I’d love to bring in the Tome of Adventure Design for villainous plots and then port in the Cairn2e Warden’s Guide for Faction Agents, but this is more than enough. We already have MB spark tables, and we want to keep it manageable and start actually playing before the fun grows stale.
Well, at the very least I could go over some additional relevant subgroups.
SUB-FACTIONS
A Prayer for Bears
In the French Revolution, democratic Christians fought royalist Christians, but what if there was an alternate history where France went pagan as part of the deal? Though the people of Mulnar adopted Ulf as their god, they never stopped their regional version of spirit animal worship. The Mulnarn’s stubborn devotion to the ‘Great Bear Ursnae’ melded with Ulfan traditions, and now the Mulnarn druids claim that all of their land’s strange megafauna are Holy creations of Ulf. This belief has sparked a deep ideological rift between the Mulnarn clerics and the Ulfan bishops, the former of whom conclude that all things are holy creations of Ulf, while the latter say that only the people of Ulf and their direct creations are holy. It’s actually a highly divisive issue and contributes significantly to the war.
Sodortha
Our most astute readers may remember that this arc started with the neighboring province directly to the west of Mulnar. We gnomes haven’t forgotten, and neither have the bard-knights of Sodortha! While we most likely won’t be traveling as far west as the Horseshoe Mountains in this campaign (dare I speak too soon), the People of Stilt Moss Valley are equally weary of the Ulfan reign. On the brink of their own revolt, special Sodorthan troops will be included in our tension flowchart. They’re led by The Magpie Knight, an old friend of the Weaver.
The Buespari
Though the Monks of Motion are central to other Gnomestones adventures, by this time the Buespari have fallen pretty far to the wayside. Sir Tollix Twinewinder’s absentee father was a rambling Buespari man, for which Tollix can thank his ability to Warp and Weft (the Ulfans mistrust this power). The Buespari are reluctant to take sides: they are generally favorable to the concept of revolution as facet of Motion, but they rather not be slain. There’s an outside chance that the cult of Ursnae may actually refer to the lost Bear-steed of Bue’s Disciple of Stone from way back in the Age of Heroes. If this were the case, the Monks would zealously serve the interests of the bear cult and their revolution, but now we’re really getting into the weeds.
FINALE
At some point we blacked out, and the next thing you know it’s all done!
There’s a lot to process, but it will all make sense when we start playing. The play instructions are included with the picture. I’m looking forward to generating dynamic scenarios! One draw back is that the Events Tables doesn’t react to player choice, so manipulating it won’t be part of the game, with one exception. If expansion is achieved on the x or y axes, there is a slight incentive to achieve expansion on the other axis, so that chances for good luck can be increased. It’s possible to trigger the event lists through in-game actions, so if the Gnomes rise, it would benefit the Mulnarns to then increase the civil unrest, and vice versa. But other than that angle, the Events Table is mostly dictating, rather than responding to gameplay.
That’s all for now! I look forward to applying this tool when we get started with the action. Back at Ulf’s Mantle, Sir Tollix broods over dark tidings by the parapet, watching the Worwen clouds gather forebodingly in the south. What possibly can he do now? This question and much more will be answered next time, on Gnomestones.
It's funny, I'm always curious about how to work other kinds of play into Mythic Bastionland -- particularly other themes and dimensions of play -- but just reworking the random encounter table to include more stuff is one of the most elegant ways I've seen of doing it!