The Warlord

INTRODUCTION

The warlord is a mouse from the realms of night. She accomplished great things, both horrible and beautiful. Play to find out her story.

She had a daughter, who grew up through years of war and bloodshed. For some reason, she decided to run away into the weird, dreadful spirit lands. Play to find out why she ran, how she survived, when and where to.

After unifying the tribes, the warlord sheds the nocturnal crown and goes to find her daughter. At the end of her journey, she will find her. Play to see how it pans out, what she’ll have to overcome, and what they’ll say to each other when they are reunited at last.

OVERVIEW

This is a tabletop roleplaying game about mice, family, ghosts, travelling, redemption, love, war, and weird shit.

The players will follow the warlord on her journey. One player will be the warlord herself. The other players will control the spirit lands and the dangers she will face; the spirits of the dead that come from her past, to haunt her and talk with her; and every mice she has ever known, during flashback scenes, through which everyone will discover the story of the warlord.

The goal of this game is to collectively tell a story, but also let it run wild and discover it; to be surprised, to give up some control, to surprise others, and to make sense of the messy, organic narrative you create and explore at the same time - and maybe, make something beautiful out of it.

She always finds her daughter. Play to find out what's at stake, what their life looked like, how she gets there, and what happens when she does.

VERSION INFORMATION

v0.3.

This is a rough first draft of the rules, but they should be feature complete. Next steps are adding some player resources, writing printable player aids for ease of play (especially for the ritual sentences, the collective moves, structural elements of the ritual loop, things like that) and adding more scenes to the Tapestry, especially ones about the life of the warlord. (But the imaginary daughter, Hurting and Burning scenes should take care of that until then.)

ROADMAP

Coming in the future:

• Player aids for print, to help run through the Ritual Loop in a smooth manner.
• Reminders for the collective moves and the ritual sentences.
• More Tapestry cards - especially daily life  stuf and scenes involving the warlord's daughter.
• V - Of Questions and Campfires: resources for loaded questions to run the day phase. Reunion questions. Contexts, questions, and conversation starters for the campfire phase. Examples of consequences and hurting scenes.
• VI - Tapestry Threads: an experimental feature I really want to try that turns the tapestry deck into a branching narrative.
• VII - Examples of Play: what it says on the tin. I need to run a few games to flesh this out.
• More uses for consequences, especially more moves that call for blackening consequences.
• Maybe specific moves or playbooks for the various roles, but I don't know if that would be appropriate. Might need to playtest some to get a grasp of that.
• Changes and updates from the upcoming playtest sessions.

CREDITS AND FINAL WORDS

Icons from game-icons.net.