The Little Game
Writing up this game is an exercise in minimalism. The players start the game as villagers in an extremely isolated area called the Village of the Vale. They will know almost nothing of the big wide world around them. I will write up very little before the players need it.
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The Little Game
What you know:
The Vale has 4 hamlets and a collection of 20 or so farmsteads surrounded by a forest. Gingal, Dandan, Kubelo, and Jenkins. Each has 5 to 10 buildings. There are about 500 people in the Vale and you know every single one of them, young and old.
Hamlets are a market and community center for nearby family farms. They provide locally needed services like surplus storage. Each Hamlet will have a mill for grinding flour. They will have a blacksmith able to shoe horses, repair and make tools, and tinker pots. Each hamlet will have brewing skills for making meads and beers and wines.
Gingal has a lumber mill for planing boards. Kubelo has a large number of pepper trees and olive trees. Dandan has a lot of fruit trees. Jenkins, the largest has a traveler's Inn and an attached brewery. (The inn is cleverly called the Inn at Jenkins)
Farmteads are miniature hamlets themselves but interact with the various hamlets. For an idea of a active Farmstead think about Faldor's Farm in the Beleriand series.
The Vale is surrounded by forest on 3 sides with rolling hills and the beginning of a gorge to the south.
A Village called Belwing is to the south someplace. Most adults have been there a few times during their lives. The Village of Blue Rock is to the northeast, farther away. Only a few people have been to it in their lives. The City and castle of Arrow is near Blue Rock and the Duke of Arrow lives there. The City and Castle of Redfoot is far to the south and the Duke of Redfoot lives there. Only the Village elders have been there and not in the last decade.
It seems that the Village of Vale lies on the border of Redfoot and Arrow and it is unclear who ultimately has authority over it. Tax collectors, a yearly occurrence, come from both, and get taxes in kind from the region for both, a situation that the Village Elders have let go for over a decade and is a source of much community argument. But the elders claim it is easier to pay both a little then to alert either to their prosperity and find them both sending soldiers to claim the village.
Traders travel between these villages and the cities of Redfoot and Arrow carry out what amounts to a modest exchanges of staples and a few luxury items. Redfoot has glass workers and the trade is practiced in Gingal as well. While fabric arts are common in village life rare fabrics like silk can sometime be found in Redfoot and is carried by traders. The City of Arrow is rumored to produce weaponry, especially archery equipment, which is prized throughout the land. Traders from Arrow often have exotic spices though the Hamlet of Kubelo has Pepper and Olive trees nearby that often produce enough to export pepper and both olives and olive oil.
Minstrels come through the vale on occasion and are met with eagerness and suspicion. They know many song and tales and somewhat about the outside world. But they also create tall tales.
The Inn at Jenkins sometimes has visitors from Belwing or Blue Rock, rarely from Arrow or Redfoot. It also often serves as a meeting place for the Vale Elders.
None of the PCs will have left the vale.
Giant Spiders and Giant rats are common foes. The spiders are about the size of a pug. The rats often as large as a corgi and are fierce. Growing up, Vale kids were encouraged to hunt and kill these pests, as well as regular rats. They are told not to fight wolves, but to tell adults if they see wolves. Legends of Koblolds and Orcs are the stuff of scary campfire tales but elders of the tribe assure the young they exist. Relics from some ancient battle adorn the walls of the Inn at Jenkins.
Giant Rats provide meat and fur. A soft fur, when treated, provides cloak linings and blankets. Giant Spiders are often mixed in fertilizer providing exceptionally helpful nutrients.
The game begins with a hunt for spiders.
Game Details
Each player will begin with an extremely rural background. Farmer, woodsman, miller, innkeeper. Blacksmith. Hunter. One PC will be a Blacksmith’s son or apprentice. One will be an Innkeeper’s son or ward.
PCs will have been raised in a nature oriented religion with a sufficiently complicated theology they are only barely knowledgeable about. Consider it like knowing the holidays, marriage, death rituals, and little else. A class of nature priest similar to druids or friars travel among the land performing needed ceremonies. A PC might be an apprentice of such a person but would never have left the Vale.
PCs will have a personal knife, mostly an eating utensil, and a small collection of other items such as fire-starting kit. Salt & pepper bag. Ball of twine. There will be a few small bows. A skinning knife. PCs will have rural skills.
Everything i have written up for this game is on this wiki page, or fits on one side of one page. There is one map, sections of which the PCs will get a bit at a time.
I am not sure what game system i will use. Probably a mixture Warlock and other mush. I will give players a copy of the "Game Book." I have a copy of Warlock as a doc file to clip from.
Skills: Players will start with some general rural skills and a few ones they were specially trained in depending on background.
Common: things nearly everyone has: fire starting, basic cooking, animal tending, farming, very basic medical first aid.
Practiced: trap setting, farm repair, very basic herblore.
Accomplished: tracking, hunting, animal rendering. Healing teas. brewing. vinting.
Expert: construction. Midwifery.
I will be using the distinctions of magic items, enchanted items, and crafted items
Magic items are extremely, almost impossible, to destroy. Enchanted items have a spell causing the magic and the it maintains its usual strength. Ie; a magic spear can be used to lever a large bolder from the ground easily. An enchanted spear can be broken like a normal spear.
Crafted items are made by experts and master craftsmen. Few crafted items will be better then +3. A common enchanted item, among the hedge wizards spells to cast will be a variety of Continual spells that create useful but very minor enchanted items such as fire stones, ice stones, chill stones, warming blankets, and the like.
There will be less then 1000 magic items on planet. The vast majority of these will be arrows, followed by +1 weapons and shields, then +2 weapons and shields.
Magic users and clerics.. True wizards and clerics will be extremely rare to start. True wizards and clerics rarely are found in humble rural places, but that's just a guideline. At the beginning of the game no wizard or evoking priest has been to the Vale in the lifetime of the oldest native. Most wizards and clerics will be found in cities.
Not all priests will be evoking priests. Certain to be a sore point among them.
Hedge wizards will be rare but well known and the Vale will have a couple. These practitioners will be sort of a mixture of herbalists, midwife, alchemist, and charlatan. At best a 3 level mage making a rural living. Most will have traveled to learn more heir trade but may inlist young children to collect local supplies. They may provide medical help.
Friars are something akin to a parish priest, druid, and a monk. Well versed in nature lore, knowledgeable in stories and myths, they perform rituals, marriages, funerals, and blessings. The usually have medical skills.
Knowledge of the world. At the beginning of the game the PCs will know little beyond the Village of Vale except place names. The Villages of Belwing and Blue Rock are well known as are the Cities of Arrow and Redfoot.
