So Long, and Thanks for all the Jam! (Part 7)

I've been running +Zak Smith's "A Red and Pleasant Land" at the +MK RPG club here in sunny Milton Keynes for the long block; a period of 8 weeks gaming every Tuesday night. Last night was the final session so now its time to quickly recount what occurred but more importantly talk about why RPL should be something you try at least once. You can view the previous sessions here.

The Quick Recap

Leveling up for the final time.

The players convinced the Order of Clubs knights (who were guarding the Heart King) that their lord had been resurrected and was angry. This caused a bit of a mutiny when it all kicked off at the Hatter's tea party, just as Winnie and Eliza took care of the Red Bride Ilona's guards followed by Ilona's untimely "final death" at the hands of Lemule and Maximus.

Through some chatter with the Hatter the pieces began to fit into place. The player characters were the reason why the mirrors had sealed over in Voivodja and their special items (each character had a special object that was dear to them in some way) were the key to getting back, along with the blood of the Jabberwock.

They tried to clear the nearest mirror but it seemed to still be missing one item. Lemule shoved Eric into the mirror just to test, resulting in Eric taking more burns to his face and body as he bounced back. A bit more discussion led to the deduction that presumably the Red King (who had gone missing the same time the characters had arrived in Voivodja) was stuck on the other side.

They visited Castle Poenari, convincing the guards within that Eliza was the new Bride (having killed off Ilona). They also realised that, going by the portraits on the wall, that the Red King looked the spitting image of the Bethlem physician that had taken over not too long ago. They ran into the other brides in the harem and battle ensued which led to Winnie using Phantasmal Psychedelia to summon a clone of the Jabberwock into the small room. This caused general confusion all around but did assist in the death of the bride Tizala. Ildana immediately surrendered, having just witnessed the party slaughter her fellow bride and give herself a bit of a pasting.

They broke into the Red King's chamber and found another portal with the Red King's crown on the floor - throwing the crown through the portal completed the restoration of the portals back to the 'real world'... so what happened next?

• Eric Forsing (Tom) - Voivodja had successfully eroded what little sanity he had left. He spent the next 6 months back in London, staring at the statue he had taken with him before eventually taking his own life.
• Maximus (+Anthony Edmonds) - never fully believing he was insane, he was just grateful to escape Voivodja. He left with Eric, starting his life anew in London.
• Winnie Sweet (+Kathryn Jenkins) - Winnie desperately wanted to be a vampire so Eliza turned her. When Tizala returned to her humanoid form she was exiled from the castle and Winnie became a bride in her place.
• Eliza De Grace (+Victoria Allin) - she was as good as queen now, who needed her true love back in London? She was more than content to stay in power here in Voivodja, maybe she could make a difference.
• Lemule Black (+Scott Dorward) - they knew the Red King was dead (he had died back in Bethlem on that fateful night). He had a crown. All hail King Lemule. He had hopes, like Eliza, that he could perhaps settle the politics of Voivodja but this would be a temporary peace till someone drank from the wrong tea cup or coughed in the wrong tone.
• Cuthbert Harrington (Dan) - He went missing during the assassination of Ilona and has not yet been accounted for.

So Just How Good is A Red and Pleasant Land?

RPL is beautiful in many ways. Its cover, its artwork, the writing - all top notch. How good is to actually play though? The setting is a true delight and odd enough that it makes a welcome break for your usual elves-in-the-woods, dwarves-in-the-mountains, fantasy trawl. Running it within a total of 7 sessions however saw me cramming the content; each week there was some major NPC involved, things escalated super fast, random encounters were reduced considerably... I mean after the 7th session we saw Lemule become the Red King! Poenari would have potentially lasted two or three sessions had I left the various puzzles and used the maps as listed in the book! Coupled with levelling up between each session it made for a very fast paced and enjoyable game, but its not a way I would advise you run RPL.

RPL needs to either be a one-shot session where you dump the players in a random scene with all manner of loopy stuff happening, or a long campaign (and I mean looong). You either need to have a fast paced session where players can just enjoy the lunacy of Voivodja or you can play it, as presumably intended, over a couple of years.

The nature of the setting, the politics, the characters - there is enough content here to keep your group going for ages and anyone can spin the lot into a captivating story, especially thanks to the tables.

Tables. Good grief +Zak Smith makes it easy for you. I timed myself one night and found that I was able to create enough content for two 3 hour sessions in under an hour. This involved using the simple dice-drop tables to generate a couple of landscapes, reviewing his anomalies tables and coming up with a few ideas of my own to put some meat on the landscape. A quick roll during the planning of each session determined what was happening in Voivodja outside of the player's actions, which meant that should the players ever deviate from their current plans I'd know how the climate was likely to respond without too much thought.

I think that highlights a good aspect of it. The number of tables involved takes away so much of the grunt work in GMing, leaving you free to concentrate on being creative with the results.

Winnie already plotting Eliza's downfall.

There's a page in the book called "The Unreasonable". It covers the difference between what makes something creepy and what makes it whimsical and it's a bloody good page to read and re-read in-between planning your sessions. The first couple of nights I kept things neatly in the 'weird' stage, I wanted to emphasise that this was essentially an alien landscape while letting the players have fun interacting with it.

I started to dial things back though; they found the house with the remains of Eric's past, they met the Colourless Queen and were served babies, they found humans strung up like butcher meat - Voidvoja was a funny place but it was also a deadly beast and I wanted to gently bring in that creepy 'fuck there's actually vampires running this place' factor. I found this a bit hard at times, being all too easy to slip into my usual gonzo style of play.

You should buy A Red and Pleasant Land if you do not already have it. You can get the PDF from DriveThruRPG but really you're going to want to get a copy of it in print (though it is now sold out, so either keep an eye on the second hand sources or wait for the second printing). Even if you don't choose to play it 'as is' it's got so much value in the way of the aforementioned tables, creative NPCs, monsters, and general fun things to drop on your players. At the very least you can use the book, as advised by Zak himself, to kill small animals.

Many thanks to the players +Victoria Allin, +Kathryn Jenkins, +Scott Dorward, +Anthony Edmonds, Tom, and Dan for being awesome all round.