Deconstructing Bastionland: Session 0

What is Bastionland, what is this series, and why am I doing it?

A Quick Introduction

Hi there! I'm James, a long-time TTRPG player and, for much of that time, a designer of my own systems. I love Roleplaying games, and I am particularly interested in what makes them tick, and how these processes affect the stories created while playing.

What is Mythic Bastionland?

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you already know what Mythic Bastionland is. But, if you haven't, Mythic Bastionland is a TTRPG written by Chris McDowall. The game is set in a pseudo-Arthurian land, partially created by the Referee (GM) and follows the adventures of a group of knights as they explore and defend the realm from Myths, and eventually quest to find the fabled City. It is the third iteration of the Into the Odd system (following Into the Odd itself, and its sequel Electric Bastionland). If you want more information:

• Here is the link to Chris' blog

• Here is a link to the review that got me into the game

It's an excellent system, and what I really want to highlight is its ease of use. The Referee is lead through creating a Realm step by step, and then populates it with threats all premade in the book. When the players create characters, they randomly are given knights with exciting titles with even more exciting abilities. Each session isn't carefully plotted in advance by the Referee, but just happens, as random encounters cause those pre-populated threats to gradually make their presence known, escalating from looming omens to lingering threats and finally, if unchecked, devastating consequences.

Okay, that's a definition, but why are you hung up on it?

What really gets me about Mythic Bastionland is that, beneath its gorgeous art and evocative lore, is an excellently designed system for procedural play. The landscape traversed by the players feels textured, full of interesting locations. The random events make play feel organic and decision-lead but also continually push the narrative forward. The players always have sufficient information, or failing that, a method for gaining further information, so play never stalls. In a world where pre-session prepping is a leading cause of GM burnout, a game that plays itself is wonderous.

Beyond that, the core resolution mechanics are simple, allowing gameplay to flow, but the combat rules have enough depth to enable, and indeed force, dynamic play. Furthermore, the fact that each character has unique abilities mean that each player interacts with the world in their own way, without a need for cumbersome skill or talent lists.

So sure, it's an excellent game.

But what is this series, and why are you doing it?

I've played a campaign of MB, and I'd play more. But there are many other stories I want to tell:

• Desperate Norse heroes struggling to keep things together in the face of Ragnarok (I've been playing the Banner Saga recently)

• Alien Knights holding to their oaths centuries after the Atom Wars destroyed civilisation on the far-flung planet of Jaronil (Psychedelic space-fantasy with the aesthetics of Moebius)

• Intrepid scavengers and scientists exploring an anomalous zone (Stalker, Metro 2033, Pacific Drive)

• Gangs trying to stay alive in a lawless city, ruled by corrupt cops and threatened by horrors from the sewers (The Warriors crossed with urban myths and possibly a dash of cyberpunk)

• Inhabitants of the Last City trying to stave off entropy as the fabric of reality frays and tears (Viriconium, Dying Earth, Book of the New Sun)

Perhaps the above list shows I am a derivative hack, and perhaps I could be accused of seeing everything as a nail while holding a hammer, but I feel that any of these could fit into the framework of Mythic Bastionland - a race against the clock, dealing with various growing threats across a hex-tile map.

The rulebook of Mythic Bastionland has a lot of content. 144 pages are just dedicated to who you might be, or the threats you'll encounter, and this is one of its great features - the game gives you all of this and says "Go, run a campaign!". But because of this, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that to run a similar campaign you'd need to produce an equal amount of your own content, which is a daunting task.

Hence this series. By breaking down Mythic Bastionland to its core components and sifting out all the elements only relevant to the MB setting, we should land with a collection of key subsystems. Each can be used individually as add-ons to any system/campaign of your choosing, to add a little personal flair.

But the real purpose of this series is to reconstruct them into a generic system foundation. From this, anyone will be able build settings all of their own that have all the juicy procedural goodness of Mythic Bastionland.

A quick note on dissecting the frog

There is a classic analogy about comedy "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better, but the frog dies in the process". This, to an extent is true about the forthcoming posts - they will peel away some of the beauty and mystique of Mythic Bastionland. Bear that in mind before continuing.