The Lady and Tiger

I recently ran Winter’s Daughter for the first time using Knave 1e. This was partially intended as a way to keep my party busy as I caught up with setting prep for our campaign but it also provided me with the chance to run more of the material I’ve been hoarding for the past few years. Something I notice when talking to other GMs, whether online or offline, is that we always have a new setting or adventure book purchase to talk about but rarely do we follow up and actually run much of that material. Plus I’ve basically only heard praise for the adventure and I wanted to give it a try myself. This is part play report, part review and mostly just serves as a way for me to get some of my scattered thoughts about the module written down someplace.

Session 1

After explaining gist of the setting, providing them with a hook from the book (hired by a wizard to go graverobbing) and running everyone through character creation, I started them out at the outskirts of the forest clearing containing the burial mound the adventure (largely) takes place in. The aleatoric character generation in Knave has been a huge success with every group I’ve run it with and that was no different here, as the players immediately used the results of their rolls to get into the headspace of who their characters might be and why they needed the money in the first place.

If you weren’t aware, the current version of Winter’s Daughter has a pretty major change to its opening compared to what was originally published. Initially the party would come across a live (and willing) human sacrifice being performed by a sinister sorcerous cult. I can see how this can easily derail the rest of the story and put players into an undesirable moral quandary, especially as the cult was statted up to be quite strong vs. level 1 characters. However I can’t help but feel that the removal of the scene without replacing it with something else that provides an initial burst of action or interest leaves something to be desired.

Now, the players are confronted with a circle of mossy standing stones etched with runes encircling a slime-covered and still moving stag skeletons. Metal owls hang from the trees nearby, and, all in all, a pretty evocative scene is set. However I did feel the lack of meaningfully actionable elements here. The slime on the skeleton is evaporating into a green haze but neither the slime nor haze has much to offer to the party beyond set dressing. This ultimately leads to the entire situation feeling like fake tension behind the screen. The owls did creep out my players and I did like that they are set to induce chills in characters who touch them, but little else occurs and it feels like an odd speed bump on the way to the parts of the adventure that provide more meaningful interaction.

Once the party made their way into the burial mound they came across a set of four enchanted religious objects, set to attack any non-Lawful characters. I have mixed feelings on alignment in D&D in general, but there’s a few things I didn’t like here. On one hand, I really like the idea of a collection of small religious objects (a book, a crucifix, a statue of a cherub and a huge candle) coming to life and accosting the party. It has a strong fairy tale element and fits right at home in the adventure. However the objects don’t communicate with the party, instead attacking on sight, and the combat feels like a consequence of uncommunicated risk. The dungeon does have a back entrance but having an unavoidable combat with no opportunity for parlay in the first room feels like a poor introduction to the OSR, which is what I often see this adventure touted as. And the combat does feel unavoidable – sure, Lawful characters can simply walk past but, if they’re adventuring with Neutral or Chaotic characters (a likely occurrence), leaving their allies to die doesn’t seem like a particularly reasonable line of action. The objects also have Morale 12 which particularly frustrated me, since it felt like it necessitated a fight to the death.

I don’t have a better place to begin talking about this, so I do want to highlight that I highly appreciated the formatting of the adventure. The OSE house style is used here to great effect and I found myself running the adventure easily by just reading the room key for the party’s location and working from there. I didn’t need to do any extensive prep beyond getting the enemies converted to Knave and putting them into my VTT. However because of its focus on ease of use I do feel there’s some criticism to be levied here – the formatting places potential encounters on the same syntactic level as the general vibe of a room and this can make running it right out of the book feel a little off. It’s easy to rattle off details about how musty the room is or what the doors within look like before realizing that the next entry, a monster the party very much needs to deal with immediately, should’ve probably come first. It isn’t a deal breaker by any means and if you do more of a read-through than I did prior to your session I doubt you’ll have much of an issue but when it comes to my own personal dungeon keys I prefer something closer to Courtney’s style detailed in On Set Design, but with enemies described lightly in the key itself and having their details moved to their own separate box. This is sort of how Winter’s Daughter does it, but enemies show up in both the key under their own header as well as a separate section and I feel like I would prefer having the enemies only listed in detail once.

The party made their way to Area 6 and spent some time waffling on whether or not to mess with the statue. Figuring that with nothing ventured, nothing would be gained they took off its blindfold and were confused for quite some time about the star symbol on the statue’s head. This was something I struggled with as well, and I feel it dovetails with the earlier scene at the standing stones. The adventure sometimes includes details that don’t have a clear explanation and this can cause issues when players want to plumb every interaction for lore or backstory. It was only a speedbump with the statue but later they met the princess it was modeled after and they spent a little bit engaged in inapt discussion asking her what the star meant, why she had a blindfold, and other details. If you’re a better GM than me maybe it isn’t an impediment at all, but including inexplicable details as well NPCs who by all rights should know the meaning of those details feels like leading the GM to failure. I eventually settled on the Princess forgetting the reason for the blindfold and the star being a simple birthmark, but it was a disappointing moment that felt like it could have easily been avoided or made meaningful. Again, this might not be an issue if you read the text thoroughly and decide to move lore or backstory elements around but if you’re just jumping in it does feel like an unnecessary inclusion.

From Area 6 they went straight to Area 14 and entered Fairyland. As much as I love nonlinearity and extol the virtues of Xandering the Dungeon I do feel that constructing the dungeon such that the party can waltz right into what feels like the narrative middle or end feels a little off. Narrative in OSR games can be a touchy subject, but this dungeon does feel designed to provide a player-driven plot, especially with the variety of hooks that seem to imply the ghost of buried knight should be confronted before the princess. This isn’t to say the adventure doesn’t support meeting the princess first – in fact, she provides a hint as to the puzzle preventing access to the aforementioned ghost if you haven’t met him yet, a clear sign that this order is supported by the module designer. But it does feel a little off that the party can simply walk up to a character within the dungeon who explains the entire backstory of the place, provide them with a clear quest to a location within a short distance and gives them a hint that circumvents any puzzle solving whatsoever. It feels more like a concession to nonlinearity than an organic development of events and NPCs who can explain the dungeon’s backstory and quest are something I try to avoid in my games from personal experience.

The goblin guarding the princess’s tower, on the other hand, is absolutely amazing. He won’t let characters in without an invitation (impossible) unless they eat a mushroom from his pouch. The fungi have randomized effects and, although I wish the table was larger, the impact on the game is great. The players get a chance to roleplay and interact with a character who doesn’t default to violence and can have long lasting changes on their character that, by and large, are either helpful, funny or both.

This was where the first session ended, and the party was resolved to help bring the two lovers together in spite of being originally hired to return the ring to an outside party. All in all, my feelings at that point were mainly positive. The adventure has a fun vibe and really nails the fairy tale aesthetic, the visuals were fun to describe (especially the transition into Fairyland from an underground pool) and outside of the first combat taking too long due to a string of bad rolls on both sides, the rest of the adventure moved along at a brisk pace and kept the players engaged.

Part 2