A couple of days ago, I kicked off a much anticipated campaign of Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG) with a session 0. I laid out the 5-foot-long Grand Long Map and postcards from UVG locations, and printed out sheets and packets from the UVG book so multiple players could review the glossary, languages, and gear. I also introduced players to Hakaba, my homebrew Adventure Hour! hack for UVG (rules one-pager here).
Here's a quick play report:
Our characters so far:
- Alroy, polyglot anarchist necromancer folk historian made out of glazed red brick, with a pinchy pet crab
- Miela, fisher-chemist and rope whisperer clad in nets and knots died in cactus blood
- Loyalty, soul-dealing "insurance adjuster" for the "Neighborhood Watch" (a transnational crime syndicate) mounted on Yelga the battle camel
- Hathak, a living war between plastic pseudo-sub dermal animalcules and a telekinetic rogue gut biome, nominally a "professional citizen" (*cough* ritual sacrifice *cough*) and biomechanic for the cultish Blueland Group
The party got a big loan from a shady military-industrial complex museum board member (themselves funded by bourgeois vampires), loaded up on narcotics and headed West hoping to deliver a letter to a duke, offload their goods, and come back with a boatload of camels from the Grass Colossus. One week into the trip, they lost a day searching for Yelga the battle camel after she was kidnaped and modified by some Vomes (violent machines). Now she has an eery titanium jaw and a penchant for staring into the sun with red-glowing eyes, but she can survive on solar (and radio thermal) radiation! Alroy and Miela also enjoyed the Crystal Clock, a portable time-dilating light circus inside a giant spindly-legged crystaline biomech. The party resupplied with jerky from a hamster farm (with a guarantee that it's NOT hamster jerky) in the ancient ruins beneath a coral viaduct. Finally, Hathak bought a pet hamster with a scar, a 1,000-yard stare, and a love of splashing in puddles.
I also recorded the session and posted it on YouTube in hopes that it might be helpful for people who'd like to see an example of how one might get a UVG campaign off the ground - and I plan to record and post all the forthcoming sessions of this campaign.
Here are the chapters of the video, which correspond to specific parts of the session 0:
Video Intro
Game Intro and Icebreaker
Character Generation
Character Introduction
Caravan Financier Generation
Reviewing Trade Goods
Outfitting Characters
Lines and Vales (The Issue of Slavery)
Caravan Logistics and the Week-long Turn
Budgeting and Buying Stuff (this is a long chunk of people poring over equipment lists and figuring carrying capacities. I warned you)
Gameplay: From the Violet City to the High Road and the Low (huzzah for actual gameplay!)
Finally, after the game, I did a faction turn using my UVG factions sheet. I rolled for each faction, aiming to accomplish the topmost goal on their goals list (they're designed to be accomplished in order from top to bottom). I decided that the Porcelain Princes' goal of kidnapping a cat lord and the Red Land District's goal of securing polybody tech secrets were opposed (-1 to the roll). The results of my rolls were:
The Great Folk progressed on their goal of recruiting a marmotfolk bone master from Skull Town (the better to resurrect the shelled Behemoth), and a random politico-economical event took place: werepugs led by an ultra established a militant raft city at the base of the Needle of the World in the Circle Sea. They plan to climb it.
I will share these developments with the players next time via rumors and rumormongers. To wit, they will encounter:
- M'oorlah Gowain, a blue-mohawked, orange-skinned doom-saying biker with steel-scale snakeskin pants and a ragged leather trench coat. Her metal steed, Blokee, has an expressionless plasteel face with glowing red eyes. M'oorlah is come from Metropolis to spread word of a coming apocalypse. She has seen the werepugs bulding their raft at the base of the Needle, and she interprets it as a sign of Doom based on a years-old proclamation of the Black City's Grand Observer: "The wrinkled ones will climb to the skyand bring the heavens down." She has a book full of the Grand Observer's proclamations, after spending a few quarter-remembered years in the Black City.
- Weritas Offputte, a squat-faced, black-haired, pale green lumber shepherd with a contagious curse: trees uproot themselves and follow slowly in Weritas's wake. Rides on a small hover wagon so they can keep making progress even while sleeping and avoid being trampled by the trees. They were cursed by a cold vome witch in the Three Sticks region for taking her man. He was trampled by the trees. Anyway, Weritas is coming east from the Behemoth Shell, where she witnessed a rare sight: a Great Folk caravan! They were brining a house-sized shell as a gift in hopes of enticing some marmotfolk bone sculptor to come to the Shell and teach them his ways.
My general intention with the random events is to replace entries once they've been rolled, but with this one I think I'll leave it be and if the werepugs climbing the Needle comes up again, that'll mean the pugs commandeer The Eye of the Storm at the top of the Needle and fly it around wreaking havoc.
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