This adventure module was first used as a Brains&Brawn RPG® play-test at Kraken Gaming in South Wales in February 2023. It took two and a half hours to play through with two playtesters both of whom are experienced role-players. It went well. SPOILER ALERT: One of the Characters was a Wizard able to Speak-With-Dead so it was not necessary to bring in the Grave Diggers Daughter character as a Spiritist to help the story progress.
HERE is a write-up of the actual game session.
 |
| we did not yet paint all the mini's |
Grim Green
GrimGreen village is off the beaten track. For several months a year during late summer the access roads are so overgrown it is impassable by the main routes. Only those who know the local forest paths are able to find it. During autumn, winter and early spring the village can be seen from some distance through the barren deciduous trees surrounding it.
Adventure Notes / Plot Outline
Adventurers come to village to protect it from bandits.
Offer of payment later turns out to be in used adventurers gear from a store house.
Raiding the storehouse reveals lots of adventurers gear.
The village is in disrepair.
It is made of wood.
The Non-Player Characters Grave Digger & Grave Diggers Daughter
can be persuaded into telling the truth - the freshly dug graves are adventurers.
A cemetery named GravenStone is in the forest somewhere near the village.
They might be there and back by nightfall.
Village used to export food crops to outsiders
but bandits have killed most the farmers in their raids.
The villagers are themselves killing any adventurers they can persuade to come into their village.
“Oh, you must all sleep in comfort.
We have many empty houses here now.
Each of you can have a room.”
The village houses are quite simple. The main room is the first floor, which has beds. The ground floor has storage mostly for hunter-gathering, agricultural and woodcraft related items. It was never a rich village.
Nowadays, everybody is fed from the same cauldron, the village are working together. In some ways, the villages explain, it has brought the people together as a strong community.
The villages do not have much food, they eat once a day. Most of them are involved in food related activities. The broth is made of nettles. Gritty, sour stodge. It is of course valid green, reflecting the name of the village and the adventure module. Surprisingly Nettles are a common and normal food in this world as it was in medieval times. The characters have eaten it regularly in their lives. It usually tastes a lot better than this flavourless grime.
The characters soon realise the villages are trying their best to continue going while in a state of shock. Whenever anybody mentions the bandits they shrug their shoulders.
Every villager has a different story to tell about the bandits. Children eventually blab that there are no bandits, the elders made it up.
The villagers have resorted to preying on adventurers, who they can alert in here to exchange their goods at market.
What happened to the able bodied villagers are used to live here?
The children say they disappeared, one by one. Always at night. The elders told them not to talk about this with anyone.
During the night, a cloaked man enters the bedroom and attempts to stab some of the characters. The characters may fight or flee.
With no room to draw weapons, unless they specified they sleep with a weapons, it is a fistfight, pushing and shoving, wrestling.
Any player who says they character shouts out loud will probably wake the other characters and half the village.
The assailant attempts to escape. If caught, it turns out to be one of the villagers. Interrogated he will explain everything.
The villagers have turned to banditry, they are all in on it, except for the children. It wasn’t always this way.
The other villagers will deny this. They will act shifty about it.
The assassin will attempt to wrestle free and attack one of the other villages in a frame verses counter-frame argument. The players will have to pull him off, or someone might accidentally get killed.
At this time the remaining bandits will arrive, having surrounded the village.
The children run over to them, shouting "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy is back!" and forming a protective shield around the bandits if necessary to protect their loved ones from any attack by the Player Characters.
The villagers, probably the Elders, will mournfully explain everything to the Characters.
Brains&Brawn RPG : Grim Green
GM Guide
The purpose of Brains&BrawnRPG is open-ended development, encouraging players to use their imaginations to create the story. This involves improvisational skills. The role of the GamesMaster is simply to present a situation, listen to the player-characters decisions, present a new situation based on the most probable outcome of the player-characters decisions. The adventure scenario is a series of interrelated situations which progress the story in a certain direction of itself. Gamesmaster must weave these elements together.
Characters
Village Elders
Old Crone
Younger Crone
Old Gaffer
Younger Gaffer
Village Idiot
Mother
Gravedigger
Gravediggers Daughter
The Hunter
Thirteen children : aged between one and fifteen, continuously arguing and running amok.
Several Bandits : men and women of the village.
Act One
One : Arrival at Grim Green
Kids & Crones
Two : Survey of Defences
Three : The Locked Hut
Four : GraveDigger & his Daughter
Act Two
Five : Visiting Graven Stone
No freshly dug graves
Six : Nettle Soup
Seven : Dusk Into Nightfall
Act Three
Eight : Daddy’s Home
Nine : Battle or Beginning?
Playtester credits:
Charley Jungle (Ralof the Rogue)
Chris Rugby (BloodWolf the Wizard)
Joe Russell (GM/designer)
 |
| with great respect to Akira Kurosawa |